Appealing to the Public: Newspaper Presentation and Adjudication of Emotion

BRYNA GOODMAN 2006 32 APPEALING TO THE PUBLIC: NEWSPAPER PRESENTATION AND ADJUDICATION OF EMOTION BRYNA GOODMAN, UNIVERSITY OF OREGON This article examines public discussion of the 1928 suicide—after an unhappy love affair—of Ma Zhenhua (馬振華 1898-1928), the educated daughter of a countylevel functionary. Ma’s suicide was widely covered by Shanghai daily newspapers— major and minor, party and non-party (particularly 時報 Shibao and 時事新報 Shishi xinbao, two of the city’s “four big papers,” and the Guomindang organ 民國日報 Minguo ribao).1 The newspaper story swiftly inspired fiction, stage, and film representations of Ma Zhenhua’s life and death.2 Newspapers were also the vehicles for an intense public debate. The debate focused on the interpretation of feelings, feelings that readers discerned in the documents of the case. At issue were the love-letters of Ma and her fiancé, the impecunious military secretary, Wang This article is indebted to comments and suggestions from Cynthia Brokaw, Prasenjit Duara, Wendy Larson, Haiyan Lee, Lü Fang-shang, and participants in Harvard workshops organized by Eugenia Lean, Timothy B. Weston, and Eileen Chow. I thank Tim and Eugenia in particular for stimulating me to think about newspapers and emotion. Yu Chien-ming enabled me to gain access to relevant materials at Academia Sinica libraries. I am grateful to Rebecca Karl for sending me a related paper that challenged my thinking about the Ma Zhenhua case (Rebecca Karl, “Journalism, Value and Gender in 1920s China,” unpublished talk, Academia Sinica, Modern History Institute, Taipei, Taiwan, February 2005). Lori O’Hollaren provided valuable technical assistance with the figures. 1 The four newspapers (si da baozhi) that dominated Shanghai included also Shenbao (Shanghai news) and Xinwenbao (The news). In the course of the 1920s, both Shibao (Eastern times) and Shishi xinbao (China times) embraced a type of social news (shehui xinwen) that often bordered on yellow journalism, emphasizing crimes and scandals as an effective commercial strategy. Secure in their market position, Shenbao and Xinwenbao covered sensational news more modestly and provided less social and political commentary. On Shanghai newspaper history, see Ge Gongzhen, Zhongguo baoxue shi (China’s journalism history) (Shanghai: Shangwu yinshuguan, 1927); Ma Guangren, ed., Shanghai xinwenshi (Shanghai journalism history) (Shanghai: Fudan daxue chubanshe, 1996); and Terry Narramore, “Making the News in Shanghai: Shen Bao and the Politics of Newspaper Journalism, 1912-1937” (Ph.D. dissertation, Australian National University, 1989). 2 Shibao, Shishi xinbao, and Minguo ribao (Republican daily), daily reports from 18 March 1928 until early April; Shenbao, 18 March 1928; Zhang Biwu, ed., Ma Zhenhua aishi (The sorrowful history of Ma Zhenhua) (Shanghai: Huahe chubanshe, 1928); and Jin Xiongbai, ed., Ma Zhenhua nüshi zisha ji (Miss Ma Zhenhua’s suicide) (Shanghai: Shehui xinwenshe, 1928). Simultaneous performances of the play, Ma Zhenhua nüshi tou jiang ji (Ma Zhenhua drowns herself in the river), were advertised for the Xianshi and Xinxin theaters as early as 7 April 1928 (Shishi xinbao). Zhang Biwu combined news photographs and reportage, calligraphy, and artwork by Ma Zhenhua, scene descriptions from the film Ma Zhenhua (produced by the Da Zhonghua Baihe film studio) together with film stills, a short story based on Ma’s life by Zhu Shouju, and a play by Sun Quantang, Wang Shichang zhi si (The death of Wang Shichang). The film Ma Zhenhua also appears in Mao Dun’s 1928 short story, “Zisha” (Suicide), in which the pregnant heroine views and compares herself with the cinematic Ma before taking her own life. Reprinted in Mao Dun, Mao Dun zuopin jingdian (Classic works of Mao Dun) (Beijing: Zhongguo huaqiao chubanshe, 1996), 2:432. TWENTIETH-CENTURY CHINA 33 Shichang (汪世昌 1900-?). By publishing these documents together with analyses of their contents, newspapers constituted a venue for public articulation of literary and behavioral conventions of love. Newspaper readers, many of whom wrote letters to the editor, recognized and judged character through the epistolary signs of feeling by which the lovers demonstrated to each other their sincerity. Newspapers competed for readers both by publishing the raw evidence of love and love’s betrayal and by eliciting readers’ responses. In this fashion, newspapers became a site for the public adjudication of feelings. Journalist and reader discussion of the case enunciated changing...