Shanghai’s Public Screen Culture

This chapter examines local specificity of Shanghai’s public screen culture to contest conceptualisations of public space as subject to the homogenizing effect of globalisation. Berry examines two processes that shape local deployments of the moving image. First, he demonstrates how the drive toward “secular enchantment” is offset by the specific local uses of each screen, which is determined by its social function and institutional context. Second, he analyses Shanghai’s text-based or “walking word” screens as part of a long and varied lineage of putting writing into public spaces. He argues that these local uses are not a “glocal” adaptation of Western standards, but rather, evidence a pattern of coeval development under conditions of rapid proliferation of new media technologies around the world.