Bodies Becoming Technological
Zoom lecture hosted by Professor Man He from Williams College
Topic: Women Represented in Chinese Films, Advertisements, and Theaters, 1930s-1940s
Zoom Link: https://pugetsound-edu.
Film, known as shadowplay in Chinese metropolises since the 1890s, gained its first academic definition in Yingxi zazhi (The Motion Picture Review, 1921) as a synthesis of literature, science, and technology. Here, “technology” refers not to film equipment but to “acting,” or the technologies of bodies. This seemingly odd connotation of “technology” has intrigued a round of scholarly investigations into the “body” depicted in Chinese visual, print, and performative cultures of the early twentieth century. Joining these intellectual conversations, this talk engages in early film stock, medicine advertisements, and backstage prompts for training amateur actors to further analyze the feminized or masculinized bodies on paper, reel, and stage during WWII. Specifically, this talk invites the audience to inquire into a set of interconnected questions, namely, how the artistic reconfiguration of the body reflected the formulation and resistance of biopower; how the regulation of the body prescribed well-being and illness, and beauty or the lack thereof; and finally how the acting body became the prominent medium for war-time theater.