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Chinese Postwar Comedies of Domesticity

10/15/2019 @ 2:10 pm - 4:00 pm

Chinese Postwar Comedies of Domesticity
a seminar with Professor Christopher Rea (UBC)
Time: 2:10pm – 4pm, October 15 (Tuesday) 2019
Location: IAB 918

It’s the late 1940s and the war is won, but there’s still trouble at home. Perhaps your husband has
taken a mistress, or even a second wife. Perhaps your best friend who’s come back from the war
turns out to be your wife’s childhood sweetheart, throwing your marriage into turmoil. Perhaps
you yourself have returned from the interior to find that you can no longer afford a place to live
in the city. Or perhaps your home is now occupied by a traitor. What do you do? Laugh? Cry?
Fight? Question? This talk will consider why, after World War II, Chinese filmmakers became
so interested in dramas of domesticity, and why, during a time of civil war, their preferred mode
for representing trouble at home was often comedy. Films to be discussed include Long Live the
Missus! (1947), Diary of a Homecoming (1947), Spring River Flows East (1947), Spring in a
Small Town (1948), Wanderings of Three-Hairs the Orphan (1949), and Crows and
Sparrows (1949).

Christopher Rea is Professor of Chinese Literature and Associate Head of the Department of
Asian Studies at the University of British Columbia. He is author of The Age of Irreverence: A
New History of Laughter in China (2015; Chinese, 2018) and the forthcoming Chinese Film
Classics. His other books include the translations China’s Chaplin (2019) and The Book of
Swindles (with Bruce Rusk, 2017), and the edited books Imperfect Understanding (2018)
and The Business of Culture (with Nicolai Volland, 2015).

Christopher Rea

Suggested viewing:
Long Live the Missus! 太太萬歲 (dir. Sang Hu, 1947, with English subtitles)
http://u.osu.edu/mclc/online-series/long-live-the-missus/

You can also hear Professor Rea’s comments on Long Live the Missus! here:
Lecture 1 (14 mins): https://youtu.be/J-NW0rR71RQ
Lecture 2 (12 mins): https://youtu.be/XtAlbyth7Nk

Details

Date:
10/15/2019
Time:
2:10 pm - 4:00 pm