Melanie Thompson Film 350 Prof. Mokdad
Liminal Space: The Social-historical Thresholds Occupied by Jia Zhangke’s The World
By 2004 China had joined the World Trade Organization, won the bid to host the 2008 Olympics, and been selected to host the universal exposition in 2010. Carried by its relentless pursuit of modernization China had ascended to the world stage, but at what cost? This question is explored in Jia Zhangke’s appropriately titled The World. Taking place in Beijing’s World Park, the film follows the lives of migrant workers as their own quests for modernity come into conflict with the socio-economic structures that sustain China’s economic boom. The World is Jia’s first film to take place outside of his native province of Shanxi and brings his criticisms of Chinese modernization and contact with global culture from the rural context to the big city. Using an aestheticized realist style to depict the struggles of the urban underclass, The World fits neatly into the tradition of Chinese post-socialist filmmaking while simultaneously exhibiting a style and subject matter compatible with the international art film market. At the intersection of these two movements, one local, one global, The World goes beyond the model of a typical art film to satisfy a yearning for truth in a country that finds itself in the liminal space between communism and capitalism, and modernity and tradition.
The World focuses on the story of two migrant workers: Zhao Xiao Tao and her boyfriend, Taisheng. Tao serves as the film’s primary protagonist, and the narrative follows her journey as she is exposed to the harsh realities facing migrant women in China’s modern capital. Tao is employed as a performer in Beijing’s World Park, where she dons an array of exotic costumes and performs at locations around the park and in the nightly exposition. Over the course of the film, Tao begins to see cracks in the spectacular facade created by the park. Her friend Anna, a Russian dancer, turns to prostitution in order to buy a plane ticket out, her co-worker sleeps with the park director in order to get a promotion, a young relative of Taisheng dies in a construction accident, and her boyfriend has an affair with another woman. The film ends with Tao and Taisheng being carried lifeless from their friend’s apartment after a fatal gas leak.
In many respects, The World is a quintessential art film, displaying Jia’s tendency towards auteurism, cinephilia, and utilizing a loose, episodic narrative consistent with this mode. In addition to his consistent style, Jia builds intertextuality amongst his through the coincidental reappearance of actors and characters. The actress Zhao Tao, who stars in The World has also starred as various characters in every one of his films since Platform. The character Sanming, who makes a brief cameo in The World, creates a tangible connection between The World’s protagonists and those from Platform. Sanming also goes on to star in Jia’s next film Still Life. This intertextuality makes The World part of a distinct and interconnected body of work. Jia displays his cinephilia by referencing films outside his own. For example, The World’s middle chapter is a reference to Ozu Yasujiro’s Tokyo Story both in title and narrative (Richler). In addition to these art cinema characteristics, The World’s style also closely aligns with the Bazinian realism that became a popular trend on the festival circuit in the late 1990s (McGrath, 82). Jia’s use of long takes, long shots, location shooting, handheld camerawork, and ellipses are consistent with the observational realism employed by directors such as Abbas Kiarostami and Cristian Mungiu. His style draws upon a global legacy of New Wave cinemas, particularly Bazin’s own cinema verité (Lu, 178).
Jia’s films also make use of financing and distribution channels consistent with international art cinema. The World is financed through international co-production, primarily amongst Jia’s Hong Kong based Xstream Films, Japan’s Office Kitano, and France’s Lumen Films. The film also received support from the French government’s World Cinema Aid Fund (Aide aux cinéma du monde) (Richler). Likewise, the film travels the film festival circuit, premiering at the Venice Film Festival, and is distributed by non-domestic companies, Zeitgeist Films in the US, and Film Festival, and is distributed by non-domestic companies, Zeitgeist Films in the US, and France’s Celluloid Dreams internationally.
With respect to his style and auteurism Jia appears to be is a typical art film director, however, in the Chinese context, these two traits are motivated by a specific and widely felt need to respond to China’s turbulent past and present. Jia’s filmmaking emerged in a wave of post-socialist realism and documentary filmmaking whose “subject matter and stylistic orientations...are inseparable from the deep social and cultural transformation occurring in China today” (Lu, 177). The documentary and post-socialist realism movements in China emerged, in part, as a response to the social realist films of the Mao era. These films were characterized by their portrayal of an ideological reality as opposed to a documented one. “The postsocialist realist films of the 1990s are thus imbued with the faith that just going out into public with a camera and capturing the unvarnished street life found there serves to unmask ideology while documenting the realities of contemporary China.” (McGrath, 85). Another response to the socialist filmmaking of Mao’s China was the emergence of individualism. Jia’s auteurism may be seen as an alignment with international art cinema but it is also a renunciation of the collectivist mentality of Mao’s China. In Mao’s China individual expression was suppressed in favor of the communal perspective, so presenting an individual vision was to seek liberation (Lu, 183). Thus, Jia and other Chinese sixth generation filmmakers answer a different call than auteurs in other countries, particularly in Europe. Their burden is not to maintain the country’s cultural integrity, but to somehow address the unhealed scars of the cultural revolution.
The other film movement to which the sixth generation against which the sixth generation developed is the fifth generation. Though some notable fifth generation works aimed to critique Chinese society through historical allegory, many were lavish costume dramas or wuxia pian genre films aimed at breaking into the global commercial film market. Where international art cinema is defined against Hollywood, it is also important to take into account this dynamic within China. Eschewing continuity editing, genre, stars, and what they saw as orientalist content, Jia along with other sixth generation filmmakers sought to capture the truth of present day China. Where fifth generation filmmakers portrayed China’s beautiful landscapes and historic tales, the sixth generation captures the gritty lives of China’s grassroots people. Where many fifth-generation films had large budgets and studio support, the sixth generation took on an amateur lens. The motivation behind Jia’s content, he explains was that in all the films he had seen in college, none documented the Chinese reality he knew (Tweedle, 284). Many sixth- generation directors, including Jia, find their inspiration for filmmaking in their experience growing up in “the dystopian moment” of post Mao China and their films “are about the disillusionment and dejection of underclass urban youth in a world without heroes or clearly defined ideals” (Lu, 178). While their amateur style did emerge as a response to commercial filmmaking, it did not come solely from a need to create intellectual auteurist films, it also came from a craving for representation and acknowledgement, a yearning altogether more specific and ultimately collective than typical art cinema could boast.
Despite the fact that The World and its post-socialist peers satisfy a specifically Chinese need in both their subject matter and style, their sincerity is difficult to qualify without addressing the films’ foreign audiences and financing. Because of their gritty and often pessimistic subject matter, Jia’s films are critiqued for catering to Western audiences. By portraying the hardship and unfair working conditions of migrant workers in Beijing for example, Jia is accused of presenting a negative, and stereotypical view of Chinese oppressed by a totalitarian regime (McGrath, 107). Many suppose that his films are “banned in China” for similar reasons, a label which suggests more radical filmmaking along the lines of third cinema. However, the matter is more complicated than it may appear, and in order to assess The World fairly it is important to examine the reasons why it is Jia’s first film not to be banned in China.
What is the significance of the label “banned in China?” The most obvious reason for a film to be banned is that its content is overly critical for the Chinese government’s. However, for the amateur filmmaker, making films underground also comes with several benefits. The process of having a film legitimized by Chinese censors is an arduous three step process, and a film having a film legitimized by Chinese censors is an arduous three step process, and a film submitted for approval cannot be entered in foreign film festivals or released domestically without permission (Jaffee). By making films outside the system, amateur directors have to jump through fewer hoops in order to realize their projects, furthermore, the label “banned in China” makes the films more marketable to foreign financiers and film festivals (Jaffee). The fact that Jia’s content and style changed very little between his illegitimate and legitimate films -- despite the fears of fans and critics alike -- indicates that either the censors have loosened their restrictions, or Jia no longer requires his underground credentials to obtain funding. Regardless the choice indicates a desire, as Jia himself expressed, for domestic audiences to be able to see his work on the big screen (Jaffee). In addition, it allows for the possibility that Jia and other underground filmmakers make use of the established art cinema industry to produce critical, socially engaged work whose ideology and theory does not align with that which inspires European art cinema.
While I would not go so far as to label Jia’s filmmaking as third cinema, I would argue that it fulfills a similar need for expression in the Chinese context. The sixth generation’s style of is well summarized as an “unglamourous docudrama mode of filmmaking aiming as contemporary Social Engagement” (Lu, 176) In several respects, The World offers a political critique and a detailed documentation of the exploited underclass that aligns well with third cinema (Richler). However, The World and Jia’s other films also reject many aspects of the third cinema model in that they emphasize the auteur and the individual and fail to provide a call to action. This speaks to China’s unique cultural-historical position. Jia’s films simultaneously aim to digest and depart from the ideology of the cultural revolution as well as critique the tide of globalization and neoliberal capitalism in China. In China, the individualism represents a new claim on human rights. Whereas third cinema films sought to depart from the capitalist heroes and bourgeois individualism of Hollywood and art cinema, Jia seeks to escape the collectivist ideals of Mao’s China, where the individual didn’t matter (Lu, 183). For the sixth generation, individual stories and individual expression provide a better approximation of the truth, and of people’s lived experiences than the collective is capable of. The World lacks a call to action because the Chinese are caught amidst a torrent of change, the film seeks to capture and understand a moment of it, not create greater upheaval. Although it easily fits the art cinema model abroad, The World is a product of a generation’s need to acknowledge China’s past and process its uncertain present in a way that domestic politics and public discourse will not allow. The World speaks to China’s unique position as a country that underwent communist revolution in the 1960s and 70s and has emerged on the other side. There is no more call for a revolution, and individual expression has replaced the community as revolutionary filmmaking practice, in China amateur art cinema has become “revolutionary.” Thematically, The World also finds itself in a liminal position. It is somewhat unclear whether the film is a critique of globalization itself or of the empty promises of the Chinese government in that respect. On one hand, there is a conspicuous lack of representation of anything Chinese in The World Park. Although the actual park contains replicas of the Great Wall and other famous Chinese sites, these are not shown in the film. The adoption of foreign styles and luxury brands made by Qun likewise hints at the cultural erosion taking place through globalization. However, David Richler suggests that the film’s critique “is less about the replicas or the mobile phones themselves, but how the State imbues them with false promises of mobility and access to a world that remains impossibly out of reach.” This is distinctly evident in the allegory of the theme park, whose slogan “see the world without ever leaving Beijing” becomes more like a sentence for its workers. The protagonists of the film are migrant workers who have come from a rural background in Shaanxi province to work in Beijing in hopes of finding better employment and greater knowledge of the world. Instead, they find themselves trapped in dead-end jobs enacting the spectacle of the world for others. Throughout the film Jia uses the park to play with the audience’s expectations and emphasize his critique. This is perhaps most evident in one of the final shots of the film. A few scenes earlier Tao tells Taisheng that they should get married. When she appears later in a white wedding dress, film language indicates to the audience that Tao will be getting married. The painful irony is revealed, however, when Tao ascends the park’s stage in the dress for the new year’s performance. There will be no happy ending for her and Taisheng. The promises of a better life, of world travel or marriage are empty ones. The closest she may come is to enact these fantasies on stage, to perpetuate the illusion of a modern, she may come is to enact these fantasies on stage, to perpetuate the illusion of a modern, cosmopolitan China.
Chief among the promises offered by globalization and modernization is mobility, both spatial and social (Luo). This is the promise most out of reach of The World’s protagonists. Tao covets the passports of her ex-boyfriend and Russian friend but must content herself with playing the part of a stewardess in the World Park’s grounded aircraft. The theme is reinforced by Jia’s use of long shots, and ellipses. The lack of close ups compared with the abundance of long shots throughout the film causes the characters to be dwarfed by their surroundings. The viewer is held at a distance from the melodrama of the characters’ lives, causing their conflicts and actions to appear inconsequential compared to the overwhelming weight of their environments (Zhang, 133). The film’s ellipses also remove critical moments of agency, causing characters actions to appear predetermined, or outside of their own will. Tao, for example, exercises significant agency when she chooses to sleep with Taisheng after firmly rejecting his advances earlier in the film. However, neither her decision nor the act itself is included in the plot, which cuts to what appears to be a post-coital embrace. The lack of agency given to the characters reflects the sentiment that their villain cannot be personified, it is the nebulous pressure of the system in which they are caught. Although The World, in this sense, offers a universal critique of capitalist culture, it is also specific to the lives of China’s migrant workers whose marginalization and lack of social mobility is the result of a system designed to maintain a cheap migrant workforce (Gaetano).
Jia’s Bazinian style also serves as “an emergency brake that reimagines the cinematic image as a source of friction rather than the quintessence of globalization and its flows.” (Tweedle, 301). Construction and demolition are ongoing motifs in Jia’s films. In The World construction cranes are always present in the skyline of Beijing. The tragic death of Little Sister at the construction site is a reminder of the cost of Chinese modernity and what segment of the population pays for it. The forest of concrete pillars where Tao and Little Sister converse and where he is mourned are a visual metaphor for the transformation of China’s landscape. The World’s consistent use of the long take serves a means to capture this changing landscape. They, along with the film’s loose narrative produce a work that approximates the time-image (McGrath, 103). This time- image is the effort to capture a moment in China’s history, to hold it and attempt to make sense of it before it is swept up again of the tides of modernization. In The World, almost every scene is composed of only one meticulously sequenced shot. Although the consistent use of long takes is also definitive of slow cinema and observational realism popular amongst art film makers, in The World this technique serves a particular need to forestall the dizzying forces of change. It also communicates the ambivalence of Jia’s protagonists towards these forces, as they “inhabit the gap between a globalized future and the histories that have not yet come to an end. (Tweedle, 295).
At once a commodity and a commentary, The World also bears its own unique features that distinguish it from both the global art film and the post-social realist movement. A running motif in The World is the copy, the fake, the simulated. The world contains miniature copies of global landmarks, Taisheng creates fake IDs and documents, and Qun makes counterfeit luxury goods. These are all symptoms of the larger facade that is a modern, cosmopolitan China. This theme comes with an interesting intersection to Jia’s realist observational style. The long takes, long shots, hand-held camera, the locations shooting these all create the illusion of truth. Furthermore, several of the characters in The World play characters with their own names. Zhao Tao plays Zhao Xiao Tao, Chen Taisheng plays Taisheng, and Sanming Han plays Sanming. What are we to make of this ironic bit of commentary? Perhaps Jia is alluding to his own complicity in presenting as real something that is fake. Perhaps he is critiquing the pretension of realism to the truth. Another author claims as much regarding The World’s animated sequences stating that they “entertain the attractions of contemporary image culture and destroy the exclusive pretensions to truth often associated with observational realism” (Tweedle, 297). Through these animated sequences and Jia’s own jabs at realist filmmaking we can see a new auteurist style emerging, one which critiques spectacle and subjectivity, but maintains an awareness of its own contrived nature. The surrealist quality of The World reflects the surrealist landscape in which Jia finds himself, where things change so quickly that anything is within the realm of possibility. This sentiment is encapsulated in the ending of The World when Taisheng’s disembodied voice asks “are we dead” and Tao replies “No, this is only the beginning.”
Ultimately, the question remains as to what place The World holds in the context of world cinema. I would argue that The World can be seen as an authentically Chinese product, created to respond to and process the despondent feelings and disorienting reality encountered by Jia’s generation. It represents a unique cinema developed in opposition both to totalitarian cinema and Hollywood popular cinema models. It is not incisive or revolutionary in the way that third cinema is, but neither does it ignore the forces of globalization in China and the plight of the common people caught up by its throes. Although The World operates on the global stage as a typical art film, this does not discredit its independence from that mode, but rather speaks to a group of amateur, independent directors that required the assistance of an established industry to realize visions not supported by local public discourse.
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