Comments on: Poll: Your favorite Shanghai era

By: xensen

xensen — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 18:53:48 +0000

Duriandave, you're right that the eras are not exclusive (in fact, you might notice that the dates overlap). They're groupings of convenience, really. Thanks for the great clip. I've embedded it here.

By: duriandave

duriandave — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 18:40:57 +0000

I had to go with High Times, since I never tire of those Shanghai calendar girls. But I'm certainly not averse to Revolution. Actually, High Times and Revolution are not totally exclusive. A lot of the leftist films of the early 30s mixed glamor with revolution. And the calendar girl pictorial style was later co-opted for the Communist propaganda posters, which continued to focus on pretty girls, albeit of a more proletarian nature. And how about those soldier ballerinas in the revolutionary model operas of the late 60s and early 70s! Here's a clip of my favorite revolutionary glamor girl Li Lili in the 1933 silent film Daybreak.

By: nico

nico — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 17:20:16 +0000

while I love the drawings and appreciate the context of colonialism, and pretty ladies are hard to resist (but I’m tired of them), there’s no denying that the political growing pains-stage are the most interesting.
“Marxist hotbed” doesn’t usually connote artistic greatness, and much of it falls to kitsch (cherries and fat babies and workers!), but I love it.
When I finally see more than stills of the Kentridge-like video art, I reserve the right to change my mind.