Listening to Films: Radio and Communal Film Culture in 1970s China

The study engages the interface between the visual and the auditory in late Mao China.

Featured Speaker:

Nicole Huang, Professor of Chinese Literature and Visual Culture, University of Wisconsin-Madison

The focus is on the cinematic soundtracks of a handful of films, including model opera films and feature films from the period, that were edited specifically for the purpose of radio broadcasting. Coined as “edited film recording,” this made-for-radio sonic compilation would retain much of the music and dialogues straight from the original track, complemented by a voice-over narrator that supplies backgrounds, settings, and connections among different scenes and figures to a broad audience. Film literacy thus could be achieved without an actual access to the film products themselves. The hybridity of the genre created an illusion of broader and equal access to the symbolic order of a socialist visual culture. While communal life in 1970s China can be characterized by an infatuation with film and film culture, a web of other media, particularly those of sound, facilitated this fascination. The ‘grey period’ of China’s 1970s could then be seen as a decade of cross-platform saturation of media culture.