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Sixth Generation films and national allegory

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Sixth Generation films and national allegory

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Content SIXTH GENERATION FILMS AND NATIONAL ALLEGORY
Copyright 2004
by
Katherine Kit Ling Chu
A Thesis Presented to the
FACULTY OF THE GRADUATE SCHOOL
UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
In Partial Fulfillment of the
Requirements for the Degree
MASTER OF ARTS
(EAST ASIAN STUDIES)
August 2004
Katherine Kit Ling Chu
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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
While writing this thesis, I have received tremendous intellectual and
emotional support and encouragement from my committee members. I cannot
express my gratitude enough to Dr. Stanley Rosen, Dr. Eugene Cooper, and Dr.
Dominic Cheung, who have patiently guided me through these years of my
graduate study in East Asian Studies Center at the University of Southern
California. I have been so fortunate to have them as my mentors, who introduced
me to truly an interdisciplinary study of politics, film, culture, literature, and theory.
I would like to thank Professor Berger, Chris Evans, Grace Ryu and all my
colleagues in EASC for their supportive environment and for the opportunity to be
a Teaching Assistant. It was an invaluable experience to work as a graduate
assistant in the program. I want to thank all my friends whose advice and
encouragement have helped me to survive through my graduate study. I am grateful
to my brother and sister-in-law who have shown utmost support and care to my life
in Los Angeles. I also want to express my deepest gratitude to my father and mother
in Hong Kong, who have sent their love and support from the Pacific Ocean’s other
shore in the continuance of my education. Lastly, I would like to give a special
thanks to Dean Junio for tirelessly helping me edit my thesis; your insight was
incredibly valuable.
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS......................................................................................ii
ABSTRACT................................................................. iv
I. Introduction..............................................................................................1
II. The pioneering Sixth Generation.............................................................7
a) Definition............................................................................................... 7
b) The incoherent Sixth Generation..........................................................9
III. The socio-political background of China in the 1990s........................13
IV. Bound by the Government institutions..................................................18
V. Business and market ....................................................................23
VI. Usurping the Fifth Generation...............................................................26
a) The films of the Fifth Generation...................................................... 26
b) The films of the Sixth Generation..................................................... 30
i) Realistic style........................................................................ 31
ii) The marginalized national allegory..................................... 33
iii) A brief summary....................................................................37
VII. Case study National Allegory....................................................... 39
a) Xiao Wu.............................................................................................. 40
b) Blind Shaft [Mangjing]....................................................................45
VIII. Conclusion........................................................................................... 50
BIBLIOGRAPHY 52
APPENDICES
1 Filmography........................................................................... 57
2 Directors..................................................................................60
iii
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ABSTRACT
Chinese films made their debut on the world stage during the mid 1980s. By
the 1990s, with the winning of major awards, the films of the so-called Fifth and
Sixth Generation have become the window for westerners to observe China. The
present study first tries to briefly introduce the different definitions of the Sixth
Generation and provides a general socio-political background of China in the 1990s.
Second, by using the framework drawn by Jameson, the national allegory tries to
examine the Chinese Sixth Generation films from three perspectives. Firstly, how
the Sixth Generation films broke through the limits and maintained their own
creativity under the strict institutions. Secondly, how the Sixth Generation people
address them and survived in the face of commercialization, adoption of market
principles, and openness to the Hollywood influence. Finally, a comparison is
drawn between the films of the Fifth Generation and the Sixth Generation to
demonstrate how they were made to be the Chinese national allegory by western
orientalism and the Chinese directors’ Occidentalism. The last part of the paper is
devoted to an examination of the current cultural and social environments of the
Chinese mainland and the so-called third world countries; taking Xiao Wu (Xiaowu;
Jia Zhangke, 1997) and Blind Shaft (Mang jing; Li Yang, 2003) as examples, this
paper tries to discuss the possible national allegory the Sixth Generation films
might present.
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Nineties Chinese culture is in fact becoming a unique space, open to
crisscrossing perspectives: it is a city of mirrors. Contemporary Chinese
culture resembles a scene in the fog, transfixed between orientalism and
Occidentalism, interpellated by different, diametrically opposed power
centers, existing in a proliferating, multiple, overlapping cultural space.1
I. Introduction
Chinese films made their debut on the world stage during the mid 1980s. By
the 1990s, with the winning of major awards by such directors as Chen Kaige,
Zhang Yimou, Wang Xiaoshuai, Zhang Yuan, Jia Zhangke and Lu Xuechang in
world film festivals, the films of the so-called Fifth and Sixth Generations2 have
1 Dai, Jinhua; edited by Jing Wang and Tani E. Barlow. Cinema and Desire: Feminist Marxism and
Cultural Politics in the work o f Dai Jinhua, p. 72
2 Film periodization is a common practice in Chinese films history. Dai further notes that “various
discourse on ‘generations’ have become the labyrinthine map of the new era. In one short decade,
pcriodizing has commenced with proclamations of beginnings and endings, raptures and beginnings.
Each seeks to predict the birth of an entirely new culture and social structure. Yet each ‘generation’
steps onto the historical stage to play its part, only to step right down again. More to the point, the
discourse on ‘generations’ is not configuring contemporary China’s cultural map; it is in and of itself
an important cultural scene.” According Dai, the categorization of film directors starts from the May
Fourth generation which is the generation of liberation. But, she argues that the periodization is not
“rational” and “not known who invented the label”, (p. 71-99) However, another scholar, Semsel,
George Stephen, ed., Chinese Film: The State o f the Art in the People's Republic tries to
categorize the first five generations of Chinese directors. According to the book “Chinese film
theory: a guide to the new era” figure out a rough picture of the periodization of the first five
“ generations”. He concludes that:
1. First Generation: the pioneers before 1930s.
2. Second generation: those who developed social realism films between 1930s and 1940s.
3. Third Generation: those who did not study film but entered the industry near or shortly
after 1949, making films primarily in the 1950s and 1960s with some still working now.
4. Forth Generation: those who studied film in Beijing Film Academy before 1966 but did not
make films until after the Cultural Revolution.
5. Fifth Generation refers to a group of young filmmakers who are mostly graduates of
Beijing Film Institute in 1982.
Another scholar May, Shannon in her article, “Power and Trauma in Chinese Film: Experiences of
Zhang Yuan and the Sixth Generation”, says, “The term ‘generation’ has been used by Chinese film
historians to catalogue film directors into periods, taking into account both the time when a director
first began making films as well as directorial style and production methods. A new generation is
marked by an abrupt stylistic change that tends to coincide with the graduation of a new class of
directors from the Beijing Film Academy. The previous five periods are generally accepted as:
1
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become the window for westerners to observe China. Upon reviewing Chinese
films in the last two decades, it might be found that both the Fifth Generation and
Sixth Generation try earnestly to interpret their films as the national allegories of
China, defined by Fredric Jameson. His famous article: “Third-world Literature in
the Era of Multinational Capitalism” was originally published in Social Text in
1986. In “A Brief Response” (1987) to a critique of the essay, Jameson explained:
“The essay was intended as an intervention into a ‘first-world’ literary and critical
situation, in which it seemed important to me to stress the loss of certain literary
functions and intellectual commitments in the contemporary American scene. It
seemed useful to dramatize that loss by showing the constitutive presence of those
things - what I called narrative allegory [...] and also the political role of the
cultural intellectual - in other parts of the world.” 3 In the essay, he stressed that the
intellectuals in the third world all seem to be collectively attentive to the “national
situation, itself’ or “the name of the country”. They have the “unique
characteristic” of repeating the use of the terms “us” and “return again and again”
to ask questions like“ what we have to do”, “how can we do it”, “what can’t we do”,
and “what do we do better than this or that nationality”.4
... what all third-world cultural productions seem to have in common and
what distinguish them radically from analogous cultural forms in the first
world. All third-world texts are necessarily, I want to argue, allegorical,
1905-1932, 1932-1949, 1950-1960, 1960-1980, and 1980-1992. Once labeled as a member of a
particular generation, a director is known as being of that generation regardless of the length of his
career.” See May, Shannon. “Power and Trauma in Chinese Film: Experiences of Zhang Yuan and
the Sixth Generation” Journal for the Psychoanalysis o f Culture and Society 8.1 (2003) 156-160
3 Hardt, Michael & Weeks, Kathi ed., The Jameson Reader, p. 315
4 Jameson, Fredric. “Third World Literature in the Era of Multinational Capitalism” Social Text
15(1986): 65
2
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and in a very specific way: they are to be read as what I will call national
allegories, even when, or perhaps I should say, particularly when their
forms develop out of predominately western machineries of
representation, such as the novel..,5
.. .third-world texts, even those which are seemingly private and invested
with a properly libidinal dynamic - necessarily project a political
dimension in the form of national allegory: the story of the private
individual destiny is always an allegory of the embattled situation of the
public third-world culture and society.. 6
Lu, in his book Transnational Chinese cinemas: identity, nationhood, gender
further concluded that, “The stylistic mannerism of these films is significant in the
imaging and imagining of China as a community, for as Benedict Anderson states,
‘Communities are to be distinguished, not by their falsity/genuineness, but by the
style in which they are imagined.’ The explorations in the art of cinematography
and manner of narration in the films of the Fifth and Sixth generation directors have
contributed to the innovation of Chinese cinematic conventions and the creation of
a new film language.” 7
On the other hand, most of the Fifth and Sixth Generation films depict a
fictional “old” China that appeals to Orientalism, or an extremely personalized and
marginalized “new” China that is about to fall into turmoil and collapse. In these
films, China is a political symbol being manipulated and toyed with, while the films
themselves do not always contain any substantial political implication.
The failure of the 1989 democratic movement marked the end of the Chinese
5 Hardt, Michael & Weeks, Kathi ed., The Jameson Reader, p. 319
6 Hardt, Michael & Weeks, Kathi ed., The Jameson Reader, p. 320
7 Lu, Sheldon Hsiao-peng. Transnational Chinese cinemas: identity, nationhood, gender, p. 8
3
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cultural enlightenment movement.8 Throughout the 1990s, the whole society as
well as culture fell into an era of nihilism and meaninglessness. During that period,
the films of the Sixth Generation came into being. Similar to those of the Fifth
Generation, the films of the Sixth Generation won their reputation mostly by
winning awards in overseas film festivals, and the reports about them have been
published predominantly in overseas magazines and newspapers. Most of these
films, during the 1990s, were not readily available for general exhibition. “This
limited exposure meant they were effectively isolated from any open and informed
public discussion of their works.”9 The films of the Sixth Generation try to interpret
and ponder the society and culture in a marginalized way. The directors of the Sixth
Generation are well trained in the art of film and their works emulate those of
western masters, to some extent. It is not difficult to find some significant
pioneering in their works. The forms and themes of their works are rebelling
against the previous and contemporary orthodox modes.
Due to their intrinsic marginalization and the introduction of western
commercialized films of Hollywood, the films of the Sixth Generation have an
increasingly diminished living space. They are oversimplified as a new
“phenomenon”, irresistibly following the example of the Fifth Generation, i.e.,
induced by the fast fame and profit provided by the overseas investment in western
film festivals.
8 “The tremendous turmoil at the beginning of the nineties cast optimistic, idealistic Chinese cultural
workers into bottomless disenchantment.” Dai, Jinhua; edited by Jing Wang and Tani E. Barlow.
Cinema and Desire: Feminist Marxism and Cultural Politics in the work o f Dai Jinhua, p. 80;
also see, Lull, James. China turned on: television, reform, and resistance, p. 208-220
9 Barme, Geremie. In the red: on contemporary Chinese culture, p. 197
4
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Western festival programmers and art-house distributors, for example,
welcome Chinese independent films for their ‘transgressive qualities’. These
‘qualities’ depend specifically on commitment to independent filmmaking and thus
to subverting mainstream production and official censorship. Such iconoclastic
performances meet the need of international film circles in the desire for a new
‘other’ to succeed the fifth generation as a new vocabulary to define Chinese
cinema.”1 0
The Sixth Generation was born as a child of the Fifth Generation and its
indulgence of the western world and Western Orientalism was its sin that could not
be atoned. Most of the works of the Sixth Generation were only shown in western
film festivals or foreign embassies in Beijing and never entered the main stream.
Those that did come into the mainstream cinema were sealed books for the
audience. Dramatically and ironically, the films of the Sixth Generation themselves
have come to be marginalized. The theme of the Sixth Generation films is that of
alienated individuals in a rapidly developing economy, roving in the cities and
being an indispensable part of the city. Accordingly, they try to demonstrate the
special margin of Chinese society and culture. The subject of this kind of
marginalized culture prevailed in the Chinese intellectual society in the 1990s and
illuminated the stubborn Western views of the East.
The present study first tries to briefly introduce the different definitions of the
Sixth Generation and provide a general socio-political background of China in the
1990s. Second, by using the model developed by Jameson, the national allegory
1 0 Cui, Shuqin. Women through the lens: gender and nation in a century o f Chinese cinema, p. 89
5
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framework tries to examine the Chinese Sixth Generation films from three
perspectives. Firstly, how the Sixth Generation films broke through the limits and
maintained their own creativity under the strict institutions. Secondly, how the
Sixth Generation people address them and survived in the face of
commercialization, adoption of market principles, and openness to the Hollywood
influence. Finally, a comparison is drawn between the films of the Fifth Generation
and the Sixth Generation to demonstrate how they were made to be the Chinese
national allegory by Western Orientalism and the Chinese directors’ Occidentalism.
The last part of the paper is devoted to an examination of the current cultural and
social environments of the Chinese mainland and the so-called third world
countries; taking Xiao Wu (Xiaowu; JiaZhangke, 1997) and Blind Shaft (Mang jing;
Li Yang, 2003) as examples, this paper tries to discuss the possible national
allegories the Sixth Generation films might present.
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II. The pioneering Sixth Generation
a) Definition
Since the birth of the Fifth Generation, the Chinese academic circles tend to
conduct analysis by “generation” and expect the rise of the Sixth Generation as the
natural result of the Fifth Generation. However, it is not an easy job to define the
Sixth Generation. Various titles have been lavishly given to the Sixth Generation,
such as underground films, independent films, new generation films, situation films,
dissident films, new imagist movement, and new urban films.
In the narrow sense, “Sixth Generation” refers to the 1989 graduates of the
11 • 12 13
Beijing Film Academy, including Zhang Yuan , Wang Xiaoshuai , Lou Ye , Lu
Xuechang1 4 , Hu Xueyang1 5 , Liu Bingjian, Tang Danian, and Li Jixian. Hu Xueyang
1 1 Zhang Yuan was born in Nanjing in 1963. He graduated from the Beijing Film Academy in 1989
(Faculty of Cinematography). Since his debut in 1990, he made consecutive Award-winning
features: Mama (1990), Beijing Bastards (1992), The Square (1994), Sons (1996) , East Palace,
West Palace (1996), Crazy English (1999), Seventeen Years (1999), Adoption (2001), 1 Love You
(2001), Green Tea (2003), and Jiang Jie (2004). He is also an active MTV producer and director.
1 2 Wang Xiaoshuai was born in Shanghai in 1966, Wang Xiaoshuai is considered as one of the most
talented young filmmakers in China. Grown up in Guizhou, Wang studied film directing at the
Beijing Film Academy from 1985 to 1989. “With fellow thirty-something directors Zhang Yuan, Jia
Zhangke, and Zhang Ming, Wang Xiaoshuai is establishing a new kind of mainland cinema that
explores both the odd and average characters of contemporary urban Chinese life. Zhang Yimou and
Chen Kaige nothing like the allegorical period pieces like those create these pictures in the 1980s.
Hidden meanings are few and far between. Mostly, for these young directors, what you see is what
you get.” See: http://www.asianfilms.org/china/wangxiaoshuai/index.html
His famous works included The Days (Dongchun de rizi, 1993), Frozen (Jidu hanleng, 1995), So
Close to Paradise (Biandan guniang, 1996), Suburban Dreams (Menghuan tianyuan, 1999), Beijing
Bicycle (Shiqisui de danche, 2001) and most recently Award-winnings feature Drifters (Erdi, 2003)
1 3 Bom in 1965 in Shanghai, Lou Ye studied film directing at the Beijing Film Academy from 1985
to 1989. He worked as a producer and assistant director on various productions and made several
short films after graduation. In 1993 he made his first feature film, Weekend Lover (Zhoumo
qingren). His second feature is Girl in Danger (Weiqing shaonu, 1995). After the critically
acclaimed Suzhou River (Suzhou He, 2000), Lou Ye made his fourth feature Purple Butterfly (Zi
Hudie, 2003).
1 4 Lu was bom on June 25, 1964 in Beijing. A film director at the Beijing Film Studio, Lu figures
prominently among the sixth generation directors and is one of China’s most promising young
talents. He attended the high school under the Central Academy of Fine Arts where he studied
painting for four years. Upon graduation, he entered the Directing Department of the Beijing Film
7
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declared, on the occasion of the production of ,4 Lady Left Behind (Liushou Ntishi)
by Shanghai Film Studio in 1991 that, “the students of the five classes that
graduated in the year 1989 comprise the Sixth Generation of the Chinese films.”
They are the apparent inheritors of the Fifth Generation, especially since they
possess credentials from the only university dedicated to filmmaking in China.
The Sixth Generation, in the broad sense also includes the 1991 graduates
Guan Hu, Li Xin, Wang Quan’an and Zhang Ming1 6 (who stayed in college as a
teacher). Wang Chao1 7 , and Jia Zhangke1 8 are members, who entered the Beijing
Film Academy in 1992, and the graduates of the Central Theatrical College at the
Academy where he graduated in 1990. Lu has directed The Making o f Steel (Zhangda chengren,
1997) and A Lingering Face (Feichang xiari, 2000). Cala, My Dog (Kala shi tiao gou, 2003) is his
third full-length feature.
1 5 Hu Xueyang was born in Shanghai in 1963. He is a film director graduate. Important feature films
included, A Lady Left Behind{Liushou Ntishi, 1991), The Perished Youth (Yanmo de qingchun,
1994), The Morning Glory Flower (Qianniu hua, 1995), Sin (Zuie, 1996), Ice andFire (Bingyuhuo,
2000).
1 6 Born on June 4, 1961 in China’s Sichuan Province, Zhang Ming spent his childhood by green
mountains and clear rivers. During his early youth, Zhang studied in the small city of Wushan
located on the banks of the Yangtze River’s Three Gorges. When he was 17, the Fine Arts
Department of Xi’nan Teachers College in Chongqing, Sichuan accepted Zhang through
competitive examination. Filled with dreams of cinema, Zhang Ming read everything he could find
on the topic of film during his college days, and saw every film that was shown, regardless of
quality.
In 1988 the graduate program of the Beijing Film Academy accepted Zhang Ming. His major was
directing. Although his graduate study at BFA was accompanied by a new wave of development in
Chinese cinema, he was soon to witness its rapid decline. By the time he graduated in 1991, it was
already exceedingly difficult for filmmakers to find investors. From 1991 to 1994, Zhang Ming
made a number of short TV series, while at the same time teaching classes in Audio-Visual
Language at BFA. In 1995, with the help of his friends, Zhang Ming completed his first
feature-length film Rainclouds Over Wushan (Wushan yunyu, 1999).
See: http://www.asianfilms.org/zhongwen/zhongguo/wushan/director.html
1 7 Bom in Nanjing in 1964, Wang Chao graduated from the Beijing Film Academy in 1994. From
1995 to 1998, he was an assistant to director Chen Kaige. During this time, he often wrote the
critique of the foreign film for the newspapers and periodicals. He has also published three short
stories and one novel since 1996. His first feature film The Orphan o f Anyang is based on one of
those stories.
1 8 Born in Fengyang, Shanxi Province in 1970, Jia graduated from the Beijing Film Academy and
has been actively involved in independent filmmaking in China. He made the medium-length film
Xiao Shan Going Home in 1996 and won the Gold Award at the Hong Kong Independent Film
8
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same time, such as Zhang Yang1 9 , Shi Runjiu and Jin Chen are also members of this
cohort. Furthermore, the boundary can be expanded to include Jiang Wen2 0, an
excellent actor turned director. Thus, the Sixth Generation refers to a group of
self-promoting young filmmakers who came of age during the post-Mao era. Most
of them lived in urban centers and were professionally trained by the Beijing Film
Academy or other institutes. Sixth Generation directors are telling the stories of
China’s marginalized people: laid-off workers, prostitutes, rock musicians, artists,
homosexuals, petty criminals and gangsters, disaffected youth, poor coolies in
polluted port towns, and displaced peasants swelling the ranks of the urban
proletariat.2 1
b) The incoherent Sixth Generation
The first Sixth Generation film, Mama2 2 , directed by Zhang Yuan, appeared in
1990. From then on we have seen Beijing Bastards (Beijing zazhong, 1993) by
Zhang Yuan, reflecting the status of people living in the urban margin; Dirt (Toufa
luanle, 1994) by Guan Hu, illustrating the warmth of memory and friendship; and
Festival. Xiao Wu is his first feature length film.
1 9 Bom in 1967, Zhang Yang received his BA in Chinese Literature from Zhongshan University,
Guangdong in 1988 and continued his study in the Directing Department of the Central Drama
Academy in Beijing. After graduating from CD A in 1992, he entered the Beijing Film Studio and is
now working for the studio as a director. Zhang Yang has made three feature films since 1992: Love
Spicy Soup (1997), Shower (1999), and Quitting (2001).
See: http://www.asianfilms.org/china/malatang.html
2 0 Bom in Hebei in 1963, Jiang Wen majored in Performance Studies at the Central Theatrical
College from 1980 through 1984. He has co-starred, directed or produced films like Last Princess
(1984), Hibiscus Town (1985), Red Sorghum (1987), SpringPeach (1988), Black Snow (1989), Li
Lianying, the Imperial Eunuch (1990), In the Heat o f the Sun (1994), The Emperor's Shadow (1996).
See: http://www.asianfilms.org/zhongwen/zhongguo/heatsun.html
2 1 Cornelius, Sheila. New Chinese cinema: challenging representations, p. 106-117
2 2 Mama won the jury prize and the main award at the Film Festival of Nantes (France), and the
critics’ award at the Edinburgh and Berlin Film Festivals. See Ruggieri, Maria & Kraicer, Shelly.
“Dancing with chains around your legs: An interview with Zhang Yuan” (Far East Film, 2004)
9
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Weekend Lover (Zhoumo qingren, 1995) by Lou Ye, demonstrating the delirium of
youthful narcissism. These more or less autobiographic films are filled with
emotional blaze, rock and roll, shaking, flashing, and short-scene sound bytes. One
can find in them the sentiments of urban marginal life and broken experiences.
Laced with a rock and roll style, they are tinged with the filmmakers’ personal
tribulations, exhibiting the anxiety and self-pity of wasted youth.
The aforementioned autobiographic films, however, fail to cover all the
esthetic temperaments of the young directors of that generation. Those films that
reveal more aesthetic temperament include The Days (Dongchun de rizi, 1993) by
Wang Xiaoshuai, Red Beads (Xuanlian, 1993) and Postman (Youchai, 1994) by He
Jianjun, Weekend Lover (Zhoumo qingren, 1995) by Lou Ye, and Sons (Erzi, 1996)
by Zhang Yuan. Some of them plainly, even indifferently, depict trivial lives, (i.e.,
people living such a life and the spiritual core of marginalized people) with the
methods of the new realism. Lou Ye’s Weekend Lover tried to examine a subject
that gradually came to be taboo in Chinese society, i.e. the erosion of marriage and
love between men and women. By the end of the 1990s and the beginning of the
21st century, many films of quite different styles appeared, such as Rainclouds
Over Wushan (Wushan yunyu, 1995) by Zhang Ming, The Making o f Steel
(Zhangda chengren, 1997) by Lu Xuechang, Xiao Wu by Jia Zhangke, Seventeen
Years (Guonian huijia, 1999) by Zhang Yuan, Platform (Zhantai, 2000) by Jia
Zhangke, B e ijin g B icy cle (Shiqisui de danche, 2 0 0 0 ) by W ang X iaoshuai, and The
Orphan o f Anyang (Anyang Ying’er, 2002) by Wang Chao.
Facing the opportunities brought about by the advent of a new era, some
to
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younger directors, such as Zhang Yang, Shi Runjiu and Jin Chen as well as those
who just joined the Chinese Film Investment Company, such as Wang Xiaoshuai,
Lu Xuechang, Guan Hu and He Jianjun, are vigorously seeking resources within
the institutional framework to make their own films. Other young directors still
keep their ideals outside of the institutional framework (underground). The
differences among their production procedures ineluctably engender variations of
themes and narrative styles.
Apparently, the so-called “Sixth Generation” has neither an established
definition nor a uniform esthetic label. “The Sixth Generation does not refer to a
specific group of creators, aesthetics, or even a sequence of works.”2 3 Unlike the
Fifth Generation, the naming of the Sixth Generation is self-imposed and
publicized consciously. After the completion of A Lady Left Behind in 1992, Hu
Xueyang immediately held a nomination ceremony for himself and the group at
large. Interestingly enough, Guan Hu, who graduated from the directing
department in 1987, dubbed “87” in red Chinese seal character at the beginning of
his work Dirt. As the de facto representative of the Sixth Generation, Zhang Yuan
was more clearly minded in his subtle response. “Generation” is a beneficial
appellation, he said.
We’ve seen the success that can be achieved by being called a “generation”; to
the Chinese people it means a remarkable quantity with irresistible force. Many of
m y partners are m y classm ates. W e’re about the same age, and k n ow each other
2 3 Dai Jinhua; edited by Jing Wang and Tani E. Barlow. Cinema and Desire: Feminist Marxism and
Cultural Politics in the work o f Dai Jinhua, P . 74
11
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well. Yet I still believe that filmmaking is personal. I try to be different from my
predecessors and different from my contemporaries. When something is another’s,
it’s no longer yours.2 4
It is evident that the title of “Sixth Generation” first came from the young
directors themselves to label their independence and to expand their existing
influence as they attempt to travel the same path to fame as did the Fifth Generation.
The title later turned out to be an invaluable marketing tool for producers. For
example, the reports covering Zhang Yuan’s I Love You (Wo ai ni) in 2003
frequently referred to such words as “the leader of the Sixth Generation” .
Jia Hongsheng added, “The Sixth Generation knows clearly what a film
requires and is quite skillful at making films. It is the first group of people to accept
the unbiased view of urban lives. The deliberate objectivity in their portrayal of
cities will keep you alert. Their unbiased films evince the thoughts and survival
techniques of urban people. The members of the Sixth Generation are outstanding,
far superior to other Chinese people. The Sixth Generation never fails to fulfill my
expectation and it exerts profound influence upon the thoughts of an entire
generation.” 2 6
2 4 Dai Jinhua; edited by Jing Wang and Tani E. Barlow. Cinema and Desire: Feminist Marxism and
Cultural Politics in the work o f Dai Jinhua, p. 79-80
2 5 See the poster of I Love You!
2 6 An article published in Beijing New Youth (Beijing xin qingnian), an Internet forum (BBS) of
Peking University students. Tided in “The individual dreams o f filmmakers in the real world -
Questioning the Sixth Generation” (Xianshi de geren yingmeng - xiang diliudai tiwen) written by
Yan Liu. http://cn.cl2000.com/film/dvsn6.shtml
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III. The socio-political background of China in the 1990s
Since the mid 1980s, a series of political and economic policies2 7, such as the
system of contracted responsibility, promoted economic development throughout
the country. The combination of the policy of openness and that of reform within
the educational, scientific and cultural systems had a profound impact on the
cultural circle.2 8 Martial arts novels of Jin Yong, love stories from Hong Kong and
Taiwan (of which Qiong Yao is a prominent writer), and the cynical novels of the
Beijing style like those of Wang Shuo2 9 seized the time. The overseas cultural
products had their days in China. However, the opening up of China’s economy did
not result in the loosening of control over politics and thought. Each young director,
upon entering the motion picture industry would first encounter the complicated
and strict government censorship system.
After the shooting of Red Sorghum (Hong gaoliang, 1988) by Zhang Yimou,
the Fifth Generation came into the center stage from a marginalized status and
became part of mainstream, commercialized culture. The film itself marked the
advent of mass-produced, profit-oriented films, which were targeted at
2 7 Lull comments “cultural policy has been so inconsistent over the years that the main impression
people have of the whirlwind cultural changes in China is one as much of confusion and frustration
as it is of excitement.” Lull, James. China turned on: television, reform, and resistance, p. 133
2 8 See Lynch, Daniel. After the propaganda state: media, politics, and “thought work” in reformed
China, p. 18-52; Wang, James C. F., Contemporary Chinese politics: an introduction, p. 289-319;
Lull, James. China turned on: television, reform, and resistance, p. 127-153
2 9 Among these three types of popular writers, Wang Shuo was the most prominent in shaping the
film industry. The humorous urban slang, crispy dialogue and wisecrack voice-over narration in his
fiction made it particularly attractive for film adaptation. The well-known Wang Shuo films include
The Trouble Shooters (Wan zhu; Mi Jiashan, 1998), H alf Flame, H alf Brine (Yiban shi huoyan,
yiban shi haishui; Xia Gang, 1989), Transmigration (Lunhui; Huang Jianxin, 1998), No One Cheers
(Wuren hechai; Xia Gang, 1993), and In the Heat o f the Sun (Yangguang canlan de rizi; Jiang Wen,
1995). See, Zhu, p. 155-160
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commercialization, entertainment and consumption. In 1993, the Chinese Film
Distribution Corporation’s monopoly was dissolved and its issuing rights were
transferred to provincial companies. Subsequently, production of motion pictures
became directly linked with economic interests. Since the production of films no
longer enjoyed the financial support of the state (as it did in the mid 1980s),
producers had to take the box office as well as other economic interests as major
factors in creation.
The majority of the Sixth Generation directors were born in the 1960s. They
were, the “lost generation”3 0 , somewhat ensnared by many dilemmas, one after
another: their childhood was spent during the Cultural Revolution, but they only
had a blurred memory of it; they witnessed the new political and economic reforms
(which were part of the enlightenment movement in the mid 1980s) during their
teenage years, but were not major beneficiaries of these reforms.
When the Sixth Generation entered university, the pioneering films of the
Fifth Generation were at the height of splendor and had a great influence on the
former; when they stepped out of college in the 1990s, the world had undergone
profound change. They were unable to surmount the aesthetic quality constructed
by the Fifth Generation and they faced a motion picture industry totally
commercialized and entertainment-oriented. It must have been quite frustrating and
terrible, when a group of young directors entered society and found that the past
3 0 About 160 million young people who were between the ages of 8 and 18 at the time of the Cultural
Revolution have been termed the “lost generation”. The bulk of the “lost generation” suffered
widespread discontent and disillusionment. Many of these young faced a “crisis of confidence” in
attitudes toward the CCP and China’s socialist system. See, Wang, James C. F., Contemporary
Chinese politics: an introduction, p. 289-319
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\
two decades’ experiences and education were not useful in the real world. Zhang
Ming said,
The conditions under which these people live are that of a market
economy rather than that of a planned economy. The creative feelings are
constrained by the market economy. However, the present social
environment has not fully reached such state. So the problem is not that
they are not accustomed to the society, but the society fails them, not
providing them with a suitable environment. Then they become a little bit
strange and their works seem to be strange too. Furthermore, being too
earnest for fame and interests, they might go extremes and end up
forfeiting their merits. These young Chinese directors have distinct
merits and demerits. It would be much better if they could draw on their
strengths to offset their weaknesses. But it’s an impossible task. They
were born in the 1960s and the youngest are more than thirty. They share
so much in common. Their understanding of film holds more truth. But
from the social viewpoint they were not successful yet. But I believe they
have the potential.3 1
Within this backdrop the Sixth Generation filmmakers were unable to
immediately devote themselves to the creation of commercialized films. It is quite
interesting to observe that they had nothing except their own little lives in a society
that was changing rapidly with economic reform. Hence, their films were quite
different from the traditional mainstream ones, which bypassed individual
personality and stressed the happiness gained from the sense of belonging to a
certain group. They also differed from those of the Fifth Generation, whose
national allegories were heavily loaded with a sense of history and responsibility.
The Sixth Generation instead chose to depict the individuals’ everyday lives
with which they were quite familiar. In formal terms, they deserted the abstract
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scenes that characterized the Fifth Generation’s films and replaced them with a
completely new definition of realism or new film language generated from other
mediums.3 2 These young filmmakers are more individualistic in their orientation
and outlook. Leifeng is not their hero; instead, their national hero, “as portrayed in
popular cinema, is that of a ‘smoking drinking, snappy dresser’ who has his or her
own opinion about things and who despises ‘rigid bureaucratic thinking’”.3 3 Their
highly marginalized and individualized themes coupled with an avant-garde
narrative mode and obscured scenes have resulted in their own poor performance at
the box office. However, they became more attentive to the spiritual world of
common people and explored the potentialities of films within an alienated domain.
In sum, the Sixth Generation filmmakers are confronted with three challenges
in terms of film patterns:
1. the contradictory thinking process between the interference of institutions and
the freedom and self-independence of creation;
2. the undeniable fact of a completely commercialized society, including the
trend of total commercialization and the adoption of market principles in the
film industry, which was strongly advocated in film theoretical circles;
3. whether the Sixth Generation should inherit or rebel against the Fifth
Generation, which is approaching mainstream culture and whose expressive
3 1 http://cn. cl2000. com/film/dvsn6. shtml. See footnote 26 for full citation.
3 2 Some of them, they made MTV and commercials, for example, Zhang Yuan and Shi Runjiu are the
two most significant examples.
3 3 Wang, James C. F., Contemporary Chinese politics: an introduction, p. 301; see also, Rosen,
Stanley. “Prosperity, Privatization and China’s Youth,” Problems o f Communism, xxxiv, 2
(March - April, 1985), 26.
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pattern is creating a legendary National allegory detached from the real world.
The Sixth Generation was bom amidst the trend of mass popularization and
commercialization of films. Profit is not their sole goal and they would be quite
willing to risk their own money to shoot what they like. Their patterns feature an
effort to explore new film languages and to emulate older generations; their themes
give more attention to the everyday lives of common or marginalized people, their
spiritual pain and dilemma, as well as the basic pursuit for their lives. The directors
of the Sixth Generation did not turn a blind eye to the popular mass culture;
however they still keep a certain distance and are alert to its superficialities and
pretenses. They try to reveal the true society under these pretenses and
superficialities, and explore new ways for the development of motion pictures in
various ways, from different angles and on diverse levels.
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IV. Bound by Government institutions3 4
“I’m Chinese. I love my people.. .But every time I make a film I get into
trouble ... Great films are made by filmmakers who see the world through
their own eyes ... I do what I can under censorship.” 3 5 —Chen Kaige
“The Basic thing is that you can’t make films that are
anti-communist”3 6 —Zhang Yimou
Economic reform brought about the diversified development of values,
ideology, and culture. However, political centralization had been consolidated since
the 1990s and the theme of the age was prevailing in cinemas as well as in
television. Indeed, the Chinese Communist party’s control over the media was
tighter during this period than during the Cultural Revolution.3 7 At the turn of the
century such works as Not One Less (Yige dou buneng shao, 1999) and The Road
Home (Wo de fuqin muqin, 1999) by Zhang Yimou, The Emperor and the Assassin
(Jinke ci qinwang, 1998) by Chen Kaige and TV series Reign o f Yongzheng
(Yongzheng wangchao) by Hu Mei have further confirmed the penetration of
“dominating speech” (zhudao huayti) in the works of the Fifth Generation directors.
Meanwhile, the market economy gradually took root in various levels of society,
politics, economy and culture; consumption has come to be the focus of civil life;
mass culture is vigorously, though somewhat ineffectively, dominating people’s
3 4 The main regulatory body for the film industry is the Ministry of Culture’s Film Bureau. A
separate body, the China Film Corporation, which describes itself as a branch of the Film Bureau, is
responsible for day-to-day matters. The Film Bureau is responsible for policy and planning. It
allocates quotas to each studio and arranges matters of pricing, resources, and distribution. The
relationship between bureaucrats and filmmakers is seldom a happy one; China is no exception. See,
Howkins, John. Mass Communication in China, p.68-69; Lull, James. China turned on:
television, reform, and resistance, p. 136-142
3 5 Lull, James. China turned on: television, reform, and resistance, p. 138
3 6 Ibid.
3 7 Zhao, Yuezhi. Media, Market, and Democracy in China: Between the Party line and the bottom
line, p. 49
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lives. In an increasingly globalizing world, the complex relations between the
global culture and the cultural/political identity voiced by the dominating speech
render the creation of native intellectuals even more ambiguous and difficult. At the
beginning of the 1990s young directors were confronted with the problem of “to be
or not to be” when they first entered the film industry. Indulging themselves in the
spirit of cultural enlightenment, they sought their own voices against the pressure
of official censorship and a commercialized market. In the end, they took
independence as their own ideal. However, staunch fealty to independence might
mean the loss of everything they possessed. Still, they were seeking the possibility
of self-expression and their own voices in the marginalized front and struggle.
As the market became more competitive, Sixth Generation directors began to make
mainstream films, connecting themselves to a larger base of audiences at home.3 8
As suggested by Barme, politically, an increasing official tolerance has threatened
to leave entrepreneurial cultural dissidents with nothing new to say and no
particular harassment to lament.3 9 The shifting political economy resulted in the
emergence of some of the sixth generation filmmakers from underground. Zhang
Yuan was back in the filmmaking business in 1999, making an officially endorsed
film Seventeen Years (Guonian huijia), a story about the life of inmates in labor
camps, during China’s reform.4 0
Production patterns and politics are elements of the real world for the common
people in the film industry. A question usually arises when people are talking about
3 8 Zhu, Ying, Chinese cinema during the era o f reform: the ingenuity o f the system, p. 167
3 9 Barme, Geremie. In the red: on contemporary Chinese culture, p. 191-192
4 0 Zhu, Ying, Chinese cinema during the era o f reform: the ingenuity o f the system, p. 167
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a film made in China: is it underground or aboveground? The reason for this
situation is not that people are too political, but rather because this is an
unavoidable choice envisaged by people in the Chinese film circle. Production
patterns determine the artists’ psychology in the creation and interpretation of
“political correctness” (zhengzhi zhengque) viz. their works. If a film is made
within the parameters set by the governmental institutions, political correctness
means “politically guaranteed” (zhengzhi shang baoxian) or “no political dispute or
objection” (zhengzhi shang wu zhengyi, zhengzhi shang wu yiyi). In this sense, the
ending of Seventeen Years is actually a compromise made by Zhang Yuan for the
institutions. “Some critics have charged Zhang with ‘betrayal’, claiming that ‘by
collaborating with authorities Zhang sold out and lost the edge that made his other
films so powerful ”4 1 It is hard to say whether or not young directors’ decision to
make films within the institutions is a compromise or an invasion of institutions
into the individuals’ artistic liberty.
However, a significant number of the Sixth Generation directors chose to
make films without governmental consent, such as Zhang Yuan, Lou Ye, Wang
Xiaoshuai and Liu Bingjian. He Jianjun changed his name for his underground
films. For example, he changed his name to He Yi in the film Postman. Some other
directors have never been successful in making films within the institutional
restrictions, such as Jia Zhangke and Wang Chao.
B ecau se som e o f the Sixth Generation directors w ho made “rogue film s” (i.e.,
4 1 Cui, Shuqin, Women through the lens: gender and nation in a century o f Chinese cinema, p.
Ill
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films without institutional approval) won awards in major film festivals worldwide,
the Sixth Generation fell under repression by the Chinese authorities. In China,
refusal to accept censorship or shooting licenses portends, to some extent, the death
of a film. Although the creators are eager to communicate with the ordinary masses,
their “underground” films seldom come into the view of common people. There
seems to be a predicament: only those elite intellectuals and fashionable “petit
bourgeoisies” can view films describing the lives of grass roots, shown during
some small film shows or parties saturated with “cultural ambience”. Real life
generally trumps realism viz. filmmaking. Just as Lu Xuechang said,
I think making films that conform to the stipulations of institutions is the
only way for us. I hope my films can pass the censorship of the
institutions and be appreciated by the audience, especially the Chinese
audience. Of course you can make a film stealthily and win some
overseas awards. It is also an achievement for you. But I believe the
Chinese audience should appreciate the Chinese films, and the only way
is to make films within the institutions. You have to consider its
operability. It is inevitable. I hope I could have a better way out in this
field. But under these circumstances, you can still make good films.
Absolutely! So far, A Lingering Face (Feichang xiari, 2000) is just an
experiment. I feel that there is still some way to make an excellent film,
which can be appreciated both domestically and overseas.4 2
Sixth Generation films in China seem to reach only a limited circle of cultural
elites and intellectuals. These works are only commented on and reviewed in
fashionable magazines and non-mainstream newspapers. It is interesting to observe
that the lives of the Sixth Generation have ascended to a high level in terms of
social, cultural and economic status. Ironically, because of the political and
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commercial limits, the marginalized Sixth Generation was elevated to the positions
of virtual Yuppies, or even aristocrats. They are now cultural celebrities touring the
world, and are the suppliers of cultural products to the white-collar classes of
Chinese society. They are also the heroes of cover stories in fashion, pioneering,
and pop-song magazines.
http://cn.cl2000.com/film/dvsn6.shtinl See footnote 26 for full citation.
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V. Business and market
The Chinese film industry was pinched between market pressure on the one
hand and political demands of the government on the other. Movie attendance in
China dropped by more than 30% in 1993.4 3 According to Rosen’s research,
attendance at Chinese theaters had dropped from 21 billion in 1982 to just under 4.5
billion in 1991.4 4 Furthermore, box office revenues dropped by more than 79
million RMB in 1999 (US$9.9 million). Compared to 1998, this was a 50 percent
decrease.4 5 Recently, box office revenues have continued to decline, with receipts
in 2003 falling to around 1 billion RMB (little more than US$100 million). Chinese
citizens go to the cinema an average of only once every 18 months, although some
analysts claim this attendance figure is nearer to once every 3 years.4 6 It is not very
difficult to find the realistic attitude and the consideration of market acceptance and
marketing strategy in the works of such new directors as Zhang Yang, Shi Runjiu
and Jin Chen. Youth is no longer an age of obscure self-banishment or of hurting
pain that deserves self-pity and self-blasphemy. A promise of a “beautiful life”
clearly comes to be the basic theme of these kinds of films. We can find a return to
the social mainstream values and mass esthetic tastes in films like Spicy Love Soup
(Aiqing malatang; Zhang Yang, 1999), A Beautiful New World (Meili xin shijie; Shi
Runjiu, 1999), Shower (Xizao; Zhang Yang, 1999) and All the Way (Zou dao di; Shi
4 3 Wan, Jihong. Hollywood and the Changing Political Economy o f the Chinese Film Industry in
the 1990s, P . 3
4 4 Rosen, Stanley. “The Wolf at the Door: Hollywood and the Film Market in China” (Heikkila, Eric
J . & Pizarro, Rafael ed., Southern California and the World, p. 49
4 5 Shun Yiqing. “Urban Movie Theaters in 1999” (1999 Nian de dushi dianying) Dianying dongxun
(January 2000): 23
4 6 Barbieri, Maria. “Perseverance pays off: Chinese Cinema in the year of the goat” (Far East Film,
23
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Runjiu, 2000). They take the perspective of the common people and blend some
narrative skills of post-modernism with the typical narrative modes, to which the
audience is quite accustomed. Accordingly, their works are appealing to the
majority of the audience, especially the young people.
In the film Spicy Love Soup, the creators maneuvered to avoid the grand
narrative style and the profound and mission-loaded thinking on human life, and,
instead, tell the stories of confusion about love in a sectional form as well as a
popular and light-hearted way. Each story, romantic or pathetic, was tinged with
something warm and encouraging so that the audience felt, more or less, the power
of love and the beauty of life. The commercial success of Spicy Love Soup suggests
that the Sixth Generation filmmakers have broken out of their own trap to reach the
public.4 7 Indeed, Spicy Love Soup was a box-office hit.4 8 The participation of
prominent stars from Hong Kong and Taiwan lends much power in the box office
for Zhang Yuan’s Green Tea (Liicha; 2003) and Lou Ye’s Purple Butterfly (Zi hudie;
2002). These are Chinese stories told in a form palatable to the Chinese audience.
They are also love stories with Hollywood happy endings, avoiding all the conflicts
and despair of realistic life. The creators are quite aware of the distance between
their works and the realistic lives they intend to depict. The filmmakers paid
attention to their niche market and produced more films on a wider range of topics.
Zhu discovered that the recent trend of the Sixth Generation movies “has been
2004)
4 7 Zhu, Ying. Chinese cinema during the era o f reform: the ingenuity o f the system, p. 167
4 8 See Yin, Hong. “Chinese Cinema in 1998” (’98 Zhongguo dianying beiwang lu), Dangdai
dianying 88, no. 1 (1999):28.
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moving toward the representation of the urban, the return to the everyday world, the
divergence of film genres, and the fusion of the ‘art’ film with popular genres such
as the thriller, the Chinese western melodrama, and even martial arts.”4 9
4 9 Zhu, Ying. Chinese cinema during the era o f reform: the ingenuity o f the system, p. 168-169
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VI. Usurping the Fifth Generation
a) The films of the Fifth Generation
Some classmates of the 1978 class of the Beijing Film Academy formed
“youth production teams” which made films founded by the in Guangxi Film
Studio, in 1983. Their first work, the One and the Eight (Yige he bage) came to be
the first recognizable film of these youth production team. The film Yellow Earth
(Huang tudi) in 1984 brought fame and recognition to them in the world film
industry. The films before and after this period had a deep impact on the Chinese
film industry and aroused the attention internationally. Hence, the name “the Fifth
Generation” came into being.
In the 1980s, the students graduating from Beijing Film Academy around the
same time, such as Cheng Kaige5 0 , Zhang Yimou5 1 , Tian Zhuangzhuang5 2 , Wu
5 0 Chen, the best know of the Fifth Generation directors, was bom in 1952 in Beijing, into a family
already steeped in the traditions of filmmaking. His father was Chen Huaikai, a successful director
of Chinese Opera films at the Beijing Film Studio, and his mother was a script editor. The One and
the Eight (1984), Yellow Earth (1984), Big Parade (1985), King o f the Children (1987), Farewell
My Concubine (1993), The Emperor and the Assassin (1999) are the most important works of Chen.
See, Cornelius, Sheila, New Chinese cinema: challenging representations, p. 38-41; Zhu, Ying.
Chinese cinema during the era o f reform: the ingenuity o f the system, p. 126 -130
5 1 Zhang was born in 1950 near Xi’an in Shaanxi province. Admitted to the Beijing Film Academy
in 1978, he was assigned to the cinematography training school. Later he worked on The One and
the Eight with director Zhang Junzhao, and Yellow Earth and The Big Millitary Parade with Chen
Kaige. In 1996, Zhang stepped in front of the camera for the first time, in Old Well (Lao Jing, 1986),
which won him the Best Actor award at the Tokyo Film Festival. Zhang’s first film as director, Red
Sorghum (1988) won the Golden Bear. For his next films, Jii Dou (1990), Raise the Red Lantern
(1991), The Story o f Qiu Jii (1992), and To Live{ 1994), Not one Less{1999), The RoadHome{2000)
etc let him won numerous prizes from different festivals. See, Cornelius, Sheila. New Chinese
cinema: challenging representations, p.42-46; Zhu, Ying. Chinese cinema during the era o f
reform: the ingenuity o f the system, p. 112-123, p. 163-165; Chow, Rey. Ethics After idealism:
theory, culture, ethnicity, reading, p. 132
5 2 Tian was bom in 1952 in a family with close connections to the film industry. His mother, Yu Lan,
had been a film star and became heads of the Beijing Children’s Film Studio. His father, Tian Tang,
was an actor and Vice-Preisdent of the Ministry of Culture’s Film Bureau. As a result, Tian was able
to attend many censorship screenings in his youth. Horse Thief (1985), The Blue Kite (1993) are his
famous films. See, Cornelius, Sheila. New Chinese cinema: challenging representations, p.41-42;
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Ziniu, Zhang Junzhao, and Huang Jianxin, employed a new film language, and
made a series of realistic works sharply contrasting to those of the directors
graduating before the Cultural Revolution.5 3 These films, such as The One and the
Eight, Yellow Earth5 4 , The Horse Thief (Dao ma zei, 1985), The Big Military
Parade (Da yuebing, 1985), Black Cannon Incident (Heipao shijian; Huang Jianxin,
1985), Red Sorghum (Hong gaoliang, 1988), and The Blue Kite (Lan fengzheng,
1993)5 5 became the threshold of Chinese new films and were generally called the
Fifth Generation films. These films deserted the traditional structure and narrative
methods of the old films and attached great importance to the representation of
image and space.5 6 The Fifth Generation as a whole would be inconceivable
without its relationship to the “nation” and its effort at constructing a new image
and mythology. 5 7
A new generation is supposed to be the natural replacement of previous ones.
However, the Fifth Generation films, in a time when Chinese economic reform was
at its height, depicted the countryside and the lives of ordinary farmers; they
aroused the nostalgic sentiments of an audience engulfed by international
capitalism. The Fifth Generation films became the diminishing “China”,
Nationalism always held an important position in the ideals of these Fifth
Generation directors. The line that was often quoted by commentators was “We
Zhu, Ying. Chinese cinema during the era o f reform: the ingenuity o f the system, p. 123-126
5 3 Zhu, Ying. Chinese cinema during the era o f reform: the ingenuity o f the system, p. 130-138
5 4 Cornelius, Sheila. New Chinese cinema: challenging representations, p. 61-67
5 5 Cornelius, Sheila. New Chinese cinema: challenging representations, p. 49-52
5 6 Lu, Sheldon Hsiao-Peng ed., Transnational Chinese Cinemas: Identity, Nationhood, Gender,
p.7
5 7 Zhang, Xudong. Chinese modernism in the era o f reforms: cultural fever, avant-garde fiction,
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Chinese!” from the first recognizable work of the Fifth Generation, the One and the
Eight. The favorite words of Chen Kaige are “throughout the history of five
thousand years.” Nationalistic sentiment is apparent in his works. The themes of his
later works, The Big Military Parade and The Emperor and the Assassin both
involved nationalism.
The use of allegory and the emphasis on nationalism, which were distinctive
traits of Fifth Generation films, had a new turning point after Zhang Yimou’s Red
Sorghum won the Gold Bear Award in the Berlin Film Festival. It was the first time
for a Chinese film to win an international award. Westerners were stunned to
“discover” the existence of Chinese films. Hence, the golden age of the Fifth
Generation began. Since the success of Red Sorghum in the international stage, the
directors of the Fifth Generation came to focus their efforts on winning overseas
awards. Such films as Jii Dou, Raise the Red Lantern (Da hong denglong
gaogaogua, 1991), and To Live (Huozhe, 1994) by Zhang Yimou, Farewell My
Concubine (Bawang bieji, 1993) by Chen Kaige and The Blue Kite (Lan fengzheng,
1993) by Tian Zhuangzhuang have won awards in the international film festivals
and have incited fervent discussion on their contradictory domestic and overseas
acceptances.
These films continued to use the form of allegory and the theme of Chinese
modern history (especially the Cultural Revolution), and presented many (artificial)
C hinese national features to bring out a Chinese identity. A s a result, westerners
sought to understand “China” through the Fifth Generation films. On the other hand,
and the new Chinese cinema, p.204-205
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Chinese critics severely criticized the Fifth Generation films for “manufacturing” a
false image of China - an image that is distorted and meant to appeal to the
• 58
imagination of the western eroticists and cater to commercial interests.
These Chinese criticisms, however, seem to be groundless. For instance, one
criticism is that the lantern lightening custom described in Raise the Red Lantern
was never truly a Chinese custom. Furthermore, critics claim that the film, in the
form of allegory, still “made a China consisting only of strange folk customs,
stringent taboos on sex and politics, repressed desires and human struggle.” Film
producers “had an overt plan to appeal to the West. The film had a storyline that
played up to the Western vision of what China is like, both sexually and visually.” 5 9
The critics, unfortunately, are misguided. These kind of Chinese symbols seem to
be processed using Roland Barthes’s “mythologies theory”6 0 , which is not required
5 8 Some critics claimed these films mainly “satisfied the Western gaze”. See Chow, Rey. Primitive
passions: Visuality, Sexuality, Ethnography, and Contemporary Chinese Cinema, R 155-156.
And, Lu, Sheldon Hsiao-peng. Transnational Chinese cinemas: identity, nationhood, gender, p.
126
However, some thought “as they (filmmakers) pursued their own ideological agenda, establishing
themselves as independent cultural critics, they effectively cut themselves off from intelligent and
interested readers of all social strata.” See Barme, Geremie. In the red: on contemporary Chinese
culture, p. 197
5 9 See, http://www.asianfilms.org/china/zhang-selling.html
6 0 “Roland Barthes theorized this type of signification in terms of what he called ‘mythologies’ in
1950s. With his characteristic good humor, Barthes gives a comically precise example to explain
what he means by mythical speech:
7 am a pupil in the second form in French lycee. I open my Latin grammar, and I read a
sentence, borrowed from Aesop or Phaedrus: quia ego nomior leo. I stop and think. There is
something ambiguous about this statement: on the one hand, the words in it do have a simple
meaning: because my name is lion. And on the other hand, the sentence is evidently there in order to
signify something else to me. Inasmuch as it is addressed to me, a pupil in the second form, it tells
me clearly: I am a grammatical example meant to illustrate the rule about the agreement o f the
predicate. I am even forced to realize that the sentence in no way signifies its meaning to me, that it
tries very little to tell me something about the lion and what sort o f name he has; its true and
fundamental signification is to impose itself on me as the presence o f a certain agreement o f the
predicate. ’
The ‘impostition’ of this other significance - other to the obvious meaning the sentence seems to
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to be based on real life. . .the ethnic details in these films are not there simply to
‘mean’ themselves; rather they are there for a second order articulation. They are
there to signify ‘I am an ethnic detail; I am feudal China.”6 1 Thus, those weird folk
rituals, such as the “lantern-raising ex nihilo”6 2 in Raise the Red Lantern were
never rooted in reality. In Zhang Yimou’s theory, China is an allegory that consists
of weird folk-custom, a strict taboo for sex and politics, repressed desire, and the
struggle of humanity. Although it is understandable that so many scholars in
Mainland China should vehemently chastise the “self-colonization” of the Fifth
Generation films, their criticisms are simply unwarranted.
b) The films of the Sixth Generation
While the Sixth Generation was studying at university, the enlightenment
movement was at its height and government repression over science, culture, and
politics was relatively light. Upon entering the market, they still held the dream that
they could depict reality freely. However, there was no longer a “free” environment
in China by the 1990s. Feeling frustrated, they kept their enthusiasm hidden in their
minds. Some of them sought more freedom by making “underground” or “out of
the institutions” films. More importantly, they desperately searched for “new”
forms of film language and the “fidelity” of themes. They inherited the tradition of
European artistic films and that of pioneering, experimental films.
denote - is, for Barthes, the activity of myth: ‘In myth there are two semiological systems, one of
which is staggered in relation to the other: a linguistic system, the language... which I shall call the
language-object, because it is the language which myth gets hold of in order to build its own system;
and myth itself, which ... is a second language, in which one speaks about the first.” See: Chow, Rey.
Primitive passions: visuality, sexuality, ethnography, and contemporary Chinese cinema, p. 144
6 1 Chow, Rey. Primitive passions: visuality, sexuality, ethnography, and contemporary Chinese
cinema, p. 145
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Directors of the new generation rebelled against the highly commercialized
environments through their relentless pursuit for pioneering. By doing so, they not
only established their realistic styles, but also provided a different type of national
allegory, expressed from the standpoint of marginalized people,
i) Realistic style
Zhang Yuan’s Mother (Mama)6 5 is a realistic work of the Sixth Generation. It
was also the first film of the Sixth Generation that starred non-professional actors,
shot on the spot and completed with low cost.6 4 Though denied by the censors,
Zhang Yuan financed the film himself in 1990 and won many awards. This film
tells a tragic story in the realistic style. A young mother, Liang Dan, raises her
imbecile son, Dongdong, all by herself. She always believes that her patience
would make her son recover. Without any positive result and having lost her youth
and love, she tries to escape the situation by killing her son.
Realistic methods such as natural environmental sounds, natural lights, fixed
cameras and long scenes were adopted in the films. Many stealthily shot street
scenes were also added.
Apart from all these, Zhang Yuan inserted many interviewing fragments,
which allowed the mother to tell the hardship of raising an imbecile child to divert
the audience’s attention from the story itself. The contrast between colored and
6 2 Lu, Sheldon Hsiao-peng. Transnational Chinese cinemas: identity, nationhood, gender, P . 128
6 3 This film, together with others films like, Beijing Bastards (1992), The Square (1994), Sons
(1995), East Palace, West Palace (1996) etc. were all banned from release initially, they were
eventually screened in China after 1998. At the same year, Zhang produced Seventeen Years, which
was reviewed as the “inside-system” (Tizhi nei) production by the critics.
5 4 Zhang Yuan made this film with only 10,400 RMB (US$1,300). It was a history in the Chinese
film production.
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monochrome scenes constantly reminds the audience to observe the event and the
characters in a detached mood.
There were similar techniques in Zhang Yuan’s other films. Some examples
are, Beijing Bastards (the actors suddenly stop acting to talk about their feelings
before the camera) and Sons (clarifying the story-teller’s objective stand and
viewpoint by saying “They live right downstairs.”). Other directors, such as the
director of Suzou River (Suzhou he), Lou Ye also adopted this kind of technique.
The major characteristic of these films is the emphasis on the completeness
and fidelity of the events rather than the themes.
The plot is no longer important; true life is shown without any alteration.
Meanwhile, the directors intentionally keep some distance between the audience
and the films to emphasize the objective viewpoint. Take Beijing Bastards as an
example. The main thread is Kazi’ s looking for his girlfriend, Maomao. However,
this event is interspersed with other stories and other characters such as Cui Jian6 5
6 5 In 1980s when most Chinese had little knowledge of rock music, Cui Jian, bom in August 1961 in
Beijing and known as father of China’s rock music, presented his “Nothing to My Name” which
remains Cui Jian’s best known and most beloved song over China. With the strong beat of Penniless,
Red Cloth, False Monk, the Girl in Flower Shop, Cui Jian shouted out his feelings about the world
around him, arousing enormous resonance among his fans.
Media then said, “Rock rightly satisfies the demand of his generation to speak out what they feel.”
Rock has in a certain sense become a new type of criticism of the existing social problems in China.
Cui Jian first introduced rock in China in 1986. He harmoniously merged the strong beat of Western
music into the local folk music in North Shanxi Province on the Huangtu Plateau. His Penniless,
which was once sung all over China, is the first rock song in China.
Before singing his Penniless, Cui Jian was a little-known trumpet performer in Beijing Symphony
Orchestra, where he concentrated upon performing only world-famous tunes. In his leisure time, he
held his favorite guitar and imitated those Western rock stars.
Since May 1986, Cui Jian, with his unique and refreshing songs and voice and style, has won over
large audiences from stars in Hong Kong and Taiwan. What’s more, his songs have even appealed to
a tremendous number of mid-aged Chinese intellectuals, who suffered a lot on their journey through
the Cultural Revolution between 1966 and 1976.
Following Cui Jian, there came on to stage the rock bands like Tang Dynasty, Panther, Cobra, Hard
Stone. See, Cui Jian’s personal official website: http://www.cuijian.com
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who looks for a rehearsal place and Ye Lou who tries to recover his cheated money.
These stories are not finished at one time, but intertwined with the main thread and
intermittently turn up in the film. Hence the audience’s attention focuses on the
living status of the characters, rather than the causes and effects of the events,
ii) The marginalized national allegory
As far as the theme and characters are concerned, another turning point of the
Sixth Generation is that they have turned their attention to the everyday lives of
common people and even alienated ones, for instance, a desperate mother torn by
an imbecile child or a lunatic and alcoholic father. These characters are usually
neglected in traditional films. There is another important factor that differentiates
the Sixth Generation from the Fifth Generation: the former began to be concerned
with the living status and spiritual predicaments of common and alienated people
with whom the filmmakers were familiar in their daily lives. This changes Chinese
films from a concern only with the grand and sublime to that of caring about the
specific and particular. The Sixth Generation broadened the national allegory and
provided the “oriental wonder” from a different angle.
In 1993 Wang Xiaoshuai completed his first work The Days. It is a story about
young people told in a realistic way. Specifically, it is about a couple of young
painters in love. However, the lovers eventually lose their passion for each other in
the dullness of everyday life. The hero is busy wrangling with painting traders
while the heroine is stifling her creativity through the trivialities of a co-inhabiting
life.
Attempting to regain their passion for love by changing their environment,
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they go back to the hometown of the hero, in northeast China. But the couple
becomes so vulnerable that the heroine ends up in an overseas marriage and the
lonely hero winds up in craziness. The film’s natural exhibition of real life together
with peaceful scenes and smooth tempos make the audience feel that it was led by
the camera to observe the common life of the heroes-washing clothes, making
meals, quarrelling, making love and painting. This theme of meaningless represents
the emotional predicament of young lovers.
The audience felt that the story just happened in their own lives. Compared
with the more wide-reaching social concerns of Fifth Generation movies, Wang’s
film “is an intimate account of day-to-day life as lived by himself and
contemporaries, a moving account of the end of a relationship which also pinpoints
a general mood of dread and incipient defeat.”6 6
Guang Hu said,
Upon graduation from the university in 1993, we were about 22 or 23
[years old], the craziest ages. We had little chance and we were somewhat
frustrated. We were passionate, but the faith and ideals we had cherished
all went into ruin with the coming of the 1990s. The first work of a young
director is inevitably somewhat autobiographic. We wanted to tell
something we were familiar with. Since we were neophytes to the film
industry, we were more sensitive to the urban life and the emotional
6 7
confusion of young people. That’s why we all made movies about them.
Zhang Ming argued that,
Obviously, these people want to make films different from the previous
generations. They don’t want to talk about the past. And the only thing
new in their view is such kind of people. But I think that they should
6 6 Cornelius, Sheila, New Chinese cinema: challenging representations, p. 116
6 7 http://cn.cl2000.com/film/dvsn6.shtml See footnote 26 for full citation.
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search for the new things among the ordinary people and common things,
instead of those unconventional and never-seen-before things, for the
latter have little influence on our Chinese people. The texts in The Days
and Beijing Bastards are both very obscure and consist of open linguistic
structures. Compared to the Fifth Generation films that often add an
allegorical implication to the life and the nation, the Sixth Generation is
more willing to illustrate the real life, and make the life and nation itself
an object of consideration.6 8
In recent years, the focus of the Sixth Generation has spanned from such
autobiographic characters as rock youngsters to the disadvantaged and the
marginalized, as well as social realities.
For instance, Zhang Yuan’s East Palace, West Palace (Donggong, xigong,
1997) is the first Chinese film touching on the taboo subject of homosexuals.6 9 This
film tried to examine the diversity of human natures and showed tolerance and
respect for other ways of living. Man Man Woman Woman (Nannan nunti, 1999)
written by Cui Zi’en and directed by Liu Bingjian, is another film that tries to go
deeper into the homosexual genre.
It should also be noted that films concerning lesbians are emerging. These
films review human nature and are attentive to a reality that should not be neglected.
Compared with above-mentioned directors, Wang Chao, Jia Zhangke and Li Yang
6 8 http://cn. cl2000. com/film/dvsn5. shtml See footnote 26 for full citation.
6 9 The very title of East Palace, West Palace marks the symbolic realm of the film as the discourse
between the center and the margin, the official and the banned. As alluded to in the first scenes of the
film, the title refers to the slang term used by gay men for the bathrooms on either side of the
Forbidden Palace, the mythic seat of State power in the center of Beijing. The choice of this location
flouts the CCP’s taboo against homosexuality by placing the proscribed “other” at the heart of the
PRC itself. See, May, Shannon. Power and Trauma in Chinese Film: Experiences of Zhang Yuan
and the Sixth Generation. Journal fo r the Psychoanalysis o f Culture and Society 8.1 (2003)
156-160 Also, see “ Viewing the First gay film : ‘ East Palace, West P a l a c e (You “Donggong
xigong” qian kan tongzhi dianying)
http://newvouth.beida-online.com/data/data.php3?id=vdgxgqktzdv&db=m ovie.
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go even further and are more revolutionary. Their films accurately and intensely
capture Chinese reality and illuminate the viewpoints and attentions of grass roots
people. They stand for the “silent majority”, reflect the absurdity of existence, and
faithfully record the terror and warmth of the living environment viz. ordinary
people. Jia Zhangke’s Xiao Wu describes the life of a thief in a rapidly changing
time. Xiaowu lost his illusions about friendship, love and family. Wang Chao’s The
Orphan o f Anyang tells of the rough lives of a prostitute, a gangster and a laid-off
worker; and their acceptance of their distorted fates. Blind Shaft was adapted from
the novel ShenMu by Liu Qingbang.
The director Li Yang realistically depicted the rough and tough environment
of the mining area and the fidelity and melancholy of the hero, who had to sacrifice
others’ lives to raise his family. From them we can see a rarely found passion. These
marginalized groups, strange and undeniable, seize the attention of the audience
and provide another viewpoint from which to assess Chinese society.
One can feel the simple and stubborn humanitarian cares in the narrative styles
of these films. The camera is no longer a propaganda tool of the authorities, but
rather the tool to depict the “true” living states of ordinary people. Take The
Orphan o f Anyang as an example. The standstill camera watches calmly over the
melancholic people living in the city. The camera follows the eyes of several
characters and tends to shoot scenes in public areas. The sudden appearance of
faces and the arbitrary flo w o f people represent these lives. It can be said that The
Orphan o f Anyang has struck an uncommon balance between the insightful ideas
over society, basic human emotional directions and patterns of artistic exhibiting.
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An intense strain was formed between the strong historicism and the calm film
language. The same pursuit can also be found in Xiao Wu: “I would like to be a
witness, watching everything before my eyes with the camera.”7 0 Maybe it is this
kind of narrative style and the effort to present an unadulterated real life that
compels us to experience the everyday lives of the people in the stories,
iii) A brief summary
The directors of the Sixth Generation tend to pursue fidelity in their films.
Different definitions of processed “fidelity” result in different interpretations. The
films in the 1950s and the 1960s also reflected a certain “fidelity”, and, in order to
cater to political needs, focused on class struggle. No doubt, such “fidelity” was not
true to the reality. The films made by the Fifth Generation intentionally added
“Chinese” features and the “real” China they depicted brought about much
criticism among Chinese people. The pioneering nature of Zhang Yuan and Wang
Xiaoshuai lies in their interpretation of the “real China” from another angle, which
poses as a rebellions challenge to the dominating mainstream films and those of the
Fifth Generation. Their films are devoid of the fancied peace and prosperity or the
burdens of history; they are just plain reproductions of the everyday lives of
ordinary and marginalized people. At the beginning, the Sixth Generation paid
much attention to the living states of ordinary or marginalized urban people,
especially the life experiences of young people, who have been shocked by
trem endous social changes. The “rewriting o f history” undertaken by the Fifth
Generation actually turned reality into illusion. The cities became a vacuum that
7 0 http://cn.cl2000.com/film/dvsn6.shtml See footnote 26 for full citation.
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needed to be filled. The Sixth Generation jumped in to fill this vacuum and
shoulder the task of presenting the neglected or forgotten parts of the reality.
There is no escape from reality. As a matter of fact, it was the artistic and
political limits that facilitated the revolution in the Chinese film industry. The entity
of the film was far from being established, and the identity was even more blurred.
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VII. Case study National Allegory
Jia Zhangke’s Xiao Wu7 1 and Li Yang’s Blind Shaft are among the most
realistic and best movies among Sixth Generation films. Xiao Wu describes the
experiences of a young peasant coming to cities and ends up as a thief. Blind Shaft
reflects the real living state of peasant workers. Although the rapidly changing
society only serves as the background for people’s everyday life and interaction,
the audience can clearly sense the fact that the Chinese traditional culture and living
mode are severely threatened by the newly established urban living patterns. In
Blind Shaft, there is a sharp contrast between the improved living standard as the
result of reforms and the indifference to the value of life. In Xiao Wu the pervasive
popular songs from Taiwan and Hong Kong ironically imply the phenomenon of
popular (western) culture replacing the native culture. Xiaowu lived as a thief,
Tang Chaoyang and Song Jinming as murderers. When they decide that they want
to change, they discover that they cannot. Behind all the superficial prosperity,
what could the ordinary and disadvantaged groups do to improve themselves?
Instead of enjoying the direct benefits of economic reform and opening up policies,
they bear the most severe detriments. Their anxious and helpless living reality is
presented in the experiences of “small potatoes” (insignificant people) in the films.
The two films are indisputably the allegory of the “current Chinese state”.
The text of the third world “inevitably” projects a political dimension in the
form of “national allegory”. Though it was just a basic theoretic frame constructed
1 1 More about the background of the production of Xiao W u, See:
http://www.dianying.com/b5/topics/filml01/xiaowu/
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by Jameson with the intention to bring something new to the western cultural
classics; and although it aroused much criticism for its rough division between the
first world and the third world, the national allegory of the third world proposed by
him coincides with the depiction of the directors of the Fifth and Sixth Generations
on current China. However, in a time when the allegory form itself is sold as a
cultural commodity, according to the post-modernist cultural logic, Jameson’s
argument that the text of the third world “inevitably” projects the political
dimension should undergo certain adjustment. The political projection of the third
world’s text is “indispensable”, rather than “inevitable”, for the intellectuals aware
of the bitter struggle in current Chinese culture to interpret the Chinese films with
the third world’s national allegory.
a) Xiao Wu
Jia Zhangke’s film was a perfect example for the interpretation of national
allegory. Since 1997, Jia Zhangke has made three films, namely Xiao Wu, Platform
and Unknown Pleasures (Ren xiao yao, 2002')7 2 , which, unlike the styles of the
Fifth Generation, take rising towns (those in Shanxi province, the hometown of the
director), instead of the countryside, as their background. Xiao Wu seems to be the
sequel of Platform, which covers the first ten years since China adopted reform and
opening up policies.
Most of the marks of time transitions in this film are the changes of
popular/m ass culture rather than the exhibition o f the elite culture (o f course they
7 2 Before the first feature Xiao W u, Jia directed a prize-winning short film; Xiao Shan Going Home
(1996) achieved prominent attention from the western film scholars, critics, and audiences.
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are the director’s interpretation). It is an individualized narration on the
“modernity” of the 1980s, instead of the usual narration on grand history with the
goal of “enlightenment”. This angle is the result of the director’s marginalized
stand that allows him to construct a completely private system.
The director presents his review of “the new age” with dull scene switching
and slow camera language. His newest work Unknown Pleasures, whose name was
borrowed from the title of a song sung by Ren Xianqi, tells a story that happened in
2001. When the hero Binbin went into a chartered room the music of, In the Mood
for Love (Huayang nianhua, 2000) came into the air; the fragments of Focus
(Jiaodian fantan)7 3 and CCTVEvening News (Xinwen lianbo7 4 ) reported the major
events that happened in that year. The film gave the audience a vivid picture of a
downtrodden industrial city: dilapidated buildings of the soviet style, old streets,
and shops with few customers, cheap and tattered cinemas and other entertaining
facilities, prostitutes in barber shops. The four protagonists in the film all end up in
failure, illustrating the situation of current young people-hopeless and goalless.
Xiao Wu won a cluster of prizes on the festival circuit including Vancouver, Nantes,
Berlin, and Pusan Festivals75.
The background of Xiao Wu, which questions Chinese modernization, is set in
a small county in Shanxi province, Fenyang, which can be seen as epitomizing of
7 3 Focus Report, a highly popular program that produced by CCTV and aired 5 days per week. See,
Li, Xiaoping. “‘Focus’ (Jiaodian Fangtan) and the Changes in the Chinese Television Industry.”
Journal o f Contemporary China 11 (30) (Feb. 2002): 17-34
7 4 This is probably the single most important political program as it reflects attempts to set the
agenda for the day’s political activity as well as helping to set that agenda.
7 5 Kraicer, Shelly. Cineaction, (Issue 60, 2003) p. 30
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the real China after the adoption of economic reform. Fenyang is on the boundary
between the urban and rural areas; it is about to become a city. Most of the films of
the Sixth Generation are set in the developed cities (such as Beijing and Shanghai)
that are quite internationalized. By contrast, Fenyang, though small, retains the
characters of Chinese traditional cities. From the case of Fenyang, one could have a
better view of how foreign culture is assimilated into the native culture.
The story tells about the experience of Xiaowu, a craftsman (also a thief) in
Fenyang. He knows clearly that he will be washed out. It is not because of his
profession, but because he could not adjust himself to the social changes.7 6 When
he walks along the streets of the town, he finds many changes. The film is about his
three emotional experiences (friendship, love and family): despised by his friends,
deserted by his lover and evicted by his father.
Xiao Wu... set in Fenyang; the ultra-low budget film follows the story of
a desultory pickpocket whose half-hearted attempts at friendship, petty
thievery, and romance all lead nowhere, absolutely anywhere. He is
shown, in the film’s striking final image, humiliated, squatting on the
ground while chained by the town’s head cop to a pole in the main square,
as the townspeople gather round to peer, curious and bemused.7 7
Faced with the pressure exerted by the Fifth Generation, Jia Zhangke no doubt
feels the allure and pressure to make so-called, “Fifth Generation films”. The years
1992 and 1993 have witnessed the fantastic performance of Chinese countryside
films and were named “the years of China”. Jia Zhangke takes “quasi-cities”,
which are the most populated and influential areas in China, as the background to
7 6 Cornelius, Sheila. New Chinese cinema: challenging representations, p. 103
7 7 Kraicer, Shelly. Cineaction, (Issue 60, 2003) p. 30
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present an allegory of a China blindly embracing modernization and materialism.
Industrialization and urbanization are the general trends in China. Fenyang is a
little county dreaming to become a big city. The local residents do everything they
can to emulate those in the big cities, though their efforts are mostly futile and
sometimes even produce results contrary to their wishes.
This situation in Fenyang quite closely resembles China as a whole, in its
globalization process. Jia Zhangke’s focus is accurately fixed on this transforming
time: the strange combination of feudal centralization in the countryside and the
laws and regulations of modern society; the rapid localization of western/ modern/
material civilization. Jia Zhangke tells the story indifferently and objectively. One
can feel the complicated features of a changing society in his simple scenes.
At the end of the film Xiaowu was caught stealing and cuffed to an electrical
pole by the police. He looked at the passers-by indifferently and they looked back
on him indifferently too. When the reporter interviewed the passers-by, they said
that they were “overjoyed at the arrest.” Though Xiaoyong is doing the same job as
Xiaowu, his social status is quite different. The TV fragments in the film not only
exhibited the entertainment function of the mass medium, but also served as a tool
to conduct ethical criticism on the hero and the symbol of power. Xiaowu’s dire
circumstance is a tragic questioning of the future of Chinese economic
modernization and globalization.
Since his first work Xiaoshan Going Home (Xiaoshan huijia, 1995), Jia
Zhangke has maintained a realistic style. Like the other directors of the Sixth
Generation, he attaches great importance to the objectivity of the writer/audience
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and the realism of his films. His sense of social responsibility is even greater in the
selection of themes and characters. Xiaoshan and Xiaowu are both from the grass
roots of the society. Despite being among the majority, their kind is marginalized in
society. In fact, their own lives and psychology closely resemble that of most
Chinese people. Viewing of the previous Sixth Generation films was generally
limited to the social circles of the creators. They presented to us the real lives of
people, but failed to reflect the grass roots of the society. Jia Zhangke tends to
examine the real social situation. The stories of “small potatoes” often reflect the
changing process of society.
Jia Zhangke’s concern reveals his sense of social responsibility. For him
realism and recording are not only skills and shooting methods, but also an ideal
and attitude towards life. Oriented by this point of view, he presents to us not only
the individual and specific reality, but also more importantly, the internal and deep
functional status of a transforming society. As critic Richard Corliss points out,
such films are about “ordinary people: sufferers and inflictors of suffering, men of
the street and ladies of the evening. There is little facial or verbal inflection, and
few dramatic gestures, unless one is smoking.” Most importantly, Corliss states, “to
be noticed is to risk being denounced. Best to blend into scenery, to seem a grey
person in a grey nation. Or to be a twisted bureaucrat. Only then will you flourish”.
78
The Sixth Generation, pioneered by Zhang Yuan, stresses a realistic style and
diverts people’s attention from empty grandeur to humble but realistic individuals.
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They are, however, unable to explain the internal structure and functional
mechanism of the social environment in which they live.
Hence, the thinking of the Sixth Generation movies only leads to confusion.
Xiao Wu stands up first to analyze and think about the society. In the irresistible
commercializing waves of the 1990s, the appearance of Xiao Wu explored the new
frontier for the Sixth Generation as a cultural symbol.
b) Blind Shaft [Mang jing]
Blind Shaft is a realistic film depicting coalminers living at the bottom of
Chinese society. Its documentary style presents the lives of those ordinary people to
the audience without any dramatic effects; it is just a simple story. Its director, Li
Yang was once the assistant to the famous director Huang Jianxin.
Li Yang has been living in Germany since 1988 to further study the art of
film/drama and has worked in German TV stations as an actor. In 1992 he began a
three-year’s course on directing in Cologne Media and Art Institute during which
he started to conceive his three documentaries. Blind Shaft was his first feature. Its
success in international film festivals is another victory for the “realistic aesthetics”
after Jia Zhangke.
Since the adoption of reform and opening up policies, numerous private
coal-mining pits appeared in China, which became the nightmare for many
mineworkers. The security conditions of these mining pits failed to reach the
standards set by the government. The owners were reluctant to invest in security
equipment and quite willing to bribe officials. Nobody cares about the lives of the
7 8 Corliss, Richard. Time International 26 March (2001): p. 10
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mineworkers. The pursuit of maximum profit is all-important. The mineworkers
work under extremely dangerous and harsh conditions without any modern
equipment or security. In 2001, a cave-in accident in Guangxi Autonomous Region
killed more than 80 mineworkers.7 9 However, the mine owner tried to shirk his
responsibility by secretly burying the bodies. Though this “buried case” was finally
uncovered by two conscientious reporters, it was only one case among countless
similar accidents in China. According to statistics, more than 5,000 coal
mineworkers were killed accidentally during the last few years.8 0 And this is just
the publicly reported figure. The true picture is no doubt far worse.
It is under this context that Li Yang decided to make this film. He adopted the
typical patterns of the Sixth Generation films: realistic scenes, on-the-spot audio
7 9 On 17 M y 2001 in Nan dan County (Guangxi, Guangxi Zhuang Minority Autonomous Region),
81 miners were killed. Initially over 300 miners were believed to be missing. A high-level
investigation team was set up by the party and the government on the causes of and responsibilities
for the accident, and found serious malpractices and corruption had led to illegal and dangerous
operations at the mine. See:
http://www.china-labour.org.hk/iso/news item.adp?news id=1848&news id=1848
8 0 This latest expose represents the tip of the iceberg in terms of the acute problem of cover ups of
mining accidents and casualties. The official records have registered an annual average of 5,000
deaths in China's coalmines for the last few years. The real figure is estimated to be much higher. In
recent government attempts to tackle the notorious mine safety record, increasing reports from the
government-controlled media offer glimpses of the scale of the cover-ups.
For example, according the Xinhua (29 May, 2002), it was found that a total of 14 accidents
had taken place during the past four years in the coalmines in Hejin city, Shanxi province, which
killed 95 miners. Only 12 percent of these deaths were registered in the government records. In
another mining city of Fengyang in the southeastern province of Hunan, 42 accidents in the city's
coalmines have killed 86 miners since 2000; but official records only reported 11 percent of the
casualties.
Most of the miners in China's coalmines are rural migrants who are employed by a myriad of
operators of illegal and dangerous small mines. Official records show that, despite a government
crackdown on illegal mines, around 23,000 small coalmines are still operating in 2002. About 80%
of these are illegal. The government has set the target of reducing coal mine deaths by 10 per cent
this year. However, if the government target is based on its own official records, the campaign will
be declaring yet another success based on only a small percentage reduction of the real number of
workers dying each year in China's mines.
See: http://www.china-labour.org.hk/iso/news item.adp?news id=1915
46
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recording, and non-professional actors. The director emphasized in many
interviews that he “didn’t want to make comment, just tell a story and display the
life and leave the audience to comment ” If Jia Zhangke’s Xiao Wu is regarded as
the first film that undertakes the task of social analysis and thinking, then Blind
Shaft further pushes the films towards the goal of reconstructing society.
Just as Xiao Wu employs the body to represent China, Blind Shaft uses the
body to present the harm done by urban modernization upon Chinese traditional
culture. Interpreting from the national allegory, the criticism implied in the scene of
a pitch-black shaft at the beginning of the film is profound. The English name of
“Mang jing” is Blind Shaft, means “mining pit” as well as “cheat” and “light”. It
reveals the darkness of human nature. The “shaft” is not only where people work, it
also symbolizes the darkest corner of their minds.
The mineworkers in Blind Shaft stand for workers as well as victims. They
hold great faith in modernization, but also are haunted by the vices of human nature.
Tang Chaoyang and Song Jinming killed Tang Chaoxia, a peasant worker just like
themselves, in a dark pit in order to cheat a pension of RMB30, 000 from the mine
owners. The owner’s cold remark that “China is poor for everything except human
resources” chills us.
The poorer a man is, the cheaper his life is worth. This is the cruel reality that
cannot be eluded. The unbalanced psychology resulting from comparison makes
the reality intolerable and cruel. Song Jinming and Tang Chaoyang m ay be kind in
their hometown. But everything changes when they come into the outside world.
47
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To make money to change their impoverished status, human natures easily
succumb to greed. The favorite words of Tang Chaoyang are “if you are
sympathetic to others, who will show pity to you?” To kill for money becomes an
acceptable excuse that consoles him.
Whether one acknowledges it or not, classes exist in any place and any system.
A class lives in its own circle, caring little and knowing little about other classes. In
China, peasant workers are living at the bottom of society.
People never bother to get to know peasants’ lives and other details. They are
peasants from the countryside. Poverty does not bring about changes. It is the
contrast between the poor and the rich that leads to changes. The psychological loss
resulting from the contrast causes all the degeneration and mutation.
The appearance of Yuan Fengming portends the splitting of the alliance
between the two murderers. Yuan Fengming reminds Song Jinming of his son, who
is studying in school. A kind feeling revives Song Jinming’s human nature. This
unexplainable feeling works to stop Song Jinming just in time and even leads him
to pay money to a prostitute, ends Yuan Fengming’s virginity. However, the delays
by Song Jinming drive Tang Chaoyang to kill again.
The ending of the film leaves some hope to the gloomy story. Tang Chaoyang
and Song Jinming kill each other in the shaft and Yuan Fengming gets the pension.
What’s the influence of the money on him? No one knows.
The gloomy story is really chilling. The reality is too cruel to be believable.
What causes the transformation of human nature? Why would people want to get
rich in such a strange and appalling way? It is the splitting of human nature amidst
48
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tremendous social change, the distortion and loopholes of systems, and the
unlimited dilation of desire that result in the indifference to human lives and the
corrosion of human nature.
Contemporary Chinese society neglects the peasants. The newly issued book
The Survey o f Chinese Peasants (Zhongguo nongmin tiaocha) exposed the real
pictures and shocked the local readers. People just sigh when they encounter them
and move their eyes upwards immediately. Although the phenomenon described in
Blind Shaft is not common, it is a signal that portends crisis. How should China deal
with the most populated group? How should one face this “China”?
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VIII. Conclusion
What the west and the admirers of the Sixth Generation are concerned about is
not the films themselves, but the “reality” outside of the films. The censorship
mechanism and a complete set of ideological systems provide many explanations
for the western masters’ theories, and they create academic bubbles. Post-colonial
theory repeatedly criticizes the films of the Fifth Generation. By the strength of the
national allegory, they create “oriental wonders” to present a marginalized “east” so
that the west may verify its own central status. Western culture, (or the
predilections of the judges of European film festivals) was the prerequisite for the
success of Zhang Yimou’s films; western expectation of oriental culture was the
key factor. It could not be said that the west began to get to know China, but rather,
these films once again verified the westerners’ imagination about the east or China.
Some critics think that the reason for the repeated success of the Sixth
Generation works in the west is not their artistic values, but that they create another
kind of “oriental wonder” that is different from the Fifth Generation, or that their
production patterns (out of the institutions, underground) hold significance and
values for their boycott and subversion of mainstream official production pattern.
This oversimplified view focuses on the ideological conflict between the east and
the west and turn a blind eye to the realism and artistic nature of the films
themselves. The “prostitute-complex”, non-professional actors and their dialects,
rough image quality, and noisy streets become fashionable; the medium or small
towns or the conjunction areas between urban and rural areas are turned into new
screen phenomena, and the humanist care about the middle or low level citizen
50
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overflows. These films, though poorly imitating those successful ones viz. the
intention of overseas export, are depicting the social, cultural and political
conditions in China. The realism and the cruelty of these films are rarely found in
Chinese films. In fact, such films as The Orphan o f Anyang, Xiao Wu, and Blind
Shaft merely take a glimpse of the disadvantaged and fail to stand and speak up for
them.
The expression of the Sixth Generation directors is so vague in the
post-modernist cultural logic constructed by international capitalism. “After
brands” is what the Chinese people are pursuing. The introduction of one-third of
the international brands into Shanghai8 1 is enough to show that Shanghai has kept
pace with the world. What a pride! But what are they proud of? Who is proud for
Shanghai and China at large? These questions must be contemplated and ruminated
on by the third-world, as it is culturally colonized by the first world. If by no other
means, the national allegory in contemporary Chinese films, at least, can address
this unfair relationship between cultures.
MingPao, New York, 2004/3/19
51
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BIBLIOGRAPHY
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Chinese:
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55
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Internet Resources:
English
Asian Film Connections
Chinese Movie Database
Chinese
http ://www. asianfilms.org
http: //www. dianying. com/ en/
http ://movie. newvouth.beida-online. com/
http://www.filmsea.com/
http:// cn. cl2QQQ. com/ film/
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Reproduced w ith permission o f th e copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
APPENDIX 1
Filmography
Chinese Pinyin English Director Year
Shouyang Adoption Zhang Yuan 2001
mm
Zou dao di All the Way Shi Runjiu 2000
Meili xin shijie Beautiful New World, A Shi Runjiu 1999
Beijing zazhong Beijing Bastards Zhang Yuan 1993
Shiqisui de danche Beijing Bicycle Wang Xiaoshuai 2000
Da yuebing Big Military Parade, The Chen Kaige 1986
Heipao shijian Black Cannon Incident, The Huang Jianxin 1985
i f #
Mang jing Blind Shaft Li Yang 2003
Lan fengzheng Blue Kite, The Tian Zhuangzhuang 1993
Dongchun de rizi Days, The Wang Xiaoshuai 1993
M M M fT
Toufa luanle Dirt GuanHu 1994
Erdi Drifters Wang Xiaoshuai 2003
Donggong, xigong East Palace, West Palace Zhang Yuan 1997
w m m m ^
Jinke ci qinwang Emperor and the Assasin, The Chen Kaige 1998
Guo ba yin Enjoy life Zhao Baogang 2000
Bawang bieji Farewell My Concubine Chen Kaige 1993
Jidu hanleng Frozen Wang Xiaoshuai 1995
f e l t # '#
Weiqing shaonii Girl in Danger Lou Ye 1995
Ui
* ^ 1
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Lu cha Green Tea Zhang Yuan 2003
Dao ma zei Horse Thief Tian Zhuangzhuang 1986
Wo ai ni I Love You Zhang Yuan 2003
Bing yu huo Ice and Fire Hu Xueyang 2000
Hua yang nian hua In the Mood for Love Wang Kawei 2000
Jii dou Jii Dou Zhang Yimou 1990
Kala shi tiao gou Kala, my Dog Lu Xuechang 2003
Liushou niishi Lady Left Behind, A Hu Xueyang 1991
m w B
Feichang xiari Lingering Face, A Lu Xuechang 2000
A
Zhang da cheng ren Making o f Steel, The Lu Xuechang 1997
Nannan nti nii Man Man Woman Woman Liu Bingjian 1999
Qianniu hua Morning Glory Flower, The Hu Xueyang 1995
M M
Mama Mother Zhang Yuan 1991
Yige dou buneng shao Not One Less Zhang Yimou 1999
Lao jing Old Well Wu Tianming 1986
Anyang ying’er Orphan o f Anyang, The Wang Chao 2002
M & I& W #
Yanmo de qingchun Perished Youth, The Hu Xueyang 1994
JAM
Zhantai Platform Jia Zhangke 2000
Youchai Postman He Jianjun 1994
Zi Hudie Purple Butterfly
Lou Ye 2003
Wushan yunyu Rainclouds Over Wushan Zhang Ming 1995
Da hong denglong gaogao gua Raise the Red Lantern Zhang Yimou 1991
m m Xuanlian Red Beads He Jianjun 1993
U »
0 ©
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M m
Hong gaoliang Red Sorghum Zhang Yimou 1988
WESffl
Yongzheng wangchao Reign o f Yongzheng Zhao Baogang 1998
Wo de fuqin muqin Road Home, The Zhang Yimou 1999
Guonian huijia Seventeen Years Zhang Yuan 1999
Xizao Shower Zhang Yang 1999
Zuie Sin Hu Xueyang 1996
Biandan guniang So Close to Paradise Wang Xiaoshuai 1996
m -
Er’zi Sons Zhang Yuan 1996
Aiqing malatang Spicy Love Soup Zhang Yang 1999
Guangchang Square, The Zhang Yuan 1994
m im m
Menghuan tianyuan Suburban Dreams Wang Xiaoshuai 1999
Suzhou he Suzhou River Lou Ye 2000
Yige he bage The One and the Eight Chen Kaige 1982
Huozhe To Live Zhang Yimou 1994
im m
Ren xiaoyao Unknown Pleasures Jia Zhangke 2002
MIAIfA
Zhoumo qingren Weekend Lover Lou Ye 1995
a s ;
Xiao wu Xiao Wu Jia Zhangke 1997
/RU®^
Xiaoshan huijia Xiaoshan Going Home Jia Zhangke 1995
Huang tudi Yellow Earth Chen Kaige 1984
APPENDIX 2
Directors
Chinese PinYin (English)
Chen Kaige
Guan Hu
He Jianjun
Hu Xueyang
Huang Jianxin
Jia Hongsheng
Jia Zhangke
Jiang Wen
Jin Chen
Li Jixian
Li Xin
Li Yang
Liu Bingjian
Lou Ye
Lu Xuechang
Shi Runjiu
Tang Danian
Tian Zhuangzhuang
Wang Chao
Wang Quan ’ an
Wang Xiaoshuai
Wu Ziniu
Zhang Junzhao
Zhang Ming
Zhang Yang
Zhang Yimou
Zhang Yuan
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Asset Metadata

Creator Chu, Katherine Kit Ling (author)

Core Title Sixth Generation films and national allegory

Degree Master of Arts

Degree Program East Asian Studies

Publisher University of Southern California (original), University of Southern California. Libraries (digital)

Tag cinema,OAI-PMH Harvest,political science, general

Language English

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Permanent Link (DOI) https://doi.org/10.25549/usctheses-c16-323203

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