Multiplicity in Mainstream Studio Films in Local Languages
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CHAPTER EIGHT MULTIPLICITY IN MAINSTREAM STUDIO FILMS IN LOCAL LANGUAGES The definition of mainstream cinema (zhuliu dianying 主流电影) under- went significant changes during the market reform years. Yomi Braester argues that a true commercial mainstream cinema was established only in the late 1990s with the advent of Feng Xiaogang’s New Year’s movies (hesuipian 贺岁片). The features of mainstream cinema include “genre films of relatively high production values, financed by private, increas- ingly transnational investors, and distributed in main venues, with a growing emphasis on multiplexes . [incorporating] elements of art film and state propaganda, with the explicit goal of achieving wide distribu- tion and box-office success.”1 In this sense, mainstream cinema is more associated with commercial cinema (shangye pian 商业片) and enter- tainment cinema ( yule pian 娱乐片), and thus largely distinguishes itself from the state-sponsored, patriotic “main-melody” cinema, although there has been a growing symbiosis between them in recent years.2 In the 1980s and 1990s, local languages and dialects were permitted in main-melody films and television series, where they were primarily used to portray rev- olutionary leaders of Socialist China.3 However, in the new millennium, as a result of the national language law of 2001 and especially a 2005 SARFT regulation mandating that revolutionary-leader characters speak Putong- hua, dialect has largely disappeared from recent main-melody films, such as The Founding of a Republic ( Jianguo daye 建国大业, 2009), produced and directed by Han Sanping 韩三平. However, local language, as an important element in traditional entertainment forms, is reinvented and 1 Yomi Braester, “Contemporary Mainstream PRC Cinema,” in The Chinese Cinema Book, ed. Song Hwee Lim and Julian Ward (Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan; London: British Film Institute, 2011), 176. 2 Ibid., 181–182. 3 For example, in these media productions, Mao Zedong usually speaks with a Hunan accent, Zhou Enlai a Tianjin accent, Jiang Jieshi a Ningbo accent, and Deng Xiaoping speaks Sichuan Mandarin. Note that the characters do not speak the same exact dialect as the historical figures they portray, but “imitate local-language features on the condi- tion that the resulting sound be intelligible to audiences in general.” Gunn, Rendering the Regional, 111–112. 216 chapter eight increasingly employed in mainstream commercial entertainment films, whose business model relies on box-office revenue rather than generous government subsidies. Therefore, mainstream film has become a battle- field where tension between the state, capital, and art is intensified, and the official position on the use of local language is ambiguous. For example, the official response to Lu Chuan’s 2002 directorial debut, Missing Gun, in Guizhou Mandarin was divided. This film created a national sensation, and within the first month after its premiere the domestic box office tally had reached RMB 9 million and the overseas rights were worth USD 1.5 million. However, the state official in charge of Putonghua popularization criticized the veteran leading actor, Jiang Wen, who speaks Guizhou Mandarin in the film, for countering the national language policy and bringing to the big screen the “dregs” of the dialects.4 But as Lu Chuan argued in his rebuttal, the fundamental function of film is neither propaganda nor pedagogy, but entertainment; in his commercial blockbuster he was trying to revive the cinematic spirit of amusement, thrills, excitement, and suspense to make an enjoyable film.5 Despite the language official’s disapproval, the film received support from Han Sanping, the head of the state-owned China Film Group and direc- tor and producer of numerous main-melody films. Han played a Sichuan Mandarin-speaking role in Missing Gun and facilitated its production and distribution. Earlier, as president of the Beijing Film Studio in 1997, Han initiated the tradition of Feng Xiaogang’s New Year’s commercial films with their distinctive Beijing flavor.6 And later in 2006, he endorsed the distribution of Ning Hao’s Crazy Stone in multiple dialects, and the film 4 Yin Tingting 尹婷婷, “Guojia yuwei fuzeren piping Jiang Wen jiang yuyan ‘zaopo’ banshang yinmu” 国家语委负责人批评姜文将语言 “糟粕” 搬上银幕 [The official from the state language commission criticizes Jiang Wen for bringing linguistic dregs to the silver screen], Chengdu ribao, September 2, 2002. 5 Interview with Lu Chuan, http://ent.sina.com.cn/s/m/2002-05-14/83187.html; Wei Lixin 魏力新, “Xun Qiang wei zhongguo dianyingye xunzhao xinxin”《寻枪》为中国 电影业寻找信心 [Missing Gun brought confidence to the Chinese film industry], Beijing People Broadcasting Radio report script, June 11, 2002. A similar view can be found in the earlier debate on the value of entertainment films in the 1980s; see Rui Zhang, The Cinema of Feng Xiaogang (Aberdeen, Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2008), 21–25. 6 Han encouraged Feng to shoot a New Year’s comedy rather than a main-melody film, in order to slip pass censorship. He approved Feng’s proposal to adapt Wang Shuo’s novel You’re Not a Commoner (Ni bushi yige suren 你不是一个俗人) into Party A, Party B, Feng’s first New Year’s film. Feng Xiaogang, Wo ba qingchun xian ge ni 我把青春献给你 [I dedi- cated my youth to you] (Beijing: Changjiang wenyi, 2003), 102–103. .