China on Video

Paola Voci

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2010
• ISBN:
  9781136960017
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Art
• Subtopic: Asian Art

China On Video is the first in-depth study that examines smaller-screen realities and the important role they play not only in the fast-changing Chinese mediascape, but also more broadly in the practice of experimental and non-mainstream cinema. At the crossroads of several disciplines—film, media, new media, media anthropology, visual arts, contemporary China area studies, and cultural studies--this book reveals the existence of a creative, humorous, but also socially and politically critical "China on video", which locates itself outside of the intellectual discourse surrounding both auteur cinema and digital art.

By describing smaller-screen movies, moviemaking and viewing as light realities, Voci points to their "insignificant" weight in terms of production costs, distribution size, profit gains, intellectual or artistic ambitions, but also their deep meaning in defining an alternative way of seeing and understanding the world. The author proposes that lightness is a concept that can usefully be deployed to describe the moving image, beyond the specificity of recent new media developments and which can, in fact, help us rethink previous cinematic practices in broad terms both spatially and temporally.

1
Smaller-screen realities¹

In this chapter I explore Chinese smaller-screen realities from both a disciplinary and a theoretical perspective. The term smaller-screen “realities” is used to include both context (i.e., movie-making and movie-viewing practices) and text (the movies themselves). I do not imply that the reality of smaller-screen production and distribution and the reality shown on screen are ontologically equivalent, but rather that they are deeply interconnected. My main premise is that smaller-screen realities are breaking boundaries and challenging genre divides. Scholars similarly need to be prepared to debate and reconfigure disciplinary divisions and subject categorizations not only within film, media, social science and anthropology but also in relation to national (in this instance, Chinese) cultural studies. Far from detaching these smaller-screen realities from the nation, I propose that smaller screens need to be framed in the context of Chinese independent film- and video-making and in dialogical relation to other mainstream and non-mainstream Chinese visual culture practices. However, I also suggest that we expand our analysis beyond the national perspective and understand smaller-screen realities as having broad theoretical significance from different disciplinary perspectives.

More specifically I propose that smaller-screen realities are an extension of the cinematic experience and, as such, they have an impact on theorizations of film as an art form (Arnheim 2006; Bazin 1975; Kracauer 1997; Hou Yao

1926) and contribute to rethinking film audiences’ collective presence (Donald 2000; Gunning 1990; Hansen 1991). Their examination, therefore, has implications for our understanding of cinema and its role as an “eye of the century”, i.e., as one of the privileged cultural mediators, translators, and makers of its times (Casetti 2008, 2009). Smaller screens’ individualized (personal, portable, private) and at times clandestine acts of vision not only impact on the moving image’s current role and foreshadow its future, but also they rethink its past. While I consider their cinematic quality as one of their defining traits, smaller-screen realities also need to be understood in the context of (new) mediated cultures and web-based social networking (Curran and Morley 2006; Jenkins 2006) and mobile cultures (Goggin and McLelland 2008; Hjorth 2009; Ito 2004; Ito et al. 2005; Wei and Lo 2006; Wei, Ran 2006). In addition, they offer alternative strategies for political and social engagement, by renegotiating the role of the multitudes (Hardt and Negri 2001), as is the case in the light political documentary practices I examine in Chapter 6 (i.e., one-person activism and accidental journalism), and the role of the subaltern (Beverley 1999, 2004; Spivak 1988), as I argue in my analysis of the documentaries produced by villagers (Chapter 7). Last, but not least, smaller-screen realities are allowing individual and subjective expressivity to be preserved and shared – and in fact gifted – in a cultural space dominated by mass-circulation and globalizing practices.

Having located my study across disciplines and framed it both within and beyond the specificity of either “national cinema” or the “Chinese Internet”, in the second part of the chapter, I define and theorize smaller-screen movies by introducing lightness as an analytical concept that captures their originality and can also help us understand why disciplines as different as film studies, media studies or social and anthropological studies, have both acknowledged, from different perspectives, the relevance of these smaller-screen realities, and have left them somehow outof-focus. Their light nature is explored in its diverse content and formal ramifications, but also in its intrinsic commonality. What smaller-screen realities share is an alternative way of viewing and understanding the world which, even when dealing with social experiences or political issues, focuses on the individual and the personal, rather than on the collective and the public, and privileges a disproving rather than argumentative mode of expression. In my analysis, lightness reveals the existence of a creative, humorous, but also socially and politically critical “China on video”. As this “China on video” shows, smaller screens provide outlets for light but meaningful cultural practices that effectively challenge not just disciplinary divides but also cultural hierarchies, social classifications and political polarizations.

Locating smaller-screen realities: disciplinary perspectives

Smaller-screen movies and Chinese film culture

Movies viewed outside theaters differ greatly in scope and style, often blurring the boundary between fiction and non-fiction. In China, many such movies have been labeled “underground”, “independent”, “new wave”, or “urban” visual works, and film scholars both in China and overseas have begun to analyze their impact on Chinese film culture. In particular, starting from the mid-1990s, there has been an increased attention to the works of the “new independent documentary movement” and many emerging underground/independent films.² However, as scholars explore independent film-making’s controversial themes and underground production and see it as consciously promoting counter-cultures, they have also often implicitly endorsed the idea that alternative, experimental productions belong to a very circumscribed circle of unconventional, courageous film-makers. Alternatively, independence and underground practices have been – perhaps rather cynically – seen as strategies to gain international attention as well as preliminary phases to achieve domestic endorsement (Barmé 1999; Mo and Xiao 2006; Pickowicz 2006; Zhang Yingjin 2006). While both are valid arguments, I propose, agreeing with Valerie Jaffee’s view, that despite its complex mix of artistic ambitions and pragmatic motivations, “underground filmmaking, particularly the production of documentaries, remains a lively and viable practice in China today” (Jaffee 2006: 104). Although many of these underground/independent film-makers also work within the official system (either as independent contractors with CCTV or as freelance producers of more conventional or official works), their more original and controversial productions do not intersect with, or circulate in, mainstream media.

However, studies on independent film-making only tangentially refer to the contribution of semi-professional and amateur film-makers and most of the critical discussion revolves around film auteurs such as Zhang Yuan

or Jia Zhangke

professional documentarians such as Jiang Yue

or Duan Jinchuan

and dissenting video artists such as Wu Wenguang

and Cui Zi’en

. In sum, while the recent scholarship has greatly contributed to describing and analyzing some important developments in film-making practices outside big studio productions, there are many other movies made and seen in China today. I believe that, whereas movies more directly connected to cinema, TV, and video art installations have deservedly attracted scholarly attention, other visual practices (e.g., cell phone movies, music videos, short animations, online amateur documentary) should also be recognized and included in the study of independent movie-making in China. I define such visual practices as smaller-screen realities.

In the introductory chapter to From Underground to Independent: Alternative film culture, Paul Pickowicz notes that “in the Chinese case, with very few exceptions, underground filmmaking has had very little to do with formal innovation…. Indeed, when it comes to aesthetics, Chinese underground movies are quite disappointing” (Pickowicz and Zhang 2006: 6).³ Pickowicz could be underestimating underground films’ inventive quality and aesthetic awareness. While it is certainly true that not all underground film-makers achieve good results from an aesthetic point of view or display innovative filming techniques, many in fact do. For example, besides the work of already established “ex-underground” directors such as Jia Zhangke

or Zhang Yuan

Liu Hao’s

film, Dixia

(Basement 2007) arguably shows a great deal of formal experimentation.

Similarly, I suggest that the movies discussed in this book, which are also produced outside “the sterile official socialist sector”, (ibid.) are also innovative. Cellflix, web spoofs (egao movies), and Internet flash animations share the same determination to affirm the individual creativity of many underground film-makers, experimental video-makers or video artists and often explore original visual narrative techniques.⁴ That is why I believe that popular culture needs to be included in the discussion of new cinemas. Many of the movies discussed in this book are popular culture products, often created by those who have been regarded in the past as passive receivers or, more recently, consumers and active decoders of moving images.⁵ However, while recognizing their locations and critical distance from art films or other forms of experimental and independent film-making, I do not want to simply ghettoize these other movies into the realm of popular culture. For this reason, I consciously and provocatively choose to discuss them together with, and in dialogic relation to, works of professional film-makers (e.g., Jia Zhangke

Wu Wenguang

), dissident intellectuals (e.g., Cui Zi’en

Ou Ning

) and experimental video artists (e.g. Zhao Liang

Cao Fei

).

Smaller-screen realities are defining visual culture in China as a genre-defying, category-resistant, media-crossing experience, which should thus be understood not just as the sum of separate visual practices (e.g., film, visual arts, TV production, and Internet videos) but, rather, as deriving its cultural meanings and social values from the different but interconnected individual creations of both professional and amateur participants. Scholars need to come to terms with the changing environment in which movies are produced and viewed/consumed in China as much as elsewhere. It is in such a changing environment that I wish to look at and rethink new developments in film-/video-making. While discursive categories such as “underground”, “independent”, “new wave”, “avant-garde”, or “urban” are useful to describe some of the new modes of production and reception for films in China, they have also tended to diminish the significance of movies to which none of those labels seem to apply. To understand what has been left out of the academic discussion and why, it might first be useful to reflect on the use of the term “film”.

Although scholars of Chinese cinema have begun to refer to movies as

yingxiang (films and videos), many publications dealing with underground/independent movies continue to use the term “film” (dianying

), even though traditional 35 mm or 16 mm films now account for only a very small proportion of this type of work.⁶ Since scholars acknowledge that the shift to other media (and, in particular, digital video) is crucial for the development of cinematic practices in China, the continuing use of the term “film” obviously neither refutes the importance of new media nor simply nostalgically evokes the different texture of a 35 mm copy over a digital one. Rather than a negligible inaccuracy, the metonymic reference to film culture (or its Chinese equivalent dianying wenhua

) actually reflects the choice to locate new developments of the moving picture in the context of cinema studies. Such a choice is amply justified by the fact that many film-makers who now use digital media in fact started their career with film, and many are still using film. From a disciplinary perspective, the reference to film culture is even less surprising, especially since those who are analyzing independent movie-making in China are mostly film scholars who have been researching Chinese cinema for years.

However, if we are to understand film culture as a discursive category that is inclusive of non-film productions and other non-film viewing practices, the real questions are: what kinds of movies are being included as part of film culture and what kinds are being excluded? For instance, flash animations or the cellflix posted on the Shanghai Metroer webpage have so far been excluded, even though their close relationship with film culture and their innovative quality justify their inclusion. If we take cinema as being essentially defined by its etymological root kinema (“movement”; from kinein, “to move”), rather than by its medium of production (film), its narrative modes (fiction, documentary, etc.) or its screening spaces (theaters), then smaller-screen moving images can and should legitimately be recognized as part of the cinematic experience.⁷

While a simple shift in naming is not in and by itself sufficient to recognize the smaller-screen realities’ cinematic heritage, it might be useful to refer to “movie” culture, as the term “film culture” may not only have become inaccurate, but possibly even misleading. This is especially the case when it comes to film culture’s treatment of “new” movies. In Chinese cinema, new has been mostly defined initially via the generational model (e.g., the Fifth Generation or the Sixth Generation), through other categories and groupings (e.g., “underground filmmaking” or “urban cinema”) or, only relatively recently, with reference to the innovative work of specific auteurs (e.g., Jia Zhangke in the PRC, Wong Kar-wai in Hong Kong or Tsai Ming-Liang in Taiwan). Throughout different historical times the meaning of new cinema has shifted from being politically defined to being aesthetically defined. In the past, the predominant leftist perspectives on cinema cast a negative judgment on films perceived as either aesthetically pleasurable (ruanpian

) only or not sufficiently engaged with social and political problems (yulepian

). In more recent years, auteur cinema (zuozhe dianying

...