DOCSLIB.ORG

ZHANG YIMOU's RED SORGHUM and JU DOU By

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
ZHANG YIMOU's RED SORGHUM and JU DOU By THE THEME OF SEXUALITY: ZHANG YIMOU’S RED SORGHUM AND JU DOU By Jessica Reingold History 300AA: Chinese History Through Film April 23, 2014 Reingold, 1 Zhang Yimou is a Fifth Generation Chinese director who debuted his directing career in 1987 with the film Red Sorghum. The “Fifth Generation” filmmakers graduated from the Beijing Film Academy in 1982, fours years after its reopening from its closure during the Cultural Revolution and are the fifth generation “of film-makers to emerge since the birth of Chinese cinema.”1 During the Cultural Revolution, many of Fifth Generation film makers, “who had once enjoyed a privileged background by Chinese standards,” were “sent during the Cultural Revolution to the countryside, where they suffered many indignities.”2 For example, Zhang Yimou “reportedly sold his own blood to buy his first camera,” and “was forced to use toilet water to develop film” during the Cultural Revolution.3 Because of their vastly different experience from the generation before them during the Cultural Revolution, the Fifth Generation filmmakers were not inclined to show any enthusiasm for the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in their films. However, “overt criticism was still taboo,” so the Fifth Generation filmmakers used more subtle tactics to show their disagreements with the CCP by embedding messages within the theme of their films.4 The shift in way the theme of sexuality is displayed in Red Sorghum (1987) to Ju Dou (1990) represent how director Zhang Yimou reflects the CCP’s social rules and influence on the film industry in the late 1980s into the early 1990s, and displays how he used the atmosphere in China as means of creative growth as a filmmaker. 1980s China was lead by Deng Xiaoping who was looking to reform China and open it up to the world’s economic markets. However, the CCP did not reform other aspects of country, such as censorship in the arts and media. After the Cultural Revolution, the CCP needed to continue censorship in order to continue “the Party’s ideological control,” especially in the growing film industry after the Beijing Film Academy reopened.5 The censorship of the film industry in the 1980s continued to follow the “organizational structure of the socialist film Reingold, 2 censorship.”6 As Zhang Yimou explains in an interview, film censorship includes script approval, and approval of the finished product and a determination on whether or not the film can be shown and distributed domestically”, or if it should be only be distributed abroad.7 Zhang Yimou explains, “Chinese films are not like Western films. They are neither a commodity nor a work of art—they belong in the realm of ‘ideology.’”8 Film in China is seen as a “powerful medium for influencing thought.”9 An example of how important censorship was to the CCP, is the “political tightening of the realm of ‘ideology,’” with state-financed films that included “moral-political-educational themes” from 1989-1991 after the Tiananmen Square Massacre on June 4, 1989.10 The Tiananmen Square protest was a massive rally by students calling for modernization and democracy that included rock concerts, hunger strikes, and eventually troops from the government that randomly fired shots in the square to end the month long demonstration for good.11 Consequently, restricted themes in films were “anything anti-government or anti-party” and “overly violent.”12 Therefore, one theme in which filmmakers could explore (within bounds) and use to convey messages in was sexuality, as seen with Zhang Yimou’s two films that star Gong Li, Red Sorghum (1987) and Ju Dou (1990). Red Sorghum, released in 1987 and Ju Dou, released in 1990, are the first two films of Zhang Yimou’s trilogy. Therefore, they are very similar. Both are set between the 1920s and 1930s in rural China and begin with a young woman, played by Gong Li, going to her new home to meet the husband she has been sold to. Both films also display sexuality as a major theme very early on in the films. While “Red Sorghum breaks cultural taboos against representing female ecstasy, orgasm, and fecundity onscreen,” Ju Dou extends the sexuality to include “erotic close-ups” of “bathing and seduction shots.”13 Reingold, 3 Nevertheless, Red Sorghum, as a whole, “seems to have avoided the detachment of Fifth Generation directors and also preserved characteristics of traditional popular drama.”14 Ju Dou, on the other hand, is a “‘sign of a cross-cultural commodity fetishism,’” and the sexuality appeals to Western audiences as well because Zhang Yimou does not tailor it to the narrow- mindedness that the general Chinese population continued to harbor even after the Cultural Revolution.15 The difference in explicitness of sexuality between Red Sorghum and Ju Dou is shown through the way in which flirting and gazes are exchanged, and how the sex scenes are shot. Red Sorghum begins with a narrator talking about his grandma was sold to a Leper who owns a wine distillery, for a donkey. On the way to her new husband’s property, the narrator’s grandma, also known as Jiu'er, is carried in sedan by men who work at the wine distillery and by one man who was hired just for the occasion, who is the narrator’s Grandpa. Jiu’er looks through the sedan opening to see that the men who are carrying her are shirtless. Grandpa is closest to her and is the one she is most attracted to. The camera shows a close-up shot of Jiu’er’s face as she gazes upon the Grandpa’s back and shows what she is seeing from her point of view. Grandpa seems to know that she is looking at him through the open sedan curtain so he flirts with her by calling her out, saying, “Little bride, don’t peep out of your sedan secretly. Talk to us!”16 Similar but less innocent scenes also occur in Ju Dou. Ju Dou begins with Tianqing returning to his uncle, Jishan’s fabric dying mill. When he returns, he is informed that Jishan has bought himself a new wife, Ju Dou, who is also played by Gong-Li. The audience also learns that Jishan is notorious for torturing his wives in an attempt to produce an heir for fabric dying business. The first night he is back he hears Jishan torture Ju Dou and the following morning while Tianqing is beginning his daily work, he notices Ju Dou Reingold, 4 preparing to bathe herself. The idea of witnessing her bathe excites him, as he looks for a peephole in the wooden wall separating them. Unaware of Tianqing watching, Ju Dou proceeds to bathe herself as Tianqing gazes at her back from the peephole. Later that day, Tianqing gazes upon Ju Dou again while she is working with the fabric and continues to watch her until she catches him and makes eye contact. This first introduction into the theme of sexuality (aside from Jishan’s abuse) is much more risqué than in Red Sorghum because Ju Dou is a married woman and does not know that Tianqing is gazing upon her, whereas Jiu’er is still just a bride and she gazes upon Grandpa, he knows she is looking at him. The second instance of flirting and gazes in Red Sorghum also occurs during the sedan ride. While the sedan is carried through the mysterious sorghum field a masked robber claiming to be the infamous Sanpao stops the sedan and tries to kidnap Jiu’er. Jiu’er makes eye contact with Grandpa to almost telepathically ask for help and Grandpa returns the eye contact to communicate that he going to help her. Grandpa tackles the robber and clears the situation of danger. Jiu’er returns to the sedan, but not without thanking Grandpa. She thanks him by leaving her foot outside of the sedan, a symbol of not only her gratitude but also how his heroic display is attractive to her. Feet as a sexual symbol relate to traditional sexual values in Chinese culture that extend back past the seventeenth century when women’s feet were bound. Grandpa takes a hold of Jiu’er’s foot to show he is attracted to her too and she pulls her foot along with his hand back into the sedan. This interaction between Jiu’er and Grandpa is flirtatious and a little daring since it is in front of the wine distillery workers. However, it is not as daring as the second major encounter of gazes and flirting between Tianqing and Ju Dou. After another night of torture, Ju Dou goes to bathe herself in morning. She sees an axe mark in the side of the stair railing signifying that the noise that interrupted Jishan’s abuse was Reingold, 5 Tianqing. As Ju Dou goes to cover up the peephole, she realizes that Tianqing must care for her since he tried to stop Jishan from torturing her more during the night. Ju Dou leaves the peephole open; knowing that when she starts to prepare to bathe Tianqing will hear and go over to the peephole to watch. This time Ju Dou undresses knowing he is gazing at her and after she takes her top off she turns around to face the peephole directly, lowers her arms from her breasts and exposes her upper body to Tianqing. Although there no nudity shown, from the amount of skin that is shown in this scene it is clear that Ju Dou has completely exposed herself to Tianqing. Additional skin is not revealed in Red Sorghum and there is no implied nudity.
Load more

Recommended publications
  • Teaching Post-Mao China Not Connected
    RESOURCES FILM REVIEW ESSAY documentary style with which filmmaker Zhang Yimou is normally Teaching Post-Mao China not connected. This style—long shots of city scenes filled with people Two Classic Films and a subdued color palette—contribute to the viewer’s understand - ing of life in China in the early 1990s. The village scenes could be By Melisa Holden from anytime in twentieth century China, as the extent of moderniza - tion is limited. For example, inside peasants’ homes, viewers see Introduction steam spewing from characters’ mouths because of the severe cold The Story of Qiu Ju and Beijing Bicycle are two films that have been and lack of central heating. However, when Qiu Ju travels to the ur - used in classrooms since they were produced (1992 and 2001, respec - banized areas, it becomes obvious that the setting is the late twentieth tively). Today, these films are still relevant to high school and under - century. The film was shot only a couple of years after the Tiananmen graduate students studying history, literature, and related courses Square massacre in 1989. Zhang’s previous two films ( Ju Dou and about China, as they offer a picture of the grand scale of societal Raise the Red Lantern ) had been banned in China, but with The Story change that has happened in China in recent decades. Both films il - of Qiu Ju , Zhang depicts government officials in a positive light, lustrate contemporary China and the dichotomy between urban and therefore earning the Chinese government’s endorsement. One feels rural life there. The human issues presented transcend cultural an underlying tension through Qiu Ju’s search for justice, as if it is not boundaries and, in the case of Beijing Bicycle , feature young charac - only justice for her husband’s injured body and psyche, but also jus - ters that are the age of US students, allowing them to further relate to tice supposedly found through democracy.
    [Show full text]
  • Perspectives in Flux
    Perspectives in Flux Red Sorghum and Ju Dou's Reception as a Reflection of the Times Paisley Singh Professor Smith 2/28/2013 East Asian Studies Thesis Seminar Singh 1 Abstract With historical and critical approach, this thesis examined how the general Chinese reception of director Zhang Yimou’s Red Sorghum and Ju Dou is reflective of the social conditions at the time of these films’ release. Both films hold very similar diegeses and as such, each generated similar forms of filmic interpretation within the academic world. Film scholars such as Rey Chow and Sheldon Lu have critiqued these films as especially critical of female marginalization and the Oedipus complex present within Chinese society. Additionally, the national allegorical framing of both films, a common pattern within Chinese literary and filmic traditions, has thoroughly been explored within the Chinese film discipline. Furthermore, both films have been subjected to accusations of Self-Orientalization and Occidentalism. The similarity between both films is undeniable and therefore comparable in reference to the social conditions present in China and the changing structures within the Chinese film industry during the late 1980s and early 1990s. Although Red Sorghum and Ju Dou are analogous, each received almost opposite reception from the general Chinese public. China's social and economic reform, film censorship, as well as the government’s intervention and regulation of the Chinese film industry had a heavy impact upon each film’s reception. Equally important is the incidence of specific events such as the implementation of the Open Door policy in the 1980s and 1989 Tiananmen Square Massacre.
    [Show full text]
  • Foreignizing Translation on Chinese Traditional Funeral Culture in the Film Ju Dou
    ISSN 1923-1555[Print] Studies in Literature and Language ISSN 1923-1563[Online] Vol. 15, No. 1, 2017, pp. 47-50 www.cscanada.net DOI:10.3968/9758 www.cscanada.org Foreignizing Translation on Chinese Traditional Funeral Culture in the Film Ju Dou PENG Xiamei[a],*; WANG Piaodi[a] [a]School of Foreign Languages, North China Electric Power University, Since Red Sorghum, the first film directed by him has Beijing, China. won the Golden Bear on February 23th, 1988, Zhang and *Corresponding author. his films produced a series of surprises for the Chinese Supported by The Fundamental Research Funds for the Central people and the world (Ban, 2003). He was said to be one Universities (JB2017074). of the most advanced figures in Chinese movies, and his films are regarded as a symbol of Chinese contemporary Received 15 April 2017; accepted 17 July 2017 culture. Published online 26 July 2017 In Zhang’s films, you’ll see a profound understanding of Chinese traditional feudal consciousness and strong Abstract critical spirit, which proves to be a strong sense of China is a country with more than five thousand years of history and life consciousness. It’s a peculiar landscape traditional cultures, which is broad and profound. With the of traditional folk customs and also praises for women’s increasing international status of China in recent years, rebellious spirit. The constant exploration and innovation more and more countries are interested in China and its in the film style and language represent the rise of a traditional culture as well. Film and television works, as new film trend.
    [Show full text]
  • La Sociedad China a Través De Su Cine
    E.G~oooo OCIOO 1'11 ~ ,qq~ ~ QC4 (j) 1q~t Instituto Tecnológico y de Estudios Superiores de Monterrey Campus Eugenio Garza Sada La sociedad china a través de su cine Tesis presentada como requisito parcial para optar al título de Maestro en Educación con especialidad en Humanidades Autor: Ernesto Diez-Martínez Guzmán Asesor: Dr. Víctor López Villafañe Monterrey, N.L. abril de 1997 INTITUTO TECNOLOGICO Y DE ESTUDIOS SUPERIORES DE MONTERREY CAMPUS EUGENIO GARZA SADA La sociedad china a través de su cine Tesis presentada como requisito parcial para optar al título de Maestro en Educación con especialidad en Humanidades Autor: Ernesto Diez-Martínez Guzmán Asesor: Dr. Victor López Villafañe Monterrey, N.L. abril de 1997. A Martha, Alberto y Viridiana, por el tiempo robado. i Reconocimientos Al Dr. Victor López Villafañe, por el interés en este trabajo y por las palabras de aliento. Al ITESM Campus Sinaloa, por el apoyo nunca regateado. i i Resumen Tesis: "El cine chino a través de su cine". Autor: Ernesto Diez-Martínez Guzmán. Asesor: Dr. Víctor López Villafañe. La presente investigación. llamada "La sociedad china a través de su cine", pretende arribar al conocimiento de los mecanismos sociales, culturales y de poder de la sociedad china en el siglo XX, todo ello a través del estudio de la cinematografía del país más poblado del mundo. Desde los albores de la industria hasta la inminente fusión de Hong Kong con la China continental, el cine ha sido un importantísimo medio cultural, de entretenimiento y de propaganda, que ha sido testigo y actor fundamental de las grandes transformaciones de este país.
    [Show full text]
  • Press Contacts: Michael Krause | Foundry Communications | (212) 586-7967 | [email protected]
    presents a film by ZHANG YIMOU starring GONG LI LI BAOTIAN LI XUEJIAN SUN CHUN WANG XIAOXIAO ————————————————————— “Visually sumptuous…unforgettable.” –New York Post “Crime drama has rarely been this gorgeously alluring – or this brutal.” –Entertainment Weekly ————————————————————— 1995 | France, China | Mandarin with English subtitles | 108 minutes 1.85:1 Widescreen | 2.0 Stereo Rated R for some language and images of violence DIGITALLY RESTORED Press Contacts: Michael Krause | Foundry Communications | (212) 586-7967 | [email protected] Film Movement Booking Contacts: Jimmy Weaver | Theatrical | (216) 704-0748 | [email protected] Maxwell Wolkin | Festivals & Non-Theatrical | (212) 941-7744 x211 | [email protected] SYNOPSIS Hired to be a servant to pampered nightclub singer and mob moll Xiao Jinbao (Gong Li), naive teenager Shuisheng (Wang Xiaoxiao) is thrust into the glamorous and deadly demimonde of 1930s Shanghai. Over the course of seven days, Shuisheng observes mounting tensions as triad boss Tang (Li Baotian) begins to suspect traitors amongst his ranks and rivals for Xiao Jinbao’s affections. STORY Shanghai, 1930. Mr. Tang (Li Boatian), the godfather of the Tang family-run Green dynasty, is the city’s overlord. Having allied himself with Chiang Kai-shek and participated in the 1927 massacre of the Communists, he controls the opium and prostitution trade. He has also acquired the services of Xiao Jinbao (Gong Li), the most beautiful singer in Shanghai. The story of Shanghai Triad is told from the point of view of a fourteen-year-old boy, Shuisheng (Wang Xiaoxiao), whose uncle has brought him into the Tang Brotherhood. His job is to attend to Xiao Jinbao.
    [Show full text]
  • Accepted Manuscript
    Performing Exoticism and the Transnational Reception of World Cinema Daniela Berghahn, Royal Holloway, University of London Professor of Film Studies, Dr. phil. Department of Media Arts, Royal Holloway, University of London, Egham Hill, Egham, Surrey, TW20 0EX, United Kingdom Email: [email protected] Abstract This article examines why exoticism is central to thinking about the global dynamics of world cinema and its transnational reception. Offering a theoretical discussion of exoticism, alongside the closely related concepts of autoethnography and cultural translation, it proposes that the exotic gaze is a particular mode of aesthetic perception that is simultaneously anchored in the filmic text and elicited in the spectator in the process of transnational reception. Like world cinema, exoticism is a travelling concept that depends on mobility and the crossing of cultural boundaries to come into existence. The visual pleasure afforded by exotic cinema’s sumptuous style is arguably the chief vehicle that allows world cinema to travel and be understood, or misunderstood, as the case may be, by transnational audiences who are potentially disadvantaged by a hermeneutic deficit of culturally specific knowledge when trying to understand films from outside their own cultural sphere. Dieser Artikel untersucht, warum der Exotismus von zentraler Bedeutung ist, um die globale Dynamik des World Cinema und seine transnationale Rezeption zu verstehen. Indem er eine Theorie des Exotismus vorlegt, und zugleich auf die eng verwandten Begriffe der Autoethnografie und der kulturellen Übersetzung eingeht, stellt er die These auf, dass es sich 1 beim exotischen Blick um eine besondere Form ästhetischer Wahrnehmung handelt, die einerseits im filmischen Text verankert ist und andererseits bei der transnationalen Rezeption im Zuschauer ausgelöst wird.
    [Show full text]
  • A Cultural Study of the Portrayal of Leading Women in Zhang Yimou Films
    The University of Southern Mississippi The Aquila Digital Community Dissertations Fall 2019 Unveiling Identities: A Cultural Study of the Portrayal of Leading Women in Zhang Yimou Films Patrick McGuire University of Southern Mississippi Follow this and additional works at: https://aquila.usm.edu/dissertations Part of the Ethnic Studies Commons, Other Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Commons, and the Other Film and Media Studies Commons Recommended Citation McGuire, Patrick, "Unveiling Identities: A Cultural Study of the Portrayal of Leading Women in Zhang Yimou Films" (2019). Dissertations. 1736. https://aquila.usm.edu/dissertations/1736 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by The Aquila Digital Community. It has been accepted for inclusion in Dissertations by an authorized administrator of The Aquila Digital Community. For more information, please contact [email protected]. UNVEILING IDENTITIES: A CULTURAL STUDY OF THE PORTRAYAL OF LEADING WOMEN IN ZHANG YIMOU FILMS by Patrick Dean McGuire A Dissertation Submitted to the Graduate School, the College of Arts and Sciences and the School of Communication at The University of Southern Mississippi in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy Approved by: Dr. Christopher Campbell, Committee Chair Dr. Phillip Gentile Dr. Cheryl Jenkins Dr. Vanessa Murphree Dr. Fei Xue ____________________ ____________________ ____________________ Dr. Christopher Dr. John Meyer Dr. Karen S. Coats Campbell Director of School Dean of the Graduate School Committee Chair December.2019 COPYRIGHT BY Patrick Dean McGuire 2019 Published by the Graduate School ABSTRACT It is imperative to recognize the ongoing collaborations of filmmakers from different countries.
    [Show full text]
  • Cultural Review: Viewing Hero
    Cultural Review ence, will assiduously avoid any topic or either of these. Its story takes place theme that might offend the values of its against a real historical backdrop (as the 2005 target audience. The theme espoused by director has made a point of emphasizing), Viewing Hero: . 2, Hero is an affront to traditional scholarly but the story itself is fictional. The crux of A Conversation about History, NO thought, as well as to modern human rights the matter is that the attempted assassina- Art and Responsibility mentality; it does not conform to the values tion of the Qin Emperor, which is Hero’s and standards of Chinese or of foreigners. main storyline, does not conform to either BY SHARON HOM AND HU PING If Zhang Yimou failed to consider how emotional or historical reality. Not only is it provocative the theme of Hero would be to not historical, it is actually ahistorical. Sharon Hom: One of China’s “Fifth Genera- the values of others, he was acting in igno- An artistic fiction that counters history tion” filmmakers,1 Zhang Yimou is one of rance. If he knowingly violated these val- typically expresses its creator’s extreme dis- two mainland Chinese directors2 who have ues, this suggests that what he was satisfaction with history, and indicates that RIGHTS FORUM achieved artistic acclaim internationally. producing was not an entertainment film, real events have violated the author’s values His work has been banned, criticized, lion- but a morality play. and standards. When the creator’s dissatis- CHINA ized and debated domestically within Defenders of Hero also say that it is faction with historical reality is so strong that China, most recently following the release merely a commercial film aimed at making he feels that producing a work in confor- 91 of Hero.3 In addition to his international money.
    [Show full text]
  • Alternate Paeans of Desire: the Chinese Film JU DOU and the American Play DESIRE UNDER the ELMS
    Intercultural Communication Studies XIII: 3 2004 Zeng Alternate Paeans of Desire: the Chinese Film JU DOU and the American Play DESIRE UNDER THE ELMS Li Zeng University of Louisville Abstract The internationally acclaimed Chinese film Ju Dou (1990), directed by Zhang Yimou, is about a love triangle among a dye-house master with impotence, his young wife, and his nephew apprentice. Although the film is adapted from Liu Heng’s novella Fuxi fuxi (1988) whose title draws our attention to the Chinese myth about Fuxi and Nuwa–two siblings becoming spouses who created humankind, the incestuous relationship in the film reminds us of that in Eugene O’Neill’s play, Desire Under the Elms (1924). The situation of Ju Dou, as this paper sees, is the Ephraim-Abbie-Eben plot of the Desire Under the Elms which is modeled upon the Hippolytos-Phaidra-Theseus relationship in Greek mythology. Apart from the similarity of plot scenario, there is technical similarity between the two works. In comparing Ju Dou with Desire Under the Elms, the paper suggests that these two artists emotionally revealed different aspects of their view of life through similar dramatic plots and characters and that O’Neill not only influenced modern Chinese playwrights in the early decades of the twentieth-century but might still be in rapport with Chinese culture in the post-Mao era. INTRODUCTION Ju Dou is one of the famous Chinese films by Zhang Yimou, an internationally renowned film director in contemporary China. Financed in part by foreign capital, Ju Dou came out in 1990.1 Although the Chinese government banned the film domestically for two years and attempted to withdraw it from international competitions, Ju Dou was widely shown abroad, received the Luis Bunuel Award at the 1990 Cannes Film Festival, and became the first Chinese movie to be nominated for an Oscar in 1991.2 An internationally acclaimed work, Ju Dou has fascinated a large number of audiences, film critics, and scholars of Chinese culture over the past decade.
    [Show full text]
  • Download Article (PDF)
    Advances in Social Science, Education and Humanities Research (ASSEHR), volume 184 2nd International Conference on Education Science and Economic Management (ICESEM 2018) Studies of the National Subjectivity of Chinese Films: History, Status quo and Multi-dimensional Construction Zhang Xianxi School of Communication, Zaozhuang University No.1 Bei’an Road, Shizhong District, Zaozhuang, China Email: [email protected] Abstract—Starting from the studies of nationalization of Chinese films, the studies of the national subjectivity of Chinese II. HISTORY OF THE STUDIES OF NATIONAL SUBJECTIVITY films have become the hotspot and frontier of the current OF CHINESE FILMS academic research in China since the success of the International The current studies of national subjectivity in China focus Symposium of Chinese Films and National Subjectivity in 2007. on the Chinese philosophy and the subjectivity of Chinese Based on the history and status quo of national subjectivity culture. In contrast, the national subjectivity studies of Chinese research, this paper puts forward the strategies of constructing the subjectivity of Chinese films from the perspectives of films, although having become the research hotspot and inheriting the Chinese cultural genes, promoting Chinese style frontier, have made comparatively few representative and highlighting Chinese spirits. achievements. Historically, the national subjectivity studies of Chinese films can be traced back to the studies of Keywords—Chinese Film School; Subjectivity; Cultural genes; nationalization of Chinese films which began from the early The Chinese styles; The Chinese spirits 1960s when there was a relatively loose context for artistic creation. In the paper To Look for Treasures in the Chinese Tradition: Learning Notes on the National Forms of Films I.
    [Show full text]
  • HERO in the WEST and EAST by FANG ZHANG a Thesis Submitted
    HERO IN THE WEST AND EAST BY FANG ZHANG A Thesis Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of WAKE FOREST UNIVERSITY in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of MASTER OF ARTS in the Department of Communication May 2009 Winston-Salem, North Carolina Approved By: Peter Brunette, Ph.D., Advisor Examining Committee: Mary M. Dalton, Ph.D. Shi Yaohua, Ph.D. ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This research spanned over two semesters and would not be in the current form without generous help and encouragement from many of my mentors and friends. First, my deepest appreciation, thanks and respect go to Dr. Brunette, who not only advised me on this project but throughout my graduate career at Wake Forest University. Even though we have different opinions in 2008 presidential election and political massages in Chinese films, yet we enjoy much more joyful moments of “great minds think alike,” such as sharing the excellent articles from New Yorker and Hollywood Reporter. Thank him for the trust, support and guidance throughout these years. I am looking forward to his new book on Michael Haneke. Dr. Dalton, Dr. Louden, Dr. Beasley, Dr. Giles, Dr. Hazen and Beth Hutchens from Department of Communication, they are true inspirations not only because of their work in professional careers but also how they live their lives. I am thankful for the time listening to them, working with them, and learning from them. Last year, Dr Beasley got married and Dr Krcmer had a new family member—a lovely girl, best wishes for them. This list of acknowledgements would not be complete without mentioning three of my best friends, Laura Wong, Rebecca Hao and Zhang Wei, without whose constant support and assistance, I cannot survive the hard time or get confident in facing the coming challenges.
    [Show full text]
  • The Representation of Motherhood in Post-Socialist Chinese Cinema
    Networking Knowledge: Journal of the MeCCSA Postgraduate Network, Vol 2, No 1 (2009) ARTICLE The Representation of Motherhood in Post-Socialist Chinese Cinema HUILI HAO, University of Sussex ABSTRACT Critics agree that the mother figure has consistently played an important role in Chinese cinema. But this topic has rarely been addressed. This paper will explore what others mother figures can be found in Chinese cinema from 1990 onwards besides the mainstream representation of motherhood that carries both the national modernization and the women’s traditional merits. In this paper, I shall investigate three paradigms of the representation of motherhood in Chinese films since 1990s. The first paradigm is the Exemplary Mother, which seeks to construct the main discourse of motherhood through complying with the main-stream ideology. The second paradigm is the Transgressive Mother, which resists the myth of the good mother. The third paradigm the Consistent Mother in Chinese feminist films, which concerns the mother’s subjectivity and experience, emphasizing the strong bonding between mother and daughter, and normally giving them a positive future. KEYWORDS Representation; motherhood; Chinese film Introduction Post-socialist China has seen economic and political changes that have affected all areas of Chinese society, including discourses around gender. With regards to motherhood, the discourse has become more complicated than during the Mao era. Heterodox discourses on motherhood, which had almost disappeared from the representational system (including film) prior to 1979, has now returned. This paper studies the representation of motherhood in the films of post-socialist China in relation to the multiple discourses on motherhood during this same period, followed by a discussion of the relationship between these discourses, especially their relationship with the representation of motherhood in films.
    [Show full text]