| The scholar of University of California,Berkeley,Weihong Bao published Fiery Cinema:The Emergence of an Affective Medium in China,1915-1945 in 2015,which is her first and so far only academic monograph on film theory.In this book,Weihong Bao used the key concept of affective medium for the first time in the study of the early history of Chinese film(1915-1945).In recent years,this book is an important masterpiece of theoretical and practical criticism of English film research,especially for Chinese film research.However,since there is no Chinese translation so far,this paper takes this book as the main research object to systematically clarify the theoretical background of affective medium theory,and sort out the main meaning of film as affective medium in Weihong Bao’s Fiery Cinema,so as to highlight its theoretical innovation.The first chapter is the Theoretical Source of Affective Medium Theory.This chapter mainly includes the source of affective medium theory,construction methods and three dispositifs of affective medium theory.The first section introduces the theoretical source of affective medium theory.It mainly includes German media archaeology,media environment and affect theory,which provides theoretical support for the reconstruction of the appearance of early film medium.The second section introduces the construction methods of affective medium theory,including Foucault’s archaeology,genealogy and dispositif analysis,which provides a methodology for the construction of affective medium theory in various historical discourses.The third section introduces the main connotation of the theory from the three dispositifs of the theory of affective medium,which is also the structure of the book.Chapter Two is the Theoretical Construction of Affective Medium Theory.This chapter mainly discusses the core viewpoint of Weihong Bao’s affective medium theory.Firstly,the connotation of affect theory is investigated from the two terms of "an aesthetics of new heroism" and "mediating affective immediacy".Then it evaluates the connotation of "medium" from the two terms of "glass" and "a vibrating art in the air".Finally,it examines the theoretical creation of the theory of affective medium as a term from the relationship between film and modernity,medium and emotion.Chapter Three is The Theoretical Contribution of Affective Medium Theory.Firstly,the theory of affective medium marked that the materiality of film media was included in the research field and realized the "device turn" in early film research.Secondly,the theory of affective medium bridged the huge gap between early leftwing films and commercial films and provided a new perspective for rewriting the history of early films.Finally,the theory of affective medium complements the problem that early film studies neglect the agency of the audience.The conclusion mainly looks forward to the theoretical value of affective medium theory.Defining film from the perspective of affective medium will help to re-answer the question "What is film" in the digital age.To develop a new understanding of the film medium. |
