ABSTRACT
An overwhelming atmosphere of devastation rages among the sound and fury of a false spree in the film Unknown Pleasure, which shows Chinese youngsters living in the postsocialist world of the neoliberal age, engulfed by a deep feeling of depression, with hedonism and nihilism as their philosophy. However, the movie does not sufficiently explore the political-economic matrix to find the social contradictions that contribute to the social malaise and lead to this lamentable spiritual state. Apart from offering a depleted picture of the postsocialist world enveloped in a hedonistic atmosphere and surrounded by the omnipresent western pop culture, which offers a source of “unknown pleasure,” the film does not account for the origin of their nihilism and hedonism, which is over-conditioned by the Chinese society steeped in ferocious marketization.
