声色现代：中国早期默片的跨媒介经验研究 = Synesthetic modernity: the intermedial experience of early Chinese silent films

• Main Author: 李逸 Li, Yi
• Other Authors: I Lo-fen
• Format: Thesis-Doctor of Philosophy
• Language: Chinese
• Published: Nanyang Technological University 2024
• Subjects: Arts and Humanities; 中国早期默片; 跨媒介经验; 现代性; 文图学; 媒介考古
• Online Access: https://hdl.handle.net/10356/181846
• Institution: Nanyang Technological University

This study aims to map out the intermedial experience of early Chinese silent films from perspectives of the Text and Image Studies. Applying the method of media archaeology to excavate archives ranging from newspapers, fictions, pictorials to images, this study explores the hybrid media origins and intermedial experience of early Chinese silent films. On that basis, the study further examines the dynamics between such intermedial experience and modernism elements in early Chinese silent films, investigating the procedures of modern Chinese subjectification from two different demensions including ‘watching’ and ‘listening.’ From the perspective of ‘watching,’ this study argues that the visual experience of early Chinese silent films is always entangled with other media ranging from glasses, telescopes, Vitascopes, traditional literati paintings, lithographic comic strips, to literary novels. With the intermediation between visual experience and bodily experience produced by these various media, early Chinese silent films finally established a series of ambiguous, reserved and self-subverting visual aesthetics. As for the dimension of ‘listening,’ this study puts efforts on rescuing the historical records of sound performances and auditory experience in early Chinese silent films from the dominance of visual discourse in silent film studies. Based on the audio-visual interactions of early Chinese silent films, this study reveals how auditory experience produced by phonographs, lecturers and musical performances resisted the incorporation of visual rationality with its heteroglossia. It is argued that this resistance developed a series of ‘Sound Enlightenment’ practices that mediated the cosmopolitan and the local, the elite and the popular, transcending the visual discourse of the ‘Enlightenment’ itself. In conclusion, this study proposes that, unlike the rationalized and institutionalized idea of modernity, the Chinese modernity is always full of ambiguous reflexivity and transgressive subversion. It does not conform to the rational, self-sufficient visual discourse of modernity but instead represents itself as a hybrid, synesthesia version of the ‘Synethetic Modernity,’ which interpellates an Intersubject that mediates the traditional and the modern, the local and the cosmopolitan, the rational and the irrational. 本研究试图在文图学的视野下，借助报刊、小说、画报、影像等材料，以媒介考古的方法探究中国早期默片的多元媒介起源与跨媒介经验，并进一步从“观看”和“倾听”两大主题出发，追问中国早期默片的跨媒介经验对电影美学的建构和中国现代主体的形塑。 在“观看”的维度上，本研究认为，中国早期默片的电影化视觉经验召唤着包括眼镜、望远镜、维太放映机、传统文人画、石印连环图画、文学小说在内的诸般媒介及其视觉和身体经验，最终建构起一种暧昧含蓄、自我颠覆的视觉美学风格。 在“倾听”的维度上，本研究尝试从视觉主导的早期默片论述里重新发掘声音表演和听觉经验的历史脉络，通过中国早期默片的视听互动，揭示留声机、辩士和音乐演奏等声音媒介如何以其“众声喧哗”的声音实践抵抗视觉理性的收编，进而在启蒙主义的视觉话语之外，发展出一系列杂糅中西、沟通雅俗的“声音启蒙”。 本文认为，不同于理性化、建制化的现代性构想，中国的现代性总是充满了暧昧化的自反和跨越性的颠覆。它并不服膺于理性自足的视觉话语，而是呈现为一种杂合性的、联觉式的“声色现代”（Synesthetic Modernity），为一个摆荡在传统与现代、本土与世界、理性与非理性之间的交互主体（Intersubject）之形成提供了可能。