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From the beginning of the sound cinema era, singing actresses captivated Chinese audiences. In Sounding the Modern Woman, Jean Ma shows how their rise to stardom attests to the changing roles of women in urban modernity and the complex symbiosis between the film and music industries. The songstress-whether appearing as an opera actress, showgirl, revolutionary, or country lass-belongs to the lineage of the Chinese modern woman, and her forty year prevalence points to a distinctive gendering of lyrical expression in Chinese film. Ma guides readers through film history by way of the on and off-screen careers of many of the most compelling performers in Chinese film history, such as Zhou Xuan and Grace Chang, revealing the ways that national crises and Cold War conflict shaped their celebrity. As a bridge between the film cultures of prewar Shanghai and postwar Hong Kong, the songstress brings into view a dense web of connections linking these two periods and places that cut across the divides of war, national politics, and geography.
List of contents
Acknowledgments vii
Introduction 1
1. A Songstress Is Born 31
2. From Shanghai to Hong Kong 71
3. The Little Wildcat 103
4. The Mambo Girl 139
5. Carmen, Camille, and the Undoing of Women 185
Coda 213
Notes 219
Chinese Films Cited 247
Bibliography 253
Index 267
About the author
Jean Ma
Summary
Jean Ma shows how the rise and domination of singing actresses—or songstresses—in Chinese cinema attests to the changing roles of women in urban modernity, the complex symbiosis between the film and music industries, and the distinctive gendering of lyrical expression.
