Mapping Shanghai's society of spectacle

Abstract

The purpose of the present study is to map out the role of urban images in constructing Shanghai's spectacular society of commodification and modernity, and more important, to find out how this cultural imagery of "modernity" shaped and defined urban perceptions and experiences in the 1930s through a comparative study of two of the most representative works about the spectacular metropolis at the time, Wu Yonggang's Goddess (1934, Lianhua Film Company) and Mao Dun's Midnight (1933). A detailed analysis of the urban images and spectacles as presented in Goddess and Midnight, and of the confrontations of selected characters and these images and spectacles, not only provides insight into the psychological and behavioral changes of Shanghai urbanites as effected by the external world, but also sheds light on the further impacts of urban imagery on filmic and literary imaginations, because both works were products within the spectacular society after all.