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id	eprints-19760
recordtype	eprints
institution	SOAS, University of London
collection	SOAS Research Online
language	English
language_search	English
description	Despite playing various kinds of roles across genres from 1949 to 1965, Chen Qiang acquired stardom mainly due to his remarkable screen performance as villainous landlords in socialist China. His villain stardom is an aberrant case, compared to the majority of film stars in Chinese socialist cinema who encouraged identification and emulation and helped propagate socialist ideology to reform Chinese citizens. Paying special attention to socio-historically specific film exhibition practices and the actor's own reflections on his villain performance, this article argues that Chen's stardom functioned as an important affective technology within a wider and complex Communist propaganda enterprise in that it helped cultivate class hatred necessary for the Communist revolution and socialist land reform campaigns. Through this case study, the article suggests that close engagement with both cultural–historical specificities of cinema and recent critical theories of affect open up a space for researching the diversified star phenomena in contemporary China.
format	Journal Article
author	Lu, Xiaoning
author_facet	Lu, Xiaoning
authorStr	Lu, Xiaoning
author_letter	Lu, Xiaoning
title	Villain Stardom in Socialist China: Chen Qiang and the Cultural Politics of Affect
publisher	Taylor and Francis
publishDate	2015
url	https://eprints.soas.ac.uk/19760/