The Cultural Impact of the Nanking Massacre in Cinematography: on City of Life and Death (2009) and the Flowers of War (2011)
Total Page:16
File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb
CULTURA CULTURA INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY OF CULTURE CULTURA AND AXIOLOGY Founded in 2004, Cultura. International Journal of Philosophy of 2016 Culture and Axiology is a semiannual peer-reviewed journal devo- 2 2016 Vol XIII No 2 ted to philosophy of culture and the study of value. It aims to pro- mote the exploration of different values and cultural phenomena in regional and international contexts. The editorial board encourages the submission of manuscripts based on original research that are judged to make a novel and important contribution to understan- ding the values and cultural phenomena in the contempo rary world. CULTURE AND AXIOLOGY CULTURE INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY INTERNATIONAL ISBN 978-3-631-71562-8 www.peterlang.com CULTURA 2016_271562_VOL_13_No2_GR_A5Br.indd 1 14.11.16 KW 46 10:45 CULTURA CULTURA INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY OF CULTURE CULTURA AND AXIOLOGY Founded in 2004, Cultura. International Journal of Philosophy of 2016 Culture and Axiology is a semiannual peer-reviewed journal devo- 2 2016 Vol XIII No 2 ted to philosophy of culture and the study of value. It aims to pro- mote the exploration of different values and cultural phenomena in regional and international contexts. The editorial board encourages the submission of manuscripts based on original research that are judged to make a novel and important contribution to understan- ding the values and cultural phenomena in the contempo rary world. CULTURE AND AXIOLOGY CULTURE INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY INTERNATIONAL www.peterlang.com CULTURA 2016_271562_VOL_13_No2_GR_A5Br.indd 1 14.11.16 KW 46 10:45 CULTURA INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY OF CULTURE AND AXIOLOGY Cultura. International Journal of Philosophy of Culture and Axiology E-ISSN (Online): 2065-5002 ISSN (Print): 1584-1057 Advisory Board Prof. Dr. David Altman, Instituto de Ciencia Política, Universidad Catolica de Chile, Chile Prof. Emeritus Dr. Horst Baier, University of Konstanz, Germany Prof. Dr. David Cornberg, University Ming Chuan, Taiwan Prof. Dr. Paul Cruysberghs, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Belgium Prof. Dr. Nic Gianan, University of the Philippines Los Baños, Philippines Prof. Dr. Marco Ivaldo, Department of Philosophy “A. Aliotta”, University of Naples “Federico II”, Italy Prof. Dr. Michael Jennings, Princeton University, USA Prof. Dr. Maximiliano E. Korstanje, University of Palermo, Argentina Prof. Dr. Richard L. Lanigan, Southern Illinois University, USA Prof. Dr. Christian Lazzeri, Université Paris Ouest Nanterre La Défense, France Prof. Dr. Massimo Leone, University of Torino, Italy Prof. Dr. Asunción López-Varela Azcárate, Complutense University, Madrid, Spain Prof. Dr. Christian Möckel, Humboldt University of Berlin, Germany Prof. Dr. Devendra Nath Tiwari, Banaras Hindu University, Varanasi, India Prof. Dr. José María Paz Gago, University of Coruña, Spain Prof. Dr. Mario Perniola, University of Rome “Tor Vergata”, Italy Prof. Dr. Traian D. Stănciulescu, Alexandru Ioan Cuza University Iassy, Romania Prof. Dr. Steven Tötösy de Zepetnek, Purdue University & Ghent University Editorial Board Editor-in-Chief: Co-Editors: Prof. dr. Nicolae Râmbu Prof. dr. Aldo Marroni Faculty of Philosophy and Social- Dipartimento di Lettere, Arti e Scienze Sociali Political Sciences Università degli Studi G. d’Annunzio Alexandru Ioan Cuza University Via dei Vestini, 31, 66100 Chieti Scalo, Italy B-dul Carol I, nr. 11, 700506 Iasi, Romania [email protected] [email protected] PD Dr. Till Kinzel Englisches Seminar Technische Universität Braunschweig, Bienroder Weg 80, 38106 Braunschweig, Germany [email protected] Editorial Assistant: Dr. Marius Sidoriuc Designer: Aritia Poenaru Cultura International Journal of Philosophy of Culture and Axiology Vol. 13, No. 2 (2016) Editor-in-Chief Nicolae Râmbu Guest Editors: Asunción López-Varela and Ananta Charan Sukla Bibliographic Information published by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data is available in the internet at http://dnb.d-nb.de. Cover Image: © Aritia Poenaru ISSN 2065-5002 ISBN 978-3-631-71562-8 (Print) E-ISBN 978-3-631-71635-9 (E-PDF) E-ISBN 978-3-631-71636-6 (EPUB) E-ISBN 978-3-631-71637-3 (MOBI) DOI 10.3726/b10729 © Peter Lang GmbH Internationaler Verlag der Wissenschaften Frankfurt am Main 2016 All rights reserved. Peter Lang Edition is an Imprint of Peter Lang GmbH. Peter Lang – Frankfurt am Main · Bern · Bruxelles · New York · Oxford · Warszawa · Wien All parts of this publication are protected by copyright. Any utilisation outside the strict limits of the copyright law, without the permission of the publisher, is forbidden and liable to prosecution. This applies in particular to reproductions, translations, microfilming, and storage and processing in electronic retrieval systems. This publication has been peer reviewed. www.peterlang.com CROSS-CULTURAL INTERMEDIALITY: FROM PERFORMANCE TO DIGITALITY CONTENTS Asunción LÓPEZ-VARELA AZCÁRATE 7 Introduction: Performance, Medial Innovation and Culture Ananta Charan SUKLA 13 Indian Intercultural Poetics: the Sanskrit Rasa-Dhvani Theory Krishna PRAVEEN and V. Anitha DEVI 19 Kathakali: The Quintessential Classical Theatre of Kerala Jinghua GUO 27 Adaptations of Shakespeare to Chinese Theatre Cyril-Mary Pius OLATUNJI and Mojalefa L.J. KOENANE 43 Philosophical Rumination on Gelede: an Ultra-Spectacle Performance María VIVES AGURRUZA 53 The Cultural Impact of the Nanking Massacre in Cinematography: On City of Life and Death (2009) and The Flowers of War (2011) Qingben LI 67 China’s Micro Film: Socialist Cultural Production in the Micro Era Annette THORSEN VILSLEV 77 Following Pasolini in Words, Photos, and Film, and his Perception of Cinema as Language Adile ASLAN ALMOND 83 Reading Rainer Fassbinder’s adaptation Fontane Effi Briest Yang GENG and Lingling PENG 103 The Time Phenomenon of Chinese Zen and Video Art in China: 1988-1998 Carolina FERNÁNDEZ CASTRILLO 125 Lyric Simultaneities: From “Words in Freedom” to Holopoetry Janez STREHOVEC 137 Digital Art in the Artlike Culture and Networked Economy Stefano CALZATI 153 Representations of China by Western Travellers in the Blogsphere Horea AVRAM 173 Shared Privacy and Public Intimacy: The Hybrid Spaces of Augmented Reality Art 10.3726/CUL2016-2_53 Cultura. International Journal of Philosophy of Culture and Axiology 13(2)/2016: 53–66 The Cultural Impact of the Nanking Massacre in Cinematography: On City of Life and Death (2009) and The Flowers of War (2011) María VIVES AGURRUZA Fundación Germán Sánchez Ruipérez, Madrid, Spain [email protected] Abstract. The Flowers of War (2012), based on the homonymous novel by Geling Yan, and City of Life and Death (2009) are recent Chinese films that deal with the so- called ‘Nanking Massacre’ or ‘the Rape of Nanking’. The events which inspired these stories in the context of the second Sino-Japanese War will be analysed through the study and comparison of both films, together with the reasons which led the directors to fictionalise a series of events so many years after they occurred in 1937. This analysis will be carried out based on the testimonies of the foreigners who eyewitnessed the events at the time, and who left written testimony of the facts, and a comparison shall be made between the fictional and factual events. Keywords: Nanking Massacre, the Rape of Nanking, City of Life and Death, The Flowers of War, Geling Yan, Iris Chang, II Sino-Japanese War INTRODUCTION The publication of The Rape of Nanking: The Forgotten Holocaust of World War II (1997) by Iris Chang brought the ”Nanking Massacre” to global attention. Several other books and films, such as City of Life and Death (2009) and The Flowers of War (2011), based on the homonymous novel by Geling Yan, appeared. Thus, Iris Chang achieved her desire to inspire other authors and historians to investigate the stories of the Nanking survivors (McLaughlin, 2004 n/p). Iris Chang, born in New Jersey, the daughter of two university professors who had emigrated from Taiwan. Accompanied by Duan Yueping, the assistant curator of the Memorial Hall of the Nanking Massacre, Chang visited Nanking to research the stories of the survivors of the massacre. Chang killed herself on November 9, 2004 when suffering from a severe depression in her home at St. Jose, California. Among the photographic records of this tragedy are the diaries of John Rabe and Minnie Vautrin, along with multiple letters to family or friends, the Japanese Embassy, and reports and articles from the 53 M. Vives Agurruza / The Cultural Impact of the Nanking Massacre in Cinematography foreigners who lived through the events. Minnie Vautrin, a direct witness and survivor of the massacre and head of Gingling College contributed to save thousands of lives and thousands of Chinese women and girls from systematic rape by Japanese soldiers. “Exhausted and haunted by the images of those she could not save,” Vautrin killed herself in 1941 (McLaughlin, 2004n/p). Most of these records were compiled by Zhang Kaiyuan in his edition Eyewitnesses to Massacre: American Missionaries Bear Witness to Japanese Atrocities in Nanjing, which also includes some testimonies to the International Military Tribunal for the Far East – also known as the Tokyo Trials – which took place on April, 1946. The events also reached the world at the time of the tragedy through the book by H. J. Timperley, What War Means, published with the title The Japanese Terror in China