Historical Studies (Chinese Edition)

No.1, 2013

 

The Grand Theatre and the Social Culture of Shanghai in the Republican Era

(Abstract)

 

Yao Fei, Su Zhiliang and Lu Rongyan

 

Founded in 1928, Shanghai's Grand Theatre catered for and guided popular taste for Western entertainment and culture through its Hollywood movies and modernist Western design, making the cinema a cultural marker of fashionable modern life in Shanghai. Cinemas, as represented by the Grand Theatre, did not function only as entertainment; in fact, they had multiple functions beyond the showing of films. As the intermediate link in the information dissemination chain of "movies-cinemas-society", the Grand Theatre's spreading of Hollywood culture stimulated the consumption and reproduction of Hollywood elements in Shanghai society; at the same time, nationalism, group consciousness and even the political situation in Shanghai in the Republican era also affected people's evaluation of the movies and their attitudes towards theatre space.