The reincarnation of Tiger Mountain: post-socializing the model opera film (yangbanxi)

This thesis is not simply about the model opera film (yangbanxi), a genre that was favorably engineered by Madame Mao, Jiang Qing, in order to feed highly politicized lives of the Chinese masses, and scheme to continue igniting the revolutionary fervor among peasants, workers and soldiers. Instead, it opens up the discussion of reconsidering the politics of cultural production in contemporary China. By comparatively examining the narrative and film form in Taking Tiger Mountain by Strategy (1970) and The Taking o f Tiger Mountain (2014), this thesis seeks to unravel the three main forces that are conventionally intertwined and negotiate with one another - globalization, nationalization, and regionalization - so as to articulate an ambivalent correlation between political economy, authoritarian control of the Chinese Communist Party, creative autonomy of the artist, and phenomenological contingency of moving image in digital cinema. Thus, the thesis is not only evaluating the state of Chinese-language cinema, but also reinvestigating the stake of cultural production in contemporary China, arguing for highlighting the complexity and paradox that are largely overlooked and/or oversimplified by the existing scholarship.