Urban Context and Mass Culture -- Series of Advanced Culture Studies

Author: Wang Wenying, Ye Zhongqiang, Editors
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2004-12-01
Features: The book Urban Context and Mass Culture—Analysis of Shanghai Urban Cultural Space consists of five chapters: The Formation and Reconfiguration of Shanghai's Public Spaces for Mass Culture, "Haipai Opera" and the Construction of Mass Culture, Between the Mirror and the Streets: Film and Contemporary Urban Life, "Urban Maps" and Consumerist Ideology, and Image Shanghai and Shanghai in the Age of Image Reading. The monograph examines and organizes various forms of mass culture in Shanghai over more than a century from the perspectives of public spaces, film, opera, magazines, and images. Although this examination and organization are far from comprehensive and in-depth, we have discovered many interesting insights and formed our own perspectives. Among them, what has drawn our attention is that seemingly boundless, ever-changing, and fluctuating mass culture has its own independent developmental logic: they have their own history of development, a real presence, and a future for development. They are interconnected with political, economic, and even cultural developments, either interdependent or mutually exclusive, but they remain a certain kind of independent existence.