Dissemination of Party Values in Relation to the Film Industry in China - Essay Example

Introduction Chinese film has evolved over the years, although it has always reflected the vision of the ruling class. Before 1949, which is the year that the People’s Republic of China was formed, the Chinese ruling class was interested in portraying traditional values, and the Chinese films during this era reflected this. In particular, there was a threat to traditional Chinese values by the West, and a return to traditional Chinese values is what was vaunted by the films during the pre-Communist period, particularly the 1930s. This all changed, as the Communist Party took over and took total control over the media in China, including films. In place of the traditionalist view was a view of a revolutionary. Traditionalist portrayals of patriarchal families and submissive women were pushed aside in favor of films which portrayed a liberated woman and a family which was not traditional. Collectiveness replaced individualism in these films, and the heroes of these films were socialists and revolutionaries. In this way, the Chinese films have evolved along with the Chinese society, and these films were a way of disseminating the values of the power elites who were in charge during given times in Chinese history. Discussion Chinese film portrays the values of the dominant political party in that these films are focused upon the socialism of the Chinese government and the Chinese people and Western thought and ideals are de-emphasized or denigrated (Hsiao-peng Lu, 1997, p. 7). Pickowicz (1991) refers to these values as “the theme of spiritual pollution,” and states that the Chinese films often portray the conflict between traditional Chinese values and “evil” Western values in a broad way, using symbolism to portray the conflict between these two ideals. Pickowicz studied several Chinese films of the 1930s. The first film that he covers is titled Peach Blossom Weeps Tears of Blood. In this film, a young, innocent Chinese country maiden meets a handsome city man who falls in love with her and wants to marry her. However, the mother of the man does not feel that the maiden is good enough. Nonetheless, the couple moves in together and the girl becomes urbanized, wearing makeup and dressing in city-style dress. The woman is pregnant, but the man’s mother puts him under house arrest and sends the woman away. The woman somehow dies, and, at the funeral, the families are united. A Dream in Pink is another movie with similar themes, although the conflict between country and city, traditional Chinese and Western, good and evil, is broader. In A Dream in Pink, a simple writer with a virtuous wife, falls in love with a city girl who embodies Western values – smoking, drinking, wearing makeup, wearing provocative clothing and dancing to Western music. The writer leaves his wife, marries the Western-style woman, the Western-style woman gets bored and dumps the man, the man comes running back to the wife, and the wife forgives him (Pickowicz, 1991, pp. 40-46). Pickowicz states that these films were ways that the Chinese government imparted the values that Western influence is wrong, and traditional Chinese ways are correct. In these two films, the people from the country are portrayed as virtuous and innocent, and, according to Pickowicz, these people represented traditional China. The city people, with their Western style hair, clothing and life, are portrayed as evil and corrupting, and these people represent the Western influence on traditional Chinese life (Pickowicz, 1991, p. 45). Thus, the party values of tradition over modernity and Western influence are the conflicts which are portrayed in these films, and the message is clear – Chinese people should not turn their backs on tradition and modernity, especially Western modernity, and must hold true to traditional Chinese values. These films promote a particularly nationalistic vision of China, and resistance to Western thought and values are central to them. Other films portray this kind of nationalism as well. Farquhar & Berry (2004) examines four films about Opium War, which speaks “bitterness against Western imperialism in China” (Farquhar & Berry, 2004, p. 124). In the first film, Eternal Flame (1943), the English are portrayed in a racist manner, as Chinese people portrayed the English with large nose prostheses and curly wigs. Moreover, British merchants are seen as opium pushers, and a young girl reveals how opium addiction ruined herself and her family. The other versions, made in 1959, therefore after the advent of the People’s Republic of China, portrayed the ruling class in a harsh way (Farquhar & Berry, 2004, p. 126). While the films that were made prior to the founding of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) were clearly extolling the ruling party’s vision that Chinese nationalism is paramount, and Westernization is evil, the founding of the PRC in 1949 introduced additional narratives in Chinese films. As stated above, the versions of the Opium Wars which were made after 1949 showed the ruling class to be the villains, as opposed to the Westerners. Cinema, in general, became an arm of the state and was the key to fostering mass culture in Maoist China (Hsao-peng Lu, 1997, p. 6). The Communist message was spread through every arm of the media, as propaganda, and the film industry was just one arm to spread the message (Shambaugh, 2007, p. 25). The Communist Party that formed in 1949 recognized film as a medium which would reach a large number of people, therefore could be used for education and mobilization (Clark, 1083, p. 305). At this point, the Chinese government imposed its political message upon filmmakers, or the themes emphasized by the Communist party were implied by these filmmakers (Ye & Yimou, 1999, p. 3). Therefore, at this time, the Chinese films shifted its focus from the evils of Westernization to the evils of imperialism, feudalism and capitalism, and, instead of portraying the traditional Chinese as virtuous and good, socialism and the values founding socialism were portrayed in this light (Hsao-peng Lu, 1997, p. 7). It was during this time that China began importing films which portrayed the values that the new Chinese state wanted to extol, and the Soviet Union supplied a great many films during the early period of the PRC, from 1949-1957 (Mai-Chen, 2004, p. 85). The Communist control of the Chinese movie industry was a fact of life until the early ‘90s, when economic pressure on the industry forced reforms (Jihong & Kraus, 2002, p. 420). Actually, the Communistic themes came earlier in Chinese cinema then 1949. The theme of Communism is the diminishment of the individual, and the rise of the collective, and this is a theme which was embodied in a movie which was made during the period of time that China emphasized nationalism instead of Communism. Titled Queen of Sports, and made by a leftist director, this movie tells the story of a young girl who leaves home for a special school for female athletes, and dreams of being a championship sprinter. As with the earlier films made during this period, the evils of Westernization are emphasized, as the young girl falls in with a Western crowd, and proceeds to smoke, drink, dance and fornicate. However, in the end, she decides that her pursuing a personal goal is wrong, and resolves to help others as a physical education teacher. Pickowicz (1991) sees the girl’s decision to give up her personal dream to help others as symbolic, in that the girl is turning her back on the bourgeoisie in favor of the good of the collective (Pickowicz, 1991, p. 50). Thus, the Chinese cinema foreshadowed the themes to come in the post-Communist era. The films made after the founding of the PRC were decidedly different in theme from the earlier films which extol traditional Chinese virtues. In this case, traditional Chinese themes and virtues were shown to be wrong, with the new socialist ethics portrayed to be correct. In the early days of the Communist party, the themes emphasized a kind of utopian theme of the raising of people’s consciousness (Zhao). Weakland (1966) states that the themes that run through the films post-1949 show traditional Chinese large families as being ridiculous, and small families are highlighted as the ideal; traditional Chinese ways of dealing with women, such as arranging marriage and allowing husbands to control the wives, are seen as oppressive to women and the State is shown as the liberator and assistant to young women; officials and landlords are shown to be oppressors, subject to bribery, physical brutality and injustice; and reactionary figures, revolutionaries, are shown as heroes who strive for independence against the current ruling class. The need for social cooperation is also highlighted, even as individualism is denigrated. Modern education is emphasized over traditional education, as traditional education is seen only as a tool to gain status and power (Weakland, 1966, pp. 480-481). Weakland (1971) reviewed some of the films which fit the above themes. The films made after 1949 featured women as heroines of resistance, including the story of Mu-Lan, in which a young girl poses as a boy, in order to fight in place of her aging father. This is a role, of course, which is familiar to Western audiences because of the Disney portrayal. Weakland also states that, in reviewing the Communist films, women hold a more prominent position then did the men in these films. Moreover, women are featured not just in more films then men, but, in the films that they are in, their roles are considerably more intense than that of the male in the film. They are also mainly portrayed as oppressed (Weakland, 1971, p. 456). Because women’s liberation is such a prominent theme in post-communist China, these films also deconstruct the traditional Chinese family, which was patriarchal. The family portrayed after 1949 emphasizes the importance of the mother over that of the father, and criticized the traditional family as being oppressive to women (Weakland, 1971, p. 460). The Chinese film portrayals as an arm of the government and society may be contrasted with how the Western world, in particular the United States, made their films. While the Chinese films espoused the values which the Communist Party would like to convey, as well as the values, prior to the advent of the Communist Party, that the Chinese government wanted for the people, Western film tends more towards showing gritty realism and showing things in a decidedly less Utopian light. Far from demonstrating the values that were desired in society, Western films, rather, show the degradation of society and the values which are not desirable, yet are realistic. There is one example that will be used to illustrate this point. Bogdanovich's Last Picture Show was the antithesis of 1950's values. The 1950s, in America, was a time of prosperity, and the typical image of this era was that of the nuclear family – mother, father, two rascally boys, a dog and a house in the suburbs. This was the image that society wanted to portray of this era. Yet, it was truly a hoax, as women were oppressed during this era and, even within the “perfect” nuclear family, there was a great deal of unhappiness. This was particularly true of women, who had the pressure of keeping up the happy-family facade and were discouraged in having any life outside the home. This led to women being particularly depressed, often drowning their sorrows in alcohol and pills (Coontz, 1997). The Last Picture Show pulled back the facade of the idyllic 1950s household in spectacular fashion. This film centered around the lives of two boys, Sonny and Duane, who live in a small town in Texas. On the outside, these two boys are typical “All-American” boys – they play football, Duane is going into the army to fight the Korean War, and both boys are clean-cut and handsome. Also featured is the typical “All-American” girl, Jacy. Blonde, beautiful, rich and popular, Jacy is the very portrait, on the outside, of a the ideal 1950s girl. Her wealthy family, beautiful mother and successful father round out the picture. In short, the main characters in this film seem to be, on the outside, the idyllic characters envisioned by 1950s society. Yet the characters are not ideal at all. Far from it. Sonny is sleeping with the 40ish wife of his coach. The wife falls in love with Sonny, as she is apparently starved for attention from her husband, yet Sonny treats her very callously – Sonny just drops her one day without explanation, devastating the woman. Jacy isn't much better, in fact, she is far worse. She strips naked on a diving board in front of about 50 other kids her age. She sleeps with a friend of her father's on a pool table just because she is bored. She uses Duane to get to another boy, as she was determined to have sex with Duane just because the other boy doesn't want a virgin. She elopes with Sonny, then makes sure that her father uses the law to fetch her back. She is vain, self-centered and conceited. Her beautiful mother, meanwhile, is drunk every night and having an affair. Her marriage to Jacy's father is loveless at best, and Jacy's mother is extremely unhappy. Duane's biggest faux pas is that he puts a retarded child up to having sex with the town prostitute, then laughs when the prostitute cruelly taunts the boy during the sex act. In short, the characters act very contrary to how society would have portrayed the era, instead showing, in a perhaps exaggerated way, how society really was. While the Chinese films described above present an idealized image of society, in accordance with what its government wants to portray to its citizens, Western film does not try to espouse decent values. The Last Picture Show is just one example of this trend, but it is one that is wide-spread in Western film. Conclusion Chinese films have changed over the years to reflect the changing of both society and power in China. The changes in the cinema have not all been bad, though. In particular, the emphasis on women’s liberation is refreshing, as the earlier films portrayed the submissive woman as being the ideal. This is just one change which has come to the Chinese cinema, after the Communist takeover of the government in 1949. At any rate, the Chinese cinema industry was treated as an arm of propaganda, and as a way of disseminating the message of the revolution. As such, it represents the evolution of the Chinese film. Sources Used Clark, P. (1983) Film-making in China: From the cultural revolution to 1981. The China Quarterly, 94: 304-322. Farquhar, M. & Berry, C. (2004) Speaking bitterness: History, media and nation in Twentieth-Century China. Available at: http://www.sfu.ca/cmns/faculty/zhao_y/assets/documents/B10%20Zhao%20179-212%202004.pdf Fu, P. (1997) The ambiguity of entertainment: Chinese cinema in Japanese-occupied Shanghai, 1941-1945. Cinema Journal, 37.1: 66-84. Hsiao-peng Lu, S. (1997) Transnational Chinese Cinemas. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press. Jihong, W. & Kraus, R. (2002) Hollywood and China as adversaries and allies. Pacific Affairs, 75.3: 419-434. Mai-Chen, T. (2004) Internationalism and cultural experience: Soviet films and popular Chinese understandings of the future in the 1950s. Cultural Critique, 58: 82-114. Pickowicz, P. (1991) The theme of spiritual pollution in Chinese films of the 1930s. Modern China, 17.1: 38-75. Shambaugh, D. (2007) China’s propaganda system: Institutions, processes and efficacy. The China Journal, 57: 25-58. Weakland, J. (1966) Themes in Chinese Communist films. American Anthropologist, 68.2: 477-484. Weakland, J. (1971) Chinese film images of invasion and resistance. The China Quarterly, 47: 439-470. Ye, T. & Yimou, Z. (1999) From the fifth to the sixth generation: An interview with Zhang Yimou. Film Quarterly, 53.2: 2-13. Zhao, Y. The state, the market, and media control in China. Available at: http://www.sfu.ca/cmns/faculty/zhao_y/assets/documents/B10%20Zhao%20179-212%202004.pdf Read More