Acting through the Camera Lens: The Global Imaginary and Middle Class Aspirations in Chinese Urban Cinema

Abstract

ABSTRACTMuch has been written about the social composition of China’s rising middle class and their political and economic stances; yet little critical attention has been paid to the visual representation of middle class sensibility in China’s neoliberal era. This article engages in a comparative reading of the actress-turned-director Xu Jinglei’s films My Father and I (2003) and Go Lala Go! (2010), and investigates how Xu’s movies both cultivate and mirror prevalent middle class sentiments by romanticizing and subtly transgressing heterosexual gender relations. It argues that the intertextual reference between Xu’s films, her stardom and social transformation not only projects the cultural aspirations and imaginaries of middle class audiences, but also illuminates the inherent affinity between middlebrow culture, gender dynamics and Chinese urban cinema.