Limited Happiness: From Female Movie Stars To The Actresses That Severed People

Chinese movie actresses first appeared in 1920s Shanghai. Their rise to fame depended on a visual oriented mass media revolution as well as the construction of the public discourse. As some of the most upwardly visible women who had to lead a life under the gaze of the public, they were endowed with several different meanings. Female movie starts played a very important role in Shanghai urban culture, during the republicn period.The CCP took over Shanghai in May,1949. They began to transform Shanghai urban culture. Movie actresses were deeply involved in the process. My research is located in the intersection of Chinese women's history, PRC history, and cultural history in modern China. Feminist and gender analysis provides the most important framework for my study. I will put women in center of 1950s history and find their lost voice. I'll closely explore the movie actresses'own experiences as part of and apart from the national experience of all Chinese people in the early PRC period. I decide to complete my dissertation with the hope that my study will help produce different pictures and refresh our understanding of PRC history.Grounded on research in archives, newspaper and magazines, memoirs, and other historical records, my thesis attempts to reconstruct a meaningful world of movie actresses in the early PRC period. I will explore the roles movie actresses played both in the public and private spheres; how did they identity themselves and how did the express the identity, trying to answer some important questions in historical studies:In the early PRC period, how did the new state intervene people's life? What is the relationship between communist revolution and women's liberation? Is women's liberation a revolution postponed? What roles did women in urban public space play in the process of China's cultural modernity?...