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Revisiting Women's Cinema REVISITING WOMEN’S CINEMA feminism, socialism, and mainstream culture in modern china LINGZHEN WANG revisiting women’s cinema a Camera Obscura book REVISITING WOMEN’S CINEMA LINGZHEN WANG feminism, socialism, and mainstream culture in modern china duke university press durham & london 2021 © 2021 Duke University Press All rights reserved Printed in the United States of Amer i ca on acid- free paper ∞ Designed by Aimee C. Harrison Typeset in Minion by Westchester Publishing Ser vices Library of Congress Cataloging- in- Publication Data Names: Wang, Lingzhen, author. Title: Revisiting women’s cinema : feminism, socialism, and mainstream culture in modern China / Lingzhen Wang. Other titles: Camera obscura book (Duke University Press) Description: Durham : Duke University Press, 2021. | Series: A camera obscura book | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: lccn 2020017609 (print) lccn 2020017610 (ebook) isbn 9781478009757 (hardcover) isbn 9781478010807 (paperback) isbn 9781478012337 (ebook) Subjects: lcsh: Motion pictures—China—History—20th century. | Women motion picture producers and directors—China. | Feminist films—History and criticism. | Women in motion pictures. | Motion pictures—Political aspects—China—20th century. Classification: lcc pn1993.5. c6w364 2020 (print) | lcc pn1993.5.c6 (ebook) | ddc 791.430820951—dc23 lc record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020017609 lc ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020017610 Cover art: Photograph of Wang Ping, circa 1958–1959. Photographer unknown. To my parents, Wang Yaobing and Fang Ya CONTENTS Illustrations ix Acknowl edgments xi Introduction 1 1 Socialist Feminism and Socialist Culture Reconsidered: Institutionalized Practice, Proletarian Public Space, and Experimental Mainstream Cinema 23 2 Articulating Embedded Feminist Agency in Socialist Mainstream Cinema: Wang Ping and The Story of Liubao Village (1957) 56 3 Socialist Experimentalism, Critical Revision, and Gender Difference: Dong Kena’s Small Grass Grows on the Kunlun Mountains (1962) 83 4 Feminist Practice after Mao: In de pen dence, Sexual Difference, and the Universal Model 107 5 Film Theory, Avant- Gardism, and the Rise of Masculine Aesthetics: Chinese Mainstream Cinema in the 1980s 132 6 Alternative Experimental Cinema: Zhang Nuanxin’s Socially Committed Mainstream Film Practice of the 1980s 149 7 The Black Velvet Aesthetic: Universal Cultural Feminism and Chinese Neotraditionalism in Huang Shuqin’s Woman Demon Human (1987) 195 Notes 235 Bibliography 257 Index 275 ILLUSTRATIONS 2.1 Song Wei listens to Li Jin’s plans. The Story of Liubao Village (柳堡的故事), 1957. 74 2.2 Poetic scenery in Jiangnan (1). The Story of Liubao Village. 76 2.3 Poetic scenery in Jiangnan (2). The Story of Liubao Village. 76 2.4 Er meizi approaches Li Jin. The Story of Liubao Village. 79 3.1 Magazine cover photo of a young Tibetan woman. Small Grass Grows on the Kunlun Mountains (昆仑山上一棵草), 1962. 91 3.2 Hui sao finds a steamed bun in Xiao Liu’s pocket. Small Grass Grows on the Kunlun Mountains. 98 3.3 A close-up of sleeping Xiao Liu. Small Grass Grows on the Kunlun Mountains. 98 3.4 A basket full of chicks in Hui sao’s room. Small Grass Grows on the Kunlun Mountains. 100 6.1 Li Chun contemplates dif fer ent beauty concepts. Sacrificed Youth (青春祭), 1985. 175 6.2 A dragonfly on the tip of a lotus flower bud.S acrificed Youth. 176 6.3 Li Chun in a Dai dress. Sacrificed Youth. 176 6.4 Li Chun grabs the last copy of A Rural Doctor’s Manual. Sacrificed Youth. 181 6.5 “I cannot understand this book. I am not interested in this thing.” Sacrificed Youth. 182 6.6 Li Chun disagrees with Ren Jia. Sacrificed Youth. 183 7. 1 The first appearance of“Zhong Kui Marries Off His Sister.” Woman Demon Human (人鬼情), 1987. 209 7. 2 Haystacks on the outskirts of the village. Woman Demon Human. 218 7. 3 “You are a good- looking girl.” Woman Demon Human. 220 7. 4 Qiu Yun fi nally faces Zhong Kui. Woman Demon Human. 229 x Illustrations INTRODUCTION From the advent of the Maoist era in 1949 to the end of the first de cade of the post- Mao economic reform around 1987, Chinese female film directors played a key role in producing popu lar and mainstream feminist visual culture. Work- ing within the general socialist environment, where gender and class equal- ity were considered institutionally foundational and where the publicly owned studio system promoted women’s filmmaking, artistic experimentation, and new socialist values combating patriarchal consciousness, Chinese female di- rectors demonstrated unpre ce dented individual and social agency. They stood front and center in the formation and transformation of socialist proletarian mainstream cinema, creating films that not only helped articulate socialist vi- sion, ethics, and subject positions but also contributed to diversifying social- ist cultural imaginations and aesthetics, reaching a broad mass audience. They exemplified an integrated socialist- feminist approach to cinematic repre sen ta- tion during the first seventeen years of socialist China (1949–1966), before the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution (无产阶级文化大革命, hereafter Cultural Revolution, 1966–1976), and pioneered a socially engaged experimental film- making during the first de cade of the post- Mao era (1976–1986). They pro- duced many popu lar, sociopo liti cally engaged, and artistically experimental films, contributing significantly to global women’s cinema and feminist culture. Their great achievements, however, have long been overlooked and denied in feminist and cinematic studies inside and outside China since the late 1970s. This overall dismissal is neither purely cultural nor simply gender- related. In the late 1970s and 1980s, the world as a whole underwent a series of geopo- liti cal and economic transformations: the launch of the Second Cold War (1979–1985), the advancement of cap i tal ist globalization and the subsequent decline of the global Left and rise of the new Right, and China’s economic reforms. The fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991 brought an end to the passive-ag gressive geopolitics of the Cold War, but this “conclusion” actually represented the ultimate triumph of capitalism over socialism as it not only fanned the flame of cap i tal ist Cold War ideology but also advanced the development of global neoliberalism. Together, these global movements have, by and large, caused a cultural turn in the transnational intellectual world, a shift from both the socioeconomic interrogation of cap i tal ist systems and the insistence on the importance of geopo liti cal signification of aesthetic values and cultural practice.1 These global changes also produced a profound impact on feminist movements. Not only was Marxist feminism questioned but the linkage between class and gender, as well as historical materialism, became gradually repudiated in the rise of radical and cultural feminism in the 1970s.2 “Does socialism liberate women?” This Cold War–enh anced question, which early-1970s Western scholarship on Eastern Eu rope first raised,3 was greatly revived in the early 1980s, particularly in Western feminist approaches to socialist China. The proliferating radical as well as liberal definition of feminism as an in de pen dent and individualistic endeavor put forward an unwavering negative answer to the question.4 In the Chinese context, the Chinese party- state, while implementing economic reform, launched in 1978 the “thought liberation” (思想解放) campaign to reevaluate the Cultural Revolution and to relax the po liti cal control of cultural production. Chinese wo men’s autobiographical lit er a ture and subjective experimental cinema emerged during this period of diverse sociopo liti cal imagination and cultural pluralism. As economic reforms so- lidified around the mid-1980s and more Western liberal theories and Cold War– influenced scholarship entered China, however, discourses promoting Enlightenment modernity (scientific truth, universal rationality,hum an na- ture, and individualistic subjectivity), economic development, and sexual difference (as opposed to gender equality) became mainstreamed. In the area of lit er a ture and cinema, the dynamic “cultural fever” (文化热) of the early 1980s developed into the “Root-Se eking” Movement (寻根运动) in the mid-1980s, pronouncing the power of the cultural (un)consciousness, masculine vitality, (male) intellectual reflection, and a detached avant- garde aesthetic.5 Freud’s psychoanalysis, Jung’s collective unconsciousness and archetypes, Arnold J. Toynbee’s philosophy of civilization, and Li Zehou’s ancient Chinese thought and culture all worked together influentially to 2 Introduction promote an abstract and universal psychocultural structure indifferent to historical and sociopo liti cal changes.6 Post- Mao Chinese feminism, which appeared in the early 1980s to address extant gender issues in socialist China, was also implicated in the newly mainstreamed economic and sociocultural trends. In its attempt to catch up with universal feminist values and more “advanced” feminist practice, mostly referring to liberal and post-se cond- wave feminist developments in the West, post- Mao feminism in the mid- and late 1980s advocated in de pen dent female consciousness, essential sexual difference, and a critique of patriarchal culture.7 This post- Mao official and intellectual turn toward the universal (liberal and apo liti cal) standard of truth, humanism, and economic development occasioned a retreat from socialism’s central
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