Renegotiating Jia Zhangke’s Contestious Auteurism on Douban

Dorothy Wai Sim Lau

doi:10.1515/jcfs-2023-0035

Article

Renegotiating Jia Zhangke’s Contestious Auteurism on Douban

Dorothy Wai Sim Lau
Dorothy Wai Sim Lau is an associate professor at the Academy of Film, Hong Kong Baptist University. Her research interests include stardom, Chinese-language cinema, Asian cinema, and screen culture. Her publications appear in multiple journals and edited volumes. She is the author of Chinese Stardom in Participatory Cyberculture (2019) and Reorienting Chinese Stars in Global Polyphonic Networks: Voice, Ethnicity, Power (2021). She is writing her third monograph, Celebrity Activism and Philanthropy in Asia: Toward a Cosmopolitical Imaginary (under contract with Amsterdam University Press). Lau was the visiting scholar at School of East Asian Studies, The University of Sheffield, in 2022.

Published/Copyright: April 3, 2024

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From the journal Journal of Chinese Film Studies Volume 4 Issue 1

Abstract

This article focuses on sixth-generation mainland Chinese auteur Jia Zhangke and examines how his independent filmmaker’s profile is renegotiated and reevaluated on Douban, a China-based platform for cultural commentary. Whereas Douban allows viewers to rate a film, post a review of any length, and comment on other posts, it manifests a self-censoring tendency with sustained state control. Examining in Jia’s contentious auteurism through a “post-independent’ lens, this article recounts how Douban users approach and interpret Jia’s more recent titles such as Ash Is Purest White (2018) and Swimming Out till the Sea Turns Blue (2020) that pose a question of whether Jia’s auteurism is perpetuated. The account extends to the controversies surrounding Jia’s departure from and re-entry to the independently-run, government-supported Pingyao International Film Festival, which took place in 2020 and 2021 and have further perplexed his established brand. Contextualizing Jia’s Douban-represented authorial identity in China’s platform-based cultural production, this analysis unravels the intricate dynamics of market logic, state governance, and audience agency in the rise of the mass media-saturated intertextuality and crossover capitals.

Keywords: Jia Zhangke; Douban; Chinese auteur; cultural commentary; state governance

Corresponding author: Dorothy Wai Sim Lau, Hong Kong Baptist University, Kowloon Tong, Hong Kong, E-mail: dorolau@hkbu.edu.hk

Funding source: University Grant Committee, Research Grant Council, Hong Kong

Award Identifier / Grant number: 22600020

About the author

Dorothy Wai Sim Lau

Dorothy Wai Sim Lau is an associate professor at the Academy of Film, Hong Kong Baptist University. Her research interests include stardom, Chinese-language cinema, Asian cinema, and screen culture. Her publications appear in multiple journals and edited volumes. She is the author of Chinese Stardom in Participatory Cyberculture (2019) and Reorienting Chinese Stars in Global Polyphonic Networks: Voice, Ethnicity, Power (2021). She is writing her third monograph, Celebrity Activism and Philanthropy in Asia: Toward a Cosmopolitical Imaginary (under contract with Amsterdam University Press). Lau was the visiting scholar at School of East Asian Studies, The University of Sheffield, in 2022.

Research funding: The research work of this article is supported by Hong Kong's UGC Research Grant Council for the Project (22600020). “Renegotiating Film Authorship in Cyberspace: Chinese Filmmakers, Global Fans, Politics of Participation.”

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Received: 2023-08-07

Accepted: 2024-03-03

Published Online: 2024-04-03

Published in Print: 2024-04-25

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Articles in the same Issue

https://doi.org/10.1515/jcfs-2023-0035

Keywords for this article

Jia Zhangke; Douban; Chinese auteur; cultural commentary; state governance