One
A message from a friend came to my email address that the New York University Film Department held the "Reel China" Biennial of Contemporary Chinese Documentaries. The event was scheduled for two weekends in late September and early October 2006, with a dozen "Chinese underground documentaries" and a cross-ocean connection with the authors after the screening. Each film is followed by dialogue and academic discussion with the audience. The title of the festival is so cleverly designed that it is unforgettable. English reel has the meaning of film film, but also do "screening film" meaning, just with real "real" homophony, reminiscent of "real China", so the title of the Chinese is "photo China". Viewers can see at a glance from the English title that this is a film festival screening Chinese films, and from the English pronunciation and Chinese titles, they can speculate that only those films that reflect the real China are placed.
By the time we hurried to the New York Film Department in lower Manhattan, the film had already begun. I observed in the dark, in the small screening hall, the audience was less than a hundred people, mostly yellow-skinned Orientals. Li Gun's 18-minute short film "A Cabin on the Wasteland" features Old Li, a farmer living in a remote mountain village in northern Jiangsu, facing the approaching pace of the city, and the sentimental pastoral countryside disappears. The narrative of the film is rough and chaotic, the picture is dull and monotonous, the concept is first and the content is superficial. In post-film comments, Dan Streible, a professor of film at New York University, said that if the film is placed in the grand framework of the World Record, rather than just a "China problem" film, it is at best an amateur work. A friend of mine, Xiao Guo, and a visiting scholar majoring in film and television photography whispered: Is there a standard for selecting films for this film festival? This kind of film will not be ignored in China at all.
Immediately after the scene with the author, Professor Andrew Ross, a well-known scholar at the University of New York, solemnly asked the director Li Gun on the other side of the ocean: Do you think it is possible for Chinese farmers to express themselves? Li said that in fact, he did not reflect the destruction of rural ecology by industrialization from the perspective of human nature as a farmer. The film is launched under the title of a peasant's work, and the author is well aware of the dialectical relationship between the identity of the bottom and the mainstream discourse, and the response is clever. In this film exhibition, except for a few powerful works such as "Dr. Zhang" and "Beauty", most of the exhibition films are tailor-made foreign exhibitors. In the lens of "photography", China is objectified and defamiliarized. The most typical is the stone "50 Minutes of Woman", the author's self-conscious detachment, the distant "China" under the scrutiny of an all-knowing bystander, is carried by the floating light. The film presents the audience with a sketch of a hurried passerby who seems to be only interested in the "customs" of foreign countries. The most sentimental thing is that the video narrative occasionally reveals the rarity of tourists: at the wedding banquet of mountain farmers, the huge washbasin is filled with coarse vegetables and light rice; the children who hold up their stomachs and slip in the garden are pooping on the side of the banquet; on the dangerous and muddy country road, the camera in the shaking bumps captures the closed and foolish "native China" curiously. The film was used as a finale and was screened at the end. The audience also reacted the most enthusiastically, constantly bursting out with piercing laughter and surprised sighs. Xiao Guo couldn't help but tease: "They are all Chinese, how is it similar to looking at the alien world?" ”
Domestic public opinion often criticizes films for exhibiting in foreign countries, often mixed with disputes of righteousness, but in their hearts, they actually attach great importance to international evaluation. From this North American Biennale, it is possible to reflect on the big and narrow arguments that ignore the specific problems at the operational level and get the gist. For example, the design of this film festival, with the theme of vulnerable groups in contemporary China, hopes to reflect the plight of homosexuals, women, lower classes and marginalized groups through documentaries by emerging authors. However, after years of experience in international film festivals, the contestants are familiar with this set of rules, just like the Chinese students of "Kaoto" and "Kao G" are familiar with the question type, the contestants will also do the "work" of the film festival, but only "unintentionally" create. Young artists often complain that there are no smooth channels for independent production and documentary distribution in china, and serious works are useless. Therefore, it is better to take the pulse film festival jury to please and vote for it. And European and American audiences can not calmly look at Chinese films, especially documentaries, must be politically ideological. The already antiquated preconceived notions of "high pressure", "blockade", "resistance", etc., will be activated once they encounter Chinese films, and cannot be considered in terms of artistic or other comprehensive standards as when looking at world documentaries. As a result, "underground" Chinese films must have political subtexts, with the goal of rebelling against "eastern despotism." This kind of paranoia has a long historical accumulation, in the long collision of Chinese and Western cultures, constantly emerging on the surface in new forms, and slowly deposited in the mass collective unconscious. Through the Chinese image in Hollywood movies, we can glimpse the Chinese imagination of Westerners. Tracing the history of Hollywood Chinese-themed films, it will also be found that the fictional Chinese of light and shadow are ever-changing, and "real China" is often reduced to wishful thinking of viewers.
Two
Shortly after the film appeared, there was D.W. Griffiths, the father of American cinema. Griffith), after completing his monumental works, The Birth of a Nation (1915) and Intolerance (1916), made a successful work, Broken Blossoms or The Yellow Man and the Girl (1919). The 90-minute silent film is rarely mentioned now, but it was a sensation at the time. Many film historians elevated the film to the height of the first tragedy of American cinema, believing that it embodied a different side of Griffiths: not only making spectacular film epics, but also creating delicate and emotionally rich moral dramas. The film's protagonist is Cheng Huan, Chinese, played by white actor Richard Barthelmess. The makeup artist took great pains to make him look Asian. He was hoisted up from the corners of his eyes with tape, and he was also allowed to squint his eyes while performing, plus thick oil paint. Just by relying on this appearance, the image of a Chinese guy with thin eyebrows and oblique eyebrows was created.
Fu Manchu
Griffith's "yellow people" set an example for later films with oriental themes. Even during the Golden Age of Hollywood (1920s-1950s), the film makeup industry came up with manuals that systematically instructed white actors to dress up as Orientals. At the same time, it also trains white actors to imitate lines with Asian accents. The Japanese characters have to speak machine-gun, broken and urgent "Japanese English", while the Chinese characters speak "Chinese English" with a straight tone and dry chanting. From the 1920s to the 1960s, Hollywood generally hired white people to play Asian protagonists. The producer has his own reasons: "The audience is not used to watching the performance of oriental actors for too long in a film", or "Oriental actors are not professional enough to be competent in the protagonist". [1] Thus, the roles assigned to Asian actors are the teahouse, the chef, the laundromat, or the mad enemy soldier in the war movie. If you look back at movies from that period, you'll see big Hollywood stars like Louis Lena, who played a Chinese peasant woman in The Good Earth (1937), John Wayne, a Mongol khan (The Conqueror, 1956), and Marlon Brando in The Teahouse of the August Moon. 1956) in the comical Japanese translator Sasaki, while Catherine Hepburn in Dragon Seed (1944) Wischovy cleverly dressed as a Chinese anti-Japanese village woman.
Hepburn plays a Chinese woman
Ironically, Griffith's motivation for making Withered Flowers was to reverse his highly attacked image of an ethnicist. The Birth of a Nation provoked strong discontent among black americans and intellectuals when it was a manifesto of racism. Under intense pressure, Griffith, inspired by a popular British novel by the Chink and the Child, Thomas Burke, was determined to reinvent his public image. At that time, when Chinese immigrants were pouring into London's Limehouse Old Chinatown, the British suddenly realized the existence of Chinese, and literary works also paid attention to Chinese immigrants. Griffiths wanted to jump out of the traditional racial map of the United States and touch on the emerging Chinese problem. A cross-racial romance repels people's conservative racial prejudices. But "Withered Flowers" is a plausible story, and the protagonist Cheng Eunuch combines the various faces of Chinese in the eyes of Westerners: Buddhists, opium addicts, timid and fearful, feminine and feminine men. The Chineseman came to London alone, fantasizing about enlightening the "violent, barbaric West" world with Buddhist ideas. But it backfired, and the harsh reality depressed him. He smoked opium and languished all day, just at this time he met Lucy, a white girl who had been bullied by her stepfather, and thus developed unrealistic romantic fantasies. Although the film focuses on showing the kindness, gentleness and integrity of Cheng Eunuch, rather than the classic image of the popular literature Chinese, the heartless villain, it is difficult to say that it is biased towards the "Chinese Yankees" side. The plot conflict begins when Cheng Eunuch carries the comatose Lucy to his bed, takes good care of her, and heals her wounds, a scene that far exceeds the bottom line of racial concepts. As a result, he was bumped into by a white man who patronized a Chinese antique shop, and the degree of surprise can be imagined. He did not dare to delay, and trotted all the way to Lucy's stepfather to make a small report. The cruel stepfather, a down-and-out boxer, goes after Lucy and Cheng Like crazy. Thus, a classic thriller in the history of cinema, the "closet scene", was born. This scene is the climax of the whole film, quite famous, and is often mentioned in the class of the American University Film Department. Lucy hid in the closet, and her stepfather's axe smashed the closet door piece by piece, and Lucy screamed like a trapped beast behind the door. Although it is a silent film, it makes the audience feel immersed in the scene, as if hearing a heart-rending cry for help. At the end, the Chinese guys kill themselves with a bullet to offset this out-of-the-ordinary love affair, and the romantic that the audience cannot accept is stopped. In fact, "Withering" is not a love story from the beginning, the heroine is only touched by the tenderness of the Chinese, but has been careful not to let him "violate". And Cheng's love is nothing more than "pure spiritual, even the people who hate him the most say so" (end credits).
Three
The ambiguous image of the Chinese did not last long, and soon in the 1920s, fear of the "Yellow Peril" began to penetrate the psyche of the Western masses. Hollywood, the far-reaching mass entertainment industry, has pushed it to a climax. Hollywood has been producing dozens of Chinese films for decades, including Fu Manchu. There are many scholars in the field of American film culture who study the relationship between Fu Manchu and the history of "anti-China" in the United States. In an Article on Yellow Peril Thrillers, Jess Nevins argues that the idea of the "Yellow Peril" was rooted in the 19th century, when Chinese immigrants emerged in American society. In the 1850s, mainstream white society saw the Chinese as a source of physical, ethnic and social pollution, and in the 1860s and 1870s they were opium perverts, and in the 1870s and 80s the Chinese became stinky coolies. It was only at the end of the 19th century that Chinese people began to be seen as a "threat" to Western civilization. But at the same time, it is also mixed with some "positive images" of the Chinese, such as chinese peasants with simple minds, simplicity and sentimentality. Among the oriental novels that were popular in Britain and the United States at that time, the Chinese threat theory that had contributed to the theory was called the "Yellow Peril Novel" by Nevins. The routines of these novels often feature well-educated Chinese doctors (such as Harvard and Yale graduates) plotting to destroy the West; there are also evil Chinese wizards, unpredictable in shape, casting poisonous curses on good and good people; and gang leaders in Chinatown, using underworld networks to manipulate the whole of San Francisco. Among them, the works that triggered the "Yellow Peril" frenzy were Arthur Sarsfield Ward's The Mystery of Fu Manchu (published in the United Kingdom in 1913 and renamed "The Insidious Doctor of Fumandu" when it was released in the United States). In fact, this book does not have any new tricks, but it carries forward the plot routine of the "Yellow Peril" novel, and integrates the essence of each family. Due to the continuous remake of the film, especially the many Hollywood stars have joined, the image of the wise and evil Satan of "Fu Manchu" has become the prototype of the popular myth. In fact, the latest version of "Fumanzhou" has long been greatly discounted in racial meaning, but as a literary prototype, "Fumanzhou" still ghostly wanders in the collective unconscious of the American public.
After 1949, with the fall of the iron curtain of the ideological cold war between the two camps of the East and the West, the hard-line collective image of communist China replaced the insidious and cunning individual Chinese image in American movies. In particular, with the outbreak of the Korean War, different Hollywood studios, some cooperating with wartime propaganda to cheer for the war, and some reflecting on the cruelty and justice of the war, launched a series of Korean War films: "Steel Helmet" (1951), "Fixed Bayonets" (1951), "Retreat Hell!" 1952), The Bridges at Toko-Ri (1955), Battle Hymn (1956), Men in War (1957), Time Limit (1957), Pork Chop Hill (1959), The Manchurian Candidate .) Candidate,1962), The Chairman (1969), etc., plus 40 television films. On the one hand, Korean War films inherit the narrative tradition of "World War II" historical films: magnificent scenes, epic style, narrative tension and order, and use stunts to create realistic effects of war. But at the same time, they also have their own style, such as the enemy is always placed in the distance or background, the Chinese army is always "not present" in the conflict, that is, there is no close-up, but always let the audience feel their approach, which reinforces the atmosphere of terror and cruelty. American soldiers fight bloody, unknowable, and incomprehensible opponents, and the hero's story is full of sadness and war-weariness. In contrast to Hollywood movies, China, the other side of the war, has also made more than a dozen films on related themes. Widely influenced such as "Shangganling" (1956), "Long Sky Than Wing" (1958), "Beacon Train" (1960), "Three Eighth Line" (1960), "Surprise Attack" (1962), "Hero Tanker" (1962), "Hero Children" (1964), "Strike against the Invaders" (1965), "Surprise Attack on the White Tiger Regiment" (1972), "Fierce Battle of the Nameless River" (1975) and so on. These films' narrative strategies in dealing with the enemy coincide with Hollywood's, and we see only a vague image of the U.S. military. Of course, there have been short close-up shots of the US military in films such as "Raiders", but its image is often funny, weird, and unoccupied. Careless makeup makes the U.S. military look less like a soldier and more like a clown. Chinese films do not exaggerate the horrors of war, but on the contrary, they try to set off the romantic atmosphere of revolution. The enemy was always comical and bluffed, while the volunteers were heroic and tenacious, full of optimistic heroism. Obviously, this type of drama (melodrama) puts publicity first and does not pay much attention to realism.
Hollywood's Korean War films, which soon followed the armistice, went out of theaters and had fewer and fewer opportunities for them to circulate on the television network, becoming "forgotten films" like the fate of the war in American public discourse. At a U.S. university, I took a course on "Modern Chinese History." Once, when I was involved in this history, I asked the American undergraduates in the class if they knew anything about the history of the Korean War, and almost all of them shook their heads. Only one girl knows more, saying that her grandfather participated in World War II and the Korean War, but when the family gathers only talk about the glory of "World War II", they are secretive about the Korean War. This is typical among the American public, where the Korean War did not bring glory to Americans, but trauma, so American historians jokingly called the war a "forgotten war." In order to arouse the interest of the students in class, I borrowed the theme of the movie, counting the Hollywood Korean War films, hoping to see a positive response, but they just shook their heads. Obviously, the generation of "post-80s" in the United States has no chance to see the old films that are shelved. But when the Manchurian Candidate was mentioned, many students raised their hands. Ha ha! At least one film has not been forgotten.
Four
"The Manchurian Candidate" was named one of the 100 classic films in the United States, and the title "The Manchuria Candidate" has become an almost everyday term for those who have been brainwashed and cannot be autonomous. When this film was released, it was as confusing and legendary as the plot of the movie. Director John Frankenheimer, who directed a political film for the first time, failed miserably at the box office. Critics agreed that this was a second-rate film with a chaotic plot and mixed elements. But no one expected that a year after the film was screened, President Kennedy was assassinated, and the assassination was the same as the end of the film. So many people speculate that the assassin Lee Harvey Oswald assassinated the president inspired by the movie. There are even more outrageous claims, as happened to the film's main character, Raymond Shaw, oswald was brainwashed by the communist state to assassinate Kennedy under the remote control of foreign powers. Rumors of catching wind and shadows were rife, "The Manchurian Candidate" followed suit, and the media also participated in the hype of the political metaphor of the film's symbolism. Perhaps with a clear conscience, the major cinemas joined forces to remove the film from the theater line as a sign of respect for Kennedy. But the media refused to let go of this "material" film, and finally the protagonist in the film, Frank Sinatra, a double superstar in the music and film industry, bought the screening rights of the film out of his own pocket, hoping that this film would disappear forever, so that his proud friend Kennedy's undead would rest in peace. The film "Full" was beaten into the cold palace from 1963 until 1987.
Stills of the Manchurian candidate
Although the elements are complex, the basic plot of the "Full" film is still straight. An American detachment was ambushed in the Korean battlefield, captured with his hands tied, and sent to Manchuria for "brainwashing." The place name Manchuria has a special landmark significance in the Chinese geographical imagination of the American public. Later, they returned to China as heroes and engaged in activities to subvert the American political system and assassinate the president-elect. At that time, it was just an ordinary "communist threat theory" movie. But with the passage of time, the American film critics have rated this film more and more highly, making it enter the ranks of hundreds of classics. It was agreed that The Full contained a rich surreal element and a profound satire on American politics. It is said that it organically combines Hitchcock's narrative style with traditional thriller suspense films, and is a masterpiece in film noir[2]. But to be sure, the film's historical and political context factors far outweigh the artistic style. It is a product of McCarthyism, but it cannot be said to be a straightforward expression of McCarthy's ideology. Because the film is precisely Based on McCarthy's logic, it satirizes McCarthy's political paranoia and pathological persecution. The brainwashed Assassin Raymond Shaw, whose parents are a classic McCarthy persecutor who persecute political opponents every day in the name of the communist threat, and in the end they themselves are Soviet spies who try to subvert the American political system. If you look at this film with today's eyes, you will feel strange. On the Internet, I have seen domestic film fans posting that in any case, I can't understand that "Full" film is actually an American film classic, no matter from what aspect, it should not be. But if the American public's fear of "brainwashing" during the Korean War and the arrogance of McCarthyism are seen as the production context of the film, its special significance can be recognized.
After the outbreak of the Korean War, a journalist named Edward Hunter published an article in the Miami-based newspaper The News in September 1950 saying that Chinese "brain-washing" methods were used to force people into the party. Since then, the word "brainwashing" has frequently appeared in american newspapers and newspapers, becoming a label attacking Communist China. In 1953, allen Dulles, the director of central intelligence, blatantly used "Brain Warfare" to describe the Korean War. At this time, 70% of American prisoners of war on the battlefield signed a declaration calling for an armistice, and 15% defected to the Chinese army. [3] This greatly demoralized the U.S. military and caused panic among the American public. What puzzled the Americans most was that after the war, a large number of prisoners of war set foot on their own territory, but still refused to overturn the anti-American declaration made in the prisoner-of-war camps. Thus, American public opinion found the answer from Hunter's theory: Chinese brainwashed our children. [4] Conservative forces in the United States have given this phenomenon a religious interpretation: communism has the magic of Satan, which can make the enemy lose normal emotions and reason and become controlled robots. Liberals argued that the Soviet Union and Chinese had invented a secret technology that could change prisoners' beliefs and behavior in a short period of time. The CIA preferred the "scientific explanation" of progressive liberals, so it spent a lot of money with Cornell University to study the technology, and found that Sino-Soviet did not master neural or brain control technology. However, the study spurred the CIA's potential to develop brain neurotechnology for future interrogations. [5] The 2004 new edition of The Manchurian Candidate (starring Danze Washington) used the development of brain nerve control technology as a clue to fictionalize the experimental institution behind the command of the American consortium, implanting memory chips into the brains of American soldiers who participated in the Gulf War, allowing them to return home and portray Raymond Shaw, the spokesman of the big consortium (alluding to the HarleyBurton Company), as a hero based on artificial memory, and finally, Shaw was promoted to the throne of vice president (alluding to Cheney).
"The Manchurian Candidate" is a film full of contradictions and tensions in terms of political ideology. One can both classify it as a black critique work by the Hollywood left, such as James Naremore, who in his study of film noir argues that the film was the pinnacle of the Creation of The Kennedy Era, represented by Stanley Kubrick and Frankenheimer, representing Kennedy-liberalism and the Hollywood leftist counterattack against McCarthyism. [6] Some commentators have suggested that the film was the culmination of the McCarthy-style communist threat theory. Ethnically and ideologically, the film portrays Chinese and North Koreans as pornographic, cold-blooded, and irrational others. The protagonist Frank has this dialogue: the Chinese in the nightmare are all the faces of Fu Manchu.
Five
After the end of the Cold War, the United States ushered in a wave of Asian immigration in the 1990s, and Chinese people entered all fields of American society, and no one dared to take a Manchurian-style Chinese. In traditional Hollywood movies Chinese unique sense of mystery and strangeness has gradually become a thing of the past. While the producer deliberately assigned black characters, more and more Chinese faces appeared in the film. In particular, in the 21st century, Hollywood has made a big push into the Chinese market, and hiring Chinese stars can bring unexpected box office. On the one hand, in terms of racial awareness, Hollywood filmmakers have become cautious and cautious when dealing with the image of Orientals, and dare not make mistakes. On the other hand, in terms of political ideology, it is less restrained and more tactically renewed. According to Jeffrey N. Wasserstrom, a professor at Indiana University, the American mass media launched a new version of Demonizing China in the 1990s: the good and the Chinese and the evil Chinese Empire,[7] which pitted Chinese against their country. In 1997, there was a turning point in Sino-US relations, when Chinese leaders visited the United States, and conservative forces in the United States clamored for vicious attacks on the Clinton administration, which advocated dialogue. On the cover of The National Review on March 24 of that year, Mrs. Clinton was dubbed a "Manchurian candidate," accompanied by a cartoon in which the Clintons had an Asian face, squinting eyes and teeth. Hollywood has also been in tune with the mainstream media as ever, releasing three anti-China films a year, "Seven Years in Tibet" (starring Brad Pitt), "The Life of the Dalai Lama" (Kundun), and "Red Corner" (a story of a lawyer played by Richard Keele in Prison in Beijing), with a tone that is basically "bad government, good people", so the hope of saving Chinese is pinned on the "democratization" or "Westernization" of future politics. Wasserstrom concludes that the specters of the "Yellow And Red Perils" were never buried, and that the new version of the "China Threat Theory" is nothing more than a new bottle of old wine.
The Clintons were Manchurian candidates
In the process of building and reconstructing China's image, Chinese Americans also have positive interactions with mainstream society. On the one hand, Chinese immigrants have successfully struggled and played an increasingly important role in society, and the image of Chinese has become positive and positive. On the other hand, in order to strive to enter the mainstream society, immigrants often consciously internalize the mainstream thinking mode of culture, when looking back at the motherland, hoping that they will "sink" into the observation angle of the bystander, China has become a strange object with a distance under cold scrutiny, and the sense of integration into the mainstream is also spontaneous. This is vividly expressed in the large and small Chinese cultural events that are often held in North America. For example, at the "Photo China" documentary biennale, it will be felt that there is some kind of unspoken rule that pervades the whole process of selecting and screening works. The films on display have similar themes: Chinese pure, simple, and good, struggling for basic survival. The repression of Chinese society contrasts with the fragility of the individual, and helplessness and hope are bitterly intertwined. This is not only in line with the mainstream ideology of North America, but also reflects the complex political pattern of the two sides of the strait and the three places and the complex emotions of The recognition of Chinese identity. The strange, barren and distant hometown on the screen not only evokes a faint sense of nostalgia, but also witnesses the helplessness of immigrants leaving their hometowns.
The specter of the "Cold War" was still looming, and in July 2007, the FBI published an advertisement in the Chinese media in the United States and Western China, asking the Chinese to cooperate with the bureau to report Chinese spies, which aroused a strong response from the local Chinese. Feeling deeply humiliated, they appealed in the Chinese-language media: No matter how loyal you are to the United States, no matter how many generations you have been rooted here, the color and race of the Chinese will not be able to turn the Chinese into real Americans. When you go out, passers-by will ask you which country you are from, and when Sino-US relations are tense, you are walking on thin ice.
[1] Robert B. Ito, A Brief History of Hollywood Yellowface, “Bright Lights Film Journal”。 March 1997 Issue 18
[2] Noir refers primarily to a number of black-and-white films produced by Hollywood from 1940 to the late 1950s, based on popular American detectives, gangsters, and crime novels of the time, and reproduced on the screen in the Style of German Expressionism. The genre of graphics, narratives and performances is highly stylized.
[3] John Marks, The Search for the Manchurian Candidate (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1991. P. 198.
[4] Ibid.
[5] Ibid., P. 199.
[6] James Naremore, More Than Night, Film Noir in its Contexts (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998). P. 132-3.
[7] 见Jeffrey N.Wasserstrom，Big Bad China and the Good Chinese: An American Fairy Tale, (Timothy B. Weston and Lionel M. Jensen ed, China beyond the Headlines)，（New York: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc. 2000）