Chinese Fifth Generation

Chinese Cinema underwent a considerable metamorphosis throughout the XX’s century. Nonetheless, this all went along the social changes that happened in the country since 1919. The year of the May Fourth movement, in fact, was significant both for the intellectual awakening of China and its newly found tolerance towards foreign influences, specifically those ideologies imported from the West. Precisely, on May Fourth, the movement inspired by students and readers of “New Youth” magazine raised awareness of different approaches to science and democracy as opposed to the radical Confucianism and retrograde Chinese thinking that populated the country and that ultimately became questionable. To a certain extent, this movement shook the country like never before and happened to have a positive outcome at an intellectual level. For example, the gained emancipation of women from social and sexual repression was a considerable achievement at that time seen the ever so imposed feudal patriarchy exercised until then and this change began to be visible also on screen although more considerably at the end of the century. On the other hand, the May Fourth movement contributed to the reorganization of Nationalism and ultimately facilitated the birth of the Communist party in China. However, if initially the social changes seemed positive, when Mao Tse Tung took over the Communist party many Chinese filmmakers, intellectuals and certainly the country itself, witnessed one of the darkest periods in its history. Fearing the return of a stronger bourgeoisie and elitist thinking which constituted a threat of the socialist framework he hardly worked on, in 1966 Mao Tse Tung launched the Cultural Revolution, a movement that intended to purge society of capitalist elements by targeting intellectuals in particular. This began quite aggressively in the cities, especially in Beijing during the first years. Young intellectuals were deported to the countryside and forced to undergo a process of “re-education” by learning about rural life from the peasantry. Many of the Chinese filmmakers belonging to this era, commonly labelled as Fourth Generation and that “survived” the Cultural Revolution, saw their career interrupted for about a decade to then be reignited at the end of the movement. Understandably, after being exposed to a rural life and forced labour for such a long time, these directors began to explore themes such as social repression and sexual oppression, the latter relating mostly to women, and produce the so called “scar” films. These movies addressed the human story during the Cultural Revolution and therefore demonstrate the psychological scar that the movement left on artists’ lives thereafter. Besides the already existing Fourth Generation filmmakers, a younger wave of directors that carried on “working” on the same themes arose at the end of the 1970s and were thus called Fifth Generation. This is normally associated with the 1978 graduates of the Beijing film academy including the internationally acclaimed director Zhang Yimou and that are studied mostly for their particular take in Chinese history itself  and how, whilst being censored in their homeland, were instead awarded at international level. This essay aims at analysing how the above mentioned Zhang Yimou carried on his award winning model of filmmaking and how he presented himself so successfully as the essence of orientalism to the West. Nonetheless, in order to understand Yimou’s international success, it is rather necessary to consider the early stages of his career and how the life changing events he came across have influenced his thinking and overall approaches to filmmaking.

 Zhang Yimou’s interest in a filmmaking career was not immediate. In fact, he was one amongst all the young people that was “dispatched” to the countryside of China in the 1960s for re-education during the Cultural Revolution, first to a farm and then to a cotton mill in the Chinese province of Shaanxi : he was only seventeen years old. During the decade spent in forced labour, Zhang discovered an interest in photography and found himself particularly accustomed to the medium. His affinity with photography became so significant that apparently “he sold blood to pay for his first camera” (Dyer : 2009). When the Cultural Revolution purgatory finished, he decided to undertake a career in filmmaking and applied to study at the Beijing film academy. However, this was a difficult process for him since his family happened to partake Nationalism and he was out of the age limit for admissions. As Dyer said on an article he wrote about Yimou in 2009 “that Zhang ever made a film is a small miracle, given the circumstances of his early life”. Eventually, after many appeals to Chinese cultural institutions, he gained a place at the Beijing film academy and began his studies in 1978.

 At the end of the Cultural Revolution, Fifth Generation filmmakers found themselves “trapped” in between Chinese preindustrial society and the imported postmodern culture that resulted in an artistic dilemma with a filmic texts where “reality and history tended to head to opposite directions whenever they seemed about to overlap” (Jinghua : 50 ). The undergoing self contradictory yet introspective process of enlightenment that the Fifth Generation filmmakers had to face during the 1980s, and through historical critique, aimed in fact at letting the imminent modernization shed its light through years of past social repression. However, since the filmmaking process is “an excessively expensive discourse.. The filmmakers’ indulgence in a pure artistic narcissism happened to be no escape” (Jinghua : 50 ) from the influence of socio-political events and a dark historical past. As a matter of facts, films such as Yellow Earth (1984) by Fifth Generation’s director Chen Kaige, that portrays rural China and is about military alliances of Chinese political parties against the Japanese invasion of the country, were considered too dark for Chinese audience which also remained particularly unimpressed by them. On the other hard, this and other films of that decade were internationally awarded, specifically in Western countries, although they remained subject of the strict censorship regime in China. Ultimately , the production of these so called “exploratory” films came to an end when most Fifth Generation filmmakers, specifically director Zhang Yimou, understood that the only way to make Chinese cinema an award winning artform and escape the allegorical “self-entanglement” in which his contemporary filmmakers found themselves after the Cultural Revolution, was to break into the foreign film market.

When studying at the Beijing film academy, Yimou and his classmates were exposed to several Hollywood classic films and other productions coming from the West. Especially between 1978 and 1980 many “American films of the thirties and forties supplied by the China Film Archive constituted an almost comprehensive survey of tendencies over a dozen or so years” (Ni : 95). Classic films such as Gone with the Wind (1939) and Citizen Kane (1941)  until then unknown, functioned significantly as learning material for the Beijing film academy students in order to understand what themes were treated and ultimately, through their analysis, understand was appealing to the Western audiences. By then, many international film critics and academics had analysed the huge success of mainstream Hollywood productions and several published film theories became available to the new generation of Chinese filmmakers to feed their hunger for knowledge of the, to their eyes “exotic”, Western movies. One of the most significant and contemporary to the post Cultural Revolution filmmakers film theory coming from the West, is certainly Mulvey’s “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema” (1975). The essay blends freudian psychoanalysis and film theory towards an understanding of the audience behaviour in front of the cinematic screen, pointing out how patriarchy plays a significant role within the spectator’s perception of visual content. More specifically, Mulvey demonstrates how the pre existent inner perception of opposite gender influences the way these are represented on screen, inevitably putting the spectator in a masculine position and turning the woman on screen into a device offering multiple visual pleasures. Inevitably, this theory was easily understandable by Fifth Generation Chinese filmmakers that witnessed a history of women’s sexual repression in favour of male figures that more than often were put in a position of power, although politically, just like the gazing spectators in the auditorium. Therefore, in the Fifth Generation filmmaking scenario, the male spectator is replaced by the Western audience and the female device of pleasure, implicitly, by China as a country. Although this can come across as a quite strong statement, its truthfulness is understandable when considering that the scarring experience of marginalization that Zhang Yimou and his contemporaries had to face during the Cultural revolution caused them to have “no reservations in publicly express their disillusionment with their country” (Yau : 700),

Going back to the business side of filmmaking, when it became clear that Chinese censorship was not going to easily allow the screening of westernised films in the country although these were made by local directors, gaining the approval of international film festival judges became almost vital for any filmmaker willing to make a career in moving image. However, because western film structures were highly commercial and their content was “conforming to conventionally accepted rules rather than being based on any formal innovation” (Lu : 158), Chinese filmmakers had to produce a representation of “Orient that was palatable and intelligible for Western viewers” (Jinghua : 50). In a sense, this new regime served to Fifth Generation filmmakers as a mean for escape from the still going historical retrospective analysis of their own past that drove them to produce, after all, “ponderous, sometimes downright pretentious and dull art movies” (Zha : 331). On the other hand, however, by escaping from that form of ancestral subtle power and embracing the new Western - like filmmaking regime for the sake of their career and recognition, they ended up falling into another form of censorship,  “one not directly political but mainly commercial”. (Lu : 158).  To this extent, Zhang Yimou happened to be the most successful amongst all Fifth Generation filmmakers because of his ”unusually keen marketing sensibility” (Lu : 158). In fact, he embraced fully the Western film model and understood what international audiences wanted to see, hence his still nowadays considerably successful career.

 In a 1993 article about exoticism on screen, Jane Ying Zha questions weather Zhang Yimou is exoticised by the West, or if he is exoticising China for the West. Considering his personal background and methodical filmmaking choices, alongside his subtle post Cultural Revolution resentment towards his country, it is agreeable to state that he not only chose to exoticise China for the West, but that as a consequence he allowed the West to exoticise him as a creator of orientalism for the audiences. Furthermore, the fact that his films were being censored in China and that the local critic indicated that his approach to filmmaking was too dramatic (Zha : 331) pushed him more towards the search of international approval, moving away from a, at this stage, unreacheable local consent. On a positive note, his choice to distance himself from art house Chinese themes to concentrate in pleasing the Western spectators and prioritise storytelling instead of “high art”, saved him from producing , again, dull arthouse films that had by then become a “trendy plague among his fellows Fifth Generation filmmakers” (Zha : 331).

 Having multinational businesses investing in their films created a sort of responsibility towards the outcome for filmmakers like Zhang. Since he gained a certain knowledge of the mainstream Hollywood melodrama and understood after his first successful films what elements of them were more palatable to the Western audience, Yimou began to follow a selected model that became a signature of all his films thereafter. In fact, in an interview with Ni Zhen, Yimou confirmed that first of all “films must be enjoyable, and their deeper meanings must be experienced by the audience through their enjoyment” (Ni :102) . When other filmmakers realised how successful the model was, they decided to also adopt it. During the early 1990s, this model was in fact so predominant internationally that most of the imported Chinese films were likely to have come from its matrix. Certainly, the founding stone of this is the confirmed patriarchy that, as mentioned before, characterises the Western audience approach to films. In her Visual Pleasure and Narrative Film, Laura Mulvey explains perfectly how the patriarchy related to the male gaze, identified with the Western audience, is at the base of the genders representation in most films following Zhang Yimou’s model. What just stated is however more incisive when considering female characters in the films since, as Mulvey explains, “the paradox of phallocentrism in all its manifestation is that it depends on the image of the castrated woman to give order and meaning to its world. An idea of woman stands as a linchpin to the system: it is her lack that produces the phallus as a symbolic presence, it is her desire to make good the lack that the phallus signifies” (1975). The theory of the male gaze and the woman as signifier of lack exist upon each other. In fact, since the male is subconsciously considered the complete being, he is automatically put in a position of power as opposed to the woman that, again, is presented on screen as the weaker, yet necessary, element of spectacle. Nonetheless, this typical Hollywood classics take on patriarchy fully demonstrated how Yimou incorporated the Western way of making films into his model. As a matter of fact, women are often a central character on his films and in order to explain how they function as Hollywood showgirl devices and how he smartly creates stereotypes of Chineseness for the Western audiences it is worth to analyse one of him mostly acclaimed films: Raise the Red Lantern (1991).

 Based on Su Tong’s novel Wives and Concubines, the film tells the story of Songlian, a young woman that after losing her father, fact that left her family bankrupt, is sent for marriage to a wealthy man and therefore moves to his residence. She founds herself to be the youngest and the fourth of the Master’s wives, that all live in separate houses within the residence and that she will soon realise are all struggling for his favour, including herself. The patriarchal order of the film is already evident when considering that the four concubines are owned by the master since, upon Chinese ancestral structures, possessing many wives signified power. Within the household, the wives need to all get along when at the same time, especially the youngers, do whatever it takes to be the favourite of the Master. Although the latter represents the male gaze within the screen story, the audience never really gets to see him clearly. In fact, he is never clearly portrayed in the film and, instead, the audience can only hear his dialogues and is offered shots of his back or anyway an unprivileged point of view leaving him as a silhouette throughout the film.  In fact, the film is smartly shot in a way that instead portrays the female character Songlian as a central figure through close ups to “feed the Western male gaze and’’..determine..”its expectation of oriental beauty, making her image fundamental to this panorama of the orient” (Jinghua : 59). As Mulvey explains, the woman on screen functions both as an erotic object for the male character within the screen story, as well as for the spectator within the auditorium. In this way, “the gaze of the spectator and that of the male characters in the film are neatly combined without breaking narrative similitude”.. In fact, “the sexual impact of the performing woman takes the film into a no man’s land outside its own time and space” (Mulvey : 1975).   

 The intimate scenes between Sonliang and the Master are also cinematographically centered on her, leaving the Master in the shadows, almost as an abstract figure. However, although abstract and at times absent, his presence is rather overimposed through other elements not necessarily related to his physical persona. The red lanterns for instance, which clearly gave the movie its title, besides representing a clear element of typically oriental decoration on the film, they also serve as a “shining symbol of his presence” (Lu: 160). The lanterns are placed in each wife’s house within the courtyard and only those of the house where the Master decides to spend the night at are lit. The fact that different lantern are lit at the time and in different places according to the presence of the Master somehow hands him a mediating function towards the audience as he “allows” the spectators into the houses with him to witness the beauty and sensuality of the showgirl, internalising in this way the Western gaze and playing an integral part within the narrative of the film. On the other hand, the lanterns can be considered an allegory to desire, both related to the Master and to the concubines. In fact, the status of the lanterns signify both the physical presence and sexual inclinations of the Master which then causes different psychological effects on the wives. A wife’s worth is then increased if her lanterns are lit and diminished when they are not. In more severe cases, for example, when Songlian fakes pregnancy in the films and her lie is unsurprisingly discovered, her lanterns are sealed as a form of punishment for her subordinate behaviour towards the Master. Besides, when Songlian’s maid Yan’er is caught whilst secretly lighting lanterns in her room as a result of her desire of being one of the Mistresses, her lanterns are set on fire in the courtyard and she is forced to stare at them burning, as dictated by the rules. The fire of the burning lanterns represents again Yan’er’s sexual desire towards the Master and because she refused to apologise for her misbehaviour and therefore left in the cold witnessing her lanterns burning, she will ultimately lose her life. Along these lines, when the Third Mistress’s affair with the family doctor is discovered, another ritualistic sentence of death is served as she is murdered in the death house, located on the rooftop of the residence. Besides the lighting of lanterns, the selected wife receives a foot massage aimed at inducing sexual arousal and the concubines all together can order their desired food at the dining table. The ritualistic activities that surround the courtyard are important signifiers of the meta presence of the Master. As although he is almost an abstract figure, the Master is the bearer of the power of the ancestral rules that the residents of the courtyard live, or die, upon. In the patriarchal order, he is indeed the one in charge, however, what really holds the position of power is the rules of the courtyard themselves. Furhermore, it has been noted by many critics that all the listed rituals are nowhere to be found true in Chinese history. In his Raised eyebrows for Raise the Red Lanterns, Dai Qing explains why. For instance, there in no way that any family “would risk incurring the wrath of heaven by carrying out a private execution on the rooftop” (Qing :335) since according to Chinese cosmography the sky and, as a consequence, the rooftop was sacred. Furthermore, the masks with which the Third Mistress’s room was decorated, were highly unlikely to be the decorative choice of an Opera singer, besides the fact that those showcased in the film became a trend just in the 1980s and therefore sixty years apart from when the film was set as Qign explains (335). Yet, there was no such thing as foot massage used as a sexual stimulus. All these rituals were therefore created from scratch by the director in order to offer the West elements of Chineseness, yet to signify “the deathly dance and hollow ceremony of old China” (Jinghua : 58) .

 Alongside red lanterns and oriental decor, another relevant element of the mise en scene is the courtyard itself. The fact that the movie develops within one, enclosed location shot from an “oppressive bird-eye’s view” (Lu : 164) represents a metaphor of China. As a matter of fact, since this prison like courtyard is populated mostly by women, the oppression is only registered on female body and therefore this setting “ (159) represents China as an exotic and feminized other in its restriction, oppression and closure” as opposed to the Western audience that has a supremacy on it. The weaker position in which China is metaphorically put whilst being represented on the film by the females populating the courtyard, represents a lack in terms of gender and in terms of nation providing in this case, on Mulvey’s terms, an “empty signifier” to the (Western) phallus (159). The women in the film are in fact gaining he “showy” qualities “at the price of happiness” (164) . In fact, the Mistresses, and specifically the protagonist Songlian, are constantly portrayed in their sorrow, often of a sexual or emotional nature, accompanied by the spatial  oppression of the courtyard, offering a less than powerful metaphor of China. To continue, the metaphor of spatial and psychological oppression showcased in the film, perhaps as a representative of the country’s post Tiananmen atmosphere, subtly attributes its related sorrow to the presence of a “backward cultural environment upon which, by contrast, the Western subject occupies the position of the subject presumed to enjoy, through a refraction of the admiring gaze of the cultural other” (165).  The fascination with these rituals, oriental decors and imposed feudal rules is felt by the Western audience certainly because of its exoticism and these being bearers of significant cultural differences. Yet, “Western film critics have highly praised the chilling and suffocating quality of the narrative calling it beautiful and enchanting”(Jinghua : 59).

 Seen the considerably deprecating image of the country that Raise The Red Lantern depicts, it is of no surprise that the film was banned in China for quite some time. As a matter of fact, however, when director Zhang Yimou and his colleagues from the Beijing Film Academy started making films again in the 1980s, he says “they were still angry about their suffering during the Cultural Revolution” (Dyer : 2009) and from it came that evident tone of resentment towards their country as discussed above. Although he worked as a cinematographer on films considered to have a higher artistic value, yet no particular drive in China such as his fellow Chen Kaige’s Yellow Earth (1984) , he then decided to embark on productions of his own. Even though he tried to break into his homeland as a filmmaker, considering his personal history of struggles during the Cultural Revolution, alongside the heavy censorship regime that was imposed upon his films in China, however, offers a degree of understanding of why he chose to target the Western film market and ultimately become perhaps the most relevant director of mainstream Chinese Cinema to date. Nevertheless, his contributions to the representation of the Eastern to Western eyes remains second to none.

Bibliography

Dai, Qing, “Raised eyebrows for Raise the Red Lantern.” Trans. Jeanne Tai, Public Culture, 5 (1993): 333-337.

Dai, Jinghua. “Postcolonialism and Chinese Cinema of the Nineties.” Trans. Harry  H. Kuoshu, in Jing Wang and Tani E. Barlow, eds., Cinema and Desire: Feminist Marxism and Cultural Politics in the Work of Dai Jinhua. (London: Verso, 2002) 49-70.

Tonglin Lu, “The Zhang Yimou Model,” in Confronting Modernity in the Cinemas of Taiwan and Mainland China (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 157-172.

Zha, Jane Ying, “Excerpts from Lore Segal, Red Lantern, and Exoticism” in Public Culture Winter, 1993 5 (2): 329 -332

Yau, Esther “The Fifth Generation“ in, “The Oxford History of World Cinema” ,Oxford University Press, 1992 pp 693 - 702

Zhen, Ni, “Notes to the Grindstone” in, Memoirs from the Beijing Film Academy, Duke University Press : 2002 : pp 95- 102

Mulvey, L, ‘Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema’ in Screen , vol. 16, no. 3 (Autumn 1975)

Dyer, Geoff “Zhang Yimou on his creative independence” , Financial Times, 11th December 2009. https://www.ft.com/content/793b3406-e523-11de-9a25-00144feab49a

Filmography

Raise The Red Lantern (1991) Directed by Zhang Yimou [Feature Film]. China

Yellow Earth (1984) Directed by Chen Kaige [Feature Film]. China

Gone with the Wind (1939) Directed by Victor Fleming [Feature Film]. USA

Citizen Kane (1941) Directed by Orson Welles [Feature Film]. USA