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.