The Film Censorship in Shanghai French Concession (1927-1943)
Weiqing Zhao (Communication University of Zhejiang)
In 1927, following the authorities of the International settlement, those of the French Concession also established a film censorship system to examine the films screened in their jurisdiction. The authorities of the two settlements maintained close cooperation in film censorship. With the changes in the political situation inside and outside the settlements, the foreign authorities made constantly adjustments to the film censorship system, especially after the outbreak of the Battle of Shanghai in 1937. The film censorship policy in the foreign settlements was not only influenced by the political situation in Shanghai but also by that of the world. The relationship between the French Concession and the International Settlement was no longer as close as it used to be when they come to film censorship. Meanwhile, the Shanghai foreign settlements has become the center of film production and screening of China in the 1920s, so the film censorship of the authorities in foreign settlements had an impact on the film industry in Shanghai even the development of Chinese film. Here, films with ethnic and political themes were always the object of censorship. The film censorship in the French concession was similar to that in the International Settlement, but it had its own special characteristics since the political status and administrative system in French concession were different from those of the International Settlement. This study, taking film censorship in the French Concession as an example, examines how the authorities in French Concession managed film screened within their jurisdiction, how they exerted influence on the Film Censorship of the International Settlement, and thus the Chinese film industry, and explores the influence of film censorship on film culture and even Shanghai urban culture, so as to discuss the relationship between entertainment control and urban culture.
Colonial Capitalist Melodrama: Political Critiques in Popular Hong Kong Films of the 1950s-1960s
Tom Cunliffe (UCL)
Due to the lack of research on popular Hong Kong cinema of the 1950s-1960s, the extent to which films made during this period could be subtly critical of the colonial capitalist system has largely been unexplored. Colonial film censorship was extremely strict at this time, and any overt criticism of the British colonial government would instantly have been banned. Hence, how did filmmakers issue political critiques in their popular melodramas in a subtle way that could bypass the censors’ gaze? This paper will assess how the Cantonese left-leaning filmmakers in the 1950s subtly raised the issue of Law Wing-sang’s concept of collaborative colonialism – the collaboration between the colonial government and Chinese elites – in their social-realist melodramas, before moving on to assess how Lung Kong inherited this critical social consciousness in his early romantic and crime/social-realist melodramas in 1966 and 1967, which paved the way toward the socio-political perspectives of the Hong Kong New Wave that emerged in the mid-1970s. This provides a context to rethink Hong Kong’s colonial history that still impacts Hong Kong today, and also at how certain strands of the neglected popular cinema of this time was negotiating and critiquing Hong Kong’s colonial capitalist conditions.
Between Carnival and Censorship: Politics of the Comedic Kung Fu Body in Chinese Cinema
Wayne Wong (University of Sheffield)
This article argues that the carnivalesque nature of kung fu comedy is inherently incompatible with the nationalist agenda imposed by the Chinese government. Not only does the incompatibility limits the genre’s diversity and development in the long run but it also defeats the state’s intended purpose of promoting “soft power” through the hand-to-hand combat tradition. The highly adaptive yet grotesque kung fu comedic body has been analysed through the Bakhtinian idea of “carnivalesque”, in which the social order, hierarchies, and morality are temporarily overturned. The transgressive bodily spectacles, on the one hand, presents a unique postcolonial aesthetics challenging the heroic tradition of previous martial arts films. On the other hand, the acrobatic body embodies a neoliberalist ethos highlighting adaptability and dexterity in a hyper-capitalist Hong Kong. Yet such themes have become increasingly problematic considering the straitlaced moral framework in China, which promulgates national achievements and ideological conformity. As kung fu films have been officially appropriated as a means of promoting China’s “soft power”, playful representation of the (national) body and provocation of unintelligible laughter would be regarded as regressive and dangerous, undermining not only the communist party’s geopolitical ambitions and the state’s self-proclaimed military capabilities, but also the film industry’s continuing effort against the cultural influence of global Hollywood. The presence of censorship has led to a monolithic representation of kung fu that focuses on the heroic and epic, such as the Ip Man biopics (2008–2019), or a new kind of kung fu comedy that depoliticise the subversive body, such as Kenji Tanigaki’s Enter the Fat Dragon (2020). I will use Dayo Wong’s The Grand Grandmaster (2020), a kung fu comedy released only in Hong Kong, as a comparison to demonstrate how political censorship in China undermines the genre’s subversive potentials.