Uploaded 18 December 1998
The left-wing films of the period after World War 2 in China are collectively referred to as “progressive” (jinbu)in People’s Republic of China (PRC) film discourse. As such, these films represent both the culmination of the May Fourth left-wing film movement (referring to the cultural and social reform movement launched in China in the wake of student protests on 4 May 1919) and a model for the “socialist realist” films in the Communist period. Yet what is the meaning behind the construction of these films as “progressive”, that seeks to impose a homogeneous and unified purpose on these films? Does “progressiveness” come from the material positioning of these films as compared to “the conservative”, or does “progressive” refer to a deeper ideological level of the text as well? This paper looks at one of the most important and enduringly popular films from this period, A Spring River flows east (Yijiang chunshui xiang dong liu China 1947), [1] and will look particularly from the viewpoint of gender representation. Putting “woman” into the picture can be a fruitful method for revealing the ideologies of misogyny or patriarchy that operate in the hierarchical arrangement of text ideologies. Here I will also consider the textual constructions of “man” and “masculinity” to demonstrate a further layer to the contestations around gender that was occuring at this time.
To demonstrate the need for historical and social context, the first part of this study examines how Spring River was located in the production and exhibition context of Shanghai in 1947. In this section I note how notions of the “progressive” relate to both an industry structure that positioned left-wing films in relation to mainstream KMT (Kuo Min T’ang ñ Chinese Nationalist Party) films and to exhibition practices that marked left-wing films as “nationalist” in opposition to foreign competition. This seeming contradiction between “alternative” and “mainstream” identities provides the background for the second part, where I approach the position of “woman” and “man” in Spring River. Here I consider the configuration of types such as the “virtuous wife and good mother”, the femme fatale and the emasculated male hero, as well as the historical conditions that may have influenced their formation.
As a film of the immediate postwar era, I suggest that in Spring River we can see the intersections and concurrent operations of discourses that position left-wing films as “subversive” and committed to class revolution, but remain at the same time influenced by traditional pre-May Fourth ideological significations. To the extent that ideology can be seen as a continuum of ideas, Spring River offers an opportunity to observe the struggles of ideologies as they compete to achieve dominance in the text, and points us towards what lies beyond the restrictions of homogeneity that bind critic and spectator.
The contextual location of “progressive”
By 1946, the year Spring River went into production at the Kunlun Film Production Company, the Shanghai film industry was well into recovering from wartime disruption. During the war the industry had scattered: many left-wing artists went inland to Chongqing or south to Hong Kong. [2] The remaining film workers were seconded into the Japanese studios that had taken over the production facilities of the major prewar studios, Lianhua and Mingxing. After the Japanese surrender, the various remnants of the prewar Shanghai industry returned and formed into three main streams of film production: government, private and “independent” production companies. [3] The ruling KMT confiscated the Japanese studio properties, moving its wartime film production company (Central Motion Picture Company) to Shanghai and Beijing and became the largest studio in terms of facilities, personnel and output (fourteen films in 1947). The second stream was the establishment of three studios by private entrepreneurs that maintained a semi-fixed production staff and studio premises – Wenhua, Kunlun and Cathay film production companies. The third stream consisted of the “independent” production companies: small ventures that organised for the production of one or two films then collapsed or disbanded, renting studio space and equipment from the more established studios above.
It should be noted that the Chinese studios differed from conventional Hollywood studios in several major ways [4] Firstly, while Chinese studios had a share in the provision of production and distribution, they did not control the exhibition of their products and hence weren’t able to extract the secure flow of revenue that accrued to prewar American studios. Exhibition institutions remained owned by private entrepreneurs or combines (including foreign interests such as MGM which bought the Dahua cinema in 1948) [5] which contracted film supply from the distribution exchanges. While some instances of consolidation between production and exhibition occurred (for example the owners of the Cathay film production company also owned the Jincheng and Jindu cinemas in Shanghai) [6] the ability of production studios to exert a controlling influence on theatres was limited by the overwhelming presence of foreign films in the exhibition market. A consequence of not being able to capture a steady source of revenue was that Chinese film companies were often undercapitalised and lacked the financial resources to invest in necessary technology and staff training. [7] This resulted in repeated shortfalls in production such that a gap emerged between the restricted supply of Chinese films and the burgeoning market demand. The small independent companies existed in large part to fulfil this gap, but the speculative nature of these enterprises in turn reinforced the instability of investments in the Chinese film industry.
A second distinguishing feature of the postwar Chinese production companies compared to the Hollywood studios is that labour mobility between different companies was relatively fluid. We can observe that not only actresses such as Bai Yang (lead actress in Spring River) also appeared in films for the KMT-owned studios (City of Saints[Shengchengji] China 1946, Diary of Returning Home [Huanxing riji] China 1947) but also technical personnel such as Wu Weiyun (technical advisor for Spring River) also worked for KMT studios (Far Away Love [Yaoyuan de ai ] China 1947) and independent studios such as Zhongqi (Brutal Spring, Broken Dreams [Chuncan mengduan ] China 1947), regardless of their political orientation. This arose from the scarcity of qualified and experienced personnel in the postwar era, restricting studios to a fixed pool of talent. [8] Hence managers in the mainstream studios often overlooked the political orientation of workers to satisfy the short-term need for products.
However at the same time we can also witness that many directors and writers remained associated with one production company only, such as the two fixed groups of artists clustered around Kunlun (Shi Dongshan, Cai Chusheng, Shen Fu, Yang Hansheng) and Wenhua (San Gu, You Lin, Fei Mu, Shi Hui). It is notable that it is at the level of film conception that labour remained immobile, whereas the production roles thought to be less able to exert an ideological influence (photography and acting) were able to transcend studio boundaries. This point more generally indicates the third major difference: the substantial political positioning of studios. Where KMT-owned studios were plainly motivated by government censors and management to portray a sympathetic image of government rule, Kunlun, and to a lesser extent Cathay and Wenhua, were staffed by explicitly leftist or left-leaning producers and directors, who had the conscious intention to produce films critical of KMT rule. Kunlun’s manifesto was “to stand with the people, to expose and criticise the crimes of KMT reactionary rule and the pain and persecution felt by the people under this rule, and to promote the people’s road of struggle.” [9] Hence films of the Kunlun studio not only had to have “business eyes” but also an ideologically correct message in accordance with Marxist revolutionary doctrine.
The commitment to Marxist political ideology at the Kunlun studio carried over into work practices. Whereas Hollywood studio production was marked by a hierarchical structure of work relations headed by a producer, the arrangement of production roles in Kunlun was horizontally based such that work relationships were based on cooperation and collaboration. At Kunlun, production appeared to have been arranged around the director as the principal authority who delegated tasks. However, scenario writer and director committees were established as a critical forum to check the abuse of directorial power. [10] These committees formulated ideological guidelines on the content of films, limiting the authorial power of the individual director. The boundaries between production roles were fluid: the two directors of Spring River began work in films as an actor and a photographer. [11] Yet at the same time, a clear degree of specialisation by occupational role also occurred: the credits list for Spring River notes twenty three different roles for technical personnel. Hence whereas work practices that emphasised a flat hierarchy and mutual criticism differed from those found in mainstream Hollywood production, a certain tension is still detectable between the goals of collective authority and personal recognition and specialisation. Staiger has noted in regard to Hollywood cinema that the profit motive drove production towards standardising products and work processes in order to minimise cost and risk. [12] This was also a goal faced by studios in China: even the left-wing films had to have “business eyes”. [13] However, left-wing films at the same time had a propaganda motive that in turn determined its production structure and work processes. For the left-wing filmmakers propaganda and education of the audience was the primary goal, but this was also guided by the principle of “art for the People” articulated by Mao Zedong in his “Yenan Talks on Literature and Art.” Besides affirming the aim of making literature and art accessible to the “masses”, Mao also advocated learning from the “masses” by adapting local art forms. [14] Spring River absorbed both of these dictums by placing emphasis on narrative continuity and clarity and also in its adaptation from the popular Yuan dynasty opera, The Lute [Pipa ji ], which it resembles closely in structure, theme, characters and plot. [15]
A final point of difference between Hollywood studios and Chinese film production in the 1940s was the social and institutional context of overarching government regulation. By February 1946 the government had published a list of forty six items considered unacceptable to be shown in films and had established an internal department of film supervision. [16] According to statistics published in 1948, of one hundred and sixty two films produced between 1945 and 1948, forty eight met with censorship of some kind. [17] By this time, all films were required to go through a three stage system of supervision – submission of scenario, submission of shooting script and submission of final picture. In practice however, censorship extended to threatening letters, police raids and closing down of studios. In addition, imports of film stock and equipment were subject to foreign exchange controls by the Central Bank. [18]
The result of such an institutional context was that left-wing filmmakers had to develop an entirely different range of signifying practices to those found in mainstream cinema and which enabled them to communicate their socialist message while maintaining a facade acceptable to the government censors. Such practices included indirect devices such as symbolism, visual motifs and referencing to people and places associated with the KMT and also more direct techniques such as tragic finales, direct address and rhetorical questioning. For example, left-wing films made frequent use of the profoundly pessimistic or unresolved ending to pointedly question the KMT and Hollywood films with their sense of perfect closure and acceptance of the status quo, as well as to provoke the audience into action against the forces of repression presented in the film. Material limitations also contributed to a sense of urgency, mission and the need to maximise the subversive potential of each film. Hence, the economic and institutional circumstances of Chinese films in the forties led to the formation of a set of economic and signifying practices characterised by collective work practices, standardisation of political content and an “alternative” approach to film style and technique. To examine how this “alternative” production context was received on the film exhibition level, I now turn to a consideration of exhibition and reception practices.
By October 1947 when Spring River was released, the exhibition of foreign and Chinese films in Shanghai had returned to its flourishing prewar state and was prospering under the postwar conditions of relative stability and rising disposable incomes. Cinemas were divided between those screening exclusively foreign, exclusively Chinese or both types of films. [19] A breakdown of twenty six prominent picture theatres advertising in Shen bao over October-November 1947 reveals that seven screened foreign films only, five screened Chinese films only and fourteen screened both. Cinemas exhibiting foreign films appeared to be under contractual agreements to screen a specified amount of foreign films in relation to domestic films. In November 1947 the Meiqi and Nanjing cinemas were forced to cease screening Spring River due to commitments to screen a foreign film programme. [20] While, on the one hand, this locked out Chinese films from the “dress circle” (superior standard) theatres from time to time, it should also be recognised that the production conditions of the Chinese industry, characterised by undercapitalisation and constraints on supply, held back Chinese films from the market and opened the opportunity for foreign films to gain a wide audience. In contrast, the exhibition of Chinese films continued the prewar practice of individual theatre negotiation and booking with the distributor, which could extend indefinitely without the need for a contractual settlement. [21] Such arrangements were advantageous when popular films were forthcoming, but when supply was slow these cinemas were forced to screen old films.
The relative market position of foreign and Chinese films is difficult to accurately determine without adequate audience attendance figures. One set of figures states that of 383 features shown in Shanghai 1946, 370 were foreign and only 13 were Chinese [22] , however this tells us little about how popular foreign films actually were for Chinese audiences. (In contrast to prewar Shanghai, the postwar expatriate film audience had fallen to negligible levels.) Anecdotal evidence from the 20s comparing the lukewarm reactions of audiences to foreign films to the enthusiastic reactions to Chinese films [23] , suggests to me that there was a high demand for good quality Chinese films. An examination of advertisements for twenty six first and second run cinemas for October and November 1947 when Spring River was released in two parts, reveals that of 113 titles released, only nineteen (seventeen per cent) were Chinese made. However looking at the duration of the runs of foreign compared to Chinese films shows that of 1586 screen days [24] , forty one per cent were devoted to screening Chinese films. Although this includes the anomalous success of Spring River(which screened for three months to a record breaking 712,000 attendances [25] ), this indicates that despite the prevalence of foreign film titles, Chinese films tended to open on more screens and for longer durations. In addition, the increasing number of Chinese films produced by major and independent companies up to 1949 testifies to the increasing demand for Chinese films. Hence we can surmise that there was a significant demand for Chinese films and that the prevalence of foreign films, while also possessing its own market segment (the educated upper-middle classes), was to some extent a spillover of demand that was constrained by the slow and retarded development of Chinese film production.
Foreign films screened in 1947 included selections from all major Hollywood genres: film noir (Laura), the gangster film (Scarface), the melodrama (Mildred Pierce), the war film (Night Plane from Chungking), the social issues film (The Lost Weekend), light entertainment (Cover Girl), the musical (Princess and the Pirate) and animation (Fantasia). However given the contractual obligation of theatres to run a specified amount of foreign films, this tells us little about how foreign films were received by Chinese audiences. A casual analysis of advertisement trends in Shen bao over 1947, shows that comedy films (in particular Chaplin and Laurel and Hardy films) were amongst the most frequently rescreened and longest running in first release. Exotic adventure films (One Thousand and One Arabian Nights, Salome, Queen of the Nile) were almost as popular.
Significantly, Hollywood melodramas (Now Voyager, Temptation, Moontide) were among the shortest running films of the time, barely lasting more than a week on first release. This suggests that certain features of the Hollywood melodramas precluded Chinese audiences from the dilemmas of American family morality. These so-termed “woman’s films”, mostly dealt with problems defined as “female” (“problems revolving around domestic life, the family, children, self-sacrifice” [26] ). But they were also notable for their employment of female protagonists with access to point of view structures and narrative enunciation. [27] In contrast, melodramas and family morality plays were dominant among the production of Chinese films in 1947. Indeed, of forty films completed in Shanghai 1947 perhaps as much as twenty seven can be classified as dramas about family relations or the morality of love. [28] Without entering into a detailed discussion on the different modes of female spectatorship in Chinese and Hollywood melodramas [29] , it appears that as a general tendency, the discursive formation of “woman” is more marked as “independent” in Hollywood films than in Chinese films, where it is firmly located in familial and social networks. [30] Hence whereas the choice between family and career in Mildred Pierce is coded in terms of individual self-fulfillment, a similar choice between family and career/political alignment in Eight Thousand Miles of Clouds and Moon (Baqianli yu yun he yue China 1947) is coded in terms of national fate. This connects more generally to the historical context of 1947 where the urgency of nationalist discourses overrode those on personal self-determination. Hence the preference for Chinese over American melodramas can be traced back to factors such as relevancy and patriotism, rather than any substantive difference in terms of female representation.
Advertising and mass media publications indicate the increasing familiarity of the Chinese audience with film practices. From 1945 to 1949 seventy separate film magazines and journals were published which, besides the usual photographs of stars and new releases, also included literary columns with discussions on film stories and novels. [31] Advertising strategies promoted the formation of values as Chinese films increasingly stressed their ability to match Western films and outperform other Chinese films. Eight Thousand Miles of Clouds and Moon was advertised as “recommended for all those who enjoy Western films” and its “new style, new technique” was “absolutely rarely seen in the Chinese cinema” [32] ; Spring River claimed to “sweep away all mediocre techniques.” Spring River was also advertised in terms of its quality: “the highest artistic achievement of screenplay, direction, performance, and music”, and patriotism: “a grand masterpiece dedicated to the nation by China’s outstanding film artists.” [33] Another valued strategy was realism: Mother and Son (Mu yu zi China 1947) promoted its “social realism, addressing problems close to home”. [34] In fact this latter claim to realism was incorporated into many of the advertising images and slogans for films in 1947 reflecting the demand for films exposing social problems in a realistic manner.
A function of such advertising was to distinguish Chinese films from foreign films. Chinese films were “real” where foreign films were “spectacle”; Chinese films were “innovative” and had claims to “quality” where foreign films were full of technological novelty (such as colour) but were entertainment pieces only; Chinese films were “patriotic” where foreign films were “exotic” (especially in terms of female sexuality – the half-naked female form was a common graphic accompaniment to advertisements for foreign films). The effect of such advertising was as much to create an audience that was patriotic, concerned with social issues rather than with escapism and appreciative of “quality substance” films, as well as being a reflection of such values.
Hence by 1947 the film audience in Shanghai was developing standards for discriminating between foreign and domestic films, was becoming more sophisticated in terms of filmic knowledge and practices and was showing a marked taste for locally produced films reflecting the issues and events of society around them. Whereas PRC histories tended to portray the 1947 audience as uncritical passive victims of a foreign cultural invasion [35] , the reverse appears more apt – Chinese audiences chose foreign films to satisfy an appeal to the exotic, the spectacular, and the comic which couldn’t be met by Chinese films. At the same time the audience turned to Chinese films for their relevancy and rejected foreign films that portrayed family and social situations that jarred with their own experience. The conditions were set for the success of a film that combined all these elements and did so in a way that utilised Hollywood style and appealed to Chinese patriotism – A Spring River Flows East.
In sum, the prevailing economic conditions and public discourse practices in Shanghai 1947 situated left-wing Chinese films between the extremes of the KMT mainstream and the foreign films market. Where factors internal to the film production sector, such as undercapitalisation and a personnel shortage, limited its ability to compete effectively with foreign films, external conditions such as censorship meant that left-wing filmmakers had to devise veiled strategies to criticise government rule and at the same time appeal to a Chinese audience. The resulting strategy was hence one that employed an ideologically-based realist film form to implicitly attack KMT rule, combined with an emphasis on patriotism and traditional Chinese lifestyle and morality to capture the domestic audience. The resulting signifying practices were both subversive of the contemporary dominant power grouping, and also hegemonic in that they acted to reinforce essentialist images of traditional Chinese moral codes rather than subjecting them to criticism or questioning. It is to this construction of a hegemonic discourse based on an appeal to traditional morality that we turn in the next section, through an examination of how the film positions and defines gender.
The construction of “woman” in A Spring River Flows East
Before considering the representation of “man” and “woman”, it is useful to outline the basic plot of the film [36]
Part one: Eight years of chaos Banian liluan
The narrative begins in Shanghai 1931 as a factory celebrates National Day October 10. At the party Zhang Zhongliang gives an impassioned speech against Japanese aggression. Zhongliang declares his love to factory girl Li Sufen and soon afterwards they are married and have a baby, named Kang’er (literally “son of resistance”). With the outbreak of war, Zhongliang is sent to the front and Sufen and her mother-in-law return to Zhongliang’s home town to live with his father and brother, Zhongmin. By 1940, the Japanese terrorise the village and Grandfather is sentenced to death. A guerilla attack led by Zhongmin avenges his death and provides the opportunity for Sufen, Granny and baby to return to Shanghai. In the meantime, Zhongliang arrives in Chongqing destitute and seeks former acquaintance Wang Lizhen for help. Lizhen fixes him a job and after a while, Zhongliang settles into a routine of wasting time, drinking and dreaming of Lizhen. One night, Lizhen invites him to her bedroom and the pair make love. The first half concludes as a violent thunderstorm lashes Shanghai, virtually driving Sufen and Granny out of their shanty town lodgings.
Part two: After the storm Tianliang qianhou
With Lizhen how his wife, Zhongliang soon becomes firmly entrenched in her business and social network. After the Japanese surrender Zhongliang returns to Shanghai to stay with Lizhen’s cousin He Wenyan, who subsequently becomes his mistress. Meanwhile, Sufen offers her services as a maid at Wenyan’s house. On National Day 1945, Sufen is serving drinks at a cocktail party held at Wenyan’s house when she recognises Zhongliang and collapses. When the truth is revealed, Lizhen demands that Zhongliang divorce Sufen immediately. Sufen, Granny and Kang’er confront Zhongliang and Granny reproaches him for his neglect. In a state of desperation, Sufen runs to the riverside and after telling Kang’er not to follow his father’s ways, drowns herself. Zhongliang and Granny arrive at the scene and while Zhongliang hovers helplessly, Granny rejects him and condemns society.
Beginning with the narrative representations of women in Spring River, we can identify Sufen and Lizhen as the two main loci on which the text focuses its construction of “women” and “femininity”. The image of Sufen as the ever faithful and hard-working wife and mother, conforms most closely to the traditional image of the “virtuous wife and good mother” (xianqi liangmu). Probably the first textual representation in China that concentrated solely on the lives of women was the Biographies of Women (Lienu zhuan), a collection of 125 biographies of virtuous and virtueless women written in the Western Han dynasty. [37]
Later, the Four books for women (Nu sishu) laid down social codes such as “a woman should humble herself and respect others, she should always put others first and herself last … she should behave subserviently and always appear fearful.” [38] Codes for everyday life prescribed that she should also prepare wine and food to worship the ancestors and always be ready to serve her husband. [39] The extent to which Sufen (whose name translates as “simple and chaste”) conforms to this model of behaviour is clearly conceptualised by the filmmakers in a scene later removed from the film, where Sufen kneels and prays to Zhongliang, religiously subjugating herself to his authority. [40]
However in noting the echoes of the traditional conception of virtuous women, we must also recognise the significant adjustments made as a result of left-wing ideology. The most telling adjustment is the effective displacement of the locus of wifely value from ancestor worship to the worship of youth. In the traditional Chinese conception of the role of the wife, her importance to maintain family lineage by birth and ancestor worship was paramount. [41] Indeed, in the traditional tale most closely resembling Spring River, The Lute, the first wife of the absent scholar earns universal praise for the care of her parents-in-law. Yet in the anti-feudal atmosphere of left-wing ideology, ancestor worship was no longer “progressive”. However, whereas this might have suggested the freeing of women from this role to assume other roles in public life, discourse on the glory of youth (embodied in journals like New youth) and the importance of upbringing for national salvation, effectively linked the role of women as mothers to the fate of the Nation. [42] Hence in Spring River, Sufen is represented almost obsessively as “the mother” – the audience is repeatedly shown scenes of Sufen washing, cooking, cleaning and playing with her son and the refugee children. However, whereas in traditional discourse the objects of women’s labour, ancestors, were claimed not by the woman but by her husband’s family, so too in Spring River, the objects of Sufen’s hard work, children, are denied to her by the claims of the Nation. This is made explicit in one scene where as Sufen works in the foreground, the refugee children are being taught to recite “I am Chinese, I love China” in the background. Hence in the transition from filial daughter to sacrificial mother, the functions performed by women remain the same – producing and reproducing for the patriarchal family or Nation. In this “new” role, women are the mediator by which children grow into citizens and are valued for their contribution to the Nation.
In the feminist critique of Chinese tradition, marriage has been seen as a primary site for women’s subordination. [43] As the ultimate of exchange commodities, women were highly valued for providing a family lineage, and the centrality of marriage to a woman’s self-conception was a common theme through the traditional discourse on women. Associated with this sanctity of marriage was the high value placed on widow chastity and suicide that involved a system of public honours and publicity through local gazetteers. [44] With the May Fourth reform movement, the practice of arranged marriage was abolished and free marriage instituted by law. The 1931 KMT and CCP (Chinese Communist Party) Marriage Laws both continued provisions for free choice marriage and divorce. [45] However, where the standards of society governing the relations between men and women had changed, there were two important influences from traditional China that failed to be significantly altered in the Republican era.
The politicisation of the family via “the use of the political system to offer explicit honours for behaviour defined as virtuous in private, everyday life” [46] in traditional China, continued in both communist and nationalist discourses that claimed authority on morality in the service of the Nation and Society. To the extent that the Nation was considered the family writ large, Spring River works to make this idea concrete. Hence, Sufen’s fidelity to Zhongliang is equated, not only to the maintenance of traditional morality and social order, but also to the upholding of the Nation. Sexual purity and chastity becomes both the signifier of “Chineseness” in the face of Japanese aggression and the means for the restoration of public order in the face of KMT sexual and moral corruption. As Lu Xun explicated on the role of chastity in nationalist discourses: “the more loyalty the emperor demanded of his subjects, the more chastity the men required of the women.” [47]
The second aspect of traditional morality that left its mark in post-revolution China was the symbol of suicide as a recourse from the harsh blows of society. In traditional China, the motivation for suicide was based on a code for moral uprightness that placed a high honour on the maintenance of chastity. Such were the codes of honour set by traditional Chinese society that individuals may have sought death in preference to an “illegitimate” existence. [48] Clearly this is relevant to the intention behind Sufen’s suicide – abandoned by her husband and faced by the breakdown of trust and faith, Sufen’s social personality is perceived to be no longer viable. What is interesting here is that the standards by which Sufen resorts to suicide remain so much informed by traditional codes that seek to contain women. When we consider the possible alternatives to her suicide – divorce and independence, both of which represent a clear break from dependence on a patriarchally dominated family, suicide then becomes the only means by which the text can reassert control over the fate of women and contain them within the confines of a patriarchal moral code. In this sense, Sufen’s suicide is as “honourable” as the suicide of women in traditional China whose potential destabilising threat to the social order is contained by ritualising their deaths.
But what needs to be qualified in Spring River is that the traditional orthodox discourse that forces Sufen to commit suicide has been displaced onto the class oppression represented by Lizhen and the KMT, that on the surface assumes the cause of Sufen’s death to the wider political and social environment. In the words of Mao Zedong in 1921: “When society seizes someone’s hopes and leaves him utterly without hope then that person inevitably will commit suicide” [49] . The blame for suicide then is relocated away from the victims themselves and onto the vagaries of an unequal society; the reason for suicide is social and not psychological and can be rectified by the transformation of class structures rather than through the investigation of the moral code. In this sense, women’s bodies, such as Sufen’s, become the passive signifiers of class oppression rather than the active enforcers of traditional orthodox moral codes that make explicit their subordinate position as “women” rather than as class members. [50] That both traditional and “progressive” ideologies can be detected in the suicide of Sufen, marks it as a moment of rupture in the film’s attempt to maintain an ideological smoothness that represents Sufen more as a class member than as woman-as-victim. Moments of excess like suicide do open the possibility for alternate readings of the film that may construe the death of Sufen as a critique of traditional values that force women to commit suicide. [51] However, given that throughout the film the audience has been encouraged to affirm Sufen’s role as “virtuous wife and good mother”, the moment of rupture suicide represents is not so much a revision of Sufen’s behaviour, as a moment revealing other ideologies: a traditionally-inflected body of values that, despite its displacement of blame onto class conflict, preserves the idea that virtuous women commit suicide and thereby remain within the confines of patriarchally defined morality.
In noting the unidimensionality in Sufen’s character representation we can see that in general, the conception of character psychological motivations into positions of extremity (such as good/bad, virtuous/treacherous) in Chinese film and literature tends not to be considered problematic. Rather such arbitrary allocating of human attributes is explained by the traditional view of “complementary bipolarity” which presents them as a given part of existence. [52] It follows logically then that in the context of the ideological mission of the left-wing film movement, the presentation of characters along class dialectic lines (pro or anti-KMT) should also be treated unproblematically. Hence we can find a schema that constructs Sufen and Lizhen into irreconcilable opposites:
Lizhen bourgeois group Sufen proletarian group
glamorous, glitzy plain, dull
unprincipled, licentious principled
cowardly brave
extravagant, sensuous poor, destitute
cruel, vicious caring, philanthropic
sexually-free, promiscuous conservative, chaste
foreign-influenced tradition-influenced
lazy hardworking
corrupt virtuous
greedy, selfish self-sacrificing
controlling, strong subordinate, vulnerable
In this context, if Sufen is the “virtuous wife and good mother” then Lizhen (whose name, “beautiful and precious” suggests vanity and artifice) is the femme fatale – from her first appearance performing a Spanish dance, Lizhen connotes the foreign, the unknown, the exotic that is beyond male comprehension. Clothes, hairstyle, makeup and lighting all emphasise Lizhen’s body as she personifies “difference” from the standard of “man” and the chaste woman. Beyond a tenuous connection to her cousin Wenyan, Lizhen is also devoid of family relations that would place her within patriarchal relations; instead she represents the independent socialite who exists beyond male control. Indeed, in her capacity as seductress, she exerts an active control over men ñ “man at once desires her and fears her power over him. Drawing man away from his goal, her sexuality intervenes destructively in his life.” [53] Sexuality is seen as a root factor in her relations with men – from her dance performance, to her seduction of Zhongliang to her jealousy of his infidelity, the film codes her as the active promoter of her own sexuality as a means to control others and define herself. That this abundant sexuality is excessive is suggested by the visual link between her and the mise en scene (the cluttered excess of her possessions suggests abundance beyond proportion) and between her and men other than Zhongliang (her previous boyfriend, her quasi-incestuous relationship with her godfather and her treatment as a sex object by Cui and other cronies).
The abnormality of the femme fatale figure is crucially important in this context to legitimate her exclusion and destruction. The femme fatale image has long been used as a negative moral paradigm for enforcing social codes. The Biographies of Women defines “pernicious courtesans” (niepi) as “deeply scorned, who easily arouse sexual jealousy and bewilderment, who reject chastity and abandon righteousness.” [54] Through popular culture and historical discourse, female sexuality has been linked to destruction. Idioms such as “beauty to crumble cities and nations” (qingcheng qingguo), figures such as Yang Guifei whose beauty led to the demise of Tang dynasty emperor Tang Xuanzong and historical discourse on female power holders such as Empress Wu that called attention to her “lustful nature” [55] are well known examples. Spring River makes effective use of these stereotyped images to link Lizhen’s promiscuity to the breakdown of the family and the fate of the nation. To the extent that nationalist discourses constructed the nation in familial terms, Lizhen’s sexual disruption of family unity constitutes an equal threat to national unity. Whether rationalised as due to the imbalance of yang/yin elements, or as disruptions to the prevailing social order, the femme fatale is seen as something that must be stopped. This can be achieved by disavowing her as non-human, such as in fairytales where the femme fatale is often represented as a fox fairy. [56] Alternatively, the femme fatale can be controlled by representing her as abnormal or inhuman such as locating her “outside the traditional Confucian bonds binding the child to the parent and daughter-in-law to the husband’s family.” [57] In this case, Lizhen is represented as both independent of society and dependent on her sexual desire, and as abundantly beautiful and desirous, but ultimately barren and sterile.
But again these traditional ideas on the need to control women due to their “excessive” sexual transgressions are displaced by the intrusion of a political discourse that attributes the power of the femme fatale to her class membership. A common technique of left-wing films was to inscribe dominant-subordinate social relationships into the text by attributing causal passivity to the dispossessed class and causal agency to the bourgeois class. Hence, Zhongliang’s conversion is essentially seen as an effect of Lizhen’s control of him and the death of Grandfather is seen as an effect of Japanese aggression. In this reasoning, Lizhen is a femme fatale not just because she is a woman, but also because she is a member of the bourgeois class. Power and control then becomes intricately associated with processes of commodification and money more than of mere sexuality alone. Hence, before Zhongliang begins to be sexually attracted to Lizhen, he is already dependent on her for the money, clothes, lodging she gives him as well as the job she gets him. The portrayal of an independent woman giving assistance to a dependent man may give the impression of a “progressive” change in the representation of women. However we should remember that the femme fatale is as much a tool of patriarchal discourse as she appears independent – she is not the subject of power but the bearer of it [58] . Hence Lizhen’s “independence” is more accurately the embodiment of bourgeois power over the proletariat – literally through her “consumption” of Zhongliang (by means of money and sex) she manifests the oppression of the bourgeois class. The problem of the independent femme fatale then is naturalised as a function of class inequality more than as one of gender. The implication is that once again social revolution will solve the problem of perceived excessive female independence, rather than the interrogation of the social and moral beliefs that lay behind such representations.
At this stage we may ask what are the likely motivations for the “virtuous wife, good mother” and femme fatale images in the postwar period. We have seen how the dominant representation of women as virgin-mother or whore-femme fatale has been a basic dichotomy over the course of traditional Chinese narrative. With the May Fourth reform movement and influx of western medical discourse, gender and sexual difference was conflated on the strength of essentialised biological difference. [59] The implication for the feminist movement was important – women could now exist beyond kin relations and determine their own subject position. The problem that emerged however, was that the sex binary “valorised notions of female passivity, biological inferiority, intellectual instability, organic sexuality and social absence” by means of appealing to European social scientism and theory. [60] Hence where women were now free to represent themselves as “women” (nuxing) such representations had to end either in death, suicide, mental disorder or madness brought on by sexual excess (as defined in opposition to the male sexual “norm”). [61] Male representations of women were similarly implicated in using the essential female body as a signifier of social victimisation [62] or as “others” on which to project their own fears and failures. [63] Both of these elements are at work here in the representation of Sufen. Her suicide, as a signifier of social oppression, links her to class conflict and national salvation and also to an essential construction of women as passive and inferior that excludes them from participation in their own liberation. The representation of the femme fatale on the other hand, with its elements of exorcism and control of female strength and independence, hints at social movements that seek to contain female influence and restore the “male” to dominance. To consider the further dimensions to these images of “castrating woman” and “emasculated male”, I turn next to the representation of “strong” and “weak” masculinity in this film.
The question of “man” and “masculinity”
I have noted above how the femme fatale constitutes a locus of causal agency in this film. One reason why she is able to exert such a strong influence is because of the weakened or decentred male hero. Given that the film constructs this as primarily a relationship founded on dominant-subordinate class relations, I believe that this is a displacement of a deeper anxiety about gender relations and definitions that extends across class divides. [64] There are several ways in which this problem can be observed. [65] First, there is the use of characters which are not masculine and “normal” – that which is female or “deviant”. We have already noted the force of the images of Sufen and Lizhen and to this we can also add Wenyan. Here, the character of Zhongliang can be likened to the kind of anti-hero in classical fiction such as Ximen Qing (from Jin ping mei [The Golden Lotus]) who is steeped in ambivalence and uncertainty. [66] It is only by viewing Zhongliang in relation to others that we can identify what is particular to his character. In relation to Sufen we can see his moral weakness but in relation to Lizhen we can perceive his basic innocence. However, through sheer screen time and presentation it is clear that images of “woman” overwhelm those of “man” in this film. That this was considered a vital part of the filmmaker’s intentions is given by the advertising line: “see the blood, rain and violent winds of China’s wartime era through the relationship of one man with three different women.” [67]
From Ming dynasty erotica such as Jin ping mei with its overwhelming images of wives, concubines and courtesans, to the Mandarin Ducks and Butterfly novels with their focus on women to the narrative expense of men [68] , the predominance of “woman” images in Chinese narratives was by no means a recent occurrence. However, it should be noted that the dominance of women in a narrative does not necessarily guarantee that they are represented as superior to the representation of “man”: after all as McMahon notes in relation to erotic romance, the presentation of women as multiple sexual partners to the one man attenuates the superiority of women. [69] With marriage reforms and the rise of the “modern” monogamous marriage it seems that representations of men were more than often put in a position of choosing between women. Films of the thirties often represented class conflict and national salvation in terms of men’s choices between the “good” proletariat girl and the “bad” bourgeois woman (see films such as Wild flower [Yecao xianhua] China 1933, Three Modern Women [San ge modeng nuxing] China 1934 and Pink Dreams[Fenhongse de meng] China 1931). [70] Constrained by the institution of monogamous marriage, men appeared consoled by the choices between women that still constructed them as active sexual agents. However, by the postwar era this situation had been reversed ñ “man” no longer made the choices, it was made for them. In Spring River and Remembering South of the River (Yi jiangnan China 1947) the downfall of the male protagonist is a matter of external agency rather than of self will. (Similarly in films like Lights of Ten Thousand Homes [Wanjia denghuo China 1947] and Spring Heavenly Dreams [Tiantang chunmeng China 1946] unemployment and family breakdown are beyond the control of the male hero). Moreover, whereas left-wing thirties films constructed women’s bodies as the “site” of intersecting discourses on class, commodification, morality and imperialism [71] , in postwar films men’s bodies had become this “site”. The result of such decentring and disempowerment of male agency is the complete disavowal of the diegetic male voice. Occupying the site of contestation between bourgeois and proletarian classes, Zhongliang is reduced to silence, unable to reconcile either side. This is vividly depicted in the finale of the film where, after Sufen’s suicide, Zhongliang is appealed to by both Granny and Lizhen; yet his only answer is to hesitate ñ he is thus reduced to a voiceless presence. Similarly in the final scene of Remembering South of the River, the voice of the male protagonist is silenced by the door that his proletarian wife locks on him. [72] If, in the wake of May Fourth feminism, films of the 1930s were dominated by the question “what is a modern woman?” [73] then the films of the late forties have instead turned to ask “what is a man?”.
The historical roots for this crisis in dominant masculinity represented by the cinematic male images in the postwar era, can be detected in two broad historically specific movements that posed a serious challenge to the orthodoxy of male domination. The first, Japanese invasion and colonisation was the culmination of a century of foreign aggression and encroachment on Chinese material and psychological territory, that decentred past notions of authority and the presumed superiority of the Chinese male civilisation. This version of a masculinity governed by oppressive force seriously undermined the masculinity of moral authority that the traditional Chinese state had hitherto relied on. Here, as in other contexts of colonial experience [74] , I believe we can locate dramatic shifts in the categories of nation, class, race, gender and sexuality. This is probably most clearly seen in the figuration of wartime experiences such as the Rape of Nanking, the “comfort women” camps and biological testing, whose surrounding meanings involve, on the one hand, notions of incomparable brutality and foreign racial and material superiority, and on the other, constructions of sexual and biological inferiority of Chinese men and women. Hence the experience of colonialism, in that it displaced men in the local hierarchy, resulted in the undermining of the authority of traditional patriarchal discourse at both the national, local and individual psychological levels – this is made explicit in Spring River when Grandfather, representing “traditional authority’, is executed by the Japanese. [75]
Feminist movements were also the product of a long evolving process of reform that sought to contest traditional patriarchal structures. From the movement for female voting rights in the wake of the 1911 Revolution, through successive campaigns for free marriage and equal social and economic rights, the feminist movement reached a peak in the early thirties, before the necessities of war consigned its urgency to a secondary position. Not only did the wartime period see a slowing down in the extent of feminist activities, but war also provided the excuse for subtle windbacks of the gains made by then. The KMT New Life Movement in its attempt at “social and moral rejuvenation or spiritual reform of the Chinese people through the application of confucianism (and) … christianity to the modern problems of China” sought more to increase the status of traditional roles and re-establish the traditional sexual distribution of labour than to encourage women to “behave like men”. [76] In the communist areas, feminists like Ding Ling who criticised the unequal treatment of women in Yenan were denounced as “splittists” [77] and their discourse subordinated to the pre-eminent demands of war unity.
Further, communist ideology acted to redefine women’s roles such as Zhou Enlai’s suggestion to increase the status of motherhood in the service of National Salvation rather than changing the duties of motherhood itself. [78] If the figures of Sufen and Lizhen represent the non-threatening ideal and the “other” that must be suppressed, this follows logically from the anti-feminist discourses that attempted to contain the threat that woman’s mobility represented to the nationalist and communist patriarchal system. This located “woman” in an either/or bind that forced a choice between family and career. [79] Hence, the crisis of masculinity that pervades Spring River stems directly from the social and political events of the postwar era that directly contributed to the destabilising of, and anxiety towards, orthodox male roles in a changing society.
If the vision of emasculated men found in the films of the late forties offered a representation of “what is not a man”, then can we see what the dominant ideology of these films defined as “what a man should be”? At the risk of establishing my own dichotomy of male representation that parallels the somewhat rigid and essentialising version of the virgin/whore split, I believe we can determine two dominant modes of male representations in Chinese narrative: figures converging around the scholar-lover (caizi) and figures converging around the warrior-hero (haohan). [80]
By the first I refer to representations of a bookish, intellectual, sensuous type masculinity which can be found in the principal characters of erotic, scholar-meets-beauty and even May Fourth fictional genres and whose visual codes include beauty that is close to a woman’s, frailty and youth.
The second refers to the rough, unrefined masculinity which can be found in the principal characters of novels like Water Margin, Romance of the Three Kingdoms and the knight-errant genre and whose visual codes include large physique, beard and slovenly appearance. Crucially, for our discussion the difference between the two also hinges upon their relationships to women – the scholar-lover type relates mainly to women, whereas the warrior-hero type demonstrates a lack of regard for women that often verges on misogyny. (81)
In Spring River I suggest we can see Zhongliang as shifting from the warrior-hero type to the scholar-lover type, over the course of this film. Zhongliang’s initial involvement with the underground resistance, his desexualised relationship with Sufen and his transformation into a roving vagabond complete with unruly hair, beard and unkempt clothing, all code him in the image of the warrior-hero whose primary relationships are with men (or non-women).
In contrast, from the beginning of his relationship with Lizhen, Zhongliang shifts into the scholar-lover mode of representation – his preoccupation with appearance (clothes, hair, moustache), his drawing closer to women (indicated in dream sequences and drawings) and the acquisition of aesthetic abilities such as dancing, all mark him by the end as the scholar-lover.
The significance here lies not in the transition between two different types of masculinity in itself, but in the film’s hierarchical coding of the warrior-hero as “good” and the scholar-lover as “bad”. Clearly in the downfall of Zhongliang to immoral aesthete, the film marks out the ideological terrain in its definition of masculinity by which national salvation will be achieved or destroyed. We can note here Zhongliang’s self-reflective cartoon: “If I’d died earlier, I’d be a hero; if I keep on going, I’ll probably become a coward” (zao si le shi yingxiong – zai huoxiaqu pa yao bian gouxiong). Here yingxiong “hero” is parallelled to gouxiong”coward” which by allegorical extension becomes gouxiong “to construct the male”. Hence this poem constitutes a multi-layered juncture where the concepts of “hero-coward-constructed man” imply that the formation of the “male” xiong by the film’s ideology is dependent on defining and choosing between the “heroic” and the “cowardly”. As a moment of rupture in the text “hero-coward-constructed man” indicates not only the deeper anxiety of masculinity, but moreover the film’s own construction of “manhood”.
This is reinforced by the only male figure that is coded as positive in the film ñ Zhongmin, Zhongliang’s younger brother and leader of the local resistance movement. In Zhongmin, we find a virtual repeat of Zhongliang’s initial coding as macho warrior, through his desexualised relations with women and visual parallelling to the Liangshan rebels from Water Margin. That the film goes to such extremes to rigidify the boundaries of “acceptable” masculinity is clear when we compare to the canonical left-wing films of the thirties such as Street Angel (Malu tianshi China 1933), The Big Road, (Dalu China 1932) and Crossroads (Shizi jietou China 1936), where the transition from membership in the brotherhood to sensuous lover was coded in no explicitly negative way – rather the suggestion was that “woman” was able to “tame” excessive masculinity. Where in the thirties the influence of women on men was constructive, in Spring River it is wholly destructive. The construction of “proper” masculinity in Spring River reveals a misogynist ideology that imposed a rigid definition of acceptable masculinity that excluded relationships with women in favour of the primacy of relations with men/non-women.
However, viewing ideology as riddled with contradictions not all of which can be successfully contained, alerts the reader to seek out alternative ways to identify the competing ideological discourses in the text. Where I have highlighted the potential to read moments of excess as ruptures in the portrayal of Sufen, so too, the figure of a weakened male protagonist also raises possible alternative interpretations. [82] The absence of a significant male protagonist can function to displace audience identification onto the surrounding characters, in this case the three women, Lizhen, Sufen or Wenyan. Here I think we can locate an intriguing textual role played out in the figure of Wenyan.
The first thing to notice about Wenyan is that she can’t be easily located in one category of the virgin/whore split . In terms of dress and mise en scene (including her promiscuous glances and hints to Zhongliang) she is coded as femme fatale and potentially destructive. But in that she is incapable of exerting any controlling influence over men, she is coded as wife/mother. Moreover, the film style acts to suggest her vulnerability and imply that she is as much a victim as Sufen. Scenes such as when Wenyan is excluded from her own bedroom as her lover, Zhongliang, and Lizhen kiss inside constitute a “moment of truth” [83] as a shot-reverse shot sequence brings us close to her feelings of abandonment and suffering. This is made even more explicit when Wenyan visits her husband in gaol. As the camera (located in a corridor between the two rows of bars) pans wildly between Wenyan and her husband, the distinction between free and convicted is blurred, such that the bars of the gaol seem as much to represent the oppression of patriarchal ideology that operate on Wenyan as the forces of Law that discipline her husband. In this brief second of misrecognition, the point is made that while men only have to face bars in gaol, women face invisible bars and boundaries in every moment of their lives.
Furthermore, it is through moments of truth like these, that portray the suffering of bourgeois women under the patriarchy of their own class, that the experience of patriarchy becomes generalisable to all subordinate women across society – by extension, patriarchy is endemic to the cultural system and not merely to a political structure that locates oppression in one class and innocence in another. It is through marginal figures such as Wenyan in this film that we can see the undermining of the one-sided portrayal of the bourgeois. This also points us to look at the male-dominated social structures that enforce and reproduce female subordination.
Does this mean that in the division of identification between male and female, bourgeois and proletariat, the text is necessarily schizophrenic? No, as it is not guaranteed that any spectator will choose to assume any or all of these viewing positions. Rather my intention is to point to the conflicting ideological currents that operate beneath the surface unity of the text and in that way uncover some of the residual meanings and interpretations that continue to give viewing pleasure today. And that while the anxiety of masculinity has resulted in the representation of women that confines them to stereotypes, the displacement of male authority as the textual centre also opens the text to subversive readings that point to the very structures that enforce the subordination of women.
Conclusion
It is not difficult to see that the complexity of Spring River exceeds that which can be summed up in one category such as “progressive”. Whether seen from the production and reception context that marked Spring River simultaneously as a site for alternative anti-government discourse and as a site for traditional orthodox discourse, or from the construction of “woman” and “man” that also revealed the very anxieties of a patriarchy in transformation, a description that does justice to Spring river cannot be summed up in blanket terms like “progressive” or “misogynist”. Instead, although the film’s dominant ideology seeks to impose a hegemonic definition of “masculinity” and “femininity” that constructed political actors in place of sexual beings, neither go uncontested and the very raising of male emasculation and female empowerment constitute slippages that can reveal and question the constructions themselves. As a film full of overlap and ruptures at the intersection of discourses, Spring River stands as an intriguing example of the shifting ideological tensions to be found in the continued re-assessment of Chinese film history.
Endnotes:
[1] On first release in October 1947 the film broke box office records, and continued to be rescreened through the rest of the immediate post war years. The film was re-released in 1956, ten years after its production, and again in 1979 – both occasions marked by the publication of commemorative articles (see Zheng Junli “Why I made A Spring River Flows East” (Wo weishenme paishe Yijiang chunshui xiang dong liu), People’s Daily (Renmin ribao), 23-24, September 1956, and Zhu Jinming, “Remembering old friends as the spring river flows east” (Chunshui dongliu yi guren) Popular Cinema (Dazhong dianuing), no.2, 1979). The popularity among overseas audiences is also testified to by Leo Ou-Fan Lee (“The tradition of modern Chinese cinema: some preliminary explorations and hypotheses” in Berry, Chris (ed.), Perspectives on Chinese Cinema[London: British Film Institute, 1991], who remarks that the film was a highlight at a retrospective of Chinese films held in Berkeley in the early 1980s.
[2] See Jay Leyda, Dianying: An Account of Films and the Film Audience in China [Cambridge: MIT Press 1972], Chapters 4 and 5.
[3] Du Yunzhi, History of Film in the Republic of China (Zhonghua minguo dianying shi) [Taipei: Committee for Cultural Construction of the Administrative Yuan 1988] [minguo 77). See Chapters 14, 15 and 16.
[4] The characteristics of Hollywood studios addressed here are those described by Janet Staiger in “Chapter two: the Hollywood mode of production to 1930” in David Bordwell, Janet Staiger and Kristin Thompson, The Classical Hollywood cinema: Film Style and Mode of Production to 1960 [London: Routledge and Kegan Paul 1985].
[5] Cheng Jihua, Li Shaobai and Xing Zuwen, History of the Development of Chinese film (Zhongguo dianying fazhan shi)[Beijing: China Film 1963].
[6]Cheng et. al. .
[7]D u Heng, “Cinema chronicles”, Tien hsia Monthly , October 1938, 291-4; November 1939, 383-86.
[8] Paul Clark, Chinese Cinema: Culture and Politics since 1949[Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1987].
[9] Cheng et al, 209, quoting Yang Hansheng “The progressive film and drama movements in the KMT-controlled areas” (Speech given at the inaugural National Cultural Conference, July 1949).
[10] Cheng et al, 253-256.
[11] See biographies in China Filmmaker Society, Film History Research Division (ed) Collection of Biographies on Chinese Film Artists (Zhongguo dianyingjia liezhuan) [Beijing: Chinese Film 1982]; entries on Cai Chusheng, vol. 1, 338-349, Zheng Junli, vol. 2, 286-297.
[12] Janet Staiger, “Mass produced photo plays: economic and signifying practices in the first years of Hollywood” in Bill Nichols (ed), Movies and Methods (Volume 2) [Berkeley: University of California Press 1985].
[13] Zheng Junli, Talking Outside the Frame (Huawai Yin) [Beijing: Chinese Film 1979] 5.
[14] Bonnie S. McDougall, Mao Zedong’s “Talks at the Yan’an Conference on Literature and Art”: A Translation of the 1943 text with commentary [Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press 1980], 64, 68; for further discussion on how the Talks related to film production see Leyda, 152-158.
[15] The Lute relates the story of a scholar who leaves his elderly parents in the care of his wife, to travel to the capital to undertake the imperial examinations. Upon his success he remains in the capital and is betrothed reluctantly to the daughter of the prime minister; for a translation see Jean Mulligan Kao Ming’s pipa ji – The Lute [New York: Columbia University Press 1980]. A film of The Lute was made in 1939 as part of a wave of costume films in “Orphan Island” Shanghai [Cheng et al. 103]. Zheng Junli, co-director of Spring River, denies a conscious relation between the plots [Zheng 1956].
[16] Cheng et al., 154-9.
[17] Cheng et al., 159.
[18] Cheng et al., 152-3.
[19] C.J. North,”The Chinese motion picture market “, Trade Information Bulletin no. 467 , US Department of Commerce, Bureau of Foreign and Domestic Commerce, 1927.
[20] “Notice to the audiences of the western district on the presentation of A Spring River Flows East at the Peace Theatre by Kunlun Film Production Company”, Shen bao, 8 November 1947.
[21] North.
[22] Cheng et al., 162.
[23] Leyda; North: “the whole setting [in foreign films] is strange to them [the Chinese audience] – the furniture, clothes and all the equipment that goes into making the foreign movie. Lastly the actual actions of the person appearing and even the situation itself are often completely foreign to them”, p. 21. This eyewitness account was written in the 1920s so may not have been true twenty years later, however it does give us an idea of some contemporary opinions about foreign films.
[24] By “screen days” I mean the sample number of cinemas screening in October/November multiplied by the number of days in October and November (ie 26×61).
[25] Cheng et al., 222.
[26] Mary Ann Doane, The Desire to Desire: The Woman’s Films of the 1940s [Bloomington: Indiana University Press 1987], 3.
[27] Doane, 3.
[28] Films such as Eight Thousand Miles, Remembering South of the River (Yi jiangnan), Mother and Son (Mu yu zi), Man Without a Name (Wuming shi), used wartime as a backdrop for narratives on family separation and unity; other films such as Diary on Returning Home (Huanxiang riji), Spring Heavenly Dreams (Tiantang chunmeng), Light of Ten Thousand Homes (Wanjia denghuo) soberly considered the plight of the family or couples in postwar Shanghai society and other films, Fake Phoenix (Jiafeng xuhuang), Quick Son in law for Cheng Long(Chenglong kuaixifu), treated a similar topic in a satirical manner.
[29] Without sex-disaggregated data on audience attendances we are at a loss to determine what extent of the audience was made up by women. However, given the perception and practice of film as a “non-elite” activity and its close association with advertising discourses that targeted the “consuming woman”, film and film-going may have constituted a “site” for the expression of female desire. This opens the possibility for a female mode of spectatorship; see Doane.
[30] This isn’t to suggest that “independence” in Hollywood films wasn’t also dictated by society, nor that the quest for individual self-determination wasn’t also a factor in Chinese films; actually the two overlap in strikingly similar ways in terms of sacrifice and choices.
[31] Wang Suping “Investigating films of the forties through the shifts in film periodicals” (Cong dianying qikan yanbian tantao sishi niandai dianying), Contemporary Cinema (Dangdai dianying), no. 2, 1996, 35-40.
[32] Advertisement for Eight Thousand Miles, Shen bao, February 1947.
[33] Advertisement for A Spring River Flows East, Shen bao, 8 October 1947.
[34] Advertisement for Mother and Son, Shen bao, 22 October 1947.
[35] See Cheng et al., Xu Daoming and Sha Sipeng A Short History of Chinese Film (Zhongguo dianying jianshi) [Beijing: China Youth Publishing House 1990] and articles like “Imperialist American films ruined my youth”, Popular Cinema, 10 April 1950, p11.
[36] For a narrative rendering of the filmscript see Cai Chusheng and Zheng Junli “A Spring River Flows East ” in An Anthology of Chinese Filmscripts since the May Fourth Movement (Wusi yilai zhongguo dianying juben wenxuan) [Beijing: Chinese Film Publishing House 1979], 83-230; for plot synopses see Tony Rayns and Scott Meek, Electric Shadows: 45 years of Chinese Cinema[London: British Film Institute 1980] F10-12; also Cheng et al., 217-218.
[37] Liu Xiang, Biographies of Women (Lienu Zhuan Sibu Beiyao version). For discussion see Marina H. Sung, “The Chinese Liehnu tradition” in Richard W. Guisso and Stanley Johannesen (eds.),Women in China: Current Directions in Historical Scholarship [New York: Edwin Mellen Press 1981].
[38] Sung, 68.
[39] Sung, 68.
[40] Zheng Junli 1979; the filmmakers were also sure to glorify Sufen in this scene by shooting her at an upward tilt to “magnify her strength”.
[41] Judith Stacey, Patriarchy and Socialist Revolution in China[Berkeley: University of California Press 1983]; Margery Wolf, “Women and suicide”, in Margery Wolf and Roxane Witke (eds.),Women in Chinese Society[Stanford: Stanford University Press 1975], 111-142.
[42] See Frank Dikotter, Sex, Culture and Modernity in China: Medical Science and the Construction of Sexual Identities in the Early Republican Period[London: Hurst and Co. 1995], 2; Elisabeth Croll, Feminism and Socialism in China[London: Routledge and Kegan Paul 1978], 153-184.
[43] Stacey, Croll.
[44] Mark Elvin, “Female virtue and the state in China”, in Mark Elvin, Another History: Essays on China from a European Perspective [Sydney: Wild Peony 1996], 302-351; see also Rey Chow, Woman and Chinese Modernity: The Politics of Reading between West and East[Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press 1991], 59.
[45] Stacey, 162, 77.
[46] Elvin, 330.
[47] Quoting from Lu Xun’s 1918 essay “My views on chastity”, Ann E. McLaren, The Chinese Femme Fatale: Stories from the Ming Period [Sydney: Wild Peony 1994], 15; the relation between the standards of femininity and foreign ‘others” is also addressed in Patricia Ebrey “Women, marriage and the family in Chinese history” in Paul S. Ropp (ed.), Heritage of China: Contemporary Perspectives on Chinese Civilisation [Berkeley: University of California Press 1990], 197-223.
[48] Elvin, 348.
[49] Roxane Witke ,”Mao Tsetung, women and suicide”, in Marilyn B. Young (ed.), Women in China: Studies in Social Change and Feminism [Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press 1973], 18.
[50] See Meng Yue, “Female image and national myth”, in Tani E. Barlow (ed.), Gender Politics in Modern China: Writing and Feminism [Durham: Duke University Press 1993] and Yue Ming-Bao, “Gendering the origins of modern Chinese fiction”, in Lu Tonglin (ed.), Gender and Sexuality in Twentieth Century Literature and Society [Albany: State University of New York Press 1993] for examples in other contexts. Another significant aspect of the suicide is that we do not see it happen, which both hides the violence that may alert an audience to the dual nature of Sufen’s victimisation, and increases the audience complicity in the silence of her death and life.
[51] See Thomas Elsaesser, “Tales of sound and fury”, in Nichols (ed), 1985, 165-189; Paul G. Pickowicz “Melodramatic representation and the May Fourth tradition of Chinese cinema”, in Ellen Widmer and David Der-Wei Wang (eds.), From May fourth to June fourth: Fiction and Film in twentieth century China [Cambridge: Harvard University Press 1993].
[52] Andrew H. Plaks, “Towards a critical theory of Chinese narrative”, in Andrew H. Plaks (ed.), Chinese Narrative: Critical and Theoretical Essays [Princeton: Princeton University Press 1977].
[53] E. Ann Kaplan, Women and Film – Both Sides of the Camera[New York: Methuen 1983], 7.
[54] Liu Xiang.
[55] Sung, 73.
[56] McLaren, 15.
[57] McLaren, 15.
[58] Mary Ann Doane, Femmes Fatales: Feminism, Film Theory, Psychoanalysis [New York: Routledge 1991], 3.
[59] Dikkotar: “Human anatomy was claimed to sanction the new division of duties in which man was the brain, the worker in public domain and woman was the womb, the wife and mother of the private sphere”, p. 29.
[60] Tani E.Barlow, “Theorising woman: funu, guojia, jiating(Chinese woman, Chinese state, Chinese family)” in Angels Zito and Tani E. Barlow (eds.), Body, Subject and Power in China[Chicago: University of Chicago Press 1994], 267.
[61] Barlow, 267; see also Yi-tsi Feuerwerker, “Women as writers in 1920s and 1930s”, in Wolf and Witke, 1975, 143-168, and Dikkotar on how Western medicine was used to explain female madness.
[62] See Witke;Yue.
[63] Stephen Ching-Kiu Chan “The language of despair: ideological representations of the ‘new-woman’ by May Fourth writers”, in Tani E. Barlow (ed.),Gender Politics in Modern China: Writing and Feminism [Durham: Duke University Press], 1993: “the reason for your suffering is to be found in my own inability to right the wrongs that society has done me”, p. 21.
[64] This paragraph and ones following takes as inspiration a comparison between left-wing films and American film noir produced after 1945. Besides the parallels between male and female representations that I present here (in terms of the femme fatale and “absent” hero), there are some further intriguing similarities between the two movements: firstly, both explicitly assume an “alternative” stance – left-wing films as an alternative to the KMT and Hollywood products, and film noir less overtly as an alternative to the unified and prettified picture of individual and social interaction found in mainstream Hollywood films. As films of exposure both aim to question normal social relations between classes or between sexes. And while some films seek to impose or offer solutions such as Marxist ideology, both for the bulk remain generally bleak and depressing; see the monograph E. Ann Kaplan (ed.) Women in Film Noir [London: BFI Publishing 1978].
[65] Richard Dyer notes that while the American film noir investigates the woman, it also expresses “a certain anxiety over the existence and definition of masculinity and normality”; Richard Dyer, “Resistance through charisma: Rita Hayworth and Gilda”, in Kaplan, 1978, 91.
[66] Plaks 1977, 345 .
[67] Advertisement for A Spring River Flows East, Shen bao, 9 October 1942. The focus on ‘woman” was an important factor common to most advertising for Chinese films at the time. We can also bear in mind that the trend of thirties ‘woman’s films” (eg Three Modern Women, New Woman [Xin nuxing], The Goddess [Shennu]) was also continued in the late forties in films like Beauties Stepping Out (Liren xing China 1948),Troubles in the New Boudoir (Xingui Yuan China 1946) and Desire (Yuwang China 1947).
[68] See Chow 51.
[69] Keith McMahon “The classic ‘beauty-scholar’ romance and the superiority of the talented woman”, in Zito and Barlow (eds.), 230.
[70] For an analysis of the intersections between gender, modernity and national salvation in thirties films see Zhang Yingjin The City in Modern Chinese Literature and Film: Configurations of Space, Time and Gender[Stanford: Stanford University Press 1996], 185-207.
[71] In reference to thirties left-wing melodramas Ma Ning notes “The adoption of the classical codes presents the female protagonist in these films as the object of male desire. Their bodies are the battlegrounds where the power struggle between opposing social forces is waged”; Ma Ning, “The textual and critical difference of being radical: reconstructing Chinese leftist films of the 1930s”, Wide Angle , vol. 11, no. 2, 1989, 26.
[72] See Tian Han, “Remembering south of the river” in The Collected works of Tian Han, vol. 10 [Beijing: Chinese Drama Publishing House 1984], 213-290.
[73] Zhang Yingjin 1996.
[74] See Mrinalini Sinha, Colonial Masculinity: The “Manly Englishman” and the “Effeminate Bengali” in the Late Nineteenth Century [Manchester: Manchester University Press 1995].
[75] Such an observation has been overlooked in most feminist challenges of patriarchy in China, such as Stacey and Croll, who tend to assume a linear jump from Confucian to Maoist patriarchy without considering the impact that colonial patriarchy had on local experiences. Moreover, Chinese literature had been manifesting the impact of colonisation through images of castrated masculinity well before Japanese occupation, for instance the lead character Lu Xun’s The True Story of Ah Q , a self-proclaimed revolutionary whose defeats at the hands of others are re-interpreted by him into psychological victories. (Thanks to Chris Berry for pointing this out to me).
[76] Croll, 158.
[77] Merle Goldman Literary Dissent in Communist China [New York: Atheneum 1971], 25-26.
[78] “For the continuation of the human race, the glory of our nation and especially the construction for the descendants of the present generation, we must respect and advocate motherhood”; Zhou Enlai, “On ‘virtuous wife good mother’ and the role of motherhood”, Lun “xianqi liangmu” yu muzhi Liberation daily (Jiefang Ribao), (Yenan) 20 November 1942.
[79] This was a common theme in other films of the period such as Troubles in the New Boudoir (Xingui yuan China 1946) and Eight Thousand Miles, where “family” or “independence” were represented as conflicting choices.
[80] Though I have yet to see a work where this idea is fully explicated, this is mainly abstracted from some observations made in Andrew Plaks, The Four Masterworks of the Ming Novel (Ssu ta ch’i-shu) [Princeton: Princeton University Press 1987], 152, 332; some further insights on this pattern is discerned in Perry E. Link Jr., Mandarin Ducks and Butterflies: Popular Fiction in Early Twentieth Century Chinese Cities[Berkeley: University of California Press 1981], 67 (note 63), 77 (note 87).
[81] Tracing this dichotomy out it is not intended to impose a hierarchical value on either side, asserting one as positive and the other as negative, nor to categorise a character as solely one or the other. Rather I am interested in how at different times representations of men can shift between the two types and that often it is from these shifts that we can detect the ideological value that is allocated to the different types of masculinity.
[82] See Dyer for an analysis of how this operates in Gilda, from which the following is abstracted.
[83] Dyer.