Riding the tide of market reform: The affective qualities of money and the emergence of the new rich in Stand Straight, Don’t Bend Over (1993) and Shanghai Fever (1994)

This article examines the emotional and affective qualities of money as depicted in two films, Stand Straight, Don’t Bend Over (站直啰，别趴下, Huang 1993) and Shanghai Fever (股疯, ). Both films capture the exciting moment when the People’s Republic of China (PRC) was transforming into a market economy after Deng Xiaoping’s Southern Tour in 1992, and certain characters in the stories find ways to earn much more money than anybody else in their community. The emergence of the new rich in these two films is depicted as bringing about new emotional and bodily experiences related to money. Engaging with Brian Massumi’s theory on emotion and affect, as well as drawing upon Anatoly Detwyler’s discussion of re’nao (‘hot noise’, contagious atmosphere) and Gilles Deleuze’s theory of the movement-image, I argue that these new emotional and affective experiences of money are cinematically felt experiences of social change that shape new forms of subjectivity.