Zhao Dan: spectrality of martyrdom and stardom

Abstract

There is an uncanny link between martyrdom and stardom in Zhao Dan's film career. In real life he was twice incarcerated for multiple years, and on screen he appeared often as suffering martyrs. His stardom, based on ‘I play myself’ after Crossroads/Shizi jietou (1937), acquired an eerie dimension of spectrality as his self-performance was attuned to a ghostly mechanism engineered by precarious history more than individual subjectivity. Through Zhao's fated star performance of self as others, this study investigates spectrality as an irrational logic that integrated martyrdom and stardom in socialist China.

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