Book review: Chinese Animation,Creative Industries,and Digital Culture

Looking back over the past several decades, the study of Chinese cinema has been flourishing in English-language scholarship that covers a wide range of subjects, including Chinese film genres (martial arts, ghosts and immortals, etc.), key filmmakers such as the Chinese genealogy of directors, the cinema in Communist China, Chinese postsocialist cinema, domestically-made blockbusters in the new millennium and Sino-foreign co-productions. However, while Chinese animation has played a vital role in shaping mass culture in contemporary China, scholarship has left the study of that field, particularly animations produced in the new millennium, largely untouched or forgotten. When compared to its live-action counterparts, there have been relatively few systematic book-length studies of Chinese animation. Sean Macdonald’s Animation in China: History, Aesthetics, Media (2015), which analyzes classical Chinese animated works produced by Shanghai Animation Film Studio (SAFS) from the 1950s to the 1980s, was the first scholarly book in English wholly devoted to the subject. Weihua Wu’s Chinese Animation, Creative Industries, and Digital Culture (2017) can be regarded as the second academic monograph on the subject of Chinese animation following Macdonald’s pioneering work.

Wu’s book examines Chinese animation from its beginning up to the present, with a specific focus on independent animations in the digital age. Reviewing the writing on contemporary Chinese animation, Wu attempts to separate the legitimacy of ‘new animation’, as a fresh genre of iGeneration visual culture in our contemporary moment, from the authority of the classic Chinese animation (the so-called meishu films that were mainly produced by SAFS). He also tries to explore how web-based independent animation differentiates itself from the decaying Chinese school that had once played a dominant role in animation aesthetics. From these investments, two basic concerns arise in Chinese Animation. First, against the background of a globalizing Chinese society that features neoliberalism with Chinese characteristics, how and to what extent have these structural transformations taken place in Chinese animation? Second, because Chinese animation has been greatly impacted by these socio-cultural changes, which have resulted in the emergence of digitalized techno-culture and a commodified form of individuality, how can scholars develop a fresh and plausible theoretical approach for studying animation in the context of the increasingly intensive interplay between the mainstream and subcultural expression?

Wu addresses these questions across the five chapters of the book, not including the Introduction and Conclusion. The Introduction briefly reviews the historical development of Chinese animation and its vital role in understanding contemporary Chinese mass culture. Chapter Two analyzes how the meishu film reflects social and cultural transformations in a socialist China with regard to issues like national/ethnic (minzu) style, ideological homogeny, cultural consciousness and nationalization. Wu considers how the meishu film has been improperly used by Chinese animators, and its engagement with minzu style. The word meishu literally means fine arts in Chinese language, and the usage of the term here indicates the standpoint from domestic animators, who see animation emerging from handmade, static and traditional arts form instead of from motion pictures (p. 28). Afterwards, Wu briefly reviews animation production in the immediate post-Maoist period (1976–1980), which was characterized by three mainstream narratives: the expression of patriotic little heroes, minority subjects, and didactic fairytales.

Chapter Three examines the interplay between the national rhetoric of animation and animation spectatorship by analyzing the production of Chinese animated films and animated TV series from 1976 to 1989. Wu argues that the aesthetic practices of the Chinese School of Animation construct a pattern of storytelling and an institutionalized form of spectatorship, which has been greatly challenged by the sociocultural transition since 1990. Wu begins with an introduction to the global fame of the Chinese School and its main subgenres: water and ink animation, paper-cut animation, paper-folded animation, puppet animation and hand-drawn cel animation. Wu then examines how visual iconographies of the Chinese School and a uniform animation spectatorship have been impacted by external factors like the upsurge of the broadcasting of imported animation on Chinese television. Case studies include the changes and continuities of the mythical character Sun Wukong before and after the Cultural Revolution (1966–1976), and child-oriented controversial television animation Inspector Black Cat (1984–1987). According to Wu, the changes in the social discourse have directly led to a cultural dislocation, which ‘destabilizes a unified and discourse-based recognition of animation spectatorship and … thwarts the assumption of cultural autonomy in this market economy’ (p. 72).

For Wu, the development of Chinese animation since the end of the Cultural Revolution can be divided into two phases: the new era (1976–1989) and the post-new era (after 1989), which he also calls the post-meishu film era. Chapter Four focuses on Chinese animation in the 1990s, when mainstream animation production and industry were transformed by computer-generated imagery (CGI). Wu argues that animated works in this period are basically digitalized products of a reconstructed cultural sector and a form of hybrid visual representations in the context of globalization. Wu’s focus is on the surge of domestic television animation production since 1995, including animated TV series like Journey to the West (52 25-minute episodes, 1999) and Blue Cat’s Three Thousand Questions (2041 11-minute episodes, 1999 to the present), which enhanced the reputation of computer-assisted animation systems in China. The chapter also includes an analysis of the diversification of animated projects and governmental support policies such as the implementation of an increasingly strict TV screen quota system and national construction of computer animation bases, in order to promote the industrialization of the domestic animation sector. As a representative of contemporary Chinese feature-length animation in the post-new era, The Lotus Lamp (1999) is a sort of cultural pastiche resulting from the seemingly ambivalent coexistence between the Disney-style characters, computer technology and the persistence of the Chinese School (namely in the form of a guest appearance from Sun Wukong).

Chapter Five moves to Chinese Flash animation and its interaction with digital culture and postmodern creative tendencies in China, with a specific focus on Chinese shanke (Flash animator). First, Wu introduces FlashEmpire.com, which has become the first online Flash community in China since 1999 and has served as a cradle of Chinese Flash culture. In Wu’s view, Flash animation in China can be divided into two categories: functional Flash and aesthetic Flash. Considering Flash practices in China as components of postmodern culture integrating various types of artistic endeavors, Wu argues that the overwhelming majority of both aesthetic Flash (as an expression of an individual’s creative identity) and functional Flash (as a commercial design tool) are still far from maturity. Wu then discusses the representative works of the first generation of Chinese shanke before 2002, like Rock ‘N’ Roll on the New Long March (2001) and Mr. Lu Xun (2001) with characteristics such as nonsense humor and individual imaginations. The last section of this chapter analyzes the second and third generation shanke (2002 to 2004), whose enthusiasm for Flash practices was transferred from individualized self-representation and experiments with digitized narrations about contemporary China to a prevailing passion to pursue wide-scale public acknowledgement and commercial objectives.

With the advancement of CGI and popularity of the internet in China, the new millennium has witnessed the emergence, formation and multidirectional exploration of Chinese independent animation, the main concern of Chapter Six. Wu first briefly reviews the social and cultural context in which independent animation in China emerged and discusses how independent animation is ‘a reflexive individual resistance to mainstream styles and values, a sense of free expression, and an often unabashed link with consumer society’ (p. 146). He examines how the minjian (literally ‘among the people’) discourse has been associated with the cultural identity of independent animation as an emerging digital culture. Wu maps out how the notion of ‘independent animation’ was introduced into China, followed by the convergence and divergence of concepts like ‘films animated by personality’ and ‘individual animation’, and ‘auteurist cinema’ between China and the West. Important platforms promoting the practice of independence in animation include the Academic Awards, Independent Animation Forum as well as magazines like CG Magazine and 24-Frames. Wu considers that Chinese independent animation straddles the aesthetic lines between the present-day market (industrialized and digitized animation production) and a nostalgia for the past (the handcrafted Chinese School of Animation), which is backed up by CGI techniques. He concludes that Chinese independent animation filmmakers’ desire for self-expression has been, to some extent, supported by the digitization and development of the creative sector alongside the dominant role of mainstream commercial works in the domestic market.

Chinese Animation gains importance in the field by systematically analyzing representative animated works, especially those produced in the post-new era (post-meishu film era) including Flash animations, experimental animations, and computer graphic creations, within broader sociocultural dimensions and theoretical frameworks. With its interdisciplinary research model, the book will appeal to moving image scholars and students whose research interests include contemporary Chinese cultural studies, animation studies and studies of Chinese cinema more broadly. It will also be of value to animation historians working on various historical and regional contexts as well as scholars working in the increasingly active field of independent animation.