Parfect, Ralph. Matthew D. Johnson, Keith B. Wagner, Tianqi Yu and Luke Vulpiani. New York: Bloomsbury Academic, Bloomsbury Collections. Copyright Matthew D. All rights reserved. Further reproduction or distribution is prohibited without prior permission in writing from the publishers.
Johnson , Keith B. Wagner , Tianqi Yu and Luke Vulpiani eds. Discussion of film and moving image culture, and of individual films, has appeared on a profusion of online spaces, from bulletin boards BBS and dedicated review or database sites such as www.
So far, however, little research has appeared on how exactly these new spaces are being used to address issues relating to film in China, or on what the broader implications of their rising prevalence and visibility may be for Douban was launched in March , and at the time of writing ranks as the twentieth most popular website in China, with 68 million registered users and over million visits each month.
In its film section, Douban Dianying Douban Film , users can rate a film with from one to five stars, or post a review of any length, on which any Douban user can then comment; these comments in turn can be responded to, hence allowing multi-party discussions to develop. As a space for cultural commentary, Douban is characteristic in at least two ways of the broader Chinese cultural landscape of the early twenty-first century: first, it participates in a commodity culture with retained elements of state control; and secondly, it belongs to a culture of the internet in post-WTO China.
Just as film production and consumption have become strongly commercialized in the reform period in China, with films increasingly forced to compete as products in a globalized, consumerist cultural marketplace, while remaining subject to state controls including censorship, [10] so too has the nature of published comment on film changed dramatically.
