This study analyzes women’s fashion in films produced in Shanghai from 1931–1937; the findings are used to reveal commonalities as well as differences among images of women in modern Shanghai. In addition, the study elucidates the sociocultural background of the city of Shanghai and its relationship with women’s fashion during the period.
In Shanghai in the 1930s, there was a background awareness that the transformation to a modern society was a threat to ethnic identity. Beginning in the mid-19th century, settlements were established in Shanghai; the city underwent economic colonization by the United States and the great powers of Europe. The landscape of the city was restructured according to the logic of capitalism and social polarization became serious. After the Manchurian Incident in 1931, there was general anxiety in China that international conflict would be imminent. As a result, struggles against the Japanese arose and Chinese people found empowerment in the national spirit. Shanghai was the place where ethnic capital was concentrated in art and culture. This resulted in the formation of a national culture in Shanghai, where the leftist movie industry sought to reflect the dark truths of colonial society.
The 1930s, the subject of this study, were a period in which Western fashion and traditional Chinese fashion collided, creating mixed looks. Two very different kinds of images of women appear in the films of this period, pursued by two conflicting social groups in Shanghai. By analyzing women’s fashion in films from Shanghai, four types of images of women were classified: traditional, ironic, progressive, and modern images of women. For each type of image, commonalities in fashion forms and designs were identified.
Images of traditional women were categorized into two types. Common women living on the city periphery were shown in traditional fashion. Bourgeois women in the city were also shown wearing traditional fashion, despite having received modern educations and having been considered progressive. This is due to the way they were educated in regard to becoming a good wife and wise mother. In the era of modernization, fashion was used to classify people according to their status and women who differed in social status wore different fashions.
Images of ironic women fused images of traditional and modern women. Under a political system that resulted in a society with a double character, conflicts of identity among women were displayed by the ambivalent appearance of fashion. In terms of form, differences in the two types of image were shown in relation to the reproducibility of the body. In terms of style, differences were shown through the use of Western stylistic elements.
Images of progressive women were featured as opposed to traditional images of women. In the country, images of women as dependent on men had previously been pursued; this independent image was formed out of what came previously, and wore fashion that was not centered on gender. It was closely related to the women’s liberation movement, which had been initiated by leftist intellectuals at the time. With the increase in the social status of women laborers, practical and non-stylistic fashion became sought after. Fashion in this image was generalized as normal fashion for women for 30 years after the liberation of China.
Images of modern women characteristically depicted such women as blindly following Western women by wearing overly decorative fashion. Such modern women appeared disinterested in the existence of the nation or in reviving ethnic culture; they were only interested in fulfilling their personal desires. Underneath their fancy social lives, they had a tendency of being financially incapable and reliant on men. They produced a new fashion culture by wearing modernized qipao and Western fashion elements together and by wearing modified Western fashion.
Shanghai women’s fashion culture in the 1930s produced new forms of expression according to the sociocultural changes of the time; this fashion varied in appearance according to the social status of the wearer and became the basis for women’s fashion following the era of modernization. The aspect of the collision of Westernization and tradition displayed in the women’s fashion of the period continues even today. Therefore, this historic review of the fashion and consumer culture of Shanghai in the 1930s can have important implications for the globalization of tradition, which we have been tasked with in the present.
<Key word>
Modern Shanghai, Westernization, Nationalization, Modernization, Movie Costume, Images of Women.
，韩语毕业论文，韩语论文题目 |
