Tradition, Transmediality, and Modernity: Representation of the Double in Chinese Modern Visual Culture

Films featuring look-alikes with contrasting attributes played by the same actor or actress were prevalent in both Republican cinema before 1949 and contemporary Chinese-language cinema. This trope of doubling is a focal point of this article. To examine the distinctiveness of the Chinese cinematic double, this article looks back on the pictorial and conceptual paradigm of traditional Chinese painting, as well as the photographic technology of the late nineteenth century. The interaction between cultural and aesthetic conventions of Chinese painting and the imported modern technology played a significant role in configuring the double in Chinese photography. The uncanny magic of the mimetic technologies that created the perfect doubles of man, culminated in Chinese cinema in the 1920s and 1940s. While this article focuses primarily on the relationship between the trope of the double and the history of media, it also examines the themes, technologies, mimesis, and identity that were inextricably interwoven with the figure of the double. From painting to photography and on to film, the intermedial and historical journey of doubling reflects the emergence of visual regimes of modernity which changed the optical experience, transformed perceptions of the real, and challenged social ideas about class and gender.