The Art of Useless: Fashion, Media, and Consumer Culture in Contemporary China

Calvin Hui

Published by Columbia University Press 2021

The Art of Useless

Fashion, Media, and Consumer Culture in Contemporary China

Calvin Hui

In the series Global Chinese Culture

https://doi.org/10.7312/hui-19248

Overview
Contents

About this book

The Art of Useless offers an innovative way to understand China’s political-economic, social, and cultural transformations, showing how consumer culture helps anticipate, produce, and shape a new middle-class subjectivity. Calvin Hui examines changing representations of the production and consumption of fashion in documentaries and films.

Author / Editor information

Calvin Hui is Class of 1952 Associate Professor of Chinese Studies at the College of William and Mary in the United States.

Reviews

Yiman Wang, author of Remaking Chinese Cinema: Through the Prism of Shanghai, Hong Kong, and Hollywood:
A superbly original study of the media construction of the middle-class sensibility in post-1949 China, Calvin Hui’s The Art of Useless demonstrates the indisputable value of Western Marxism and cultural studies in Chinese-language film studies. The ingenious tripartite structure moving from consumption to its underside affords an irresistible riveting read.

Tze-lan D. Sang, author of Documenting Taiwan on Film: Issues and Methods in New Documentaries:
By closely examining a broad selection of documentaries, feature films, and other artistic works and cultural products, Hui illuminates not only the works themselves but also the sociocultural environments that have nurtured these works and in turn been shaped by them. A useful and enlightening perspective on Chinese middle-class consumer culture.

Ban Wang, author of Illuminations from the Past: Trauma, Memory, and History in Modern China:
A cutting-edge work of cultural studies, this book shines a penetrating light on the rise of a middle class in China. Examining the powers of mass media, film, and fashion industry, Calvin Hui offers us fascinating scenarios and critical insights into how consumerist fantasies raise the pretensions of a status-seeking “bourgeoisie” while opening up dream spaces for alienated labor.

Michael Berry, author of Speaking in Images and A History of Pain:
From Never Forget, a 1964 socialist film intent on educating a factory worker who longs for a fancy suit, to the forty dazzling costume changes in 1980’s Romance on Lu Mountain, to the white-collar fashion presentations in 2010’s Go! Lala Go!, the politics of how one dresses has been a crucial coordinate for navigating cultural identity in contemporary China. In The Art of Useless, Calvin Hui takes us on a fascinating cultural tour that remaps our understanding of the relationship among fashion, politics, and visual culture during an era of unprecedented social transformation.

Topics

Frontmatter Publicly Available Download PDF	i
CONTENTS Publicly Available Download PDF	vii
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Publicly Available Download PDF	ix
Introduction. The Trouble with Naming: Middle- Class Culture, Petty- Bourgeois Sensibility, and Zhuang Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	1
Chapter One. Dirty Fashion: Ma Ke’s Fashion Exhibit Useless (2007), Jia Zhangke’s Documentary Film Useless (2007), and Cognitive Mapping Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	35
Chapter Two. The High- Quality Suit, Class Struggle, and Cultural Revolution: The Politics of Consumption in Xie Tieli’s Film Never Forget (1964) Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	56
Chapter Three. “Mao’s Children Are Wearing Fashion!”: Romantic Love, Fashion Consumption, and Modernization Politics in Huang Zumo’s Film Romance on Lu Mountain (1980) Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	96
Chapter Four. Imag(in)ing the Chinese Middle- Class Culture: White- Collar Work, Romantic Love, and Fashion Consumption Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	135
Chapter Five. Between Production and Consumption: Chinese Migrant Factory Workers in Documentary Films and Ethnographic Works Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	163
Chapter Six. The Psychic Life of Rubbish: On Wang Jiuliang’s Documentary Film Beijing Besieged by Waste (2010) Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	191
NOTES Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	215
WORKS CITED Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	241
INDEX Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	257

Language: English
Publisher: Columbia University Press
Audience: Professional and scholarly;

eBook

Published: November 12, 2021
ISBN: 9780231549837