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Rural Women and Social Change in New China Cinema: from Li Shuangshuang to Ermo

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Rural Women and Social Change in New China Cinema: from Li Shuangshuang to Ermo Rural Women and Social Change in New China Cinema: From Li Shuangshuang to Ermo Xiaobing Tang The title of this essay may sound slightly clichéd, since it would be extremely hard to find a film in New China cinema, namely, the filmmaking tradition in the People’s Republic since the late 1940s, that does not reflect, repre- sent, advocate, cope with, or directly participate in social change. Indeed, the course and content of New China cinema are unmistakably characterized by its sometimes exhilarating, sometimes tormented relationship with a tumul- tuous political history and cultural transformation. This dominant tradition of social engagement dates back to a defining formative stage of Chinese cinema during the 1930s, when the silver screen’s mobilizational potential was seized upon as a timely solution for a nation in crisis and its entertain- ment value was resisted as at best frivolous. New China cinema, as a crucial cultural institution of the new socialist nation-state, amplified such an ed- ucational function and, in all sincerity, offered carefully composed imagery to visualize current policies and collective aspirations. If we wish to extract positions 11:3 © 2003 by Duke University Press positions 11:3 Winter 2003 648 one defining feature of New China cinema, I would argue, it is precisely this deep-rooted seriousness in its self-conception and presentation. Even in the Fifth Generation’s more self-conscious pursuit of a new cinematic lan- guage, which for many critics signals the arrival of an artsy (if belated) New Wave or New China cinema, lightheartedness is still assiduously avoided. More often than not, the defamiliarized narratives and extraordinary visual images characteristic of the Fifth Generation filmmaking are defiantly dis- played against the grave backdrop of historical events and obsessions. The inescapable continuity of New China cinema, of which the Fifth Generation is a necessary stage, is a point that I wish to emphasize at the outset of this study. My main focus here, however, is the representation of rural women and their participation in social change in New China cinema. The four films that I will discuss belong to an important genre in Chinese cinema, namely, rural films, or films about life in the contemporary countryside. (In the parlance of the Chinese film industry, they are categorized as nongcun pian.)1 Although the generic identity of such a film is principally determined by the subject matter, distinct features about and even conventions in its sound track, visual vocabulary, and plot premises often quickly prepare the audience for a rustic experience. The four particular films, selected from the heyday of socialist realism in New China cinema to post–Fifth Generation filmmaking, present a good occasion for us to describe those generic features or conventions. At the same time, the cross-references and revisions that we observe in these filmic texts demand a comparative viewing. This comparative viewing will help us appreciate an enduring representational strategy, in modern Chinese literature as well as cinema, of gauging the impact of social change through the focal figure of a rural woman. It will also inspire us to assemble a multilayered historical narrative, through which we may be better able to recognize the symbolic and cultural meanings of generic variations over the course of time. Such a diachronic tracking relies on but also explains more than a static or morphological description of generic features. For what we will find, by looking into the evolution of these rural films, are indeed different visions of becoming modern that bestirred a predominantly agrarian nation in the second half of the twentieth century. One fruitful entry point for such an investigation, as I will show in the following sections, is Tang Rural Women and Social Change in New China Cinema 649 the apparent dissimilarity between Li Shuangshuang (dir. Lu Ren, 1962) and Ermo (dir. Zhou Xiaowen, 1994), two films that compel us to regard generic transformations as imaginative responses to social changes. Rural Films and the Quest for a National Cinema As early as 1953, at the launch of the first five-year plan of socialist construc- tion, production and circulation of “rural feature films” in order to cater to the vast peasant population was already put on the agenda of the newly cen- tralized film industry by government policymakers. The task was quickly grasped as part of a cultural revolution that would further consolidate the political legitimacy of the nascent people’s republic. Largely in response to the collectivization movement in the countryside during the late 1950s, film studios put out an increasing number of films that explicitly address the new life of a peasant community, such as a village, a commune, or a fam- ily. While much emphasis is placed on creating lifelike, credible characters through evocations of a local culture, a positive if didactic message neces- sarily presents itself through a final resolution of dramatic conflicts, which usually means a happy ending to the satisfaction of the rural audience. In an ideal-type rural film, the plot development ought to be moderately paced and emotionally unambiguous, and a systematic contrast must be erected to distinguish positive from negative characters. While continuity editing and explanatory narration strive for a reality effect, most frame compositions are stable, dramatically lit, and shot at medium or long range. The desired effect is to facilitate audience access and identification through visual clarity and strong emotional appeal. In addition, the musical component should draw on a local or regional heritage, accented by traditional instrumentation and folksy singing that augment the communal or festival atmosphere at appropriate moments, an effect not dissimilar to that of a “cinema of attrac- tions.” Through its effort to engage a peasant audience, therefore, the genre of rural films actively incorporated many indigenous aesthetic preferences and forms of entertainment, which could then lead to a departure from the classical Hollywood narrative cinema that had directly shaped Chinese film- making until the late 1940s. (A notable film displaying many of the features summarized here is Young People in Our Village [Women cunli de nianqing positions 11:3 Winter 2003 650 ren], pt. 1 [dir. Su Li, 1959]). As one film critic put it in 1960, rural films may well indicate the direction of an emerging Chinese national cinema.2 They certainly helped define and promote the triumphant vision of a socialist countryside. Generic conventions notwithstanding, rural films in the mode of com- munal comedy only had a brief and interrupted history. Besides, those techniques for projecting a peaceful, idealized image of the contemporary countryside could not really establish the rural films as a distinct genre, be- cause the same cinematic methods were also employed in portraying socialist industrialization and construction. If the initial idealization in rural films owed much to the ideology of socialist realism until the early 1960s, films made about the countryside during the early 1980s, including Our Leader Niu Baisui [Zanmen de Niu Baisui] (dir. Zhao Huanzhang, 1983) and Life [Rensheng] (dir. Wu Tianming, 1984), mark the coming of age of rural films as a separable genre. Especially with Life, which incidentally appeared in the same year as Yellow Earth [Huang tudi] (dir. Chen Kaige) and shared a similar deep-seated emotional ambivalence toward the barren loess of northwestern China, the gap between country and city entered rural films as an inescapable pathos. Realism in rural films thereby acquired a radi- cally different valence when life in the countryside was no longer viewed as self-sufficient or even adequate. By the 1990s, when it became apparent to Chinese directors that only films about the rural landscape and obscure customs would attract organizers of international film festivals abroad,3 and when members of the Fifth Generation were accused of orientalizing a rural China of the past as exotica for a foreign market, the notion of rural films underwent yet another expansion. Life in the countryside would now be subjected to a careful ethnographic reconstruction. The international and domestic success of Zhang Yimou’s 1992 film The Story of Qiuju [Qiuju da guansi] was a significant turning point, not only because a key Fifth Gener- ation director had made a documentary-style film about the contemporary countryside, but also because it was produced with offshore financing.4 The classic, paradigmatic rural film of the idealist phase, by all accounts, is Li Shuangshuang, a light but edifying comedy about the new collective life in a people’s commune. The film was a sensational success and won the second Hundred Flowers Award for best feature film in 1963 by a nationwide Tang Rural Women and Social Change in New China Cinema 651 audience vote. The same year, the China Film Press put out a volume on the germination, production, and exhibition of the film as an exemplary process, obviously intending it to be a guide for future developments of New China cinema. In addition to the director’s shooting script, some essays in this volume, such as those by the lead actors, the cinematographer, the set designer, and the musical composer, delve into various technical aspects of the filmmaking process.5 While this volume offers a valuable document for a study of the innovations and objectives of New China cinema, the film itself, with the passing of the people’s commune and the fading of a socialist vision that once deeply enthralled the Chinese nation, now appears dated and staged, if not altogether wistful. Nonetheless, the central issues that the film identifies and tries to address, such as women’s social role and agency, conflicts between the public and the private, and the desire for and pursuit of a better life, still remain and are continually revisited in films from the 1980s and 1990s.
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