The art of useless : fashion, media, and consumer culture in contemporary China /

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Bibliographic Details
Author / Creator:	Hui, Calvin, author.
Imprint:	New York : Columbia University Press, [2021]
Description:	1 online resource (xi, 267 pages).
Language:	English
Series:	Global Chinese culture Global Chinese culture.
Subject:	Consumption (Economics) -- China. Fashion -- Social aspects -- China. Middle class -- China. Consumption (Economics) in motion pictures. Fashion in motion pictures. Middle class in motion pictures. Documentary films -- China -- History and criticism. Consumption (Economics) Consumption (Economics) in motion pictures. Documentary films. Economic history. Fashion in motion pictures. Fashion -- Social aspects. Middle class. Middle class in motion pictures. China -- Economic conditions -- 1976-2000. China -- Economic conditions -- 2000- China. Criticism, interpretation, etc.
Format:	E-Resource Book
URL for this record:	http://pi.lib.uchicago.edu/1001/cat/bib/13586151

Hidden Bibliographic Details
ISBN:	9780231549837 0231549830 9780231192484 9780231192491
Notes:	Includes bibliographical references and index. Description based on online resource; title from digital title page (viewed on October 04, 2021).
Summary:	"Since embarking on economic reforms in 1978, the People's Republic of China has also undergone a sweeping cultural reorganization, from proletarian culture under Mao to middle-class consumer culture today. Under these circumstances, how has a Chinese middle class come into being, and how has consumerism become the dominant ideology of an avowedly socialist country? The Art of Useless offers an innovative way to understand China's unprecedented political-economic, social, and cultural transformations, showing how consumer culture helps anticipate, produce, and shape a new middle-class subjectivity. Examining changing representations of the production and consumption of fashion in documentaries and films, Calvin Hui traces how culture contributes to China's changing social relations through the cultivation of new identities and sensibilities. He explores the commodity chain of fashion on a transnational scale, from production to consumption to disposal, as well as media portrayals of the intersections of clothing with class, gender, and ethnicity. Hui illuminates key cinematic narratives, such as a factory worker's desire for a high-quality suit in the 1960s, an intellectual's longing for fashionable clothes in the 1980s, and a white-collar woman's craving for brand-name commodities in the 2000s. He considers how documentary films depict the undersides of consumption-exploited laborers who fantasize about the products they manufacture as well as the accumulation of waste and its disposal-revealing how global capitalism renders migrant factory workers, scavengers, and garbage invisible"--
Other form:	Print version: Hui, Calvin. The art of useless New York : Columbia University Press, [2021] 9780231192484

Table of Contents:

Intro
Table of Contents
Acknowledgments
Introduction: The Trouble with Naming: Middle-Class Culture, Petty-Bourgeois Sensibility, and Zhuang ( )
1. Dirty Fashion: Ma Ke's Fashion Exhibit Useless (2007), Jia Zhangke's Documentary Film Useless (2007), and Cognitive Mapping
2. The High-Quality Suit, Class Struggle, and Cultural Revolution: The Politics of Consumption in Xie Tieli's Film Never Forget (1964)
3. "Mao's Children Are Wearing Fashion!" Romantic Love, Fashion Consumption, and Modernization Politics in Huang Zumo's Film Romance on Lu Mountain (1980)
4. Imag(in)ing the Chinese Middle-Class Culture: White-Collar Work, Romantic Love, and Fashion Consumption
5. Between Production and Consumption: Chinese Migrant Factory Workers in Documentary Films and Ethnographic Works
6. The Psychic Life of Rubbish: On Wang Jiuliang's Documentary Film Beijing Besieged by Waste (2010)
Notes
Works Cited
Index

The art of useless : fashion, media, and consumer culture in contemporary China /

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