China in the Mix

<p>Scarce attention has been paid to the dimension of sound and its essential role in constructing image culture and identity in Chinese film and media. <em>China in the Mix</em> fills a critical void with the first book on the sound languages scenery media and culture in post-Socialist China. In this study Ying Xiao explores fascinating topics including appropriations of popular folklore in the Chinese new wave of the 1980s; Chinese rock 'n' roll and youth cinema in <em>fin de siecle</em> China; the political-economic impact of free market imperatives and Hollywood pictures on Chinese film industry and filmmaking in the late twentieth century; the reception and adaptation of hip hop; and the emerging role of Internet popular culture and social media in the early twenty-first century. Xiao examines the articulations and representations of mass culture and everyday life concentrating on their aural/oral manifestations in contemporary Chinese cinema and in a wide spectrum of media and cultural productions.</p><p><em>China in the Mix</em> offers the first comprehensive investigation of Chinese film expressions and culture from a unique cohesive acoustic angle and through the prism of global media-cultural exchange. It shows how the complex evolving uses of sound (popular music voice-over silence noise and audio mixing) in film and media reflect and engage the important cultural and socio-historical shifts in contemporary China and in the increasingly networked world. Xiao offers an innovative new conception of Chinese film and media and their audiovisual registers in the historiographical frame of China amid the global landscape.</p>