China in the Age of Global Capitalism

Jia Zhangke's Filmic World

Xiaoping Wang

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9781000702439
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Ciencias sociales
• Subtopic: Estudios de medios

Jia Zhangke is praised as "the most internationally prominent and celebrated figure of the Six-Generation of Chinese filmmakers". This book provides an examination the content and forms of Jia's featured films and analyzes their merits and faults.

Jia's films often narrate the lives of ordinary Chinese people against the backdrop of the political-economic changes. The author conducts an in-depth analysis of how this change have ferociously impinged upon the characters' living conditions since China integrated itself with the world economy in the high tide of accelerated globalization since the 1970s. The author focuses on discussing the "politics of dignity" expressed by Jia's allegorical renditions to explore the director's political unconsciousness and cultural-political notions.

This book maps ten of Jia Zhangke's films onto three major themes: Jia's filmmaking and China in the market society; truth claims and political unconscious; "post-socialist modernity" in the age of globalization. This book will be of interest to students and scholars of Chinese film studies, as well as other disciplines, such as political science, sociology, anthropology, etc.

Part I

1 Recording human affection within social transmutation

Portrayal of early reform China in Platform (2000)

Introduction

Composing an alternative historiography has always been the practice taken by writers and artists discontent with officially made or sanctioned works, the latter of which, in their view, are filled with unacceptable ruptures; Chinese “independent” directors are no exception in this regard. The representative figure of this group, Jia Zhangke (1970- ), made up his mind to record an “unofficial history” when he set off to write the scripts of his features; as he claims, “Remembering history is no longer the exclusive right (or prerogative) of the government. As an ordinary intellectual, I firmly believe that our culture should be teeming with unofficial memories.”¹ The statement signifies that he holds “the social obligation of representing unofficial memories in addition to projecting his own ‘artistic visions.’”² This determination brought out his early three features, which are called Jia’s “hometown trilogy.” Platform is one such example of “a cinematic rendition of unofficial history through ‘personal memories.’”³ A three-hour masterpiece made around 2000 about the ups and downs of a provincial dance and music troupe as well as the fortunes of its members transitioning from late 1970s to early 1990s, Platform has been praised as an epic. Focusing on a group of adolescent performers when they experience personal and societal changes, it portrays the lives of people in a local semi-official cultural troupe, a Maoist institution, which unfortunately is undergoing its most drastic transformation during the decade and finally disintegrates. The destinies of the individuals are then tied in with the fortunes of the socialist “work unit” they are working for, the latter of which becomes the subplot in addition to being the social context.

In more detail, an intricate, entangled relationship between the collective and the individual, between the national and the personal,⁴ is shown by the movie through narrating the love stories of two pairs of lovers (Cui Mingliang and Yin Ruijuan, and Zhang Jun and Zhong Ping, respectively) within the vicissitude of the troupe, through which the movie records human affections within social transformation and transcribes the social-economic history of early Reform China. In that era of shortage, the people are longing for “modernization” to no avail; in the post-revolutionary society, they recklessly explore secular happiness, yet they do not know how to achieve that objective; their individual adventures are bound up with the social-political upheavals, which serve to explain both their initial courageous choices and their ultimate resignation. All of these are profoundly conveyed by the cinematic texture.

Longing for “Modernization” in the Era of Shortage

This “peasant troupe of cultural work” was a “work unit” or a semi-official institution of the county level which was established in the Mao period to provide cultural education or ideological interpellation for the masses. For the purpose, it often traveled across the country, in particular, to poor rural areas, to perform programs, which indicates that one of the key features of the Maoist ideological state apparatuses (ISAs) was to cultivate the political consciousness of the masses, who were mostly illiterate and relied on visual skits to receive messages. When the film starts, the troupe is performing a show in a village. Acquarello finds that the show “extols the country’s technological and social progress made possible by the Communist Revolution and celebrates its principal architect, Chairman Mao Zedong.”⁵ In particular, the cultural workers are performing a musical skit named “A Train Travelling toward Shaoshan (the birthplace of Mao),” apparently paying homage to the erstwhile supreme revolutionary leader. However, the message the skit sends forth is more than that because the train in modern China has been a symbol of modernization ever since the 19th century, just like the locomotive engine in the West signifies the earliest achievement of the Industrial Revolution. To understand the imagery vicariously highlighted here, we need to know that Mao’s revolution, a socialist one notwithstanding, is simultaneously made up of a nationalist movement aimed at modernizing the nation by liberating it from the oppression of international imperialists and domestic “feudalist” forces. In the Mao era, the Party had initiated the program of “four modernizations,” the policy of which Deng’s regime enacted and developed further. Cast in this light, we can better understand the connotation of the skit: the peasants, after getting a good harvest, take the modern vehicle to express their gratitude to the “great leader” of the party-state. What this indicates is that the educational program in which these cultural workers engage is intended to elevate the peasant’s consciousness of advancing the productive force as well as to lift their revolutionary awareness. In the early reform years of the Deng era, the government to a large extent still maintained this double mission, although since then, it has put more emphasis on enhancing production force (Figure 1.1).

However, at that time, few people had the opportunity to take the train for throughout the Mao era and the early reform period, the nation-state was still backward. The members of the troupe, who can afford to lead a better life than the peasants by living in the town, are no exception in this regard. Thus, in the skit, Cui Mingliang can only mimic inaccurately the sounds of a train, which is satirized by the troupe director, an intellectual-like figure, who apparently is the only one to have taken the modern means of transportation. The director’s other remarks are worthy of further note: “Granted you have not eaten pork, did you ever see pigs running around?” His reasoning is somewhat far-fetched; still, it indicates the shortage of materials in the rural area and the country in general at that time: the masses had seldom enjoyed meat, even if they raised pigs themselves. By contrast, his interrogation sounds more acceptable: “(You said you never heard of the sounds of train, yet) haven’t you watched the movie The Son of a Train Driver? Haven’t you watched the film Railway Guerrilla?” The first movie he mentions is a 1976 film made by North Korea, showing the history of its national emancipation; the second is a domestic work of “red classics,” extolling the heroic deeds of the Party-led military group fighting the Japanese during World War II. Many Chinese in that period had watched the two films; ironically, they could only acquire the knowledge of this modern means of transportation from films exemplifying the history of the past, even after several decades of socialist nation-state construction. Even after the members of the troupe set off toward broader society, they can only excitedly yell out at a passing train, not take it.

Figure 1.1 A musical play, “A Train Travelling toward Shaoshan,” is performed.

The train, as a recurring image, runs throughout the movie. It is embedded in a narrative scheme, implicitly showing the causes and effects of the national transformation. First, the existence of the “three major disparities or distinctions” which the Party itself has acknowledged is displayed. The first two disparities, namely those between industry and agriculture, town and country, are witnessed in Cui Mingliang’s brief exchange with his cousin, the peasant Sanming, whom he chances upon when he travels around with the troupe to make money. Illiterate Sanming is being made to sign a contract which will absolve the owner of a private coalmine owner of his responsibility to guarantee his workers’ safety. Compared to destitute Sanming, who can only sell his body, Cui Mingliang, who lives in the small town, can afford a relatively comfortable life. The fact that upon departure, Sanming asks that Cui deliver money to his sister (who is going to take the national college entrance exam), and his demand that she stay in town and never return to the village, further reveal the gigantic divergence in living conditions between urban and rural areas. After the reform started, this divergence of life standards was seen in the enhanced vast difference between the interior area and the coastal zones, which is also revealed here. When Zhang Jun makes inquiries of the barbershop boss about the coastal city of Guangzhou, one of the country’s commercial centers, the boss, who comes from Wenzhou (also a coastal city yet far from Guangzhou), informs him that Guangzhou is a nice place. The seemingly casual conversation nevertheless shows that Zhang Jun has strong interests in the life of the unfamiliar city, which is the front line of the national program of “reform and opening up.” He then goes to the metropolis to enjoy stimulation and excitement. When he returns, he brings back radios broadcasting overseas songs and music, which greatly arouse the interests of his partners in the troupe.

The third disparity, namely between manual and mental labor, is exemplified by Cui’s relations with his parents. He refuses to be swayed by his mother’s teaching, which urges him to do more family chores, with the pretext that he is “a cultural worker, an intellectual laborer.” Being a young artist fond of chasing fashion, he wears an impractical pair of bell-bottom pants. When his conservative-minded father discovers this, he orders his son to squat down, which humorously leads to the explosion of the pants. When Cui answers his father’s sarcastic interrogation, “Could workers do their jobs and peasants go to the field when they wear this kind of pants?”, which is premised on traditional aesthetic taste, Cui’s answer remains the same: “I myself am an artist laborer and I do not need to take that kind of (physical) job.” (Figure 1.2)

Because of these disparities, and because Maoist policy stresses production and pays less attention to consumption, people in the early years of the reform period (throughout the 1980s and early 1990s) whole-heartedly followed the Party’s new orientation of engaging in the project of “modernization” by developing the economy. The national consensus was achieved; a spectacular future is also envisioned for the youthful troupe members. Here, the audience witness that Cui Mingliang sings a song, the lyrics of which he deliberately revises, when they are boarding the coach after the performance: “After twenty years, we would come to meet together (At that time we would have) children seven to eight, and (we would have) a heap of wives.” Compared to the original lyrics, “(At that time) our country would be so beautiful…towns and villages brilliantly shine,” a collectivist dreaming for a full-fledged socialist paradise, the changed words show an individualist fantasy of pubertal indulgence. The jocular episode also reveals that, compared to the hegemonic discourse of “modernization,” the socialist ideal itself had never developed a full-set, concrete scenario to compete with the developmentalist mentality. Accordingly, it is easily replaced by, or taken to be, the modernization discourse itself. Therefore, although the excited cries of the characters convey their longing for the prospects of “modernization,” the altered phrases also reveal a confused vision regarding the material form of the future, demonstrating the de-politicized condition of the society when it was past its ultra-radical Maoist passion.

Figure 1.2 Cui Mingliang argues that he is a cultural worker and an intellectual laborer.

In this time of scarcity, the masses were in great need of spiritual fulfillment. Yet, because of the regretful consequences of the ultra-radical policies of the Cultural Revolution, there was little opportunity f...