Contemporary Chinese Cinema and Visual Culture

Envisioning the Nation

Sheldon Lu

• Editore: Bloomsbury Academic
• Anno: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781350234192
• Edizione: 1
• Argomento: Mezzi di comunicazione e arti performative
• Categoria: Film e video

Honourable Mention, Best Monograph Award, BAFTSS Publication Awards 2022 Sheldon Lu's wide-ranging new book investigates how filmmakers and visual artists from mainland China, Hong Kong and Taiwan have envisioned China as it transitions from a socialist to a globalized capitalist state. It examines how the modern nation has been refashioned and re-imagined in order to keep pace with globalization and transnationalism. At the heart of Lu's analysis is a double movement in the relationship between nation and transnationalism in the Chinese post-socialist state. He considers the complexity of how the Chinese economy is integrated in the global capitalist system while also remaining a repressive body politic with mechanisms of control and surveillance. He explores the interrelations of the local, the national, the subnational, and the global as China repositions itself in the world. Lu considers examples from feature and documentary film, mainstream and marginal cinema, and a variety of visual arts: photography, painting, digital video, architecture, and installation. His close case studies include representations of class, masculinity and sexuality in contemporary Taiwanese and Chinese cinema; the figure of the sex worker as a symbol of modernity and mobility; and artists' representations of Beijing at the time of the 2008 Olympics.

Part 1

Nationhood, Gender, Sexuality, Masculinity in Feature Film

1

Projecting the Chinese Nation on Domestic and Global Screens

In this chapter, I examine two sides of one phenomenon, namely, the representation of China on domestic and global screens. First, I look at the new ways for Hollywood to represent, appropriate, and incorporate China in its blockbuster films. This largely has to do with Hollywood’s desire to increase its presence in the lucrative growing film market of mainland China. Second, I analyze the self-representation of China in mainland films, especially its own blockbusters. Spatial expansion and accelerated mobility have provided fresh opportunities for Chinese filmmakers to reimagine the place of the Chinese nation and its people in the contemporary world.

This chapter is organized into several sections. The first section is “Images of China on World Screens,” where I mainly examine the evolving strategies of representing China in American films. The subsequent section is “Domestic and Global Projections of China’s Self-Images,” which reviews a sizeable number of Chinese films in the twenty-first century that render visions of China in their unique manners. The last section is “Interracial Politics and Gender Dynamics in China Peacekeeping Forces,” which focuses on one particular film as a telling example in the reorientation of China’s self-representation.

Images of China on World Screens

Chinese film studies, world cinema, and screen images of China might have been separate academic fields claiming different kinds of linguistic and scholarly expertise. “Chinese” film was an area study; world cinema belonged to a discipline—film studies; images and representations of China in different cinematic traditions came out of various area studies and disciplines, such as American studies, French studies, and European cinema.

However, such disciplinary boundaries have been blurred and crossed increasingly in an era of globalization. These areas and disciplines often overlap and become difficult to distinguish from each other. This is the result of both how films have been made and how academic disciplines have evolved. For instance, how would we categorize the “area” or national origin of a thoroughly transnational film such as Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (Wohu canglong 卧虎藏龙, Ang Lee, 2000)?¹ Such films are coproductions, involve an international cast, and utilize multiple sources of funding and production.

There have been long-standing representations of China and Chinese on global screens. The framing and depiction of the other is necessary for the articulation and clarification of the self. Images of China, Chinese people, and Chinese culture are abundant in American cinema since the beginning. They are like a pendulum that swings back and forth between positive and negative portrayals of China over the years.²

During the Cold War, there was a steady stream of popular writings, musicals, and films about Asia and Americans’ involvement in Asia. America’s representation and taming of the other through the hands of writers and filmmakers since the end of the Second World War amounted to a special brand of Orientalist discourse, “Cold-War orientalism.”³ Such a discourse was in sync with the goal and reality of a US-led global integration in the economic, political, and cultural realms. The United States and the Soviet Union were competing for geopolitical influence as well as the hearts and minds of the people from around the world. Socialist mainland China was largely isolated from the capitalist West at the time.

In the post–Cold War era, there arise new opportunities for America to lead the world in the domain of popular culture. Cinema is an effective means for the United States to assert its influence and bring about a cultural, political, and economic integration. China’s huge number of moviegoers provides an ideal ground for Hollywood to expand its overseas market.

Naomi Greene is among the most incisive critics of Hollywood’s appropriations of Chinese motifs, materials, and stories for its own commercial gains. She comments on the commercial success and popularity of such animations as Mulan (1998) and Kung Fu Panda (2008) made in the United States:

In Mulan, a legendary Chinese heroine is transformed into an American teenager; in Kung Fu Panda, the age-old Chinese tradition of the martial arts is emptied of weight and meaning. In both films, China itself is reduced to a heap of motifs in which the Forbidden Palace and the Great Wall have no more meaning—and probably less—than egg rolls and chopsticks.

And what better way to tame the awakening dragon than to replace it with a cuddly panda or a diminutive creature like the pint-sized Mushu of Mulan?⁴

These films appear to be more interested in offering palatable images, motifs, and themes about a foreign land for popular consumption rather than providing authentic engagement with an ancient culture and a rising modern power.

Hollywood has become truly a global cinema. Its films are simultaneously released and watched in theaters all over the world. The arrival of Hollywood blockbusters (Meiguo dapian 美国大片) is eagerly waited for by spectators in China. New strategies are devised by film companies to bring Chinese spectators to the orbit of American film culture and make them identify with shared universal (American) values and emotions. Screen images of China have developed in new directions in the twenty-first century. Such films range from full-blown Hollywood feature films on Chinese subjects, to US-China coproductions, to films that reference and incorporate Chinese elements. A new trend in Hollywood is the making of blockbusters with an eye to export to and cash in on the huge Chinese film market. The Chinese film market has expanded tremendously, is second only to America in box-office revenue, and is poised to be the largest film market in the near future. Some American films inject a mix of Chinese elements, utilize Chinese locations, and employ a Chinese cast in order to endear and attract the Chinese audience. This has been called “Hollywood with Chinese elements” (Zhongguo yuansu 中国元素). As Yiman Wang points out, a major development in border-crossing film culture is “Hollywood’s increasing investment in commercializing and cinematizing East Asian elements, and East Asia’s active engagement with ‘global Hollywood.’ Other than appropriating iconic Chineseness (as illustrated in Kung Fu Panda), Hollywood has also taken an increasing interest in buying the remake rights of East Asian hit films and producing English versions.”⁵

In regard to Hollywood remakes of East Asian films, a most famous case is Martin Scorsese’s film The Departed (2006), which is a remake of a Hong Kong film, Infernal Affairs (Wujian dao 无间道, 2002).⁶ The American remake wins several awards at the Academy Awards, including the long-awaited overdue Best Director Award for Scorsese. Infernal Affairs itself is a new development in the long tradition of Hong Kong action cinema. This twenty-first-century action film has little “action” in the old sense. It does not choreograph and showcase any of the intense physical, balletic gunplay in the fashion of John Woo’s action films from the 1980s and 1990s but updates an old genre in a new age of telecommunication by resorting to psychological subtlety. The Hollywood adaptation makes certain changes, from Hong Kong to Boston, from Buddhism to Catholicism, from Chinese actors to American actors, but maintains the overall storyline.

Film remakes across countries and continents are an integral component of transnational film culture. The remaking of foreign films goes both ways between China and the West. Chinese filmmakers also make adaptations of foreign films. Mainland Chinese director and actress Xu Jinglei 徐静蕾 directed and acted in a remake of a film based on the novella of Austrian author Stefan Zweig (1881–1942): Letter from an Unknown Woman (Brief einer Unbekannten).⁷ This story was first translated into Chinese and published in Shanghai in the 1930s. It was adapted into a Hollywood film by Max Ophül in 1948 under the same title. Xu’s 2005 remake, with the Chinese title Yige mosheng nüren de laixin 一个陌生女人的来信, under the postsocialist condition of Reform and Opening, adds another layer to the cross-cultural formation and recontextualization of women’s images, feminine ideals, love, and purportedly bourgeois values from around the world. What appear to be escapist, conservative sentiments in one continent might turn out to be liberating, progressive forces at another location in a specific historical era.

A Hollywood film may have an American version for the American and global audiences and a slightly different Chinese version specifically for release in mainland China. These films make use of Chinese locations and employ Chinese actors or actresses. Renowned Chinese actress Li Bingbing 李冰冰 is cast as an important character, Su Yueming, in the science-fiction blockbuster Transformers: The Age of Extinction (2014). She plays the role of a feisty, strong woman with snappy martial art skills. Part of the film is shot in the streets of Hong Kong, and a sprinkling of the Cantonese dialect can be heard. Chinese model/actress Zhao Xi 赵茜 (aka Candice Zhao) appears for a fleeting moment in an elevator scene, posing as an iconic native girl with abundant sex appeal.

Figure 1.1 Transformers 4: Age of Extinction. Directed by Michael Bay. Production companies: Hasbro, Di Bonaventura Pictures. 2014. Chinese actress Li Bingbing stars in the film.

The superhero film Iron Man 3 (2013) also has a Chinese version in order to break into the Chinese market. The Chinese version adds another four minutes with Chinese actors. Actress Fan Bingbing 范冰冰 and veteran actor Wang Xueqi 王学圻 appear in the film. Wang’s role is Dr. Wu, and Fan plays the role of his assistant. Fan Bingbing is one of the most bankable female stars in the Chinese film industry. She was chosen to act in the science-fiction film X-Men: Days of Future Past (2014), playing the role of Blink in the film.

The two “Bingbings,” literally “icy cold” princesses, are among China’s hottest, most desired actresses. In these films, they exhibit strong fighting skills and resemble female actioners in earlier Hong Kong cinema, such as the supernatural/action feature The Heroic Trio (Dongfang sanxia 东方三侠, 1993) starring Maggie Cheung, Anita Mui, and Michelle Yeoh, as well as the James Bond franchise Tomorrow Never Dies (1997) starring Michelle Yeoh who fights alongside Pierce Brosnan. However, the intended audience ...

Indice dei contenuti

• Cover
• Half-title Page
• Dedication Page
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Contents
• List of Figures
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction: Refashioning the Nation in Transnational Cinema and Art
• Part 1 Nationhood, Gender, Sexuality, Masculinity in Feature Film
• Part 2 Multimedia Engagements with the Local, National, and Global
• Conclusion: Globalization at Bay
• Filmography
• Bibliography
• Index
• Copyright Page