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“Happy Dancing Natives” Minority Film, Han Nationalism, And Collective Memory, Benjamin D. Shaffer
“Happy Dancing Natives” Minority Film, Han Nationalism, And Collective Memory, Benjamin D. Shaffer
Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection
Cinematic representations of China’s ethnic minorities have been prominent in Chinese visual culture and collective memory since the 1950s. After the founding of the People’s Republic of China, the Chinese Communist Party led campaigns to classify China’s diverse range of ethnic groups. These social experiments inspired a number of documentary and narrative films about the ostensibly “exotic” and “colorful” non-Han peoples of China. The audience for these depictions of minorities in visual culture varied considerably. Some early documentaries fueled the rise of Han nationalism and political agendas within the Communist Party. Several narrative films had large audiences in mainstream Chinese …