The evolution of Chinese film policy: how to adapt an instrument for hegemonic rule to commercialisation

Since the 1990s, the Chinese political leadership has gradually embraced the commercialisation of the film sector and has turned the liberalisation of entertainment content production into a strategy for generating legitimacy. This article traces the evolution of Chinese film policy from its Communist origins to the present day, and reveals that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), at the same time, has never desisted from using film production to establish hegemony in a Gramscian sense, and that these efforts have even been intensified over the last decade. The second part of the article scrutinises how the CCP’s mechanisms of control and ideological guidance have been adapted to commercialisation and, based on personal interviews with Beijing film producers in 2006 and 2007, investigates the extent to which the intensified efforts of adaptation since 2003 have been able to persuade the private sector of film production to participate in maintaining CCP hegemony.     

Going for Wombat — Transformations in Wirangu and the Scotdesco Community on the Far West Coast of South Australia

ABSTRACT Becoming an object of touristic interest is only one of a series of ways that Aboriginality is being transformed in contemporary Australia, as the space opens up for individuals and groups to reposition themselves as Aborigines within the nation, with a distinctive culture in various forms. The nation's appetite for Aboriginal ‘culture’, within desirable limits (Povinelli 2002) and energised by a sentimental politics (Cowlishaw 2010), continues to grow. There is, however, a destructive flip side to the politics of difference being played out within Aboriginal societies. This is evidenced by the many battles for access to or control of ‘cultural’ resources for their commercial benefits or collective survival value. In many places communities or groups are faced with the terrible choice of distinction or extinction (Comaroff & Comaroff 2009). That is, they must find, and make alienable, something distinctive about themselves or face collective extinction. How one Aboriginal community is responding to these threats and challenges is the subject of this paper. This paper also adds to the growing literature on ethno‐commercialisation by focusing on the central role of language in these processes.