Lost Horizon Research Articles

Shangri-La as a utopia, sacred place, and a prison in James Hilton’s "Lost Horizon"

The purpose of this paper is to explore James Hilton’s Lost Horizon in the context of its utopian character and historical and mythical parallels that make up its setting, Shangri-La, as a refuge, but also a paradoxical prison. This study delves into the historical and cultural context of the Western imagination's portrayal of Tibet as a sacred and mystical place and places it within the context of British imperialism, emphasising the misconceptions and romanticised notions associated with the country. The paper also explores the sources and inspirations behind Hilton's setting and characters, highlighting the connection between Hilton's Shangri-La and the mythical Tibetan kingdom of Shambhala.

A Study on the Imagology of Tibetan People and Shangri-La in Lost Horizon

“There is only one valley of Blue Moon, and those who expect to find another are asking too much of Nature” (Hilton 63). After the First World War in the 1930s, several war-persecuted Europeans discovered the Shangri-La utopia in China. This essay uses imagology to analyze the foreign culture in Lost Horizon from both character and setting perspectives and the cultural conflicts of the Orient and the Occident. Written by James Hilton, Lost Horizon adequately illustrates the image of Tibet from a Western perspective of that era. Mystical Shangri-La is scenic and full of romantic fantasy, a symbol of peace and tranquility. Apart from the remarkable scenery, the book also contains inequalities between the social status of East and West, especially the prejudiced contempt and discrimination against the Chinese people in Tibetan areas. Lurking in the background are omnifarious ethnic, political and cultural conflicts and severe oppression. Behind the yearning for an Eastern land is the Eurocentrism, colonialism and racial superiority rooted in Western ethnicity.

Oriental Utopia under the Gaze of the Other—A Brief Analysis of the Construction of the Oriental Image in Lost Horizon

Oriental Utopia under the Gaze of the Other—A Brief Analysis of the Construction of the Oriental Image in Lost Horizon

Shangri-La and the Imperial Imagination in James Hilton’s Lost Horizon

ABSTRACT Since the publication of James Hilton’s Lost Horizon (1933), Shangri-La has become a household term, applied to any peaceful idyll or retreat from the modern world. In the academic community, there is a growing consensus that Shangri-La is a purely unreal, imaginary place in the novel of a utopian genre. Nevertheless, how Shangri-La emerged and exists remains a mystery. Therefore, this essay explores how Hilton’s Shangri-La came into being in two forms: an imagined paradise in the East with exotic chinoiserie, and the cultural Other to the West, which is governed by imperialism in the western imagination in the wake of global expansion and colonization. The literary strategies employed by James Hilton in Lost Horizon make Shangri-La an incarnation that epitomizes the imperial ambitions following the demise of the British Empire, with its concomitant economic, intellectual and cultural decline.

The Portrayal of Science and Religion in James Hilton’s Lost Horizon and Walter Miller’s A Canticle for Leibowitz

In their fictional works, James Hilton and Walter Miller draw the readers’ attention to the negative impacts of scientific and technological developments on human civilization and the environment. They portray that Science and technology have become a tool in the hands of world powers for destructing humanity and the natural world. In James Hilton’s Lost Horizon and Walter Miller’s A Canticle for Leibowitz, science and technology are seen accountable for the nuclear wars that caused the annihilation of humanity and the natural world. The novels proclaim that scientists and educated people are a part of nowadays' problems as they are misrepresented by politicians. Thus, in Miller’s novel a worldwide effort begins to kill the scientists and burn all the books and other materials containing scientific knowledge. Nevertheless, a group of monks and religious men preserve the relics of the world’s scientific knowledge in the hope that one day humankind will be ready to use them decently. Moreover, both novels portray religion as an emblem of peace, rebirth, and survival of humanity; it helps science and humanity to recover and survive. This article discusses the role of science and religion as depicted in Lost Horizon and A Canticle for Leibowitz.

Rolf Hammerschmidt’s Boytropolis and the Ethno-Ecological Imaginary

Abstract Rolf Hammerschmidt, one of Europe’s most prolific gay porn directors and producers, first came to notoriety with an eco-utopian fantasy that descends into the dystopian. His two-part Boytropolis (1993, 1996) imagines a secluded woodland society of horny loincloth-clad young men whose insatiable sexual appetite appears to derive from a juice diet consisting of a mysterious emerald-colored potion that they extract from the local foliage, at least until they are denied indulgence in either this nectar or the sexual activity it inspires and vanish in a puff of smog. Attending to the unexpectedly rich cinematic history on which the film draws, which centrally includes not only Fritz Lang’s Metropolis but also Frank Capra’s Lost Horizon (1937), this article puts forth that Boytropolis exposes and explores a troublingly normative homotopian vision, one that relies on environmental and racial homogeneity, and on an eco-imperialist politics of conquest, for its erotic charge.

Searching for Shangrila: Existential Authenticity, Buddhist Revival, and Ethnic Empowerment on the Sino-Tibetan Frontier

In 2001, the county of Zhongdian in Diqing Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture, Yunnan province, was renamed Shangrila, after the monastery described in James Hilton’s 1933 novel, Lost Horizon, and in allusion to the mythical Tibetan kingdom of Shambhala. Thereafter, work began on constructing the region as an easily accessible showcase for Tibetan culture. Based on fieldwork conducted in the Shangrila Thangka Academy, this article deals with the production and commodification of Tibetan Thangka scrolls. The multiple narratives presented in this article, in parallel and sometimes contradictory ways, center around authenticity—ranging from the preservation of Tibetan culture to the propagation of Tibetan Buddhism—and function as a cultural critique of Chinese society in the reform era.

Utopian Formats: Simon Morley’s “Lost Horizon” (2014)

In “Lost Horizon”, a 2014 ekphrasis, Simon Morley summons up not just one artpiece but several that have all in common to deal with utopia: a fifteenth century traditional Korean handscroll painting by artist Ahn Gyeon entitled A Dream Journey to the Peach Blossom Paradise (1447); René Daumal’s uncompleted surrealist novel Mount Analogue: A Novel of Symbolically Authentic Non-Euclidean Adventures in Mountain Climbing (1952); James Hilton’s best-selling novel Lost Horizon (1932) and its Hollywood black and white adaptation by Frank Capra (1938), not to mention philosophical texts by Proudhon or Thomas More. Splicing together Western and Eastern traditions, high and popular culture, Morley engages in a clever and subtle play on formats in his exhibition and exhibition catalogue. He reproduces images but changes their orientation, proportion or framing, zooming in or out on details; he scatters words on a variety of media, changing their size, orientation or typography; he practices various techniques of graphic production, including traditional Asian formats, but always taking some liberties with the canonical techniques and formats or introducing a personal twist. The materiality of his creations is thus constantly highlighted, as is his appropriation of works and traditions.But “Lost Horizon” fails to fully capture, reproduce and reveal the works that inspire the artist. They are a vanishing point in Morley’s creation, which is all the more relevant (or ironic) as they are themselves woven of absence insofar as they aim to represent a “u-topia” – that is, literally a “place that does not exist”, a presence-absence.This paper therefore aims to show how, by playing with multiple formats, Morley addresses and problematizes the conundrum of utopia while shedding thought-provoking light on the ekphrastic practice.

Lost Horizon: Quantifying the Effect of Local Topography on Global 21 cm Cosmology Data Analysis

Abstract We present an investigation of the horizon and its effect on global 21 cm observations and analysis. We find that the horizon cannot be ignored when modeling low-frequency observations. Even if the sky and antenna beam are known exactly, forward models cannot fully describe the beam-weighted foreground component without accurate knowledge of the horizon. When fitting data to extract the 21 cm signal, a single time-averaged spectrum or independent multi-spectrum fits may be able to compensate for the bias imposed by the horizon. However, these types of fits lack constraining power on the 21 cm signal, leading to large uncertainties on the signal extraction, in some cases larger in magnitude than the 21 cm signal itself. A significant decrease in uncertainty can be achieved by performing multi-spectrum fits in which the spectra are modeled simultaneously with common parameters. The cost of this greatly increased constraining power, however, is that the time dependence of the horizon’s effect, which is more complex than its spectral dependence, must be precisely modeled to achieve a good fit. To aid in modeling the horizon, we present an algorithm and Python package for calculating the horizon profile from a given observation site using elevation data. We also address several practical concerns such as pixelization error, uncertainty in the horizon profile, and foreground obstructions such as surrounding buildings and vegetation. We demonstrate that our training-set-based analysis pipeline can account for all of these factors to model the horizon well enough to precisely extract the 21 cm signal from simulated observations.

Eco-Politics in James Hilton’s Lost Horizon

Eco-criticism as a newly emerged theory pays attention to environmental issues. It aims to grow awareness about the planet and identifies factors damaging nature. James Hilton in his famous utopian novel Lost Horizon notifies human beings of the horrific consequences of war and other violent actions. He draws the reader’s attention to a world which is on the brink of destruction due to the war and its aftermath. On the other hand, he creates a harmonious society for the war-weary people who flee their places due to the political tensions. Throughout the novel, Milton expresses his anger toward the politicians who have put life and nature at stake. As nowadays, the trench of warfare has exceeded human miseries; it has resulted in several environmental problems. This article aimed to examine the novel and its depiction of the horrors of war from an ecocritical perspective. Hilton’s novel, as an eco-fictional work, demonstrated an apocalyptic world dominated by horrors of war. On the other hand, it also demonstrated a tranquil world which is free of war and natural destruction.  

Fragment Dziennika Nepalskiego

In Diary, the author describes a journey through a mysterious land, the Lo Kingdom in Upper Mustang, in northern Nepal. She compares her impressions to observations of the heroes of James Hilton’s famous book “Lost Horizon”. The fascination with the legendary land, the mythical Šambhai (Shangri La) has a huge impact to this day and attracts many travellers to visit the former Kingdom. Hiking the Himalayan trails from Kagbeni to Syanboche to the capital of Lo Manthanang brings many different reflections to everyone. Six hundred years of tradition and modern history overlap there and interact with each other. From 2008, the Kingdom of Lo is no longer formally established. Nepal is a Republic along with the Northern Mustang.

"Lost Horizon'-Shangri-La's Dawn".

"Lost Horizon'-Shangri-La's Dawn".

«КОЛЛЕКТИВНОЕ ВПАДЕНИЕ В МАРАЗМ – НЕИСТОЩИМЫЙ РОДНИК ДЛЯ ХУДОЖНИКА»

Valery Nistratov is a documentary photographer, one of the most famous representatives of Russian art-documentary photography working with “The New York Times”, “The Guardian”, “Newsweek”, “Le Monde”, and other media. He teaches at the Rodchenko Moscow School of Photography and Multimedia. He is the author of the books “Risse im Patriarchat. Frauen in Afghanistan” (2003), “Forest-steppe” (2008), “Title Nation” (2011), and “Lost Horizon trilogy” (2017). In this issue of P&I Valery Nistratov talks about how the world of photography is penetrated by a new ethic, while Russian everyday life is imbued with a chthonic stuff. Interview by Ekaterina Maksimova.

Literature as the Route of Transmission of Buddhism into Britain

Literary transmission of a subject has been a perennial phenomenon through the mode of literature because literary works are not produced in vacuum. Authors transpire the spirit of an age by creative amalgamation of their external influences, which they absorb from their social consciousness, and their internal influences to create fictional literary images, style, themes and motifs for a work. In this manner, an author’s influence from a preceding text or social consciousness exports to the successive literary works incessantly across the temporal and spatial dimensions. To determine literature as an intermediary or channel of transmission of Buddhism into Britain, the methodology of Influence Study is applied to delineate the spread of Buddhism through literary works. The investigation aims to identify the junctures of contact between an influence or an author and an influencer or the Buddhist source of information. Since multitude of impressions are involved in the ongoing process of literary production, the Influence Study utilizes Auguste Comte’s philosophy of positivism and factual account of biographical details to verify the junctures of direct or indirect contact of the author with the Buddhist source of information via literary or extra-literary medium to map the route of interrelationships. For conclusive results, the tools of close reading and interpretive analysis are implemented by juxtaposing the texts imbibing the stylized Buddhist ideology with the teachings of Buddhism. In this connection, a few British texts such as Edwin Arnold’s the Light of Asia, Rudyard Kipling’s Kim, James Hilton’s Lost Horizon, and Aldous Huxley’s Island are scrutinized to investigate the literary transmission of Buddhism into Britain.

Where East-meets-West meets Asianization: Aesthetics, regionality and Frank Capra’s Lost Horizon

Abstract As a term of description, ‘Asianization’ characterizes the impact of aesthetic and narrative influences from Asian cinemas on co-produced or American films since the late twentieth century. The ‘flexible citizenship’ of filmmakers and aesthetic traditions stemming from East Asian cinemas are seen to have transformed the global action cinema, in particular. Analyses of the orientalism of self/other relations inscribed in Asianized western films permeate reception, in spite of the problematic nature of the paradigms of Orient and orientalism. This article problematizes Asianization by referring to the Asian masquerades in Hollywood cinema in the pre-Second World War era, and the orientalism and ‘East meets West’ mythos that underpins a number of these films. The main case study, Lost Horizon, a blockbuster produced by Columbia Pictures in 1937 and directed by the Italian American filmmaker, Frank Capra, is a prototype imagining of ‘Asia’. It is a simulacra instilled through the trappings of costume, set, acted masquerade and elliptic narrative geographies, and facilitated by the racial proscriptions of the Motion Picture Association of America (Hays) Code of the era. The aesthetic discourse is marked, I argue, by duality whereby Asia is presented as both threat and paradise, a duality that resonates, if disparately, in the aesthetics of contemporary and twentieth-century Asianized films.

Film Chronicle: Lost Horizon dir. by Frank Capra, and: Man of Aran, dir. by Robert Flaherty, and: The Edge of the World, dir. by Michael Powell, and: Atanarjuat: The Fast Runner, dir. by Zacharias Kunuk, and: Hud, dir. by Martin Ritt, and: Jean de Florette and Manon of the Spring, dir. by Claude Berri, and: The White Hell of Piz

Film Chronicle: Lost Horizon dir. by Frank Capra, and: Man of Aran, dir. by Robert Flaherty, and: The Edge of the World, dir. by Michael Powell, and: Atanarjuat: The Fast Runner, dir. by Zacharias Kunuk, and: Hud, dir. by Martin Ritt, and: Jean de Florette and Manon of the Spring, dir. by Claude Berri, and: The White Hell of Piz

Writing China: Essays on the Amherst Embassy (1816) and Sino-British Cultural Relations. Edited by Peter Kitson and Robert Markley. Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2016. Pp. ix+193.

<i>Writing China: Essays on the Amherst Embassy (1816) and Sino-British Cultural Relations</i>. Edited by Peter Kitson and Robert Markley. Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2016. Pp. ix+193.

Captivating Readers: Middlebrow Aesthetics and James Hilton’s Lost Horizon

A bestseller during its day, Lost Horizon became the first-ever mass-market paperback and has never been out of print since its initial release…. Further demonstrating the novel’s enduring influence and appeal, Lost Horizon has inspired several sequel novels, a musical, radio adaptations, and the namesake for the Shangri-La Hotel chain. Indeed, the word Shangri-la itself was coined by Hilton and has found a place in the OED . Although not all these appropriations are necessarily to be lauded, it is clear that Lost Horizon has maintained a prominence in popular culture that is difficult to reduce or explain away in terms of mere entertainment value.

Truth and Indigenous Cosmopolitics in Shangrila

As this article shows, cadres involved in the ‘discovery’ of Shangrila in Yunnan were well aware of the fictional origins of the name. In arguments for changing the name of Zhongdian county to Xianggelila, scientific facts were coupled with literary truths about the Shangri-La of the 1930s novel Lost Horizon, grounded in material reality. In their efforts to make Shangrila meaningful locally, cadres associated Shangrila with the hidden land of Shambhala, appealing to a spiritual reality ultimately knowable only to visionaries. We can thus talk about three different logics of truth (scientific, literary and visionary) and two different realities (material and spiritual) of concern to the ‘making up’ of Shangrila.

Dressing for the future: Speculative fashion in 1930s Hollywood

Abstract The interwar years saw extensive speculation on the future in all fields of design. Hollywood was remarkably reticent on the subject and ‘science fiction’ was a subordinate genre. This article explores significant films that were set in the future with particular regard to dress and architectural mise-en-scène. It suggests how certain tropes of future dress, partly indebted to avant-garde design and partly adapted from historical fictions, were deployed and considers in some detail the futuristic Just Imagine of 1930, popular serials of the era and finally the utopian Lost Horizon of 1937. It concludes with some reflections on how dress appeared as part of the future proposed by the New York World’s Fair of 1939.