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Animation in China

By the turn of the twenty-first century, animation production has grown to thousands of hours a year in the People’s Republic of China (PRC). Despite this, and unlike American blockbuster productions and the diverse genres of Japanese anime, much animation from the PRC remains relatively unknown. This book is a historical and theoretical study of animation in the PRC. Although the Wan Brothers produced the first feature-length animated film in 1941, the industry as we know it today truly began in the 1950s at the Shanghai Animation Film Studio (SAFS), which remained the sole animation studio until the 1980s. Considering animation in China as a convergence of the institutions of education, fine arts, literature, popular culture, and film, the book takes comparative approaches that link SAFS animation to contemporary cultural production, including American and Japanese animation, pop art, and mass media theory. Through readings of classic films such as Princess Iron Fan, Uproar in Heaven, Princess Peacock, and Nezha Conquers the Dragon King, this study represents a revisionist history of animation in the PRC as a form of “postmodernism with Chinese characteristics.” As a theoretical exploration of animation in the PRC, this book will appeal to students and scholars of animation, film studies, Chinese studies, cultural studies, and political and cultural theory. Sean Macdonald is assistant professor of Chinese studies at the University of Florida, U.S., where he lectures on modern and contemporary Chinese literature and culture.

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Animation in China History, aesthetics, media Sean Macdonald

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Animation in China History, aesthetics, media Sean Macdonald

First published 2016 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2016 Sean Macdonald The right of Sean Macdonald to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Macdonald, Sean Animation in China : history, aesthetics, media / Sean Macdonald. pages cm. — (Routledge contemporary China series; 133) Includes bibliographical references and index. 1. Animated films—China—History. I. Title. NC1766.C6M33 2016 791.43′340951—dc23 2015019635 ISBN: 978-1-138-93880-9 (hbk) ISBN: 978-1-315-67543-5 (ebk) Typeset in Times New Roman by Apex CoVantage, LLC

To my family

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Contents

List of figures Acknowledgments Introduction: It all started with a studio

xvi xviii 1

1

It all started with a monkey

15

2

Cartoons and Chinese studies

48

3

Meishu pian as national style

78

4

A discussion and a princess

105

5

Nezha naohai (Nezha Conquers the Dragon King): Scar animation and an ending

136

Industry and animation

174

Glossary Filmography Bibliography Index

207 226 230 247

6

Figures

1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 1.5 1.6 1.7 4.1 4.2 5.1 5.2 5.3 5.4 5.5 5.6 5.7 5.8 5.9 5.10 5.11 5.12 5.13 5.14 5.15 5.16 5.17 5.18 5.19 5.20 5.21 6.1

Zhang Guangyu 2012: 89 Zhang Guangyu 2012: 91 Uproar in Heaven, part 1, 1961 Uproar in Heaven, part 1, 1961 Scene of the City, 1935 Uproar in Heaven, part 1, 1961 Beijing Film Studio ident, 1970 Uproar in Heaven, part 2, 1964 Princess Peacock, 1963 Nezha Conquers the Dragon King, 1979 Nezha Conquers the Dragon King, 1979 Nezha Conquers the Dragon King, 1979 Nezha Conquers the Dragon King, 1979 Nezha Conquers the Dragon King, 1979 Nezha Conquers the Dragon King, 1979 Nezha Conquers the Dragon King, 1979 Nezha Conquers the Dragon King, 1979 Nezha Conquers the Dragon King, 1979 Nezha Conquers the Dragon King, 1979 Nezha Conquers the Dragon King, 1979 Nezha Conquers the Dragon King, 1979 Nezha Conquers the Dragon King, 1979 Nezha Conquers the Dragon King, 1979 Astroboy, 1963 Astroboy, 1963 Battleship Potemkin, 1925 Battleship Potemkin, 1925 Nezha Conquers the Dragon King, 1979 Nezha Conquers the Dragon King, 1979 Nezha Conquers the Dragon King, 1979 The Dreaming Girl, 2005

35 36 39 40 41 44 45 128 129 143 145 151 151 154 156 156 158 158 159 159 160 161 161 163 164 164 165 166 170 171 195

Figures 6.2 6.3 6.4 6.5

Kuangkuang riji, 2010 Miss Puff, 2012 A film about behavior that hasn’t been defined in the midst of the revolution, 2011 Sunrise Over Tian’anmen, 1997

xvii 197 198 200 203

Acknowledgments

Research for this study began in 2009. But thanks must go to the person at the Montréal production office of the movie Heavy Metal who allowed a teenager to try out as a cel painter back in 1979 or 1980. Frustrating and exhilarating, the experience was a type of knowledge with an absent signifier. I never worked on the film, but I realized it took a thick layer of paint to fill in one cel. Research for this book was made possible with two grants from the Humanities Scholarship Enhancement Fund of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences. I thank my colleagues in the Department of Languages, Literatures, and Cultures and the University of Florida for their support. I would especially like to thank Barbara Mennel who has been an objective critic and mentor for this research. Shuibo Wang was very helpful in introducing me to the animation community. By a twist of fate, my first published review was of a film by Shuibo, and some of my first experiences of contemporary art occurred many years ago when he allowed this unkempt backpacking foreigner to stay in his studio at the Central Academy of Fine Arts. On my visit to the Shanghai Animation Film Studio in 2010, I had the luck to meet Sicci Chen, who was at the time a young, bilingual studio employee who I have remained in touch with. Sicci picked out all the classics in that basement store, and I have never stopped watching them. Thanks to Li Jianping, Dean of the Animation School of the Beijing Film Academy (BFA), who was kind enough to answer my questions in the summer of 2014. Sabrina Yu, who was completing her doctorate in animation at BFA, was immensely helpful. I felt fortunate to be able to chat with animators like Sabrina and visiting faculty Steven Brown. Pi San, director of Hutoon, probably did not realize how delighted I was to visit his studio after watching so many of his productions online. I hope his studio continues producing such high quality and relevant animation. Sun Xun was very welcoming, and I hope he will understand that the theorist can be at least as authoritarian as the artist. I have not done Sun’s films justice, and can only hope to watch more of his work. Thanks very much to the screenwriters Yao Zhongli and Pu Shu for sitting down with me in Shanghai. With each meeting I felt a true sense of an animation community.

Acknowledgments xix Ideas for this book were presented as papers in several conferences, and I would like to thank some of the discussants and participants for their comments and criticisms, including Thomas LaMarre, John Crespi, Daisy Du, Hongmei Sun, and Sandra Annett. Thanks to the late Professor Esther Cheung of the Department of Comparative Literature for arranging my stay and use of the library at the University of Hong Kong in 2010. I would like to thank the students of “Animation in China,” a course I have been offering since 2012, for their interest and their very observant readings. Special thanks to Wayne Lozano for editing an early, insane draft of this book. Thanks very much to my editor, Stephanie Rogers, for seeing value in this project, even in the early chaotic manuscript stages. And thanks to the my anonymous readers whose critical comments greatly aided early drafts. Thanks to Rebecca Lawrence for her patient communications. I am very grateful to the production team at Routledge for making this publication possible. Sincere thanks to the producers, directors, animators, writers, and spectators of animation in China; the industry exists because of you.

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Introduction It all started with a studio

The interfaces for phones, tablets, and computers, GPS’s and digital maps, the manipulable avatars and weaponry of computer games, all employ animated images. The animated series, the latest blockbuster, are often produced as, or enhanced by, CGI. Animation has come into its own in multiplicities of form and format. As some of the most prevalent and taken-for-granted imagery, animation represents a key series of forms and technologies in the historic emergence of mass media. Largely emerging from the marginalized status of the television cartoon, animation is still linked to logos on cereal boxes, toys, furniture and clothing, to comic books and picture books featuring talking animals that simultaneously recall, parody, and ignore the ancestral genre of the fable. And yet animation is also a reminder that representation is both signifier and signified, that representation, as a system of signs, points to the object it represents and becomes in turn an object-in-itself. When I began this research a few years ago my attention was drawn to what appeared to be the emergence of an industry or series of industries grouped under the word dongman. As one early article puts it: “Dongman is the abbreviated term for donghua (animation) and manhua (manga), cultural forms that receive the deep affection of young people around the globe” (Li Yulong 2005: 44). The 2000s are key for the growth of national industries of animation in the People’s Republic of China (PRC). Paola Voci discusses the plethora of animation festivals, and state investment and promotion of animation industries in the first decade of the 2000s (2010). Weihua Wu discusses mainstream and independent animation, the rise of flash animation beginning in the early 2000s, and the reemergence of commercial television animation by 2010 (2014: 63–68). Wu claims the fragility of independent online animation is linked to “the more recent emergence of China as a global economic power; the fact that the state’s control and monitoring of the Internet is much more heavy-handed and overt in China; and the presence of both statutory and unofficial mechanisms of censorship in China on a large scale” (64). Voci notes television animation increased from 12,000 minutes in 2003 to 100,000 minutes in 2007 (2010: 41). I return to television content quotas and independent animation in the last chapter. However, this present study is a reading of the historically mainstream animation produced at the Shanghai meishu dianying zhipianchang, the Shanghai Animation Film

2

Introduction

Studio, or SAFS for short. Most of the films I discuss are considered to be wellknown classics of Chinese animation and there is a sense of nostalgia attached to them. SAFS films have the aura of national treasures, which has greatly affected critical reception, especially in Chinese language discussions. The available SAFS catalogue represents a few key film texts including a handful of feature-length productions and two- or three-dozen shorts. By limiting myself to films produced at the SAFS from the 1950s until the 1980s, I acknowledge a quasi-official corpus produced during a key period of PRC film and cultural history. The SAFS has been important to the construction of a national history of animation, and the government has directly intervened by publishing quasi-official publications. Wang Liuyi (2012) edited a ten-volume history of animation in China, Zhengtu: zouxiang bainian de zhongguo donghua (The Journey: Approaching One Hundred Years of Chinese Animation) in conjunction with Guoji wenhua yu duo meiti yishu (The Cultural and Multimedia International Association).1 The Zhongguo donghua xuehui (China Animation Institute, 2006) edited Zuji huisheng: Zhongguo donghua 80 nian zuopin ji (Footprint and Reverberation: A Collection of China’s Animation in the Past 80 Years).2 A hard-covered, slip-covered, coffee-table style book printed in color on high quality glossy paper, Footprint and Reverberation presents the history of Chinese animation like a catalogue of titles divided into features, co-productions, series, shorts, and student productions. The Journey constructs a national history within transnational animation history. Both Footprint and Reverberation and The Journey present lists of films, but The Journey lists a large number of films produced between 1949 and 1979 in the PRC which are either in storage or not available to the public.3 The Journey history begins with a narrative of the international development of animation since the late nineteenth century and makes the important link between satirical manhua and animation (2012: Vol. 2, 96–133). The Journey includes good introductions to a large number of directors/animators at the SAFS, but by Volume 5 the discussion turns to industry (chanye) and the history becomes more of a catalogue of state investment in animation accompanying lists of series and their production houses, all emphasizing China’s place in the transnational formation of animation industries. Animation has become a nation-building industry. The history of animation in China consists of a relatively consistent narrative that begins with early cinema, flows into the Wan Brothers, to the Northeast Studio, to the SAFS and then the “industry” arrives with the opening up and reforms. Bao Jigui’s Donghua dianying tongshi (A Comprehensive History of Animation in China) follows a similar trajectory as the two publications just mentioned with the additional category of Shehui zhuyi shichang jingji shiqi, the “Socialist Market Economy Period,” that starts in 1995 and includes the significant intervention of the State starting around 2004 (2010: 205 and after). Animation is a national industry, and the national narrative represented in historic accounts reflects this. The government began publishing an industry “Blue Book” on the economic side of animation in 2011, and State Administration of Press, Publication, Radio, Film and Television of the People’s Republic of China publishes data on the television animation regularly.

Introduction 3 Reading mainstream, official history means that choices of film text are often already made. However, from the beginning, the national narrative of animation in the PRC has been linked to state intervention, and these interventions are rarely, if ever, historicized. For example, the notion of “national style” is invoked again and again in the literature (Ehrlich and Jin 2001; Farquhar 1999; Quiquemelle 1991; Wu 2009; Zhang Songlin 1981). In Chapters 3 and 4, I read “national style” as a significant form of discourse that circulated in state promotionals by figures like Mao Zedong and Zhou Enlai and claimed to link all forms of cultural production to supposedly singular and authentic Chinese style and form. By exploring an official, canonical, national history of animation in China, I attempt to historicize animation history. The Wan Brothers were the first animators in China, but the story of animation in the PRC is the story of the SAFS. The SAFS story has been developed into a relatively fixed narrative linked to the first Communist-controlled studio, the Dongbei dianying zhipianchang (Northeast Film Studio), where the first animation, a stop-motion puppet short called Huangdi meng (The Emperor’s Dream) and a cel-animated film, Wengzhong zhuobie (To Catch a Turtle in a Jar) were produced in 1947. Both films appear to have been political satires of President Chiang Kai-shek.4 After 1949, the Northeast Studio animation section became the animation section of the Shanghai Film Studio, which would become the Shanghai Animation Film Studio in 1957. But this narrative is complicated by the wartime history of film production in China. The relationship between the Northeast Film Studio and the Japanesecontrolled Manshu Eiga Kyokai, the Manchuria Film Association, suggests links between the colonial occupation of parts of China before 1949 and the role played by the Japanese in film history. Many of the first members of the Northeast Film Studio when it was founded in 1947 had worked at the Manchurian Film Studio (Leyda 1972: 131–136; Li Yu et al. 2011; You and Wang 2002). As for animation, Mochinaga Tadahito (1919–1999), known in Chinese as Fang Ming, was involved in early Chinese animation, including the films just mentioned, and represents a link between early Japanese and Chinese animation. Mochinaga continued to work at the animation section of the Shanghai Film studio until the early 1950s and would return to the PRC later to give lectures on animation at the Beijing Film Academy in the 1980s (Li and Su 2012: 70–74; Nan 2012). The emergence of Japanese animation after WWII also complicates concepts like national style as a marker or markers for cultural specificity in animation. Saiyûki (Journey to the West), a wonderful film also released internationally with an English dubbed soundtrack as Alakazam the Great, was based on episodes from Journey to the West, including the Uproar in Heaven episode. When the SAFS was in planning stages for Danao tiangong (Uproar in Heaven, 1961; 1964), Toei animation released Hakujaden, a film based on the perennially popular Legend of the White Snake, a well-known story adapted in theater and film. The Toei version played at the Venice Film festival and was also later dubbed for the international market. Hakujaden is deliberately designed with Chinese

4

Introduction

elements of character design, backgrounds, and even music. Were animators in the PRC aware of these productions during the promotion of national style during the 1950s and ’60s? The historical place of animation in China is terminological and institutional. Although this is changing, historically Chinese animation media has been particularized as nationally and ethnically specific. National style is best epitomized by the term meishu, the official term for animation and part of the name of the sole animation studio until the 1980s in the PRC, Shanghai meishu dianying zhipianchang, the Shanghai Animation Film Studio. Weihua Wu discusses meishu as an example of “catachresis and metaphor” (2009: 42). Wu derives one of the definitions for animated film from the important text Dianying yishu cidian (The Dictionary of Film Arts), published in 1986: “Including animated cartoon, paper-cut film, puppet films, and folded-paper films, meishu film follows the aesthetic process by drawing illustrations, or borrowing other art forms to structure the visual system . . . ”5 But if the term meishu is specifically Chinese, the same could be said for other Chinese language terms for film. In The Dictionary of Film Arts, meishu film is one of the four major genres of film, along with gushipian (fictional or narrative film), xinwen jilupian (news documentary), and the kexue jiaoyupian (scientific educational film). Each term implies a specific use of language for particular categories or types of film, no less than the term meishu for animation. The word meishu comes into modern Chinese from Japanese. In a discussion of a series of art books published in 1911 in China, Meishu congshu (Fine Arts Series), Ogawa Hiromitsu notes that although the term meishu is common nowadays, at the time this vocabulary would have been unusual. Hiromitsu compares lexicons and dictionaries of the period and notes that meishu corresponds to the Japanese term bijutsu, a compound word corresponding to “the European concept ‘fine arts.’” The word is a Japanese neologism, perhaps similar to the large number of imported terms that came through Japan, where Japanese scholars used compounds from classical Chinese to translate European vocabulary from a number of domains (Hiromitsu 2003: 7; Lydia H. Liu 1995: 284–352). The term bijutsu for fine arts is used in school names in Japan beginning in the late nineteenth century, and the same occurs with the term meishu in China in the first two decades of the twentieth century (Hiromitsu 2003: 14–15). Meishu is a conceptual category linked to institutional practice. With the victory of the Communists in 1949 and following the declaration of the PRC, the government clearly placed a high value on cultural production including literature, art, film, performance, architecture, public monuments, and spaces like museums. And this included the discourse surrounding various sectors of cultural production in journals on literature, art, and film studies. From the very beginning the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) implemented a rationalization of cultural production (Zou 2002: 6–7; Hung 2011). The control of cultural production was an ideological project that occurred at the level of the institutional organization of cultural sectors. Max Weber denied the existence of rationalized institutions outside of the Western culture: “Institutions of higher education of all possible types, even some superficially similar to our universities, or at least academies, have existed (China, Islam). But a rational,

Introduction 5 systematic, and specialized pursuit of science, with trained and specialized personnel, has only existed in the West in a sense at all approaching its present dominant place in our culture” (Weber 1992: xxix). Weber separates Western and non-Western culture by the supposed abilities to systematically organize institutions of knowledge. However, even leaving out the pre-modern examination system in China, by the middle of the twentieth century, such a denial of rational organization to nonWestern cultures is absurd. Since much of my discussion of animation is linked to the SAFS during what is sometimes called the revolutionary period (approximately 1949–1976) and the beginning of the opening up and reforms (1978–), periodization is key. The “revolutionary period” is followed by the “postrevolutionary” or “postsocialist” period, history-based terms originally meant to supplement or replace the terms postcolonialist and postmodernist.6 Yet neither of these alternative concepts is without problems. In place of postcolonial concepts developed around Indian history and the Euro-American historicism of postmodernism, the terms postrevolutionary and postsocialist seem to take into account specific historical conditions. “Postsocialist” is also used to discuss conditions in Russia and other Eastern Bloc countries after the end of the Soviet era. However, when the terms “postrevolutionary” and “postsocialist” are used in the context of PRC cultural production, the methodology is usually not comparative. As a result, in spite of the appropriateness of these terms to account for contemporary historical moments in the PRC, the terms inscribe the history of the PRC as outside of, or instead of, assumed dominant historical paradigms. When Dirlik and Zhang bring the term postmodernism into the context of Chinese studies in the introduction to Postmodernism & China, postmodernism is particularized as Chinese through generalization: “One of the ironies of postmodernity in Chinese, visible in some of the contributions in this volume, is that while the ultimate justification for the use of the term may lie in spatial fracturing and temporal dissonance, which call into question any claims to cultural authenticity, Chinese postmodernists insist nevertheless on marking Chinese postmodernity as something authentically Chinese” (2000: 4). Dirlik and Zhang note that “Postmodernism as a concept was introduced to Chinese intellectual circles in the mideighties” (2000: 1). Fredric Jameson’s lectures at Beijing University in 1985, later translated into Chinese and published in the PRC and Taiwan, are given partial credit (see Yan 1990). Postmodernism is acknowledged as partially the result of “socioeconomic change”: “decentralization, the ‘invisible hand’ of the market, global operation and competition, and the whole cornucopia of neoliberal economic doctrines were engaged ideologically and theoretically in order to create a ‘socialist market economy.’ ” As a result, “the platform for discussions of Chinese postmodernity and postmodernism is, therefore, historically a state project” (2000: 4). In the end, “Chinese postmodernity may serve as a periodizing concept” that emerges “within a postsocialist situation” in which “postmodernity itself may serve as a site of struggle between the legacy of the past and the forces of the present” (Dirlik and Zhang 2000: 7). Thus, “postmodern” is an alternative term to describe the opening up and reform period in PRC history (1978–), an interchangeable term for “postsocialist,” “postrevolutionary,” and even “post-Maoist.”

6

Introduction

Dirlik and Zhang describe postmodernism as “struggle between the legacy of the past and the forces of the present.” But such a historical struggle could just as easily describe the revolutionary period itself. A state-constructed periodization and narrative emerged during the revolutionary period that represented an implicit description of pre-liberation (pre-1949) history. This revolutionary narrative was an explicit critique of European and Japanese capitalist modernity and an internal critique of Chinese culture as a form of historical primitivism described with terms such as semi-feudal and semi-colonial within a schematic, ideologically derived outline of history and social relations. Dirlik and Zhang do an excellent job of highlighting the historical ambiguity of a term like postmodernism in the context of the PRC. But to deny the term “postmodern” to revolutionary China is problematic. While discussions often situate postmodernism as an aspect of capitalist development, elements of postmodernist institutions and representation are evident in revolutionary culture. A prime example of this is rationalization of institutions of knowledge. While there were many differences between “Eastern” communist and “Western” capitalist nations at the economic level, this did not prevent specific types of cultural and social development linked to postmodernism to emerge in non-capitalist societies – quite the contrary. So much has been made of the emergence of market capitalism in the PRC, even cultural innovation is attributed to market reforms. However, the early philosophical statement of postmodernism, Jean-François Lyotard’s The Postmodern Condition, was not fundamentally a history of Western capitalist culture. Lyotard was concerned with institutions of knowledge and described the way institutions of higher education underwent particular types of rationalization, which included the necessity of achieving “the optimal contribution of higher education to the best performativity of the social system” (1984: 48). Lyotard claimed that in capitalism, performativity is geared towards applied and basic research. In “communist” or socialist economies, performativity would be defined primarily in terms of the demands of the state. In her comparison between European and Soviet systems, Ruth Hayhoe notes “[w]e can see the resilience of the fundamental values of autonomy and academic freedom . . . in the socialist as well as the capitalist narratives” (1996: 9). The narrative of autonomy, knowledge for the sake of knowledge, is an idealized view of the function of research as an example of pure knowledge in Western history (in Lyotard this autonomy is illusory). Educational reforms begin in the turn-of-thenineteenth and early twentieth centuries in China, but the centralization of educational institutions would not occur until after the founding of the PRC in 1949. Chinese universities did not resemble European universities even into the first half of the twentieth century. According to Hayhoe, however, “[t]he nearest China ever came to being fully colonized by any one power, with the possible exception of Japan, was when it came under the influence of the Soviet Union in the period from 1949–1957” (1996: 16). Hayhoe describes a “geographical rationalization” of higher education in the first Five Year Plan (1953–1957) that would radically affect universities until the 1980s (1996: 77). Hayhoe notes that “[b]y 1955, a tightly

Introduction 7 structured system of education had emerged” (1996: 81). By 1956, the PRC state was moving away from Soviet influence, and this would be reflected in education and was one of the factors that led to the promotion of national style. The point here is not merely the way the Soviets affected institutional organization in the PRC. The point is that since the PRC shared at least certain aspects of institutionalized knowledge, PRC contemporary history should not be placed far beyond the pale of Western history or postmodernism. The PRC was a participant in that world history that includes postmodern culture even before the opening up and reforms. While capitalism certainly plays a role in the development of postmodern culture, it would be reductive to claim that postmodernism is solely an effect of capitalism, or solely the deliberate effects of state policies. Lyotard’s important discussion approached the problem from the point of view of institutions of knowledge, especially the university. Claiming that postmodern cultural and social innovation only occurred with the opening up and reforms reduces historic change to capitalism, and legitimizes one specific state narrative that attempts a clear-cut historical and ideological distance from revolutionary state policies. The radical cultural and social innovations of the revolutionary period are relegated to a permanent past as if they have been erased by market reforms. Judging social and cultural institutions solely on the degree of economic development is a form of economism that reduces those institutions to either the effects of state reforms or capitalism. The use of the term meishu pian, fine arts film, to describe animation is not merely a question of terminological catachresis. Immediately after the founding of the PRC the government set about nationalizing film production (Clark 1987a: 58–61). The nationalization of the film industry was concomitant to the rationalization of the education system. The Beijing Film Academy was founded in 1953 and was the first institution of higher education to specialize in film studies and film training. This would change by 1958, but the link between the fine arts and film does not seem to be very difficult to hypothesize in the context of New China. The term meishu is used in live-action film for art design. The first animated films at the Northeast Studio were at the meigong ke, the art design section of the studio. This implies a logical link between art design for film and animation, and since art design has to do with elements as diverse as credits and sets, in this case animation shares something with live-action fictional films. But there is probably another link derived from the rationalization of the film industry and education. Most of the early directors at the SAFS received their education at Fine Arts departments or schools.7 The second part of the classic SAFS production Danao tiangong (Uproar in Heaven) appears the same year, 1964, as Marshall McLuhan’s Understanding Media, an early text that employed a new vocabulary and discourse for media in English. The cultural gaps between the PRC and the West during the revolutionary period were economic and political. However, this hardly means that culture, as a series of signs and symbols reproduced within a particular national space and linguistic system, must be isolated in a historical quarantine like a time capsule, only analyzable within a referential reading for deliberate ideological messages or diktats. In his discussion of simulacra, Jean Baudrillard makes the distinction

8

Introduction

between production and reproduction: “Today we know that it is at the level of reproduction (fashion, the media, advertising, information and communications networks), at the level of what Marx rather carelessly used to call the faux frais [the incidental costs] of capital . . . that is, in the sphere of simulacra and the code, that the unity of the whole process of capital is formed. Benjamin was also the first (with McLuhan after him) to grasp technology as a medium rather than a ‘productive force’ (at which point the Marxian analysis retreats), as the form and principle of an entirely new generation of meaning” (1993: 56). The 1950s and ’60s saw several crises of production, of grain production, of iron production, but the revolutionary period saw a remarkable efflorescence of media reproduction. Images in literature, theater, art, and film remain as evidence of an incredible explosion of reproduction. McLuhan deserves credit for being one of the first theorists to draw attention to the proliferation of electronic media. But for McLuhan even the electric light was a type of media. And although his ideas are discussed in the context of video and digital media, McLuhan discussed print media as well, and one of the innovations he discussed would have found plentiful examples in the PRC, the graphic: “the pictorial ad or the picture story provide large quantities of instant information and instant humans, such as are necessary for keeping abreast in our kind of culture. Would it not seem natural and necessary that the young be provided with at least as much training of perception in this graphic and photographic world as they get in the typographic? In fact, they need more training in graphics, because the art of casting and arranging actors in ads is both complex and forcefully insidious.” McLuhan’s argument for media is complex, but one of aspect related to the shift in addresser and addressee. The role of the author and reader was complicated by the medium under question: “Some writers have argued that the Graphic Revolution has shifted our culture away from private ideals to corporate images” (2007: 230). Xiaomei Chen has convincingly shown that while guidance of works like The Red Detachment of Women and The White-haired Girl has often been attributed to Jiang Qing, in actuality the performers and writers collectively developed such works in consultation with the leaders (Chen 2002: 85–89). This gives a slightly different definition to McLuhan’s “corporate images.” While the economy stagnated and educational institutions temporarily closed during the climax of the revolutionary period, the reproduction of media proliferated and authorship was basically “corporate.” According to one estimate, 2.2 billion portraits of Mao were produced during the Cultural Revolution, three for each person in the PRC (Barmé 1996: 8). As Li Zhensheng put it: “Mao was simultaneously ever-present (in image) and inaccessible (in person)” (2003: 144). The imagery was serial; not even an animated film needed so many frames. Xiaobing Tang’s discussion of the utopian impulse in the Peasant Painting of Huhsien [Hu] County is significant in the context of the postmodern. Emblematic examples of mass-produced print media during the revolutionary period, the Hu County Peasant Paintings were first exhibited in Beijing in 1973, and would tour Europe and the United States.8 These paintings are the pinnacle of a non-style that had developed since the founding of the PRC when the government investigated nianhua or New Year’s prints in an attempt to recuperate folk art and produce an

Introduction 9 authentic medium for the masses (Hung 2000). These “peasant” paintings, some attributed to individuals artists, some to pairs of artists, some to a “spare-time” collective, are stylized to such a remarkable degree it is difficult to believe they were not executed by professional artists. As well as the precise use of perspective in some of the prints, the repetition of shapes for the crops and fields bears comparison to paintings of agricultural space by the American regionalist Grant Wood (1891–1942). The styles vary somewhat, but by and large there is a standardization of style and color adapted to the array of carefully chosen agricultural activities. The figures do not represent individuals but stylized types; the rosy-cheeked peasants fill roles of children, of the elderly, of male and female worker-peasants. These human types fulfill similar functions as groups of chickens, cylindrical sheathes of drying corncobs, carefully shaped trees in orchards, baskets (of eggs or silkworms), and bags of grain. They populate the picture spaces as signs of what Tang refers to as la promesse du bonheur, a “promise of happiness” (Tang 2000: 282), a promise bequeathed by the work of art, not by actual lived conditions. Art historian Aleš Erjavec notes that long before the end of the Soviet Era “the link between the ideological signifier and the social referent was irreparably destroyed” (2003: 4). Gilles Deleuze (1925–1975) notes that “Pop Art pushed the copy, copy of the copy, etc., to that extreme point at which it reverses and becomes a simulacrum” (1994: 293–294). The example he gives is Andy Warhol’s (1928– 1987) “ ‘serial’ series” in which the artist reproduced series of paintings, some of which were series themselves. In subtly different and yet similar ways as Western Pop art at the time, Hu County Peasant Painting is a form of postmodern simulacra, not only because of the problematic representation of the “real,” but also because the paintings themselves are not merely “paintings,” they are reproductions of originals, copies that have become the originals of themselves. These stylized images, potentially prescriptive in their clean line and organized layout, reveal utopian aspects of propaganda forms: scenes of hardworking peasants reading revolutionary theory in their spare time, crowds of peasants enthusiastically attending political meetings, scene after scene of bumper harvests, of rows of tractors, mechanized irrigation pumps, of perfectly tiered hillsides, of geometrically arranged fields and villages in precisely executed linear perspective. Yet these paintings go beyond mere utopian impulse. Francesca Dal Lago noted an interesting use of one significant painting from the Hu County Peasant Paintings, the full-figure portrait called Lao Shuji (Old Party Secretary) by Liu Zhide. A middleaged man sits intently looking at a copy of Engels’ Anti-Dühring that lies on his left knee just as he is just about to strike a match to light his pipe. Dal Lago notes two instances where the painting appears in other paintings, one painting of a group of peasants looking at the painting at the National Art Museum of China where it was first exhibited, and one instance in an instructional volume on painting for middle-school students (2009: 174–184). The idealized image itself becomes an image of itself in these other paintings; the copy becomes the original. The idealized image of the masses was of course only one aspect of revolutionary simulacra. Again, the problem here is not the disparity between idealized

10

Introduction

paintings and the everyday life of the peasants who are supposed to be the subjects of the paintings. These paintings are not representations of peasant life; they are simulacra, representations without an original, in which the representation, the copy, becomes the original.9 Xiaomei Chen (1999, 110–112) notes a similar phenomenon in her description of the painting Manqiang chouhen, (Full of Hatred, 1970), an oil painting of a theater still of the actress Xue Jinghua as Wu Qinghua in The Red Detachment of Women, a revolutionary ballet which would be filmed in 1971, which was itself based on the 1961 live-action fictional film directed by Xie Jin. Such representations were not based on an “original”; the fictional figure and her representation were part of a series of representations on film, on stage, in painting, and in print media (including photos, comic books, and posters which were, as in this case, sometimes reproductions of paintings).10 The revolutionary period that climaxed with the Cultural Revolution is an important period of contemporary PRC history and a significant facet of the global society of the spectacle (Debord 1977: Chapter III, “Unity and Division Within Appearances”). Just as it would be overly reductive to attribute postmodern cultural production to capitalism, it would be overly deterministic to attribute the production of simulacra solely to video or digital technology. Printing presses, opera and movie theaters – these sites of media production are neither less nuanced nor less abstract. The production of simulacra did not have to wait to be generated by video signals or the binary code of information technology. As Erjavec notes, in some cases socialist countries were ahead of their Western counterparts. Mikhail Epstein is very perceptive on this point with regard to the Soviet Union: “Long before Western video technology began to produce an overabundance of authentic images about an absent reality, this problem was already being solved by our ideology, press, and statistics, which would calculate crops that would never be harvested to the hundredths of a percentage point.”11 The miscalculation of grain production was not only a problem for the Soviet Union. In the PRC as well, simulacra, the hyperreal, were already present during the revolutionary period. By the late 1950s the government was rejecting the Soviet model of education and a kind of decentralization of education through the establishment of local institutions of higher learning had begun (Hayhoe 1996: 92–99). While this may have been true at the institutional level, as the revolutionary period progressed the opposite occurs with increasing standardization in visual culture. And a type of stylized narrative of class struggle parallels this visual stylization. The model is the first step in the construction of simulacra. One of the most interesting models in fine arts was Shouzu yuan (Rent Collection Courtyard), a series of sculptures produced to show the practices of a feudal landlord in the 1930s and 1940s. The series went through several changes from the early 1960s until it was declared a model sculpture in 1966 and expanded to 119 figures. This work, sometimes described as an installation, began as a folk art diorama. Authorial attribution was originally omitted from this work and it is as much a corporate series produced by a sculptor collective as it is a single work by one sculptor. The catalogue (1968) is important as a record of this installation and presents the sculptural series as a narrative of peasants paying rent in grain, the landlord and his

Introduction 11 henchmen unfairly measuring the weight and estimating the value, and the subsequent rebellion by the peasants. The narrative is a series of tableaux of exploitation through the landlord’s forced extraction of rent from the peasants by payment with grain. The negative characters include figures of the Nationalist Party, but the beads of a Buddhist monk are also implicated with the landlord’s abacus. The majority of the life-size peasant figures are tragic looking, the clay forms punctuated with glass eyes. The narrative represents a common trope in revolutionary art and narrative in the PRC, exploitation depicted through abject figures followed by revolt and liberation. The narrative structure and realism of the figures of Rent Collection Courtyard seems to hearken back to earlier forms of narrative sculpture, in particular Western Christian sculpture. Rent Collection Courtyard is a series of figural tableaux, a collective “Stations of the Cross,” the Catholic series depicted in painting or sculpture of the crucifixion of Christ. With its liberationist climax, Rent Collection Courtyard can be read as a parody, or a deliberate subversion, of the crucifixion, but the work still employs an unsubtle abjectness in many of the peasant figures. Through its use of realist clay sculpture, Rent Collection Courtyard frames class struggle in an abstract, stylized, almost caricatural historical structure. The historical origins of the “original” historical narrative are irrelevant; Rent Collection Coutryard is the original, fictional model for the history of class struggle. Grain quotas were not the only simulacra produced during the revolutionary period. In her discussion of Rent Collection Courtyard, Haiyan Lee notes the way class designated through the chengfen system labeled each person “on the basis of his or her (past) relation to the means of production and the degree of economic exploitation this relation enabled” (2010: 221). Lee likens chengfen, class designation, to a quota system for determining class enemies that became a quasi-racial classification. Lee employs Kristeva’s concept of “abjection” to read class exclusion. However, Hal Foster noted how some contemporary abject art “identif[ies] with the abject . . . ”12 Lee is correct about the ideological content, but Foster’s reading of one tendency of neo-avant-garde art invites comparison to Rent Collection Courtyard. The representation of abjection in the pained faces and tortured bodies of the peasantry in this sculptural series is not diminished by adding a scene of revolt.13 Moreover, the dramatization of the historical landlord-peasant relationship is codified in a simplistic plot structure that has little to do with any form of historical realism. Historic economic relations are represented in a hyperreal form that risks becoming a parody of those relations. As a model sculpture, the series of sculptures and devices that comprises Rent Collection Courtyard is neither a site of origin nor a culmination of revolutionary figurations. The figures and tableaux of Rent Collection Courtyard are simulacra of histories of oppression that represent oppression as an allegorical frame, a floating frame/signifier awaiting application (you are the landlord, I am the renter). Rent Collection Courtyard is a codification of the landlord in mass culture. There is no question of an original here. In two key narratives of the period, Red Detachment of Women and White-haired Girl, the landlord is represented not only as an economic exploiter but as a libidinal villain, an abductor, and potentially a rapist.

12

Introduction

Rent Collection Courtyard represents a problematic intersection between statedictated rhetoric and cultural production. Near the end of the second talk of “Talks at the Yan’an Conference on Literature and Art” Mao focuses on a particular form of writing, satire or ironic critique.14 Mao is referring specifically to the sometimes oblique and often biting critique employed by Lu Xun (1881–1936) in his essays. Mao claimed a writer must be conscious whether critique is “against the enemy, friends or our own sake.” The critique “shouldn’t be obscure or devious, something that the popular masses can’t understand” (McDougall 1980: 81). But drained of irony, class-based critique had the tendency to become a series of negative representations of victims and enemies. Heroes are idealized as victims; enemies are caricatured as villains. The villainization of the landlord in Rent Collection Courtyard is a pure expression of Mao’s belief in using satire or ironic critique against a class enemy, except that the critique is stripped of irony. In place of irony, caricature is used to negativize the image of the class enemy. Although this stylized form of representation emerged largely through a type of mainstream media standardization process, literary critic Mazhen Fang highlights a useful novelistic genre. Mazhen discusses a type he refers to as abnormal or extraordinary style (biantai xing). The word biantai can mean “abnormal,” as in “abnormal psychology,” but Mazhen is not describing an anomalous form, he is describing what he refers to as a “common and old form” found in allegorical fables that feature characters who remain exaggeratedly ignorant, like the man who marks the boat to indicate the place where his sword fell in the water. For Mazhen this type of narrative resembles a cartoon; it is a type of kuadan shi, absurdly exaggerated ironic critique. When Don Quixote charges the windmills, the absurd exaggeration reflects upon the protagonist’s misreading of reality. Mazhen gives a reading of Lu Xun’s Ah Q Zhengzhuan (The True Story of Ah Q), a significant example of absurd exaggeration. The True Story of Ah Q, one of the best-known satires in modern Chinese literature, narrates the misadventures of a landless peasant who undergoes beatings and bullying at the hands of his fellow villagers. After gaining a modicum of respect from his fellow villagers, Ah Q is accused of robbery and executed. Ah Q has received many different readings, including the historically important analyses as an example of social realism. In opposition to realist readings, Mazhen reads The True Story of Ah Q as an example of absurdly exaggerated novelistic discourse. Mazhen’s reading is situated within a study of novelistic genre, and he is clearly articulating a corrective to realist readings within Ah Q criticism. For Mazhen, Ah Q is an example of absurdly exaggerated caricature. Considering the historical place of this figure in modern and contemporary literature, Mazhen’s reading is important. But this reading is also important with regard to a work like Rent Collection Courtyard, which employs stylized exaggeration without the irony. In Rent Collection Courtyard the peasants are either grotesquely stylized as pained victims or muscle-bound heroes. On the other hand, the landlord and his agents (several henchmen, soldiers, and a Buddhist monk) are depicted as deliberately cruel overlords. The landlord class is a political cartoon of cruelty derived from the measurement of grain. The measurement of grain is the central theme of the whole

Introduction 13 installation and is by extension the site of class conflict in history (every year the landlord extorts over 300,000 pounds from the peasants). Around the constructed historical moment of conflict between the landlord and the peasant, a sort of absurd exaggeration without irony became the main mode of representation. This would be important in the light of representations from the Cultural Revolution. Although The People’s Daily published what would be considered political cartoons that bore all the recognizable traits of that form, the same could be said for many works of art and film during this time. As the fervor intensified, exaggerated, stylized caricature set in for many types of visual representation, forms that represented their objects in an exaggerated stylized manner. All representation was caricature; a slightly grey coloring was sufficient for the villain while rosy cheeks and robust bright-toothed smiles set the positive characters apart. Once again the series is important here, the model repeated ad nauseam. The model is the teleology of visual culture within which many classics of SAFS animation were produced. This is the historic context of the animation medium in China. During a period when the cartoon became the dominant form of realist representation, animation was another form of image repetition, another form of simulacrum. The model represented a frame that determined stylization in figural representation, and in the representation of conflict. Even the Monkey King Sun Wukong was affected by this. In the next chapter I turn to the conflict between Sun Wukong and the Jade Emperor, the protagonist and antagonist of perhaps one of the most well-known SAFS films of the revolutionary period, Wan Laiming’s Danao tiangong, known in English as Uproar in Heaven.

Notes 1 See Guoji wenhua yu duo meiti yishu (The Cultural and Multimedia International Association), 2 See the institute’s website Zhongguo donghua chanye wang (The Chinese Animation Industry Net): 3 Apparently the unreleased films in the SAFS catalogue number in the hundreds. Wang Bingqing, in conversation with the author, July 1, 2014. 4 Clips of both films are available online, and I know of one extant print of The Emperor’s Dream. 5 See Dianying yishu cidian (The Dictionary of Film Arts), 1986: 576, translated and cited in Wu 2009: 42. 6 Dirlik was one the first historians of modern China to suggest a “postrevolutionary” moment in context of PRC history (1997). For the term “postsocialist” see Xudong Zhang 1997. 7 One of the first animators at the studio to have training in animation school was Xu Jingda (1934–1987), better known as Ah Da, the director of Sange heshang, The Three Monks, at the animation class of the Beijing Film Academy in the early 1950s. 8 Ralph Crozier notes the paintings went to North Vietnam in 1973, and to Albania and the Paris Biennial in 1974. The exhibit also went to London in 1976, and Brooklyn and other cities in the U.S. in 1977. See Crozier, “Hu Xian Peasant Painting: From Revolutionary Icon to Cultural Commodity” in King 2010: 144. 9 See Jameson’s complaint about Western capitalist postmodernity: “ . . . a whole historically original consumers’ appetite for a word transformed into sheer images of itself and for pseudo-events and ‘spectacles’ (the term of the situationists). It is for such objects

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11 12 13

14

Introduction that we may reserve Plato’s conception of the ‘simulacrum,’ the identical copy for which no original has ever existed” (1991: 18). But the copy is the original. The narrative of Baimao nü or White-Haired Girl was another example of a series of images with no original. Originally a folk opera based on folklore and performed in Yan’an in 1945, just as Red Detachment, the opera would later be adapted to screen (1950), ballet, and revolutionary opera and an array of media. See Mikhail Epstein 1995: 95, cited in Erjavec 2003: 5. I am indebted to Erjavec’s discussion here. See Kristeva 1982: 2, cited in Lee 2014: 232–234. Hal Foster expands upon Kristeva by noting two directions for abject art (1996: 153–168). I am citing the first. Foster is critical of abject art and considers it a form of regression. According to Britta Erickson, the last figures, a peasant and a soldier holding a red book above their heads before the head of Mao above red flags, auratic light beams shooting out, were added by Red Guards as a final scene of revolt (“The Rent Collection Courtyard, Past and Present” in King 2010: 126). The term is fengci, translated as “satire” in McDougall (1980: 81).

1

It all started with a monkey

The history of animation in China begins with the Wan Brothers – Wan Laiming (1900–1997), Wan Guchan (1900–1995), Wan Chaochen (1906–1992), and Wan Dihuan (dates unknown) – four brothers from Nanjing who grew up in Shanghai. The Wan Brothers join two other well-known sibling animation teams, the Disney Brothers, Walt (1901–1966) and Roy (1893–1971), and the Fleischer Brothers, Max (1883–1972) and Dave (1894–1979), as early animation producers. Three of the Wans – Wan Liaming, Wan Guchan, and Wan Chaochen – were instrumental links between early animation and animation produced at the SAFS. All three brothers would be instrumental in productions at the studio. Wan Chaochen was involved in puppet animation, and Wan Guchan was one of the key developers of jianzhi pian, cutout animation. But the most well-known figure of animation in China is Wan Laiming. Disney claimed that his studio began with a mouse, and in some ways Chinese animation begins with a monkey, Wan Laiming’s Sun Wukong, the Monkey King, that perennial character from the sixteenth-century novel Xi Youji, known in English as Journey to the West. The Wans produced the first feature-length Chinese animation, Tieshan gongzhu (Princess Iron Fan) in 1941, based on an episode from this novel, and Wan Laiming would produce Danao tiangong (Uproar in Heaven) in two parts in 1961 and 1964. Based on another well-known episode from Journey to the West, Uproar would not be seen by the general public in its entirety until the late 1970s in China and abroad. This chapter’s title is a paraphrase of the famous statement by Walt Disney, “I only hope that we don’t lose sight of one thing – that it was all started by a mouse” (Disney 2001: 41). In a similar manner, in China, the Monkey King was for a long time the main cartoon figure standing for animation. Wan’s Sun Wukong, the original character modeled on the design by the important cartoonist Zhang Guangyu (1900– 1965), remains the logo for the SAFS that appears on merchandise related to the studio, including the DVDs themselves. The most appropriate way to begin a discussion of the history of animation in China is with these two figures, Wan Laiming and Sun Wukong. Wan’s oral autobiography, Wo yu Sun Wukong (Me and Sun Wukong), cannot be taken at face value as a historical document. Nevertheless, Wan was of roughly the same generation as the first modern leaders of New China such as Mao Zedong (1893–1976), Zhou Enlai (1898–1976), and Deng Xiaoping (1904–1997), that

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It all started with a monkey

generation born at the end of the Qing dynasty (1644–1911) who lived through the Republican period (1912–1948, but which continued in Taiwan) and witnessed the founding of the PRC in 1949. Framed as the reminiscences of an animation producer, Wan Laiming’s autobiography is the story of the emergence of animation in China and the PRC. Wan links film, art, and animation in one historic narrative of modern China. Wan’s autobiography is charted as a teleological story that links animation to modern Chinese history, while doubling as a history of media in China. His reminiscences are presented as a series of memories of media, all teleological precursors to the animation he produced at the SAFS, especially his magnum opus, Uproar in Heaven. In Wan’s autobiography, the Monkey King Sun Wukong is a trope for animation. According to Wan, their father was a failed scholar who became a silk merchant. The Wan brothers were born in Nanjing and lived in four different places before they moved to Shanghai. In one scene Wan describes the Wan Brothers and the neighbors’ children: “We brothers consisted of so many active little boys, with the addition of the neighbors’ children we practically made up a class, and of course I was the class monitor. Under my supervision, this bunch of ‘monkeys’ climbed up and down, chattered, making such an uproar neither the family nor our neighbors could have any peace.” Wan as class monitor/director. The operative words here are haodong, active or animated, and nao, an uproar, as in Uproar in Heaven. Wan repeatedly notes that his interest in movement began as a young child: “Ever since I was young I was interested in movement, I always enjoyed watching things that move, always enjoyed playing with small animals, catching butterflies and other creatures was something I especially enjoyed . . . ” (Wan 1986: 6 my translations). Wan manages to use the root word dong for movement or animation three times in one sentence (haodong, dong de dongxi, xiao dongwu); the narrative never strays far from the trope of animation. Wan’s story is the gradual development of media culminating in the production of animation and finally Uproar in Heaven. Wan’s descriptions of his childhood in the late Qing are important reminders of the rich visual culture that existed during this period. Art is described as a distraction for the Wan brothers, something their parents used to keep them occupied: “In order to try and get some peace, my mother talked it over with my father, and so when he would return from Shanghai with all kinds of pictures, cigarette cards, popular prints, illustrations, brush-paintings, and collections of Chinese paintings they had us sit around the table and practice drawing.” (Wan 1986: 7). But much to the chagrin of Wan’s father, this distraction becomes a vocation as Wan comes to consider painting as a career choice, despite the warnings from his father and an older artist that artistic production is often unremunerated (Wan 1986: 17–19). Wan’s choice of visual genre is important for an animator. According to his own accounts, Wan was largely self-taught, and one of the genres of illustration he focused on was a form with an important place in China and perhaps an even more significant place for animation; namely, book illustration (chatu). As Wan puts it, book illustration was an aid to appreciating the characters in the novel (Wan 1986: 25). Wan’s background in pictorials such as Liangyou huabao (Liangyou

It all started with a monkey 17 pictorial) and in the field of manhua, a form not dissimilar to political cartoons, indicates links to other types of illustration amenable to animation. Wan’s references to visual print culture consistently prepare the way for his work in animation, but just as important is Wan’s description of early types of theatrical performance such as piying xi, shadow puppets, a type of performance in which light was projected from behind flat figures with articulated limbs that were manipulated to act out opera and theatrical works. This form of folk performance is sometimes viewed as a precursor to cinema and is often mentioned in connection with animation in China. According to Wan, he and his brothers staged homemade versions of shadow puppet performances. The childhood memories of homemade folk performances are the preface to the arrival of Western technical forms of early cinema. Just as the Wans took a do-it-yourself approach to puppet theater, in Wan’s narrative they took the same attitude to early moving images. Wan recounts visiting Da shijie, the Great World, an entertainment center built in 1917. Wan describes a “haha jing,” which sounds like a fun house mirror, and a “dong de xiyangjing,” a “moving peepshow,” which sounds like it was a Mutoscope, an axle with a reel of photos or images that moved when they were flipped, in a similar way as animated film. According to Wan, for him and his brothers such a device was an introduction to the technical problems of animation, of creating moving images, problems that had preoccupied the Wans since they were children (Wan 1986: 37–39). Much of Wan’s narrative is clearly constructed in hindsight from the perspective of the 1980s to account for a career in animation. But Wan engages with the medium he would be associated with, and the terminology is telling at points. Wan describes the Wan brothers’ first experiments (shiyan) and he is frank that the medium, then referred to as “cartoons” (using the early transliteration katong), is an import from Europe, the U.S., and Japan. But the Wans look to this medium as a technical and artistic form, and their first attempts are certainly not hampered by a lack of desire to experiment, only a lack of technical and financial resources (Wan 1986: 40–42). According to Wan, the brothers’ first animated production was an ad for a typewriter, and Wan distinguishes commercial from “artistic” production during this time. In Wan’s words, the difficulty of producing artistic animation was due to the capitalism of old society in China. Nevertheless, he and his brothers are finally given the go-ahead to produce a short with access to a camera thanks to Lianhua Studios. According to Wan, this first production led him to consider other uses for animation in live-action fictional film, notably as special effects in the martial arts film Huoshao honglian si (The Burning of Red Lantern Temple, 1928) (1986: 39). The link Wan makes between animation and special effects also suggests a link between animation and genre film, a point I will come back to in later chapters. According to Wan, in the early 1930s the brothers’ wartime work included propaganda shorts: “The reason we were able to use the weapon of fine arts as an antiimperialist tool and participate in patriotic movements, to allow animation to enter the ranks of anti-Japanese, was because we were influenced and educated by progressives from the literary and artistic world” (1986: 57).

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It all started with a monkey

I discuss two of the Wans extant wartime works in the next chapter, but Wan is considerably less sanguine after the war when he and his brothers worked in the film industry in Hong Kong. Wan bemoans the influences of Western culture and capitalism in Hong Kong. The Wans could not raise enough money for one of their projects, and there was also a lack of film people with experience in animation. Nevertheless, Wan Laiming and his brother Guchan were working in the film industry in set design (bujing meishu) and he refers to himself and his brother as meigong, art designers at Changcheng, also known in English as Great Wall Studios.1 Wan finally answers the call and returns to the PRC. This return is described mostly in connection with the feature-length film Wan Laiming directed at the SAFS, Uproar in Heaven. The story of Uproar is narrated as the culmination of a lifelong desire. Wan’s autobiographical narrative constantly refers to Sun Wukong and Journey to the West. When the brothers perform their do-it-yourself shadow puppet plays, Wan informs us that the children’s favorite was “Sun Wukong Trapped Beneath Buddha’s Palm,” coincidentally the episode in Journey to the West that immediately follows the Monkey King’s destruction of Heaven of Uproar. As Wan puts it, he and his brothers had produced twenty odd films but he had always felt he wanted to work with the plot and characters of Journey to the West (1986: 114). The problem for Wan in New China was that although he had accumulated experience in animation, he had been influenced by Hollywood animation: “my old artistic perspective would certainly be reflected in the work” (1986: 116). So Wan proceeds to study Marxist-Leninist literary and art theory, especially Mao’s “Talks at the Yan’an Conference on Literature and Art.” Wan describes the screening of the completed film in 1964 as a culmination of personal and national goals: “I have dreamed of this day since I was a child, after half a lifetime, and only after liberation could this be truly realized; without New China there would be no Uproar in Heaven!” (1986: 117). Wan’s emotional statement, a sort of apostrophe he claims to repeat to each person who comes to congratulate him, carries considerable truth. But just how New China influenced Uproar is a complex story. Uproar in Heaven opens with the Monkey King emerging from behind Water Curtain Cave in the Blessed Land of the Flower-Fruit Mountain, a utopian space inhabited by the Monkey King and his “children,” the smaller monkeys he commands. Sun Wukong orders his monkeys to practice battle drills and when he joins in he breaks a sword and frets about having a reliable weapon. An elderly monkey recommends the Monkey King go to visit the court of the Dragon King of the Eastern Sea, Ao Guang. Sun Wukong tricks the Dragon King into allowing him to take an iron staff, supposedly used by the Great Yü to fix the sea during the great flood. The Dragon King complains to the Jade Emperor about Sun Wukong. After listening to ministers in his court, the Jade Emperor employs a strategy of appeasement and appoints Sun Wukong to take a low official position as pimawen, stablemaster for the heavenly horses. But Sun Wukong takes pity on the corralled horses and lets them roam freely. He even transforms into a cloud at one point to rain on them as they roll and play in the water. When the Lord of the Horses comes for

It all started with a monkey 19 inspection he is furious and informs Sun Wukong that he was sent by the Emperor to supervise the Monkey King. Angered by this, Sun Wukong humiliates the Lord in a comic battle and returns home to Flower-Fruit Mountain, declaring himself “Great Sage Equal to Heaven.” The Emperor sends gods down to defeat Sun Wukong to no avail and the first part of Uproar ends here. The second part of Uproar opens with the Jade Emperor and his court once again forming a strategy of appeasement for the Monkey King by inviting him up to be groundskeeper of the heavenly Peach Orchard. In the Peach Orchard Sun Wukong eats the peaches of immortality, and when he finds out he is not invited to a banquet Sun Wukong grows indignant, gets drunk, and steals all the settings from every table, including the peaches of immortality, to take back to his monkey children. Sun Wukong then drunkenly floats to the residence of Laozi where he eats golden pills of immortality. Once again the Jade Emperor sends more gods to defeat the Monkey King. Finally, the Jade Emperor’s nephew Erlang, with the help of Laozi, manages to capture Sun Wukong in chains. The Jade Emperor tries unsuccessfully to execute him. Laozi attempts to burn him in the Brazier of Eight Trigrams, but the Monkey King survives all and finally destroys the Emperor’s palace. In the final shot, Sun Wukong rejoices with his monkeys on Flower-Fruit Mountain. An almost canonical animated film, Uproar in Heaven is a central production for film and media culture in China. Since the 1980s at least the film has remained a staple for children and a memory for their parents. Uproar represents a nostalgic referent conjuring up childhood and the reform era. Played and replayed on television and now online, it is easy to forget that this well-known interpretation of Journey to the West represents a particular selection of plot elements, and the film’s protagonist represents a very particular interpretation of Sun Wukong. For one thing, Uproar starts at the beginning of the third chapter of the Journey to the West novel, thus omitting a large section in which Sun Wukong studies under a Buddhist patriarch and defeats a monster. Most significantly, the film ends with a clearly triumphant and unrepentant Monkey King, whereas in the novel Buddha subdues Sun Wukong in the palm of his hand and places him beneath a mountain for five hundred years. The Sun Wukong of Uproar is specific to this film and the period. Wan Laiming directed the film, but the construction of the figure of Sun Wukong certainly transcends single authorship. Rudolf Wagner notes the opera version of Uproar was changed in the early 1950s to make sure that Sun Wukong prevailed in his rebellion against the Jade Emperor. The early scenes of the animated version of Uproar in which Sun Wukong is born and obtains his characteristic weapon “offer a fine parable on the early stages of the Chinese revolution, as seen from the perspective of the late fifties” (1990: 141). Wagner’s discussion is focused on historical dramas produced from the late 1950s to 1966, and it is significant that he discusses Uproar in connection with the opera production of the period. The animated Uproar is shot through with references to opera. The music is obviously influenced by Beijing opera, and the voicing also evidences opera influences. One major difference is that the animated Uproar does not use singing to move the plot and define character. But

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It all started with a monkey

movement of the figures is just as important, and the spoken script is full of archaic diction from Beijing opera (for example, the characters use the diminutive bixia when addressing the Jade Emperor). According to Wagner, the scenes comprising the end of the film, in which Sun Wukong upsets the Peach Orchard banquet and is then trapped by magic in Laozi’s brazier only to emerge even stronger, “offer a parable for the war years. The main confrontation is the one between Monkey and his simian kin, on the one hand, and the authorities in the superstructure of state and ideology, on the other. The Marxist notion of the superstructure finds a lively counterpart in the ‘Heaven’ of the [Journey to the West]. The change in the ending allows for a pun on the present: the emergence of a victorious Mao” (1990: 142–143). Wagner’s reading sets up a correspondence between the plot of the play and the narrative of revolution and the biography of Mao Zedong: “The identification of the Monkey King Sun Wukong with Mao Zedong is no flat innuendo. The figure of Sun is fully developed in the film and not just a stand-in for Mao Zedong. The implied argument is, rather, that Mao Zedong embodies in the present world all the characteristics that made a popular hero of Sun Wukong, who, as is asserted time and again, represents the most lively and progressive elements of the Chinese people” (1990: 143). Such a reading is possible, but Wagner is unclear as to where this reading originates. Was it the writers and animators? Did spectators really construct such correspondences? In a reading of the figure of Sun Wukong during the 1950s and ’60s, Hongmei Sun also discusses the reworking of the Uproar opera in the early 1950s. According to Sun, in 1955 Premier Zhou Enlai suggested the play be extended. Uproar would be revised to emphasize Sun Wukong, legitimizing his uproar, so to speak. Zhou Enlai recommended three fundamental changes: that the play depict Sun Wukong’s thoroughly rebellious nature, that the play depict the Jade Emperor’s intrigue, and that the play depict how Sun Wukong defeats the sneaky sophistry of the Jade Emperor’s officials because of his unsophisticated nature.2 Sun evidences how the Monkey King’s figure was omnipresent in theatrical performance and print, in xiaoren shu (comic books) especially. Although the opera production was undoubtedly a collaboration of an entire troupe, the opera as it now stands is attributed to the playwright Weng Ouhong (1908–1994) and the performer who played the role of Sun Wukong, Li Shaochun (1919–1975). The SAFS-animated version largely follows the Weng-Li opera to make Sun Wukong a triumphant figure whose rebellion against the Jade Emperor’s court is justified. However, while the character of Sun Wukong is framed as a righteous rebel in the opera and the animated film, this does not solve the problem of interpreting this figure. In the traditional form of Beijing opera of which Uproar is an example, Zhou Enlai’s suggestions hardly turn the character into a straightforward figure of propaganda. For the performer Li Shaochun it was a question of emphasizing particular character traits: “ . . . I often performed Uproar in Heaven in the past and attempted to imitate those external characteristics that elicited laughter from the audience. But now I understand the place of the people’s character (renmin xing) in the play’s theme and have thus analyzed the particular characteristics of Sun Wukong more

It all started with a monkey 21 deeply. In this way, when I performed the role again my performance not only expressed unique traits of the Monkey King like quick-wit, humor, and comic carelessness. I also tried harder to express his spirit of defiant optimism, to bring forth and harmonize those unique traits of internal temperament and form, thus giving an appropriately well-rounded performance . . . ”3 The author Weng Ouhong goes a step further to point out Li Shaochun’s performance as a figural representation, since Sun Wukong “is a mythical character created out of the laboring masses’ own fantasy” (Weng 1958: 28). However, neither an actor’s nor an author’s intentional reading of Sun Wukong as a figure of “the people” is sufficient to change this character for either the stage or the screen. The meaning of Sun Wukong is framed by his contrast to the other characters, notably the Jade Emperor and the members of the court. But even more importantly, the meaning of the Monkey King will be framed through the altered plot structure. Sun Wukong is changed most in the new version of Uproar because of a significant omission from previous versions; namely, Buddha does not punish him in the end. In previous versions Buddha puts Sun Wukong in his place, so to speak, by first trapping him in the palm of his hand and then beneath a mountain. In the Weng-Li opera and the SAFS version, Sun Wukong’s rebellion against the Jade Emperor simply ends with the Monkey King’s victory. Wan Laiming’s rationale for changing the ending is relevant here. Wan does not mention the opera version of Uproar but implies that the punishment of Sun Wukong is an aspect of the feudal climate that existed when the novel was written and he felt that in Journey to the West, when Sun Wukong is trapped on the Buddha’s palm and finally contained after Chapter 7 he becomes a “tragic hero.”4 With the punishment omitted, Sun Wukong becomes an unambiguously victorious figure; in a sense he is provided with a happy ending. But this plot change was not universally accepted. Playwright and director Wu Zuguang (1917–2003) criticized the new opera ending in which Sun Wukong attains victory over the Jade Emperor and returns to Flower-Fruit Mountain. For Wu the new ending had lost all dramatic force because the victorious Sun Wukong could have occupied the Jade Emperor’s throne if he wanted to. Instead, he merely returns to Flower-Fruit Mountain (1954: 18–19). The refiguration of Sun Wukong at this time is significant because he represents a traditional literary figure in a moment of historical transition. The figuration of Sun Wukong in print, opera, and film is much more than merely the construction of one character in one work, but implies simultaneous articulations across multiple media. Uproar is interwoven with the opera, but the film itself is a curious production in the SAFS catalogue. Wan Laiming refers to the nervousness he felt when the film was screened in 1964, but there is little evidence the film was distributed widely at this time, and most viewers who remember this work are probably recalling the screenings that took place in the late 1970s and early 1980s in theaters and on television. Uproar is fondly recalled as a beloved Chinese animation classic, but the historic conditions of the film’s production are usually ignored. The allegorical figuration of Sun Wukong during the 1950s and ’60s was hardly the first. The character in the novel Journey to the West has been discussed

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It all started with a monkey

repeatedly, read within various contexts with regard to the novel itself but also because the novel was “the culmination of a long tradition of antecedent versions dealing with the same narrative outlines” (Plaks 1987: 184) in operas and in prose (written and oral storyteller prompts). Unlike, for example, a Christian allegory such as John Bunyan’s The Pilgrim’s Progress that stays largely within the JudeoChristian framework to derive its meaning, attempts to tie down the narratives of Journey to the West are complicated by heterogeneity within the text that seems to reject a single allegorical reading (Hsia 1968: 115–164; Plaks 1977). The author of Journey to the West freely borrows from Buddhism and Taoism without adhering too closely to either. Whether this was actually the author’s position or a case of the indeterminacy of the text, Journey to the West is an excellent example of heterogeneity in the novel, and the figure of Sun Wukong offers the possibility of a multiplicity of readings. Thus the idea that the figure of Sun Wukong developed in the 1950s and 1960s somehow alters an original Sun Wukong is problematic. Zhou Enlai’s suggestions did not represent drastic rewrites; rather, Zhou emphasizes plot and character elements already present. For example, Zhou’s suggestion that the opera script depict the Jade Emperor’s intrigue emphasizes the decision to grant Sun Wukong the position of stable-keeper (pimawen), a well-known incident in this episode. As to Sun Wukong’s rebellious nature, his rebellion against the Jade Emperor and his court is one of the best-known episodes from the novel and comprises the standalone theatrical work Uproar in Heaven. Finally, Zhou’s suggestion to bring out Sun Wukong’s “unsophisticated nature” beside the intriguing officials in the Jade Emperor’s court could be read as nothing more than a way of highlighting the character of the Monkey King. The adaptation of Sun Wukong probably had ideological rationales, but the Monkey King resists a simple ideological reading. TheSAFS Uproar largely follows the plot of the Weng-Li opera, but as an animated film certain elements are emphasized over others because of the medium itself, while other elements supplement aspects of the character of Sun Wukong absent in the opera or the novel. The animation Uproar opens with a representation of the first chapter of the novel Journey to the West in which Sun Wukong is born out of a stone. Swirling blue-grey clouds part to reveal a heaven with six floating buildings, a larger building in the center, probably the Jade Emperor’s palace. A slow pan downwards reveals a large jutting rock. A layer of blue curling smoke darkens the stone. Suddenly light shines on the stone, then pins of light stream forth from the stone as it crumbles and a tiny monkey figure bathed in an aura hops out scratching himself as the musical theme rises (the motif repeated throughout the film at key moments). The monkey leaps, flying upwards with a white stripe trailing behind him as he waves his hands, parting the clouds, flying in a circle as the film’s title appears with small explosions and the sound of firecrackers. This opening sequence sets up the two main opposing forces of the film, the Monkey King and the Jade Emperor’s court, the heaven in the title, easily the most well known narrative and the most well known dramatic conflict in Chinese animation. The battle between Sun Wukong and Heaven, the Jade Emperor’s court of intriguing officials, is the basic

It all started with a monkey 23 dramatic conflict in Uproar in Heaven. The division between these actors, the Monkey King and the Jade Emperor’s court, is where Zhou Enlai’s suggestions emerge, where the Weng-Li opera is depicted, and where both parts of Wan Laiming’s SAFS Uproar in Heaven are produced. The revolutionary figuration of Sun Wukong as a personification of “the people” entails separating this protagonist from the fictional work of which he is a part. Sun Wukong as a historical fictional subject must be plucked from the narrative he is born into and refigured in opposition to other actors in the novel within which he appears. For Sun Wukong to be made a revolutionary hero, he must be separated from his fictional world: “After Sun Wukong caused an uproar in the Heavenly Palace, people understood just how dark and evil this place truly is, not only the way the strong bully the weak, but the innumerable cases of arrogance and snobbishness, in particular those instances when women are repeatedly repressed” (Jun Qi 1956). Such a refiguration is a juxtaposition of one character against the logic of the novel so that Sun Wukong becomes the liberating force that exposes the supposed bureaucratic feudalism of the Jade Emperor. Although Sun Wukong is as much a construction of the mythical world of the novel as the Jade Emperor and his court (Sun Wukong is neither a monkey-man nor a man-monkey5), the world of the novel must be split in two: “Our nation’s famous novel Journey to the West describes two worlds, Sun Wukong represents human power possessed of a will that dares to defy the gods, fighting his way into the Dragon King’s Palace, the Palace of Hell, causing an uproar in Heaven several times and leaving the great Jade Emperor at a loss. Although Sun Wukong was finally defeated by Erlang Shen and held under Five Phases Mountain, the novel does not express the dignity of divine power, quite the contrary, [Journey to the West] mocks and scorns [the gods], instead revealing Sun Wukong’s unyielding rebellion against divine rule” (Ke Li 1959: 26). In the revolutionary refiguration of Journey to the West, Sun Wukong is a figure of historical actuality set against a negative, historical past represented by the novel. Sun Wukong’s Uproar is the hypothetical erasure of mythology by a radicalized present in which the only force greater than Sun Wukong himself is the Soviet satellite, Sputnik.6 Sun Wukong was not the only literary-theatrical character recuperated during the revolutionary period, but the colorful cel animation of the SAFS production retains links to this period in subtle and contradictory ways. The brightly colored and stylized Sun Wukong figure was modeled on the design of the cartoonist Zhang Guangyu that abstracts and simplifies the opera figure in bright oranges, browns, and reds. The animated Sun Wukong’s face is round and mostly white as if painted like an opera mask. One detail of the animated Monkey King in particular is key here: Sun Wukong’s large forehead and cranium and the placement of his eyes juvenilizes and softens a character who is capable of great violence. Sun Wukong is slightly taller than the monkeys he rules over, but all the monkeys appear juvenile.7 The animated Monkey King is a stylized adaptation of Sun Wukong through the opera character (including make-up and wardrobe) and countless visual interpretations in book illustrations, wood-block prints, caricatures, and comic books. The Sun Wukong of the animated Uproar is the product of a period

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It all started with a monkey

that saw attempts, through policy but also in debates in print by spectators, producers and the performers themselves, to reform and modernize the content of traditional opera. Theater productions featuring “supernatural” characters like Sun Wukong were almost immediately considered examples of traditional feudal culture in need of reform. Nevertheless, Sun Wukong was highlighted as an even more extreme figure of rebellion, with the Jade Emperor and the Heavenly Palace allegorized as sites of repression with negative connotations of feudal, premodern society. Uproar in Heaven references many types of cultural production: textual, performative, musical, and visual. Perhaps the ritual roots of theater in Chinese culture affected the political critique that attempted to recuperate the mythology of legends and folktales while negating the religious aura that surrounded them. Perhaps the specific nature of the figure of Sun Wukong created an opposition between spectator expectations and the narrative itself. However, the recuperation of the Monkey King in the animated Uproar hardly makes for good propaganda. Moreover, the proximity of Uproar to certain historic events adds a layer of meaning to this film that goes beyond producer intentions. Children may have enjoyed the antics of Sun Wukong, but his rebellion holds a resonance with associations to the revolutionary period. Somewhat a naïve outsider, Sun Wukong may be contrasted to the gods and immortals of the Jade Emperor and his court. When he first appears before the Jade Emperor and refuses to bow, Taibai jinxing, the Gold Star of Venus, explains that Sun Wukong is an immortal from the world below who does not understand courtly protocol. But his supernatural abilities, indeed his abilities to defeat gods and immortals in battle, evidence his origins as a fictional, supernatural character from Journey to the West. Sun Wukong is no less the product of myth than the court he rebels against. Whereas the first part of Uproar is about forty-two minutes long, the second part is over an hour, with the last twenty minutes or so given over to action, to Sun Wukong battling the gods sent by Heaven to capture him, with little or no speaking. With regard to how to deal with Sun Wukong, the Jade Emperor had been swayed thus far to listen to the Gold Star of Venus, an innocuous old man who is even carried by the Monkey King’s child-monkeys at one point. The old man had thus far advised the emperor to try to appease the Monkey King, but after Sun Wukong insultingly upsets the Peach Orchard banquet for the immortals, the Jade Emperor finally leans towards General Li Tianwang, the Pagoda Bearer Devarãja, also know as Li Jing, the father of the boy-god Nezha. Li Jing is a fearsome-looking figure with dark brown skin and shining eyes that peek out from upturned brows. His face is angular with a long curling mustache and beard, he wears a red cape that enwraps dark greens, and a dark-green winged crown rises intimidatingly on his head. Li Jing carries the magic pagoda in his right hand and in this scene he waves a flag with the word ling for “decree” on a white background framed with red and yellow until it takes up the entire frame. The last series of battles between Sun Wukong and other gods in Uproar is an animated representation of the stylized fighting from opera. The animated Uproar could be

It all started with a monkey 25 categorized as an early wuxia or martial arts animation. Sun Wukong battles his way through a god of swords, a god whose pipa, a four-stringed, plucked instrument, sends out sound waves, a god who traps the Monkey King and his children in an umbrella, a god who unleashes a gigantic snake, as well as myriad gods floating on clouds, and Erlang’s Dog of Heaven, which Sun Wukong sends away whimpering after beating him with his staff. Finally Sun Wukong faces Erlang, a god with an all-seeing “phoenix eye,” a third eye in the middle of his forehead. Erlang will be the god who, with the help of Laozi and his golden ring, finally manages to capture the Monkey King. The battle between Sun Wukong and Erlang is essentially a series of transformations, a battle of animal transformations between the god Erlang and the Monkey King, with Erlang in pursuit of Sun Wukong who transforms finally into a temple.8 Sun Wukong’s final transformation into a temple is perceived by Erlang’s third eye, and he is finally subdued with the help of Laozi, but the rebellion is hardly over. The last scenes of Uproar show Sun Wukong chained to a pillar with several forms of punishment, including a guillotine-like blade, fire, and innumerable arrows streaming from above that only seem to destroy the platform upon which Sun Wukong stands. Sun falls asleep. Finally, Laozi has Sun Wukong tossed into his Brazier of Eight Trigrams, presumably to transform him into golden pills of immortality, but when Laozi attempts to pluck the shining dots that he sees through the brazier door, these dots turn out to be Sun’s eyes, and he bites Laozi, jumps out of the brazier, blows the charcoal off himself, and the rebellion continues. In the last scenes of Uproar, the Monkey King rushes the Jade Emperor’s palace, scattering troops guarding the door like bowling pins. By the time Sun arrives at the Jade Emperor’s palace, all that remains are three members of the court: the Emperor, the Gold Star of Venus, and Li Jing. As Hongmei Sun notes, when the Jade Emperor and his remaining court are framed beneath Sun Wukong’s legs the power has clearly shifted (2013: 16). The Emperor and the Gold Star flee, transforming into clouds as Li Jing makes one last attempt to subdue Sun by sending his pagoda to trap him. The pagoda enlarges to cover Sun Wukong, then contracts, expands, quivers, and explodes. The Monkey King reappears unscathed and then destroys the palace with his staff. There are two shots of debris falling on a background of palace ruins, followed by a long shot of Sun Wukong winding up to strike a fallen pillar with his staff, and then another long shot of Sun striking the archway with the sign of the Jade Emperor’s palace, Lingxiao dian. Finally in a medium, full-body shot on his back, Sun Wukong quickly turns around to face the spectator and laugh. While he laughs with his head thrown back, arms bent and fists clenched, Sun Wukong gradually grows in the frame until he occupies the frame entirely, and in a close-up of his upper torso he laughs directly at the spectator. Sun Wukong’s laughing face fades in a lap dissolve into the shot of the arch before the waterfall in Flower-Fruit Mountain as monkeys scramble out and the rising flag that reads “Sage Equal to Heaven” fills the screen. The camera then pulls back on a shot of Sun Wukong dancing, which dissolves into a final long shot of the Monkey King standing upon a jutting rock surrounded by a large number of monkeys dancing in joy to the musical motif of the film as the screen fades to black.

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The finale culminates with a return to the utopian space of Uproar’s opening and solves the problem posed by Wu Zuguang when he complained about the ending of the opera version of Uproar. The animated Uproar reinscribes the ending as a moment of celebration and reunion. The reunion, da tuanyuan, as finale is an important theatrical trope that links so-called traditional theater to contemporary theater and film. The battle between Erlang and Sun Wukong is the most elaborate in the film and evidences the way animation can effectively represent the mythological material of Journey to the West. The last scenes of Sun Wukong smashing the Jade Emperor’s palace, Lingxiao dian, are important. While such scenes may have been depicted in comic books of the period, the scenes that depict the destruction of the palace in the animated Uproar are specific to this film.9 The destruction of the Jade Emperor’s palace consists of five separate shots. The pagoda explodes into pieces and this begins a rain of falling pieces and dust for the destruction shots. In an interior shot, Sun Wukong swings his staff and cracks a pillar in half. Then in another long shot Sun leaps outside the front archway and smashes a sign indicating the name of the palace itself, which explodes outwards in pieces that fly out of frame. Animation seems especially appropriate for these scenes of destruction. There is something decidedly anarchic about the animation in these shots that comprise the short but intense denouement to a series of transformations and routs by the always-victorious Monkey King. The representation of the destruction of the Jade Emperor’s palace is impressive. The destruction is determined by the particular use of cel animation as the palace tumbles in large pieces that slide down across the frame; sections of stone, bits of broken ornament, and random broken pieces fall as static objects in two shots, while the animators add what looks like falling dust trails in the shot in which Sun Wukong smacks the pillar in two.10 Such anarchic violence, albeit carried out in a fictional palace in heaven, does not have precedent in film of this period, at least not in Chinese film. Even the ending of Hongse niangzi jun (The Red Detachment of Women, 1961), a film about an uprising against a landlord, includes limited scenes of destruction of the landlord’s house. But Red Detachment is narrated as a class conflict. While some may have read the conflict of Uproar between mythological figures as class conflict, the figures of this conflict, like floating signifiers, point to several possible readings. The refiguration of Sun Wukong as “the people,” as a figure of/for the masses, is part of the ideological context for cultural production in the PRC during this period. Cultural production was supposed to represent the masses as outlined in Mao’s 1942 “Talks at the Yan’an Conference on Literature and Art,” where Mao framed cultural production as collective, as both representing and expressing the collectivity of “workers, peasant, soldiers and their cadres” (see McDougall 1980). The character of Sun Wukong does not strictly fit any of these categories, unless, as I have remarked above, the novel he appears in is altered to suit a very particular reading of the material. On the other hand, while the readings are in many ways antithetical, a Maoist reading of Sun Wukong as a figure of the masses shares superficial similarity to Buddhist readings of Sun Wukong as a figure of the unenlightened human mind (Dudbridge 1970: 167–176). In Journey to the West,

It all started with a monkey 27 Buddha first traps Sun Wukong in the palm of his hand before suppressing him beneath a mountain for five hundred years, and Guanyin will give a special metal band to the Tripitaka so he can control Sun Wukong in Chapter 14. Sun Wukong is not an idealized figure, but an ambiguous figure who possesses negative as well as positive characteristics. The idealized figure of Sun Wukong in Uproar is derived from a specific reading of the novel as a criticism of bureaucracy, a reductive reading nicely critiqued by C.T. Hsia (1968: 138). Animated film cannot be read within a solely literary figural reading, but the film certainly invites an understanding of literary, political, and “mediatic” figuration. It may be difficult to appreciate the prevalence of a figure like Sun Wukong. No less an important actor than Mao Zedong himself identified with the Monkey King. In one of the documents associated with the launch of the Cultural Revolution, Mao would refer to himself jokingly as a monkey king: “ . . . always felt that when there are no tigers in the mountain, the monkey gets crowned king, so I have become this kind of king. But this is not a form of compromise, my tiger spirit comes first, then my monkey spirit.” Mao’s text, a letter to his wife, Jiang Qing, is a figurative signaling of power relations within the party at the time.11 In another well-known letter, Mao would officially declare support of the Red Guards at Qinghua University by using the phrase “zaofan you li” – “it is right to rebel.”12 The Red Guards originally referred to themselves as Hongweibing zaofanpai, the Red Guard Rebel Group. Mao’s allusion to the Monkey King in the letter to Jiang Qing is ambiguous, but his support of a particular type of violent political action was not. One of the ultra-leftist factions of the Red Guard in Shanghai called itself Sun Wukong.13 Hongmei Sun notes that the revisions to the opera version of Uproar recast the relationship between Sun Wukong and the Jade Emperor’s court as a revenge play, thus giving the Monkey King the “right to rebel” against the court (2013: 5). Indeed, the language of rebellion is an aspect of the Uproar film script. After Sun Wukong gets drunk and destroys a banquet in the Heavenly Palace, the Jade Emperor is furious and declares “This is clearly rebellion!” (zhe jianzhi shi zaofan le!). Thus the word zaofan, rebel, is synonymous with the character of the Monkey King just before this word will be used in official political discourse. In Uproar the Monkey King performs a double function as a type of trickster superhero with supernatural powers of strength and transformation and at the same time a force that subverts the supernatural Heavenly Palace, depicted as a hierarchical and bureaucratic system trying to give Sun Wukong a false sense of importance so he does not overpower the heavenly court, which he does in the end because he realizes the court’s duplicity. In effect, the supernatural trickster subverts a supernatural religious pantheon. Why should a figure associated with a popular religious pantheon rebel against that pantheon? Mao’s letter to Jiang Qing was not made public for a few years after it was written. Nevertheless, pronouncements such as these by Mao himself and others, as well as other collectively produced propagandistic texts, used rhetorical strategies, many with resonance from popular literature and religion. The Cultural Revolution continued a tradition in China of state criticism of religion which had gone on since at least the beginning

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of the twentieth century (Duara 1991; Xiao 1999). But in a paradoxical fashion, the ultra-figurative language of critique during the Cultural Revolution was inscribed with religious symbolism. While the so-called ghosts and gods of feudalism and capitalism were denounced, ghosts and gods continued an unconscious existence in the very language that claimed to sweep them away.14 The second half of Uproar came out in 1964, and the film partakes of a similar discourse as the emerging atmosphere of the Cultural Revolution. Sun Wukong is a supernatural figure in battle against supernatural figures; his status as a rebel against Heaven based on a selective reading of the Journey to the West narrative. The final scenes of violent destruction of the Jade Emperor’s palace foreshadow the scenes of looting and vandalism that occurred a few years away when the call came to “smash the four olds” and groups of Red Guards looted and destroyed private homes and temples to remove all signs of feudalism, capitalism, imperialism, and bourgeois culture.15 In the light of the events that followed shortly thereafter, the SAFS-animated Sun Wukong of Uproar in Heaven is a figure of revolution because of historical contiguity to the Cultural Revolution. In Uproar in Heaven, what spectator would not identify with Sun Wukong and look with anger at the court of the Jade Emperor? The lack of nuance is striking. Similar to the revolutionary hero of literature, film, and visual art during this time, Sun Wukong unambiguously figures all that is positive; he can do no wrong, while the Emperor is the epitome of a negative type of governance. At the beginning of the second half of Uproar, the Jade Emperor lazily lounges on his throne, seemingly drawn by eight beautiful women playing instruments. Two phoenixes transform into women celestials; their dresses become long trailing phoenix feathers as they perform a dance in the sky, their bodies curling and curving in a slow choreography, each dancer’s movements mirroring the others’. One of the women approaches the viewer holding a chalice followed by a reverse medium shot of the Emperor, who languidly motions her over with his right hand. The celestial dancer glides through a landscape of trees and flowers hanging in mid-sky and approaches two flowers that she strokes and which tilt of their own accord to fill up the chalice with heavenly nectar. She approaches the Jade Emperor’s throne; two more women trail beside the throne, the Gold Star of Venus on his left. The celestial dancer approaches the emperor on his right, respectfully holding the cup with both hands. The Jade Emperor, dressed in robes of pink, yellow, and red, with rouged cheeks and long jowls, either a mole or tiny beard beneath his bottom lip, a pencil-thin goatee and sideburns, a tall pinkish crown upon his head, takes the chalice on a saucer with incredibly long-nailed hands, dips the long nail of his left-hand pinky into the chalice and takes a sip as Li Jing’s dark figure appears in the distance. Li Jing will very shortly tell the Jade Emperor of the first victory of the Monkey King. In the figure of the Jade Emperor and his court, Wan Laiming’s Uproar in Heaven anticipates the conditions of its renunciation. Uproar in Heaven is a classic of Chinese animation, but the historic conditions of the film’s production are forgotten. In his 1986 autobiography, Wan Laiming discusses the Cultural Revolution in the accepted terms of the period that still assigned blame for that decadelong chaos to the Gang of Four, three political leaders and Mao’s wife Jiang

It all started with a monkey 29 Qing.16 Wan describes the beginning of the Cultural Revolution with reference to an editorial that appears on June 1, 1966, in the People’s Daily, “Sweep away the monsters and demons,” a call to wipe out all the bourgeois elements within the party, the army, and society at large that employed the quasi-religious terms I mentioned above to denounce political groups (“Hengsao niugui sheshen”). Wan’s discussion of the Cultural Revolution is an expression of bewilderment, but the section on Uproar in Heaven nonetheless gives a reading of the fate of the film during the time. According to Wan all “Monkey operas” were banned from the stage, and the animated Uproar was criticized for being “anti-socialist, antiPeople”: “cries were heard of ‘down with the poisonous weed Sun Wukong Uproar in Heaven’ . . . ” But Wan claims this attitude as contradictory – why would Red Guards, many of whom invoked the name and image of Sun Wukong as a figure for rebellion themselves, in turn criticize a film with Sun Wukong as the protagonist? Indeed, even in the People’s Daily the Sun Wukong of the Uproar in Heaven episode was a figure for the rebel Red Guards (Hong Tao 1967), while a few years later a comic book based on another well-known episode, the WhiteBoned Demon, was praised for its politics of unmasking.17 As Wan noted, some saw the Jade Emperor’s court as an oblique criticism of the government. One repeated rumor claims the film was an attack on the government through the depiction of the Jade Emperor, who seems to have a mole on his chin like Mao Zedong. Whether or not the Jade Emperor of Uproar was intended by the designers or producers to be a caricature of Mao Zedong and the Chinese Communist Party is, in a sense, irrelevant. The rumor exists as one more interpretation of this character and the film itself. Such interpretations arose through contiguous historical events and discourse.18 Beside the literary and political figurations, the mediatic figuration must be considered as no less significant. When Wan Laiming narrates his relationship to Sun Wukong, he is also narrating the history of a medium: animation. The story of Wan Laiming and Sun Wukong is one history of animation as a mode of representation and a mode of production, as a medium that reproduces types of representation and at the same time represents a mode of production. Sun Wukong appears in many types of media during this time. The SAFS was the sole studio to produce animated films in Chinese, but the material was also being adapted outside China, notably in Japan. The film Saiyûki (Journey to the West, aka, Alakazam the Great) was released a year before Uproar in Heaven, and part of the film adapts the same episode as Uproar. A quick comparison between Uproar and Saiyûki is worthwhile, because while both films tacitly focus on the same narrative, it is quite obvious that Saiyûki uses the plot of Journey to the West to construct a new narrative. The first few minutes of Saiyûki, when Songokū (Sun Wukong) enters the world in a forest and meets a female monkey, are quite remarkable as examples of character animation. Saiyûki was based on Tezuka Osamu’s manga adaptation of Journey, Boku no Songokū (Songokū the Monkey). The first moments of Goku’s life are depicted with no dialogue except for exclamations of surprise and fear from the protagonist and laughter and tears from his companion, Rin Rin, a female monkey. According to Natsu Onoda Power, Tezuka worked on the storyboard for

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the film and suggested changes from his own manga adaptation, including new characters such as a girlfriend for Songokū (2009: 131). Paul Wells discusses adaptation in the context of Barthes’ notions of anchorage and relay, both terms that refer to the way meaning for the image “as a floating chain of signifieds” is “fixed” by recourse to linguistic signs.19 Barthes’ uses of anchorage seem more suited to static images such as photos or illustrations with text, but relay is certainly applicable to filmic discourse. Barthes refers to a “relay-text . . . very important in film, where dialogue functions not simply as elucidation but really does advance the action by setting out, in the sequence of messages, meanings that are not to be found in the image itself” (1977: 41). Wells notes how animation relies on other non-linguistic methods to determine meaning; for example, in Disney’s Snow White, “gestures, actions, and quality of movement come to define her character.” Appearance and movement are important sites for constructing character in animation (and this remains the case in computer-generated animation as well). With regard to the text Wells notes “[t]he act of adaptation in animation . . . is not predicated on the determinants of narrative events as described in a literary text but on the stimulants of function and purpose – not the fact that something happens, but the way it happens” (1999: 209–210). In the case of Uproar and Saiyûki, the reception of an adaptation of an episode from Journey to the West would be affected by spectator expectations and the cognitive dissonance produced by the way things do not happen, which may be just as important as the way things occur for the duration of the film. The images in Saiyûki seem arbitrary at times. Heaven sends a troop of policemen in white robes with golden badges to arrest the Monkey King, and the transforming Erlang looks more like a Greco-Roman hero with long hair and metal armor who thoroughly defeats Songokū. But the character of the Monkey King is developed early on through his interaction with Buddhist figures like the hermit who trains Songokū in a short sequence of floating bubbles that show images of the training Monkey King lifting weights and skipping rope. The Jade Emperor is absent from Saiyûki. Instead, the Monkey King challenges Buddha, only to be trapped in his palm and imprisoned beneath a mountain, an important section omitted from Uproar that functions like a parable. The plot places the character in contrasting scenes that construct a rounded Monkey King character in Saiyûki. The addition of a female companion named Rin Rin is used very sentimentally. But more than a sentimental trope, Rin Rin provides a strong juxtaposition to the arrogant and temperamental Songokū, becoming in a sense another emotional layer of the protagonist. The Monkey King in Uproar is given emotional nuance through his relationship to the monkeys in Flower-Fruit Mountain. He clearly dotes on these monkeys, who he refers to as “children.” The relationship between Sun Wukong and the monkeys resembles that of a ruler and his subjects, or a commander and his troops. Uproar begins, after all, with images of Sun Wukong and his monkeys in the Flower-Fruit Mountain, which Wagner (1990: 142) and Sun (2013: 5) both link to Mao Zedong in the liberated areas during the 1920s; indeed, in certain scenes Sun Wukong and his monkeys look like guerilla fighters battling the Jade Emperor’s troops. But this

It all started with a monkey 31 historical, figurative linkage can also be attributed to the opera type the Monkey King represented, wusheng, a military type. The most salient scenes in the film focus on the scenes in which he takes the position as pimawen, the horsekeeper. The pimawen position in Uproar is established through Sun Wukong’s first gesture towards the horses; he sets the horses free. In Journey to the West Sun Wukong’s tenure as horsekeeper, which lasts about half a month, comes to an end during a banquet given by department ministers. When Sun Wukong finds out the position is really not much of position, he destroys the banquet in anger (Wu 1977: 121–123). In the Uproar opera Sun Wukong engages in a battle of wits with Tianxi xingjun, a literatus of Heaven. The exchange is similar to the singing competition in Liu Sanjie (Third Sister Liu, 1960), an aspect of the state vilification of intellectuals in the 1950s and ’60s (U 2010). Sun Wukong’s rebellion in the novel begins when he is informed the rank horsekeeper “is the lowest of the low ranks . . . ” (Wu 1977, Vol. 1: 122). But the animated film spares the spectator this affront. The first scene of Sun Wukong’s arrival vividly contradicts the Monkey King of the literary text. As Sun Wukong approaches the stable entrance, several men kneel before him as he walks up: “What are you doing? Get up, get up, get up!” The animated Sun Wukong not only rejects the bureaucratic hierarchy imposed on him from above as it is represented in the literary and operatic texts, he also rejects his own position of authority. More than the literary figure, the animated Sun Wukong’s rebellion is more than an expression of resentment. The Monkey King in the novel made sure that “[t]hose horses that wanted to sleep were stirred up and fed; those that wanted to gallop were caught and placed in the stalls” (Wu 1977, Vol. 1: 121), while in the opera Sun Wukong reins a spirited horse. In contrast, the animated Sun Wukong walks between two lines of horses tied to beams over their heads. In a medium shot the horses appear to bow to him; in close-up they champ at the bit. Sun Wukong is viewed from the side wearing his bureaucrat’s red robe and cap, a green stripe on his Beijing opera face adds a furrow to his face, and in the next long shot he leaps while asking Na you zheyang guan ma de? – “Who would treat horses like this?” Sun Wukong strokes one of the horses and bundles some horses’ reins in his hand and tosses them away as the horses joyfully leap out of their position in the stable and frolic towards the viewer and out of the frame. The next sequence lasts for no more than a minute and functions like a short montage that shows Sun Wukong affectionately stroking the horses then flying upwards to change into a cloud that rains on the horses as they play in four small pools in the clouds, and then the frame grows dark and the horses in frame bow their heads, some standing, some on the ground, as Sun Wukong pulls a cloud like a comforter over the horses and the screen fades to black. In place of the opera’s battle of wits, the animated Sun Wukong dispatches the Lord of the Horses in a short, comically violent battle. Two guards are overturned, and when the Lord of the Horses himself draws a sword and attacks, Sun Wukong curses and removes his robe, tossing it on the Lord. Instead of a battle of wits, the Monkey King’s robe muffles the Lord’s voice as he shouts in fear, a red, vaguely

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human figure beneath the robe and cap. The scene is partly determined by the medium. Animation works with movement. Here conflict is resolved through image and movement, which function like a succinct exposition to identify the characters, more than dialogue. Moreover, conflict is not the only aspect expressed through movement; the attitudes of the protagonist Sun Wukong towards the monkeys in Flower-Fruit Mountain and towards the celestial horses are established through the character’s facial expression and gestures in relation to other characters. Sun Wukong’s relationship towards the horses is especially interesting here, since the horsekeeper position is the cause of Sun Wukong’s resentment in previous versions. In contrast, in the animated Uproar the stables become the site for images of affection between the Monkey King and the horses. Sun Wukong is shown as a caring, doting horsekeeper rebuked for allowing the horses to roam freely. The celestial horses in Uproar take on a symbolic meaning not present in either the novel or the opera. The celestial horses running in the sky of heaven connote a popular saying, tianma xingkong. Tianma xingkong, an image of divine horses running or soaring across the sky, can have a number of meanings related to a style of writing or painting or simply a way of thinking. Here the “text” is both visual and linguistic, and next to the image of Sun Wukong and his horses, the image implies a free and spontaneous attitude that gives free rein to style or thought. Uproar animators used Sun Wukong’s resentment and anger not just against the power structure per se, but against restraint as such. The Sun Wukong of the animated Uproar is the most unrestrained and potentially violent Monkey King, but his care for the celestial horses is symbolic of other possible allegorical readings. Cultural production during the revolutionary period was not completely under some kind of invisible hand controlling every aspect of content. But producers were obligated to be in dialogue with cultural policy, and a variety of attitudes during this period can be linked to particular moments of government policy. Before the Cultural Revolution, cultural production reveals more than one dominant ideological tendency: even though the dominant discourse pointed toward a revolutionary framework, this framework was not monolithic. Even from the vantage point of the mid-1980s, Wan Laiming still described animation production in very selective terms: Animation style is also an integral aspect of artistic form. Animation is an indication of individual creativity expressed by the director, the artist, and the film material. My own animation style is the gradual result of my early style of illustration, as well as decades of practical and artistic experience in animation. Simply put, this means [a style that] dares to use galloping rich imagery, and bright, colorful, and expressive techniques of bold exaggeration. My brother Guchan and I were already clearly using this style in the early 1940s when we produced Princess Iron Fan. [This style] is abundantly evident in Uproar in Heaven, because after liberation leaders implemented the proletarian program of ‘Let a Hundred Flowers Bloom, Let a Hundred Schools of Thought Contend,’ which gave me the ability to boldly express my artistic style, truly obtaining that result that Lenin referred to when he said “[. . .]

It all started with a monkey 33 greater scope must undoubtedly be allowed for personal initiative, individual inclination, thought and fantasy, and form and content.”20 Wan’s comments are a way of legitimizing animation as an art form and a description of animation as a historical process. Wan’s “galloping rich imagery” reiterates the trope of movement used throughout his autobiography and vividly represents, through metaphor, animation as an art form.21 Wan’s comments here read like a poetics of animation and a very selective reading of revolutionary history. The Lenin quote is actually part of a discussion on the necessity of linking publishing to the party after the 1905 October Revolution. But Wan’s reference to the “Hundred Flowers” policy is even more selective. The “Hundred Flowers” was a very short-lived campaign promoted by the Chinese Communist Party in May 1957 to give intellectuals a chance to criticize the government. But the campaign was reversed a month later, ending with the denunciation of many who had spoken freely during this time (Pantsov and Levine 2012: 440–442). According to Marie-Claire Quiquemelle, Wan Laiming returned to the mainland from Hong Kong in 1956 (1991: 184), but his mention of the Hundred Flowers seems more of a strategic selection. Wan’s reference to the Hundred Flowers campaign suggests an aesthetic based on a short-lived state policy that promoted free expression, a policy tacitly represented as an absence of restraint. Wan implicitly describes the style of Uproar as free expression, as the “galloping” free expression of the celestial horses, and in Uproar, Sun Wukong’s attitude is clearly preferable to that of the Lord of the Horses, a figure of bureaucratic hierarchies and power structures. The Monkey King gives free rein to the celestial horses that gallop through the sky. When the Lord of the Horses sees the horses galloping freely, he growls angrily, “Who would dare release the horses?” The Lord of the Horses and Sun Wukong are opposites. The grotesque Lord of the Horses, with a long face like an angry horse, is a sharp contrast to Sun Wukong: the Lord’s awkward gait to the Monkey King’s agile leaps, the Lord’s arrogant laughter to Sun’s righteous anger, the Lord’s anger to Sun’s mocking laughter. When Sun Wukong throws his robe on the Lord, the Lord’s muffled voice rises in a desperate pitch and he is framed by laughing horses.22 Sent by the Jade Emperor, the Lord of the Horses is a grotesque, horse-faced double to the Monkey King. Such “doubling” or repetition is a part of the structure of the film and part of the medium of animation. The Monkey King and his FlowerFruit Mountain kingdom doubles the Jade Emperor’s court, not so much in structure but as a contradictory image of the Jade Emperor’s bureaucracy (the Monkey King’s loose military structure to the Jade Emperor’s hierarchical bureaucracy). The militaristic metaphor of commander and troops implicit in the image of Sun and his guerrilla monkeys is softened by an aura of play and mutual affection, a stark contrast to the bureaucratic formality of the Jade Emperor’s court. Since Fredric Jameson’s “Third-World Literature in the Era of Multinational Capitalism,” critics have been suspicious of reducing cultural production in China to “national allegorical” narratives, but a tendency to link fictional narrative to national history was not solely a theoretical construction created out of a vacuum by Jameson. Wan himself describes the context of the Uproar in revolutionary

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allegorical terms: “Although the ‘Uproar in Heaven’ [episode] in the first seven chapters of Journey to the West is written as a myth, it reflects the incisive conflict and struggle between the oppressor and the oppressed, between feudal domination and the masses” (1986: 140). And these are similar to the allegorical terms he used when he wrote an article for The People’s Daily more than twenty years earlier (Wan 1962: 5). Almost by default, cultural production was allegorized in terms of a revolutionary reading of Chinese (and to a certain extent world) history. In the case of Uproar the satirical aspects of this beloved classic of children’s animation have more or less been glossed over, but no less than any literary or theatrical texts it was based on, Uproar can be read in a number of ways, not the least of which is allegorically in reference to the historical narrative of the period. The idea that a cartoon would have hidden meanings is almost accepted now in animation discourse where critics, historians, and spectators continue to read a variety of meanings into cartoons and animated films. Uproar has a special position in this regard because it was based on a classical novel, it is a classic of animation from the so-called Golden Age of the SAFS catalogue, and was produced during a complex historic period. Uproar was released in two parts, the first in 1961 and the final part in 1964. Nevertheless, the film is often seen as one film, although there are fundamental differences between the two films in pacing, in the way the narratives unfold, and in the way the protagonist is represented. Accompanying the literary and political figurations of the Monkey King, the mediatic figuration of this character is the most important to my argument. In his autobiography Wan Laiming explicitly links his own narrative as an animator to the figure of Sun Wukong, and the links between animation in China and Sun Wukong go beyond Wan’s career to encompass several print and electronic media. The SAFS logo is still the face of Sun Wukong based on the first studio feature, Uproar in Heaven, and there are a number of aspects of this animated figure refracted through the medium itself. Sun Wukong is a figure that emerges from several media simultaneously. One of the most important forms for the SAFS version in Uproar is the model of Sun Wukong designed by the illustrator and painter Zhang Guangyu. Even before Zhang was commissioned to work on the design for Uproar, he was already well known for an illustrated, satirical adaptation of Journey to the West titled Xiyou manji, Cartoon Journey to the West. The word “cartoon” in Zhang’s work did not refer to animated film, but to the form of illustration called manhua, similar to political cartoons, but often more oblique. Art historian Michael Sullivan describes Cartoon Journey to the West as “ . . . a sumptuous work, rich in comic invention, highly decorative, drawing its style not only from early Chinese art but also from that of Mexico and ancient Egypt” (1996: 121). Because of the political situation in Chongqing at the time, Zhang could not publish this satirical series loosely structured around the narrative of Journey to the West and held exhibits of the series instead. The targets of his satire are contemporary politicians, but two of the captioned paintings are worth discussing because they touch on the representation of Sun Wukong in Uproar. Sun Wukong represents multiplicities; this is an intrinsic aspect of the character. He can transform in seventy-two ways, and he can pluck his own hair and transform it into versions of himself. The link between the Buddhist allegory of the

It all started with a monkey 35 distracted human mind and the figuration of multiplicities was captured in the reading of Sun Wukong as a figure of the masses during the 1950s and ’60s in the theatrical and animated versions of Uproar. Sun Wukong as multiplicities, as replicating images of himself, represents a notion of collectivity. The state rationalization of collectivities into productive labor forces was a significant aspect of modernity and postmodernity. Zhang Guangyu’s Cartoon Journey to the West precedes the PRC figuration of Sun Wukong by at least a decade, and the illustrations point to a similar, but ironic, figuration of the Monkey King. Near the end of Cartoon Journey, Sun Wukong attends theatrical performances of “Water Curtain Cave,” indicating a magical space on Flower-Fruit Mountain. In one painting, the stage Sun Wukong appears in a parody of state use of Sun Yat-sen’s (1866–1925) “Three Principles” of nationalism, democracy, and livelihood, which is presented as part of a pedagogical program for Republican China (Shen 2013). The “real” Sun Wukong becomes so angered by this he storms the stage and violently beats the stage Monkey King. The next two paintings depict Sun Wukong as the masses or, more appropriately, zhonghou, the monkey masses, “in the midst of their industrious and thrifty work” (see Figure 1.1). Sun Wukong is pictured in eleven images,

Figure 1.1 Zhang Guangyu 2012: 89

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some of which appear to be women and men peasants and workers and including an artist in a stereotypical French beret holding a palette and a scholar or writer wearing laurels and a sort of toga lounging in the corner. The next image shows a “modernized Flower-Fruit Mountain,” as if the stage is lined with multi-story buildings, each window featuring a smiling Monkey King face, a Monkey King flag perched atop the middle building with smokestacks darkening the sky in the background (see Figure 1.2). Zhang’s satire most certainly targeted specific political figures from the period. Cartoon Journey was exhibited in 1945, the year of the Japanese surrender, but many of the cartoons were no doubt painted during wartime. Zhang’s work deserves more discussion than I have room for. Nevertheless, I want to draw attention to another possible reading, a somewhat self-referential reading of the Monkey King figure in Zhang’s Cartoon Journey, in particular in these two paintings where Sun Wukong ironically stands for the masses

Figure 1.2 Zhang Guangyu 2012: 91

It all started with a monkey 37 under state policy. The figuration of the Monkey King as a collective, as a multiplicity of Monkey Kings, occurs in a series. Additionally, in both these paintings Sun Wukong is painted as a series of possible Monkey Kings and, in the case of the smiling faces in windows of the buildings, as a possibly comic version of the structure of the Cartoon Journey, a series of painted caricatures, a type of cartoon strip. In both panels Sun Wukong is a figure for the serial print medium itself. Wan Laiming narrates his relationship with the character of Sun Wukong as a figuration of media. The Monkey King is animation in China. Uproar was produced at an important moment in media history. Uproar is now viewed as one film, but it was produced in two parts and could have been the beginning of a series.23 As it stands, the two parts of Uproar form a diptych; both parts are structured around a plot in which the Jade Emperor and his court plot to invite Sun Wukong to take a menial position, he is righteously offended and battles the heavenly legions, in the end defeating those sent to subdue him – a structure of invitation-rejection-attack. The films consist of two aggressive thrusts by the Monkey King against the bureaucratic system of heaven. The second part is distinguished by the capture of the Monkey King and the destruction of the Jade Emperor’s palace, but both parts end with Sun Wukong surrounded by cheering monkeys in Flower-Fruit Mountain. The parallel structure of the two parts cannot be simply explained by the plot structure. The repetition of invitation-rejectionattack is emphasized greatly when Uproar is compared as two separate films, instead of two parts of one whole. Like revolutionary art of the period, this animation is based on a similar repetition of images that “pushed the copy of the copy, etc., to that extreme point at which it reverses and becomes a simulacrum” (Deleuze 1994: 293–294) in Pop Art. Animation in the PRC was a technical medium with claims of fine-arts technique, while Warhol and other Pop artists were producing fine-arts objects using techniques of mass reproduction such as silkscreen. The differences between these two forms paradoxically reveal similarities in the use of serial repetition that produces simulacra, in which the copy becomes the original of itself. Wan Laiming’s Sun Wukong in Uproar would, as the result of a historical process of branding, become the SAFS studio logo and an icon for animation production in general in the PRC. Warhol and his contemporaries responded to the predominance of mass repetition in commercial culture by employing iconographic representations of high art. Sun Wukong was already doing backflips somewhere between high and low culture, and the Monkey King was always a copy with no original to start with. Reaching back to the earliest determinations of cinematic meaning in the Second thesis in Cinema 1, Deleuze distinguishes between “privileged instants” and “any-instant-whatever.” Deleuze describes film as a technological process that captured movement in equidistant moments, in frames of “any-instant-whatever.” Deleuze contrasts this basic technical aspect of cinema with what he calls “privileged instants,” images seemingly chosen from within the apparently arbitrary

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series of the recording process of film, which consists of frozen shots in each separate frame. Deleuze even refers to the problem of animation: Any other system which reproduces movement through an order of exposures [poses] projected in such a way that they pass into one another, or are ‘transformed,’ is foreign to the cinema. This is clear when one attempts to define the cartoon film; if it belongs fully to the cinema, this is because the drawing no longer constitutes a pose or a completed figure, but the description of a figure which is always in the process of being formed or dissolving through the movement of lines and points taken at any-instant-whatevers of their course. (Deleuze 1986: 5) Animation comes close to being defined outside of cinema in Deleuze’s definition here. But Deleuze retains animation within the definition of cinema because, although animation uses drawings, “the drawing no longer constitutes a pose or a completed figure.” Deleuze is probably referring to cel animation, and he is only partially correct. In so-called full animation, the animator would have to draw up to twelve drawings per second, with some images used more than once. Thus, the frames would be, to use Deleuze’s terminology “privileged instants” in so far as the drawings, which could be mistaken for individual poses, are divided into “keys,” a smaller number of key drawings that signal the overall movement for a shot, with “inbetweens” provided to give continuity between the key drawings.24 This technique of the deliberate timing of drawings is an integral aspect of all animation and grew out of experimentation with movement from the early days of the medium. The process also places animation in an abstract relation to film and movement, in which the animator is not attempting to merely imitate film, but to describe movement with drawing in relation to the technical function of film. The deliberately timed drawings can affect a number of factors, from the overall visual look of the animation to the personality of the characters. The Sun Wukong in Uproar is in the end a figure of animation at the technical level of the medium. In Part Two of Uproar, the Monkey King transforms into copies of himself. Of course, to say Sun Wukong turns into copies of himself is problematic since cel animation is already a series of copies. Beginning with the design, to the model sheets, to the drawings that are transferred onto celluloid sheets, thousands of images of one character must be produced. Moreover, Sun Wukong, the literary figure, is supposed to be able to replicate himself. When he plucks hair from his body, the individual hairs can transform into a copy of himself. In Part One, when he battles Nezha the boy-god, Sun Wukong plucks three hairs from his head, which transform into versions of himself, a trick he also uses in Part Two to summon a large number of shields to defend against a flurry of swords. However, in one scene in Part Two, when Sun Wukong first engages Erlang, the three-eyed god and nephew of the Jade Emperor, six combatants enter the fray. Sun Wukong first splits in two and while one of him returns to engage Erlang, the second Monkey King suddenly leaps from a standing position in the right corner of the frame and does a

It all started with a monkey 39 forward flip towards frame left. The Monkey King’s aerial somersault forms an arc, and slightly transparent still images appear in a series of six key poses. Then the six images land, become opaque, and leap out of frame to engage the six opponents. The scene is short and does not really contribute in any significant way to the overall plot. But this short scene is an important figuration of the Monkey King within the last approximately twenty-four minutes of Part Two (which is just over sixty minutes long). The battle section of Part Two is more than twice as long as the parallel battle section of Part One, which is barely ten minutes long. Moreover, the battle section of Part Two is a display of the Jade Emperor’s troops as layered, multiplicities of figures, some moving, some still. The whole section is a display of repetition that crowds the screen at times. Thus, Sun Wukong and Uproar is strikingly determined by the material techniques of cel animation itself. With his transformation into six copies of himself, Sun Wukong stands for animation at the most basic level of the key drawing (see Figures 1.3 and 1.4). On the level of design, Uproar is based on the character designs of the painter Zhang Guangyu and the background designs of his brother Zhang Zhengyu. But the relationship between paintings and animation is a complex affair. For one thing, the look of a painting cannot determine the movement of a figure in animation. Movement in Uproar is complex and reveals important aspects of each

Figure 1.3 Uproar in Heaven, part 1, 1961

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Figure 1.4 Uproar in Heaven, part 1, 1961

character’s personality. But overall, Uproar contains very good examples of what Sergei Eisenstein called “plasmatics” in visual design. Eisenstein was referring to the way the illustrator can play with shapes and forms, the way a human figure, for example, can be manipulated in illustration. But Eisenstein was especially concerned with early animation and the way animators could stretch and distort figures for comical effect.25 Most of Eisenstein’s examples are from Disney, but in the case of Wan Laiming, Fleischer Brothers’ productions might be more appropriate. Wan names Disney’s Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs as an inspiration for Princess Iron Fan, but he is circumspect in his discussion of early animation from abroad, which by and large would have most probably been American. Judging from Wan’s description of the first Wan Brothers’ animation in 1926, Zhiren daoluan ji (Rebellion of the Paper Man) sounds very much like an “Out of the Inkwell” film by the Fleischer Brothers.26 Although most of the earliest films by the Wans are not extant, the short they produced for the film Dushi fengguang (Scenes of the City) in 1935 shows similarities to early American animation, in particular the use of funny animals with wiry arms and legs. Eisenstein’s “plasmatic” effect is clear in a scene in which the dog and the cat kiss and their lips become absurdly elongated (see Figure 1.5). Such scenes were the staple of early animation, but the Fleischers epitomized this early use of wiry,

It all started with a monkey 41

Figure 1.5 Scene of the City, 1935

grotesque movement and exaggerated stretching and surreal transformations of bodies and shapes. In his autobiography Wan discusses the moment he is given the task of directing Uproar at SAFS, but he would first go through a period of study of political theory on cultural production because he had been influenced by Hollywood production (1986: 116). The passage in his autobiography is interesting; Wan was part of an earlier generation of animators who learned their craft under the predominance of Western animation models, especially American animation of the 1920s and 1930s. The style of Uproar is consistently described in the literature with reference to Chinese art and literature, but from another perspective Wan’s style in Uproar clearly shows traits from earlier styles of movement, earlier styles of animation, closer to the 1920s and ’30s, the period when he and his brothers began producing films. The Sun Wukong of Uproar is of course not similar in design to the Sun Wukong of Princess Iron Fan, but despite the use of a somewhat twitchy rotoscoping in Princess Iron Fan, the Monkey Kings in both films share similar types of movement. When Sun Wukong leaps he is not really propelled by his legs; rather, he glides in a sort of abstract flourish, almost as if the figure were following a brush stroke more than trajectory, a type of graceful movement of line at home in early American animation evident right from the opening shot of Uproar. Indeed, such types of movement do not change when he dives underwater to swim towards the Dragon King’s palace; Sun Wukong’s movement remains the same – he glides. In Uproar in Heaven, the Monkey King glides, whether swimming in water, jumping on land, or flying in heaven.

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By linking Sun Wukong to the Fleisher brothers, I am not claiming that Wan was imitating other animators, that Sun Wukong is somehow a “copy” of foreign animation, nor am I attempting to deemphasize the national style traits that Uproar inscribes in this figuration of a popular hero from literature, theater, and art. However, the Sun Wukong of Uproar, no less than any other figure of cultural production, is the product not only of deliberate choices made by the animators, but also of those coincidental links and intersections that occur in the minds of spectators and readers. The protagonist/antagonist pairing of Sun Wukong and the Jade Emperor and his court form the heart of the main conflict in Uproar. Like the landlord/peasant pair discussed in the last chapter, the Emperor/Sun Wukong pair floats like an allegorical structure in Chinese culture, certainly predating the particular history of the PRC. The implications of such an adaptable allegorical narrative remain open-ended in so far as any reading depends on an implicit ideology of power. The traditional view of the relationship between Sun Wukong and the Emperor was not a facile figuration of a rebel hero versus a feudal villain. The subsequent restraint of the Monkey King following his rebellion in Journey to the West reveals a negativity attached to that figure that recognizes the danger of unlimited, and potentially all-consuming, power. This “traditional” reading is important to bear in mind for the final scene of an unambiguously victorious figuration of the Monkey King. To return to the moment after Sun Wukong has thoroughly destroyed the Jade Emperor’s palace, he is framed in a medium shot from behind, and he quickly turns around to face the viewer and laugh. He laughs with his head thrown back, arms bent and fists clenched, while he gradually grows until he occupies the frame entirely. In a final close-up of his upper torso he laughs directly at the spectator. The scene deserves to be projected on a large screen. The image of triumph could be viewed simply as an example of the Monkey King’s mischief, but the scene is also frightening. The laughter echoes slightly, while the background is a blurred image of the palace in ruins. Sun Wukong’s gesture of raised shoulders and clenched fists are effective as a sign of menace, but not play. The scene is ambiguous and points to another aspect of Eisenstein’s “plasmatics,” also part of a discourse on animation that brought out what he refers to as a “formal logic.” In a short discussion of Disney’s Lonesome Ghosts, Eisenstein discusses the short film: “only having joined in the fundamental, alogical and sensuous order is it possible to achieve a mastery and supremacy in the realm of freedom from the shackles of logic, from shackles in general” (1986: 22). Eisenstein’s point is that the cartoon constructs a sort of autonomous logic, an internal logic of the fantastic that it resolves within the rules it has set up. In a sense Eisenstein draws a parallel between the “plasmatics” of visual form and the illogic of plot in animation derived from “folkloric, mythological, prelogical thought” (1986: 23). The plot of Uproar is derived from earlier mythological material but given a contemporary, if not rationalist, at least a structured historical twist. And like the Disney fantasies Eisenstein praises, the Sun Wukong of Uproar could also be said to bestow on the spectator a “momentary, imaginary, comical liberation” from everyday life. Perhaps Sun Wukong’s rebellion is as much a wish-fulfillment as Mickey Mouse’s

It all started with a monkey 43 illogic. But the final scene of the destruction of the Jade Emperor’s palace is too menacing to be simply a product of the illogic of early American cartoons. Indeed, Sun Wukong’s triumphant laughter may be read as a product of an ambiguous but not unproblematic anxiety. The year Part Two of Uproar was released included the first successful detonation of a nuclear bomb in the PRC on October 16. And while the Cultural Revolution is usually considered to have begun in 1966, the same day the nuclear detonation was announced in the People’s Daily, the well-respected, modern playwright Cao Yu (1910–1996) published an article in the cultural section entitled “Long Live the Cultural Revolution” on October 17, 1964. Admittedly, such dates are only coincidental, and the meaning of Sun Wukong’s laughter would depend on the spectator’s response to these events.27 Within the protagonist/antagonist pairing of Sun Wukong and the Jade Emperor, the conventional villain in the film is the Jade Emperor, a rather effete and officious god who acts according to the counsel of his advisors, either the Gold Star of Venus, who counsels the Jade Emperor to appease Sun Wukong with token positions, or the warlike Pagoda Bearer Devarãja or Li Jing, who counsels the Emperor to subdue the Monkey King. From the point of view of plot, both counselors function like plot devices, putting into motion decisions that contribute to the parallel structure of Parts One and Two of Uproar. The villain of Uproar is the Jade Emperor and his court, represented as a binary of appeasement or suppression. But before any of the members of the court enter the film, the court is introduced as an architectural structure before the title credits, with the Jade Emperor’s Palace, Lingxiao dian, centrally displayed. To simply read the Jade Emperor’s palace as a satirical image of the government is overly reductive. However, at a fundamental level, cel animation is one layer placed on top of a background. The background in cel animation is usually not the primary animated object, but in Uproar the backgrounds are sometimes animated with a painted image in the foreground, and this is especially true for shots of the Jade Emperor’s palace when Sun Wukong first arrives in heaven in Part One. The Gold Star of Venus and Sun Wukong approach the Jade Emperor’s palace with a frontal shot that frames the palace and bridge. When they arrive, the Gold Star of Venus asks the Monkey King to wait while he announces their arrival. Next is a shot from a perspective to the left of the palace as Sun, from the right of the frame, leaps gracefully up the stairs to the entranceway in two bounds. The sky blazes with golden ribbons of blazing light as the archway above the entrance shimmers in waves of crimson. The design of the Jade Emperor’s palace does not seem to be consistent from different perspectives, but the palace roughly consists of a gabled rooftop that rises in the middle, with another gable beneath the top gable and above the entranceway. The colors in this close-up are warmer than the long shot when the Gold Star of Venus and Sun Wukong approach from the bottom of the frame. But the opening, diagrammic image of the palace that appears just before the title sequence shows a similar structure, a gabled roof with another gable above the pillared entranceway. The basic form of the Jade Emperor’s palace reveals an interesting version of national style. The palace is probably modeled to represent a typical example

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of an Emperor’s palace, but it is not as if the animators had to go far to find a model for the Jade Emperor’s palace. The palace appears to have a vaguely exaggerated resemblance to Tiananmen, the Gate of Heavenly Peace in Beijing and what was already an iconic piece of architecture in New China. In 1961, the year the first part of Uproar was released, Tiananmen, the Gate of Heavenly Peace, was one of 180 cultural relics listed for preservation by the government (Sheperd 2013: 45). The gate has a history that goes back to the fifteenth century, but Mao Zedong would declare the founding of the People’s Republic from this structure in 1949. Tiananmen in the 1950s and ’60s was a symbol for the government of China and would appear on currency and, more importantly, on the logo for the Beijing Film Studio. In the 1960s, Tiananmen gate can be seen in the corner of the logo for Beijing Film with the trinity of peasant, worker, and soldier in the center. The architectural structure still holds an iconic place in state symbolism. Uproar evidences this, and the angle of the shot of the Jade Emperor’s is recalled in the 1970s logo for the Beijing Film Studio, the brilliantly shining Tiananmen with lamppost, the sky awash in needles of light (see Figures 1.6 and 1.7). The coincidence is important. The image of the aura appears regularly in animated films of the period, to indicate a moment of transformation, as in Yi fu Zhuang jin (A Zhuang Embroidery, 1959), or a magical birth, as in Yutong (Fisherboy, 1959)

Figure 1.6 Uproar in Heaven, part 1, 1961

It all started with a monkey 45

Figure 1.7 Beijing Film Studio ident, 1970

and Uproar and for the magical appearance of the princess in Kongque gongzhu (Princess Peacock, 1963). Here the auratic glow sets off images of architecture, one a symbol of the State, the other a fantastic palace. The auratic glow would appear in other contexts, but the persistence of aura here is constructed in both cases through the modest medium of animation. Animation takes a roundabout route to arrive at this moment. In the next chapter I take a step back to trace the emergence of the medium as a topic in Chinese studies, and as a state industry in WWII.

Notes 1 Wan refers to a film titled Kunchong shijie (Insect World) (1986: 101–103). There is an anonymous article published in the Changcheng pictorial about a Wan brother film titled Fengmi yu huangchong (The Bee and the Grasshopper) that includes a fairly detailed storyboard published in the Great Wall periodical (Anon, 1951). This seems to be the article Wan refers to (1986: 103). 2 See Weng 1986: 431–432, cited in Sun 2013: 5 (my translation). Also see Weng 1994: 4–5. 3 Li Shaochun 1959: 8. Translations are my own unless otherwise indicated. 4 Wan 1986: 137, cited in Sun 2013: 18. Sun Hongmei is critical of Wan’s claim that he was worried about how the audience would react to the change, since the Weng-Li opera was probably widely known by the time the animated film was shown. But Wan’s point about the way such an ending affects the figure of the Monkey King is relevant here.

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5 In his discussion of Li Shaochun’s interpretation of Sun Wukong, the playwright Weng Ouhong notes that the actor must play the Monkey King as neither “an ape-like (literally an ape-ized) man” nor a “humanized ape” (Weng 1958: 28). 6 According to one article (Ding Jin 1958), a new type of opera performed in the late 1950s, The Red Satellite Causes an Uproar in Heaven, introduced scientific material in mythological hues and national style. I have not found this opera, but The Jade Emperor Submits (Hu Xusheng and Yang Suiyi 1958) appears to have been written with the same subject matter. 7 For a reading of the way Mickey Mouse’s features have grown progressively juvenile over the years, gaining “a more prominent, bulging cranium,” see Gould 1980: 98. 8 The transformations could only be an abbreviation of the novel, which is much more detailed; see Wu 1977: Vol. 1, 157–165. 9 Hongmei Sun discusses several comic book adaptations of the Uproar episode (2013: 6–15). At least in Sun’s examples, the actual destruction of the palace is not depicted. 10 The pillar that Sun Wukong smashes in two appears more like a background painting, rather than a cel painted figure. 11 See Mao Zedong, “Mao Zedong gei Jiang Qing de xin 1966, 07, 08” (Letter from Mao Zedong to Jiang Qing), in Zhongguo renmin jiefangjun guofang daxue dangshi dangjian zhenggongjiao yanjiushi (eds.), 1988, Vol. 1: 55. The letter was not made public until 1972 (MacFarquhar and Schoenhals 2006: 345–346). 12 See Mao Zedong, “Mao Zedong gei Qinghua daxue fushu zhongxue Hongwei bing de xin 1966, 08, 01” (Letter from Mao Zedong to Qinghua University and affiliated Middle School Red Guards), in Zhongguo renmin jiefangjun guofang daxue dangshi dangjian zhenggongjiao yanjiushi (eds.), 1988, Vol. 1: 62–63. 13 Thanks to Professor Wu Yiching for drawing my attention to the Sun Wukong faction. For a discussion of this faction, see Hongsheng Jiang, 2010: 340–388. 14 See Lucy Xing Lu (2004), in particular her discussion of the phrase niugui sheshen (59–61). Lu also parses the expression “to rebel is justified,” which I translate as “it is right to rebel” (57–59). 15 The Four Olds were old thoughts, old culture, old customs, and old habits. For a discussion of the beginning of the Four Olds movement, see MacFarquhar and Schoenhals 2006: 113–131. 16 Gang of Four (Siren bang), the four officials, including Wang Hongwen (1935–1992), Yao Wenyuan (1931–2005), and Zhang Chunqiao (1917–2005) and Mao’s widow Jiang Qing (1914–1991), were arrested in a coup d’état just over a month after the death of Mao in October, 1976. 17 Wan mentions three groups by name: Sun Wukong zhandou dui (Sun Wukong combat troop), Qianjun bang zaofan pai (the staff of one thousand jun rebel troop), and Jinhou zhandou xiao zuzhi (the golden monkey combat troop) (1986: 158). Another episode of Journey to the West, San da baigu jing (Three Battles with the White-Boned Demon, 1960) was also adapted in opera, film, comics, and picture books. Wagner discusses the importance of Three Battles (1990: 143–235). Also see Mary Farquhar (1999: 226–332). 18 Wan discusses the accusation that the Jade Emperor was an oblique reference to “Party leader[s].” Quiquemelle notes: “Wan Laiming was criticised for his representation of the Jade Emperor, which was said to resemble Chairman Mao too closely” (1991: 186). Yan Dingxian, one of the directors of Uproar, notes the small black mark on the Jade Emperor’s face was not a mole but a small beard (Xiao Fei 2006). In a recent interview, Yan cites Zhang Guangyu, who said the Jade Emperor was designed after the image of Stove Gods from Wuxi (Li Zhen 2012: 67). 19 Barthes 1977: 39, cited in Wells 1999: 208. 20 See Wan 1986: 151–152. Also see Lenin 1978: 46. The English translation of Lenin is slightly more specific than the Chinese, but the gist is the same.

It all started with a monkey 47 21 The phrase “galloping rich imagery” is a rather literal reading of ganyu chicheng fengfu de xiangxiang. 22 Deliberately shown in close-up a number of times, the outrageously fierce Lord vaguely resembles Zhou Enlai, but this is probably coincidental. 23 In The Lost Magic of Shanghai Art Studio, SAFS director Wang Genfa notes that Wan Laiming was planning a series of film adaptations of Journey to the West. At least two more SAFS films were produced in the 1980s, Renseng guo (Ginseng) and Jihou xiangyao (The Golden Monkey Subdues the Demoness), a version of Sanda baigujing (Three Defeat the White-Boned Demon). 24 On full animation, see LaMarre 2002: 331. For an excellent discussion of this process by a practitioner see Williams 2001: 46–60. 25 Eisenstein 1988: 21. Thanks to Professor Sandra Annett for drawing my attention to this text. 26 I am relying on Wan here (1986: 53). Quiquemelle also discusses this early film and another title with direct reference to Max and Dave Fleischer (1991: 177). I believe she is referring to the same film. 27 See Cao Yu 1964 and “Zhonghua renmin gongheguo zhengfu shengming” 1964.

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One of the earliest references to animated film in Chinese is in “Yezonghui li de wu ge ren” (“Five People in a Nightclub”) a short story published around 1933 by Mu Shiying (1912–1940): “So fast, so insane, the ‘cartoon’ globe of the world of Saturday night whirls on an axis of jazz, gravity-less, everything built on emptiness.”1 Mu Shiying’s story emerges within a significant cultural moment in modern China and this sentence occurs in a passage that links the story’s symbolism to the fluctuations of the stock market and a general state of indeterminacy. Mu’s “Five People in a Nightclub,” a filmic miniature of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s (1896–1940) The Great Gatsby, is more experimental, more rooted in the popular media and the economics of the time than Fitzgerald’s novel. “Cartoon” is the early Chinese transliteration for animated film, katong. The word signals a foreign, non-Chinese medium of representation. The cartoon globe might have been the animated globe logo used by Universal Pictures in the 1930s. For Mu, the cartoon of the earth is an empty simulacrum, representing representation as a shell without foundation, figuratively and literally. Zhang Ailing (1920–1995) discusses cartoons in an early short essay entitled “Lun katonghua zhi qiantu” (“On the future of cartoon pictures,” ca. 1937).2 Like Mu, Zhang discusses “cartoons” as a foreign medium, an American short form linked to Disney and Mickey Mouse. Zhang paraphrases the “majority of spectators”: “The cartoon is projected after the news clip and before the main feature in the movie theater and occupies an entertaining short period, made especially for children . . . We have to thank Mr. Disney for adapting so many ancient fairy tales for the silver screen because children prefer watching projected pictures that move, they don’t want to look at still pictures in illustrated books” (1992: 8). Zhang’s short essay pinpoints some of the features of animated film by situating animation within and without other, older media. Zhang is clearly discussing the American theatrical seven-minute cartoon, a format for commercial animated shorts that remained from the 1920s until at least the 1960s (Klein 1993). Zhang roundly sums up certain key features of early animation by linking animation, or cartoons, to fairy tales and myths, “amusing legends like ‘Cinderella’ and ‘Little Red Riding Hood’ ” as “material” (cailiao) and “content” (ticai) for this medium (1992: 8). With prescience, the young Zhang Ailing suggests the possibility of producing “cartoons that reflect real life . . . scientific cartoons, historic cartoons, literary

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cartoons.” Zhang’s article is also one of the first instances in Chinese where an author uses the words “fine arts” (meishu) and “art” (yishu) in the context of the cartoon (Zhang 1992: 9). Mu Shiying’s intertextual allusions and Zhang’s enthusiasm for American cartoons are important early instances of discourse about animated film in China. The Wan Brothers were certainly the exception to the market prevalence of American production at this time when animation was still largely an imported medium.3 When Zhang Ailing describes the cartoon as “projected after the news clip and before the main feature” (1992: 8), she evidences how the cartoon was a bracketed form, inserted between other shorts and newsreels and often preceding the main feature. The sequential projection of animated shorts was a historical positioning that would be altered by the production of feature-length animated films. This chapter is a discussion of Chinese studies within the context of animation film studies. Cartoons were once defined in the context of other formats. This chapter positions Chinese studies in a sequential relationship to cartoons.

History and the contemporary At the height of the Cultural Revolution, the American modern China historian John K. Fairbank gave the first speech by a Chinese studies researcher to the American Historical Association. Fairbank’s description of the contemporary PRC is at once generalizing and prophetic: China presents a special world problem requiring special treatment. If China were not the most distinctive and separate of the great historical cultures, if the Chinese language were not so different and difficult, if our China studies were not so set apart by these circumstances, our China problem would not be so great. But the fact is that China is a uniquely large and compact section of mankind, with a specially self-contained and long-continued tradition of centrality and superiority, too big and too different to be assimilated into our automobile-TV, individual-voter, individual-consumer culture. China is too weak to conquer the world but too large to be digested by it. (1969: 862) The revolutionary period during which Fairbank spoke greatly affected political views of China at the time. Fairbank could not have known how ironic such a description would become; no historian at the time could have predicted the situation in the PRC today. Almost forty years later (ca. 2006), the PRC art historian Lü Peng enunciates a contemporary history that not only resists generalization, but also suggests a terminological indeterminacy that suggests a critical engagement with Western poststructuralist theory: Even if, on the level of language, we could tease out a few “contemporary” characteristics, and show the ways in which today’s “contemporary-ness” is different from yesterday’s “modern-ness,” how would we continue to use that

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These articulations by Fairbank and Lü Peng bracket the reform period in the PRC, an important linchpin for contemporary film and media studies. The reform period is often viewed as a type of return of the PRC into the global economy, represented by the euphemism Zhongguo zou xiang shijie, “China walks towards the world,” a phrase that implies both a new movement towards the world, as well as an implicit contrast to a previous state or condition, as if the PRC stood outside the world for a certain period of time. Fairbank made the PRC a historical example of Chinese exceptionalism, and his observations and predictions belie the problem of extrapolating the historic situation of a country from one historical period. Lü’s discussion of contemporary art history is just as concerned as Fairbank’s with history per se, but Lü is subscribing to a history of art that resists terminological definition. Lü’s terminological resistance inscribes the field of contemporary art in the PRC with particularism. For Lü, understanding contemporary art means finding strategies of describing “today’s art” ( jintian de yishu) (but how to define the meaning of “today”?). Fairbank and Lü construct contrasting views of contemporary history, each concealing significant assumptions about the histories they describe. By evoking a metaphorical “middle-kingdom” of historical continuity, Fairbank’s reading of revolutionary history reveals a fundamental underestimation of the capacity for historic change in China. Lü’s project of reading the “concrete characteristics and expressions” ( juti tezheng yu biaoxian) of change hardly seems possible without some sort of conceptual articulation of the “contemporary” (dangdai), not merely as a terminological distinction, but as an attempt to differentiate a particular historical period. The separation of modern and postmodern periods is not the same as the postmodern “taking the place of” (daiti) the contemporary. While Fairbank is too quick to ascribe cultural continuity to the object called China, Lü’s claim of describing the “minute details” (xizhimojie) of artistic change could potentially produce a series of fragmentary descriptions that, by rejecting terminological definition, avoid historical context as well. Ironically, Lü’s definitions are mostly derived from European models. Lü points out that the areas of “ancient history” (gudaishi) and “modern history” ( jindaishi) both contain their own “contemporary history.”5 Lü delineates strategies of position-taking for the art historian. Pointing out the etymological origins of lishi or

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history, Lü notes that the compound word enters Chinese by way of Japanese scholars of Western culture in the late nineteenth century. Lü points out that the understanding of the word “history” in Chinese simply indicates the presence of a person who records, suggesting a de-privileging of the specialization of history and art history. Lü is concerned with the contemporary period, especially the opening up and reform period from the late 1970s and after. Written at the height of the Cultural Revolution, Fairbank’s address reflects events and tendencies that were contemporary actualities for the historian. His outlook suggests both a designation of political continuity in the PRC and a contrast to “our automobile-TV, individual-voter, individual-consumer culture” (1969: 862) of the United States. The problem for Fairbank was the inclusion of Chinese studies within the discipline of history in the United States. Fairbank’s focus was not only on China per se, but the background of Chinese studies in the U.S. Fairbank considers Sinology and history as “developing through four parallel phases of growth” in the U.S. The first phase was “distinguished amateurism” with the founding of the American Oriental Society in 1843 (1969: 864). The second phase was “one of scientific professionalism” that included the organization of American learned societies in the 1870s and 1880s. The third phase in the early twentieth century occurred in a period in which “both history and Sinology were challenged by social science.” According to Fairbank, the 1920s saw “the rise of foundation funding, the entrepreneurial facilities provided by the American Council of Learned Societies and the Social Science Research Council” (1969: 865). Beginning in the 1930s, “professional training” in Chinese and Japanese was funded by the ACLS, the Rockefeller Foundation, and the Harvard-Yenching Institute. Fairbank implies that compared to European Sinology, “American Sinology,” Chinese studies in the U.S., was belated. For Fairbank, American Sinology and history took too long to respond to “the impact of social science.” Nevertheless, Fairbank concedes the link between the two disciplines was determined by historic conditions: “The marriage of Sinology and social science came only as a shotgun wedding during and after World War II.” Fairbank’s fourth phase, “the parallel growth of history and Sinology, a phase of self-conscious maturity and coalescence” (1969: 866) emerged from the events of WWII. Fairbank’s account of Chinese history studies in the US narrates the shift from European Sinology to American area studies. This shift had historically significant political and institutional implications. Paul Evans’ John Fairbank and the American Understanding of Modern China, a hagiographical biography of Fairbank, nevertheless gives a solid and revealing reading of this shift: “China also generated in Fairbank an abiding interest in the general state of Far Eastern studies in the United States. As something of a modernist maverick well distanced from both the prevailing Sinological tradition, which was largely concerned with philology, and the work of missionary scholars, he was fortunate to find a kindred spirit and patron in Mortimer Graves, a one-man dynamo then serving as executive secretary of the newly created ACLS [American Council of Learned Societies]” (1988: 37). Evans brings out two important aspects of American area studies in this passage. First, Fairbank’s project is distinguished from Sinological and missionary work.

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Second, the term “modernist maverick” nominates Fairbank as a figure of the rupture between two institutional streams constructed around Chinese studies, on the one side Sinology and missionary work and on the other the emergent modern institution called area studies. Fairbank returned to the U.S. in 1936 after receiving his D. Phil. from Oxford on the Chinese Maritime Customs Service.6 Fairbank later took a position as historian of China in Harvard’s history department: “An avowed modernist in a Sinological environment and as a Chinese specialist” in a “western oriented” history department.7 Fairbank’s reading of the late Qing government’s use of the tribute system remained an important aspect in the understanding of modern China in Western historiography until the 1970s and ’80s.8 But the ideological aspect of Fairbank’s historiography is only part of the story. Fairbank was a modernist in so far as he was an agent of historical rupture of the institution of knowledge called Sinology. When Fairbank took the position at Harvard in 1936, students pursuing Chinese were obligated to study two European languages as part of their program. On the level of linguistic knowledge, Fairbank positioned himself in contradistinction to European Sinology by viewing language as a means to an end, as a tool for the historian looking at documents or data, whereas the Sinologist supposedly looked at language for its own sake. For Fairbank the issue seemed to be a contrast between Sinology, which looked at the “literary and humane tradition,” and a new type of social-science-based research that studied “modern politics, institutions, economic history, and [the] social life of Asia.” Sinology looked to the past in literary texts; Fairbank wanted to develop academic institutions around modern China and Asia.9 Fairbank’s historical work is an important part of the Western, and specifically American, historiography on modern China. Fairbank was a prominent member of a group of academics after WWII devoted to promoting East Asian Studies, including the founding of the Far Eastern Association, which would later become the Association for Asian Studies (AAS). Fairbank, the “modernist maverick,” shows foresight even on the eve of WWII: “six months before America entered the Pacific War” Fairbank articulated a statement promoting Asian studies “with messianic urgency that would become a personal signature for the remainder of his career.” According to Fairbank the U.S. “[faced] a showdown in Asia. The American people in all their ignorance must formulate an active foreign policy toward Japan and China.” Fairbank’s views on East Asia were a type of internal critique of American culture, educational institutions, and foreign policy. In politics Fairbanks was an interventionist. Nowadays he would be considered an academic activist.10 Evans positions Fairbank as active before the U.S. officially entered WWII after the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, but the war meant a decidedly rapid development for East Asia Studies. Fairbank’s service during WWII represents a refinement through circumstance of his approach to Chinese language and culture as documentation and data. Fairbank served during WWII in the Far Eastern section of the Office of the Coordinator of Information (COI), later the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), which would become the CIA. WWII was

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the catalyst, the most potent mobilizer for the construction of the institution of area studies. Just over a decade after Fairbank gave his address to the AHA, Benjamin Schwartz addressed the AAS: “The modest, colorless, and ambiguous term ‘area studies’ emerged during the course of World War II as a way of describing one minor enterprise in the war effort” (1980: 15). Although the enterprise of area studies may have been minor in the context of the war effort itself, the war effort holds a major place in the development of area studies. The intimate links between the emergent field(s) of area studies and American foreign policy has been welldocumented (Cumings 1997; Walder 2004: 314–340; Looser 2012). The rupture between Sinology and area studies represented the emergence of a distinctly national form of knowledge, a form of knowledge linked to the government of the United States and the war effort. In addition, area studies meant a shift from the mostly literary texts of Sinological research to the possibility of reading other types of texts and media. Practitioners of area studies and Sinology viewed this difference as fundamentally historical, with area studies taking up modern topics that related to the social sciences while Sinology remained in the past looking at premodern literary and cultural topics. Moreover, debates about the merit of Sinology versus area studies continued into the 1950s and ’60s (Schafer 1958: 119–120; Levenson 1964). From the perspective of the present Fairbank may have been a “modernist,” but from the perspective of WWII when area studies emerged as an interdisciplinary institution, Fairbank was very much a “contemporist.” Fairbank and his area studies colleagues were looking at modern China in terms of research material and foreign policy, but the modern China they were looking at from their own chronological position was a contemporary China, looking back to the nineteenth-century period of British and American Imperial history until the twentieth century, the period up to the (then) war and postwar present, a period of approximately one hundred years or so.

Orientalism, philology, Sinology Schwartz’s AAS address paints a picture of area studies as a “cross-disciplinary” or interdisciplinary institution grounded in the social sciences with a clearly defined theoretical foundation. But Schwartz also addresses a new figure on the landscape, the critique of area studies in Edward Said’s Orientalism. Schwartz’s objection to Orientalism is based on his view of area studies as a type of scientific knowledge: “Said, who is not a philosopher of science, states in his book that the vast edifice of positive scholarship erected by nineteenth- and twentieth-century orientalists is, in some sense, untrue because of the underlying assumptions of the orientalists who produced this scholarship” (1980: 18). Schwartz criticizes Said for his “ . . . attack on area studies as a mode of intellectual imperialism” (1980: 16). Schwartz also claims Said is employing the concepts of Michel Foucault: “Said implies that orientalism and hence area studies taken as a whole are a dominating total discourse in the sense of Michel Foucault or a kind of ideology in the sense

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of a vulgar Marxism or sociology of knowledge operating behind the backs of all the individual orientalists and area specialists” (1980: 22). Schwartz’s view of Foucault was not unusual. In Orientalism Said acknowledged his use of Foucault’s “notion of discourse” from The Archeology of Knowledge and Discipline and Punish (1979: 3). However, while Said is no doubt indebted to Foucault’s Discipline and Punish (1975), his historical delineation of orientalism shows a familiarity with the earlier Foucault of The Order of Things (1966). Schwartz’s discussion of Orientalism represents an early appearance of a type of cultural critique that would be important for area studies and Chinese studies in the 1980s and after. Ironically, Schwartz’s criticism of Orientalism and Said’s critique of area studies find common ground in one of the subjects of Foucault’s The Order of Things; namely, philology. In The Order of Things, Michel Foucault places philological descriptions of language as one of the new empiricities, one of the new scientific modes of representation that emerged in the eighteenth century along with designation of the category of labor in economics and the zoological classifications of anatomy. Philology is sometimes considered to be a historical discipline, a literary precursor to linguistics, although some critics and researchers still claim to be working within the field of philology.11 As Said shows, for a writer like Ernest Renan, the discipline of modern philology began in the eighteenth century and was considered to be part of the scientific project of Western European culture along with other “hard” sciences like physics and biology.12 Said reads Foucault’s description of philology as an example of the secularization of language: “What Foucault has called the discovery of language was therefore a secular event that displaced a religious conception of how God delivered language to man in Eden” (1979: 135). However, Foucault’s claim was that with the rise of new philology, language had become an object in itself. Said’s Orientalism, a history of the cultural construction of an Oriental Other within European thought, should be distinguished from Foucault’s delineation of the emergence of philology within the history of the representation of knowledge in Europe. Said’s concepts of orientalism are comparative. The “Orient” is constructed through a comparative textual interaction between two or more cultures. In Foucault, by contrast, the changes in Western knowledge represented by philology are read as internal: “. . . knowledge in its positivity changes its nature and its form. It would be false – and above all inadequate – to attribute this mutation to the discovery of hitherto unknown objects, such as the grammatical system of Sanskrit . . .” (Foucault 2002: 252). Foucault sees philology as a sort of reflexive investigation of language by language: “From the nineteenth century, language began to fold in upon itself, to acquire its own particular density, to deploy a history, an objectivity, and laws of its own” (2002: 322). This is the shift Said refers to, in the best tradition of literary humanism, as leaving the Garden of Eden. Foucault locates the moment for the formation of philological positivity in Jacob Grimm’s work on German grammar and even more significantly in Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel’s (1772–1829) and Franz Bopp’s (1791–1867) work on Sanskrit. Philological methodology was concerned with the “study of internal variations,” a study of the phonetic elements of language which would make it possible

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to “establish a new theory of the root” (through the establishment of linguistic constants based on sound and syllable), which in turn led to “a new definition of the systems of kinship between languages” (2002: 307–319). According to Foucault, two “broad modes” of combination are determined; language is broken into units roughly corresponding to syllables, which are distinguished from each other through an analysis of inflection “which modifies the essential syllables or words – the root forms – from within” (2002: 309). Foucault’s notion of internal change reveals itself in this early methodological distinction.13 Bopp’s description of Chinese is similar to Friedrich von Schlegel’s in On the Language and Philosophy of the Indians in Aesthetic and Miscellaneous Works.14 Early philological discourse describes linguistic difference not so much in racial terms, but in terms reserved for an individual author; language and culture are criticized as lacking certain qualities like a poem or play. But Foucault is mistaken about early philology, because language, and by extension national culture, was explored through a sort of grammatical moralizing. Bopp and A. W. von Schlegel situate Chinese in the first category of languages without grammar, but Chinese remains the only named language in this category. When Friedrich von Schlegel also situates Chinese in the first category of languages without roots or inflections, he groups Chinese with Malay, with “singular and difficult dialects of America,” and with Coptic and Basque (F. Von Schlegel 1849: 447–448). Foucault claimed that with the new criteria of “internal structure” the new philology of the nineteenth century will have “abandoned the hierarchical classifications practiced in the eighteenth century” (Foucault 2002: 310–311). Foucault’s statement cannot be taken seriously; “hierarchical classification” had hardly disappeared. Moreover, even in this crucial moment for early modern philology, expert evidence was accepted at face value. F. von Schlegel’s grouping of Chinese was secondhand and based on observations made by Wilhelm von Humboldt (1767–1835) in his “Letter to Mr. Abel-Rémusat,” a critical discussion of Jean-Pierre Abel-Rémusat’s (1788– 1832) Elements of Chinese Grammar (von Humboldt 1906; Abel-Rémusat 1822). It was Humboldt who first situated Chinese with Coptic, “a large number of languages without conjugation, most American languages,” and Mexican (1906: 265). This attempt to group languages reveals what Foucault called the “analysis of roots [that] made possible a new definition of the systems of kinship between languages” (Foucault 2002: 317) was no more than an agreement among philologists based on an assertion by Humboldt. Because Chinese fit into neither the IndoEuropean nor Semitic groups it was situated as an exotic, unknowable other. Humboldt’s critique of Abel-Rémusat reveals two dichotomous approaches to Chinese, a philological approach that places Chinese beyond the pale and an emergent Sinological approach that uses the methodology of philology, but recognizes Chinese as a bona fide language deserving of study. Sinology emerges as the philology of Chinese because philology refused to acknowledge Chinese as a legitimate object of study. Thus the shift from Sinology to American area studies echoes the first institutional rupture that occurred at a very crucial moment for European Sinology. Humboldt’s critique of Abel-Rémusat’s Chinese grammar had important institutional

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implications because Abel-Rémusat held the first chair in Sinology in Europe.15 Schwartz’s critique of Said is also ironic in a way since Orientalism is very much a reading of the history of European philology, the discipline from within which Sinology, and finally area studies, would emerge. In a similar manner as philological conceptions of “Semitic” languages (Olender 1992: 51–81), the early philological descriptions of Chinese as “monological” would continue to have influence on Western views of China despite more nuanced Sinological descriptions of the language. For example, the assumption that Chinese had no grammar returns in the American missionary Arthur Smith’s racist catalogue Chinese Characteristics at the end of the nineteenth century in order to denounce Chinese thinking in general: “The fact that Chinese verbs have no tenses, and that there is nothing to mark transitions of time, or indeed of place, does not tend to clarify one’s perceptions of the inherently turbid” (Smith 1894: 84). Gregory Lee notes the way attitudes about the Chinese language went hand in hand with racial beliefs about the mental capacities of the Chinese people that were used to rationalize the sale of opium to China (Lee 2003: 39–44). Said’s claim that orientalism was from the outset a construction of other cultures through philological discourse reveals political aspects of the history of philology and Sinology. Said’s discussion of the chrestomathy (1979: 128), anthologies of selected texts, is also relevant in the context of Chinese scholarship. For Said the chrestomathy was the product of romanticism, a fragmented representation of “oriental” cultures by Europeans. However, such an attribution gives authorial power to European culture, as if romanticism completely determined cultural representation. Arthur Wright historicizes early Sinology with links to European attitudes towards history: “One of the problems of late XVIIIth- and XIXth-century historical thought, influenced by the steadily increasing power and prosperity of Europe and by the idea of progress, was to categorize the histories of non-European peoples” (Wright 1960: 241). Since Europe was considered by many thinkers to be the only evolved civilization with a history, the Orient was considered a place of despotic political systems outside of history. Wright’s comments on the “Romantic sinophilia” of Abel-Rémusat’s Europe make a good parallel with the historical descriptions of orientalism in Said. But Wright claims some Sinologists were influenced by Chinese scholarship: “The annotated translation favored by Rémusat and his successors may be regarded as the normal and accepted genre of writing among Orientalists, whether Assyriologists, Arabists, or what not. But in the case of Sinology, this type of work seems to me to be also in part a transplantation and an extension of the Chinese exegetical tradition and thus to suggest one of the ways in which the Western sinologue was subservient to the scholarly values of the Chinese literati” (1960: 242). In European Chinese studies, the commentarial tradition that included grammars, chrestomathies, and translations with commentaries of texts, especially premodern philosophy and literature, arose not only as a fragmented European approach representing Chinese culture, but also as forms or genres of writing that combined commentarial approaches in European and Chinese textual culture. Western commentarial tradition goes back to one of the first written commentaries

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of Homer (ca 180 BCE). With the emergence of humanism in the fifteenth century, concepts of the text changed greatly as a result of the establishment of classical manuscripts and the use of printing technologies. In China the commentarial tradition can be traced back to types of divination such as the oracle bones. Confucianism, and the figure of Confucius himself, represents commentary as a historically significant form. The Four Books and Five Classics (sishu, wujing) are editions based on the historical and commentarial establishment of canonical texts that date from the pre-Qin (books written before 221–206 BCE) period and were established by Zhu Xi (1130–1200). As David Honey points out, the “Little Preface” (xiaoxu) to the “Classic of Poetry” (Shijing) is regarded as part of the collection it prefaces. By the Later Han (947–951 CE), “commentaries began to be printed interlinearly in the text of the classics, anticipating the same practice in the West by some 800 years.” The history of the text in China is a history of commentary and exegesis as well. The modern philological exploration of Chinese language and culture called Sinology begins with the establishment of the first chair in Chinese studies in 1814, and European Sinology represents the combination of these diverse and parallel traditions of textual scholarship.16 Western scholarship on China borrowed, translated, and even mimicked Chinese commentaries on philosophy and literature, so it would be an exaggeration to say that the form of representation was entirely derived from Western models or even ideologies. Sinology was a branch of philology that focused specifically on China and the Chinese language, and the tradition remained largely a textual tradition dominated by European scholars until World War II. In Fairbank’s address to the American Historical Association cited above, Fairbank still uses the term “Sinology” to discuss Chinese history studies within the discipline of American history as a whole. The relationship between Sinology and American area studies represents the most important historical shift for Chinese studies in the U.S., and the repercussions of this shift from a largely text-based historical discipline to a databased discipline that focused on contemporary events affected American area studies and European Sinology. Said’s “Latest Phase” meshes with Fairbank’s “fourth phase,” if not in theme at least in chronology. Said and Fairbank situate the rise of area studies around WWII. Said’s political critique was an attempt to delineate the problems inherent in orientalism as it was implemented in the academy and through foreign policy in the U.S. Fairbank’s reading of area studies is a considerably more positive description. A decade divides Fairbank’s description of Chinese studies from Said’s description of orientalism, but the distance could not be greater between these two thinkers on the place of area studies. Said articulated a critique of imperialism through a reading of the fields of orientalist philology that ended with the emergence of area studies in the U.S. while Fairbank seems to have considered imperialism simply an inevitable aspect of modernity. The two perspectives are politically irreconcilable. But any form of research extends beyond merely the political. Said’s “Latest Phase” positions the emergence of area studies and popular images of Middle Eastern culture after WWII in relation to American foreign

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policy. Said’s language changes in this section, the last part of Orientalism; gone are the literary stylists of European philology. Said’s critique of orientalism falls within the category of literary criticism; this is its strength and its weakness. In his discussions of orientalist popular imagery and social science readings, Said cannot read such material in a similar manner as he read the European philologists. The post WWII material selected by Said is simply not amenable to the same type of rich and nuanced readings as the philological texts. Indeed, Said reads the rise of American area studies of the Middle East as evidence of a loss of a type of orientalism: “. . . there is little in what academic experts on the Near East do now that resembles traditional Orientalism of the sort that ended with Gibb and Massignon.”17 Said’s discussion of the rupture with traditional orientalism occurs in a discussion in which he bemoans the lack of literary studies (1979: 265). Said’s critique of orientalism has, for the most part, been interpreted politically. However, Said’s style of criticism arises within a liberal humanist tradition of literary criticism. Said’s literary critique of “traditional Orientalism” needs to assign authorship. It is no surprise that post-colonialism would venture into metaphorical readings of historical figurations of subjectivity (Spivak’s subaltern) and the material representation of the subject as a poetics of rhetoric of pure style (Bhabha). Said was first and foremost a literary critic. His political critique is enunciated within literary criticism. While Said’s critique is far from formalist, his regard for the cultural institutions he criticizes is impressive. In Said, orientalism is a historically entrenched discourse of concepts and attitudes. Orientalist discourse is a mode of representation that may be read within several media (including literature, philosophical-linguistic-social discourse, classical painting, modern music, and contemporary mass media) as an aspect of the linguistic representation of knowledge. The profound ideological attitudes that Said reveals in his readings of European philology operate like deep structures within the institution. Orientalism is an a priori discourse in the field of knowledge known as philology. Schwartz’s annoyance with what he saw as Said’s Foucauldian reading of area studies is an overstatement of the politics of Orientalism, which is very much an internal critique of orientalist discourse in philology. With its literary methodology, Said’s Orientalism stands as a marker for the transition between philological and Sinological readings of culture through textual exegesis and area studies readings of culture. Said’s difficulty with popular and social science readings points not only to the problems inherent in such forms of representation, but also to the limits of literary reading in an era of emergent mass media. The limitations of Said’s critique are not only political, they are methodological. Said’s literary style and his critical approach to analysis of cultural production imply authorial attribution. Said’s post-WWII critique of popular images and area studies also signals an important shift for institutions of knowledge. The most directly political section of Orientalism, “The Latest Phase,” is explicitly a critique of American foreign policy, and implicitly a complaint about the postWWII emergence of mass media representations that cannot be reduced to one author or even to one institution.

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Area studies, Chinese studies, animation Sinology hardly consisted solely of commentaries, although philological parsing of texts was one of the most important features of European Sinology. Also, it would be slightly inaccurate to say, as Fairbank does, that Sinology had not integrated concepts from the social sciences (1969: 865); this was certainly not the case with the French Sinologist Marcel Granet, for example. Although the British were the dominant Western power in China in the nineteenth century, Chinese studies are not institutionalized in a significant manner in England until the 1930s.18 Similarly, chairs in Chinese had been established in American universities starting in 1876, but Chinese studies would remain a somewhat marginalized, rarefied discipline until the onset of WW II (Honey 2001: 273–274; Franke 1995: 16). The shift from Sinology to area studies focused on China was perhaps not as cut and dried as Said’s description of area studies focused on the Middle East. Benjamin Schwartz’s In Search of Wealth and Power: Yen Fu and the West (1964) is a major area studies work that retains similar features of Sinological textual scholarship and is even comparable at times to the literary readings in Said’s Orientalism. Schwartz’s book is a work of comparative political philosophy and history. Translation implies the importation of concepts from a source to a target language, so, in spite of the themes of area studies and the social science implicit in reading a thinker like Yen Fu, or in pinyin Yan Fu, Schwartz was also obliged to deal with the language employed by Yan Fu in his translations of nineteenth-century biological and sociological writers. For example Schwartz has recourse to Sinological and philological approaches to discuss why Yan Fu used a pre-Qin style of writing in his translations, while maintaining the three criteria of translation: faithfulness, comprehensibility, and elegance (Schwartz 1964: 92–93). Nevertheless, one of the problems specific to area studies as the American version of Sinology is the relationship between the U.S. and the PRC. Said’s critique of orientalist philology is not easily applied to Sinological methodology. But to ignore the antagonism towards the PRC in American area studies during the cold war period would be a mistake. In Schwartz’s reading, Yan Fu would come to terms with “a unilinear, universal account of the evolution of the human race . . .” whereas “[t]he Communists have met this problem with the deus ex machina of imperialism” (1964: 176–77). The ideological tendency that emerged with area studies focused on China was probably linked to the American support for the Nationalists. The U.S. had taken sides in a Civil War in which, after all, their side got the island but lost the mainland. Fairbank phrased the American position a year before the founding of the PRC: “Can We Compete in China?” And he answers the question as a choice between Communism and American Ideals (1948). The outcome of these events would lead to the famous China White Paper, a historical statement of American policy vis-à-vis China. More importantly, Schwartz’s study of Yan Fu is a reminder that area studies can retain Sinological textual approaches. Nevertheless, area studies represented a major historic shift for Chinese studies, a national approach that entailed a further integration with social science perspectives and methodologies. Text would be

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mined for data, and language would take on a more functional use. The chrestomathies and grammars of Sinology are replaced by Newspaper Chinese by the Inductive Method.19 The philological, Sinological view of language was replaced by a need for information gathering and language training. However, when Said bemoans the lack of discussions of literature in American area studies focused on the Middle East, the same could not be said about Chinese studies. Although area studies emphasized the social sciences, area studies disciplines focused on China in the U.S. always included cultural components for the teaching of Chinese as a language and literature as well. Area studies implied a new institutional framework for Sinology and Chinese studies based in the U.S., but in many ways area studies remained “a combination of old elements – humanities, language, and social sciences” (Reischauer and Fairbank 1948: 122). Thus, besides the American origins, the most fundamental difference between Sinology, which focused on “classical” Chinese studies, and area studies approaches was that area studies opened up the potential of reading historically contiguous events and their texts. Two texts of literary criticism – C.T. Hsia’s A History of Modern Chinese Fiction 1917–1957 (1961) and Rey Chow’s Woman and Chinese Modernity (1991) share links to area studies and emerge at the intersection between modern and contemporary literature and culture. Hsia’s book has gone through several reprints and remains an important touchstone text for modern Chinese literature. Chow’s book represents an important entrance of contemporary critical theory into the field of modern Chinese literature and opens up literary criticism to film studies. Both texts are signposts on the way to film and media studies within Chinese studies. Hsia’s History is one of the earliest studies of modern Chinese literature in English. Hsia’s history must be placed in the context of the politicization of literature taking place in the PRC and the hyper-politicized relations between the U.S., the PRC, and Taiwan. Hsia’s history appears during the emergence of area studies that grew out of strategic developments during WWII. Just as Said would do almost two decades later with regard to Arabic cultures, Hsia notably positions his history as an implicit critique of area studies. For Hsia, the study of literature supplements social science descriptions of China and Chinese culture: “At a time when modern China has become in this country a subject of intensive study, it is a matter of some surprise that its literature has been permitted to suffer comparative neglect. Social scientists, in their investigations of modern Chinese history and culture, have by and large failed to make use of the literary record, even though they cannot be unaware of its profound influence on modern Chinese thought and politics” (1961, v). Hsia’s approach is difficult to describe. Hsia claims to be looking for “patterns,” a New Critical conceit (1961: vi). However, while Hsia’s history may have been contemporary to American New Criticism, this is where the link ends.20 An eclectic mix of political diatribe, biographical approaches, and long translated passages, Hsia attempts to create an alternative reading to what he perceived as the formation of a revolutionary canon in the PRC. His readings of the fiction of Eileen Chang/Zhang Ailing (1920–1995) are a remarkable example of critical recuperation. Not only does Hsia provide a comparative framework to her writing by placing her beside Western writers such as Katherine Mansfield,

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Katherine Anne Porter, Eudora Welty, James Joyce, and John Keats, Hsia constructs a historical biography for Chang, setting the stage for later academic work that would not really be carried out for another twenty or thirty years. Through his discussion of Chang, Hsia articulates a counter-discourse to PRC literary historiography. Hsia describes Chang’s work in terms of imagery and symbolism, and it is the descriptive passages he is most drawn to: “The author’s visual imagination, which rises on occasion to a Keatsian opulence, is always impressive in the detailed description of the clothes of her female characters” (1961: 396). Description is also a key notion in Rey Chow’s Woman and Chinese Modernity, an important critique of modern Chinese literature within a context of post-structuralism, feminism, and film studies. Interestingly, Chow’s use of Chang also focuses on detail, gendered as “feminine detail.” For both Hsia and Chow, Eileen Chang is a figure for counterdiscourse. For Hsia, it is Communist China, for Chow the literary and theoretical construction of a modern China linked to an elite modern literary canon. This historical limitation, this reduction of historical positioning, is part of Chow’s argument and is the main rationale for her discussion of representations of China, culture, and history. Except for the addition of discussions of late-nineteenthcentury translation and popular fiction of the period, Chow’s choice of modern authors does not depart very much from the group of major writers selected by Hsia. But she does introduce a new topic into her readings; the topic of cinema as another medium of representation. Chow’s polemical reading of Bernardo Bertolucci’s The Last Emperor (1987) introduces cinematic representation to an already significantly dense theoretical text on representation in Chinese literature. Chow differentiates her readings of Bertolucci’s Last Emperor from then current criticism derived from Said’s Orientalism. Nevertheless, Chow’s readings of The Last Emperor reinscribe the masculine (Occident)/feminine (Orient) binary from Said’s Orientalism.21 Chow forms a critique of “teleology” based on a reading of Johannes Fabian’s concept of “allochronism,” an anthropological tendency to place other cultures in a different historical moment that denies the other culture’s coevalness or contemporaneity.22 Chow elects to dismiss Laura Mulvey’s autocritique of her own theory of the male gaze in cinema, thus retaining Mulvey’s earlier generalizations about the male spectator to construct a critique of “the caressing strokes of Bertolucci’s camera” on the “feminized object” of the last emperor and, by extension, modern China. Chow thus maintains a binary of a masculine Occident and a feminine Orient and enlarges the scope of these problematic representations onto “Sinology and China studies” including area studies programs.23 Ironically, by borrowing and adapting the concept of allochronism, Chow avails herself of a social studies critique perfectly in line with American area studies approaches. Hsia claims excellence as the model of choice, while Chow opts for the ethnic spectator. And yet both critics elect to work within political frameworks. Although Hsia and Chow write from within different historical, ideological, and critical perspectives, they both construct articulate counter-discourses, “alternative” narratives on behalf of the specificity of Chinese cultural production. Chris Berry

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notes that Chow was “perhaps the most prominent example of a new scholar of Chinese literature and culture emerging from outside East Asian Studies in the early 1990s . . . ” (2012: 493). At the same time, Chow’s readings are situated firmly within a line of “East Asian Studies” critical discussions that link up with C.T. Hsia. Chow’s innovation in Woman and Chinese Modernity was the introduction of models of textual exegesis from anglophone film studies that emerged during the 1970s.24 Woman and Chinese Modernity was an important supplement to film studies focused on Chinese cinema. Nevertheless, Chow’s model of film studies was derived from literary analysis that engaged with film as both auteur cinema and national cinema, two tendencies that Chow continued in Primitive Passions. But the first studies that focus on Chinese film are published before the emergence of Chinese film studies as a subdiscipline within American Chinese studies. The first monograph in English on Chinese cinema, Dianying – Electric Shadows (1972) by Jay Leyda, is published the same year as Wolfram Eberhard’s The Chinese Silver Screen: Hong Kong and Taiwanese Motion Pictures in the 1960s (1972). Both these books represent the earliest work on Chinese film in English. Leyda was a researcher, biographer, translator, and avant-garde filmmaker. His research specialty was Soviet cinema, and he remains a key commentator and translator of Sergei Eisenstein. Berry and Yingjin Zhang both take Leyda to task for his lack of knowledge of the Chinese language (Berry 2012: 485–487; Yingjin Zhang 2002: 48–49). Besides the datedness, much of the problem with Leyda’s book is linked to how his knowledge of Chinese affected the romanization of Chinese names and the confusion and redundancies that ensued. However, were the romanization cleaned up, Leyda’s approach would still be fairly standard in Chinese film studies. Leyda’s study is made up of auteur profiles that tie discussions of studios into a framework of national cinema studies, an approach that dominated Chinese film studies until the 1990s (Berry 2012).25 Leyda’s experience with the Soviet industry certainly qualified him to discuss PRC cinema. Wolfram Eberhard’s study does not fall within the field of film studies per se, but the idea that an early study like this has not attracted more attention should be regarded as an embarrassment for contemporary film and media studies. As a folklorist and popular culture researcher, Eberhard does not engage in auteur readings of the films he discusses. He is also not concerned with cinema as an industry. Instead, Eberhard summarizes the plots of the stories and sometimes notes where the films were made and where they were screened. Often Eberhard describes the audience and links the plots to similar plots in literature, opera, folk tales, and other films. In contemporary terms, Eberhard was watching examples of genre cinema: “Chinese films – whether made in Taiwan or Hong Kong – can be divided into two styles: screen versions of classical Chinese operas and films written especially for the screen. In content they may be divided into heroic films, romantic films, and science fiction films . . . The heroic and romantic categories roughly correspond to the so-called ‘military’ and ‘civil’ dramas of the classical Chinese opera” (1972: 5). A glance at the summaries in Eberhard’s short study shows that he is discussing popular films of the period, including filmed operas, dramas, and martial arts films.

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Eberhard viewed the films, mostly produced in Hong Kong and Taiwan, in Taiwan, Hong Kong, and San Francisco. Eberhard’s study is an early example of transnational cinema studies focused on Chinese film. Eberhard derived his summaries from two sources, the films themselves and the handbills for the films. The summaries of popular film plots from this period are essential for understanding transnational Chinese cinema. Eberhard uses an interesting division for these films: “We might start our analysis of our 181 films with an even broader categorization, the one used in the advertisements: films in classical costumes and films in modern costumes” (1972: 5). By using the language of advertisements, Eberhard introduces an informal film discourse that has significance for genre cinema and even for films in the PRC at this time. What I find most significant in Eberhard’s study is the presence of mainland films. While it is well known that revolutionary films were produced in the PRC during this period, from the late 1950s until the mid-1960s, costume drama (guzhuang xi) was a major category and even promoted officially (please see the next chapter). There is every indication that the market for Chinese film was more open than has been previously imagined. Commenting on the paucity of English research into Chinese cinema at this time, Berry suggests a combination of factors: a lack of recognition in international festivals, lack of access to archives, and cultural elitism among Chinese studies scholars. In a contemporary review of Leyda’s Dianying, Ralph Croizier noted that Chinese studies scholars did not take film seriously: “With some notable exceptions, Chinese artists and intellectuals themselves have not taken film art as seriously as their counterparts in many other countries, while foreigners interested in the arts have generally been attracted to more purely Chinese art forms and usually prefer them uncontaminated by Western influence” (1973: 501). But it is important to be clear about which Chinese studies scholars neglected film at this time, because inside the PRC, for example, film studies was certainly a valid academic topic. In the United States, in a critique published shortly after WWII, none other than Leyda himself would bemoan the lack of institutional training in film studies in the U.S. in comparison to the Soviet Union (1946: 279–286). Having a state bureaucracy that promoted cultural production had its advantages in this regard. Shortly after the founding of the PRC many types of cultural production were institutionalized in the academy and in sectors of the government. Officially, theatrical and spectacular performance seemed to be favored, but the film sector was still very important. Animation in the PRC would be linked to film and to the fine arts, although practitioners often came from fine arts programs. While Eberhard worked with popular or genre cinema, Leyda regarded popular Republican cinema with disdain, notably those films now referred to as wuxia or martial arts films.26 This is another reason why Eberhard’s early work is still important. Academic interest in genre or popular cinema in Chinese studies is relatively recent and owes a large debt to the shift to martial arts narratives by auteur filmmakers such as Li Ang and Zhang Yimou. The neglect of cinema from China, whether from the PRC or Taiwan and Hong Kong, would end by the 1980s. As Chris Berry noted, one of the first venues for

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introducing Chinese cinema was the international film festival. The Pesaro International Festival of New Cinema held a retrospective of film from the PRC in 1978 that included twenty-five films (Leyda 1978–1979: 63–64). A film with a complicated reception at home, Xie Tieli’s Zaochun eryue (Threshold of Spring, 1963), would become the first feature-length film from the PRC shown at Cannes in 1979. The animated film Nezha Conquers the Dragon King (1979) would be the first “new” film shown at Cannes the following year. The export of films coincided with screenings of foreign films inside the PRC (Clark 1984: 189). By and large the films that gained publicity through festivals tended to be auteur films that did not even do well back home. Yellow Earth (Huang tudi, 1984) is a good example of this. Despite poor ticket sales when it was first released, after the film received acclaim at the Hong Kong International Film Festival, reception improved at home and abroad (Yingjin Zhang 2002: 43–45). The exportation of key productions to international film festivals may be part of the reason for the predominance of auteur studies in Chinese film studies. The introduction of film studies into Chinese studies meshes with two aspects of this discussion. While an aspect of contemporary Chinese studies, as in the case of Chow’s early forays into literary film studies approaches, film studies was also an aspect of area studies. Even when film studies seemed to articulate an alternative field it did so within area studies. Film studies focused on China would either have to develop as a sub-discipline of international film and media studies as a national cinema or as a subject within area studies, in an East Asian Studies department, for example. But in a sense Chinese film and media studies enters as a disciplinary supplement to area studies. Yingjin Zhang notes that Chinese film received the attention brought about by retrospectives in Turin, Hong Kong, and Beijing, and also that two film scholars from the PRC, Cheng Jihua and Chen Mei, taught seminars at the University of California at Los Angeles in the fall of 1983 and the spring of 1986. This occurs during the opening up and reform period, around the same time (1985) Jameson was lecturing on postmodernism at Peking University. Festival films and institutionalized film studies in the 1980s are part of a larger context in China as well. This period of “culture fever” in the PRC was also a period of intellectual exchange, with a whole generation of PRC scholars traveling abroad. Indeed, this is another facet of an unprecedented spread of Chinese culture that begins at this time.27 Thus when we talk about the development of area studies departments devoted to China, whether in East Asian Studies, Chinese cinema, or simply Chinese sections of modern language departments, institutional dialogue has been very important. Chinese language studies were on the increase and so were the opportunities for dialogue between students and instructors. Rey Chow claimed that by the 1990s Mandarin had become “the White man’s Chinese” affecting research and hiring practices (Chow 2000: 8). But such a reductive phrase sidesteps the role played by visiting scholars from the mainland in American university Chinese studies programs. Anglophone film studies centered on Chinese cinema emerged during the 1980s in tandem with other fields. The emergence of film and media studies focused on

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Chinese cinema is the result of changes in the academy in the U.S, Britain, and Europe. But unlike the institutionalization of area studies after WWII, this time it was also a product of PRC intellectual exchange abroad through visiting scholar programs and through official channels such as Embassies and Consulates that supplied film materials for film festivals. This had implications for animation as well. In 1978 two features were screened at two international festivals: Bai Qiu’en daifu (Dr. Bethune, 1965) at the Pesaro International of New Cinema and Danao tiangong (Uproar in Heaven, 1961, 1964) at the London Film Festival. Uproar in Heaven was released in two parts and is now justifiably considered to be an SAFS classic. After the release of Part Two in 1964, Uproar was not screened in the PRC until the late 1970s. The film was shown to great acclaim at the 1978 edition of the London Film Festival and would play in Paris and then on television in Britain and France.28 It would be difficult to name another film produced in the PRC since that time that received such a reception outside of the country. The release of these films for screening at European festivals is important. During the Cultural Revolution, from the mid-1960s until the late 1970s, there was very little dialogue between filmmakers in the PRC and their colleagues abroad. The decision to release pre-Cultural Revolution films would seem to have been strategic. By choosing films produced on the eve of the Cultural Revolution, the PRC state was not just publicizing cultural policy but regime change as well. This moment, the first years of the opening up and reform period, is crucial for cultural production in the PRC, and the selection of films for foreign distribution is evidence that the state played a significant role in the introduction of film material for foreign distribution. As to the decision to choose animated films, SAFS films produced in the 1950s and early 1960s tend toward fantastic subject matter. In some ways certain SAFS productions resembled genre films from Hong Kong and Taiwan at the time, films that had already built up an audience abroad, more than other fictional live-action films from the PRC. The London screening of Uproar was followed two years later with the screening of the next SAFS feature-length animation, Nezha Conquers the Dragon King at Cannes, the first animated film in the PRC shot in cinemascope. The beginning of the marketing and reception of PRC cinema at this time may have contributed to the later predominance of “national cinemas” approaches in Chinese cinema. Animation studies centered on the PRC have only begun in English, and most are centered on the small number of well-known directors and the Shanghai Animation Film Studio. But the history of animation in China predates the establishment of the SAFS and the founding of the PRC. Understanding animation in China requires a return to the prehistory of PRC animation around WWII, contemporary to the emergence of American-area studies. Paul Wells notes that animation represents a type of rationalization, both of the abstracted image in cel animation and the process of production of the animation studio (2002: 19–34). Esther Leslie notes that with the production of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs in 1937, Disney “would massify production.” In his division of labor, Disney instituted Fordism in film production. Disney Studios represented

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the “mass production of mass culture” (2002: 134–137). Disney’s importance in animation history is not just with regard to the dominance of particular forms of content, funny animals, and fairy tales, but in the development of animation as a specific mode of film production. The big move came with the construction of the Burbank studio in 1940. One year later Disney was hit by a strike that would be divisive for animators and management alike. Snow White (1937) was an immense success critically and financially. But Disney had built his new studio on loaned money, and with the war he had lost his European market for films like Pinocchio (1940), Fantasia (1940), Dumbo (1941), and Bambi (1942).29 The war would not only undermine the market for Disney films, it would partially determine their production as well. After the attack on Pearl Harbor, the Army commandeered the soundstage of Disney’s newly built studio for seven months. Disney’s first military commissions for training films came from the Navy. As well as military-funded shorts for training and propaganda, Disney and several staff would embark on a tour of South America under the auspices of the Good Neighbor Policy, an early area studies initiative launched under Roosevelt.30 Although the Army and State Department certainly benefited from the relationship with Disney studios, Disney profited in the long term by keeping the studio in production, maintaining distribution during wartime, and opening up new markets for Disney films. Disney produced dozens of training films and entertainment films (some of which functioned as propaganda) and a feature-length propaganda film entitled Victory Through Air Power (1943), based on the book of the same name by aviator Alexander P. Seversky (1894–1974). How to define wartime production in China? WWII in Europe begins with the German invasion of Poland on September 1, 1939. Does the war in China begin with the Mukden Incident in 1931 when Japanese soldiers bombed a railway line in Northeast China and used the bombing as a pretext to occupy Manchuria? Does the war begin with the aerial bombing of Shanghai January 28, 1932? Or does the war start with the conventional 1937 War of Resistance against Japan? The Wan brothers – Wan Laiming, Wan Guchan, Wan Chaochen and Wan Dihuan – are the first known animators in China. There is talk of an early film, a combination of live action and animation, like the Fleischer Brothers’ “Out of the Inkwell” series in which a figure drawn on paper is animated and interacts with its live action creator. But one of the first extant Wan brothers animated films from China is the short that appears in the middle of Dushi fengguang (Scenes from city life, 1935).31 The film is above all concerned with seeing. Scenes plays like an addition to the city symphonies of the 1920s and ’30s. However, movement in Scenes is stylized, and the film is interwoven with references to models for visual experience, the human eye, the neon sign, the xiyangjing or peep show, the montage of city sights, and a short cartoon. The cartoon is part of the live-action film’s narrative. An impoverished young writer, Li Menghua, is pursuing a young woman, Zhang Xiaoyun, who has little interest in him. The young couple sit in a theater sharing a box of sweets as a cartoon plays. The scene is a shot-reverse-shot montage between the young couple and the

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animated short, which lasts no longer than one minute. The cartoon is a Disney or a Fleischer Brothers style 1930s funny animal cartoon, but the Mickey Mouselooking character at the beginning is a dog that rides a gift box that floats above the ground (the box undulates beneath him) finally pulling him towards a door. The dog suitor meets a fox wearing a fur coat coming out of the door. As the fox exits he bops the dog in the head with a spinning walking cane (this wealthy live-action competitor will prevail later in the film). The dog is calling on a cat; her eyes flutter manically (either from faulty animation timing or just ridiculousness). The young couple in the theater responds to the cartoon with their facial expressions: the young man is unhappy when his dog is hit by the fox, the young woman is not pleased watching her cat-self kiss the dog for giving it a scarf. A panning shot in the cartoon introduces the girl’s mother at the other end of the room huffing and puffing to the sound of a grunting tuba. The interrupting mother is a pig, a satirical image of the live-action mother played by actress Wu Yin (1909–1991). The pig-mother looks forward to the first feature-length film by the Wan Brothers, Princess Iron Fan, and the important character Zhubajie, known sometimes in English as Pigsy, the human pig, one of the pilgrims from Journey to the West. This short shows the Wan brothers employing an international animation style. The Wans borrow from American funny animal cartoons, but they adapt this convention and construct a dialogue between live-action film and animated short. The animated section in Scenes from City Life does more than repeat American funny animal conventions. The Wan brothers’ figures retain a caricatural aspect; the figures function as a film within a film, commenting satirically upon the characters in the live-action film.32 Building on Paul Virilio’s concept of “cinematism,” Tom LaMarre distinguishes between two types of filmic perception. According to LaMarre, “cinematism” refers to Cartesian perspective, a notion of Western perspective in visual representation, while “animetism” refers to the “multiplanar image” partially derived from thinking about cel animation which, because of the conditions of its production, relies literally on images painted on layers of plastic.33 LaMarre reads cel animation, “animetism,” in very important ways to construct a hypothetical model for the production of cel animation. By describing the medium of cel animation, LaMarre is able to bring out inherent techniques for movement and depth, especially the way cel animators deal with the exigencies of their medium. Disney’s wartime propaganda is an example of animation produced for very specific purposes that can help to define the animation medium. Disney’s production plays with flatness and depth, in LaMarre’s terms, with the animetic and the cinematic. Disney’s wartime production, including his training films, consisted of what J. P. Telotte referrs to as hybrid productions that combined live action and animation to deliver propaganda messages.34 The visual style of these cartoons is determined by a number of media, including the caricature, the landscape, the map, and the diagram, while the narratives approximate the instruction manual, the mock history, and, of course, the propaganda advertisement promoting military production. However, the prop plane sound effect will become omnipresent in Disney WWII films, and not only for planes.

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Disney studios emphasized air power during the wartime period. Victory Through Air Power is a propaganda film, and Disney believed in the book’s theme so much he financed the feature-length promotion of military strikes from the air himself, in hindsight a prophetic plea considering the use of long-range aerial bombing by the U.S. during WWII. The film combines animation sequences with lecturing by Seversky, whose make-up matches the brilliantly animated sequences and the immense, colorful globe he uses for demonstration. The plethora of animated maps and aerial shots is remarkable. The soundtrack includes symphonic music, and a large number of sound effects for bomb explosions, and machine gun and cannon fire. However, like the constant images of planes from every angle, the sound of the prop engine is predominant, a low, thrumming, rhythmic sound. James Agee noted the film conveniently omits any images of bombed civilians. Victory Through Air Power is a masterpiece of animated cinematic derealization. Disney’s animated treatment represents aerial bombardment as an aesthetically pleasing and efficient strategy for military domination.35 The prop plane sound effect is very important to the history of animation. In the context of a WWII era film promoting aerial bombardment, the sound is the image as much as the image is the sound. This sound works as a cue for the spectator. The sound of the propeller engine on a blank screen signals the possible arrival of planes. Sound effects may increase the realism of animation. However, the prop engine sound effect is not only used to accompany the plane image but for comic effect as well. The sound retains the same referent, the plane and plane engine, but adds a Doppler shift (the pitch goes from high to low to give the illusion of an object passing by). The Doppler shift spatializes sound for the spectator and gives the impression that the spectator stands still while the object producing the sound is moving in relation to her/him. This sound-image, the Doppler-shifted sound, indicates the subjective position of the onscreen character and the spectator in relation to a moving object, or the sound may indicate the movement and speed of the character in relation to the spectator. Visual contexts are key here. In the opening scene of one propaganda film, Sky Trooper (1942), Donald Duck sits in a kitchen peeling potatoes as planes fly diagonally from top right to bottom left, first across the screen and then across the window of the kitchen where Donald peels and wishes aloud that he could fly. The Doppler-shifted prop engine sounds give the effect of an engine speeding by as the planes pass by Donald’s window. Animation, as in any type of film, uses the frame of the screen in particular ways. The frame of the viewer’s screen is echoed in Donald’s window frame. The prop propeller sound-image here occurs within the screen’s frame, a sound signifier that functions like an aural caption, adding spatialized sound to the plane images passing through the window frame. Telotte notes a critical consensus on a shift that occurred at Disney with the production of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. With the production of Snow White, Disney would embrace an “illusionism” (Leslie’s phrase) that turned away from the experimental work of the 1920s and ’30s.36 Mass culture, including electronic and print media, truly explodes in the 1920s and 1930s. Perhaps some of the avant-garde aspects of early Disney animation have much to do with the proximity

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of this production to historical avant-garde and modernist cultural production. At any rate, making a feature-length animated film involves a whole array of narrative and technical changes that would alter the structure and form of animated production. The claim that Disney embraced a kind of “illusionism,” that Disney Studios moved towards a type of realism, is clearly born out with Snow White and to an even greater degree with a film like Bambi (1942) in which production for the film included art classes for animators, the use of live models (including keeping live animals at the studio), and anatomy studies (Schickel 1997: 171–192). However, if the realism of Disney was pushing the studio animation towards the “cinematic,” the tendency towards cinematic representation in cel animation potentially distorts the relationship between the background and the moving characters. The “multiplanar” (LaMarre’s term) is still beholden to two fundamental planes, a static background and a plane of movement. This precedes endorsement of a particular type of perspective. Cel animation means working within the film regime of frames-per-second, of plotting movement with timing and spacing, of sound synchronization. These aspects of animation imply an a priori abstraction of the cinematic process. Paradoxically, Disney’s wartime animation style pushed animation technique towards the illusionism of cinema and thus reinforced the “cinematic derealization” inherent in cinematism, just as “cinematism,” as an abstraction of data about space and time, has the potential to move towards the cartoon (or in LaMarre’s term, the “animetic”). Virilio is clear on the dialectical complexity of these points.37 In Sky Trooper, the prop plane sound also accompanies the blurry image of Donald as he races in to see his sergeant. Commando Duck (1944) is another good example of the combination of these elements. This is the only film to include racist caricatures of Japanese soldiers (Shale 1982: 94). The animated short opens with a title and Donald Duck in shadow clutching weapons and surrounded by vegetation. The story is straightforward. Through a series of misadventures, Donald destroys a Japanese base. The opening shot is a side shot of the plane (probably a Fairchild C-82, but with four engines instead of two) carrying Donald and the other paratroopers. Initially, the prop engine sound effect accompanies the image of a Fairchild C-82, but this sound shows up again in another context. When Donald attempts to evade the enemy in an inflatable raft he goes over a waterfall, but his raft gets caught in a tree branch and a chase scene ensues as the raft inflates with water along a ravine, threatening to crush Donald. The absurdity of the situation is compounded as the raft explodes, causing boulders and rocks to chase Donald. But the sound effect is important here. As Donald and then the rocks rush by the spectator’s view, the Doppler-shifted prop engine sound effect is used to imply speed. The prop engine is a new sound effect, employed here in a new context. It is a sound-image of speed. In older American cartoons sound effects were still primarily orchestral with strings, woodwinds, slide whistles, horns, and drumrolls used to set mood and approximate movement. The appearance of the prop propeller sound effect during WWII is a very important one for the development of American animation imagery, both visual and aural.

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In animated film the sound effect is part and parcel of the “cartoon-effect.” But to claim this induces a sense of “realism” is problematic. Sound is an aspect of filmic montage. In animation, sound is a metonymic floating signifier. Thanks to Disney, the prop engine is not only a comic sound effect in cartoons, but is an important aspect of the militarization of cultural production that occurred during WWII. As the prop propeller sound effect increases realism through the use of concrete sound, this same sound exaggerates the movement of the cartoon figure. In other words, the reality effect results in a type of cartoon derealization. Along with the military propaganda Disney also produced health and hygiene propaganda for the Institute of Inter-American Affairs. After a trip to Latin America sponsored by the Roosevelt administration, Disney also produced two entertainment films, hybrid anthologies made up of shorts that integrated live-action and animated sequences. In 1941, Disney went on a much-publicized governmentsponsored trip to Brazil, Argentina, Chile, and Peru. The resultant films are important to animation history. A type of tourist consciousness resonates in Saludos Amigos and The Three Caballeros with their hallucinatory colors and eclectic music. The Three Caballeros is especially interesting in the context of cinematic representation. Disney liked to reference “the book” in his films. Snow White opens with a live-action book opening, as if the film were a filmed book (or at least a filmed fairy tale). Books are still here, Brazil is a throbbing pop-up picture book, but sequences are introduced with Donald manipulating a projector and celluloid. The strategy is self-referential; we watch the segments with Donald as they are projected on a screen as the film we are watching is projected on the theater screen. The screen is screened and celluloid lies in heaps after each viewing (staccato sound of plastic). In these scenes cinema is materialized by layers of animation. Books explode with different background styles, and there are also live-action actors. Are the live-action segments backgrounds for the animation or is the animation background for the live-action? The cinematic and the animated are split – animated figures float on live-action backgrounds, live-action figures sometimes dance fullfigured, sometimes as disembodied cut-outs within the surrounding animation. The American Donald Duck is accompanied on his tour of South America by two other talking birds, the Brazilian José Carioca and a Mexican Panchito Pistoles. The last stop is Mexico as Panchito introduces Donald and José to Mexican history. Donald and his friends enter the book called Mexico, an upright picturebook of postcards. In a scene that foreshadows the magic carpet ride in Aladdin (1992), the three birds finally board a serape, a colorfully striped blanket, and take flight (none of these cartoon birds flies naturally). The live-action scene serves as background to the animated figures here. Mexico is ethnographic folk dances. The Acapulco segment is most relevant to my discussion. The trio first arrives at what Panchito describes as “Acapulco Beach, the Riviera of Mexico” and, taking out a sparkling telescope that he elongates with a quick gesture, he passes the telescope to Donald: “Take the telescope and have a look at what you might call the hot stuff.” Now the screen approximates the round viewpoint of a telescope, an aerial shot showing female sunbathers in bathing suits, some on cots, some under umbrellas. Two women toss a beach ball between them.

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LaMarre notes how Japanese animated shorts from the early 1930s “show an awareness of perspective between linear perspective and ballistic perception” (LaMarre 2009: 27). This reading of Virilio interprets “cinematism” as a particular use of perspective, but “cinematism” goes beyond the representation of perspective. In The Three Caballeros the monocular view consists of an aerial shot that flattens the live-action figures within the circle. In one particular shot the telescope-shot/reverse-shot structure transforms the three caballeros into a surreal, recombinant, phallic monster.38 Donald, José, and Panchito dive-bomb the fleeing women three times in a comic representation of aerial attack. The third pass is shot from behind the caballeros, who lie prone on the serape slightly to the left of the screen. All three seem to be playfully shooting the women who run beneath the serape. On the far left Donald has both hands forming guns, to the far right José is aiming his umbrella like a rifle, while Panchito’s smiling beak also appears to point at the fleeing women. The classic animated image is embedded in the history of WWII. The sexual caricature these birds express is far from innocent children’s entertainment. The Three Caballeros is presented in official studio history as an example of the way Disney productions could bridge cultural boundaries (Kaufman 2009). However, at the time, James Agee noticed a “streak of cruelty” in the film.39 This scene gives credence to a reading of aggression in Donald Duck and his fellow caballeros, and the Doppler-shifted prop plane sound effect lends further resonance to the scene. According to official studio history, the descent and ascent of the serape was meant to imitate a WWII fighter craft, the Lockheed P-38 (Kaufman 2009: 227). The film was released internationally on December 21, 1944, just months after renewed air raids on Japan that began in the fall of 1944, with intensified bombing of Tokyo beginning just a month before the film’s release.40 The prop plane sound effect used in animated film in this period in Disney is linked to the propaganda films made at the studio during this time. Disney’s production during the war was made for several potential audiences: military personnel for the propaganda and training films, Spanish-speaking audiences in Mexico and Central and South America for the health and hygiene propaganda produced on behalf of the Institute of Inter-American Affairs, domestic American and foreign audiences for the entertainment films, and domestic and Latin American audiences for The Three Caballeros. In a sense the scene in which Donald and his friends attack the women on the beach in Acapulco gives a grotesque definition to the concept of a target audience. The prop plane was certainly not a new type of transportation or military vehicle. However, in the case of Disney, the historical contiguity of this sound as a key component of production makes its emergence more resonant and relevant to animation history at this time. WWII Disney had already achieved global dominance in animated film, not only market dominance but a stylistic and technical dominance as well. Paul Wells claims “ . . . all cartoon animation that follows the Disney output is a reaction to Disney, aesthetically, technically and ideologically . . . ” (Wells 2002: 45). Wells is referring to American production here, but according to Wan Laiming, the first feature-length animated film in China was produced as a response to Snow White

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and the Seven Dwarfs: “At the time I thought if Americans are able to produce a Snow White that expresses their specific ethnic style, of course we can also produce a film like that expresses our ethnicity like Princess Iron Fan.”41 Wan Laiming was one of the chief directors of Princess Iron Fan and would go on to be the head director for Uproar in Heaven twenty years later. Princess Iron Fan is the direct translation of Tieshan gongzhu, an adaptation of a very well-known episode from the sixteenth-century novel about the journey of a Buddhist monk, Tripitaka, who traveled to India to retrieve sutras. He is accompanied by three disciples – Sun Wukong, the monkey king; Zhu Bajie, part human, part pig; and Sha Wujing. The four encounter a fiery mountain and to put out the flames so they can pass by, they must obtain a magic fan possessed by Princess Iron Fan. The name of the film in Chinese appropriates the Chinese translation for Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, Baixue gongzhu, literally “Princess Snow White.”42 The plot centers around attempts by the disciples, especially the Monkey King and Zhu Bajie, to trick the Princess into loaning her fan to them. Journey to the West is amenable to animation treatment. One scene in Princess Iron Fan depicts a moment in the novel when Sun Wukong shrinks himself down to the size of an insect and allows himself to be consumed in a cup of tea. The “cut-away” view of the Monkey King as an insect punching internal organs of the Princess is quite clever and may have at least inspired a similar view in the Shaw Brothers’ version of this story in their 1966 live-action Princess Iron Fan. Wan suggests Princess Iron Fan was a “response” to Snow White, but Wan Brothers’ style is more Fleischer Brothers than Disney. Figures in the black and white Princess Iron Fan have similar design to Fleischer Brothers figures (one of the female characters looks like Betty Boop). The Wans used rotoscoping for Princess Iron Fan, and perhaps owing to the frames-per-second rate of the animation, the figures seem slightly jerky at times. The trickster Monkey King, Sun Wukong, is in constant motion, but this is only partially owing to the frenetic quality of the animation. Sun Wukong is a well-known opera character with specific stylized movements assigned to the character. The sound track is particularly important. As an early animated film, Princess Iron Fan’s sound effects are mostly orchestral. Composed by the important composer Lu Zhongren (1911–2011), the soundtrack usually maintains upbeat melodies dominated by percussion and high-pitched horns and woodwinds to accompany the animated movement. Since the central conflict revolves around attempts by the monk and his disciples to obtain the fan, one of their main opponents is Princess Iron Fan’s husband, the Ox Demon Spirit. Low-pitched sounds mark the Ox Demon King when he is on screen. Even when Zhu Bajie steals the Ox Demon King’s pet, the Golden Beast, low timpani booms and belches of tuba mark the scenes in which the Golden Beast appears. Transformation of characters is an important feature of Journey to the West. In the novel, The Monkey King Sun Wukong and the Ox Demon King engage in a short duel of transformations; for example, at one point in the episode the Ox Demon King and Sun Wukong transform into a number of birds. In most of the scenes in Princess Iron Fan, the Ox Demon King walks upright like a human with

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animalistic features, but near the end the Ox Demon King transforms into a giant ox and gallops in the sky. His facial features elongate, horns grow out of his head and his body flattens as a low bellow issues forth, presumably to mimic an ox. But the bellow here does not sound like a sound produced by musical instrument. The ox bellow is a bass note that elongates to match the visual transformation of the Ox Demon King into an ox, a mechanical bass note that sounds very much like a prop plane engine. Even the ox’s horns appear like an immobile propeller when his body flattens during the initial transformation. The battle between Sun Wukong and the transformed Ox Demon King is telling. Sun spins and bobs, knocking the ox in the head a few times as ox and monkey run on clouds spinning in descending circles. In the final descent to earth, the Ox Demon King is directly above Sun Wukong as they plummet to the ground. Princess Iron Fan was released in 1941, the last year of what is referred to as the Orphan Island period (1937–1941) in Shanghai, when film production thrived in the foreign concessions until Shanghai fell to the Japanese. Filmmakers nevertheless had to contend with Chinese and Japanese censors. The opening credits are followed by a sort of apologia for the fantastic content. The Republican government did not permit expressions of superstition, and Japanese censors would not allow direct references to the war. Princess Iron Fan is a film about overcoming obstacles, and since the film claims to be an adaptation of a classic literary text, the film could be presented as a work that transcends contemporary events, so to speak. However, the mechanical sound effects for the ox clearly point to more specific metonymic possibilities. Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs may be considered a model for the form of Princess Iron Fan in so far as both films are feature-length animated productions. Princess Iron Fan thus represents a technical and format reply to Snow White. Both films also display the tendency in animated film to function as literary adaptation. Princess Iron Fan is an episode from the novel Journey to the West and already open to interpretation and allegorization. Princess Iron Fan reworks the story of Tripitaka’s attempts to obtain the fan as an allegory for resistance under Japanese occupation.43 The visual style of Princess Iron Fan is a hybrid of many styles. Within the borrowings from Disney and the Fleischer Brothers, the Wans’ film shows a tendency that links it to the manhua (a Chinese reading of the Japanese word manga), that form of illustration in China that resembles the political cartoon. The Ox Demon King is the villain of the piece, but such a figuration still opens itself up to a number of potential readings. As I mentioned, the Ox Demon King’s transformation is implicitly paired with the sound of the prop plane, linking him to the historically contiguous actuality of aerial bombardment by the Japanese. But this link is complex. To suggest simple correspondence between the characters in the film and wartime historical actors would be hasty. I believe it would be simplistic to read the Ox Demon King simply as “Japan.” By the early 1940s, the sound of the prop engine in Disney productions marks a kind of exuberance that perhaps derives from the producers’ distance from the effects of such technology. Disney uses the prop plane engine sound to persuade and excite his audience. Thus this meaning of the prop plane engine sound reveals

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a moment where Princess Iron Fan departs from Snow White and Disney. Certainly, although both films represent technical achievements, Snow White does not have the political resonance of Princess Iron Fan. Disney’s film is a technical achievement in so far as the studio was able to represent the fairy tale as a lushly expensive animated film. Estimates vary, but around 750 people are supposed to have worked on Snow White, with a negative cost of around $1.7 million. The fairy-tale structure belies the labor-intensive process (arguably the point of certain types of animation, certainly Disney animation). In an ironic way, the narrative of Princess Iron Fan reveals the conditions of production of the film itself. Wan recounted that producers sent over a few dozen inexperienced artists to work on the film, but, according to Wan, there were never more than just over one hundred people on salary.44 Thus while Snow White seems seamless with regard to the conditions of production, Princess Iron Fan retains a somewhat rough quality, both in the look of the animation and the technical aspects. For example, the soundtrack is sometimes shrill. Considering the year of production, the use of the sound effects mimicking the Ox Demon King/prop engine in Princess Iron Fan could have had nothing to do with the use of this sound effect in Disney. Shanghai experienced aerial bombardment from the early 1930s. One of the most well-known aerial attacks began January 28, 1932, and lasted for over two months. But just as relevant here is the use of the prop plane, as sound and image, in Chinese cinema before Princess Iron Fan. The last scene in Sun Yu’s Da lu, The Big Road (1934), is iconic in this regard. This early silent film used an external record for sound (including a crying infant and comical sound effects when one character playfully hits another) and songs. But one of the most dramatic moments in the film is the ending when the main characters are working to complete a road to enable the transportation of military supplies to resist an unspecified foreign militia, most probably Japan. In this last scene a prop plane engine interrupts the singing of the road crew who quickly glance upwards to see a circling biplane, which soon kills the entire crew with strafing fire. And this death from the air also recalls the death of Zhu’er in the silent Xiao wanyi (Little Toys) released a year earlier in 1933. The plucky young woman character played by Li Lili (1915–2005), the very epitome of national resistance, is killed by an airplane that hovers menacingly in the screen frame. While the soundtrack to Little Toys is lost, both films came out less than a decade before Princess Iron Fan and reveal the resonance of the prop plane sound-image in the context of modern Chinese cinema. However tragic the association, the sound-image of the prop plane is far from completely negative in these films. In both The Big Road and Little Toys, military vehicles and weapons are also represented as desirable objects, as “little toys” useful to the nation. Indeed, perhaps this is where the prop engine in Disney and Princess Iron Fan find common ground. Despite the horrifying bellow of the Ox Demon King, he is not killed but subdued by a collective that includes the monk, his disciples, and the villagers. The villagers split a tree down the middle and Sun Wukong lures the Ox Demon King into the split tree as the villagers let go from either side, thus trapping the Ox. Sun Wukong then plucks one of his magical hairs

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which changes into a nose ring for the Ox. The Ox Demon King cannot be considered a mere enemy combatant. After all, he has a use value. He is a means to the end of obtaining the magic fan to extinguish the fiery mountain. The Ox Demon King cries; large tears stream from his eyes as the pilgrims tell him to give up the hiding place of the iron fan. I find the crying ox sympathetic. But he is clearly a means to the final goal of putting out the fire and returning the valley and the inhabitants to a sort of equilibrium. The Ox Demon King is not the enemy. With his capture he becomes a trope for the necessity of harnessing state resources: “[t]he awareness of the nation state’s location in the world system necessitates its military and fiscal modernization which, in turn, requires an unprecedented intervention in society to extract the needed resources” (Duara 1991: 74). The Ox Demon King roars like the prop engine because he is the means to an end. As such he is also a figure of the animated film itself. The resolution of the film occurs when the bull is captured and nose-ringed. This is not a trope for defeating an enemy, but for harnessing a draft animal linked metaphorically to a technology. In his description of the production of Princess Iron Fan, Wan Laiming would bemoan the low salary paid by “the capitalists” to the animators in his studio. Far from being naïve, Wan is merely viewing animated film as a problem of resources.45 During WWII, even Disney would avail himself of state funds for animation production. Princess Iron Fan is a story about overcoming difficulties by harnessing resources. Two of the brothers, Wan Laiming and Wan Guchan, would continue working in animation at the Shanghai Animation Film Studio. What happened when animation production was localized in one studio and completely funded by the state? This is the topic of my next chapter.

Notes 1 See Mu Shiying 2008: 270. The translation is my own. I also consulted Douglas Trumbull’s translation (Mu 1992: 9). This story was originally published in a collection entitled Gongmu (Public Cemetery) in 1933. 2 See Zhang 1992. This is an early essay published in a high school publication. 3 Quiquemelle cites a Wan Brothers article from 1936 (1991: 178). But the watershed moment for the Wans seems to have been the 1941 feature Princess Iron Fan. 4 See “Zhongyao de bushi ‘shenme shi dangdai’ – women yinggai guanzhu zai lishi zhong xingcheng de dangdai xing” (The important question is not ‘What is the contemporary?’ – on the historic transformations of contemporary-ness that deserve our attention) in Lü Peng 2010b, 136. 5 Lü Peng, “Shenme shi dangdaishi?” (“What is Contemporary History”), Yang Li (interview originally published in 2005) in Lü Peng 2010b: 64–70. Lü seems to have derived the Western etymological notes from a translation of Jerzy Topolski’s Methodology of History. 6 Material from Fairbank’s thesis, “The Origin of the Chinese Imperial Customs Service. 1850 58,” would later be published as Fairbank 1953. 7 The phrase “western oriented” is part of a phrase attributed to Fairbank by Evans: “western oriented and parochial” (1985: 57.). 8 See Farquhar and Hevia 1993 for a review of postwar American historiography of China. See Hevia for a discussion of Fairbank’s reading of the tribute system (1995: 9–12).

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9 See Evans 1988 on the foreign language requirement (58), on language as a tool (38), on the contrast between Sinology and area studies (192). Also see the discussion of Harvard’s library (59). 10 See Evans 1988 on the Far Eastern Association and the AAS (64), and for Fairbank’s “messianic urgency” (65). 11 See Foucault 2002: 305–329. Said notes that Nietzsche considered himself to be a philologist (1979, 131). In a posthumous publication, Said makes a strong case for a return to philology (2004). 12 See Renan 1890: 149, cited in Said 1979: 132–133. 13 See F. Von Schlegel 1849: 448, quoted in Foucault 2002: 309. 14 Chinese is a language from the first category of “languages with monosyllabic roots, without the capacity of composition, and hence without organism, without grammar . . .” (Bopp 1856: 102–103). 15 The chair in Chinese and Tartar-Manchu languages and literatures at Collège de France in 1814. 16 For this brief comparative narrative I am indebted to David B. Honey’s excellent discussion (2001). 17 Sir Hamilton Alexander Rosskeen Gibb (1895–1971) and Louis Massignon (1883–1962), two twentieth-century European orientalists. 18 See European Association of Chinese Studies, 1998, cited in Brødsgaard 2007: 36. 19 “This text is a direct result of the attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941. Within a few hours advanced students of Chinese in the University of Chicago were conferring with the writer on the question, ‘What can we do?’ ” See Creel, “Preface,” in H. G. Creel, Ssu-yü Teng, and Nianci Zhou, 1943. 20 Rey Chow considered Hsia’s book to be “[t]he best example of the use of New Criticism to interpret modern Chinese literature remains C. T. Hsia’s A History of Modern Chinese Fiction . . . Apart from the convention of Hegelian intellectual history, New Criticism is arguably still the predominant mode of analysis in modern Chinese literary studies today” (2000: 24, note 32). 21 See Chow 1991: 3–33, in particular 24. Said notes the manner in which orientalist discourse reads the Orient as “feminine” (1979: 138; 182; 206; 220). Also see, Melani McAlister, “Edward Said, Orientalism (1978),” in Agnew and Rosenzweig, 2002: 552. 22 See Fabian 1983: 37–70, cited in Chow 30–31. 23 Chow 1991: 31. See Mulvey (1987) for a critique of Mulvey 1972. In direct contradiction to Chow, Fatimah Tobing Rony read The Last Emperor as a critique of film spectatorship and fetishism (1988–1989). 24 “In the ’70s, one position emerged from this welter of theories with some claim to provisional consideration as dominant. This position is an amalgam of Lacanian psychoanalysis, Althusserian Marxism, and the textual analysis of Roland Barthes, with a commitment to feminism” (Carroll 1982: 89). 25 Berry (2012) is discussing national film studies; the addition of auteur studies and studios is my own. 26 See Leyda 1972: 62–63. Croizier notes this in Croizier (1973: 502–503). 27 Two important studies of this period are Jing Wang’s High Culture Fever (1996) and Xudong Zhang’s Chinese Modernism in the Era of Reforms (1997). 28 I have found one review of the film, Huang Shixian 1978. Quiquemelle claims the film was shown in the PRC in 1977 (1991: 186). The first part was screened at the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival in 1962 (Chen Huangmei 1989: 115–116). 29 Schickel estimates that Disney counted on 45% of his return from foreign markets (1997: 230). 30 George Yúdice notes the Good Neighbor policy as a small-scale precedent to Cold War investment in “knowledge producing enterprises” (2003, 82).

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31 The short Fei yu huo, aka Shu yu wa (The Mouse and the Frog, 1934), has recently been restored. 32 See “Pinglun: Dushi fengguang yinyue xiju de dianfan zhi zuo,” 2005. 33 See Chapters 1 and 3 in LaMarre 2009: 3–11; 26–44. 34 See Telotte 2007. On the wartime production, see Shull and Wilt 1987. 35 Agee (2000, 25–28), cited in Schickel 1997: 274–275. On “derealization” see Virilio 1989: 79. 36 See Telotte 2007: 246–247. Wells also discusses aspects of this turn; see Wells 2002: 44–50. I borrow the term “illusionism” from Leslie 2002: 121. 37 “Photographic realism, oddly enough, looked unreal in animated films. It was a subtle matter to obtain a realistic effect that lapsed into caricature only intentionally” (Schickel 1997: 179). “Cinematic derealization now affected the very nature of power, which established itself in a technological Beyond with the space-time not of ordinary mortals but of a single war machine. In this realm sequential perception, like optical phenomena resulting from retinal persistence, is both origin and end of the apprehension of reality, since the seeing of movement is but a statistical process connected with the nature of the segmentation of images and the speed of observation characteristic of humans. The macro-cinematography of aerial reconnaissance, the cable television of panoramic radar, the use of slow or accelerated motion in analyzing the phases of an operation – all this converts the commander’s plan into an animated cartoon or flow-chart” (Virilio 1989: 79). 38 For accounts of contemporary reaction to The Three Caballeros, see Telotte 2007: 249–250 and Smoodin 1993: 110–111. 39 See Agee 2000: 25–28, cited in Schickel 1997: 274–275. 40 For a discussion of this event, see Mark Selden 2007. 41 Wan Laiming and Wan Guohun 1986: 88, translations are mine. 42 The opera version of this episode is titled San dao bajiao shan, “Three Attempts to Steal the Palm Leaf Fan.” 43 Wan discusses this reading. Apparently a sentence was cut from the film: “Fight for the final victory of the resistance.” But as Wan mentioned, the film’s message is sufficiently clear without this statement (Wan 1986: 90). 44 Regarding the Disney numbers, see Schickel 1997: 171–222. With regard to Wan’s comments, see Wan 1986: 88. I have used the word “producer,” but Wan uses the term zibenjia, “capitalists.” Wan himself describes film production as similar to Sun Wukong passing by the fiery mountain. 45 Wan complains about the lack of salary by the “capitalists” to the animators for the production of Princess Iron Fan. Wu Weihua notes: “Wan naively blames Western colonialism and capitalism for his diaspora in Hong Kong and his creative interregnum there” (Wu 2009: 35). However, Wan is clearly complaining about the problem of raising financing and pooling animators for animation production. While his use of terms like “capital” (zijin) may seem a bit quaintly revolutionary (i.e., dated, hardly his own fault), his criticism of Hong Kong culture, which he compares to the cultural situation in Shanghai, is given in the light of the Wan Brothers’ inability to raise funds to produce the film Kunchong shijie/Insect World, an unfinished project from the early 1950s (Wan 1986: 102–103).

3

Meishu pian as national style

In his important discussion of animation history centered on the PRC, Weihua Wu notes that “[i]n English-language scholarship, studies of Chinese animation are mostly developed from a broad historical perspective, partly because the indigenous complexities and socio-cultural subtexts are too obscure to be clearly visible” (2009: 35). However, such obscurity is only apparent. This chapter shines a historical light on national style discourse. National style is often invoked in Chinese film studies as a descriptive term for specifically Chinese modes of cinema. In this chapter, I attempt to carry out an archeological retrieval by returning to important moments in the emergence of national style discourse in the PRC during the mid1950s and early 1960s. Besides the recent work by Wu and Voci discussed in the introduction, discussion of animation from China in English is sparse. Jay Leyda’s Dianying – Electric Shadows (1972) is perhaps the first source in English to mention animation from China. Although his presentation is fragmented, Leyda seemed to have been well informed on the problem of national style in animation (1972: 291). Marie-Claire Quiquemelle’s “The Wan Brothers and Sixty Years of Animated Film in China” (1991) is a good summary of animation with a focus on the Wan brothers, especially Wan Laiming. Ehrlich and Jin (2001) review the past and the present challenges of the industry within a global market. Mary Farquhar’s “Monks and Monkey: a Study of National Style in Chinese Animation” (1991) limits discussion to Uproar in Heaven and the San ge heshang (The Three Monks, 1980). However, Farquhar’s discussion of minzu fengge, another way of phrasing minzu xingshi, as national style, is important. Although Farquhar and Wu are writing sixteen years apart, they are both writing in the wake of attitudes that take shape in 1980s film criticism in the PRC. Wu cites the writer and director Zhang Songlin, who wrote what amounts to an industry manifesto, “Chuangzao fuyou minzu fengge de Zhongguo meishu dianying” (Create richly national style Chinese animation) (1981). For Zhang Songlin, two of the first films that evidence national style in animation were Jiao’ao de jiangjun (The Arrogant General, 1956) and Shenbi (The Magic Brush, 1956) (Wu 2009: 38; Zhang Songlin 982: 176). National style adds a historical aura to contemporary cultural production, even cultural production of the revolutionary period. For example, Zhang describes The Magic Brush as “a Chinese ancient folk

Meishu pian as national style 79 tale” (yi ge Zhongguo gulao de minjian gushi) (1981: 176) although neither the film nor print versions seem to predate 1955.1 Zhang’s reform-era language uses a transitional terminology that combines residual aspects of earlier minzu, national or ethnic style discourse from the revolutionary period (1949–1976): “[The film] concerns a strangely magical painting brush that expresses the thirst of the laboring masses for happiness and comfort and contains romantic touches of Chinese myth. In both content and form the film shows Chinese traditional artistic style. The figures of the protagonist Ma Liang and the government officials show the form and style of Chinese ancient characters combined with that specific aspect of puppet animation, a proper amount of exaggeration that gives [the film] an even greater artistic flavor. The scenery includes city walls and room interiors that expresses specific aspects of our nation’s ancient decorative art, giving the whole film a brilliantly unified ethnic style.” (Zhang Songlin 1982: 176). Thus, the “Chinese ancient folk tale” is enhanced by “Chinese traditional artistic style” (Zhongguo de chuantong yishu fengge). In short, The Magic Brush employs design elements that help to construct what could be called a Chinese effect. Minzu, or national style discourse did not originate in animation. Zhang’s use of the term is just one example of a return of the term in PRC film criticism in the 1980s. Chris Berry opened up discussion of the term in English in a 1992 article, “ ‘Race’ (minzu): Chinese Film and the Politics of Nationalism.” Berry’s translation of minzu as race is part of his critique of the term: “what may start out as a strategic essentialism can all too easily become merely an essentialism, a transhistorical ideal that once established tends toward conservatism and repression” (1992: 47). Yingjin Zhang articulates a rebuttal of Berry’s translation of minzu in “From ‘Minority Film’ to ‘Minority Discourse’: Questions of Nationhood and Ethnicity in Chinese Cinema.” According to Zhang, Berry’s “indiscriminate use of ‘race’ as an overriding term obscures the difference between ‘race’ and ‘ethnicity’ on the one hand, and, on the other, conflates the ‘state discourse,’ which champions the Han Chinese cultural hegemony over ethnic minorities, and the ‘politics of nationalism’ in Chinese film, which has strategically drawn on minority cultures in the formation of the ‘Chinese characteristics’ (minzu tedian) as opposed to Western discourses and technologies” (1997: 74). Yingjin Zhang makes a valid point. “Race” has fixed and problematic biological connotations in English, while “ethnicity” may imply slightly more open-ended cultural markers. Nevertheless, Frank Dikötter notes that when the term enters Chinese in the early twentieth century “[r]ace and nation overlapped in the term minzu” (1991: 108). In a sense, Zhang conflates ethnicity and nation in his discussion of the possible minority culture exoticism of Liu Sanjie (Third Sister Liu, 1960), where he notes that such a filmic representation of minority culture was “an effective means by which the nation-state objectified minority peoples through stereotypes and co-opted them in the construction of a socialist China” (1997: 80). Both Zhang and Berry link the notion of minzu to the representation of minorities in PRC cinema (Berry 1992: 51–52; Zhang 1997: 79–83). As a concept, minzu can only be defined within the context of other minzu, one ethnicity (or nationality) defined beside one or more other ethnicities. The

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comparative aspect of minzu has important implications. While minzu as a term and concept for ethnicity and nationality predates the founding of the PRC, I mostly focus my discussion to the way this concept emerged in cultural and critical discourse in the PRC, especially in film discourse. The concept also changed in different discourse contexts as well. Berry notes an important discussion of minzu xingshi, ethnic or national style, in Mao Zedong’s 1942 essay, “Fandui dang bagu” (Oppose Stereotyped Party Writing). Mao mentions minzu xingshi, ethnic or national form, in a discussion of the importance of combining international Marxist content with national form and is reiterating a point he had made in an earlier talk from 1938, “Zhongguo gongchandang zai minzu zhanzheng de diwei” (“The Role of the Chinese Communist Party in the National War”): “Being Marxists, Communist Party members are Internationalists, but we can put Marxism into practice only when it is integrated with our nation’s specific characteristics and acquires a definite national form.”2 In suggesting the adoption of a minzu xingshi, translated in the English edition of the Selected Works as “national form,” Mao is clearly suggesting what Berry notes as a “sinification” of Marxism here.3 Mao’s comments are nevertheless suggestive of the need to combine cultural styles and forms. Berry notes that Zhou Enlai “was well known for taking a relatively liberal attitude on many issues.” While Zhou Enlai seems careful in his discussion of minzu, he seems to push the possibility of combining forms, and, although his suggestions still fall into the category of “sinification,” his comments are nevertheless positive with regard to the assimilation of foreign cultures: “We should increasingly absorb positive things from foreign countries and integrate them into our own national culture.”4 In two 1956 talks on the Kunqu opera Shiwu guan (Fifteen Strings of Cash), Zhou discusses the importance of maintaining continuity with an opera tradition. The performing arts, especially theater, were important in the PRC at this time. The tenor of the talks is no doubt the result of having been written during the Hundred Flowers Campaign, but Zhou’s comments on minzu xingshi are relevant to discussions of other types of cultural production. Zhou claims Fifteen Strings of Cash “possesses a strong national style (minzu fengge) enabling people to notice the excellent traditions of national art (minzu yishu).” This praise is part of a promotional speech that suggests a wide array of forms while promoting an internationalist openness towards cultural production: “Ancient modern, Chinese Foreign, study everything, exclude nothing.” Zhou interprets government policy in the widest possible ways: Mao Zedong’s let a hundred flowers bloom doesn’t mean removing a lotus from the pond; rather, it is a matter of adapting to local conditions. Some types of theater aren’t so easily adapted as modern works, so it’s possible to first produce a few costume dramas, historic dramas. Don’t take for granted that producing modern plays is the only way to progress. There are some Kunqu titles and melodies that really shouldn’t be lightly tampered with; there’s no rush, the ones being produced at present should be performed more, and only revise after repeated familiarity through performance. As to revising, first

Meishu pian as national style 81 revise amongst yourselves, do not revise arbitrarily, don’t simply revise after hearing a number of suggestions.5 Zhou’s speeches were probably a lead-in to a spate of historical dramas produced in the PRC between 1958 and 1966 (Wagner 1990: ix-xiv). Zhou’s talks are evidence of the central place of theatrical performance during the revolutionary period. Politicalized theatrical critique would be very important in the construction of model operas leading up to the Cultural Revolution (Chen 2002: 78–121). Theatrical performance seems to have been chosen because it is a form of cultural production that functions as a link between traditional performance and electronic media such as film and television. Zhou’s invocation of “costume dramas” is an indication of how wardrobe can determine genre. The notion of guzhuang xi is not only important to theater but also to early Chinese film. As I noted in the previous chapter, Wolfram Eberhard would employ a division based on wardrobe for the films he watched in the late 1960s, modern and classical costume, and the idea is clearly linked to theater wardrobe, as Zhou’s terminology evidences. Stephen Teo notes that guzhuang pian, costume pictures and historical costume pictures, were an essential aspect of early genre cinema, including martial arts films, historical films, and films based on opera performances.6 Zhou’s discussion of “costume dramas, historic dramas” links to Zhang Songlin’s suggestion that the animated film The Magic Brush was based on a “Chinese ancient folk tale” enhanced by “Chinese traditional artistic style.” The implication is that minzu xingshi, ethnic or national style, is signaled or marked through particular features of wardrobe and set design and, in the case of animation especially, character design. According to Yingjin Zhang: “The assertion of ‘Chineseness’ as a marker of national identity in the subsequent development of Chinese cinema was made in many different ways, ranging from the subtle cinematic treatment of ethical problems in family dramas, to the radical political protest against the colonialist and imperialist presence in China” (Zhang 1997: 77). But the construction of “Chineseness” is at the very least twofold. First, minority culture was sometimes represented in contrast to “national” Han culture, so certain markers of “minority-ness” were maintained in the representation of specific dress, dancing, social customs and other features. Chris Berry and Paul Clark have noted that this sometimes included a tendency to exoticize and even primitivize minority cultures (Clark 1987b; Berry 1992: 51–52). Second, while ethnic or national characteristics (minzu tedian) are distinguishing markers within the rubric of “Chinese characteristics,” that is to say within the multi-ethnic landscape of PRC national cinema, these national characteristics are also distinguishing markers “as opposed to Western discourses and technologies” (Zhang 1997: 74). However, objectification of the “other” through ethnic markers also implies the potential objectification of Han Chinese culture as a set of tropes and characteristics, of features and markers that signal “Chineseness,” in the sense of Han Chinese. The idea of intentionally marking a film with ethnicized style, with Chinese style and form, cannot but be problematic. In discussions of Chinese ethnic or national style, style is usually only

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alluded to indirectly, as if the mere assertion of Chineseness stands for the style itself. I do not wish to set up a simple distinction between domestic and international “national characteristics.” However, the notion of “national characteristics” is often invoked with recourse to vaguely essentializing cultural markers, or wellknown works of art, literature, or traditions of theater and popular cultural production. In other words, the national characteristics of a work are evidenced by links to other texts that contain and represent national characteristics. Yet the notion of “national form” is only meaningful within a context of multiplicities. “National characteristics,” “national form” – such descriptive terms are only meaningful within an international context. The international begins with the national, nationalists used to say. But the national is also best defined within the international. National characteristics and national form derive meaning within a comparative context. Zhang Songlin notes another important early-animated film, The Arrogant General, which exhibited national style. Zhang claims the film is based on the saying linzhan moqiang, to sharpen the spear on the eve of battle. Zhang also notes the use of “the art of Chinese traditional drawing” and, as he does in his discussion of The Magic Brush, the way the character and background design show “national style.” Zhang notes that “as director Te Wei was starting production on [The Arrogant General] he was putting forward the slogan ‘exploring the road to national form’ ” (Zhang Songlin 1982: 176–177). Wu also notes this moment (2009: 38–42). This is a key moment for the production of film discourse within the context of animation and the simultaneous development of a theoretical discourse that describes film using a prescriptive and promotional rhetoric. In an article published in the most important fine arts journal, Meishu, in 1960, Te Wei’s (1915–2010) call for the production of Chinese national style animated film includes a Great Leap Forward rhetoric of statistical reportage: “A leap transforming all sectors has occurred in production levels from before the year 1958 in terms of productivity and technology. Production has vigorously increased from a yearly average of five to forty-seven, while at the same time average costs have dropped 55%; shooting time has shortened by one third, and quality has also noticeably increased” (Te Wei 1960: 50). Wu Weihua claims national style discourse represents “the commencement of a cognitive mapping through a specific situating of Chinese film, including animation. This approach intends to understand the specifics of Chinese animation as a collective political practice more than an aesthetic practice, and as an ethnographic image more than an array of artistic imagery” (emphasis added).7 By separating “collective political practice” from “aesthetic practice” and claiming the “ethnographic image” instead of “an array of artistic imagery,” Wu embeds animated film production in political and cultural collectivities. In effect, national style is determined by national style. National style is very much a process, but the cultural production that emerged alongside national style discourse cannot be simply viewed within the frame of national style. The political discourse was of a period. Both Zhou Enlai and Te Wei acknowledge the Great Leap Forward slogan houjin baogu, emphasize the contemporary,

Meishu pian as national style 83 deemphasize the ancient.8 But Te Wei’s language brings out specific aspects of cultural production that relate to animated film: “But a greater harvest is found in the erasure of superstition, the development of a spirit of innovation surpassing outdated limits in the subject matter found in children’s stories [tonghua], folk tales [minjian gushi], and myths [shenhua], while at the same time shooting the modern subject matter of the Great Leap Forward, the everyday life of children, and political satire, producing new types, new forms, new styles, and new techniques of animated film” (Te Wei 1960: 50). Here Te Wei is linking this notion of innovation (chuangxin) to subject matter or content (ticai) and technique (jiqiao). Although Te Wei’s article here (authoritative in that he is at this time the head of the SAFS) reveals much about the period in which it was written, and this promotional article also shows aspects of animation discourse specific to the PRC state and China before 1949. Te Wei’s short piece is not only a promotional for animation within the PRC; he also addresses assumptions about animation: that animation did not reflect reality, that animation would have difficulty reflecting (fanying) the real life of struggle, and that it was difficult to point to the specificity of animation (meishu pian de tedian). According to Te Wei, the specific qualities of animation are “the emphasis, prominence, and exaggeration of inherent traits by commanding unlimited possibilities processed by images in the sense of sight to express any form of fantastic intent” (Te Wei 1960: 50). Te Wei’s use of the term “fantastic intent” (huanxiang de yitu) is important here, and he was not the only animator to employ terms linked to huanxiang (fantasy). Fantasy is integral to situating animation production in the PRC (and before the PRC) until the Cultural Revolution. Te Wei’s promotional is an apologia defending animated film from those who assume animated film to be limited to children’s stories, myths, and folktales. While his defense probably responded to particular politics of the time, Te Wei’s apology for animated film is part of a historic tendency. Notions of fantasy particularize animated film not only because of a relationship with the fantastic, but also because of a historical classification of what could be called genre cinema. When Republican government antisuperstition campaigns in the 1920s and 1930s focused on urban centers, their main target was cinema and what Zhiwei Xiao has called “superstitious films” (shenguai dianying). Western films like The Ten Commandments (1923) and Ben-Hur (1925) drew the attention of censors in China for religious content, and, while Chinese films were not explicitly religious, early martial arts cinema came under scrutiny for an emphasis on “guai (bizarre, exotic, and strange)” (Xiao 1999, especially 191–192). This concern seems to remain an aspect of film production even into the 1930s and ’40s and intrudes into the first feature-length animated film in China, the Wan brothers’ Princess Iron Fan, discussed at the end of the last chapter. The term “superstitious,” literally gods and monsters (shenguai), is used twice in the apology, a short text preface placed at the beginning of the film: “Journey to the West is often misunderstood, even viewed as a superstitious novel [shenguai xiaoshuo] . . . the present film has adapted this material for didactic purposes, superfluous elements have been eliminated, and [the film] involves no superstition [shenguai] . . . [the film] shows how the difficulties

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encountered in life can be overcome by resolve and collective action . . . ” (Wan 1941). Again, as in Te Wei’s promotional, the rhetoric is defensive, a sort of apologia for the animation the viewer is about to see. This type of legitimizing discourse is not specific to animation. The defense of animation through didactic legitimation recalls the discourse of legitimation used by compilers of zhiguai, stories of the strange, like Pu Songling (1640–1715), Ji Yun (1724–1805), and others who excused their own interest in the uncanny by claiming a moral purpose in compiling the tales.9 Although history separates these forms, a specific logic links them. The didactic legitimation of fantastic material represents an important although often ignored marker of “Chineseness.” Indeed, minzu xingshi (national form) and minzu fengge (national style) are themselves didactic markers used to frame cultural production. It would be a mistake to read animated film production as directly affected by government policy, but by that same token it would be absurd to deny the links between promotionals by party leaders and administrator/directors like Te Wei and the films. Te Wei’s discussion of national style and national form is a promotional for the SAFS within the context of the PRC in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Te Wei notes the same two films as Zhang Songlin, The Magic Brush and The Arrogant General, claiming that in both films “ . . . design, character movement, and background are boldly nourished by our national theater traditions and plastic arts with added development and creativity; in addition, every effort has been taken to endow the characters’ thoughts and feelings, customs, movements, and language with Chinese characteristic national style” (1960: 51). Zhang Songlin uses the term Zhongguo chuantong de yishu fengge (Chinese traditional artistic style) (1981: 176), while Te Wei employs wo guo chuantong xiqu (our national traditional theater) to allude to the use of national forms in The Magic Brush and The Arrogant General. Like the terms national form and national style, tradition is invoked to cover a whole array of discrete elements, aspects, and details that comprise the overall look and presentation of these two films. These two films, and a third, Wuya weishenme shi heide? (Why is the Crow Black?, 1955), are at the center of an important narrative of meishu pian, animated film, and the SAFS. Te Wei’s promotional is first and foremost a discussion of national style as a problem for animators. This is important because while there may have been a push by leaders like Zhou Enlai to increase cultural production exhibiting national style, just how or what this style was supposed to mean was by and large constructed in discourse about film by the practitioners themselves. As Te Wei notes in his discussion of the national style of The Magic Brush and The Arrogant General, “Of course it is easy to embody national form in ancient subject matter and characters. [Doing the same] with modern subject matter and modern characters is difficult, and with animals even more so. This is because foreign white rabbits and Chinese white rabbits are basically the same” (1960: 51). Te Wei is supplying his own objections here, but the premise is nevertheless significant for the use of gudai, for ancient, old fashioned, or to put it simply – not modern. The ancient and the traditional will be problematic aspects of national style right up until the eve of the Cultural Revolution, as well as partially determining the subject

Meishu pian as national style 85 matter and appearance, including character design, backgrounds, and the soundtracks, of SAFS productions. The call for national style was not limited to animated film. One of the most important contemporary articulations of national style in the early 1960s was “Xiang chuantong wenyi tansheng qiubao – dianying minzu xingshi wenti xuexi biji” (Exploring Traditional Literature and Art for Exemplary Works – notes on the problem of national cinematic form) by the playwright, film director, and theorist Xu Changlin (1916–2001). A long and detailed exposition of the problem of national style, Xu’s study was published in 1962 in a series in four issues of Dianying yishu (Film Art), a major cinema publication of the PRC launched in 1956. Xu references Zhou Enlai in the first part of his discussion, integrating the leader’s and his own discourse within the concept of national form: “Prime Minister Zhou pointed out that our works should ‘have a beginning and an end, and clearly indicate order.’ I understand this as an unambiguous standard for the national form of our cinema” (1962: No. 1, 12). The discrete features grouped under the umbrella term “national style” are clarified here because, like abstract signifiers, they are tied to the signifieds of literature and film, essentially an impressive array of premodern, modern, and contemporary works cited throughout Xu’s discussion. Xu’s articulations of national style are nuanced and detailed. Xu’s basic thesis is that film production needs to be explicitly linked to Chinese cultural production, in particular fictional and theatrical production. Right from the first page Xu cites a number of examples to construct a national style: Wenxin diaolong, the Six Dynasties (220–589) treatise on aesthetics, writing by the playwright Li Yu (1610– 1680), the Qing Dynasty novel Honglou meng (The Story of the Stone), the Ming Dynasty (1644 to 1912) novels Sanguo yanyi (Romance of the Three Kingdoms), Xiyou ji (Journey to the West), as well as plays from the theatrically rich Yuan Dynasty (1271–1368) and later. Xu also shows a familiarity with foreign film production. For example, in a discussion on “setting the scene” (ding changjing), Xu cites Eisenstein’s use of montage in Potemkin (1926) (1960: no. 2, 36). Later, in a discussion of voice-over, or off-camera voice, Xu notes the German film Das Wirtshaus im Spessart (The Spessart Inn, 1958) for use of “Brechtian technique,” as well as the Soviet Film Voskreseniye (Resurrection, 1960, 1962) (Xu 1962: no. 4: 32). Nevertheless, the vast majority of examples are taken from Chinese literature, film, and art. Xu’s “Exploring Traditional Literature and Art for Exemplary Works” is structured around a series of techniques from different forms of cultural production. Xu’s generalizations are an attempt to employ national form as a category to catalogue a large number of techniques from different types of cultural production. To do this, Xu must in a sense flatten the differences between types of cultural production in a comparative manner to reveal commonalities between different forms. To absorb different types of cultural production within the category of national form, Xu makes a distinction between technique and content and links different types of cultural production through analogy: “A play or a book or a film are similar, the most troubling thing for an artist is how to begin. The beginning does not only demand clarity, but beauty. Clearly, this is not merely a technical problem, but

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neither is it only a problem of content, and deserves a harmonious unity of technique and content . . . ” (1962: No. 1, 15). Xu is not concerned with structure per se; his concern is primarily with technique as it enriches the structure of the work. The title of the section is significant: “ ‘Luohui’ he ‘Juzhong,’ ” (“Luohui” and the finale.) According to Xu, luohui is a term from Pingtan, a form of oral storytelling and ballad singing from Suzhou, and functions like a synonym of juzhong, the finale or end of a theatrical work. Xu’s strategy is to amass a catalogue of examples for minzu xingshi (national form). Xu’s examples come from elite literary culture and as well as from folk artists. In Xu, in addition to national style and national form, minzu, national, is an adjective that modifies a number of terms linked to cultural production: national tradition (minzu chuantong), national cultural legacy (minzu wenhua yichan), national drama (minzu xiqu), national flavor (minzu wei), national psychological state (minzu de xinli zhuangtai), and national disposition (minzu xingge). Xu’s vast array of examples is part of his discussion of film and the references to theater and literature are meant to enrich national style in film. But the discourse on national style and national form in Xu is also a reiteration of an aesthetic terminology that reaches back before the revolutionary period. It may be a truism that Chinese cultural discourse has a very long and rich history. But contemporary Chinese contains the traces of many types of discourse, national and international. The politicized cultural discourse of Marxism-Leninism enters the Chinese language in the 1920s. But even before this, new technical vocabularies are introduced into Chinese from at least the late nineteenth century. Yan Fu’s translations from Western economics and sociological texts are one of the best-known examples. The May Fourth or New Cultural period in the first two decades of the twentieth century represented another introduction of foreign scientific and cultural terminology. National style and national form are defined through links to an array of types of cultural production, and discussion of this cultural production is delineated through terminology from theatrical and literary criticism. The terms introduced by Xu from theater are one example of this. Each introduction of foreign concepts, of foreign vocabulary used in domains as diverse as pure and applied sciences, social theory, or literature and art, initiated a response among Chinese intellectuals. New Culture supporters may have welcomed foreign, especially Western, scientific and cultural paradigms, but this was not the case for everyone. As a young man, the essayist and literary historian Zhou Zuoren (1885–1967) was associated with the May Fourth or New Culture movement but would later balance his support for foreign culture by cultivating a distinctly Chinese aesthetics. Susan Daruvala notes how Zhou’s discourse represented an alternative to the iconoclastic modernism of the May Fourth period. Zhou’s use of the aesthetics of quwei, the discourse of taste or flavor, and bense, the poetics of “true color” or integrity reinscribed ideas of locality and place in modern Chinese literature (2000: 138–168). As Daruvala notes, Zhou positions his construction of an alternative aesthetics and poetics in distinction to proponents of Guocui, the National Essence movement (2000: 236–244). But there were still overlaps between the author and the National Essence writers. The National Essence

Meishu pian as national style 87 movement, a response to foreign modernity, had been around since the late nineteenth century and continued until the 1930s. In effect, Zhou Zuoren and the National Essence thinkers articulated responses to foreign institutions of knowledge. Xu Changlin’s articulations of national form and national style emerge from different historical periods and political contexts. Nevertheless, in a similar manner as Zhou and the National Essence writers, Xu’s attempts to construct a cinema that embodied national style and national form are rooted in traditional literature, especially in links to the novel and theater. Xu’s recuperation of distinctly Chinese cultural production to construct a model for film in China represents an almost programmic taxonomic catalogue of writers, works, and vocabulary. Xu is not simply proposing a way of reading culture. The catalogue of examples is an example itself. Xu’s references to the Ming dynasty novel Shuihu zhuan (Outlaws of the Marsh), both as novelistic and theatrical forms, were not uncommon at this time. The problem of finding a national popular form suitable for adaptation to mass culture had been a concern since the 1920s when Marxist-Leninist debates on correct literary forms looked to making models of classic vernacular fiction. The actor Xu cites, Gai Jiaotian, was in two opera performance films, Gai Jiaotian de wutai yishu/The Stagecraft of Gai Jiaotian (Bai Chen, 1954) and Wu Song (Ying Yunwei, Yu Zhongying, 1963). The prevalence of Outlaws imagery in popular and mass culture represents a virtually autonomous series of figures that comprise the 108 anti-government rebel bandits during the Song dynasty. And these novelistic figures were simultaneously theatrical figures. Outlaws is one major example of content in Chinese cultural production. The films listed in Eberhard’s The Chinese Silver Screen are evidence that at least before the Cultural Revolution subject matter was not so easily differentiated in cinema produced in the PRC, Hong Kong, and Taiwan. Around the same time the Gai Jiaotian vehicle Wu Song was produced, the Shaw brothers produced a huangmei opera version of this same episode of Outlaws of the Marsh, Pan Jinlian/The Amorous Lotus Pan (Chow See Luk, 1964). The PRC version keeps to its Beijing opera roots more strictly. Xu’s article consistently links theatrical production to film and this is in keeping with the prominent place of theater during the revolutionary period. The “theatrical film” (xiju dianying), with direct links to national theatrical production, offers excellent examples of national style in cinema, especially considering the attention devoted to theatrical performance during this time. Chang-tai Hung details how, after 1949, the PRC state focused attention on the Soviet Union for models in architecture, museums, urban planning, monuments, sculpture, and painting but a shift occurs by the late 1950s. Chang notes Hua Junwu’s suggestion for “nationalizing” manhua, or cartoon production.10 The emphasis on what Chang refers to as “native colors” was a consistent aspect of cultural production in the PRC, where artists who often wove in high art and folk elements into their work “fell comfortably in place with the correct Maoist ‘mass line’ ” (2011: 178–179). In his early study of PRC film, Paul Clark marks 1956 and the years after that as the beginning of new trends in film production in the PRC:

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“These nine years saw moves towards sinification of film” (1987a: 57). Clark claims this meant the adoption of “national styles” for film production, with literary and especially operatic adaptations into film as key here (1987a: 67–68). Clark attributes the change at this time partly to “Hundred Flowers discourse,” the Party’s promotion of diversity in thought. Marina Galikowski notes the international element with the denunciation of Stalin by Khrushchev at the Twentieth Party Congress of the Soviet Union. This moment was very significant for Mao, who had ambivalent and yet strong ties to Stalin and the Soviet model up to that point. Pantsov and Levine describe this moment as a type of “emancipation”: “From now on it was no longer appropriate to talk about Stalinization, but rather the Maoization of the People’s Republic of China.”11 However, the national style debate cannot be laid solely at the feet of the Great Helmsman. The political line in the cultural sectors was blurry at times. Mao was not the only leader to make statements, and implementation involved considerable interpretation and articulation in print. National style discourse emerged in a number of types of cultural production as an alternative to one dominant ideology, and during the revolutionary period this ideology was Soviet. National style discourse can also be read in a post-colonial framework in which Mao’s pro-Soviet policies put the PRC in a subaltern position during the opening years, and this was especially true in the case of cultural production.12 As Chang-tai Hung notes: “Soviet influence . . . was not only evident in the thousands of Soviet advisers sent from Moscow but also in their influence on city planning, the expansion of Tiananmen square, national parades, art, and the construction of museums” (2011: 17–18). The discourse of national style and national form clearly emerges as part of the call to move away from Soviet influence. The colonial dynamic embedded in the Hegelian master-slave binary is uncomfortable for the master and the slave when the history of the slave remains in the purview of the master. Once the slave achieves some control over his or her own history (destiny), the slave has the awkward position of inhabiting the space vacated by the master. Notions of national style and form emerge from within a colonial framework that contrasts foreign to local culture.13 As cited above in Mao Zedong, ca. 1938 and 1942, and Zhou Enlai’s 1956 speeches on theater, clearly the problem of distinguishing Chinese culture, in constructing a type of “Chineseness,” was sufficiently important to be promoted in state policy. Nevertheless, in the PRC there was probably more than one single impetus for the theoretical articulations of national style. While pronouncements by the leaders may have represented a dominant or mainstream discourse (as well as the state having a practically bureaucratic control over the means and distribution of all types of cultural production), this did not negate the articulation of competing, even contradictory, discourses within dominant media. For example, Zhang Junxiang, the film director and theorist, strikes a pro-Soviet, opposing view of national style. Zhang makes the counter-case for acknowledging the influence of Soviet cinema on film production in the PRC. Zhang even criticizes those who “to avoid Soviet studies exaggeratedly denounce us for not paying attention to national style, denounce us for disrespecting our own cinema traditions. Of course,

Meishu pian as national style 89 this same bunch is completely unable to point out just what national style is, and what constitutes cinema traditions . . .” (Zhang 1957: 140). In the case of cinema, Zhang makes a valid point. These early articulations of national film form are significant to the history of film produced in the PRC. Contemporary Chinese film studies remains a mix of auteur profiles built on a foundation of national cinema studies, a framework that dominated Chinese film studies until the 1990s (Berry 2012). The auteur, the director as authorial producer linked to film production, does not really emerge in film criticism around the PRC until the foregrounding of directors from the Fifth Generation in the 1980s, and this period was no less important to film studies focused on Hong Kong and Taiwan in this regard (Sheldon Lu 1997: 7). Transnational readings implicitly begin from the perspective of a “national” reading in which one “national” addresses another “national.” During the revolutionary period, directors, writers, indeed the whole industry, were part of a vast expansive project of state administered cultural production. Cultural producers were in effect state employees. The state was developing into an enormous corporate body of functions and quota fulfillments, and the state was also a hyper-rationalized organizer of labor. National style represents at once a modernist “sinification” of the Marxist-Leninist dialectic and a postmodernist hypothetical institutionalization of cultural production. National style haunts film from the PRC and haunts animated film even more intensely. As I mentioned in the introduction, animated film in the PRC was linked to fine arts programs in higher education, which functioned like expert labor pools for the industry. I do not wish to deconstruct national style. This is not an attempt at erasure, an attack from a privileged position on a detrimental backwards-ness or status-quo conventionality. The loss of the referent, that beloved trope of modernism, is no less important to postmodernism. But the postmodern loss of referent is more of a vaguely enigmatic elegy on history, melancholia for the disappearance of history. In an ironically contradictory way, the loss of history associated with postmodernism is simultaneously a claim of postmodernism and one of the main political criticisms of postmodernism.14 National style is at once a loss and retrieval. In the case of animation, the story of the founding of the Shanghai Animation Film Studio is an example of a historical-origin narrative that positions the studio within national style debates of the 1950s and 1960s without actually engaging with those debates. The narrative that emerges is an example of national style discourse, an early example of film identified as national cinema, and an example of auteur production. The term transnational applied to Chinese films is relatively new, but the SAFS national style narrative of origin was clearly made in an international, in many ways a transnational, context. The SAFS was formed in 1957. This moment is narrated as an event in the emergence of Chinese national style of animation, part of an evolutionary historic development of the animation industry linked to productions of the 1950s. Zhang Songlin suggested the origin of national style animation in the PRC begins with two 1956 shorts, The Arrogant General and The Magic Brush, both produced at the animation section of the Shanghai Film Studio before the establishment of the

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SAFS. The Magic Brush and another early short produced at Shanghai Film, Why is the Crow Black?, were shown at the Venice Film festival in 1956. The international screenings of these films, especially the last film, have given animation produced in the PRC a somewhat awkward, yet significant, narrative of origin. While the contemporary effects of the screenings for this festival are difficult to gauge, one narrative around the 1956 Venice International Film Festival has become a part of official SAFS history. Two films were screened but Why is the Crow Black? is considered problematic: “An important historical reason for the emergence of the Chinese School can be found in the fact that international spectators mistakenly regarded the animated short [Why is the Crow Black?] as a Soviet Union film during the Venice International Film Festival in 1956. The assumption that the film had come from the Soviet and East European socialist countries politically depreciated all the creativity of the Chinese animators and consequentially led to negative critiques of all the works produced before the ‘Road to the Minzu Style’ ” (Wu 2009: 39–40). This moment is viewed as crucial to the origin of national style animation and of the establishment of the SAFS. However, despite the importance of the 1956 Venice International Film Festival to the history of national style animation and the SAFS, the events around the 1956 festival are only anecdotes. The narrative around the 1956 Venice Festival, in particular around the screening of Why is the Crow Black?, have left a type of wound, or at least the appearance of a wound, on the animated film industry in a transnational context. Why is the Crow Black? is part of a misreading (wudu) of Chinese cultural production narrative during the Cold War period that situates Chinese cultural production beside Soviet production, implicitly emphasizing this relationship negatively and presumably opening up the need to construct a national style to counter this problem. Moreover, this positioning is an aspect of official studio history linked directly to Te Wei who, as well as being a major animated film director, would become director of the SAFS. The incident at Venice is viewed within a continuity for Te Wei the artist, auteur filmmaker, and director of the SAFS.15 Why is the Crow Black? was the first color animation from China, but the evidence around the actual international reception of this film is unclear and primarily anecdotal. The official program of the Venice International Film Festival lists two films from China, accurately indicating place of origin and the directors, The Magic Brush and Why is the Crow Black?. Both films are listed under the Children’s Exhibition portion of the festival. According to a contemporary report, the 1956 Venice International Film Festival had set up a selection committee to screen entries from different countries. However, this was not the case for the Documentary and Children’s Film Exhibitions that preceded the main section, and 197 films were shown. Fourteen prizes were awarded to participants in the exhibition. A Czech film won the first prize for animation that year, while The Magic Brush won an award for Best Entertainment Film for Children 8–12.16 The misrecognition of Why is the Crow Black? reinscribes the modern loss of national identity through association to foreign culture. National style is a series of lost and found referents; of lost and thus reiterated discrete details; references

Meishu pian as national style 91 to classic literature, folk-tales, folk art, operatic melodies, a wide array of potential citations, of virtual referents. National style is a transnational trope of identity projected onto new mediums of cultural production during the revolutionary period. To find a moment of absolute origin for the promotion of national style is ill advised. The results of this 1950s policy included contradictory and paradoxical policies and discourses. Why is Why is the Crow Black? singled out in animation history? Very possibly something did happen at Venice, but there is no textual evidence for this. In a recent interview the director Yan Dingxian (1936–) noted that no one from the SAFS attended the Venice festival and news of the festival had been relayed in a letter: “[Why is the Crow Black] won an award, everyone was delighted” (Li Zhen 2012: 66). At least according to the database at Historical Archive of the Foundation for the Venice Biennale, the film that did win an award was The Magic Brush, which remains an important puppet animation from this period and a good example of Jin Xi’s able direction. Why is the Crow Black? certainly retains design elements from Te Wei’s earlier black-and-white talking-animal film Hao pengyou (Good Friend, 1954), especially in the bird designs and the anthropomorphic touches around the eyes (the voicing clearly uses some of the same actors). At the same time, Why is the Crow Black? shares a similar subject matter to an important early Soviet film, Chuzhoy golos (Someone Else’s Voice, 1949), a film about a magpie which returns from abroad arrogantly declaring the arrival of a new type of modern music, American jazz. Why is the Crow Black? avoids the foreign link, and the SAFS fable about an imaginary bird of pink, white, yellow and black who dances too close to a fire in the winter thus bursting into flame may have lost some of its fable-like qualities to the experiments with color. While the Soviet and Chinese films are sufficiently different from the point of view of style, both employ talking and singing birds to narrate a somewhat moral fable about arrogance. But even here the SAFS film seems to pile negative attributes onto the protagonist, so that not only is she (the voicing is female) narcissistic, she also refuses to admit she needs help when she is caught in the sudden arrival of winter without a nest. Not only is she haughty, but she is overly concerned with saving face. The release of The Arrogant General, the film attributed to the launching of the national style in animation, coincides with Zhou Enlai’s 1956 promotionals of opera as national style. Although it is still a Shanghai Film Studio production, in the literature and promotional material Te Wei’s twenty-minute short is considered to be the first truly national style animation of the SAFS. The national style reading of The Arrogant General glosses the film for those details that signal links to other types of cultural production. In the case of The Arrogant General, this means features of character design, costume, and background that resemble theater sets and costume. Thus, The Arrogant General, like the operas discussed by Zhou Enlai, could be considered a cel-animated “costume drama.” The opening scenes introduce a general returning from battle. The bright reds show an effective use of the bright poster paint colors of cel animation as well as suggesting vaguely premodern clothing styles and architecture. The main characters consist of opera

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characters, a general type and a clown type. The colors are loosely based on Beijing opera make-up, but they have an expressive simplicity in themselves. Te Wei claims he hung a slogan in the studio: “Knock on the door of theatrical style, explore the road to national style.”17 The movements of the characters in The Arrogant General were modeled on opera actors. The studio even invited opera teachers into the studio (Lent 2002). Bringing in art instructors for his animators and live subjects for study had been something that Disney began to do with Bambi (1942). There is an important difference here. Disney tacitly attempted to introduce “life studies” whereas the SAFS is instituting life studies of stylized movements from opera.18 The stylized opera movements are reminders of national style as an intertextual link to bona fide Chinese cultural production, an art that derives its model from another art form. This is clear from the gait of the general when he walks; his large steps and elbows thrust upwards resemble the movements of the general type from Beijing opera. The clown character, a sycophantic official in the general’s palace, has detailed hand movements that seem to be patterned closely after opera gestures, particularly in the way he gestures with his fan and pulls on the sleeves of his robe. Nevertheless, a reading of the film can hardly leave out the “naturalistic” characters not colored as if by opera make-up. The main narrative is indeed an illustration of linzhan moqiang, to sharpen the spear on the eve of battle. Thus a spider slowly weaves a web around the general’s quickly rusting spear and mice nest in his arrow quiver. By the second half of the film, drunken debauchery has feminized the general, whose haughty horse pulls him along in a carriage as the general fans himself and butterflies flutter around his face. The film will end with the general running frantically around his palace until he finally tries to escape through a hole in the wall. This predicament is emphasized by a shot from behind of the general’s buttocks and then a shot from the other side of the wall of the general’s frowning face framed by the spears that form an ‘X’ behind his head like a symbol of prohibition. But two scenes near the end of the film call into question the easy association with the national style imagery of opera. These scenes repeat the opening sequence, feats of strength and prowess in which the general tosses a cauldron weighing a few hundred pounds into the air, shoots a bell hanging from the corner of a rooftop, and then shoots a sparrow out of the sky (more of a mock-heroic gesture that foreshadows the decisive displays of archery that come later). Near the end of the film these opening scenes are repeated with a difference. The feminized general and his lackey come upon a man twirling a large dumbbell around his body. The general decides to lift an even larger dumbbell, but as he lifts the large dumbbell over his head he drops it on the ground and it rolls towards the panicking lackey whose foot gets crushed. The next scene repeats the opening feat of archery. This time the general and his lackey are fishing. Just as the general complains of boredom, a wild duck pierced by an arrow falls from the sky and the archer turns out to be a fisherman. The general begrudgingly praises the young fisherman and brags that he will shoot a goose out of the sky as a flock flies overhead. Not only does he not hit a goose, but three geese proceed to pass the arrow back and forth between

Meishu pian as national style 93 them until one arrow reverses direction to hit the boat the general and his lackey clown are in, causing the lackey to jump into the water in fear. The comedy of the scene is hardly original. But manhua artist Hua Junwu wrote the script (the same artist who would promote the massification and nationalization of print cartoons two years after The Arrogant General), and both these scenes cast doubt on a simple national style reading. Stephen Owen notes that archery was a trope for writing poetry, with goose hunting showing just a little less poetic skill than eagle hunting (Owen 2005). In The Arrogant General, goose hunting is juxtaposed to wild duck hunting, and the general is not even up to goose hunting. Te Wei’s general is unable to lift the dumbbell or hit the mark, and the irony reflects not only the protagonist but also the style of the medium. The two main protagonists of The Arrogant General colored like opera characters, the general and his lackey, are contrasted to the naturalistic characters, the strong man twirling the dumbbell and the fisherman who shoots the wild duck out of the sky. In addition, during the dumbbell scene, three children, two boys and a girl, are watching the failed contest between the strong man and the general. The children sit on a knoll, and branches trail like strings from a tree behind them. When the general drops the dumbbell and it rolls on the lackey’s foot there is a frontal shot of the children, who laugh, clapping, and fall backwards off the knoll and, so it seems, off the strings that seem to connect them to the tree. In other words, for a brief moment the children appear as marionettes hanging from the strings.19 The scene is in a sense metaphorical. Laughter frees the children. The two protagonists, the arrogant general and his sycophantic lackey, form a pair of characters marked as opera figures by their coloring. However, the other characters in the film are “naturalistic,” depicted without the opera make-up, unmarked, if you will. The lackey was designed to resemble an opera clown (chou), a devious character with a white patch painted over his nose and extending under his eyes. But in a sense both the general, whose design falls somewhere between a military male (wusheng) and a military painted face character (wujing) of opera, and his clown lackey are the objects of ridicule. In other words, the two protagonists who embody national style in their actions and overall design because they are referencing opera are the objects of ridicule for embodying this very conceit. In The Arrogant General, national style is a referent of exaggeration, of caricature. And what about the film itself? A short like The Arrogant General appears to be a satire, but a satire of what? Released in 1956, the resonance must have been multifold. The founding of the PRC in 1949 also represented the resolution of civil war, and the Korean War armistice had just been declared two years before the film was released. The mayor of Shanghai was Vice-Premier Chen Yi (1901–1972), also a marshal in the People’s Liberation Army. The Arrogant General may just be a social satire about preparedness. Whatever the case may be, the “national style” elements in The Arrogant General are not amenable to a simple reading as a promotion of national style. Nevertheless, The Arrogant General is one of the few animated films to be even mentioned in The People’s Daily where, in 1967, the film is denounced as one of a short list of “reactionary and pornographic operas

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all brought on stage as ‘refined representative theatrical pieces’ by a small faction of anti-revolutionary revisionists.”20 Te Wei’s Cultural Revolution experience has been narrated in print (Ehrlich and Jin 2001) and in Quiquemelle’s film The Lost Magic of the Shanghai Art Studios (2007). Te Wei was, like many at this time, basically a state employee. Despite the outcome during the Cultural Revolution, up until 1964 or so the SAFS production was firmly in line with state directives and promotionals. I am not claiming that SAFS producers and directors simply carried out orders from the government, but clearly they attempted to articulate responses to the suggestions by the leaders. Te Wei’s The Arrogant General fits too neatly into calls for national style in performance and film to be read as some kind of spontaneous production designed for a market (indeed, the People’s Daily denunciation implicitly links the film to national style). Any attempts to read national style in animation from the SAFS deserves historicization as part of the period, as one type of cultural production among many that were responding to state discourses. Two of the most endearing “classics” of the SAFS, both directed by Te Wei, may be read in the same context: Xiao kedou zhao mama (Where is Mama?, 1960), and Mudi (The Oxherd’s Flute, 1963) are perhaps the most well-known “national style” animations produced at the SAFS. They are also two of the most explicitly “fine arts” films the studio produced; their conceit is nothing less than the animation of traditional water-color paintings. These productions make perfect sense. Why wouldn’t the SAFS animate watercolors by two major contemporary painters? The choice seems almost obvious. Once again the impetus for Where is Mama? emerges from an anecdote. The story goes that during an exhibition of art from SAFS films, the mayor of Shanghai, Chen Yi, suggested it would be a good idea to attempt to animate the paintings of Qi Baishi (1864–1957) (Zhang Songlin 1982: 177; Ehrlich and Jin 2001: 10). An early production is described in The People’s Daily in national style language: “From the perspective of the nationalization and massification of cinema, the workers in animated film are assiduous researchers. [Their] spirit of courage in technological innovation is invaluable. In the midst of the technological innovation movement, animated film workers have successfully combined the techniques of our national traditional painting and the methods of animation to create ink-brush painting animation, a new form of animation that displays rich national characteristics. When we see the famous guohua artist Qi Baishi’s frog, crab, chicks, and grasshoppers so lively they seem to spring to life, acting out their life’s story. A truly praiseworthy [production]!”21 Gexin, technological innovation, was a term used from the middle of the 1950s until the early 1960s. The term guohua stands for national art, or simply “Chinese painting.” The author in The People’s Daily does not say what film he is referring to, but it is probably an experimental short the studio had completed around the same time as Where is Mama? In keeping with the links between fine arts and SAFS animated film, Wu Weihua suggests that the film Where is Mama? is a reading of Qi’s painting Washeng shili chu shanquan (The Sound of Frogs Issues Forth from the Mountain Spring for Ten Miles Around), a bright, swirling mountain stream rushing between dark stones on either side and punctuated with a few tadpoles. The painting is over four feet long

Meishu pian as national style 95 and just over a foot wide. Painted in 1951, the work was supposed to be inspired by a line from a volume of poetry picked randomly from Qi’s bookshelf by the author Lao She (1899–1966) (Su 2011). The meaning of the painting is not explicit. However, the expression “washeng,” literally the sound of small frogs or tadpoles, is a euphemism for licentiousness, and hardly a suitable subject matter for an animated film aimed at children. The narrative for the film, and more importantly the narrated voice-over, is based on a children’s book: Xiao kedou zhao mama, literally “The Little Tadpoles Look for Mommy.”22 Where is Mama? opens with a quick biology lesson about hatching tadpoles who get separated from their frog mother. The film consists of scenes of the tadpoles attempting to identify their mother as they encounter chicks and a hen, shrimp, goldfish, a crab, turtles, and a catfish. The tadpoles mistake several creatures for their mother until the real mother is finally found because she matches the rubric of large eyes, a white belly, and four legs. Where is Mama? uses a female actor’s voice-over with a string orchestral accompaniment. The voice-over is precious, even grating, like an adult talking in a deliberately cute voice to children. The plot, a series of misrecognitions, is a metaphor for national style. Xiaobing Tang’s discussion of “misrecognition” in Lu Xun (1881–1936), one of the major writers and thinkers of modern Chinese literature, is relevant to my discussion. Tang notes “misrecognition” as a significant trope in the story “Guxiang,” (My Native Land) “a pradigmatic narrative in modern Chinese literature, namely, the recognition of landscape . . . ” which nevertheless “has to overcome an initial estrangement or misrecognition” (2000: 76). Misrecognition leads to, or results in, recognition. Tang relates this experience to Jacques Lacan’s concept of the mirror stage. Lacan refers to the mirror stage as an event when an infant recognizes her/himself in the mirror; even though the infant may be unable to support her/himself as yet the infant “nevertheless overcomes, in a flutter of jubilant activity, the obstruction and, fixing [her/his] attitude in a slightly leaning-forward position, in order to hold it in [her/his] gaze brings back an instantaneous aspect of the image.”23 I do not want to project the problem of the subject onto the nation. Nevertheless, the recognition of the mother in Where is Mama? is clearly both a problem for the mother and for the tadpoles who, in the end, cannot fathom why the mother looks different than they do. The children’s picture story contains assumptions that link identity to essential anatomical features that differentiate “mother” visually, a good choice for animation.24 Moreover, the film version builds upon these problems in the context of cultural production to integrate difference and identity in rather telling ways. In the wake of the anecdotal international misrecognition of an SAFS film as Soviet and the national style promotion by the state of cultural production, the producers of Where is Mama? mark the film as “Chinese” by employing the visual style of a modern master, Qi Baishi, thus branding the film for the national and international spectator. Attached to a parable for children, the trope of (mis) recognition is made to appear charmingly rational, reductive, and even simplistic. In the context of twentieth-century Chinese fine arts historiography, Where is Mama? represents a selective valuation of modernist national art. The choice of

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Qi Baishi as a design model for an animated film occurred in an art sector in flux. That the film is considered a “classic” (dianxing) does not make this choice unproblematic. Where is Mama? was followed with another “ink-brush” animated film in 1963, The Oxherd’s Flute. This time the SAFS claimed to be appropriating the style of Li Keran (1907–1989). Qi Baishi was already a major painter by the 1920s, but Li Keran was a much younger painter who came of age in New China. Where is Mama? and The Oxherd’s Flute are both explicitly linked to guohua, traditional brush painting. Their approaches are quite different, but they share a number of themes. The Oxherd’s Flute uses a warm palette of browns and greens, earthy colors like Li Keran’s landscapes. The characters, the boy playing a flute and riding an ox, were a common theme for the artist, with links to Taoism and Buddhism. The Oxherd’s Flute is the story of a young boy and his ox. The boy falls asleep on a tree, and his animal leaves him but returns as he plays the flute. But this turns out to be a dream, as the boy reawakens to be reunited with his animal. There are no voices, only the lowing of the ox, and the soundtrack is orchestral this time with a string ensemble dominated by the melodic lines of a flute, which can be shrill at times. Both films are linked in their respective visual styles to a fine arts conceit in their appropriated design. Moreover, both films are linked by the theme of abandonment. In both cases the child protagonists are separated from and reunited with the objects of their desire in the end.25 These SAFS productions are regarded as unambiguous examples of national style. Perhaps the mayor of Shanghai, Chen Yi, had suggested animating the paintings of Qi Baishi. Or perhaps at least some members of the government were supportive. At the very least, evidence supports endorsement by editors of The People’s Daily. Sometimes referred to as guohua, national painting, or Zhongguo hua, Chinese painting, ink-brush painting has a long history in China, but as Lü Peng notes, these terms would only be used in the first two decades of the twentieth century to distinguish “Chinese painting” from Japanese and Western painting (Lü 2010a: 136–137). The assertion of national style, in this case national painting as a point of reference for animated film, also looks back to the early twentieth century and the construction of a singularly national form, a “Chinese” style of painting. The neologism “Chinese painting” is coined as a descriptive term for painting and also a whole array of practices, of “ ‘national-painting classes,’ ‘nationalpainting programs,’ and ‘national-painting departments’ ” within newly established fine arts departments and educational establishments (Lü Peng 2010a: 136). Republican-era fine arts departments even offered Guocui hua, national essence painting. Establishing “Chinese” painting at the beginning of the twentieth century was one facet of a retrenchment in Chinese culture in a number of sectors. Chinese intellectuals and educators responded to the introduction of Western and Japanese institutions by articulating local culture in structured ways, from adopting historical discourse and methodology that structured historic narrative to systematizing educational institutions. In literary thought, Chinese literary criticism was modernized through comparison with foreign methodologies. The formation of the

Meishu pian as national style 97 modern literary canon was one salient example of this (Liu 1995: 183–238). The rise of martial arts as a form of physical education was another “national essence” response to foreign education institutions, this time in physical education (Brownell 1995: 34–64). Thus national style and national painting were historical responses to foreign culture and foreign institutions. However, the appropriation of guohua as a reference point for design in animation during the revolutionary period was not unproblematic. As Michael Sullivan points out, the endorsement of guohua, of “Chinese” or national painting, by the state in the 1950s represented a “controlled revival”: “One solution to the problem of how to make guohua relevant in a revolutionary society was to stress the symbolic meaning of traditional motifs.” Qi Baishi and flower painter Chen Zhifo (1895–1962) painted doves for the World Peace Council. Sullivan also notes that some traditional themes, colors, and symbols could be adapted for political readings: “traditional themes symbolic of spring’s awakening, such as red plum blossoms against the snow, or of strength and endurance, such as great gnarled pine trees.” Of course, the color red was also welcome (Sullivan 1996: 139). But concepts and practices related to realism like painting from nature (xiesheng) were supposed to be favored over the allusion to rich traditional painting that acknowledged past masters and their styles as models (Sullivan 140–143; Lü 2010a: 551–552). By importing the medium of guohua through reference to specific artists as design models for cel animation, the animators of SAFS were fulfilling their eponymous mandate as producers of meishu pian, fine arts (animated) film. They were referencing fine art media in the medium of animated film. And they were certainly not looking to realism as a discourse for animation. Where is Mama? and The Oxherd’s Flute are considered to be SAFS classics. The colors and design of these films reference the works of Qi Baishi and Li Keran, respectively. One of the most salient features of both films is the way the backgrounds approximate the empty space of Chinese ink-brush painting, a significant marker of national style. In his discussion of theatrical film in the context of national style, Xu Changlin introduces guohua discourse that speaks to precisely this specific visual effect: “Our nation’s art theory has this to say: ‘Treat white as black’ (jibai yiwei hei). Painting resides where black ink is emphasized, painting also resides in the white spaces. Painting is movement and rest. Art in itself must distinguish between firm delicacy, density, empty actuality, and ingathering dispersal . . .” (Xu 1962: No. 5, 38). These SAFS productions are in good company. Nevertheless, the formal, aesthetic, philosophical language of guohua discourse is complex and often opaque. Lü Peng notes that guohua has a checkered history in the twentieth century. When Chinese painting starts to be termed as such at the beginning of the twentieth century, the work of the painters was already being appropriated for nationalistic and political purposes by the state. Guohua comprises a category of painting within the realm of fine arts in China from the early decades of the twentieth century, and this becomes only more evident after 1949 when guohua as a medium is juxtaposed to realist oil paintings and artwork reproduced in print (and in the early 1950s based on Soviet realism). Just as important

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was the language, the discourse of guohua. As Lü Peng notes, even in contemporary art the use of guohua discourse can be abused like any other type of fashionable theoretical language.26 The transfer of one medium to another, in this case the ink-brush on paper painting into animated film, undoubtedly produced beautiful works of animation. But how can film, a form that occurs within a time frame, be a simple interpretation of guohua? Of course, the visual aspects of animation are important, but the narrative demands of film cannot be satisfied solely by a particular visual style. A good example of “national style” in Western animation is Disney’s Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, a film that referenced a “Germanic” style that looked back to the nineteenth-century illustrations of the Brothers Grimm (Leslie 2002: 130–133). But the visual design of the background and figures contribute to the narrative, an adaptation of the Brothers Grimm story. The same could be said of Uproar in Heaven in which visual design accompanies the adaptation of episodes from Journey to the West. With these early ink-brush films directed by Te Wei, the visual design references paintings which may or may not be amenable to narrative in film. In a film like La Merle (The Blackbird, 1958), Scottish-Canadian animator Norman McLaren (1914–1987) worked this problem out by linking the animation to the structure of music. Where is Mama? employs a visual design after Qi Baishi, but derives its narrative from a children’s story. Where is Mama? was preceded the same year by around five and a half minutes of experimental clips also in the manner of Qi Baishi. Here the limits of Qi Baishiinspired guohua narrative are especially evident. The production has no official title, but is prefaced by a short text titled Shuimo donghua pian (Ink-brush animated film): “Ink-brush painting is one of our nation’s superb traditional forms of art.”27 The scenes, a series of shorts, are alternately accompanied by soundtracks of guqin (a type of plucked zither), guqin and flute, and pipa, a four-stringed plucked and strummed instrument. The first clip opens with a shot of a frog on a lily pad, a plucked guqin is interspersed with frog croaks, and then the shot of a dragonfly alighting on a tall lotus fruit. A shot of tadpoles is interrupted as the frog playfully swims through them, hands waving as if playfully scaring the tadpoles that disperse quickly in all directions. Next, the same frog plays with two smaller frogs until its leg is caught in a blade of grass and must be rescued by a crab that snips the grass blade with a claw (a similar scene occurs in Where is Mama?). In the next clip, accompanied by guqin and flute, fish play with a flower petal and are joined by a pair of shrimp. All engage in a sort of dance until the shadows of ducks alight on the water and the fish and shrimp swim quickly away as if threatened. Next, a pair of bees flies in circles and descends as the camera pans down a vine until it reaches the ground and settles on a pair of chicks and what looks like an overturned woven basket. A pipa keeps up a jaunty rhythm in this clip. The chicks first look up and attempt to catch the bees, tumbling over each other until they lose interest and begin scratching and pecking at the ground. Then a worm snakes along the white background. The chicks fight for the worm, each pulling an end. But the chicks lose interest and tumble over each other, the bees having returned during the melee. The scene evokes a type of playful

Meishu pian as national style 99 roughhousing; conflict here is softened, like a sibling rivalry. But the worm disappears into the white and the chicks briefly peck and scratch at the ground until a bee flies by and the chicks turn towards the bee. Then the camera follows the flight of the bee as it hovers briefly over a flower as a grasshopper hops onto the flower and the chicks take off after the grasshopper. The clips function like a series of animated ink-brush scenes that create links between several types of animals, insects and plants. The tumbling, rolling chicks, also painted in the manner of Qi Baishi, are also a reminder of the importance of volume in cel animation. As they tussle for the worm, one of the chicks, flawlessly layered animation-cel-brush-strokes and lines, climbs atop the other, reaches for a bee and tumbles backwards, landing on the chick on the bottom. The top chick bounces slightly on the bottom chick. Like two contracting balls, the chicks produce a subtle moment of “squash and stretch” that reveals volume of the protagonists in a subtly exaggerated manner, not caricature but a noticeable materiality, stylized into form and volume that approaches tactility. Something you can squeeze between your fingers. However, when the chicks run for a grasshopper, the shapes and truncated limbs of the chicks become no more than round jerky bodies with flicking legs, a roll of hanging flowers as a background, a blank swath between the implicit ground of the running chicks and the brushstrokes of the hanging flowers. These vignettes of stylized ink-brush scenes are experiments with the medium of painting transposed into animated film. But if these short clips are versions of guohua, they are presented as a technical, even technological, accomplishment in the prefatory text: “We looked forward to shooting an ink-brush animated film for a long time. In the midst of the present technological movement, we have had to overcome all sorts of technical difficulties before finally attaining success, breaking new ground in the effort to bring the art of guohua to the silver screen” (SAFS 1960). The appropriation of guohua by meishu dianying in these “shiyan de pianduan” (experimental shorts) represents a technical as much as an artistic mediation, with implications for painting and animated film. First of all, in transposing the brushstroke to the mass-produced medium of painted animation cels, the brushstroke must be depersonalized, or at least deindividualized. I do not want to exaggerate this process. After all, Chinese artists had been passing their work to plate engravers for centuries. Nevertheless, in this case the style, movement, and personality of the painter named Qi Baishi is represented by the animated simulacra of style, movement, and personality.28 Animation abstracts form and movement in a similar manner as painting in China. The animators must break up objects into simple elements, repeating strokes, shapes, positions of figures, with a model sheet for reference. Chinese painters use reference books, like the Jiezi huazhuan (Mustard Seed Garden Manual of Painting), with hundreds of examples of model images and brushwork for painting. Lothar Ledderose refers to this aspect of Chinese art as “modular” (2000: 187–213). But modularity cannot completely explain the distinct linkage between written language and a painting that is simultaneously literary, intertextual, and abstract. Thus one hybrid spawns another in filmic painting, a series of short camera pans or film

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clips of animated typical subjects from traditional panting. When director Cai Chusheng (1906–1968) reviews these shorts in The People’s Daily, he underlines the link to painting and naturalness: “When we see the famous guohua artist Qi Baishi’s frog, crab, chicks, and grasshoppers so lively they seem to spring to life, acting out their life’s story” (Cai 1960). But “ban yanzhe tamen de shenghuo gushi, “acting out [one’s] life story,” is a symbolic performance, a deliberate work of artifice for an audience. The two chicks playfully tumbling like siblings trap the grasshopper under what looks to be a pumpkin flower. The chicks snuggle up against each other as if posing in front of the flower. Smiling, they nuzzle beaks and lean in. The faces here, dashes angled upwards to imply smiles, are an ink-brush version of the closing shot from The Good Friend, a short from 1954 about a young duck left by his mother in the care of a hen mother in a barnyard full of chickens. But in the “ink-brush animation” experimental clips the animals are “naturalized” compared to anthropomorphized, three-dimensional (spherical), talking fowl of The Good Friend. Nevertheless, the nuzzling chicks in the experimental short reprise the cuddling duck and chick in the final scene of The Good Friend. The ink-brush animated film references fine art in design, but the animators mark the closing shot as an intertextual, visual refrain, an identical pose from another animated film from the same studio. In both films the snuggling birds are framed like a studio logo of sorts, a somewhat saccharine tribute to cooperation, cleverness, and harmony. Anthropomorphic cuteness is a feature of animation often linked to Disney in American culture, but anthropomorphic cuteness is hardly an American invention.29 This framed pose of cutely smiling, nuzzling chicks goes beyond the fine arts source texts to represent animation as an art form that performs for the spectator. Animals in Qi Baishi never smile (at least not overtly) and they certainly do not cuddle. The cute effect consists of a deliberate anthropomorphism that inserts personality into an animal to appeal to the audience. In a sense, such a deliberate playing to the audience is visual apostrophe. The anthropomorphic trick supplements narrative structure in the experimental shorts, making a frog look playful, fish and shrimp dance in choreography, and clever chicks strike preciously affectionate poses. In Where is Mama? the female voice-over functions in a similar manner, personalizing the narrative, especially the protagonists, the tadpoles, which are after all tiny black ovals with flicking tails. But the final misrecognition of the catfish as mother in Where is Mama? goes beyond anthropomorphism. As the narrator describes the scene, the tadpoles crowd around a sleeping catfish that actually appears to be breathing. The tadpoles first circle the sleeping grey form of the catfish which is punctuated with two black whiskers above the mouth. The tadpoles circle the catfish and then swim in to surround the fish, three above with the rest wriggling along the bottom of the fish. The catfish is the last misrecognition before the tadpoles are finally reunited with their hao mama, their correct mother “with large eyes, a white belly and no less and no more than four legs.” This last misrecognition transforms the sleeping catfish into a mother nursing her young. Personality in animation is the investment of particularized appearance and movement to distinguish a figure or character. The tadpoles

Meishu pian as national style 101 are not individualized except as a type of animal in the film, but here the tadpoles and the catfish are not so much anthropomorphized but “mammalized.” For a few seconds, the tadpoles look like young mammals nursing at the misrecognized catfish mother. The second ink-brush film, The Oxherd’s Flute, is in many ways a much more successful film than the experimental shorts or Where is Mama? The SAFS appropriation of Li Keran uses no words; the narrative is told with images and music, a melodic flute motif that emphasizes certain moments. The Oxherd’s Flute focuses mainly on the dream of the young oxherd who searches for his ox. The film contains images of extraordinary beauty, including landscapes and several types of animals including birds, deer, and other oxen. The narrative also includes other human figures, two boys who might be herding a large number of oxen, a fisherman, and women transporting bundles of twigs. The choice of guohua as a model for animation goes beyond function as an exemplary model of national style. As well as paintings of animals and landscapes, guohua included iconography from literature and religion. Like other guohua artists at the time, Li Keran produced paintings that included contemporary themes (including illustrating lines of poems by Mao) and landscapes (in China and in Germany where he traveled in 1957). But as a guohua painter his vocabulary also included traditional themes like drunken monks and poets and the demon-queller Zhong Kui. Li Keran was known for his landscapes and his figure paintings and had painted many paintings of oxherds consisting of a young man, or a couple of young men, and their oxen. Sometimes the young men play a flute. The oxherd genre has roots in the Song dynasty (960–1279), especially during the late Song around the eleventh century, representing what Scarlett Ju-Yu Jang calls an “ideal pastoral world for scholarofficials” (1992: 66). The image of the ox also had Taoist and Buddhist connotations.30 Where is Mama? and The Oxherd’s Flute echo the theme of abandonment, the tadpoles searching for their mother and the oxherd for his ox. But the oxherd’s story is more complex and layered and this is reflected in the animation technique. He first falls asleep, which implicitly makes a large portion of the film narrative a dream. The dream sequence begins with a close-up shot of the young oxherd lounging on a tree branch as his eyes slowly droop closed, then a medium shot of his body cradled by the branch, and finally a multiplane shot that uses bokeh, an out-of-focus image produced by a film or photographic camera. As foregrounded leaves fall, the oxherd dissolves into an out-of-focus blur and disappears. The falling leaves gradually disappear as two leaves spin, first one leaf turning into a yellow butterfly and then the other. The butterflies fly in circles briefly and disappear, leaving an almost blank background and suddenly in a medium shot of the oxherd sleeping on the tree branch, a ghostly version of the oxherd stands up from the sleeping form. The effect here possibly alludes to the Taoist philosopher Zhuangzi’s dream of the butterfly.31 But the oxherd’s dream-like search for his ox is interspersed with landscapes and encounters. The Oxherd’s Flute reads well as an adaptation of the “Ten Oxherding Pictures” (Xunniu shitu), a series of ten allegorical pictures representing the stages of enlightenment in Chan Buddhism. By bracketing the narrative as a dream from which the oxherd must awaken, The

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Oxherd’s Flute metaphorically narrates enlightenment as awakening from a dream, a metaphor for transitory existence. The Oxherd’s Flute is one of the best examples of animated film that referenced guohua by the SAFS. The allusive, layered narrative is matched by the musical motif of the soundtrack and the richly subtle visuals. The film is an excellent example of pre-Cultural Revolution animation at the SAFS, a “Golden Age” for Chinese animation. According to the SAFS cinematographer Duan Xiaoxuan (1934–), the crew traveled to Dinghu Mountain in Guandong province for two months to conduct landscape studies for the film. The SAFS was fulfilling one of the rigors of new art, the practice of drawing from life. The basic visual design of The Oxherd’s Flute was based on a recognized artist, but the genre of painting reaches into literati art history and embraces ideologies that were anathema to the promotion of realism at the time. The oxherd rides the ox, and when he searches for the ox he meets other oxherds, a fisherman, and two women carrying bundles of twigs over their shoulders who point the way to the ox. Not surprisingly, when Te Wei and the studio were criticized for the film during the Cultural Revolution, such allusiveness appears to have completely escaped the ideological criticism of their critics.32 Where is Mama? and The Oxherd’s Flute were two important productions among a wide variety of types of animation produced at the SAFS. While national style discourse played a central role in the emergence of SAFS production, other types of discourse were also key in defining the medium. The fantastic emerged as a short-lived alternative to the political tendencies of cultural production and criticism in the early 1960s. This is the topic of my next chapter.

Notes 1 The writing and directing of the film are credited to Jin Xi (1919–1997) and the print version is attributed to children’s literature author Hong Xuntao (1928–2001). See “Shenbi Ma Liang” (The Magic Brush of Ma Liang) in Shanghai jiaoyu chubanshe (eds.) 1979: 381–389. The bibliographical note indicates the story was republished from a 1956 edition (389). 2 Berry discusses Mao’s article “Oppose the party ‘eight-legged essay’,” noting that [Mao] called for a return to “race forms” (1992: 48). See Mao 1965, Vol. 3: 67; Mao 1991, Vol. 3: 844. Also see “Zhongguo gongchandang zai minzu zhanzheng de diwei” (“The Role of the Chinese Communist Party in the National War”) in Mao 1965, Vol. 2: 209 for the quote and Mao 1991, Vol. 2: 534 for the Chinese. 3 See Berry (1992: 47). Paul Clark (1987a) describes the “sinification of film.” 4 See Zhou 1979: 12. Berry discusses this talk in 1992: 50–51. 5 See Zhou 1980: 6 & 4. This republication of these two speeches from 1956 is divided into two parts corresponding to one speech given on April 19 and one on May 27. 6 See Teo 2009: 24–30. Also see Dai Jinhua 2005, cited in Teo 2009: 5–6 7 See Wu 2009: 51–52, note 4. Also see Wu 2006, 12. These comments are part of a discussion of Berry 1992, Yingjin Zhang 1997, and Hu 2003. 8 Zhou 1979: 12; Te Wei 1960: 50. Chang-tai Hung notes the use made of this important phrase in the historian Fan Wenlan (2011: 243). 9 See Judith Zeitlin’s discussion of “legitimating the strange” in Pu Songling (1993: 15–25). Also see Tak-hung Leo Chan’s discussion of Ji Yun (1998: 17–30).

Meishu pian as national style 103 10 See Hua Junwu 1958, cited in Chang 2011: 179. Chang uses the word “sinification.” Hua is clearly referring to minzu xingshi and minzu fenge. 11 See Pantsov and Levine 2012: 448. 12 There has been suggestion that Stalin’s nickname for Mao was “cave Marxist” (Pantsov and Levine 2012: 3). Of course, this seems to be coming from the mouth of Khrushchev. 13 Shu-mei Shih refers to an “inferiority complex” among Chinese intellectuals in earlytwentieth-century China, while claiming that especially in the treaty ports the multiplicity of colonial powers led to a “fragmentation and multiplicity” of response to colonialism. Thus Chinese subjects experienced “semi-colonial culture” rather than being “thoroughly colonized.” See Fanon 1991: 8–60, cited in Shih 2001: 24, note 65. The Soviet period narrowed the cultural focus considerably. 14 Henri Lefebvre notes “around the years 1905–10 the referentials broke down one after another,” linking modern changes in language to urbanization and the emergence of the “metalanguage” (1971: 110–142). Jean Baudrillard enunciates the postmodern simulacra: “History is our lost referential, that is to say our myth” (1994: 43). Fredric Jameson critiques a loss of historical referent in postmodernism, or at least the displacement of history in poststructuralist discourses (1991: 93–94). 15 Te Wei discusses this event in an interview segment in the film “Te Wei yu Zhongguo shuimo donghua” (Te Wei and Chinese Ink-Brush Animation in Shanghai Animation Film Studio, 2004). The unattributed interview reflects on the confusion at the Venice Film Festival: “ . . . [Why is the Crow Black?] won an award but sadly the judges mistook the film for a Soviet production.” Zhou Haiyan (2009:107) reproduces phrases about the Venice festival misunderstanding from the interview almost verbatim. Li Baochuan and Su Xiaping repeat this story in the section on Te Wei (Li and Su 2012: 39 in particular). 16 See Roos 1957. In the official program for the Venice Biennale in the VIIIth Annual Children’s Film Festival, two films are included under “China” – Why is the Crow Black? and The Magic Brush (see La Biennale di Venezia, 1956: no pages). For a full list of participants and winners see ASACdati, the database for the Archivio Storico delle Arti Contemporanee della Fondazione La Biennale di Venezia (The Historical Archive of Contemporary Art of the Foundation for the Venice Biennale). Thanks to my colleague Professor Deborah Amberson for drawing my attention to this database. 17 Te Wei cites this slogan in an interview in Haikuo tiankong: Zhongguo donghua dianying bashinian (As Far as the Eye can See: 80 years of Chinese animation). 18 See Klein 1993: 48–52. Also see The Making of Bambi: a Prince is Born (1994, Walt Disney Studios). Leslie notes that Bambi animator Mark Davis “transposed the shape of a baby’s head to his drawings of the fawn . . . This is totemism. Bambi enacts a return to pure totemism” (2002: 235). 19 I thank one of my students, Arlie Slonim, for drawing my attention to this scene. 20 See “Zucheng haohao dandangde piping dajun zhidao wenyi hei xian zonghui – ben bao jizhe pingshu Shanghai wenyi zhanxian geming da piping xingshi,” 1967. 21 Cai Chusheng 1960. Some of the terminology is word for word from the text that prefaces the experimental shorts that I discuss below. 22 See Fang and Zhen 1959; also see Shanghai meishu dianying zhipianchang (eds.) 1981: 85–90. 23 See Lacan 1977: 1–2. Tang discusses this concept in 2000: 85, notes 19 and 20. Also see Macdonald 2007: 185. 24 Not an uncommon trope for a children’s book. Also see Are You My Mother? (Eastman 1960). 25 I thank a student of mine, Alexander Wardell, who suggested the “abandonment” motif after a screening of The Oxherd’s Flute. 26 See “Zhongguo hua wenti – yong bi mo zhi yan wancheng de huihua zhi jixu cunzai de jichu jiujing shi shenme?” (Problems in Chinese painting – what exactly remains of the

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27 28 29 30 31

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foundations of art produced with ink-brush paper and stone?) in Lü Peng 2010b: 288–308. This series of experimental shorts is prefaced by a short text entitled “Ink-brush animated film” (SAFS, 1960). No production personnel are mentioned. The clips are included in disc 2 of Chinese Classic Animation Shanghai Animation Film Studio, 2004. Although in the Qi Baishi style, it would be problematic to say the films are based on an “original” Qi Baishi. On anthropomorphized kawaii in Japanese anime, see Occhi 2012; on anthropomorphic cuteness in Disney see Watts 1995. See Richard and Catherine Barnhart, “Images of Children in Song Painting and Poetry,” in Wicks (ed.) 2002: 52–54. “Once I, Zhuang Zhou, dreamed I was a butterfly and was happy as a butterfly. I was conscious that I was quite pleased with myself. But I did not know that I was Zhou. Suddenly I awoke, and there I was, visibly Zhou. I do not know whether it was Zhou dreaming that he was a butterfly or the butterfly dreaming that it was Zhou . . . ” See Chan 1963: 190, with changes. Te Wei claims that during the Cultural Revolution animators of The Oxherd’s Flute were accused of making light of the People’s Communes (The Lost Magic of Shanghai Art Studio).

4

A discussion and a princess

The most comprehensive early article on animation, “Zuotan meishu dianying” (Discussion of Animated Film) was published in the journal Dianying yishu (Film Art) in 1960. I translate the word “zuotan” as “discussion” here, but the term can also be read as “conference,” and the title probably had conscious ties to Mao’s “Talks at the Yan’an Conference on Literature and Art.” The discussion presents a series of short contributions to animation studies centered on China, mostly on SAFS productions, with occasional mention of other national animation production. The participants are an indication of the way animation was viewed in the PRC at this time, with an emphasis on cultural producers established in areas outside of film, and certainly outside of animation. Of the eighteen participants in the discussion, six came from literature fields: Yang Hansheng (1902–1993), Chen Baichen (1908–1994), Huang Mei (also known as Chen Huangmei) (1913–1996) wrote fiction, plays, and screenplays, while Chen Bochui (1906–1997), Yang Wenjing (1915–2005), and Yuan Ying (1924–) wrote essays, poetry, and children’s literature. Cai Chusheng, the writer of the People’s Daily review of the SAFS exhibit I cited in the last chapter, a playwright and filmmaker, also participated. Nine participants were artists: Wu Zuoren (1908–1997), Yu Feng (1916–2007), Wang Qi (1918–); cartoonists Hua Junwu (1915–2010), Zhang Guangyu (1900– 1964), Ye Qianyu (1907–95), Fang Cheng (1918–) and Zhang Ding (1917–2010), as well as the sculptor and theorist Wang Zhaowen (1909–2004). The remaining members included a composer who had worked in film, Liu Chi (1921–1998), and one animator, the twin brother of Wan Laiming, Wan Guchan (1900–1995). The discussion is important for the suggestions offered by this diverse group of cultural producers and for the films discussed, many of which are not commonly discussed nowadays. In 1960, the SAFS had not as yet produced a feature-length film although, at forty-eight minutes long, Yi fu Zhuang jin (A Zhuang Brocade) was a well-developed full-animation film. Like the live-action fictional film, Third Sister Liu, A Zhuang Brocade purported to use folk material of the Zhuang nationality, in this case a folktale. The release of this animation in the same year as Third Sister Liu certainly shows industry coordination with regard to content. The participants approach animated film from a number of perspectives, but Zhang Guangyu, the painter and cartoonist responsible for the design of Uproar in Heaven, sets the theoretical tone to the article with a succinct description of

106 A discussion and a princess animation as a type of film: “Film is an art of synthesis that includes the fine arts, and of course the fine arts are emphasized in animated film (meishu dianying). But animated film cannot only pay attention to the fine arts. Research also needs to acknowledge synthetic properties of the film form, design (sheji) and production (shezhi), as well as literature, theater, music, camera work, and other aspects. Only considering the fine arts aspect is insufficient” (Yang Hansheng et al. 1960: 36). Zhang does cite other forms of cultural production, and his section includes recourse to the insertion of “national style” (minzu fengge) terminology and acknowledgement of animated film as part of the national project of the Great Leap Forward. Nevertheless, Zhang shows knowledge of the specific exigencies of animation as a type of film. The playwright and screenwriter Yang Hansheng opens the discussion, noting two major achievements of the SAFS in carrying out the artistic policies of the Communist Party and also the richness of the productions. While Yang acknowledges the contribution of animation to “using Socialist and Communist thought to educate our new generation,” Yang notes the three main types of animation produced at the SAFS: cel animation, stop-motion puppet animation, and cutout animation. Yang cites “national style” forms relevant to animated film: “Our national artistic traditions are abundant, for example animated film can use the artistic forms of wooden puppet and shadow puppet theaters from each region, and folk art can be put to use to enable for the creation of many more types of animated film” (Yang Hansheng et al. 1960: 31). Yang’s discussion contains rhetoric that simultaneously shows consensus with the government policy of the Great Leap Forward, while suggesting diversity as a form of innovation in animation production. Notions of innovation are apparent in the language of the discussants. Another playwright and screenwriter, Chen Baichen, emphasizes the innovative qualities of the SAFS productions, Bihua li de gushi (The Story of the Murals) and Da yuejin wansui (Long Live the Great Leap Forward): “Does not this type of unprecedented, unrivalled new style constitute an utterly new national style?” Animation was viewed as a technical achievement, and the SAFS certainly wasn’t undeserving of such hyperbolic promotion of national style. But Chen’s enthusiasm slightly exaggerates the originality of SAFS productions. For example, Chen’s enthusiasm for cutout animation is telling in this regard: “Just like everyone else experiencing these animation productions, the past few years [they] have made great leaps forward. This is [my] first time watching a cutout animation, which I hear we ourselves created, to make these two superb [films], really a great production” (Yang Hansheng et al. 1960: 32). Chen’s pronouncements of innovation are echoed in the contributions by the only animator who contributed to the discussion. Wan Guchan was a director of some of the most important shorts at SAFS in the late 1950s and early 1960s, including cutout shorts like Zhubajie chi xigua (Pigsy Eats Watermelon, 1958) and Yutong (Fisherboy, 1959). Wan’s description of cutouts suggests a uniquely Chinese form: “The cutout type [of animation] wasn’t a foreign transplant, but was derived from the cream of traditional Chinese folk art shadow puppets, paper

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window decorations, and cutouts, film technique, and repeated experiment until success was achieved” (Yang Hansheng et al. 1960: 40). According to Wan, the studio studied examples of folk art performance to use as models for the films. He even describes some of the technical problems with bringing the “characters, backgrounds, and props” to the screen, especially because the light is projected from behind the screen in shadow puppet performances and the characters are made to show the profile only. Wan’s contribution includes a comparison between cel and cutout animation that sounds like a comparison between full animation and limited animation: “The method of cutout animation and cel animation is different. Cel animation demands drawing images for each character’s expression and movement, approximately ten thousand drawings are needed for one thousand feet of film. On the other hand, for cutout animation a few frontal, profile, back, and three-quarter images of the characters are sufficient. The cel animation model demands simplicity of line and color – too much detail, and the amount of drawings must be increased greatly just to move the image. Character modeling for cutout animation doesn’t have this problem” (Yang Hansheng et al. 1960: 41). Wan Guchan’s observation of the differences between the drawings of cel animation and the manipulation of drawings is very perceptive. On the surface, Wan’s observations reveal an important difference between two types of animation, cel and cutout. But his description also resembles a more recent description by Tom LaMarre of the difference between drawing movement and moving drawings in anime. To emphasize the role played in moving still images in the limited animation used in some anime, LaMarre borrows a much-repeated quote by Norman McLaren: “Animation is not the art of drawings that move, but the art of movements that are drawn.”1 In full cel animation, as many as twelve drawings per second are produced to create the illusion of continuous movement. In limited animation, the number of images is kept to a minimum, leading to creative use of far fewer cels.2 The implications of limited animation became a factor of production, “ . . . a tendency to move the drawing rather than to draw the movement – a reversal of the conventions of full cel animation” (LaMarre 2002: 335–336). LaMarre suggests the technique of moving drawings affect the visual appearance of anime to emphasize flatness of the image, even determining themes of robots and automatons that emerge from the technique itself so that anime figures become “machines of movement.” LaMarre’s argument is based on readings of Japanese anime. However, these readings of the animation medium are no less relevant to limited animation in other industries. LaMarre’s historical narrative begins with Tezuka Osamu’s Astro Boy in 1963. Wan’s observations about the potential of cutout to decrease the labor needed in cel animation are published in 1960, which means animators in Japan and China are looking to the potential of limited animation around the same time. How could Tezuka’s science-fiction story for television be compared to the “fine arts” animation produced for the theater in the PRC at this time? Looking at these seemingly disparate examples of a medium from the point of view of limited animation technique, there is really very little difference, except that perhaps a staterun studio could afford to invest a bit more in production than Tezuka could afford

108 A discussion and a princess in a newly emerging anime industry. In a similar manner as Tezuka’s Astro Boy, the cutout animation films of Wan Guchan hint at the possibilities of animation as the manipulation of still drawings and shapes. Jay Leyda referred to SAFS cel and cutout animation as “flat” in contradistinction to stop-motion puppet animation: “The ‘flat’ animators were more open to experiment . . . but the fear of looking ‘primitive’ forced such unfamiliar techniques into familiar looking channels and had little effect on the subjects” (1972: 291). However, although the scripts were sometimes laid out to satisfy narrow ideologically moral tales, up until the early 1960s, there were certainly exceptions to didactic, propaganda-type narratives. Ironically, because the animators claimed to be deriving visual design from folk forms, the movements of the characters in the cutout films sometimes simulate the movement of shadow puppets. While the early SAFS films do not engage in science-fictional speculation, character movements still retain a certain artificial, even mechanized appearance because they are in effect simulating puppets, not persons. This is comparable to The Arrogant General, where animators attempt to mimic the exaggerated, stylized movements of Beijing opera actors. But then again, perhaps this is merely an intertextual component of popular art in China, clearly present in the representation of theatrical poses in traditional woodblock prints, for example. Wan’s Jigong dou xishuai (Crazy Ji and the Fighting Crickets, 1959) is about a Buddhist trickster who helps a carpenter blamed for setting free a fighting cricket prized by a politician’s son. The animators employ character drawings from several angles, but the profile is by far the most prevalent position of the characters. The cutout film thus retains the link to shadow puppetry, which further flattens the overall appearance of the characters and backgrounds. As an added touch, the film opens and closes with the protagonist Crazy Ji singing comic arias, an element of the soundtrack that reinscribes the operatic aspect of shadow puppet theater where, as in opera, roles were sung as well as spoken.3 Wan’s Jinse de hailuo (The Golden Conch, 1963), a Huangmei opera-style musical, employs a female voice-over that narrates a story of a young fisherman who falls in love with a beautiful immortal who inhabits a golden conch that magically gets caught up in his fishing net. The sweet duets of the protagonists are matched by delicacy of design that conjures up a love story couched in a fairy tale. The narratives of Wan Guchan’s cutout animations are fantasies. Leyda’s claim that the animators “forced such unfamiliar techniques into familiar-looking channels” by reducing the subject matter to “bold hunter, evil tiger or more evil landlord, honorable maiden, and decadent princeling” is somewhat accurate, since the scope of conflict tended to determine narrative, especially with regard to heroes and villains. But the use of conflict as an element of plot in film is not unique to Chinese films. Leyda’s reading of film is ideological but while SAFS filmmakers certainly considered state policy in their productions, they also considered their audiences. The theoretical articulation of national style usually does not mention the problem of selling tickets. In “Discussion on Animated Cinema,” the closest discussants come to an idea of audience is when children’s literature writer Chen Bochui notes that “[t]he comrades of the Shanghai Animation Film Studio on behalf of the

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Party have shown great affection for the newly emergent generation, preparing such beautiful grain for the mind, passionately serving the children . . . ” (Yang Hansheng et al. 1960: 33). Paul Clark notes that film, and animation must be included here, “was a major part and indeed shaper of a new, mass, national culture that emerged by the early 1960s” (1987a: 57). Wan’s cutout animations show a technical sophistication that goes beyond a mere mimicry of traditional puppetry and contains symbolism that epitomizes the staple of SAFS productions that employed literary sources and revealed an allusive visuality that owes as much to fine and folk art history as to the technique itself. Pigsy Eats Watermelon, based on a story by children’s writer and SAFS screenwriter Bao Lei (1918–1989), a continuing adventures of the character Zhu Bajie from Journey to the West, opens with a point-of-view shot of a pair of stop-motion animated photographed “real” arms cutting out the protagonist’s head and putting the body together. The photographed hands manipulate the miniature pig-man; they give him arms and he proceeds to greedily grab for the plump watermelon held by the other hand. This image opens a short film that uses the popular pig-man from Journey to the West to make a straightforward statement about the selfishness of appetite. The opening sequence is fun, inviting the spectator to join in the production; they are cutout shapes, after all. At the same time, the opening shot of the stop-motion animated human arms of the author-producer sets into motion a fundamental, even universal, binary pair of desire and withholding; animation as productive labor (making cutouts) puts into motion the play of desire and withholding (in the figure of the greedy and selfish Pigsy). Yutong, The Fisherboy, adapts what could be called a nationalistic wuxia narrative of revenge. In the words of the film’s voice-over narrator, the story is “an anti-imperialist legend” supposedly set during the last years of the Qing dynasty before the Boxer Rebellion in 1901. The foreigners have sealed off a harbor, preventing the local fishermen from earning a living, and an old fisherman is victimized by a local official to pay a fishing tax he has no money to pay. To escape discovery by the foreigners, one stormy night the old fisherman takes to the water. Strange lights shine above the waves, and the fisherman nets a fishbowl, white with a painting of a little child with hair in buns sitting on a lotus calyx. At night the lotus grows out of the fish bowl and opens, bearing the cross-legged figure of the little boy holding a fishing rod. The boy dances and sings as two goldfish leap in and out of the water, flicking drops that fall in pairs and magically combine to form pearls on the tabletop. The European clergyman’s attempts to acquire this magical fishbowl make him the villain of the story, but right from the opening scenes the clergyman is shown absconding with national treasures, loading precious cargo like vases onto a ship. In the denouement of the print version by Zhang Shijie (1932–1978), the boy-god hooks the clergyman by the mouth like a fish (the illustrated scene faces the last page of the story).4 The image represents an act of violent retributive punishment. Was such a narrative part of state-sanctioned anti-foreigner propaganda? Or was it a popular attitude towards foreigners, especially European clergy in this case? The clergyman is a figure of reactionary racism. He speaks Chinese with an accent, and his appearance is grotesque; he is bald with a bushy

110 A discussion and a princess line of hair running from the back of his head and jutting out from his chin. Bushy, cross-looking full eyebrows give him a fearsome, even demonic, look. In the animated version the boy hooks the clergyman’s robe and spins him around, whipping him into the crashing waves where he sinks beneath the surface. The smashed fishbowl containing the magical god-boy reassembles itself. The child in the fishbowl is key here. National style is the conscious reference to other forms of national cultural production within one work, an intertextual citation of “Chinese” cultural production. Visually, the SAFS animations had rich fields to work with. When the ink-brush films reference guohua, the films cite a modern institutionalized form of academic art, a form of “high art” nationalized as a historical form in China that identifies itself as such. In addition, guohua had been, and to a certain extent still is, reproduced in magazines, photographed for newspapers, and sold as calendar posters. It was, and remains, the hobby of countless amateur painters who just paint for themselves and who may take up painting after retirement. Finally, guohua is an academic and a popular form that has also been disseminated through film and video camera. At this time, folk art was also taking a significant place as content in print media and in exhibitions for domestic and foreign audiences. The nationalization and massification of folk art was a significant part of state policy from the opening years of the PRC. Paper cutouts were a form of folk art with a long history in China. The little boy with his hair in buns recalls earlier, premodern images of children from woodblock prints and older images of children in painting that go back to the Song dynasty. As a cutout animated figure, The Fisherboy could also be referencing zhuji wawa or “pigtailed babies,” papercut figures with decorative but more importantly talismanic properties (Zhang Ding 1996: 278). The recuperation of “authentic” folk art, indeed, the adoption of national style itself, opened the door to certain contradictory problems for state cultural production. As I mentioned in the last chapter in my discussion of The Oxherd’s Flute, the iconography and symbolism of guohua come from literature and religion. The child with his hair in buns on the lotus calyx also echoes religious iconography from Buddhism and Taoism. Suffice it to say that the boy with hair in buns sitting on the lotus calyx is a shen, a type of baby-god. In referencing or citing bona fide Chinese visual style, the filmmakers were satisfying promotions by state leaders and discussions about cultural production by their colleagues, the producers themselves. But citing national style as such meant looking at earlier, premodern and “prerevolutionary” forms of art and literature that implied a different set of political and religious relationships. Folk art includes symbolism and iconography derived from popular religion. This was a major challenge to politically-informed cultural production that wished to cloak itself in national style. When a revolutionary artist, writer, or film production unit had recourse to popular literature and art, they would be obliged to question the “feudal” aspects of the work. This problem was clear in attempts to appropriate the traditional woodblock print often called nianhua or New Year’s prints that represented deities, gods, exorcists, demons, and even puns from popular religion (Hung 2000 and 2011: 182–207). The animations that cited such folk art forms encounter the same problem. Cutout animations directed by Wan Guchan such as

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The Fisherboy, Crazy Ji and the Fighting Crickets, and Renshen wawa (Ginseng Baby, 1962), all partake of fantastic mythical worlds with religious overtones. But on the surface the religious is subsumed as a plot device rather than an ideological, or even moral, aspect of the work. The religious element becomes a supernatural comic force that defeats corrupt foreign clergy, officials, and a landlord who engages in child slavery as debt repayment. Leyda referred to the SAFS as an “experimental collective” (1972: 291), and they were innovators in every sense. Participants in the “Discussion of Animated Cinema” highlight the importance of innovation in animation as a national form. However, the emphasis was clearly on constructing a national form at the expense of dialogue with transnational industries. In keeping with a major theme of critique of SAFS production, Yan Wenjing, a children’s writer and chief editor at one of the major literary journals of the revolutionary period, Renmin wenxue (People’s Literature), would suggest that as long as the film employed “national aspects” (minzu de dongxi) it did not matter if the content were modern or used folk legends (minjian chuanshuo), as long as the animators did not confine themselves to “[f]or example, Mickey Mouse, always the same bunch of animals over and over. Nothing wrong with using animals. But we have to make a clean break with the old stuff, we must especially counter that vulgar, capitalist class, old stuff (Yang Hansheng et al. 1960: 33). Like the anxiety of Soviet influence around Why is the Crow Black?, discussants were obviously aware of the importance of Disney productions at this time. The painter Wu Zuoren’s short contribution to the discussion points to the problem of originality in an international context. After noting the lack of proportion between the models and backgrounds in stop-motion puppet films and pointing out that cutout animation needs to study traditional shadow puppetry, Wu praises the progress made by cel animated films, “whether in modelling, national form, artistic style.” Wu singles out the film A Zhuang Brocade by suggesting that the human figures deserve study, but the animals are a different story: “The form of the animals retain a strand of Western flavor, they still have not left the Disney path, we should not learn from the animal models in this film” (Yang Hansheng et al. 1960: 33). As a painter Wu seems to have an eye for the problem of design; the term he uses, “zaoxing” (model), is a reminder of the importance of the model design for every type of animation. Wu’s recommendation to solve the problem of falling under Disney influence for the design of the animals is to look to the Dunhuang Grottoes, a series of caves in northwest China with examples of Buddhist art going back to the fourth century. But the Buddhist iconography would not be a major source of inspiration for SAFS until after the end of the Cultural Revolution, and this was chiefly because of the religious aspect of such art. The question of originality is a combination of national and industry exigencies. Animation was a national industry, and the SAFS was the sole representative of the medium in China at this time. But I wish to return to Wan’s claims for the cutout animation as a national form. Wan notes that with the completion of the first cutout animation, Pigsy Eats Watermelon, in August 1958: “From this moment, in addition to the two types of animated film of stop-motion puppet and cel, now a

112 A discussion and a princess new type of animation had been added, the ‘cutout film’ ” (Yang Hansheng et al. 1960: 40). This was a new form for the SAFS, but it was hardly a new form of animation. Lotte Reiniger’s (1899–1981) Die Abenteuer des Prinzen Achmed (The Adventures of Prince Achmed), the first extant feature-length animation, used cutouts of cardboard and lead for silhouette animation. The Japanese animator Ōfuji Noburō (1900–1961) had worked with traditional Japanese papercut, chiyogami, to produce cutout animation in the 1920s and 1930s. Ōfuji’s film Kujira (Whale) used a silhouette technique similar to Reiniger’s and was shown at Cannes in 1953. And closer to SAFS experiments, Norman McLaren had worked with cutouts in Rythmatic (1956) (a film that grew out of his work with UNESCO) and The Blackbird, produced in 1958, the same year that the cutout was developed at the SAFS. The claim of innovation was a political issue for the SAFS animators at this time, and Wan Guchan’s comments imply bold but somewhat exaggerated claims that the development of cutout animation first occurred in China, at the sole animation studio in the PRC at this time, the SAFS. Wan’s claims of having developed cutout animation need to be put in context, but the SAFS cutout productions were innovative uses of cutout animation in their appropriation of iconography from folk art, in the model design of the figures and their movement, and in the use of color. Actually, the truly innovative aspect of The Fisherboy is the way animators use a combination of techniques that gives the film a mixed-media appearance. For The Fisherboy, animators used limited cutout animation techniques for the main characters, full cel animation for some of the backgrounds (for example, for the water), and stop-motion techniques, for example for the scene when the fishing net parts to reveal the fish bowl. The Fisherboy also boasts one of the first uses of a rear-projected light effect that will be used in many films. Especially during mythical birth scenes, fractured points of light appear to add a sort of halo around the figure, signaling a supernatural birth. Religious content is subsumed as aesthetic content, as plot device and special effects. This supernatural aesthetic was important as a major aspect of animated films, huanxiang, the fantastic. Zhang Guangyu makes this point when he suggests that the character of the mother in A Zhuang Brocade “wasn’t handled well in closeup, but in most of the shots, she was the image of kindness, filled with elements of fantasy (huanxiang de chengfen)” (Yang Hansheng et al. 1960: 38). Wang Zhaowen claims that some view animation as a combination of revolutionary romanticism and revolutionary realism. But Wang believes this definition would be too limiting for the medium and for the terms. The terms themselves might be better employed for other types of cultural production. Instead, Wang claims cel, puppet, and cutout animation “have their own advantage. [Animation] is able to do things other artistic forms cannot do. It is amenable to embodying the fantastic, [it] is amenable to audacious fabrication” (Yang Hansheng et al. 1960: 38). Thus the supernatural aspects of the stories, those aspects that link to feudal superstition, are aestheticized as the fantastic, huanxiang. Animation is permitted a certain amount of leeway because of inherent aspects that automatically link the medium to folk legends, myths, and children’s stories. Huanxiang is an openended term to describe the non-realist aspects of an animated film. Wang

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Zhaowen’s example comes in the finale of The Fisherboy when the broken fish bowl reassembles itself. But the idea of huanxiang had other, wider implications. The material, ticai, the content of the medium, was supposed to be derived like a natural resource from native folktales and myths, from literary texts and tales passed down in the manner of fairy tales. Chen Baichen noted that despite the innovative “new national style” of animated films, producers could hardly rest on their laurels: “For example, A Zhuang Brocade recounts a national minority tale, but some aspects of the plot shows foreign influence” (Yang Hansheng et al. 1960: 32). This foreign influence could be attributed to foreign animation, but was it also possible the story lent itself to a type of exoticism? A Zhuang Brocade, based on a version of a Zhuang folktale, was one of the most complex animations produced during this time. I would have to disagree with Wu Zuoren – influence of Disney in the human characters is just as evident in the animals, especially in the close-ups. But the plot of the film is so complex and could hardly be compared to anything else at the time. For animation like A Zhuang Emroidery, as for live-action fictional film, minority culture offered an additional source for “national style.” With regard to the use of material from minority culture, Yingjin Zhang’s claim that “Han Chinese cultural hegemony . . . has strategically drawn on minority cultures in the formation of the ‘Chinese characteristics’ (minzu tedian) as opposed to Western discourses and technologies” (1997: 74) certainly has merit. But there was still a difference between the political meaning of minzu as denoting a member of a nation (the alternative word in Chinese is guomin, for “citizen”) and minzu as a term indicating a whole array of cultural markers of difference, including different ways of dressing, different marriage practices, or simply different “styles.” The composer Liu Chi’s comments also critique A Zhuang Brocade: “. . . very good at the beginning, but afterwards not as strong, also that singer used a completely European method of singing.” According to Liu Chi, music helps the scene attain a “typical” or “representative” (dianxing) atmosphere. His example is a stop-motion puppet film, Yi zhi xie (One Shoe). In one scene an elderly man enters a town market that for Liu Chi lacks “the atmosphere of a folk market crowd” (Yang Hansheng et al. 1960: 34). Liu’s succinct critique of film score is a reminder of the way national style functioned like an effect. The writer Huang Mei clearly considered minority narratives to be an aspect of massification and nationalization of culture. Huang suggests minority narratives as material for animated as well as live-action fictional films: “Minority [folktales] should certainly occupy a major proportion because of their delicacy [jingzhi]. They would circulate much more effectively as films” (Yang Hansheng et al. 1960: 42). Huang notes that he is often sent material from the “Society for Folk Literature,” and his language implies an ethnographic approach to the material. Huang makes two suggestions for animated films. Interestingly, the first, Ashima (Ashma), would be made into a live-action fictional film, the first color film in the PRC, in 1964. And Huang mentions another story, Kongque gongzhu, Princess Peacock, another instance of material that would be produced as a film, this time a stopmotion puppet animation in 1963, the second animated feature from SAFS.

114 A discussion and a princess Princess Peacock is not as well known as Uproar in Heaven or the ink-brush films. But the film deserves much more attention as a feature animation that used “national style” material from ethnic minority culture. Like One Shoe, the animation shows the touches of the director Jin Xi (1919–1997) in the movements that express personality in the characters. Based on a Dai legend, the story concerns a young prince, Zhao Shutun, who falls in love with the youngest of seven daughters from the Peacock Kingdom, a mythic (and transcendent) world above the human world. The Peacock Kingdom inscribes a heaven-like space outside the world like the Heaven (tiangong) in Uproar in Heaven or the Palace of the Immortals (xiangong) in A Zhuang Brocade. Mythic elements are linked intertextually from film to film, building an SAFS “house style.” The heaven-like spaces are integral aspects of the “fantastic,” spaces that the hero must navigate to attain his goal. In A Zhuang Brocade, the youngest brother of three rides a magical tiger and retrieves their mother’s embroidery from a world that transcends the human world, meets the youngest immortal sister who, struck by the beauty of the human world represented in the embroidery, embroiders herself into the mother’s work to be returned to the world below and marry the youngest brother. The plot of Princess Peacock is chiefly centered on the relationship between Zhao Shutun and the Peacock Princess. The plot shares some similarities with the basic structure of the Greek romance, where a young man and woman meet, are separated by obstacles, but are reunited in the end.5 There were probably many reasons for using this narrative material. There was certainly a large amount of “Chinese” material amenable to animated film adaptation. But Princess Peacock satisfies another point for animated production. Producers were concerned with the ambiguous rules of national style, the links to plots and sources that supposedly represent the nation. As I mentioned in the last chapter, the first feature in China, Princess Iron Fan, appropriated the title from the translation of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs as “Princess White Snow,” Baixue gongzhu. Thus Princess Peacock also retains a link here to the first Chinese animated feature and one of the first feature-length animated princesses. The film seems to combine at least two versions of this story named after the hero, Zhao Shutun and the Princess.6 However, the film makes some interesting adaptations. The story as it was translated as a long poem has the family of Na Nuona, the princess, going to war with Zhao Shutun’s country because he has taken her, literally, for his wife. In Princess Peacock, extra characters are added. Another kingdom’s ruler launches the attack. The “enemy ruler” (Diwang) wants his minister’s daughter to marry Prince Zhao so that the ruler can gain political power over Zhao’s country, Mengbanjia. In Princess Peacock the main thread of the plot is, nevertheless, the love story between Zhao Shutun and Nanma Ruona.7 Princess Peacock takes its place firmly in the SAFS catalogue with an opening scene that departs from the Dai narrative (at least the versions I have found) by emphasizing a detail of the plot. The opening scene shows a large number of people watching a man sitting atop the head of an elephant that is pulling on a rope that strains on a pulley leading down into a well. The man swings an arm back in effort as he goads the elephant to pull on the rope straining on the pulley. The

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onlookers supply exposition. A young man notes the thing they are trying to raise must be very heavy and an old man concurs, estimating that it must be several thousand jin (which would be around half as many kilograms, but slightly more in pounds). The old man notes that the Prince wants to use it as a weapon. The mysterious object is finally pulled out of the well – a gleaming golden bow. This scene is an inserted expositional preface to the story of Zhao Shutun and Nanma Ruona and stands as an intertextual link to the opening scenes in Uproar in Heaven when Sun Wukong through guile takes possession of the Dragon King’s staff. Like Sun Wukong’s staff, Zhao Shutun’s bow, shining golden and about as tall as the figurines in the film, can only be lifted by the hero. With fanfare the prince rides up after the elephant and its rider have fallen over in their attempt to bring up the bow. The prince’s father, the king, smiles and rubs his chin in admiration. With ease Prince Zhao pulls the remaining frayed rope and fastens it to the ground. As five men are almost crushed trying to lift the bow, Zhao Shutun runs up, swishes away his cape with one arm and effortlessly lifts the giant bow with the other. Prince Zhao tosses it in the air and it spins, beams of light shine forth for an instant, and it shrinks to scale. Like the Monkey King’s staff, the symbolism is magical and phallic; the bow is a marker of the power of the prince in the film. The prince uses the bow to shoot down the same bird as an old hunter who will lead him to the princess, and the prince will use the bow to shoot down a giant bird that menaces the Goddess of the Golden Lake (Jinhu nüshen) where the princess and her sisters come to bathe. The first female character is notably introduced in this expositional scene, the pouting daughter of the minister whose machinations will lead to the separation of the prince and his Princess Peacock. As the prince ties the frayed rope to a peg she exclaims “Ah Ma, ta zhen liaobuqi!” (He is really wonderful Mother!). From one point of view, this pouting young woman who pines for the hand of the prince is stereotypical. Her high-pitched voice and child-like pouting are in stark contrast to the elegant Princess Peacock. Nevertheless, the minister’s daughter shows a distinct, even individualized personality. Jin Xi’s puppet animations do not show much mouth movement until the 1985 film Xiyue qitong (The Strange Boy from the Western Mountain). Instead, personality is expressed in subtle and nuanced ways through bodily movements, including arm and hand gestures and the angle of the torso. The evil minister’s daughter is a superb example of the way movement endows stylized puppet figurines with extraordinary personality. Princess Peacock falls well within the song and dance elements Paul Clark criticizes in his discussion of pre-Cultural Revolution films about minorities: “The southwest minorities in particular often appear in these films as ‘happy, smiling natives,’ more prone to drop axe and bow and burst into song than to take up arms against oppressors” (1987a: 99). But the exoticism Clark objects to in representation of minority culture could have been an attempt by producers to go beyond themes of class struggle. In Princess Peacock, the struggles of oppressed classes associated with this period are completely left out. Instead, conflict enters the film in the guise of the machinations of the Enemy Ruler, a puppet that struts and fumes when his plans seem thwarted by the plot. He is also the only figure in the film to

116 A discussion and a princess look like a character from Beijing opera. His face is blue and red, closer to a Western clown than to a Beijing opera general. As in The Arrogant General, national style is a comic referent, denoting older, more typical modes of representation. Even the music accompanying this hollering, swaggering, fist-clenching character is comic. Of course, the most telling sections of the film concern the pursuit of Nanma Ruona by Prince Zhao. Thanks to an old hunter, Zhao Shutun waits by a lake for the seven peacocks which change into beautiful young women. The scene is clearly meant to conjure up more adult connotations. In a later shot by the lake, the old hunter shoos away a monkey who threatens to interrupt the romantic proceedings, a sort of playful, intertextual dismissal of Monkey King mischief that marks the romantic Princess Peacock as a contrast to Uproar in Heaven. A large portion of the first half of Princess Peacock includes musical accompaniment. In “Discussion of Animated Cinema,” when Wu Zuo critiques the One Shoe soundtrack he mentions the composer Wu Yingju (1926–), a prolific SAFS studio composer, by name. In another market Wu Yingju’s soundtracks might be collected for distribution on CD or digital download. Wu Yingju composed soundtracks for almost all the SAFS films discussed in this chapter and the last, and Uproar in Heaven. The soundtrack to Princess Peacock features rich but simple arrangements and songs and duets for male and female voice, as well as short compositions to set up scenes and characters (the scene with the enemy ruler is a very good example).8 Princess Peacock opens with a melody during the credits that functions like a motif throughout the film. The melody is repeated numerous times, even hummed by the old hunter at one point. As a representation of minority culture, Princess Peacock retains what Clark and Berry refer to as an “exoticism” (Clark 1987b; Berry 1992: 51–52). Nevertheless, the musical interludes in Princess Peacock are visually and musically stunning. The dancing peacock sisters are choreographed with an understated eroticism, and the coordination of seven puppets shows a virtuoso timing for these stop-motion animators and their director. Contrary to Leyda’s complaints, Jin Xi and his crew went far beyond whatever they had “learned from the work” of the important Czech stop-motion puppet animator and director Jiří Trnka (1912–1969).9 It would be difficult to know how effective these scenes were with audiences, but film duets were a staple of Chinese cinema from the earliest years, not to mention the popularity of many types of opera films. A few bars of the musical motif from Princess Peacock is echoed in the opening bars of the Wan Guchan cutout animation The Golden Conch, which came out in the same year. Prince Zhao’s bow and Sun Wukong’s staff are both magical phalluses that endow their owners with an aura of righteous violence as well as functioning as plot devices. However, these protagonist-driven narratives are positioned differently. The Monkey King in Uproar is mischievous, even cruelly so at times, and he is a study in righteous indignation towards the Jade Emperor and his court. Prince Zhao is by contrast a romantic rather than a comic figure. If Princess Peacock were shot today, the filmmakers would more than likely be obliged to parody the romantic aspects, especially the idealized heroism of Prince Zhao. But the film

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as it stands is already self-referential. Princess Peacock employs an archetypal romance plot about two lovers who fall passionately in love but are separated by a series of misadventures to be finally reunited. The romance structure is very important to animation, a medium with frequent recourse to a variation of this plot structure. Even if the protagonists are not lovers, the basic separation-misadventurereunion is very important to animation as a fundamentally comic form. I realize there are many exceptions to this statement, but the global success of Disney franchises, both as properties and influential models, certainly attests to the power of the romance structure. Princess Peacock is a variation of this structure, and one important difference needs to be kept in mind. The Prince and Princess in Princess Peacock are already married about a half hour into the film (the film is around seventy minutes long), and just as the whole city celebrates their nuptials the moment is marked by a self-referential exclamation by the evil minister, “Tamen gaoxing de tai zao le!” With regard to the plot structure of Princess Peacock, the evil minister is stating the obvious: they are celebrating too early, and the Prince and his Princess Peacock will have to go through a series of separation misadventures until they are finally reunited. Above all, Princess Peacock is a love story, so the main focus, the main impetus and determiner of the whole plot of this feature, is the relationship between a prince and his princess. Prince Zhao first sees Princess Peacock when her sisters alight by a golden lake to bathe and dance. The scene is beautifully choreographed and orchestrated and will serve as the model for the live-action version of Princess Peacock produced two decades later in 1982 (although the live-action version pushes the self-conscious voyeurism of this scene much further). A bright semicircle of light changes into patterned, radiating points of light, perhaps a superimposed effect achieved by backlighting, a variation of the “special effect” used in The Fisherboy and Uproar for Sun Wukong’s birth. Slowly the Princess appears from within this glow as she glides across the mirror-like water. Spinning her dress above the surface, she scatters petals and they become lotuses that bloom as she waves her trailing dress above the water. The prince is watching all of this in amazement from behind some bushes. Prince Zhao had followed a golden deer to this space by the lake, and now the princess glides to the lakeshore where a small group of deer awaits her, crowding around her as she pets them while a female voice hums the film’s motif. This idealized scene recalls another animated female character, Disney’s Snow White. Disney’s Snow White in turn recalls nineteenthcentury German illustrated versions of the Brothers Grimm. Esther Leslie notes the work of Ludwig Richter (1803–1884) and Hermann Vogel (1854–1921) as important models for the backgrounds of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. The image of Snow White surrounded by animals in the forest is found in Richter and stands as a good example of a late, perhaps somewhat kitschy, romanticism in book illustration. I am not attempting to legitimize Disney through reference to print culture – far from it. But it is important to consider that even when certain figures were “Disneyfied,” even Disney (and this means crews consisting of designers, animators, and directors) was often working with figures and tropes from other media, especially print media.

118 A discussion and a princess In another shot of a secluded grove, Princess Peacock reappears out of circles that enlarge like ripples in the air. This reappearing act occurs because Princess Peacock is not of this world. The scenes here approach an aesthetic mysticism. Chinese intellectuals have long had a complex relationship to religion. Especially when it comes to Daoism and Buddhism, Chinese writers and painters developed what could be called an aesthetic religiosity. A good example of this is Yan Yu’s (1180–1235) Canglang shihua (Canglang’s Remarks on Poetry), a work of poetics that used the historic structure of Chan Buddhism to historicize Chinese poetry. The study also represents an early example of the way a Chinese thinker could incorporate non-Han elements into an essentially “native” poetic discourse (was Yan “sinicizing” Buddhism or making poetic discourse Buddhistic?). Pu Songling’s well-known story of the strange, “Huabi” (The Painted Wall), narrates a story about two scholars visiting a Buddhist monastery who encounter a painting of a beautiful woman that one of the scholars “enters,” implicitly engaging in sexual intercourse with the woman in the painting. The story has served as a much-adapted plot in film. In a sense, the strange theme is reversed somewhat for that classic animation The Magic Brush (the brush materializes two-dimensional paintings; in Pu Songling the human “discorporates” to enter the world of the painting, albeit also a world of the flesh, so to speak). Thus Pu Songling plays with Buddhist concepts of the mundane, transcending Buddhist transcendence with an allusive, erotic aesthetic.10 The appearance and reappearance of Princess Peacock is in the same vein here, a fantastic, and subtly erotic, materialization of a woman from another world. Princess Peacock twirls towards the edge of the lake and gazes at herself, adjusting a flower in her hair. Her sisters appear to the right of the screen and she leads them in a circular formation. The sisters are not individualized; indeed, Princess Peacock is the sole individualized member and leader of the dance troupe here. The camera moves in for a close-up of her as she spins, followed by a close-up of Prince Zhao, who is clearly delighted by the sight he is witnessing from his hiding place behind a tree. But the dance scene is interrupted by a cut to a shot of the flying goddess of the lake pursued by a giant squawking bird. Princess Peacock flies up to distract the bird and her sisters follow her in a snaking line in the sky. The prince pulls back the arrow in his bow and twangs it at the bird, which bursts and dissolves in a swirl of smoke. Still flying, the goddess and Princess Peacock join hands as the goddess thanks Princess Peacock for her help. The princess defers by pointing out that things surely would have been much worse if it weren’t for that shenjian, that incredible archer. This gives the goddess opportunity to tell the princess about the prince. The princess bids the goddess good-bye and flies off to join her sisters. The scene is a showcase of stop-motion animation. The figures here fly, and it is possible that some were shot from above on a flat background (the snaking train of sisters would be difficult to imagine any other way). The trailing dresses of the princess and goddess gently fold and flap in the air, a marker of Jin Xi style that appears again in the mother’s garments in The Strange Boy from the Western Mountain. This scene of the arrow piercing and destroying the giant bird, accompanied by percussion and sheng,11 is immediately followed by a contrasting shot of the

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prince, accompanied by a few bars of the film’s musical motif as he sits pensively by the lake. The old hunter teases Prince Zhao, humming and singing that the prince has fallen in love (he seems to be in the key of the film’s musical motif). Just as Prince Zhao wonders whether he will ever see the princess again, the Goddess of the Golden Lake appears from a blooming lotus and explains that the princess and her sisters come to the lakeside every seven days. The next scene – a variation on the pensive prince who pines for his princess, only this time he sits by a fire by the lake in the moonlight – employs composite shots. As a male voice sings a few bars of the film’s motif (“My fairy princess [xiannü] what paradise are you from?”), a medium shot of the prince is used on screen right while on screen left the princess and her sisters appear in composite in a close group and quickly disperse in a similar manner as the earlier dance scene. The next shot is a close-up of the prince on screen left in profile facing right as Princess Peacock appears in a composite shot on the right side of the screen surrounded by deer, the same shot that introduced her to the viewer a few minutes earlier. The scene of the pining prince uses close-ups of the Prince Zhao figurine in profile in the moonlight and the male vocalist singing. The shot of Princess Peacock and her sisters dancing and the shot of her surrounded by deer repeat shots just seen a few minutes before. The first time the shots are implicitly from the point of view of the prince, the second time as a memory of a just-viewed scene. The prince is smitten. The song functions as an apostrophe to the princess. This particular scene, indeed the film as a whole, does not seem to have been produced for children. This scene is a musical interlude, a love song sung by a man to his lover. In his article on national style in cinema, Xu Changlin discusses the importance of the “interlude” in traditional theater. For Xu the interlude provides a contrast to the events around it, and he finds a parallel in the empty shot in film (Xu 1962: no. 5, 34–38). The film is a straightforward adult romance, perhaps even aimed at the male spectator. But more to the point, the “Princess” theme of the film is in line with Western animation history going back to early Disney. But not only Disney: Reiniger’s The Adventures of Prince Achmed, the earliest extant animated feature, employs this theme as well. And just as Prince Achmed steals Peri Banu’s feather costume as she bathes, Prince Zhao must take the princess’s “Peacock garments” if he wants to prevent her from flying away. Entering the romantic realm, the film goes back to fairy tales, another staple of animation. Disney’s Princess franchises have taken on a life of their own over the decades, and they have to a certain extent even affected the way animation is viewed as a medium, spawning imitations, variations, and parodies (a film like Beauty and the Beast seems to be a self-parody at times). Readings of the Disney Princess franchises have noted the strong gender stereotypes in the films, and Disney films are clearly amenable to criticism based on gender images (Do Rozario 2010; England et al. 2011). Princess Peacock, while it superficially resembles some aspects of a typical prince and princess story, is quite different from Disney versions because the film seems to be aimed at men more than women. The scene when Prince Zhao pines is the strongest evidence of the way the film frames the male protagonist and gives him a romantic aura. The

120 A discussion and a princess implications of the scene are easily overlooked. The prince’s figurine remains still; he is “unanimated,” so to speak. The still puppet is the image of the male voice singing the melodic motif of the film. Medium shots and close-ups accompany the male voice and the scene establishes not only an idealized romanticism, but also a type of subjectivity for the protagonist. Prince Zhao remains motionless but his internal world, represented in imagery that is a repetition of scenes just animated, endows this figurine with male subjectivity. Through shots of the still figurine and the accompanying male voice, the animators endow Prince Zhao with an implicit subjectivity expressed through desire for the female protagonist, Princess Peacock. There seems to be a deliberate irony in using motionlessness to convey emotion in stop-motion animation. In some ways puppet animation is made for this type of shot. I realize a certain amount of suspension of disbelief is needed for a scene in which one figurine falls in love with another, but I do not know of any live-action fictional films that aestheticized romantic sentiment in a similar way during this period, although certain scenes using singing and voice-over in Huazhong ren (The Person in the Painting), a fantastic love story directed by Wang Bin, come to mind. Indeed, couched in still shots of the hero accompanied by a male singing voice, the desire felt by the Prince is not entirely innocent. The situation is marked much more negatively in the long poem version where Prince Zhao literally hunts and captures the princess, thus causing a traumatic separation between her and her family, first her sisters, who must leave without her, and her parents, who decide to go to war over the abduction of their daughter (Yan Die et al. 1979: 24–43). The SAFS version alludes playfully to the hunter theme. The section depicting the capture of the princess is playful, even comical at times, but the subtext of capture is still there. Thus, as a subjectivity, the political and even sexual dominance of the prince is expressed in a sublimated, playful way, but it would be possible to read the relationship in gendered terms that put the weight of power on the male over the princess, who is metaphorically linked to a bird, even at times transforming into a bird while she spins. Moreover, because of the prince, the princess severs her familial ties although she gains familial and political alliance through her marriage to the prince. In the contemporary global film market, it is almost impossible to ignore the effects Disney has had on the “Princess trope.” Disney has successfully penetrated global markets with these images, which not only appear on screens (theater and digital screens), but also in toy and clothing lines and bedroom linen and wallpaper and even in the frames of children’s beds. England, Descartes, and Collier-Meek break down the prince and princess relationship into a quasi-socio-structuralist reading in point form, highlighting the male and female characteristics of the characters (2011: 558–560). The Disney franchises are now often dismissed as archaic tropes of codification of various types, both of men and women and even ethnic others (Lacroix 2004). Disney is in a sense a distraction, a type of interference, in any attempt to read the imaginary romantic narrative of the prince and princess, a narrative and sector that seems to have only accumulated greater idealization and marketization with each passing decade. But I would like to discuss one often forgotten aspect of the Princess trope with direct relevance to Princess

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Peacock. Disney princesses leave out a great amount of detail. From the first Someday my prince will come sung by Snow White in 1937, Disney films usually highlight the barest of social details to narrate an idealized romantic love relationship between a male and a female character. In addition to other animated films, Princess Peacock has a whole history of theatrical encounters in front of it as well. The story of the famous “Butterfly Lovers,” Liang Shanbo and Zhu Yingtai, had been made into the first color feature in the PRC in 1953.12 However, the producers of Princess Peacock deliberately chose to work with an ethnographically exoticized narrative as an example of the fantastic. As I mentioned above, Princess Peacock could be compared to other filmic representations of minority culture in PRC cinema in the 1950s and ’60s. But the choice of material for Princess Peacock may have had other rationales. The material reads well as a romance, a narrative that features a pair of lovers who are separated through a series of misadventures and reunited in the end. However, in the original texts, the prince is very much a hunter who gains access to the princess through guile. The princess is thus, in effect, abducted, and the prince must convince her that she is marrying into a good family. The violence of the textual versions is supplemented by a charming playfulness and flirtation on both sides in the film. The princess demurely removes a golden bracelet and offers it to the prince, and her sisters titter and gather around the couple with a chorus of well wishes: “One drop, two drops, three drops of water, a long and happy life to you both!” But after the princess goes to live with her husband in the family castle, as it were, events retain elements of the alliance that the relationship implied from the beginning. The Disney Princess franchises are built on a trope of romantic love legitimately critiqued from the point of view of gender representation and perhaps an archaic ideology that desexualizes romantic love, or at the very least represses sexual desire in a stylized format aimed mostly at young women and prepubescent girls. But there is another way of looking at this genre. Peacock Princess depicts an idealized relationship predicated on alliance. In the erotically nuanced dancing scenes that frame the princess and her sisters, the whole scene is depicted innocently enough, and my feeling is that contemporary viewers would find such representation somewhat corny, a bit too precious by today’s standards. Princess Peacock superficially resembles the Disney franchises it is related to in a sort of reverse typology, but perhaps because the story retains elements from the folk versions, and perhaps because the story addresses specific cultural practices, the bride who goes to live in her in-laws’ home, for example, Princess Peacock is a reminder of a type of relationship and the importance of alliance in this relationship. Foucault’s binary of alliance and sexuality is helpful here. For Foucault, alliance, the “deployment of alliance,” is a strategy by social and political power to put limits on sexual desire: “a system of marriage, of fixation and development of kinship ties, of transmission of names and possessions.”13 Foucault’s binary of alliance and sexuality is historical and represents a gradual process he traces roughly from the seventeenth century in Europe. In Disney animation, images of

122 A discussion and a princess alliance are expressed in sentimentally idealized narratives that suppress, or at least refine, sexual content in an extremely artificial manner. In some ways this is one aspect of a type of animated film in which the content finds parallel in the form. The stylized simplicity of the animated figure is matched in the stripped-down narrative, which is amenable to many variations, including self-parody. And it is important to remember that the Princess franchise, the trope as product, while it is a heavily codified form, is only one among a whole array of images and signs available to viewers today. Disney is often accused of promoting false images of gender for young women, and there is validity to this claim. But at the same time, by implicitly highlighting older, residual versions of alliance in sexual relationships, the Princess trope is merely reiterating social and political norms of power, norms meant to give order to sexual desire. Thus, in many ways Disney’s success with the Princess franchise cannot be directly attributable to the studio, since the very welcome response to this franchise form from consumers (many of whom grew up with versions of the franchise and who are passing on the embrace of this franchise to their children) would seem to indicate an agreement with the hyperformalized representation of sexuality that is the Disney Princess. In other words, the product sells because the consumer is complicit with this form of representation of social and political power. Codes necessitate an addresser and a complicit addressee. Princess Peacock also reiterates notions of alliance in the relationship between the princess and her husband and his family. The prince is called away to war, a war strategically launched by the enemy ruler who had been foiled in attempts by his minister to have the minister’s daughter marry the prince. Thus, alliance is an intrinsic part of the narrative. Indeed, alliance is a key plot device in princess narratives. The story of Cinderella revolves around a glass slipper that fits (ignoring the possibility that at least one other person will have the same shoe size). The suspense hinges upon whether the prince will find the right foot and marry the owner. In Princess Peacock, signs of alliance are complex and go beyond a simple romantic tale of two protagonists. The princess is marrying into the prince’s family and the kingdom his father rules. In addition, when the two are married the old hunter toasts the newlyweds and the prince exclaims: “Thanks to all of you our elders, you are like the deeply rooted bamboo, we are like leaves on a branch’s tip. Without the roots, we would be blown away by the wind, only because of you can we withstand the wind and rain.” The marriage of the prince and princess is at the same time expressed as a solidification of ties between classes and generations. But the evil minister works through a sorcerer (wushi). When the king dreams that his intestine flies out of his stomach and circles around the room three times, the sorcerer interprets his dream as evidence the kingdom is under the influence of a female evil spirit (yaomo) within the court that could mean the end of the court and the nation. The sorcerer thus implicates Princess Peacock and she is sentenced to be burned. The old hunter, speaking for the people, expresses his disagreement with this sentence, but the sentence is still carried out. But before she is executed the princess requests to be permitted to say farewell properly, and by this she means to wear her peacock garments and dance one last time.

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The next scene is a good example of crosscutting as shots of the spectators, of the prince’s parents the king and queen, of close-ups of the scowling faces of the evil minister and the guards, and shots from different angles of the prince galloping on his horse, are interspersed with shots of Princess Peacock dancing. This scene will be repeated in the live-action adaptation almost twenty years later, but here the filmmakers use this scene to increase suspense, with the music rising in tempo and pitch as the scene winds to a close and Princess Peacock flies away. The narrative technique of Princess Peacock and Uproar, especially the second part of Uproar, could not be more different. Uproar is an example of an adaptation which depends on the audience knowing the outcome in advance. In the case of Uproar, Paul Wells’s assessment of adaptation is apropos; what happens is not as important as “the way it happens” (1999: 210). Xu Changlin noted that even when the spectator knows the outcome, emotional enjoyment rests in the process of suspense (1962, No. 4: 38). But with Princess Peacock the producers make use of a new, relatively unknown material so that suspense does rest in the outcome. Still, aspects of Princess Peacock may have also been answering audience expectations. Princess Peacock evidences both an “exoticism” (Clark 1987b; Berry 1992) and “objectification” (Yingjin Zhang 1997) of minority culture. Princess Peacock represents minority culture in an oblique way through the use of dance, one of the most prevalent tropes for representing minority culture in the PRC. Princess Peacock is a stop-motion animated film many viewers may have seen on TV as children, but the film has a rather important place in mass media representation of minority women. One of the earliest film representations of minorities in China, Saishang fengyun (Storm on the Border, 1940), is an interesting period film featuring the star of early cinema Li Lili (1915–2005). Storm was filmed in Inner Mongolia and features an approximation of minority dance by the two female characters in the first fifteen minutes.14 Princess Peacock is not often discussed today, but the film was adapted as a live-action fictional film in 1982 and although it would be an exaggeration to make this animated feature a point of origin for the representation of minority women, the image of the dancing Peacock sisters is an example of ethnographic imagery that forms the basis for mass media representation of minorities, and especially minority women, in the PRC. The problem is not that women of ethnic minorities do not dance, but rather that images of minority women dancing and bathing in the river are prevalent images for minority culture. Dancing and bathing are conflated in the dance scene in Princess Peacock.15 Princess Peacock represents a key moment in mainstream media representations still prevalent decades after the film was produced. The Peacock Princess dances twice in the film, once by the Golden Lake as the prince looks on and once to escape her captivity and return home. The stop-motion dances are linked metaphorically to the peacock, with some of the arm movements subtly mimicking the bird. The Peacock sisters simulate the Peacock Dance, considered a traditional dance of the Dai nationality with a long history, but first officially choreographed as part of PRC promotion of minority folklore during the 1950s.16 Princess Peacock is an important narrative that articulates important tropes of nationality

124 A discussion and a princess culture, in particular Dai culture, through movement and music in animated film. Two years after Princess Peacock, the Dai dancer Dao Meilan (1944–) would perform an abbreviated version of a peacock dance in Dongfang hong (The East is Red), part of the representative section for minorities near the end of the film. And such representations continue until the present, thanks in no small part to Bai nationality dancer/performer Yang Liping, who has been performing her signature variations of peacock dancing as an example of minority-themed dance since the 1980s, at least.17 Princess Peacock has significant resonance even in contemporary mass media. Princess Peacock certainly does not depart from one aspect of mainstream discourse on minorities at the time, but the film was also one of the few filmic representations of minority culture during that time that avoided revolutionary discourse. Yingjin Zhang noted of Third Sister Liu that “the Zhuang people are represented as being ‘identical’ with the Han in that both were oppressed by landlords and both must be united in order to overcome their class enemy” (1997: 80). However, in one way, exotic representation of the other culture sometimes prevented the revolutionary universalizing of that other culture. Revolutionary imagery is utterly absent from Princess Peacock.18 This is best evidenced in the depiction of an aesthetic-religious imagery, in particular the imagery of that transcendent space, Kongque guo, the Peacock Kingdom. The villains are dispatched and then the prince is reunited with his princess, but first he will have to take a journey to a transcendent space in the sky that functions like a touchstone for SAFS productions, especially Princess Peacock and Uproar in Heaven, a heaven-like space in the clouds. In Princess Peacock, the prince first encounters the princess by accident when he is hunting a deer that leads him to the place where the princess is. But in the end the prince must pursue his princess to bring her back. With the help of the Goddess of the Golden Lake, he uses the giant bird to fly him to Peacock Kingdom, a similar device used in A Zhuang Brocade where one of three brothers rides a statue transformed into a tiger to the Palace of the Immortals. The recourse to a type of heaven, a transcendent space, to resolve the plot is important. The figuration of this “heaven” in Uproar on the one hand, and Princess Peacock and A Zhuang Brocade on the other, is suggestive of other possible rationales for employing nationality folk narrative material besides mere exoticism. Clark, Berry, and Yingjin Zhang are correct when they note the way minority culture is objectified within a larger national and cultural framework during the revolutionary period and after. But at least in these animated films, the use of minority culture was also a way for producers to present themes and images simultaneously within the scope of national style and yet outside potentially reductive ideological readings. Because the narrative that punished the Monkey King was supposedly tainted by feudal attitudes, even the mythic world of Uproar was adapted to suit contemporary political exigencies. However, folk material from other ethnic groups within the newly founded People’s Republic meant the producers could remain within the scope of national representation, which is to say national style and form, while at the same time expressing and representing the

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“special characteristics of nationalization and massification” (minzuhua he qunzhonghua de tese) through representational modes that were still as yet uncategorized ideologically. Of course, charges of superstition and feudal thinking were still possible, but the potential for adapting relatively new material based on folktales from minority groups was, in my opinion, marginally better than so-called material from Chinese literature and theater, prejudged and categorized even as it was cited by political leaders like Mao Zedong, Zhou Enlai, and others. This would change by 1964 and change drastically in 1966 and after with the official launch(es) of the Cultural Revolution. But in this pre-Cultural Revolution period, discourse remained slightly more variegated and flexible. Writers were obligated to express ideas within a revolutionary framework of international and class conflict, but the content of some of this material clearly retained imagery from popular culture and religion, and this is especially true in Princess Peacock. The prince arrives at Peacock Kingdom and it is, like the heaven of Uproar and the Palace of the Sun in A Zhuang Brocade in the clouds. The initial long-shot of the kingdom looks either vaguely like Thai or Laotian temple architecture (the Dai are considered to be related to Thai and Lao nationalities) or a mass of pagodas. The second long-shot shows the prince walking up steps and gazing at spires that jut out of the clouds. The prince figurine is further miniaturized in Peacock Kingdom, a tiny figure in a landscape of mist and spires wandering towards screen right. Next the scene shifts to another long-shot of a series of promenades ending with small enclosures with rooftop coverings. Several figures move on one of these spaces to the right of the frame. Women’s laughter is heard and women with vases on carrying poles walk towards the small cluster of figures; they are drawing water from a well. In a mid-shot one of the women is left alone and the prince asks her why they are drawing so much water. The young woman wonders, hasn’t the prince heard the seventh daughter has returned? They are bringing water to xifu, a compound of the word xi for to clean, or cleanse, and the word fu for a blessing, or a ritual offering. The word is related to xili, a Chinese translation for both the Christian ritual of baptism and the Islamic practice Wuḍūʾ, the ablution performed before prayer. According to the version of the Princess Peacock story that the film stays close to in these scenes, in Yan Die et al., the term refers to the situation of a person who has been away from home for a long time and washes herself upon arriving (1979: 72, note 1). Of course, the spectator would probably not have this gloss, only the images on the screen, and this next scene is crucial as a reiteration of images of minority women, as a discourse of the exotic other, and as another discourse that remains within the bounds of national style. Before the young woman leaves with the water, the prince surreptitiously puts the bracelet given to him by the princess during their first meeting into one of the water jugs. The symbolism is clever here. The prince has gone to the Peacock Kingdom to reclaim his wife, who has left Mengbanjia basically because she was mistreated. Suspected of bringing misfortune on the prince’s kingdom and sentenced to death, the princess is the ultimate mistreated daughter-in-law. Her decision to leave Mengbanjia is without a doubt justified, as she is fleeing for her life. The next shot shows the princess standing in the bottom right of a large ornate window frame

126 A discussion and a princess staring out, her short monologue a type of exposition that explains that Peacock Kingdom is not of the human world, “I have been back here for three days, but in the human world that’s three years, how have you been this very long time?” The Peacock Kingdom is a transcendent world, transcending time and space. Next, the woman who had just taken water from the well calls the princess, who leaves the window. In the next shot the young woman is waiting by a golden weave stool, and she bows in welcome as the princess seems to reappear in midair walking down the stairs. The princess holds a trailing cover over herself, as if she were stepping into a bath. The gentle eroticism of the scene underscores the imagery of Dai women associated with bathing. The set, with drapery, marble floors, and columns, could be mistaken for their orientalist associations. The scene appears designed to look like a miniature and somewhat restrained version of an odalisque, of an imaginary, orientalist nude of Turkish slaves and concubines painted by JeanAuguste-Dominique Ingres (1780–1867). The next image is shot from behind the figurines through drapery and frames the upper torso of the young woman as she pours water from the vases on the princess, whose head occupies the bottom right of the frame: “The first vase to wash away your grief; the second vase a wish for the husband and wife to be reunited!” And just as the young woman finishes saying this, the camera cuts to a medium, full-frame, frontal shot that shows the princess with the bracelet that was placed in the vase by the prince now on her hand. The figurine is posed in a gesture of surprise, both arms raised, a smile on her face, her skin glistening. An eroticism, albeit muted, is expressed through this figurine, her skin glistening in light of uncertain origin. And the bracelet is part of a very clever plot device. The tuanyuan, the circular reunion of husband and wife, is symbolized with a bracelet, which magically, accidentally, ends up on her wrist. The plot is circular and returns to the beginning like the bracelet. The suggestion of a strangely erotic, familial ritual interrupted by the bracelet of her husband, a reminder of the bond she has to him, adds resonance to this romance in oblique and subtle ways. Recall that the princess is neither human nor peacock; she is a celestial, just like the women who transform from peacocks and dance for the Jade Emperor in Uproar. Princess Peacock is a good example of what Louisa Schein refers to as a figure of “internal orientalism” in the representation of minority women, including a “predictable association of the minority woman with nature . . . communing with animals or nestled among trees and flowers” (Schein 1997: 75). And the section of Princess Peacock that takes place in the Peacock Kingdom is an even more deliberate use of orientalism. However, the sets, the wardrobe, and the situation of Princess Peacock’s existence also posit a magical, transcendent world beyond the human. If this fictional heaven is read as a metaphor for minority culture, the exotic is not only determined by objectification, but also by a paradoxical privileging of the other through difference (a symbolic preferment, if you will). At the same time, just as the prince tracked her as a hunter the first time, this charming scene of coincidental reunion symbolized through the bracelet is also a sign that the prince has once again “caught” her. Thus, on the one hand, the representation of Princess Peacock remains part of an emergent tendency to objectify minority women as exotic and erotic figures.

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On the other hand, Peacock Kingdom is the space where the princess has retreated, metaphorically from the human world, but more literally from the machinations of her inlaws’ house. Peacock Kingdom, a transcendent space of quasi-religious architectural forms, of both erotic and domestic interiors, is therefore a sanctuary for the princess, a private space. As features, Uproar and Princess Peacock represented the SAFS brand, not only for the PRC but in potential international markets as well. As SAFS productions they establish an intertextual relationship through representations of mythic material, a hero who possesses a magic phallus and who penetrates a fictional, transcendent, heaven-like space. In both features heaven has been stripped of religious meaning, transformed into a plot device within a narrative. But Peacock Kingdom forms an important contrast to the figuratively feudal bureaucratic satire in Uproar. Peacock Kingdom, like the prince’s own Mengbanjia, is a realm of the in-laws, especially the father-in-law, who provides a drastic contrast to the prince’s own father, a somewhat dithering, complacent, and hesitant ruler, who allows the evil minister and his sorcerer to insinuate themselves into the government to such a degree that they are even capable of pulling the reins of power that decide the most serious crime of sedition against the princess, an absurd charge that was dealt with before the prince flew off to reclaim the princess (if this were post-Cultural Revolution film, the situation might be allegorized as a narrative of the Gang of Four). The decision to accept the prince as the princess’s husband is contained in a short scene that consists of a long shot of the prince and the princess’s father the king, who sits surrounded by other guests, attendants, and much fruit. The scene opens as the prince finishes his heroic tale of how he traveled to the Peacock Kingdom. The prince sits to screen right of the king, an older man with a long flowing beard and dressed in white and purple with a lavender-colored stripe of material billowing out from a crown, a golden peacock atop his head. This is the other father-inlaw, and he is decisive and masculine as he toasts the prince. The camera slowly moves in to frame the father and son-in-law, who drains his glass and is declared zhen shige hao yang’er de, a really great guy. The hand of his daughter is decided by having the seven sisters put their hands through a curtain and have the prince choose the correct hand. In Princess Peacock, heaven is a site of absolute reunion and resolution, a very different site than that other SAFS feature Uproar, and aside from the perennial popularity of the protagonist Sun Wukong, another reason may be the genre, which today would fit in with a “Hollywood” popular genre of prince and princess romance. The conflict of Princes Peacock is resolved before the prince takes leave of Mengbanjia for Peacock Kingdom. And this scene reveals a fundamental, ideological difference between Princess Peacock and Uproar in Heaven. As I mentioned in the Introduction, when Sun Wukong charges the Jade Emperor’s palace, the Jade Emperor and the remaining members of his court are framed by the Monkey King’s legs. By this point, the power shift is complete, and all that remains is for the Emperor to leave the throne and Sun Wukong to completely destroy the palace. This framing shot beneath the legs of the protagonist occurs in Princess Peacock; however, the context is completely different. In Princess Peacock, the

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Figure 4.1 Uproar in Heaven, part 2, 1964

prince returns from battle to find the princess is gone. After it is determined that the evil minister and his sorcerer were responsible, the pair cower and tremble along a red carpet leading to the execution stage upon which two executioners wait. After a brief frontal shot of the prince in full battle armor walking with arms swinging upwards towards the viewer (a reverse shot since he is walking towards the villains), the next shot seems to be from ground level with the back of the prince’s legs framing the scene of the two plotters fallen on the ground, the stage and executioners behind them, and a spire in the distant background splitting the frame in two, which also adds a phallic element to a scene that frames two dwarfed figures crawling backwards in fear from between the prince’s legs and up the short flight of stairs to the waiting executioners, who pick them up by the scruffs of their necks. Such a scene is worlds away from the scene in Uproar when the Jade Emperor and his remaining court cower in fear of the Monkey King. The triumph of the Monkey King is the domination of an anarchic trickster, unencumbered by moral limits, who has taken the place of power. Sun Wukong’s violent victory over feudal social structures for the masses is a political cartoon-conflict of social power informed by official ideology. The prince’s victory here is a reaffirmation of the moral world of the film, without necessarily invoking a revolutionary ideological frame. Prince Zhao Shutun is merely putting things aright within the romance plot of the film. His parents might have to apologize for their mistake,

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Figure 4.2 Princess Peacock, 1963

but the true villains, the characters who cause a further separation between the lovers the prince and princess, are simply receiving their comeuppance. The film as romance is partially resolved with the removal of one hindrance to the lovers’ reunion (Figures 4.1 and 4.2). On the surface, these two feature-length SAFS films are poles apart ideologically, thematically, and aesthetically. But this particular shot of reversed/reaffirmed power in Princess Peacock is directly quoted as a similar shot in Uproar. By repeating this shot of protagonist-framing, the producers link the Princess Peacock and Uproar shots formally. In both films composition determines the way each shot is read. The link between the films is based on camera angle and framing, so that the frame here literally contains the content. By this I mean that in both films the frame created by the foregrounded legs of the protagonist that dwarfs his opponents in a sense encapsulates the main conflict in both films. I am making an artificial separation between form and content here, but content is also an aspect of the form, especially in Princess Peacock. In Uproar, the plot is given a heavyhanded allegorical reading so that an episode from the classic narrative is restructured to suit an abstracted structure of class conflict, while in Princess Peacock the plot retains a limited autonomy as an example of a romance narrative in itself that employs the structure of union, separation, and reunion, with the characters functioning as devices within this form.

130 A discussion and a princess As a director, Jin Xi showed considerable skill to work with the particular strengths of stop-motion puppet animation. And Jin Xi was one of the few practitioners at SAFS who wrote about animation with a critic’s eye. Jin Xi’s discussion of animation went beyond mere promotionals of a particular policy; he discussed animation as a specific type of film, with reference to the technical and aesthetic specificities of the medium. Besides the “Discussion of Animated Cinema” discussed above, early critical material on animated films is sparse. One of the first critiques of a specific animation is Jin Xi’s discussion of Guo houshan (Crossing Monkey Mountain). Chang-tai Hung notes how during the reform of nianhua or New Year’s pictures after liberation, surveys were conducted on the attitudes of the viewers, namely the peasantry (Hung 2000: 784). Whether such limited surveys implied systematic canvassing of the population is doubtful, but Jin Xi’s critique of Crossing Monkey Mountain attempts to construct a type of reader response theory based on attitudes of the rural audience. “Kuazhang yu shufu” (Exaggeration and comfort) sets up a binary between “comfort” and “discomfort” based on an audience response to a scene in Crossing Monkey Mountain. Jin Xi claims that a rural audience reacted negatively when the old man in the film grows angry and puffs out his stomach; they said it “looked really uncomfortable” (1963: 55). Jin Xi believed exaggeration was “an indispensible technique” of animation, but taking the peasants’ reaction into consideration, Jin Xi suggests a limit for exaggeration determined by the audience’s discomfort. But for Jin Xi, the idea of comfort, as an expression of a limit for the audience, was no simple matter. The idea of tracing the limits of affect seems to be more of an attempt to delineate an aesthetics of animation based on audience response. One of the most nuanced statements on animated film is Jin Xi’s “Meishupian de yishu xugou” (“The artistic construction of animated film”). Jin Xi succinctly captures the specific nature of animated film by first attempting to define the notion of meishu, “fine arts,” as a term for animation: “As the name implies, meishu [animated] film is cinema derived from plastic arts media, their protagonists are fine arts images either drawn, cut out from paper, or sculpted out of wood or other materials” (1962: 16). Indeed, in an earlier article on Trnka, Jin Xi showed an intimate understanding of the material aspects of stop-motion animation, including models, photographic material, and the use of sudden shifts from wide angle to close-up and vice versa used specifically in stop-motion puppet animation (1959: 41–43). In Chinese animation, meishu as a concept distinguishes animated film from live-action film by reinscribing what Tom LaMarre has referred to as the “by hand” aspect of animation, both analog and digital (LaMarre 2006; Manovich 1999). During the revolutionary period from the 1950s until the mid-1960s just before the official launch of the Cultural Revolution, animated film cinema constituted an important example of genre film still being produced in the PRC, and by this I mean film that dealt with historical and fantastic themes from premodern literature and popular culture. As Jin Xi put it: “Artistic production needs to be more concentrated, more typical than real life. Not only is this the case for animation, but animation also needs to possess rich fantasy, and a heavy dose of romantic

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coloring. The violation of these [criteria] is simply the violation of the rules of animated film.” (Jin Xi 1962: 19). The important term here is “fantasy” (huanxiang), connoting an aspect of animated film that represents the synthesis of “fine arts” (meishu) and “fictional narrative film” (gushipian) while avoiding the narrow definition of either medium (Jin Xi 1962: 19). To define “fantasy” in the early 1960s might seem unusual because of assumptions about the period. But as I have mentioned, discourse around cultural production could be quite a bit more open-ended, or at least more pluralistic. Although “Exaggeration and Comfort” employs a kind of reader response reading that remains within a program of massification of cultural production, “The artistic construction of animated film” is a philosophical meditation on the problem of animation and the representation of the fantastic. However, as in Te Wei’s somewhat defensive discussion cited above, Jin Xi must find ways to discuss the fantastic in the context of realism, of a realism that was “materializing” cultural production by demanding a representation of class and nation through a simulation of national and class conflict in art. Jin Xi must legitimize his contentions about the tendency of animated film to represent the fantastic and still pay lip service to realism. He is a very persuasive critic and theorist in this regard. Jin Xi first admits the inherent limitations of animation as a medium of representation. According to Jin Xi, when the various forms of animation do not lack “volume (depth), or a sense of realism, they seem to lack a feeling of life-like movement [literally a sense of organic movement], these limits tend to a definite degree to weaken the sense of realism in the visual field.” Jin Xi even differentiates flat types of animation that lack volume, cel and cutout, from puppet animation (that may lack the life-like movement of cel and cutout). (1962: 16–17). By making a clear critique of the problems of representation in the medium, Jin Xi suggests another way of dealing with the concepts of realism current at the time, especially those concepts that reduced cultural production to a sort of diegesis of class and nation. By declaring the limitations of animation within notions of the real with regard to the specific aspects of the medium, Jin Xi shifts the problem of realism into another conceptual area. Even if this wasn’t a rhetorical strategy, Jin Xi is clearly able to approach the problem of representation from a much broader perspective than a strictly political one. Jin Xi legitimizes his aesthetic by tying the medium of animation to other types of cultural production. For example, he notes the importance of drama in animation, even citing the importance of plot in novelistic discourse, bringing the wellknown phrase from Outlaws of the Marsh, “no story without coincidence” (wu qiao bu cheng shu). Jin Xi notes that for animation, “coincidence” must be further emphasized as part of the exaggeration of the medium at the level of plot. Coincidence ties characters and events together. For example, in Princess Peacock when the prince flies to Peacock Kingdom he meets a young woman at the well who happens to be taking water to the princess, and thus he places the bracelet in the vase, which ends up returning the bracelet to its original owner.19 Jin Xi theorizes notions of representation in ways that had resonance at the time in national style

132 A discussion and a princess discourse. However, while Jin Xi links animated film to other types of cultural production, he does not do this with explicit reference to national style. Jin Xi discusses the generalizing qualities of animation “ . . . which can use ‘puns’ and ‘symbolism’ and other techniques, as when one person symbolizes a group, or one event can obliquely discuss an international incident . . . ” (1962: 18).20 Jin Xi’s language is careful and precise. He is clearly referring to those metonymic and metaphorical substitutional uses of language that can also account for political readings of literature and art through the ideology of class and nation (“when one person symbolizes a group . . . ”). Jin Xi makes use of such “part for the whole” logic without having recourse to an explicitly political method. Such a designation is part of Jin Xi’s theoretical description of animation, but also part of a strategy of legitimation. For Jin Xi the fantastic is an integral aspect of animation. Besides looking at the nuances of figural representation, Jin Xi also employs an important aspect of argumentation during this period, an appeal to authority; namely, Mao Zedong. Jin Xi selects specific passages from “Maodun Lun,” the well-known text “On Contradictions,” one of Mao’s most complex texts. Jin Xi selects one passage from Part V where Mao cites a number of mythological and mythical characters. Jin Xi has already discussed the importance of mythological and fantastic material, thus citing Mao’s discussion is clever. In essence Jin Xi brings in well-chosen passages from Maoist thought to support his own description of animation: When he discusses “Kua Fu Chases the Sun” and “Yi Shoots the Nine Suns,” in “On Contradictions,” Mao said “these mythic transformations of opposites are the innumerable real and complex transformations of opposites into one another conjured up in men’s minds as naive, imaginary, and subjectively fantasized transformations, not the concrete changes expressed by concrete contradictions.” Mao also said “myths are not built out of the concrete contradictions existing in given conditions and therefore are not a scientific reflection of reality. That is to say, the contradictions produced by myths or fairy tales do not constitute concrete identities, only fantastic identities.” These profound explanations reveal the relationship between fantastic art and the real.21 Jin Xi appeals to authority here, but his citation is strategic. In effect, Jin Xi has enlisted Mao’s “On Contradictions” to legitimize a particular use of the fantastic. Mao’s argument is a critique of symbolic contradiction in contrast to “concrete” contradiction. However, Jin Xi enlists Mao’s argument to distinguish between concrete and fantastic contradiction, between an actual contradiction and a symbolic form in order to emphasize the importance of the representation of the fantastic in animation, not to negate such representation. Jin Xi brings in another authority in his discussion, Liu Xie (465–522), the compiler of Wenxin diaolong, a very important text on literary genre and form. Wenxin diaolong is made up of two phrases: wenxin, the literary mind, and diaolong, to carve dragons.22 But Liu’s treatise is the first systematic enquiry into

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writing in China and remains one of the most important. Jin Xi knows he is using a text that discusses literature to talk about film. For Jin Xi, the main problem he reads into animation is whether the art fanying xianshi, reflects the real, or represents reality. Jin Xi cites certain passages that generalize on the process of creation; for example, Jin Xi cites a passage from Chapter 26 of Liu Xie on “breadth” to discuss the necessity of appealing to life experience, especially the experience of the masses. Jin Xi cites Liu Xie’s discussion of poetry in Chapter 6 to discuss the importance of attitude in creation, to be able to recognize the importance of allowing for difficulty in cultural production, which according to Jin Xi brings out the specificity of form.23 Jin Xi employs Liu Xie’s well-known and oblique discussion of Bixing in Chapter 36 to account for the metaphorical comparison often used in animation, the use of animals to depict human society. Jin Xi’s uses of this poetic trope to account for a common trope in animation works well as a straightforward use of poetics.24 But his use of xieyin is more complex and points to the possibility of an obliqueness in the medium. In the translation of Liu Xie’s treatise by Wong, Lo, and Lam, Chapter 15, Xieyin is translated as “Puns and Parables,” and this translation is apt. For one thing, Liu Xie’s discussion of this type of trope resembles a term like bixing, an affective image that arises from comparison and juxtaposition of more than one image. For Jin Xi, xieyin, a trope of comparison that includes punning and parable-like characters and situations, is potentially a commentary on “real life” (xianshi shenghuo). Jin Xi’s recourse to this trope from poetics is in line with his discussion of representation above. He is indicating the way representation in animation that employs techniques of exaggeration and substitution (animals for humans) can at the same time be a commentary on reality. His choice of xieyin is strategic, since xieyin has implicit links to rhetorical forms used to critique power.25 Jin Xi’s use of poetics in the end opens up the potential for oblique allegorical and figurative readings that have the possibility to form a critique of real life. But such a use of animation would be eclipsed by the ideological debates and battles of the Cultural Revolution and would have to wait until the beginning of the opening up and reform period and a film like Nezha naohai (Nezha Conquers the Dragon King), the subject of the next chapter.

Notes 1 See Raffaelli 1997: 127, cited in LaMarre 2002: 361. For the full quote, and some good detective work about the provenance of McLaren’s coinage, see Furniss 1998: 5 and 12 (note 10). 2 LaMarre notes the “Disney Standard” of “approximately twelve frames per second” (2002: 331). LaMarre cites one of the first limited animation productions in Japan, Tezuka Osamu’s Tetsuwan Atomu (Astro Boy), which used two to three times fewer cels (2002: 335). 3 An important figure of popular Buddhism, for a discussion of Crazy Ji, see Shahar 1998. 4 See Zhang Shijie 1961: 209. The story is taken from a collection of folktales supposedly from the Boxer Rebellion. 5 For a more detailed reading of this form, see Bakhtin 1981: 86–110.

134 A discussion and a princess 6 I consulted two print translations, a 1979 revised edition by Yan Die et al. (reprint 1959?) and a revised prose version published in Zhongguo zuojia xiehui, Yunnan fenhui 1981 (reprint, 1960). 7 The princess’s name is slightly different in each text version and modified in the film. In Yan Die et al (1979), she is Nan Ruona, In Zhongguo zuojia xiehui et al, she is Lanmu Luonuo. The SAFS version seems to combine the names. 8 The singers were He Jiguang (1939–2002) and Ju Xiufang (1934–). 9 Leyda 1972: 291; also see Jin Xi 1959. 10 For a reading of Pu Songling’s story, see Zeitlin 1993: 183–201. Stephen Owen discusses Yan Yu (as Yen Yü) in 1992: 391–420. For an English version of “The Painted Wall,” see Pu Songling 2006: 24–27. 11 A reed instrument used in opera with a high pitched organ-like sound. 12 Liang Shanbo is the story of a young woman, Zhu Yingtai, who dresses like a man in order to receive an education. However, she falls in love with a schoolmate, Liang Shanbo. She finally reveals her love to Liang, but her parents have already arranged for her to marry someone else and on the day of her marriage to another man she passes by the grave of her lover, Liang. His grave opens, Zhu throws herself into the grave and their spirits transform into butterflies. A film version was made, the first color feature in the PRC in 1953. But the story had been filmed before this time in Hong Kong, and many, many versions have been made and continue to be made. 13 See 1978: 106. Susan Brownell had recourse to the binary of alliance and sexuality in her discussion of sports culture in the PRC, especially during the 1980s (1995: 34–64). Brownell’s discussion is important, but any use of the concepts of alliance and sexuality must be historicized. 14 Yingjin Zhang notes that Storm “actually foreshadows some of the themes such as solidarity that will recur in minority films for decades to come” (1997: 79). Henry Kuoshu called the film “a precursor to the PRC’s national minority genre” (1999: 96). 15 Paul Clark claimed that music and song in pre-Cultural Revolution film tended to create an image of “undifferentiated . . . less sophisticated” (1987a: 101) nationalities beside the majority Han Chinese. Erik Mueggler notes how traditional Yi dress and dance have been appropriated by the state and the people themselves (2007). Dru Gladney discusses the importance of the image of Dai women bathing in the river (1994: 103–104). In Yan Die et al. 1979, the Peacock Princess and her sisters are swimming; in Zhongguo zuojia xiehui, Yunnan fenhui 1981, they are dancing. 16 Liao Dakun (1989) claims that mention of the Peacock Dance can be found in Shanhai jing, The Classic of Mountains and Seas, dated as early as the fourth century BCE. But Liao (1989) and Dai Ailan (1984) both recount the importance of an early dancer of Dai nationality named Mao Xiang (1918–1986). 17 Yang still performs regularly, presenting her trademark peacock-themed choreographies for the stage and television. Yang’s dance troupe tours in China and internationally under the title Yunnan yingxiang (Dynamic Yunnan), see 18 Princess Peacock was not the only film of this type; see Paul Clark 1987a for a discussion of Ashima (99). 19 See Jin Xi 1962: 17. The example here is my own. For a discussion of this very important aspect of plot structure see Xu Changlin 1962: no. 2, 40–43. 20 See Jin Xi 1962: 18. I have used the term “pun” to translate jiajie, which is a term for a phonetic loan word in Chinese, when a homophone is used to fill a meaning not usually associated with the word. But Jin Xi’s discussion here clearly indicates figurative uses of language. 21 See Mao Tsetung 1965: vol. 1, 340 (with changes), and for the Chinese see Mao Zedong 1991: vol. 1, 330–331, cited in Jin Xi 1962: 19. “Kua Fu Chases the Sun” is a tale taken from The Classic of Mountains and Seas, “Yi Shoots the Nine Suns” is from the Huainanzi, a philosophical text from the second century BCE. Mao also cites the seventy-two transformations of Sun Wukong and Liaozhai zhiyi (Stories of the Strange) of Pu Songling.

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22 Stephen Owen discusses the problem of translating this title (1992: 185). 23 Jin Xi 1962: 21. Owen translates this passage as “breadth” (1992: 208); Wong et al. translate this phrase as “extensive knowledge” (Liu Xie 1999: 103). See Liu Xie 1995: 250, for the Chinese. Liu Xie 1999 (Wong et al. trans.) translates Chapter 6 as “Understanding Shi Poetry” (18–22). 24 Jin Xi 1962: 24. Bixing is translated with commentary in “Comparison and Affective Image . . .” in Owen (1992: 256–262), and “Bi and Xing – Two Types of Metaphor” in Liu Xie, trans. Wong et al. 1999: 13–136; Liu Xie 1995: 319–325. 25 See Liu Xie 1999: 53; Liu Xie 1995: 132–133.

5

Nezha naohai (Nezha Conquers the Dragon King ) Scar animation and an ending

This chapter discusses the animated film Nezha naohai (Nezha Conquers the Dragon King, 1979). Production on Nezha Conquers started in 1978 and the film was released domestically May 19, 1979. Nezha Conquers was scripted and codirected by Wang Shuchen (1931–1991), a very important director at the SAFS. Completed for the thirtieth anniversary of the founding of the PRC, Nezha Conquers represented a return to mythological and fantastic animated production after the strict politicized cinema of the Cultural Revolution (1966–1976). Nezha Conquers was the second feature-length cel animation produced at SAFS, and the first wide-screen animated film produced in the PRC. The film won the 1980 Hundred Flowers Award for best animated film. Nezha was also screened outside the PRC, in France at the 1980 Cannes Film Festival for an out-of-competition screening, and in the Philippines where the film won the Special Award at the second annual Manila International Film Festival in 1983. Perhaps because animated film has always had a need to be legitimized by literary narrative, or perhaps because book illustration was sometimes a model for animation design (Disney is a key example), literary adaptation has been a staple of animated film (Wells 2007; Cartmell 2007). Next to Uproar in Heaven, Nezha Conquers is one of the best-known classics of cel animation in the PRC. Although Nezha Conquers was based on a well-known episode from a sixteenth-century novel, itself based on earlier Taoist and Buddhist narratives, the SAFS film remains a significant source for the Nezha story. This chapter is an intertextual reading of Nezha conquers.1 I read Nezha Conquers as a key film of the transitional period following the Cultural Revolution. With links to scar literature and art, the suicide and reincarnation of the boy-god Nezha moves towards an open-ended and unresolved historic finale. The plot for Nezha Conquers largely derives from three chapters from the book Fengshen yanyi, sometimes referred to as Creation of the Gods or Investiture of the Gods, a sixteenth-century Ming Dynasty vernacular novel often attributed to Xu Zhonglin. The novel refers to the fall of the Shang Dynasty (ca. 1600–1050 BCE) and the rise of the Zhou Dynasty (1046–256 BCE), but the core of the one hundred-chapter novel is fantastic stories of gods from the Taoist pantheon, and the film uses the narrative centering on Nezha from Chapters Twelve to Fourteen. Madame Yin, wife of Shang army commander Li Jing, has been pregnant for three

Nezha Conquers the Dragon King 137 and a half years with their third son. Madame Yin dreams a Taoist throws an object at her belly, and before she finishes telling her dream to her husband she gives birth to a round, rolling fleshy ball. Li Jing slashes the ball with his sword and a little boy jumps out bathed in red light. He has a beautiful white face and wears a red silk sash over his belly and a magical gold bracelet on his wrist. The boy is the embodiment of the Pearl Spirit. The bracelet and sash are treasures from the Golden Light Cave on Qianyuan Mountain. The next day, Taoist immortal Master Taiyi from Golden Light Cave visits Li Jing and asks whether he can give this third son a name and take him as a disciple. Master Taiyi names this third son Nezha. At seven years old, Nezha is already well over six feet tall. One hot day Nezha bathes in the river near the mouth of the Eastern Sea. When he dips his sash in the river its magic power shakes the palace of Ao Guang, the Dragon King of the Eastern Sea, who sends his yaksha, a demon servant, to investigate. The yaksha scolds Nezha, who kills the yaksha with his bracelet. The third son of the Dragon King confronts Nezha in human form and Nezha kills him with the bracelet. The prince returns to the form of a dragon and Nezha pulls out the dragon’s tendon to make a belt for his father Li Jing. The Dragon King visits Li Jing to protest the murder of his son at the hands of Nezha. Not satisfied with Nezha’s parents’ replies, the Dragon King decides to take his case to the Jade Emperor. Nezha consults with Master Taiyi, who tells him to go to the Jade Emperor’s Palace. When he realizes the Dragon King wishes to report him to the Jade Emperor, Nezha grows angry, rips scales off the Dragon King’s body, and threatens to kill him if he reports. After he returns home, Nezha grows bored while wandering in the garden and finds a quiver with three arrows belonging to the legendary Yellow Emperor. He shoots one of the arrows into the air and kills the disciple of a goddess named Lady Shiji. Knowing that these arrows could only come from Nezha’s father Li Jing’s house, she has Li Jing brought before her. Returning home, Li Jing tricks Nezha into admitting to the crime and brings him before Lady Shiji. Deciding to quickly attack Lady Shiji, Nezha kills another disciple and attacks Lady Shiji, who disarms him of his sash and bracelet, and Nezha is forced to retreat to Golden Light Cave and Master Taiyi. Master Taiyi battles Lady Shiji and tells Nezha he must quickly return home because the four Dragon Kings have convinced the Jade Emperor to arrest his parents. Master Taiji kills Lady Shiji by returning her to her original form of a stone, and Nezha arrives home to tell the four Dragon Kings that he will assume responsibility for the murder of Ao Guang’s son. Drawing a sword with his right hand, he cuts off his left arm and cuts open his belly. Slicing out his intestines and separating flesh from bone he returns his bones to his father and his flesh to his mother. Satisfied with his sacrifice, the dragon kings allow Nezha’s parents to go free. In grief, Nezha’s mother buys a coffin to bury her son, and Nezha’s soul returns to Master Taiyi’s cave on Qianyuan Mountain. Master Taiyi then tells Nezha’s soul to demand that his mother build a temple to him to receive worshippers so he can be reincarnated. Visiting her in her dreams, Nezha threatens his mother until she agrees to build a temple. Knowing Nezha’s father Li Jing does not approve, Madame Yin has the temple built secretly, but when Li Jing finds out he has his soldiers destroy the temple. Having gained some

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human form and voice from six months of worship, Nezha returns to Master Taiyi at Qianyuan Mountain, who arranges lotus flowers and leaves and adds a golden elixir. Master Taiyi throws Nezha’s soul towards the lotus flowers and elixir and with a loud sound Nezha leaps forth reincarnated, a handsome young man over seventeen feet tall. Master Taiyi places the blame for destroying the temple firmly on Nezha’s father, and Nezha decides to get revenge on his father. Taiyi arms Nezha with a fiery spear and flaming wheels that enable him to travel wherever he wishes with great speed. Nezha returns to pursue his father. Nezha’s second brother Muzha reminds Nezha that parricide is the ultimate violation of social order and that children should respect their parents. Nezha explains that he has returned his flesh and bones to his parents and thus their bond no longer exists. Li Jing asks another Taoist, Wenshu Guangfa Tianzun, for help. The Taoist helps Li Jing by binding Nezha and having Nezha’s oldest brother Jinzha beat him with a cane. Nezha calls for help from his Master Taiyi, who thanks Guangfa Tianzun for tempering Nezha and then tells Jinzha to free Nezha. Master Taiyi tells Nezha to kowtow to Guangfa Tianzun and rebukes Nezha’s father for destroying the temple his mother had made for him. But Nezha is not satisfied with this scolding. Master Taiyi declares an end to antagonism between father and son, but the minute he lets them leave Nezha once again pursues his father. This time Li Jing asks for help from another Taoist, Master Randeng, who subdues Nezha with a magic pagoda and demands that Nezha admit his sin and submit to his father.2 The anthropologist P. Steven Sangren reads the Nezha story as evidence of the “[i]mportant linkages between forms of popular literature and religious practice in China . . .” Sangren’s eclectic reading of the Nezha story focuses on a number of aspects of the narrative to reveal aspects of Chinese social life through the familial dynamics suggested by the Nezha story, an active aspect of contemporary popular religion.3 Sangren notes that “[l]ike the story of Oedipus, the Nezha story revolves around tensions between a son and his father” (2000: 190). One example of Oedipal tension is the section of the story when Nezha’s mother builds a temple to her deceased son and the father has the temple destroyed. However, as Sangren points out: “the Nezha story diminishes the mother’s role in the production of her son to that of mere implement of Taiyi’s intention” (2000: 208). The Nezha story has profound roots in Chinese culture that go further back than the narrative of the novel I summarized above. Textual descriptions and visual representations of Nezha depict him carrying a flaming spear with flaming wheels under his feet. In Journey to the West, Sun Wukong battles Nezha, who transforms by growing three heads and six arms, a scene vividly depicted in the first part of Uproar in Heaven.4 Hok-lam Chan convincingly shows that Nezha imagery goes back to sutras and Chan Buddhist texts from the early Song (960–1279). Nezha stories may have developed out of Buddhist sutras dating from as early as the fourth century (Chan 2008: 66–79). Nezha remains an important figure in contemporary Taoism and his story may go back to early Indian Tantric Buddhist texts with possible links to Brahmanic mythology. By the eleventh century certain details of the Nezha story are already in place,

Nezha Conquers the Dragon King 139 notably the sacrifice he makes to his parents of his bones to his father and his flesh to his mother. By the Yuan Dynasty (1279–1368) Nezha becomes an important figure in theater but “increasingly susceptible to Taoist apotheosization” (Chan 2008: 75). Chan traces the main thread of the Nezha story – his bath in the Eastern Sea, his subsequent conflict with the Dragon Kings, and his visit to the Jade Emperor’s palace – to a Taoist biography from the Ming copy of a late Yuan collection. However, Nezha’s appearance in the 1979 Shanghai Animation Studio film cannot be simply placed in either a historical, literary, or filmic continuum. In an article coinciding with the domestic release of the film, director and screenwriter Wang Shuchen notes that the idea of working with the Nezha story was discussed at the Shanghai Animation Studio as early as the late 1950s and resulted in several scripts (1979: 33–35). Wang explains the reason for choosing to make an animated film from Fengshen yanyi, as well as comparing the film to the chapters from the novel and justifying changes made for the film, especially with regard to plot and the main protagonists. The language Wang uses is telling and opens with specific references to the Gang of Four (Siren bang), the four officials, including Mao’s widow Jiang Qing, who were arrested in a coup d’état shortly after the death of Mao in 1976. Wang claims the reason they chose this material was because it is a “mythological story” (shenhua gushi) with a small child as the protagonist, and although China has many mythological stories, those featuring small children are rare. Wang notes that the characters from the Nezha episode have considerable influence and the film would be suitable for adults as well as children (1979: 33). Wang points out that a number of incidents in the Nezha story – Nezha shooting an arrow at Lady Shiji’s disciple, Nezha visiting his mother in her dreams, his mother having a temple built for Nezha and its subsequent destruction by Li Jing his father, the battle between father and son and the final submission of son to father with the help of the Master Randeng’s magic pagoda – are absent from the film. According to Wang, when scripts had been discussed in the 1950s there were three versions: one version that stuck closely to the original plot but tried to excise superstitious and negative elements, one version that would not include all aspects of the plot but selected the most important thread surrounding the “stirring up the sea” (naohai), and one version that focused on the historical background, namely the battle between the Zhou and Shang dynasties. The final film script is mostly based on the second version that “retains ‘the stirring up the sea’ of the original, while setting off the conflict and related plot to serve as the basic structure, so that the battle between Nezha and the dragon king becomes the main thread [zhuxian]” (Wang 1979: 34). The decision to narrow the plot for the animated version treatment is understandable, but Wang’s description of a main thread had implications for characters retained in the animated film and the familial dynamic between the characters. One of the most salient conflicts in the Nezha story is the conflict between father and son, and this includes a potentially Oedipal conflict involving the mother. By emphasizing the conflict between Nezha and the Dragon King, the SAFS film subordinates the role of the father, while Nezha’s mother disappears altogether.

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Indeed, aside from a few maids present at the beginning of the film during his birth and a little girl abducted by the Dragon King’s henchmen at the beginning of the film, female characters are virtually absent from the film. Nezha Conquers opens with a shot of a mountain range dotted with banners on the left and a body of water on the right, then a shot of what appears to be an irregularly shaped promontory with “Chentang Pass” carved in red with three outof-focus buildings in the background. The opening links the story to Nezha’s earthly home where his father, Li Jing, served as a military commander to King Zhou. The next shot is of a green sky above a horizon of water that quickly flows inward to swirl up in a pillar with four dragons – black, white, red, and blue – emerging as the sky turns dark blue. Each dragon stands for an element and each ravages the landscape, with the blue bringing rain and causing a boat in the ocean to capsize, the red setting fire to the land, the black causing a wind that blows fire that drives animals over a cliff into the sea, and the white covering everything in snow. The dragons, transforming briefly into upright creatures dressed in robes, settle on a cloud, waving their hands in the air and laughing, the blue dragon wearing what looks to be a crown with tassels, a flat-topped crown with strings of pearls hanging down the front and back, the headwear of high-ranking officials and emperors in dynastic China. The dragons quickly return to dragon form and fly upwards; the red, white, and black dragons twist downwards towards the water but as the camera settles in close-up on the blue dragon, a flap of bright red suddenly consumes the background and the blue dragon jerks back in fright at this, quickly diving into the ocean as the title in yellow letters fills the frame. This short prologue before the credits sums up the main conflict of the film between Nezha and the blue Dragon King Ao Guang and his brothers. Nezha’s father is present, but he is more of a buffer between Nezha and the Dragon King, his role a sort of failed disciplinarian. He vacillates between ignorant denial and shock and anger at Nezha’s sometimes violent and destructive mischief. As in the novel, Nezha’s father is supplemented by another male figure, Master Taiyi (Taiyi zhenren), who arrives shortly after the boy-god’s birth and who represents an alternative father figure in the film. Perhaps to emphasize the relationship between the dragons and Nezha’s father, after the prologue featuring the dragons, Nezha’s father is the first major character to appear. Li Jing appears near the end of the opening credits, sitting and brooding behind a guqin, a seven-string plucked instrument played flat like a zither. He leans on his left elbow, which rests on the instrument, his head resting on his hand. His right arm, outstretched, grasps the other end of the instrument. Behind Li Jing is a three-part panel trimmed with a red and blue design. The middle panel frames the father and contains a stylized, almost abstract design of a dragon. To the left is a lamp and just in front of the guqin on the floor is an incense brazier, a thin stream of smoke snaking out the top. The next two shots are close-ups of these objects, first of the lamp, which appears to be a phoenix, and next of the brazier, which seems egg-shaped as the incense smoke roils out before the dragon design in the central panel, almost stroking the design then turning into the shape of a crane and dissipating. The phoenix and the dragon are symbols of husband and wife, and in

Nezha Conquers the Dragon King 141 this case the phoenix lamp may be the absent wife of Li Jing (he is awaiting news of the birth of his son). The egg-shaped brazier will be echoed shortly with the birth of Nezha as a “fleshy ball.” Both images are highly detailed painted objects with animated flame (the lamp) and smoke (the brazier) symbolically foreshadowing elements of the Nezha story to come. The brazier and the guqin-plucking Li Jing will appear again when the Dragon King visits Li Jing to tell him Nezha has killed his third son, Ao Bing. The opening credits end with a male servant entering to inform Li Jing that his wife has given birth. “Female or male?” he asks. The servant, slightly uncomfortable, replies, “Don’t know what it is.” Li Jing marches down a corridor to screen left only to come upon three women standing around an egg-shaped object. The exterior seems translucent while the interior looks like an unopened flower bud with pastel pink and purple petals. Li Jing looks surprised and mutters, “Pregnant for three and a half years and gives birth to this thing . . . ” The father draws a sword and strikes the object which gently splits open, the flower thrusting upwards as three layers of petals open up to reveal a fully formed tiny child curled up on the center of the flower. The little child awakens and stretches and, realizing he is naked in front of the other people, takes a petal that changes into a covering for his body. Nezha runs around the room, climbs over the doorsill, and runs outside. A light in the sky briefly glows as a white-haired, bearded man sitting on a crane, a flywhisk, a Buddhist or Taoist symbol of authority, over his right shoulder, slowly alights. Master Taiyi says he has come to congratulate Li Jing on the happy occasion but Li Jing replies that “[The mother] has given birth to an unformed little person,” to which his master replies, “Unformed is fine . . . ” And when the master asks the father where Nezha is, Li Jing is unable to tell him. Master Taiyi laughs and points to a cauldron from which Nezha climbs out. Nezha jumps into the master’s hand as he declares “Isn’t he right here?” Master Taiyi names the boy Nezha and Li Jing suggests that since he and the boy have a destined connection (you yuan), would he mind taking the boy on as a disciple? Master Taiyi consents and, plucking a floating dot of light from the air, feeds it to Nezha who grows several times larger. Master Taiyi then waves his whisk in the air and conjures a red sash and golden ring, which he bestows on the boy, telling him that if he, Nezha, encounters any trouble just to come to the Golden Light Cave. This scene introduces important links between the characters. The introduction of Master Taiyi after the birth of Nezha is significant because he stands as an alternative paternal figure. The knowledge shown by Master Taiyi concerning Nezha is in contrast to the attitude of Nezha’s father, who does not even know where his son is. Sangren’s contention that there may be an Oedipal dynamic in the Nezha story has credence, but as Sangren himself admits, even in the novel version the mother is diminished. In the SAFS version the mother is absent, so Nezha will interact primarily with three male authority figures: his nemesis the Dragon King Ao Guang, his earthly father Li Jing, and Master Taiyi. In comparison to the formal indifference of Li Jing, Master Taiyi is grandfatherly, permissive and doting in the attention he pays to Nezha.

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Thus, by omitting certain characters, the SAFS version puts into relief aspects of the Nezha story that have implications for representations of Chinese culture and especially the historic context of this film. The Nezha story is a type of patrilineal parable. Nezha is linked intimately to both Li Jing and Master Taiyi. Nezha’s “paternity” is complex.5 In both the novel and the film, Nezha’s father, Li Jing, is incapable of disciplining his son. In both novel and film, Master Taiyi plays the trickster most of the time, enabling Nezha throughout his confrontations with the Dragon King and, in the case of the novel, his father. Master Taiyi will, in the novel, reveal all manipulations to have been directed to the final subordination of the son to the father. In the SAFS version, while Nezha does perform an act of self-sacrifice, the final act of subordination, an acceptance of wrongdoing and authority, is absent from the SAFS film. Master Taiyi undermines the patriarchal authority of the father, even going so far as to usurp the place of the father. Patriarchy is subverted; however, this is really a case of earthly patriarchy being subverted by a Taoist master and “immortal” (shenxian). Thus, Nezha’s “biological” father is subordinated to another form of patriarchy, either the patriarchy of an elderly grandfather-like male, which would make this a symbolically intergenerational conflict, or a patriarchal figure of authority of an institutional (a religious or political) type that subordinates the father for other purposes. The Nezha story is a subversion of patriarchy by another form of patriarchy. To reduce the conflict within the Nezha story to a father-son conflict is to highlight one conflict at the expense of others. In the SAFS version, the relationship between Nezha and these two male figures, Master Taiyi and Li Jing, is triadic and goes beyond a simple father-son relationship.6 The figures of Li Jing and Master Taiyi function like two sides of a father figure for Nezha, one “good” and one “bad” father, one enabling his wishes and one chastising his actions.7 Nezha is the absolute center of this film: “No matter if it is the children, Master Taiyi, or Nezha’s guardian, his deer, each is there to give another side of Nezha that reveals his humanity, to increase his human interest, to give him flesh and bones, to be praiseworthy and arouse sympathy” (Wang, Yan, and Xu 1984: 111). The next scene shows Nezha riding his spotted deer towards screen right. Nezha is a playful little boy tiring out his guardian, who struggles to keep up with him and his deer. In the novel Nezha is about seven years old by this time and well over six feet tall; not so in the film, where his size is like that of a child. Character design for the film is attributed to Zhang Ding (1917–2010), an important painter who worked in many styles, including folk art styles, political cartoons, and Western avant-garde styles like cubism. Nevertheless, Zhang’s work on Nezha Conquers is described by the directors in the context of “national style” (minzu fengge): “[Zhang Ding] drew from China’s door god pictures and murals, extracting the useful elements, employing the decorative style, the concise line, and those colors often employed in folk art, blue, green, red, white, black . . . ” (Wang, Yan, and Xu 1984: 112). Wang, Yan, and Xu are referring to nianhua or New Year’s Pictures, a form of religious art that depicts a wide range of subjects, including religious deities, auspicious symbols, and historical and literary figures. Originally printed from woodblocks, they have an ambiguous place in the PRC, with the early revolutionary

Nezha Conquers the Dragon King 143 government attempting to co-opt the religious and moral elements for political propaganda. Nezha resembles a particular type of nianhua, the wawa nianhua (Child New Year’s Pictures), auspicious figures of children, usually boys, accompanied by proverbial phrases.8 At times Nezha’s appearance in the SAFS film seems to reference such pictures. But the design and movement go further than this. Nezha leaps off his deer that continues galloping off towards screen right. Like Japanese manga and anime, Nezha’s eyes are large, but his features seem to purposely reference the infants in New Year’s prints; the face is full, almost chubby, at certain moments revealing the hint of a double chin. In clothing, hairstyle, and facial features, Nezha is easily distinguishable from the “‘postethnic’ identities” of contemporary anime – his features are marked by “Chineseness.”9 Images of gender from around this period are often linked to the Red Guards active during the Cultural Revolution in the late 1960s and 1970s, especially the young women who dressed in army fatigues. However, as Emily Honig notes, the short hair and military pants and jackets were not so much a “gender-neutral style,” but male (2002). Perhaps Nezha harkens back to traditional premodern images of young boys, but by the late 1970s, at least in official images like posters, children were often clearly marked by gender, with short hair for boys, and longer hair, sometimes in pigtails and buns, for girls. With his shoulder-length hair tied up in zongjiao, or ox-horn buns, his full red lips and white skin, and a kind of red apron covering the front of his body, Nezha is an androgynous figure (see Figure 5.1).10

Figure 5.1 Nezha Conquers the Dragon King, 1979

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In this scene Nezha performs what amounts to a short gymnastics floor routine with golden shining ring and red sash. Another reason for designing a character like Nezha may have been to increase his appeal to female as well as male members of the audience. The film narrative begins with an image of premodern villagers praying to the dragon kings for rain, sending food down to the bottom of the sea for the Dragon King Ao Guang. Shots show a procession of villagers walking up towards a shrine, villagers bow and make offerings, the food is drawn down a whirlpool and carried down to Ao Guang, who rejects the gifts, demanding boys and girls instead. The film now becomes an exposition of the conflict between Ao Guang the Dragon King, his three elemental brothers, and Nezha. A similarly designed dragon character appears in Uproar in Heaven, the Dragon King of the Eastern Sea tricked out of his staff by Sun Wukong. In this opening Nezha Conquers recalls the earlier studio production. The undersea kingdom links the productions to a shared body of novelistic works and a studio production. In Nezha Conquers Ao Guang is the antagonist. Ao Guang is a dragon, a devourer of humans, and an emperor who threatens the people. The motivation is populist. Nezha is a righteous hero defending “the people” (lao baixing). This is similar to the approach taken by Chang Che (1923–2002) in Nezha, known in English as Na Cha the Great, the 1974 live-action version that came out only five years before Nezha Conquers. In Na Cha the Great, Nezha battles a dragon king who acts like an evil landlord or high official whose lackeys threaten young women with abduction. The situation is similar in the opening scene of Necha Conquers where the boy-god kills Ao Guang’s yaksa because he has abducted xiao meimei (little sister) (we will not see her again), one of the first two human children we meet just before Nezha takes his fateful dip. With darker complexions and slightly smaller build, they shout joyfully and ask to ride Nezha’s deer. The action starts with this affront, the first of many affronts that will be finally dealt with in ritual suicidal fashion. After he defeats (kills) the Dragon King’s third son, the child’s voice of Nezha giggles as he pulls out his adversary’s tendon (he says to fasten his father’s shield) and kicks the accordioned skin of the empty dragon carcass into the ocean. Narrative variation not only produces new narrative, but new allegorical correspondences as well. Like the conflict between Sun Wukong and the Jade Emperor, the situation is loaded with allegories. The father-son axis in Nezha Conquers is still present, but with the boy-god clearly dominant and a father either ignorant of his son’s actions or simply unable to discipline Nezha for his transgressions. The father is distant, and Master Taiyi enters each time as the ultimate enabler. In Chapter 1, I referred to Barthes’ terms of anchorage and relay to discuss the relationship of the plots of Uproar in Heaven and Saiyûki. The pastiched premodern narratives of Nezha Conquers are open to multiplicities of exposition according to the dynamics between the characters. In Nezha Conquers the concern is subtly shifted, from a father-son battle to a battle between a playful and inadvertently cruel boy-god and a political father-figure, a decadent ruler of an undersea kingdom to whom the peasants pray for rain. The fantastic trope of the dragon

Nezha Conquers the Dragon King 145 king, a monster that demands small children in place of animal sacrifice, is premodern and modern at the same time. The Dragon King could be read as a reminder of the tyrant Emperor Zhou of the declining Shang dynasty from the original novel. The dragon is “humanized” in his bipedal guise (he is a god, after all). However, through his desire to feed on humans, he recalls a very modern trope. In the early twentieth century some intellectuals in China constructed a generalized critique of traditional culture linked to Confucianism and religion. They described certain forms of culture and institutions as “cannibalistic,” a resonance that would continue into the revolutionary period. The insertion of a Dragon King who demands human sacrifice recalls pre-revolutionary and revolutionary critiques and denunciations of premodern culture. The Dragon King is a monster whose relations to humans involve an exchange of resources, a premodern emperor demanding tributes. After Nezha kills Ao Bing, the third son of Ao Guang, Ao Guang will confront Nezha’s father, Li Jing. At first Li Jing denies his seven-year-old son could ever do such a thing. But Li Jing sends his servant to summon Nezha, who is again performing a gymnastic floor routine (Figure 5.2). Spinning the tendon he pulled from the Dragon King’s son like a ribbon, he does a double forward flip towards screen left this time, then spins the tendon like a baton, first with his neck, then with his hand. When his father asks him what he has in his hand, Nezha seems confused but then delighted to tell his father he has got him a dragon tendon to

Figure 5.2 Nezha Conquers the Dragon King, 1979

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fasten his armor. His father grows angry and asks where the tendon came from. Nezha is nervous and fidgets with his red sash, which he now wears like a belt. Just as he begins to answer, Nezha makes a wiping gesture with his right hand, passing the back of his hand over his neck. Nezha’s gesture foreshadows his own ritual suicide. As Nezha begins to tell his side of the story, Ao Guang appears in close-up behind a door, eavesdropping. The soundtrack music builds and in a long shot from Ao Guang’s perspective, Nezha stands before his father speaking. Li Jing is the authority figure in this scene and Nezha a young boy telling on Ao Guang. As he listens, the dragon king quickly loses his temper and attacks Nezha. Unable to defeat Nezha, Ao Guang transforms into a dragon and flies out of his robes, threatening to take up the matter with the Jade Emperor. As Li Jing frets about injuring tianshen longzhong (Heavenly Dragon Gods), Nezha decides to discuss the situation with Master Taiyi. In the novel Master Taiyi draws a charm to make Nezha invisible and tells him to go to the Heavenly Palace, but the reader is not told exactly what Master Taiyi tells Nezha to do. The scene in Nezha is an interpretation of this moment, and the film takes an important turn here that links it to the earlier SAFS feature-length Uproar. Ao Guang is also a character from Journey to the West. In Chapter Three, Ao Guang goes to the Jade Emperor to complain after the Monkey King has obtained his magic staff and frightened him, an important scene in the SAFS film Uproar in Heaven. As I mentioned in Chapter 1, one repeated rumor claims Uproar was an attack on the government through the depiction of the Jade Emperor, who seems to have a mole on his chin like Mao Zedong. While it is highly doubtful Uproar animators would have dared to caricature Mao, such a hypothetical link to political power is relevant for Nezha Conquers; Nezha impersonates a Jade Emperor who remains absent as a character in the film. In the novel Nezha sees Ao Guang, the Dragon King, before he is able to report to the Jade Emperor, grows angry, and attacks. In Nezha Conquers the situation is quite different. Heaven is a series of vertically arranged buildings and statues. The shot begins at the top and pans downwards. The image recalls the Heavenly Palace in Uproar. However, the Heavenly Palace in Uproar is filled with officials and generals and the Jade Emperor sitting atop a throne that towers above the palace. In Nezha Conquers, except for two female figures that cross the screen carrying peaches and trailing ribbons, the Heavenly Palace of Nezha Conquers is empty, the Jade Emperor absent. Ao Guang enters and, approaching a large drum, he reaches into a cavity to retrieve a drum mallet as a voice suddenly calls out his name. Looking for the direction of the voice, the Dragon King replies with a formal and somewhat obsequious acknowledgment of his relationship as subject to the Jade Emperor: chen zai ([your] servant is present). Such formal language recalls operas, historical costume dramas, and genre films produced during the revolutionary period until the mid-1960s. The Jade Emperor’s voice is clearly Nezha’s, but disguised, as when a child tries to sound older by covering his mouth with his hand. Nezha as the Jade Emperor interrogates Ao Guang, who falls for the charade. Nezha attempts to correct Ao Guang’s telling of events but Ao Guang refuses this alternative

Nezha Conquers the Dragon King 147 narrative and this causes Nezha to lose his temper and come out from hiding to confront the Dragon King, who accuses Nezha: “You pile crime on crime, you tease the Dragon King and you also disrespect the Heavenly Court!” (Ni xinong longwang, hai mieshi tainting, zui shang tian zui!). Nezha grows impatient and thoroughly thrashes Ao Guang. Using his ring as a bridle, Nezha rides the Dragon King, who bucks and twists his long serpentine body as the boy-god rips off scales and rides the dragon down to the seashore on earth. Nezha finally humiliates the Dragon King in front of a group of children, forcing the Dragon King to say he will not tell on Nezha to the Jade Emperor and to promise he will no longer abduct children. Building on the Freudian Oedipal dynamic, Sangren reads Nezha within the “patrilineal modes of production of desire” (Sangren 2000: 189). Nezha is a figure of rebellion and an important figure of the conflict between father and son. But Nezha’s role in Nezha Conquers is complicated by ellipses. Since the mother is absent, competition between the characters occurs in a “homosexual” context. Master Taiyi subverts the authority of Li Jing; thus, patriarchal authority is subverted by another form of patriarchal authority. When he impersonates the Jade Emperor, Nezha is impersonating a figure of patriarchal authority to subvert another manifestation of patriarchal authority in the figure of Ao Guang, the Dragon King. By impersonating the absent Jade Emperor, Nezha is going over Ao Guang’s head, just as Ao Guang had gone over Nezha’s father Li Jing’s head by attempting to report Nezha’s supposed transgressions to the Jade Emperor. Such a dynamic of course finds its logic in the Nezha story, but the historical context of Nezha Conquers reinscribes this dynamic and gives it a fresh reading. In his discussion of Nezha Conquers, director and screenwriter Wang Shuchen suggested that Nezha Conquers was a return to the material of “myths and fairy tales” (shenhua he tonghua) after the hiatus of the Cultural Revolution. Without the defeat of the Gang of Four, Wang suggested, animated films could not have been “rescued” (zhengjiu), and the “reawakening” (fusu) and “regeneration” (xinsheng) of animated film would not have been possible (Wang 1979: 33). Chris Berry claims the Gang of Four were “othered”; they were denounced using the same terminology they had used on their enemies (2004: 80). Indeed, it was common to refer to the Gang of Four at this time as the sole perpetrators of the Cultural Revolution. “Gang of Four” served like a metonymic phrase to completely stand for the negative aspects of the Cultural Revolution. Produced in the wake of the arrest of the Gang of Four and the end of the Cultural Revolution, Wang’s language of “rescue,” “reawakening,” and “regeneration” invites an allegorical reading of Nezha Conquers, a film about the birth, suicide, and reincarnation of a boy-god. Wang allegorizes the film himself, as if the narrative were a figural representation for the historic position of animated film in the PRC, a point he underlined when the film was screened at Cannes in 1980, at the same time denying a link between the Gang of Four and the four dragons of the film.11 Nezha is such a rich figure in Chinese popular religion and literature it is almost impossible to ignore the allegorical multiplicities of a protagonist like this. Even if the reductive political reading of the four dragons as the Gang of Four is discounted, the positioning of this

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boy-god who possesses “heroic character” (yinxiong xingge) is open to many possible readings. Although delineated as a child’s prank in the animated film, when he impersonates the absent Jade Emperor in his empty palace, Nezha assumes power; he takes the place of the ultimate absent father. Nezha Conquers recalls not only the novel it is based on, but the archetypal Chinese cartoon character, the fantastic god-hero as trickster who cannot be disciplined, the Monkey King from Uproar in Heaven. Moreover, both Uproar and Nezha Conquers depart from the novelistic narratives in one important way. In the novels Sun Wukong and Nezha are both subdued by magic. The Monkey King is first subdued by Buddha and then by Bodhisattva’s golden band around his head. Nezha is subdued by a magic pagoda given to his father by a Taoist master. Yet both SAFS films do away with these curbs on power. In Nezha Conquers, Master Taiyi not only enables Nezha, but guides and encourages him to such an extent there seems to be no limit to the boy-god’s power. Nezha Conquers recalls Uproar as a predecessor from the same studio. Both films are adaptations of supernatural classics that feature supernatural births at the beginning of the film. Sun Wukong is born during the segment preceding the opening credits from an exploding mountain and Nezha from an egg-shaped object. Both protagonists are linked to children, Sun Wukong to his child subjects, the child monkeys he oversees, and Nezha is clearly a unique child who protects playmates in the film.12 Coincidentally, Nezha Conquers and Uproar in Heaven bracket the Cultural Revolution. The films of the revolutionary period, animated and live action, are contextual reminders of the array of styles used at SAFS. Indeed, each film must be read within a very broad context of types of production. Uproar in Heaven subtly shows the effects of the reform of content on the eve of the Cultural Revolution that contrasted the arrogant bureaucratic hierarchy of the Jade Emperor and his court to the guerilla rebelliousness of Sun Wukong and his monkeys. The conflict between Sun Wukong and the Jade Emperor is polarized, creating a contemporary story of rebelliousness that goes beyond the source text. Although Nezha Conquers was released at the beginning of the opening up and reform period, the film shows the traces of the preceding period and the emergence of a new, more nuanced characterization, especially with regard to the protagonist Nezha. Nezha Conquers sidesteps the central theme of father-son conflict to emphasize the conflict between Nezha and the Dragon King. To realign the basic dynamic of the Nezha story, Wang Shuchen claims that the filmmakers would contrast the main characters (Wang, Yan, and Xu 1984: 108).13 The filmmakers further villainize Ao Guang the Dragon King by having him demand children as a sacrifice. But who is Nezha? With his gymnastics routines and self-assured demeanor, there is something regimented about this little boy-god. His gymnastics routines lend Nezha a slightly androgynous appeal, and they are also a form of posed athleticism. He is a cross between Osamu Tezuka’s Astroboy and period propaganda posters that promoted sports. The year Nezha Conquers is released, 1979, is a turning point for the hero in Chinese cinema. The year marks a transition from idealized revolutionary

Nezha Conquers the Dragon King 149 representations to more nuanced and ambiguous depictions of protagonists.14 Of course, limiting the transition to one year is problematic, especially considering production time.15 Completed in August 1979, Nezha took about fifteen months to complete (Wang, Yan, and Xu 1984: 101). Nevertheless, Nezha Conquers falls into an important period in Chinese cinema history, a period which also included changes in audience expectations and, what will be relevant to my discussion of Nezha, even to more ambiguous endings. The physically regimented Nezha is contrasted to his nemesis the Dragon King. The Dragon King is a monstrous villain demanding children as sacrifice, but the scenes of Nezha fighting the Dragon King, for director Wang Shuchen the key element of plot retained from the Nezha story, are worth discussing. Although Ao Guang is the horrible god of the deep demanding sacrifice, he is also one of the four directions and, when he joins with his brothers, Ao Guang is linked to the water. In the conflict between Nezha and Ao Guang and his brothers, Nezha is a force of suppression. Nezha tames the elements, including Ao Guang as the blue water dragon along with his three brothers linked to fire, wind, and ice. Nezha suppresses and tames the elements that threaten the children. Moreover, it is important to look closely at the way the character of Nezha is generated. Images of play appear regimented, linked to sports and acrobatics. But most importantly, for Nezha play also includes killing his opponents. Wang Shuchen claimed that the character as he is developed in Canonization of the Gods would cause spectators to lose all empathy. By the time Nezha kills the yaksa and the Dragon King’s third son, spectators are led to believe he is doing this because they have abducted a little girl. In addition to his refined, almost pretty, features, Nezha is voiced by a child. After he kills the Dragon King’s son by throwing his magic ring at the dragon prince’s head, Nezha proceeds to pull the tendon from his body. Holding the dragon’s body down with his left leg, Nezha makes childish grunts of exertion as he pulls the tendon from the dragon corpse, the skin folding up (especially the dragon head and neck down to the forelegs) as Nezha yanks a long whip-like tendon out of the dragon’s corpse. The sound effects are high-pitched, whip-like, and metallic as a satisfied Nezha pulls the tendon taut between his hands, his child’s voice declaring that the tendon will make a good fastener for a shield for his father. Suddenly Nezha declares, “The stinky skin, I don’t want it!” and kicks the empty, flaccid dragon skin into the water. Until this moment Nezha has only performed gymnastic and acrobatic routines, so this violence is somewhat jarring, especially since it is delivered with a child’s voice. When Nezha impersonates the Jade Emperor and confronts Ao Guang for reporting to the Jade Emperor, Nezha inhabits the position of the father, subverting patriarchal authority. Patriarchy is subverted by an impersonation of itself. This strange circular logic infuses Nezha Conquers in a similar manner as the victory of a supernaturally endowed Monkey King over a religious pantheon of gods. Nezha subverts patriarchal authority by inhabiting the throne of an absent patriarch. I am not attempting to suggest a one-to-one allegorical correspondence between contemporary political events in the second half of the 1970s in the PRC and Nezha

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Conquers. Nevertheless, because of the complex and relatively close relationship between the Party/State and much cultural production up to this period, at the very least contiguous historical events lend themselves to a dialogical reading, in particular for the antagonists Nezha and the Dragon King. Children’s films, including animated production, contained violence in the PRC. The adolescent protagonist of Wang Shuchen’s Xiaohao shou (The Little Bugler, 1973) is shot in the leg by a villain who later falls off a cliff. In the live-action revolutionary children’s film Shanshan de hong xing (Sparkling Red Star, 1974), the ten-year-old protagonist sets fire to the bed of a sleeping villain, a local village leader/landlord. When the landlord wakes up, the boy kills him (off camera) with a scythe. However, such animosity is directed, even legitimized, within a political/nationalistic framework. The animosity of the hero and villain is constructed by their fictional social positions. The evilness of the villain enables the righteous hero, and both hero and villain are part of the simulacrum of conflict. In revolutionary film the villains were often based on a framework that finds its blueprint in Mao’s “Talks at the Yan’an Conference on Literature and Art.” Although a film with fantastic elements, it would be unproductive to extricate Nezha Conquers from the history of the period and revolutionary representation of collectivities. Nezha is an ambiguous character precisely for those reasons that tie him to the period when the film is produced. With his pale blue, almost white beard, jutting chin, dark irises set in green eyeballs, hunched shoulders, and plodding gait, the Dragon King is marked as an elderly statesman-like character. Even when he transforms into a dragon he resembles an elderly man. The protagonist and antagonist make an effective pair of opposites. The boy-god Nezha righteously attacks the Dragon King. To simply tie these images to the Gang of Four would be presumptuous (at any rate, the trial was still more than a year away). Nezha dominates the dragon king in two key scenes. The first scene at Li Jing’s residence, with the Dragon falling on his bottom, is comical. Unable to stand, Ao Guang slithers out of his robes and takes flight, threatening to report the incident to the Jade Emperor. The second scene occurs when Nezha pursues the Dragon King after he has impersonated the Jade Emperor. The old dragon god is no match for Nezha, who pursues his elderly antagonist with vigor and tenacity. Nezha rides and strikes the Dragon King, ripping off scales with his bare hands. Nezha defeats the Dragon King, ensnaring him with his red scarf, hitting him with his magic ring, and riding him to the shoreline where he demands that the Dragon King promise not to tell the Jade Emperor on him. As Nezha holds his ring up to reinforce the threat, the elderly Ao Guang cowers in defeat, agreeing to keep his promises. The Dragon King’s elderly face cowers in fear of physical punishment before the cheering children (see Figures 5.3 and 5.4). It is possible to read protagonist and antagonist ambiguously. Historical reading is a hypothesis based on the possible semantic intentions of the filmmakers in tandem with political, social, and cultural signs. The revolutionary heroism of films up to this time was tied to concepts of class, especially the notion of expressing the life of the exploited classes, including soldiers, workers, and peasants. The

Figure 5.3 Nezha Conquers the Dragon King, 1979

Figure 5.4 Nezha Conquers the Dragon King, 1979

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revolutionary hero was a priori a morally good character, and in a sense such characters were good because they had been exploited. As in the abject representation of class in Rent Collection Courtyard, expressing the revolutionary hero meant depicting exploitation itself, and exploitation meant representing cruelty perpetrated by the exploiter upon the exploited. Nezha’s domination of the Dragon King cannot be read as a simple victory of a hero over a villain. In live-action film, the year 1979 meant a shift from earlier revolutionary heroes to more complex characterization and “the decline of the hero and heroic narratives” (Berry 2004: 102). Nezha Conquers was a return to mythological material, so on one level the film turns away from revolutionary model characters. Yet the stylization of cel-animated characters is in itself a form of idealized representation. As a children’s film character, Nezha potentially remains an exemplary figure of strength and self-sacrifice. However, the image of a young hero striking poses of righteous anger, dominating a cowering elderly villain, recalls similar scenes in revolutionary film, theater, illustrated books and comics, and propaganda posters. Nezha and the Dragon King are antagonists in the section of the novel Nezha Conquers is based on, but by historical contiguity the film reinscribes this conflict in terms linked to the period when the film was produced. Nezha dominates his opponent the Dragon King in a striking manner. Even with a veneer of juvenile didacticism, Nezha’s dominance of the cowering elderly Dragon King cannot be separated from images of young Red Guards, some of them children, collectively denouncing and humiliating adult authority figures, even elderly men and women, in the period of the Cultural Revolution just preceding the production of Nezha Conquers. Just a few years earlier the SAFS production Fangxue yihou (After School, 1972) featured a schoolyard filled with “Hong xiaobing” (Red Little Guards) surrounding and denouncing an elderly man who tries to corrupt them with a song about candy. According to the logic of the Nezha Conquers plot, Nezha is in the right because Ao Guang wants to eat little sister. But the representation of legitimized violent transgression cannot be completely downplayed. Nezha might be the hero, but he is a cruel and violent hero. Nezha’s violent transgressions against the Dragon King could be viewed as a type of naïve play. But Nezha is capable of tremendous cruelty. Even as a force of nature (or a natural force) Nezha is destructive. As an inevitably unfolding plot, Nezha Conquers is open to several interpretations. I would like to discuss four key moments in the film: the birth scene, the suicide, the rebirth, and the ending of the film. Not only do these scenes function as key moments in the film, but they also represent intensities within the film that may be linked to history and self-referentially linked to the conditions of production of Nezha Conquers, in particular the medium of cel animation. The birth of Nezha begins with the credits and the image of Li Jing playing guqin when he is told that his wife has given birth. Li Jing walks quickly towards screen left, hand on sword. He parts curtains to reveal the only adult women characters in the film, probably maids. When Li Jing sees the egg-shaped object his wife has given birth to he declares the birth inauspicious, draws his sword, and strikes the thing, an egg-shaped and translucent object containing what appears to

Nezha Conquers the Dragon King 153 be purplish and pinkish petals layered like a closed flower. The scene is beautifully animated, including the special effects of light radiating around the newborn Nezha, that special effect linked to auratic revolutionary imagery. The womb-like lotus radiates with shooting needles of light and semicircles of color shaped like the lotus leaves. This scene functions like a pun in a New Year’s picture. The lotus, lian, is a Buddhist/Taoist symbol of purity and homonymic pun for continuity. In popular visual iconography the lotus accompanied by a young boy connotes procreation and continuity. In the Nezha source text the lotus is not introduced until the rebirth episode. As a “reawakening” and “regeneration” of animated film (Wang 1979: 33), the birth scene is self-referential of animated filmmaking in the PRC. The birth of Nezha is a visual and linguistic marker for Chinese animation, a reminder of the first feature-length SAFS cel-animated film featuring the Monkey King’s magical birth, a continuation of the SAFS brand. Nezha Conquers is an example of national style and one of the last “classic” animations from the SAFS. But the suicide scene in Nezha Conquers is probably one of the most intense in animation history and links the film to transnational animation and live-action film as well. Certainly in 1979, depictions of death were not common in animated film. One of the most well-known deaths in an animated film occurred in Disney’s Bambi in 1942. Death in Bambi is, in a sense, unmarked. Death is expressed as an absence of the mother and then reinforced by the image of the older male buck telling Bambi “Your mother can’t be with you anymore.” The scene tones down the death of Bambi’s mother. The depiction of death is not common in animated films in the United States; nevertheless, by the late 1970s animated film had matured considerably. Ralph Bakshi’s work, somewhat uneven at times, was largely responsible for introducing adult-oriented themes to American animated film. Martin Rosen’s British-produced Watership Down (1978) does not shy away from the animated representation of violence and death. But the death scene in Nezha Conquers is very much in a category by itself. For one thing, the main protagonist is a child, and the suicide scene uses montage in a particularly unusual way for an animated film. In the Nezha story, after Nezha has killed the Dragon King’s third son, the Dragon King and his brothers return to capture Nezha’s parents and take them before the Jade Emperor. But in the SAFS version, the dragons as elemental gods return to Li Jing’s residence and threaten to destroy the city. The directors note that the suicide scene consists of 113 shots, comprising one-sixth of the total, or around 607 separate shots (Wang, Yan, and Xu 1984: 108). Within this longer section of the film, two clusters of shots determine the narrative of the whole section. These clusters are part of the longer section described by the directors, but two sections of this long scene are especially useful for discussing the unusual use of “shots.” Ao Guang and his three brothers are bringing the force of elements on Li Jing and the local population, mostly depicted as children, some climbing a tree to escape flooding water. Thus Nezha is placed in a specific position. He has been tied to a pillar to prevent punishment by the dragons, but this act has not prevented the wrath of the Dragon King and his brothers. Ao Guang wants the life of Nezha as an exchange for the murder of his third son, or he and his brothers will continue to barrage Li Jing and the population, the

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“masses” (lao baixing), with natural disasters. Li Jing sends the house servant to untie Nezha, who at first seems as if he will restart the battle. But this scene introduces the dilemma that must be resolved by either Li Jing or Nezha himself. This dilemma is a revision by SAFS. The Nezha story clearly represents a familial conflict, while here the familial is dispersed onto a broader dynamic. The dragons and the Dragon King’s undersea army shout for the death of Nezha, and Nezha’s father Li Jing initially attempts to kill him. This is the second time Li Jing draws his sword. Nezha’s birth is precipitated by Li Jing’s striking the eggshaped object from which Nezha will emerge. In this scene Li Jing raises his sword above his head to strike Nezha and even pushes his servant away when the servant tries to stop him. Wang feels that the inability of Li Jing to carry through with the killing of his son reveals the affection between the father and son. This moment of hesitation is an important addition not in the source text possibly inserted by the director, Wang Shuchen, a Hui minority, a nationality in the PRC known for practicing Islam. Li Jing’s hesitation is an addition to the film and resembles the hesitation of Abraham, the Biblical father with the God-given task of sacrificing one of his sons (see Figure 5.5). The close-ups of Li Jing’s hand holding the sword frame the scene and give the scene a universal quality, especially when we recall that all the characters, especially Nezha and the dragons, are gods. Yet the dilemma presented here is neither faithful to the Nezha story nor to a particularly strong family dynamic. The main dilemma is appeasing the dragons so that they will not harm

Figure 5.5 Nezha Conquers the Dragon King, 1979

Nezha Conquers the Dragon King 155 the masses, not as it is in the Nezha story in which the dynamic remains intrafamilial and Nezha returns to prevent his parents from being brought before the Jade Emperor. By shifting the emphasis from a filial to a wider social dilemma, the onus for the disasters created by the dragons falls not only on the dragons, but on Nezha and Li Jing. Wang notes that the Dragon King embodies “natural and man-made disasters” (tianzai renhuo) (Wang 1979: 35). The four elemental dragons raining disasters down upon the population are more than simply villains; they are metaphorical embodiments of a fate that puts Nezha and his father into an existential crisis. The father-son conflict is subtly refigured to reinscribe filial relations within a broader social realm. A simple correspondence between the four dragons and the Gang of Four would reduce the film to a political cartoon. Nevertheless, the situation places Nezha in a moral position vis-à-vis the masses he must protect and in a heroic violent position vis-à-vis his nemesis the Dragon King, a modernist trope for a premodern traditional “cannibalistic” society. In context of the disasters visited upon the population, once again a circular logic emerges. Since the dragons are carrying out their destruction as a result of Nezha’s murder of Ao Bing, Nezha is implicated both as an agent of the disasters and as the hero who must put an end to them. Although the dragons cannot be simply reduced to tropes for the Gang of Four, contiguous history is revealing for this particular scene of Nezha Conquers. In official discourse, discussion of the Gang of Four and the decade-long Cultural Revolution was described in the metaphorical terms of “disaster.”16 Nezha’s dilemma is constructed within a context of natural disasters set in motion by the Dragon King on behalf of the son murdered by Nezha. Responsibility rests with the Dragon King and his brothers, but in a roundabout fashion, Nezha is responsible for setting the situation into motion. Nezha Conquers is an example of early reform period cinema, what Chris Berry described as a cinema that emphasized the molding of character traits within the “actions and functions” of the story, in this case a mythological narrative.17 The character of Nezha is given remarkable subjectivity for an animated figure; it would be hard to find another animated character burdened with so much subjectivity at this time, inside or outside of the PRC. Filmmakers give the Nezha character roundedness by depicting subjectivity in a series of rapid shots. After Li Jing is incapable of killing Nezha, a series of animated shots depicts Nezha’s dilemma: (1) a shot of lightning, snow and wind; (2) a long shot of children trapped by flood in trees; (3) a long shot of a baby on a raft tossed about on waves; (4) a medium shot of Nezha; and (5) a shot of the servant and two maids with heads bowed in resignation. These primary shots are repeated at a higher speed, with a medium shot of Ao Guang, a medium shot of Li Jing raising the sword, and then a close-up shot of Nezha, and a close-up shot of the sword handle. Last, in medium shot Nezha turns away from the camera then turns back with a strand of hair in his mouth and a look of determination as his hand reaches up dramatically and he bends. There is then a close-up shot of Nezha’s hand as he grasps the sword (around 19 shots) (see Figures 5.6 and 5.7).

Figure 5.6 Nezha Conquers the Dragon King, 1979

Figure 5.7 Nezha Conquers the Dragon King, 1979

Nezha Conquers the Dragon King 157 This cross-cutting of animated scenes emphasizes the dilemma of Nezha through a repetition of a few key shots. But in the next cluster, instead of a repetition of a series of moving shots, the suicide of Nezha uses a combination of still images, moving images, and superimposition. Nezha must kill himself; this is his fate (or rather this is his story). The Nezha story without the suicide would be like the story of Christ without the crucifixion. Nezha Conquers approaches the suicide scene as a rhythmic contrast to the scene I have just described. In place of the horrific selfmutilation of the Nezha story, the filmmakers opted for what is perhaps more dramatically acceptable, Nezha slitting his own throat (ziwen), a dramatic trope used in opera. The montage in this scene is remarkable. Like the scene just described, crosscutting is used. However, this scene consists of parallel editing of two main narrative actions: Nezha dramatically taking the sword in hand and slitting his own throat and Nezha’s deer running to bring him his two protective instruments, the magic ring and the red scarf. During the suicide scene Nezha comes to terms with three other characters: the Dragon King, his father, and Master Taiyi (not present). After a close-up of Nezha’s hand, the deer, swimming with the ring and trailing scarf in its mouth, reaches the steps and struggles to climb. The deer leaps up the steps, as the next shot shows Nezha, sword in hand, leaping to the top of a balustrade. Nezha shouts to screen right: “I alone take responsibility for what I have done!” (wo yi ren zuo shi yi ren dang). The way Nezha is animated here gives the illusion the camera is pulling back 45 degrees for a shot from behind the protagonist, an aspect of the animation that becomes more pronounced in the rebirth seen. He then declares that he will return his flesh and bones to his father. Finally he cries out for his master. The notion of taking responsibility, as I have said, is universalized from a notion of filial responsibility to a responsibility for the wider population here. But the technique of this scene is remarkably nuanced, combining sound, dialogue, music, silence, and visuals in a very unusual way for PRC cinema at the time (and perhaps since). The scene employs animated scenes and stills. Nezha’s gestures recall the gestures and poses of opera, including revolutionary opera. The whole section is “operatic” in construction, not parodic but functioning like an animated miniature, with the boy-god striking dramatic poses. As Nezha places the blade under his chin he turns away from the camera. In this pose Nezha’s back is slightly arched towards the top right of the screen. The blade hilt protrudes from his left side, his right hand visibly holding the handle. As the music rises to a crescendo, resolves itself, and comes to a full stop, there are three still close-ups of (1) Nezha’s deer, (2) Nezha’s father, and (3) the servant, all with frozen looks of shock on their faces. Repeating the shot of his back, to his left the right hand holding the sword handle visibly pulls to the left. A close-up of the deer holding the ring in its mouth follows and then a close-up of Nezha, looking to screen left, the blade hidden by his chin, tears streaming down his face. The camera zooms in for a close-up as the blade drops from under his chin (see Figures 5.8–5.12). Then there is a medium shot of the sword landing upright, the blade piercing the stone balcony. The blade tilts slightly, opening a small rift in the stone, as blood runs down the middle of the sword’s blade. This shot cluster employs visuals, symphonic music, and sound effects to create a very tightly structured reworking of the suicide that transforms Nezha’s sacrifice,

Figure 5.8 Nezha Conquers the Dragon King, 1979

Figure 5.9 Nezha Conquers the Dragon King, 1979

Figure 5.10 Nezha Conquers the Dragon King, 1979

Figure 5.11 Nezha Conquers the Dragon King, 1979

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Figure 5.12 Nezha Conquers the Dragon King, 1979

either a fulfillment or revocation of the filial contract between the parents and the child for the body of the child. The silent soundtrack functions in juxtaposition to the looks of sadness and shock on the faces of three characters intimately related to Nezha. Immediately after the shot of the sword, the dragons, dressed in robes and standing on a roiling dark cloud, appear in long shot from below, and Ao Guang shouts a reminder that the situation is far from over, demanding that a boy and girl be sent as a sacrifice each New Year. The final shots here represent some of the most intensive use of montage in contemporary cinema in the PRC. After the dragons retreat on their roiling cloud, the next shot is a close-up of Nezha’s face from just above the eyebrows to just below the nose, tears welling up in the bottom of his eyes. The music starts again, this time with a string section but with the solo percussive strumming of a pipa followed by cellos and a number of erhu striking up a sad melodic line. Nezha is gazing at the audience and crying in widescreen close-up. Nezha’s face is superimposed, first with several lights streaming towards the left along the bottom and top of the screen, then with a long shot of the deer holding the magic ring and red scarf galloping across the center towards screen left. Nezha fades, the long shot of the deer superimposed with a medium shot of the deer that fades quickly into the magic ring and scarf floating in blue space, then a point-of-view shot of Nezha’s hands trying to grasp his instruments, Nezha’s hands and arms, and the ring and scarf, softly colored, translucent, almost ghostly (see Figures 5.13 and 5.14). The

Figure 5.13 Nezha Conquers the Dragon King, 1979

Figure 5.14 Nezha Conquers the Dragon King, 1979

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next shot is the close-up of Nezha’s face, his large eyes slowly closing, tears falling. Next, a medium shot of Nezha from behind as his limp body falls backwards. The scene is capped by a long shot of the deer bending down above Nezha and then a medium shot as the deer licks Nezha’s right hand affectionately. The cross-cutting associated with the avant-garde montage was not commonly employed in early cinema in China or in the PRC.18 Nevertheless, types of montage and camerawork can be linked to the unusual use of cross-cutting and parallel editing in Nezha Conquers. It is also important to remember that the reform period represented a willingness to look at modernist and avant-garde film technique with fresh eyes. But throughout the studio’s history, the SAFS directors did not shy away from innovative uses of the camera, whether in cel or stop-motion model animation. Nezha’s fall recalls a scene in the animated propaganda film The Little Bugler. After the young protagonist Xiao Yong is shot, he tosses one last grenade that explodes near the landlord’s head. Next, in medium shot, Xiao Yong stands while clutching his left leg, then teeters back and forth, makes a fist, and then there is a long shot of an animated waterfall that seems to fall backwards (a tilt of the camera to the right), a POV shot signaling the disorientation of the protagonist and the probable direction of his fall. Specific use of the camera and editing were an important part of the techniques used at the SAFS. In 1958, Wang Shuchen directed Guo houshan (Crossing Monkey Mountain), what Zhou Haiyan has described as a “purely entertaining” Disney-style short unusual for SAFS production during this period (2009: 107). The film uses superimposition, camera tilting, music, and repetition to tell the comic story of an old hat seller who gets waylaid by a group of monkeys that steal his hats and mimic him. The film is a play with forms, an abstract display of shapes and soundtrack timing (it was the first SAFS film to employ a prerecorded soundtrack). However, the use of montage in this scene, both cross-cutting and parallel editing, is unusual in animation. The use of animation “shots” (jingtou) is not unheard of, but what models were animators at SAFS working with? Although Disney provided a model as far as full animation quality, the themes and style of SAFS animation after the late 1950s do not lend themselves to comparison with Disney. Disney animation tended to a type of continuity editing to maintain the illusion of a seamless flow between sequences. Cel animation is a hybrid medium that combines illustration as hand-drawn cels with camera work and film editing. In a discussion of the use of still and tableau in PRC cinema, Ma Ning describes what he refers to as “epiphanic shots” that establish a moment of equilibrium in the narrative. As Berry notes, such shots function like tableaux to give emphasis to a scene by freezing a moment for the spectator. Such frozen moments often included a type of gaze that represented a “restoration of interpersonal harmony” for the protagonist.19 Stephanie Donald notes a “social realist gaze” where “camera, narrative and the cinematic subject are brought together in a visual logic that serves official narrative” (1999: 59). But in the shot clusters from Nezha Conquers, the gaze is ambivalent. The first shocked looks from Nezha’s deer, Li Jing, and the house servant are clearly directed at Nezha. Nezha gazes directly at the spectator

Nezha Conquers the Dragon King 163 in a moment that provides equilibrium for the spectator or further grief. The looks of shock from the onlookers resemble the opening scene of Tezuka Osamu’s early television series Tetsuwan Atomu (Astroboy, 1963–1965). The limited animation of the original series consistently used stills to great effect, and the opening sequence, in which the young boy Tobio Tenma dies in a car accident, uses frozen looks of shock in a manner that resembles this scene in Nezha Conquers, at least in technique (see Figures 5.15 and 5.16). The use of stills in Nezha Conquers is even more pronounced than in Astroboy because most of the film uses full animation. Aside from the Cultural Revolution period, SAFS animation was shown at film festivals around the world, and producers, including directors and administrators at the studio, were aware of their own work in a transnational context. Nezha Conquers is an innovative production, and as film criticism and theory in the PRC was opening up at the end of the 1970s and characterization became more nuanced, so did film technique. Nezha Conquers not only returns to mythological material, but also revisits techniques of early revolutionary montage. The shocked looks on Li Jing’s and his servant’s faces recall the shocked expressions of some of the victims in Sergei Eisenstein’s Bronenosets Po’tyomkin (Battleship Potemkin, 1925) (see Figures 5.17 and 5.18). The two clusters from the suicide scene in Nezha Conquers reflect the subjectivity of the boy-god in subtle ways. The second cluster, with the face-on close-ups,

Figure 5.15 Astroboy, 1963

Figure 5.16 Astroboy, 1963

Figure 5.17 Battleship Potemkin, 1925

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Figure 5.18 Battleship Potemkin, 1925

approaches a kind of metaphorically spiritual quality not seen in the PRC up to this time. In effect, the spectators experience death from the point of view of the protagonist. The use of repetition of scenes, stills, cross-cut narrative, and superimposition in this scene is unprecedented in the PRC. The combination of elements constructs a newly stylized spiritualism in PRC cinema, a dialectical contrast to the politicized-revolutionary spirituality of the preceding period. This moment is a crucial launching pad for new genres of cultural production, but also new policies regarding culture itself. The rebirth of Nezha is an intense scene. In the Nezha story the soul of Nezha is thrown towards lotus flowers and leaves; in Nezha Conquers the rebirth scene recalls the birth scene, making this second scene truly a re-birth with the opening lotus, lotus leaves, and lotus root passing slowly across the flower in lap dissolves. The use of the lotus root also is a pun on the phrase ouduan silian (the cut lotus root remains connected by its fibres, i.e., what appears broken is still connected). Two features of the rebirth scene deserve mention. In the rebirth Nezha emerges from a lotus flower in a series of poses animated through lap dissolves. One of the directors, Yan Dingxian, notes that this section was animated by Lin Wenxiao (1935–) who based the poses on Buddhist images from the Dunhuang Grottoes, a series of caves in northwest China with examples of Buddhist art going back to the fourth century (Li Zhen 2012: 64–69). In this sense, Nezha Conquers looks forward to the 1980s and renewed interest in folk art.

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Nezha’s rebirth is one of the most technically demanding scenes in the film. Nezha awakens in a reverse shot with Master Taiyi, arms open and smiling. In contrast to the suicide scene, the animation here is continuous as the camera pulls back in medium shot and Nezha runs, arms flailing above his head as he cries “Master!” repeatedly, and then in full-body shots Nezha falls down on his knees before Master Taiyi. The Master helps Nezha up and they embrace. The camera rests in medium shot on the Master’s crane for a few seconds and then a medium shot of Master Taiyi and Nezha as they embrace, animated in 360 degrees (see Figure 5.19). The symbolic meaning of the appearance of Nezha in an SAFS film in 1979 already implies a sort of rebirth of mythological material supposedly suppressed during the Cultural Revolution. The birth already contains the lotus, a linguistic/symbolic pun. The effect is almost too much. Master Taiyi is possibly Nezha’s “real” father, and here he is depicted as the one true “parent” who actually bestows the gift of life on the boy-god. The audience is treated to a sort of emotional climax of animation technique. The scene is a reunion, or a beginning, for as Master Taiyi says when they embrace: “Nezha, you’ve grown up!” The directors were obviously proud of this technically difficult scene (Wang, Yan, and Xu 1984: 108–109). Significant in the context of Nezha Conquers, the technique resembles in important ways a reunion scene in the live-action film Xiao Hua (Little Flower, 1979), another film probably released for the thirtieth anniversary of the PRC. Separated at birth, the protagonist

Figure 5.19 Nezha Conquers the Dragon King, 1979

Nezha Conquers the Dragon King 167 and her brother meet each other by accident and when they embrace similar effects are employed to emphasize their reunion. In a similarly melodramatic moment, the scene uses a number of shots, from an overhead dolly shot, to wrap-around medium shots as Xiao Hua walks around her brother as if inspecting him, to the embrace, in which the camera first starts to circle the embracing siblings until they remain immobile and the room begins spinning (probably achieved by placing the actors and the camera on a rotating stage). Thus Nezha Conquers and Xiao Hua, both films produced for the thirtieth anniversary of the PRC in 1979, employ “circular” visual effect to emphasize an image of reunion, da tuanyuan, the great final family reunion of opera. However, Nezha’s rebirth is overdetermined. The intensity of emotion, the colors, the use of layered animation, and the attempt to approximate the 360-degree pivot of a camera through cel animation are evidence of an overdetermined moment. The rebirth scene in Nezha Conquers contrasts with the preceding scene of Nezha’s suicide as well as with the following scenes of battle with the Dragon King and his brothers in the undersea palace. The melodramatic moment is an aspect of the overdetermined conflict between the Dragon King and Nezha, a conflict that supplements the father-son conflict of the original story with a conflict between Ao Guang, a figure of premodern culture constructed during the modern period, and Nezha, a mythological figure who stands for a violent and yet necessary process of supersession. Nezha Conquers can be watched as mere children’s fable, but this is to overlook the production values of the film and the subtle adaptation that occurs within an apparent retelling of classical, mythological material. It is possible to read Nezha Conquers as a political cartoon depicting the contradiction of the Cultural Revolution, a moment of complete dominance by a hyperpoliticized cultural sphere of all sectors of the Chinese economy.20 Nezha Conquers resides at a historical juncture for cultural production in the PRC. The figure of the boy-god who commits suicide and gets reincarnated is not only significant for animation but for several types of cultural production. One of the most important movements at this time was shanghen wenxue (Scar Literature), a short-lived form that included critical narratives about the Cultural Revolution. This mode extended outside literature to include fine arts as well.21 Lü Peng and Yi Dan claim that “scar art” (shanghen yishu) evidenced political rather than artistic attitude, a shift in historic views of the revolutionary hero (Lü and Yi 2011: 25). Thus it would seem the “scar” moment in cultural production in the PRC is contiguous to “the decline of the hero and heroic narratives” (Berry 2004: 102) in cinema. Films like Xiao Hua and Nezha Conquers are examples of this shift in filmmaking at this time. However, in the case of Nezha Conquers, the narrative appears heuristic. Within the historic moment of the film’s production, Nezha appears like an attempt to present a narrative of healing of the “scar” of the postCultural Revolution period. The story of a boy-god that commits suicide as selfsacrifice to prevent his parents from being brought before the court of the Jade Emperor could be allegorically linked to the Cultural Revolution. At the same time, the boy-god’s violence, his unlimited power of negation, recalls the chaos and violence of the Cultural Revolution, much of which was perpetrated by young

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people. While the film is situated in a reflexive moment in PRC cinema history evidencing “the decline of the hero and heroic narratives,” in some ways Nezha reinscribes naïve and contradictory ideas about the hero. As a heroic protagonist of a cartoon aimed at children, Nezha’s mischief, his violent dominance of those elderly adversaries (the Dragon King and his three brothers), gives the boy-god a potentially menacing quality. The conclusion to Nezha Conquers is the most easily overlooked part of this film and features the return of Nezha after defeating Ao Guang and his brothers. In his final victory over the Dragon King and his brothers, Nezha spears Ao Guang to the floor of the ocean, and the elderly dragon entwines up the spear’s shaft and solidifies, spear and dragon becoming a sort of ruyi, an “as you wish” scepter. Was this the Dragon King finally speared by the same scepter the Monkey King had stolen? Once again Nezha Conquers seems to be referencing the first featurelength film at the SAFS, Uproar in Heaven.22 A light appears in the sky followed by a long shot of a cliff over the ocean. The deer, several of Nezha’s friends, and the family servant run up to the edge of the cliff to meet him. In a series of shot-reverse shots, Nezha slowly comes into view. He takes long strides on his flaming wheels. There is then a medium shot of the servant and children, two children riding the deer, all gazing up to screen right. They cheer and wave at Nezha’s approach. Next is a reverse shot as Nezha returns their greeting, with a close-up of Nezha in the sky smiling and waving. This is followed by a long shot of the cliff; Nezha seems to fly down and touch the water and then leap up to meet his friends. Just as the rebirth scene repeats the birth scene in Nezha Conquers, this last reunion also repeats the reunion between Nezha and his “family.” The “endings” are very important here. The small cheering crowd awaiting Nezha’s return reveals its uniqueness in the context of the ending of The Little Bugler, a more conventional representation of the revolutionary finale when the heroic characters gather as a cheering group, a supplement for the traditional theatrical da tuanyuan, the reunion in opera (Xiaomei Chen 2005: 135). But someone is missing from the reunion in Nezha Conquers; Nezha’s father Li Jing. The cheers of welcome are a distraction from the curious absence of the father. The absent father is an important trope in Nezha Conquers. Recall that when Nezha impersonates the Jade Emperor he impersonates an absent emperor. Here Nezha’s father is absent, but the detail of this absence is easily missed since the narrative seems to be resolving itself in the delighted shouts of children welcoming Nezha on his victorious return. The ending of Nezha Conquers needs to be appreciated in the context of two other films associated with Wang Shuchen that employ the image of the father. Shanshui qing (The Feeling of Mountains and Streams, 1988), the last great water-brush animation directed by Te Wei and others, features a script by Wang Shuchen. The rich visuality of the film deserves more discussion, but the basic plot is important to understanding the way Wang envisions the father/son dynamic in Nezha Conquers. In The Feeling of Mountains and Streams there are two characters, an older man, who (like Nezha’s father Li Jing) plays the guqin, and a young child. The crux of the story concerns the man, a paternal, teacher-like figure passing on the skill of playing the instrument to the child until he disappears,

Nezha Conquers the Dragon King 169 and the child is left as an inheritor to an art. As one of the last non-commercial films of the SAFS, it would be possible to read this relationship as a metaphor for passing down the skills and techniques of animation. The mood of the film is subtly melancholic, one generation passing down an artistic tradition to the next. The essence of the art figured in an ancient instrument is a return to national style motifs so important for SAFS productions. The child stands holding the instrument he has inherited, gazing off into the distance, which is filled with the closing credits, the only credits in the film. The ending of Mountains and Streams is pensive and understated in keeping with the tone of the film, but Wang’s Tianshu qitan (Secrets of the Heavenly Book, 1983) articulates paternity in a much more jolting manner. The film is quite complex, but the narrative concerns a Taoist, Yuan Gong, who steals the Heavenly Book from the Jade Emperor’s library in order to transmit its contents to the people of earth. The Heavenly Book becomes the object of a pursuit for the duration of the film. In the end Yuan Gong tells Dan Sheng, Yuan Gong’s disciple/child in the film, to memorize the contents, after which he burns the book. The book transmission, animated as an ancient styled seal script circling the boy’s head, is accompanied by digital sound effects and hints at data transmission as much as alchemy. But after the transmission is complete, the film ends with the clouds opening and one of the Jade Emperor’s henchmen sending a chain down to bind and pull Yuan Gong up to heaven to face punishment for having shared the book with the people of the earth. Like Feeling of Mountains and Streams, the theme concerns transmission of culture and knowledge. But the final scene of arrest of Yuan Gong with his disciple/son crying is an intensely dissonant moment. Zhou Haiyan notes that it represents a “complete rejection” of the reunion as finale. The child protagonist is not only denied a reunion with his father, but his father is hauled away in chains, making Yuan Gong a Prometheus-like figure (Zhou Haiyan 2009). For Wang Shuchen, the ending is an intense moment in which the father/ son relationship is resolved. In a discussion of Frank Capra’s use of convention, George E. Toles makes a comment that has relevance to Wang’s use of endings, especially the ending of Nezha Conquers: “Capra is not interested in the habitual, somewhat protected mode of response that conventions necessarily bring with them. What he consistently strives to distill out of them is a moment that effectively bursts the bounds of the familiar situation. His goal is to powerfully transcend convention without undermining it” (2001: 57). In Nezha, The ending here is subtly joyful, the small crowd is celebratory. However, this reunion is far from complete since Nezha’s father Li Jing is absent (see Figure 5.20). The animators present an apparent finale, an apparent final reunion, but this is not the case, since Nezha’s return is incomplete as he sets down among his playmates only to take flight once more. In a close-up as Nezha hugs his deer, the deer reciprocates by licking his face, and Nezha mounts his deer and takes to the air again. As in the death scene, the deer gallops towards screen left. This time, of course, Nezha is riding the deer. In the opening few minutes of the film when Nezha’s birth is announced, Nezha’s father Li Jing also walks towards screen left when he first goes to see his newborn son. Indeed, throughout the film when

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characters walk towards screen left they are walking towards the interior of Li Jing’s palace. Moreover, the last image in Na Cha the Great (1974) bears an interesting resemblance, at least in method if not theme, to the ending of Nezha Conquers. Nezha Conquers, as we have seen, leaves out the conflict between Nezha and his father. The final victory over the Dragon King in Nezha Conquers occurs when Nezha spears him to the ocean floor and he writhes up the spear shaft and turns into stone. In Na Cha the Great, Nezha battles and defeats the evil dragon king of the county, but the ultimate battle is the filial conflict between Li Jing and his son Nezha. After Nezha successfully overpowers a group of henchmen, Nezha and his father come to blows and the final scene is a freeze frame of Li Jing and Nezha leaping towards each other, Nezha thrusting his spear, Li Jing parrying with the magic pagoda with superimposed text: “One thousand years, two thousand years, three thousand years . . . The father-son problem between Li Jing and Nezha, who knows how it will be resolved in the end? Because gods and immortals live eternally . . .”23 Thus, the Shaw Brothers’ version of Nezha remains faithful to the main conflict between Nezha and his father, while granting Nezha just enough extra power to inject some action into the finale. After Nezha takes flight on his deer in Nezha Conquers, images of landscape similar to the opening scene appear and dissolve beneath him. The last shot is a

Figure 5.20 Nezha Conquers the Dragon King, 1979

Nezha Conquers the Dragon King 171 framed image of Nezha riding his galloping deer in empty space. The words “The End” and the year of the film, “1979,” appear at the bottom of the screen. This image functions like an “animated still.” Perhaps it was just a convenient way to end the film, neither open-ended nor closed. Nezha strikes a pose on his deer. Or perhaps this image of Nezha riding the deer clearly marks the film with the year of its release, 1979, the thirtieth anniversary of the founding of the PRC. Either Nezha is in stasis (he is merely striking a pose) or he is in mid-flight. Considering the context of the film in PRC cinema history, I opt for the second reading. I do not claim that the directors of Nezha Conquers were referencing Na Cha the Great, but the endings are similar in effect; both feature closing shots that freeze the action. On the one hand, Na Cha the Great hints at a type of closure, an eternal return of the same. Within the Shaw Brothers’ catalogue, within the genre of martial-arts film, the ending here is somewhat self-referential, a promise of more fight scenes or perhaps a sequel or two (there were no sequels of Na Cha). On the other hand, the final “animated still” at the ending of Nezha Conquers is ambiguously open-ended. Nezha has just alighted to pay his respects to the small welcoming crowd, but then takes flight again towards screen left, the direction of his father’s palace (Figures 5.20 and 5.21). Nezha Conquers’ directors and animators chose to sidestep the filial conflict between Nezha and his father as the main thread of the narrative, and as a result

Figure 5.21 Nezha Conquers the Dragon King, 1979

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the final image of Nezha Conquers is very suggestive. In the context of cultural production in the PRC, Nezha Conquers represents a birth, death, and rebirth of mythological material. There is also a transitional aspect to this film linked to the shift away from the revolutionary hero as protagonist, a shift that occurred in literature, art, and cinema. I would suggest that Nezha’s final flight, this animated still of Nezha riding his deer galloping in midair towards screen left, can be read as an oblique reference to the absent father. Nezha Conquers ends with Nezha on the way to confront his father Li Jing. This confrontation is off screen (a historical hypothesis). Nezha, the mischievously violent boy-god who dared to impersonate, to stand in for, the Jade Emperor, ends his own narrative on the way to his father’s palace. The ending of Nezha Conquers points to future, still unresolved, conflicts.

Notes 1 See Lindvall and Melton 1997: 204; Bakhtin 1981: 259–422. 2 Xu Zhonglin 1994: Chapters 12–14, 107–133. Also, see the abridged translation in Gu Zhizhong 1992: 131–167. 3 See Sangren 2000: 196. Sangren discusses the Nezha story in detail in Chapter 8, 186–223. Sangren’s research is focused on Taiwan where Nezha worship is still an aspect of popular Taoism. Since the 1990s Nezha temples have also been reconstructed in Sichuan and Henan province. There is a Nezha temple dating from the nineteenth century in downtown Hong Kong. 4 Wu Cheng’en 1977: vol. 1, 128; Wu Cheng’en 1980: vol. 1, 47. 5 Sangren notes the “debate between Muzha and Nezha over whether or not, by returning his flesh and bones to his parents, Nezha has in fact severed the parental relationship, can be interpreted as a debate over whether or not Taiyi or Li Jing ought to be considered Nezha’s “real father” (2000: 202). 6 Because Sangren is concerned with the father-son relationship, he does not emphasize the presence of the Taoist “enabler” Master Taiyi (2000: 186–223). I adapt Sangren’s “dyadic” for a “triadic” conflict. 7 For a discussion of the pairing of the “good” and “bad” mother, see Klein 1991: 115–145. For a discussion of the imaginary doubling of parents in Zhang Ailing’s “Jasmine Tea,” see Macdonald 2009. 8 For a discussion of state views of New Year’s prints, see Hung 2000. For an excellent discussion of the genres of depictions of children see Bo Songnian 2007. 9 Susan Napier notes a “statelessness” in the “ ‘postethnic’ identities” of contemporary anime (2005: 26). Also, see the excellent discussion in Kaori Yoshida 2008: 83–86. In my opinion, Napier’s “postethnic” trope is relatively recent. 10 The word for Nezha’s hairstyle, zongjiao, denotes not only a hairstyle worn by children, but to “childhood” as well. On the web, the “Nezha hairdo” (Nezha faji) is a style for young women. In anime, the “odango” is also used to mark characters, usually female, but sometimes male as well. 11 See, “Zhongguo daibiaotuan yu Nezha naohai” 1980. Also see “Cannes Film First for Red Chinese” 1980: “ ‘The four dragons are in no way an allusion to the Gang of Four,’ director Wang Shuchen said at a news conference after the screening. ‘They represent the four directions – north, south, east and west.’ ” 12 Wang Shuchen claims the children, additions to Nezha Conquers, “permit [Nezha] to form a bond with those around him, and add a childish aura” (1979: 35). 13 The directors use terms such as “hongtuo” (emphasis), “xuanran” (exaggeration) and “duibi” (contrast or juxtaposition) (Wang, Yan, and Xu 1984: 108).

Nezha Conquers the Dragon King 173 14 See Dangdai Zhongguo congshu bianjibu 1989: 368 and 384, cited in Berry 2004: 103. 15 Clark (1991: 40–61, in particular 51–53) refers to a slightly wider window of 1978–1981, although he also remarks that the “new films” begin to be released in 1979. 16 In 1981 the Communist Party of China issued a Resolution on Party History that declared the Gang of Four responsible for the Cultural Revolution “commit[ting] many crimes behind [Mao Zedong’s] back, bringing disaster to the country and the people.” See the Communist Party of China 1981: 33, my italics; quoted in, MacFarquhar and Schoenhals 2006: 457. The original phrasing is huoguo yangmin de zui’e huodong. The phrase zainan for calamity or disaster was also used. Also see Ren Ping 1976: 1. The Great Leap Forward famines were also considered as partially the result of natural disasters (ziran zaihai). See Communist Party of China, Guanyu jianguo yilai dang de ruogan lishi wenti de jueyi (Resolution on Several Historical Questions in the History of the Party). 17 Chris Berry claims “character traits” over “actions and function” in Mainland Chinese literature and arts criticism; see Berry 2004: 102. However, in Nezha Conquers both aspects are relevant. 18 Jessica Ka Yee Chan notes that by the early 1950s “Chinese film-makers and cultural authorities reinvented montage . . . to refer to all film editing methods . . . ” (2011: 206). 19 See Ma Ning 1992: 189–190. Cited in Berry 2000: 56–62. 20 See Althusser 1990: 87–128, cited in Thomas LaMarre 2006: 177–186 where LaMarre discusses Tima as an unresolved media contradiction, a figure for the combination of (digitized) cel and digital animation. In classical Marxist terms, the Cultural Revolution represented the absolute determination of the base by the superstructure. For Althusser, the overdetermined contradiction is only apparently overdetermined and has not as yet been properly linked to local and international conditions. Regarding the overdetermination of the superstructure and its reform, see Huang Zhizhen 1976. 21 See Galikowski 1998: 193–199; Zou Yuejin 2002: 159–163; Lü Peng and Yi Dan 2011: 24–28. 22 Wolfram Eberhard puts it this way: “ . . . the scepter completes a picture which may be interpreted as wishing the recipient professional success and advancement.” See Eberhard 2004. 23 This translation is my own; the onscreen English translation is slightly different: “1000, 2000, 3000 years . . . Nobody knows how the long the feud between Li Jing and his son Na Cha will last because the almighty is eternal.”

6

Industry and animation

The motivation behind this book was to begin an exploration of a significant form of contemporary mass media in the context of Chinese studies. Growing up in the suburbs of Montreal, Canada, in the 1970s, American television cartoons were a very powerful medium of my youth. Some of my earliest memories of cinema are cel-animated images projected onto giant screens in theaters and school gymnasiums. As an Anglo-North American, I grew up with notions of cultural production as mass media, and my early interests in Chinese culture arose within this mediadrenched cultural context. My first experiences with Chinese culture were through cinema, primarily martial arts films produced in Hong Kong.1 Before I began pursuing academic research in Chinese Studies, “Chinese” was a polyphonic geopolitical-cultural signifier that included a North American “Chinatown” experience of cuisine, exotic produce and products, shops displaying New Year’s pictures of Stove Gods and Bodhisattvas, joss paper, and images of “Red China.” To paraphrase Horkheimer and Adorno, this chapter on industry is more fragmentary than the previous chapters.2 Academic researchers derive cultural evaluative skills from predefined institutional norms. Historically defined patterns and directions determine acceptable research in the academy that we work within, even when discourses claim to articulate a subversion of a perceived academic mainstream. Traditional cel animation design requires a simplified form of visual design. Since a figure must be redrawn sometimes by at least one, but often by a large number of hands, animators create a model sheet for reference. Effectively designed models of the characters to be animated have properties of line and color that make them amenable to repeated drawing and painting. The more detail the greater the labor. As a child I recall being seduced by these simple-looking images created, as the Japanese director Ritaro put it, using the basic tools of pencils, erasers, paintbrushes and poster paint.3 Those black-outlined brightly colored figures are excellent examples of postmodern surfaces that function like signifiers refracting social, historical, and ethnographic content. Initial understandings of culture emerge from the images of such postmodern surfaces. Surfaces such as these are the potential preamble to research, to the commentary, to the lecture, to the footnote. Depth begins on the surface.4 Jay Leyda’s generalizations reveal important historical traces of PRC film historiography. In a discussion of fiction such as Journey to the West, Romance of the

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Three Kingdoms, Pu Songling’s Strange Stories, and modern writers such as Lu Xun, Xiao Hong (1911–1942), and Shen Congwen (1902–1988) as examples of literary text containing filmic elements, Leyda claims PRC filmmakers “had learned so little from their arts of the past.”5 Leyda’s comparison of literature and film occurs during the discussion of increasing politicization of content in the 1960s including national style discourse: “[i]n constant struggle to remove all ambiguities from the film, it is absurd to demand that traditional Chinese painting and theater should be regarded as models for the filmmaker” (1972: 328). National style discourse did not make a distinction made between the medium of film and other literary genres like the novel or theater: “ . . . no distinction was made between the way to tell a story and the way to tell a film” (1972: 330). Oddly, Leyda claims film was influencing literature too much, including “picture-story books” or comic books. Leyda’s claim that this form was introduced to China by American soldiers is problematic, but his discussion of the relationship between film and comics is interesting in itself: “By the 1960s it was not unusual to see adults depending on the pictorial supports of this dubious literature that seemed to increase the dangers of simplification. And children read nothing else. Film going in China is very inexpensive – comics are even cheaper and have the added powers of possession and personal circulation: much like the dream of everyone owning his own film library” (1972: 334). Comic book film adaptations as privatized print versions of films. In 1972 the idea of owning a “film library” was still unusual. Leyda actually reverses the relationship between literature and film to make a point about the way film discourse existed in print media. Leyda’s knowledge is limited because of his lack of linguistic knowledge of Chinese. But in this case there would have been very little research material in any language to be able to write a thorough study of comic books in China. The government considered pre-liberation cultural production to be tainted ideologically, and except for a few mentions of the form as a pedagogical aid, comics were not taken seriously. Leyda’s offhanded suggestion shows at the very least a willingness to acknowledge this form of mass print media. The dianying lianhuanhua (film comic) was not a creation of the 1960s, but had existed since the 1930s in China and continued as a genre of comic books right up until the 1980s, sometimes hand drawn, sometimes using stills (Li Guoping, Zhang Xiaonan 2006; Macdonald 2011). In addition, while Leyda is critiquing the propagandistic aspects of comics at this time in the PRC, he is also hinting at film comics as a form of popular film discourse, to my knowledge a topic that has never been discussed inside or outside of China. What Leyda had to say about animation had to do with his perspective as a scholar of film studies, and his comments are limited in this respect. But when he refers to the SAFS as an “experimental collective” (1972: 291), this is how the SAFS was perceived by the “cultural workers” who made animations there. When Marie-Claire Quiquemelle interviews Te Wei and Duan Xiaoxuan on camera in 2007 about the early days of the 1950s and ’60s, they refer to animation like a type of technical innovation, which was in keeping with the mood of the times for gexin, an innovation movement promoted by the State.6

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The film text has already been legitimized within a national cinema framework that privileges the auteur/director. Animation is already a full-fledged industry in the PRC, a media industry with links and repercussions in the education system and entertainment industries. In some ways, the socio-historical texts of animation in China have been co-opted by national industry development policies that make up systems of intervention that focus almost exclusively on quantitative production. This study retains a residual literary methodology. In Humanities the text remains a hermeneutic point of origin for meaning. As Pierre Bourdieu noted some time ago, “[t]he education system plays a decisive role in the generalized imposition of the legitimate mode of consumption. One reason for this is that the ideology of ‘re-creation’ and ‘creative reading’ supplies teachers – lectores assigned to commentary on the canonical texts – with a legitimate subject with the ambition to act as auctores” (1993: 37). One of the functions of the university lecturer is as lectore, as a reader who lectures and provides commentary on texts. In the university the lectore and auctore are one and the same. Either way, the “metaphor of reading” remains predominant in literary and media texts in the Humanities (Bourdieu 1993: 301, note 25). The choice of texts is changing, but textual history, like Benjamin’s discussion of the aura in art history, goes back to theological assumptions of a canon. In China, jing, the legitimized, canonical text, functioned in a similar way to the religious and philosophical canons developed in Western culture. Either way, such histories still affect legitimation in the academy, if only as a faint echo in some cases. In film, the problem of selection of canonical texts deserves more research. With regard to film from the PRC, the role played by domestic and foreign reception of directors and their films was affected by state selection and deselection, as in the consistent banning of certain films, which increased their luster abroad and domestically. Early animation in the PRC includes a small number of titles, the Wans’ Princess Iron Fan, and then SAFS productions like Uproar in Heaven and Nezha Conquers the Dragon King. Here, history and the relatively small number of features and shorts have determined selection considerably. Uproar and Nezha Conquers were both based on key literary and cultural texts of Chinese culture, and the films have become texts in themselves for new productions. The design used in Uproar remained a consistent house-style for the SAFS until the 1999 animated television series, and one could argue that the animators of the television series were certainly taking Zhang Guangyu’s designs into account. Nezha Conquers is the film text for the Nezha story, and although the animation models were slightly different, the 2003 television series is indebted to the SAFS film for much of the look and the story arc. The SAFS catalogue is regarded like a national treasure that transcends copyright. Online versions of old animations, some copied from television broadcasts, have been uploaded and re-uploaded in sites in and outside of China. The film Yewai de zaoyu (Encounters in the Wild, 1955) is an early color animation that precedes the emergence of national style discourse. I have not seen this short discussed, even though two important directors are involved, Wan Laiming and Wang Shuchen. Two farm pigs lay sleeping as a crow swoops down to eat some of their food from

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the trough. One of the pigs, the mottled one, angrily chases after the crow. The smaller pig is afraid to follow, but a dog convinces the smaller pig to go in search of the pig that ran after the crow. The little pig and dog embark on a short trip that is based on Lacanian misrecognition. The little pig and dog confuse the sinking red sun for a yaoguai or monster (an image of ontogeny recapitulating phylogeny, the child-like talking animal standing for an unscientific, “primitive” ideology). Walking in the moonlight on a small bridge, the little pig mistakes his own reflection in the water for the other pig, and when the dog comes to look by climbing atop the pig they think a monster has eaten the mottled pig. Soon, a bear with a long white beard enters and explains the concept of reflection by having the pig, dog, and himself look at their reflections in the water: “See, this is your reflection . . .” The next morning they find the mottled pig, and as the red sun rises the bear points towards the sun and asks, “What is that?” “The moon!” “You’re mistaken!” “A monster!” “Who told you it’s a monster?” “Our mother!” “Your mother is mistaken! There are no such things as monsters!” Almost ten years before The East is Red, the red sun cannot be allegorized too easily. However, a rationalist old bear critiquing the mistakes of the mother is an interesting moment. Why would the old bear blame mothers for this misrecognition? It would be tempting to read this as a pro-Soviet film. Or perhaps it is merely a talking animal short produced for amusement. Revolutionary history remains a significant aspect of television programming in the PRC. Lei Feng de gushi (The Story of Lei Feng, or Stories about Lei Feng) premiered June 10, 2010, on the children’s CCTV. The first episode opens with an image of Mao’s profile in relief with the needles of light flowing out like the auratic revolutionary logos used during the Cultural Revolution. Mao’s calligraphy appears, “Study Comrade Lei Feng,” then a flat image of Lei Feng in a PLA winter hat (a fairly well-known image). Episode 1 starts with the birth of Lei Feng as a shell explodes during the Sino-Japanese War. The movement is stiff, repetitive, uncoordinated. Each episode ends with an image of Lei Feng’s diary and an emotional male voice reading a few highlighted lines. The “book” and the flipping pages are indexical. In Disney the filmed book, the book as object in itself, was a favorite trope (here it is digital). The book that flips its own pages as the camera penetrates the image. Animation is prevalent in advertising too. One advertisement for a fruit drink called Guowei renqiwang uses a variety of CG styles and media.7 The opening imagery mimics brightly colored comic book panels containing large printer’s dots in the manner of Pop artist Roy Lichtenstein (1923–1997). The ad opens with a medium shot of a young man in white shirt with black polka dots and bowtie excitedly yelling towards the viewer “OH MY GUA!” (Oh my melon! Gua deliberately replaces the word “gosh” or “god” from the mild English oath). The Gua is a CGI watermelon man with legs, arms, and puckering lips. The relation between the live action actor and her CGI partner parallels the linguistic indeterminacy of the ad copy. Next there is another shot of a young woman as she screams “OH MY GUA!” and begins to fall backwards (a swoon?). Cut to a long shot of the watermelon man catching and holding her in his arms like a dipping couple in ballroom dancing.

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Next is a close-up shot of the watermelon as it (he?) puckers its/his lips (sound effect of a hollow kiss). Then a medium shot of the young woman sucking from a straw stuck in the watermelon’s head. The actors stare up almost reverently, followed by a shot of a plastic bottle (the brand) that spins upwards (the animation approximates a pan up by a camera) with gushes of red liquid spurting/swirling around the bottle on a blank background. The quick cut between the shot of the melon man puckering his lips and the medium shot of the woman sucking from a straw creates a kind of cognitive dissonance, another type of misrecognition of the relationship between the product (the watermelon man) and the consumer (the woman seduced by the product) who is already consuming the product. The watermelon man (product) seduces the woman (consumer) but the woman has already begun consuming the product (a watermelon flavored drink). Flavored fruit drinks are sold as supplements in place of the actual fruit. Thus the watermelon man here functions semantically as both a watermelon flavor and a virtual actor. Advertising is indirectly part of public policy in consumer economies, since governments and corporations are concerned with maintaining steady economic growth. No less than in Western media, animation has become a prevalent aspect of everyday life in the PRC. The animation text is accessible in theaters, on television, and twenty-four hours a day on the Internet; the shift towards predominance occurred in the 1980s. For one viewer, the challenge for domestic animation was a battle between Sun Wukong and the Transformers: “Most children in China know the cartoon Uproar in Heaven. That great, magically endowed Sun Wukong seems to be everywhere, in plays, cartoons, television series, and comic books. He can transform in 72 ways, do somersaults in the sky . . . so many of us have been intoxicated by his antics. But all of a sudden this last summer a new fad appeared on the screen – the children’s animated series Transformers.” This commentary by a reform-era sixth-grader compares American and Chinese franchises: “As soon as these Cybertronian robots (who can only transform in two or three ways) appeared, they completely wiped out the 72 transformations of Sun Wukong.” And this reading is linked to mass print: “It used to be that the minute we got a hold of the Weekly TV Broadcast we would turn to the broadcast times for Uproar in Heaven. But now we turn to the episode summaries of Transformers. And this [Transformer watching] group of schoolmates makes up about 80% of the primetime cartoon viewership. As to Uproar in Heaven, we just sort of feel like that film has lost its flavor” (Yao Hui 1989). For this young viewer unhampered by critical theory, the shift to television meant not only a shift to new characters, but to a new format. Yao Zhongli has worked in animation for thirty-seven years. He was one of the screenwriters for the early animated television series called Hulu xiongdi (The Calabash Brothers). The series aired beginning in 1987 and the SAFS was paid approximately 10,000 RMB per ten-minute episode, a good price at that time. According to Yao, since televisions were widespread by this time, the series was answering a market need. But the SAFS animators looked down on television production. They considered television to be too commercial.8 SAFS animators had not really considered format before this. Films were usually made for local

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audiences and international film festivals. Indeed, before this time productions were made for a variety of lengths, even for shorts. There was nothing like the seven minutes of American early theatrical animated shorts (Klein 1993). Thirteen episodes of The Calabash Brothers were produced initially.9 In The Lost Magic of Shanghai Art Studio (2007), SAFS director Wang Genfa complains about the dominance of anime-styled characters in China (like “Barbie dolls” with “big eyes”), and he claims Japanese producers actually offered their series for free initially. According to Wang, it was the Chinese television stations that ruined the market for Chinese producers. Did pirated versions of anime also play a role? Joseph Man Chan points out that “the offering of free goods” was one of the ways television broadcast spread, including “signal spillover, piracy, and direct broadcasts” since the 1980s if not before. The redistribution of media signals “often without payment of copyright fees” was common in Guangdong and Fujian provinces, which were close to signals from Hong Kong and Taiwan respectively. (Chan 1994: 72–73). Wang Genfa claims that by the end of the 1980s already 80–90% of television animation was Japanese. Despite the significance of format, the cartoon franchise dominated the discussion even as the television series was entering the PRC in the 1980s. Manhua artist Jia Zhaozeng suggests “We need a Mickey Mouse for China”: “The past few years television programming has become very rich. As an educational worker, I am concerned about children’s programming. I always feel something is missing, but what? That would be a made in China animated series welcomed with open arms by the majority of children.” Jia refers to the programming schedule: “Every Sunday, the first program on China Central Television is Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck.” As an art educator, Jia claims an engagement with the medium: “Ordinarily I am the type of person who really likes watching animation, but after watching, my interest dropped drastically so that I stopped watching.” Jia highlights “technique” as technology: “Although the technique exhibited in this series is admittedly very high, especially from the point of view of design and movement. Neither Japanese nor Chinese can compare here. Of course this has to do with technology. Because of our recording equipment, there’s no way we can achieve this kind of liveliness of movement.” For Jia, the content is also lacking: “As for the content, it’s always the same genre, every story stays within the same structure, really senseless. When I was small I watched Disney’s Dumbo, a production that brought together animation, live actors, and puppet models in one film which was so groundbreaking, sympathetic, and fascinating, that it has left an impression on me even forty years after I first saw it. The early Mickey Mouse too also used interesting plots structures, not like the commercial films they make nowadays which are a real waste of the audience’s time.” Jia’s critique remains tied to the format of theatrical film. But his perspective is also informed by television series: “Frankly I find the Japanese animated series Astro Boy more interesting because the plot shows more promise of being an inspiration for children. But the production techniques are still inferior to Mickey Mouse . . . I have to admit that when the show is on my children and grandchildren will wait in front of the television. My twoyear-old grandson really enjoys this show . . . Therefore I wonder, shouldn’t we

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have our own animated television show? Shouldn’t we have shows able to hold the attention of a two year old?” (Jia Zhaozeng 1988). According to Te Wei, the Nationalists left Disney films behind in 1949, so Disney was a model for animation in the PRC as well (Lent 2002). Jia’s comments about Dumbo are ironic. At the beginning of WWII, Disney shifted to lowerbudget productions, and animators were on strike during the production of Dumbo (Schickel 1997: 249–262; Leslie 2004: 207–213). But with regard to television content, Jia’s comments signal that a shift in the PRC to daily television programming had probably been going on for at least a decade before he wrote this in 1988. As Niklas Luhmann notes, programming for television is a matter of fitting content into “rubrics and templates” determined by “[t]ime and available space” (2000: 34). Formatting and scheduling, the need to fill up space, all affected content in new ways in the PRC after television became a dominant medium. Television programming still partially determines the format and presentation of online content as well. McLuhan claimed a “new” medium might use an “old” medium as content, for example, a movie might use “a novel or a play or an opera” as content (1994: 18). McLuhan was right to get away from a literary analysis of “content,” but part of the medium is the message delivered by content, and the content is in turn determined by the format of the medium. Although contemporary online media appear open-ended in form, the form of online media is still determined by “older” media like the film (as a duration) or the television series as a series of episodes. President Jiang Zemin’s letter to the SAFS comes at a crucial time in animation history and an important moment for redefining animation within the sectors of cultural production in the PRC: “You have produced an animated series based on a selection of stories about young foreign and Chinese heroes from the past and present. This is a very meaningful project. Using excellent works to inspire people is an important task on the cultural front. Children are the hope and future of the Chinese nation. In the end, the important task in the realization of the goal of the third step in China’s socialist modernization will fall on the shoulders of the present generation of children.” Jiang Zemin is referring to Zigu yingxiong chu shaonian (Heroic Children in History), a series of one hundred five- to six-minute shorts featuring heroic models of children from history: “It is the historic responsibility of literature and art workers to help children, from the time they are small, to stand tall and vigorously develop and firmly establish the long-range ambitions of our nation. Literature and art workers must ensure our children, as the new generation of socialism, foster idealism, morality, culture, and discipline.” Jiang legitimates the series by emphasizing its didactic aspects. The few I have watched online are fairly well done, but they have the feeling of being “spots,” like short public-service announcements about good children. Animators remain state employees: “Hopefully the vast numbers of animation arts workers can, with the guidance of the Party, ceaselessly promote thoughtful, visually stunning, and superb works of outstandingly unified animation art that can provide a higher quality of spiritual nourishment in greater amounts, which in turn will allow images of our own animated heroes to become the models and friends for the broad masses

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of children.” (Jiang 1996). That Jiang would write such a letter to the SAFS is curious, since animation had been taking off in the PRC since the 1980s, and the SAFS was hardly the only animation producer at this time. Jiang’s jingshen liangshi, literally spiritual or mental grain, which I have translated here as spiritual nourishment, recalls a euphemism used by Chen Bochui during the “Discussion of Animated Cinema” some thirty-six years earlier, which referred to cultural production for children with the same metaphorical term (Yang Hansheng et al. 1960: 33). This metaphor for film production establishes film as a product of labor, is a reminder of the ideological aspect of filmmaking, and occurs within a policy consistently upheld by the CCP that quantifies production. Despite the metaphorical implications of film production as a product within Party cultural policies and modernization strategies, Jiang Zemin’s focus on animation and film arise within the context of the conceptualization of production and the abstraction of production processes. In an article published two years before Jiang’s letter, Bao Jigui commented on recent reforms to animated film production. According to Bao, from 1986 to 1991 the number of animation studios increased in the PRC from one to fifty studios; however, only ten studios were actually producing local films; the rest were outsource studios for foreign studios. Bao estimates that the ten studios producing for the domestic market produce around fifty or sixty films, of which only ten hours would be broadcast on television. He estimates that American, Japanese, Canadian, French, Yugoslavian and other studios produce around fifteen hundred to two thousand hours, whereas from the founding of the PRC, the total animation produced in the PRC is around six hundred minutes (at this time, reporting numbers was a dour activity; things have recently picked up). The producers in the United States and Japan would have already been producing television content for at least two decades. But the most somber part of Bao’s report concerns the SAFS which had dropped in 1991 to a profit level of 470,000 RMB from a high in 1986 of 1,440,000. By the time Jiang Zemin addresses his letter to the studio, the SAFS was relying on subsidies to finance production. Bao attributes the problems with the national animation industry to the planned economics of the state. By the 1980s, the state permitted 38 animation productions a year: 35 for SAFS, two for Changchun Film Studio, and one for the Liaoning Educational Film Studio. Bao’s proposal is for the China Film Company to open up animation to the market by 1994 (1993). Jonathan Noble (2000) uses the blockbuster Titanic as a point of departure to discuss the transformation of film distribution in the PRC during the 1990s. In a discussion that builds upon the work of Dai Jinhua, Noble notes how the China Film Company’s interpretations of a 1994 importation measure implied a profitization of film distribution. Selection was based on “market expectation and profit potential.”10 The promotion of for-profit distribution included the adoption of promotional discourse. Dai notes that in the case of Disney’s The Lion King, the Hong Kong promotional campaign was imported, including a new language of chaozuo or “hype” (1999: 398). Noble evidences the way “commercialization of official discourse and the officialization of commercial practices” were “informing the culture industry in China” in the mid to late 1990s. His discussion of the marketing

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of Titanic at this crucial moment is implicitly a critique of the “mainstream view that commercialization will promote personal and political emancipation” (2000: 169–170). In The Postmodern Condition, Lyotard collapses a pair of grand narratives he calls “speculation” and “emancipation.” For Lyotard, speculation is part of the idealistic view of knowledge. Speculation is part of that Hegelian teleology that treats knowledge as continuously surpassing itself in the eternal quest of the spirit. Speculation is knowledge continually grasping for the higher ground, an idealistic legitimation of knowledge as the progress of the spirit. However, emancipation has specific implications for the historic subject: “The principle of the movement animating the people is not the self-legitimation of knowledge, but the self-grounding of freedom or, if preferred, its self management. The subject is concrete, or supposedly so, and its epic is the story of its emancipation from everything that prevents it from governing itself.” For the German philosophers, “[t]he subject of knowledge is not the people, but the speculative spirit.” (1984: 34–35). In the PRC the “speculative spirit” is subsumed by the needs of the People. The People are the final figure of emancipation. The People represent the emancipation of the nation. However, emancipation is not the result of self-consciousness of the historical subject.11 The Marxist concept of a proletariat subjectivity progressing to self-consciousness is irrelevant to Mao Zedong’s On Contradictions. Contradiction among the People will be resolved within the context of the nation (by and for the nation). There is never any ambiguity of the People’s historical self-consciousness outside of the hegemony of the Party and within a concept of the nation. Emancipation is derived within a formal structure that apparently emerges from, and transcends, history. In the mid-1990s a Guangzhou painter named Huang Yihan developed a style that formed around the phrase Katong yidai (The Cartoon Generation) that refers not only to a period (to the generation born 1970 and later) but also to the cultural shift to urban space and media, to the generations who grew up with cartoons. Huang paints water-brush paintings in the traditional guohua style, but his subject matter and use of color disrupts any expectation of national style. Some of these paintings are somewhat garish figure studies crowded with dancing and posing young people, their hair dyed orange, purple, brown, with somewhat realistic faces superimposed upon exaggerated bodies, sometimes realistic forms, sometimes cartoony out of proportion shapes. Ronald McDonald, Mickey Mouse, and Sailor Moon crowd in among representations of young urbanites, some of whom pose with lethal weapons, some handguns, some rifles pointed right at the viewer. Yang Xiaoyan notes: “Huang Yihan’s work doesn’t seem to need any explanation, with unfailing understanding his work places particular types of popular toys on a traditional chessboard” (2001: 151). As to the concept of the “Cartoon Generation” (consistently within quotation marks), “after coming through several thousand years of rural civilization, this is a new generation of the commercial metropolis, this is the TV watching, hamburger eating, cola drinking generation, nurtured and raised on commercialism” (Huang Yihan 2001: 2). For Huang, the cartoon generation is Xin renlei, a new human.

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The simulacrum of historical shift is an aspect of the China-centric ride from a generalized revolutionary culture, a periodic designation, into a capitalist mode during the contemporary period. Animation is a good entrance point, not only the industry as an economic entity but the medium as such. Animation is the cultural shift into the reproduction of simulacra that occurs despite the best effort of the dirigeants12 to authorize meaning. Animation originally represented the application of industrial methods to produce an electronic image, the succinct moment where, as Baudrillard notes, production becomes reproduction: “We must ask ourselves whether production is not rather an intervention, a particular phase, in the order of signs – whether it is basically only one episode in the line of simulacra, that episode of producing an infinite series of potentially identical beings (objectsigns) by means of technics” (1993: 55). Baudrillard employs schema, a vague outline meant to loosely frame the historical narrative of Western production. But this narrative can only partially capture even the history it is meant to signify. In the PRC, Mao’s main contribution to production was heavy industry (even the absurdly symbolic Great Leap Forward backyard kilns exemplify this). But it is important to recall that mass media also served as a rather colorful layer over the proceedings, cartoonish, solid outlined figures, apple-cheeked workers and peasants with shiny white teeth, didactic reminders of themselves as messages (the message was the medium). In 2000, President Jiang Zemin introduced san ge daibiao, the “three represents,” which stated that the Communist Party of China “has always represented the development trend of China’s advanced productive forces, the orientation of China’s advanced culture, and the fundamental interests of the overwhelming majority of the Chinese people” (2006). Alice Miller notes: “The logic of the ‘three represents’ bore an unmistakable resemblance to the declaration incorporated into the Soviet Communist Party’s 1961 program that it was a ‘party of the whole people’ – a party not just of the Soviet working class but of the entire Soviet people, among whom fundamental conflicts of interests (and so ‘class struggle’) no longer existed” (2011: 570), a noticeable irony, considering this was the time during the revolutionary period that the CCP was least likely to borrow from the Soviets. Perhaps Jiang’s “three represents” were a necessary attempt to open up the Party to new entrepreneurs and technocrats of continually evolving and emerging social sectors that were only becoming more integrated with global economies. Jiang’s “three represents” are a symbolic shift in focus from the revolutionary trinity of worker, peasant, and soldier. Indeed, the “three” of this concept could be mistaken as a metaphorical reference to this outmoded trinity, but the relationship between the three represents and the revolutionary class trinity is not a correspondent relationship. The three represents are abstractions, abstract almost to the point of referential erasure. The “represents” are abstract prosthetic supplements that collapse the former figures while reincarnating them in a strategic, inclusive dispersal. The most referential “represent” is the “advanced productive forces.” And the language surrounding this “represent” is especially telling: “Because the Party represents the needs of the development of advanced productive forces, therefore all our Party comrades’ struggle is, in the final analysis, for the common purpose

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of liberating and developing the advanced productive forces. The entire policy and strategy of the Party is the unceasing development and acceleration of advanced productive forces, and the unceasing increase in acceleration of the nation’s economic strength . . .” (Jiang Zemin 2006: 2). Because the Party represents the advanced productive forces, we the Party develop the advanced productive forces. We, the Party, develop the advanced productive forces because the Party represents those forces – an irrefutable circular logic. As Liu Kang put it: “[i]t is, after all, a question of representation” (2004: 64). The word daibiao, like the English word “represent,” has many possible connotations: “[t]he plenipotentiary, minister, mandatory, delegate, spokesperson, deputy or member parliament is a person who has a mandate, a commission or a power of proxy, to represent – an extraordinarily polysemic word – in other words, to show and throw into relief the interests of a person or a group” (Bourdieu 1991: 203). The English word “represent” is an official translation that uses the infinitive English verb as a noun. While this works in Chinese, in English the infinitive is problematic. The word “representation” could also work here, except that “representation” demands a greater referential anchoring of the term. The closest anchor is “Party,” but this word functions like one sign in a string of concepts. In a similar manner as Baudrillard’s simulacrum, the institution functions as a site of reproduction, not a site of origin. Michael Keane cites the 1990s as being crucial for the marketization of culture in the PRC and the process was already occurring during the 1980s (2007: 63–64). It is important to note that the 1980s “Cultural Fever” discussions were largely concerned with literature and mostly viewed commercialization as negative – and mass media was an aspect of commercialization and evident in print media evidenced by the explosion of mass periodicals that occurred during this time (Boulet 1988 reproduces a small sample of these magazines). Keane notes one of the first uses of the term wenhua chanye, “cultural industry,” occurred in a policy document published by the State Council general as early as 1992.13 The translation of wenhua chanye is important. “Cultural industry” is a valid translation of wenhua chanye, but in English the term recalls another “culture industries,” a nuanced term in English with roots that go back to the description of mass media by the Frankfurt School during and after WWII. For Horkheimer and Adorno the “culture industries” was a largely ideological negative critique of mass media in post-WWII America as a form of “mass deception” (2002: 94–136). Horkheimer and Adorno critiqued American culture industries with Nazi Germany providing a historical model of indoctrination and cynical state ideology. Horkheimer and Adorno looked at earlier modes of mass media within a modernist framework of high and low culture. While Cultural Studies would partially take up the concept of “culture industry” from Horkheimer and Adorno, Simon During notes Cultural Studies approaches were not always negatively critical of mass culture and mass media as Horkheimer and Adorno (During 1999). Indeed, the link between wenhua chanye and culture industries as a concept from Cultural Studies deserves further consideration. In a 2004 article by Yang Ji on the Frankfurt School and Cultural Studies, Yang translates the term “culture industries” as wenhua

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gongye, lexically distinguishing it from the official term with the word gong, which connotes heavy industry. Robin Visser discusses Wang Xiaohui’s establishment of a cultural studies center at Shanghai University that led to similar centers in other Shanghai universities. Visser discusses the project of cultural studies in China and the West as exemplary of the challenges facing researchers in academia under neoliberalism (2010: 125). Whether wenhua chanye is culture industries or cultural industries, the sociological approach has been recuperated by the state as part of planning and policy. As Keane notes, the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences has produced the Blue Book of China’s Cultural Industries since 2002 (2007: 61), and in 2011 the first blue book on animation was issued. The use of social science approaches to cultural sectors was certainly not new in the PRC. The description of literature and art was always implicitly a type of sociological analysis for the Communist Party of China. The Jiang Zemin period from the mid to late 1990s when the PRC was looking to enter the WTO was crucial for a number of reasons, and one of them was “the application of the soft sciences (ruan kexue) to policy making, the use of think-tank researchers and specialists to supply feasibility studies, cost benefit analyses, background analyses, and summaries of policy options . . .” (Miller 2011: 561–562). Under Jiang, the rationale was to introduce consultation into the political process. However, the consultation produced is primarily quantitative. Production is measured in quotas. At the Guojia dongman youxi chanye zhenxing jidi (The China National Center for Developing the Animation, Manga and Game Industries) located at Huadong Normal University in Shanghai, Yao Xuying describes animation as a ditan chanye (low carbon emission industry).14 The PowerPoint is more explicit: “Animation, manga and games are brand new cultural forms for the 21st century. Through the Internet explosion, these industries have already transformed into virtual development tidal waves in the global sphere.” Such language represents the intersection between ad copy, globalization discourse, and state promotional: “As a key step in the national strategic implementation for the development of the animation, manga and gaming industries, the Ministry of Culture of the People’s Republic of China has decided to take the lead and establish the China National Center for Developing the Animation, Manga, and Game Industries in Shanghai (Guojia dongman youxi chanye zhenxing jidi, 2010).15 There are fundamentally two intertwined streams of research into animation in the PRC. The first stream is economic, the second historical. The economic stream is promoted by the state and has found response in the academic community. Animation is referred to under the neologism dongman, a compound term denoting two industries: animation (the term for cel animation) donghua, and manhua, the Japanese loan word for print cartoons (and recently comic books or manga). This stream of research views investment in animation and related industries as types of technological-cultural innovation. The interest in these forms of mass cultural production is framed as promising industries that combine healthy living, green technology, and positive industry competition with other national industries, especially in Japan and the U.S. Michael Keane gives an important reading of the links

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between the terminologies of innovation and creativity that emerged in the 1960s and reemerged in the PRC in the late 1990s (2007: 76–93). The rhetoric is significant for the historical resonances of the terms themselves and for the implications for state intervention in the economy and the social sectors affected by these economic interventions. The rhetoric sometimes reads like a form of hype derived from think-tank reports and advertising. The animation sector was consistently part of national cultural strategy and planning, as film production and pedagogy. The most significant change in recent times is the scale of the industry and the link to other media, print (manga and comic books) and digital (computer games, but also online content). The emphasis on “green” technology plays to the Eleventh FiveYear Plan launched in 2006 and “a discernable shift . . . away from obsession with productivity towards sustainability and high value-adding” (Keane 2007: 61). The shift into animation media seems to have derived the largest push under Jiang Zemin. As Keane notes, the “Tenth Five-Year Plan (2001–2005) signaled the prominence of the information society (represented as a pillar industry) with an emphasis on raising productivity through the use of information technology” (2007: 60–61). Ma Liang claims the formation of the dongman industry was a policy of the Central Government to develop an aspect of di san chanye, fuwu ye (the Tertiary or Service Industries) to enable local studios to benefit from the international animation industry through the expertise of skilled animators who farmed out work to local studios. Yao Xuying noted that the dongman industry was mostly aimed at the domestic market. As Yao put it, Xi Yangyang yu Hui tailang zhi niuqi chongtian (Pleasant Goat and Big Grey Wolf: The Super Snail Adventure, 2009) had made 110 million RMB at the box office, so the animation industry was seen as profitable. Ma put stress on the animation industry as fulfilling the rationale for higher education degrees. By 2010, China was producing about five to six million unemployed university graduates every year. Many of these students came from the countryside and had been loaned money by relatives who were disappointed that young students would be unemployed after four years of education. Xue Yanping, a professor at the Animation School of the Communications University of China, laments that from 2001 to 2008 the numbers of higher education institutions offering animation rose from 40 to 400.16 At Nanyang dongman xueyuan, the Nanyang Game College attached to Jiaotong University in Shanghai, Wang Xichen explained that while some of their students were straight out of high school, some already held university degrees and were returning to learn technical skills in order to find a job. The school’s literature reminded me of college trade school programs that promised employment in the rising multimedia industries.17 Based on a survey of university student preferences for manga and animation carried out in 2007–2008, Chen Qijia and Hui Song note that Japanese anime occupied the top ten most-liked anime. Actually, Japanese dominated the top twenty choices with one exception, the American cartoon Tom and Jerry, which came in at sixteenth place. The anime that scored the highest was Guanlan gaoshou, Suramu Danku in Japanese, Slam Dunk in English. First published in the 1990s and quickly turned into a TV series, Slam Dunk was one of the most popular

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manga and anime series, in and outside of Japan. (Chen and Hui 2009: 24, 26–27). As for the popularity of Slam Dunk in China, basketball has been played in China since the turn of the nineteenth century and by the 1930s basketball and soccer were considered national sports (Morris 2002). In addition to the predominance of competition as a theme in anime, Slam Dunk is an example of fictionalized sports culture. The characters negotiate the basketball court in scenes that include internal monologues, split-screen shots, and those background speed lines so popular in anime (and manga for that manner). Slam Dunk is an excellent example of postmodernity in which the medium of anime articulates tropes of sports competition and success. While postmodernism is often viewed as a critique of cultural modernism collapsing high and low culture, etc., postmodernism in mass media can often be a reinscription and intensification of concepts and institutions associated with modernity and capitalism. The popularity of Japanese anime among university students and the attention devoted to creative industries, to the increase in media production by the government in the PRC, intersects in this moment of the intensification of the practices and concepts once referred to as “modernity.” New media is, in the end, the latest version of capitalism; postmodernity as the reproduction of signs is the deliberate harnessing of the production of simulacra. Jameson touches on “the market of socialist countries,” which “would seem to have more to do with production than consumption, since it is above all a question of supplying spare parts, components, and raw materials to other production units that is foregrounded as the most urgent problem (and which the Western-style market is then fantasized as a solution). But presumably the slogan of the market and all its accompanying rhetoric was devised to secure a decisive shift and displacement from the conceptuality of production to that of distribution and consumption: something it rarely seems in fact to do” (1991: 266). Here one would have to add the importance of job creation for an educated, surplus labor force. In the PRC the shift to media production is part of a deliberate transition from an economy of production to an economy of consumption. The State is putting a large burden on the new media industries, especially animation. The turn away from manufacturing seems to be no more than a shift into another type of production; namely, the production of media. The importance of media industries, and the quantification of those industries, has been recognized around the world for quite some time. Nevertheless, the quantification of animation production poses some important questions. McLuhan’s phrase “the medium is the message” was a slogan that attempted to liberate media studies from literary readings of content, readings based on a reductively authorial origin of meaning, for example. But in many ways McLuhan exaggerated the deterministic effects of the medium at the expense of content. Although the medium does determine the message, in our media-drenched present zeitgeist it is becoming evident that content also makes for pretty good media, incredibly large amounts of content (and perhaps this is why Japanese producers refer to content industries). In a report on China’s growing animation production, Yamada Ken-ichi notes that in 2011, 435 titles were produced, consisting of 4,353 hours and 44 minutes of television animation. Yamada notes this as the highest total of television

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animation production in the world. In Japan the number was 1,577 hours and 48 minutes.18 Yamada claims a “full-fledged promotion” of the animation sector in China beginning in 2004 and “protectionism” in television programming to favor local content. A recent decision by the PRC Ministry of Culture to ban all Japanese anime from the Internet supports a protectionist strategy.19 Yamada also describes the rise of the city of Hangzhou. Through efforts of the local government and state planning, Hangzhou has become an animation base, going from no animation production in 2004 to 300 hours in 2005 and 580 hours in 2010, which made Hangzhou the largest producer of animation hours for the second year in a row. Yamada points to one production from Hangzhou in particular, the 3D animated television series Qinshi mingyue (The Legend of Qin), which shows a shift in target audience, from children to a teenagers (Yamada 2013: 5–10). The show began in 2007 and remains one of the most popular domestic series.20 Yamada cites the comments of Video Market Corporation director Hiromichi Masuda who pointed to the “outstanding” quantitative growth of the industry which “has no system to sell productions on the domestic market and repay invested funds.”21 Yamada notes that the Chinese government set two conditions for foreign animation firms to operate in China: collaboration including technology transfer and the need for the works to be shown overseas. Two co-productions arose from collaboration between Chinese and Japanese producers: the television series Sanguo yanyi (Romance of the Three Kingdoms) and the film Tibet Inu Monogatari: Kin’iro no Dao Jie (The Tibetan Dog), also known in Chinese as Zanggou Duoji. The film was produced by the Japanese animation company Madhouse. Romance of the Three Kingdoms is an excellent Japanese-style anime adaptation of a very important fourteenthcentury novel (and a work well known in Japan as well, where the series aired in 2010). One director in Beijing I spoke to said the series was like a Japanese car built in China. And this seems to be even more the case for The Tibetan Dog, an anime based on the novel Zang ao (Tibetan Mastiff) by Yang Zhijun. The Chinese voicing on this anime could be confused with dubbing since the animation design is easily identifiable as “Japanese.” The characters are obviously stylized Japanese anime characters in anime Tibetan-styled clothing, a cultural juxtaposition that gives a whole new spin to the expression “national style.” Yamada suggests there is a consensus among the Japanese producers that these productions were not very profitable. One of the reasons had to do with the lack of financial success, the different business models, and the possibility of a “risk of collapsing” for Japanese production companies that operate on a small scale (Yamada 2013: 11–13). Starting in 2005, the pure quantification of domestic animation production by the State includes quarterly selections of “outstanding domestic animation productions recommended for broadcast.” This evaluation is based on several criteria of selection, adherence to Deng Xiaoping theory and the “three represents,” service to the People, and the policy of “Let a Hundred Flowers Bloom, Let a Hundred Schools of Thought Contend” (after the call to free expression Mao promoted from May to June 1957). Each provincial broadcasting organ can only choose three excellent works for each selection period. Besides the inclusion of political slogans and promotions of adherence to the principles of socialism as it has been theorized

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and articulated at different moments in the PRC since the 1950s, thematic categories are used for selection. The categories employed are not specific to animation media as such (the addendum on the selection methods page includes spaces for basic information about the director and production studio, and there is a space for a description of the plot). By 2008, animation production is categorized by ticai, by material or content with terms such as “legend,” “science fiction,” “historical,” “educational,” or “realistic.” These categories are given a percentage and measured in minutes (Guochan dianshi donghua pian bei’an gongshi baobei chengxu 2008). Ian Condry’s description of Japanese anime as a type of creative collaboration sheds light on an industry that began growing globally after WWII. Condry notes that the contemporary anime industry has challenges of its own, and the anime animator is hardly a coveted career, with low pay and long hours, and the industry relies on freelance workers: “Most animators burn out or simply can’t make a living on the pay they receive for their drawings. Those who remain tend to be the ones who work quickly and who can handle the grueling pace” (2013: 15). Some of the stress may be due to competition from China and Korea, where producers are often able to take advantage of cheaper labor and government subsidies.22 As Condry notes, “[i]n terms of economic success, anime seems more of a cautionary tale than a model of entrepreneurial innovation” (2013: 15). Indeed, director Hiroshi Minagawa asks Condry a question relevant to the medium of animation, and not just in Japan: “Why are you studying such an old-fashioned and unprofitable industry?” (Condry 2013: 16). If economics were the sole impetus for a cultural producer to enter the animation industry, he or she might as well choose another industry. For Condry, Japanese anime answers questions about the prevalence and popularity of Japanese culture around the globe. The same can hardly be said about animation in China which has historically targeted domestic audiences. The present privileging of the industry in the PRC is surprising from an economic standpoint. After all, aside from a small number of large box office draws, animation has never been an especially profitable medium. Even Richard Schickel, who is critical of Walt Disney’s tendencies of sentimentality and cuteness and his relationship to elite culture and art, realized that Disney’s industrial production techniques were not merely an attempt to fulfill Fordist efficiency. Disney’s production methods were often unprofitable, and arose from a genuine desire to produce quality animation. After the completion of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, Disney Studios attracted some of the best animators in the business, animators who were willing to work for low wages and long hours because “employees were confident they were working in the best studio of its kind in the world.” Disney’s investment in the technical process was a means to an end, and the end was producing quality films: “ . . . all the equipment the men used was of the highest quality . . . and every artist had plenty of light, a commodity in short supply at some competing studios. Nor was there any minimum footage requirement for the animators. They were, instead, encouraged to throw out a whole day’s work if they did not like it. The desire for quality was further stressed by bonuses ranging from four dollars to twelve dollars per foot for especially good bits of animation.”23 As I mentioned in

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Chapter 2, when Disney’s European markets dried up during WWII, Disney relied on government subsidies to produce propaganda and piggy-backed on area studies programs aimed at Latin America to open up new markets there. Although Disney is a huge multi-national corporation now, until the advent of television in the 1950s and the company’s expansion into amusement parks and myriad other products, animation was never truly a profitable venture for Disney studios. Many of the early classics were done under very tight economic circumstances. Perhaps Disney really did believe in animation as an art form, but animation on its own was never a completely efficient profitable venture for Walt Disney. Professor Xue Yanping asks, “Is Chinese animation reliable?” For Xue the key problem for animation is investment: “Whether it is the difficulty of carrying out State policy or the blindness and stupidity of investors, many examples of unreliableness hit you right in the face. One of the most detestable is this bunch of dirigeants with absolutely no knowledge of either the rules or situation of animation production but who firmly believe all they have to do is toss a bunch of money and ‘crack!’ out comes the glorious future of animation in China . . . ” Xue tells the story of a “dirigeant with several billion dollars in solid real estate capital who told me he would like to build a Disney-like amusement park in China.” Xue claims this dirigeant had no understanding of animation but wanted to know “whether you need to have a cartoon character before you plan the amusement park.” The dirigeant wants to purchase the rights to Blue Cat24 to make a Chinesecartoon-character inspired amusement park because his seven-year-old told him that he likes the show. Xue explains that amusement parks have to appeal to a wide age group (from 7 to 70) and it can take up to twenty years to see a return, but the dirigeant replies, “Money is no object.” Finally Xue felt “there was no hope for this person, so I simply played along: if you really want to invest, you can buy some of the SAFS properties. They’ve got a whole bunch of cartoon characters, Sun Wukong, Nezha, the Calabash Brothers . . . Historically, they’ve already been proven to resonate with people, so if you use them as characters for an amusement park, you’re sure to make a lot of money.” But Xue explained that the SAFS characters are not copyrighted, so obtaining the copyright for an SAFS themed amusement park is out of the question: “Since he took my joke seriously, it was obvious he was unreliable . . . ”25

Animation and industry Legitimizing choices is an integral part of the humanities curriculum. Certain titles are easier to justify than others. Sometimes history makes a number of choices, and a number of titles become “classics” simply because other critics and readers have decided this. In literature this tends to be the case. In film the choices are more ambiguous, but pre-selection is not absent from film and media studies. Purely economic determiners are often frowned upon. Ticket sales, the popularity of a work, are usually looked upon with some skepticism. The quantity of production has shot up considerably in the contemporary PRC, but history is still in a selection process. Without attempting to legitimize particular productions, below I have

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selected a small number of historical examples of the animation media in the postSAFS period. Just as some of the cable signals that brought the first anime into the mainland, one of the first Chinese feature-length animated films to combine cel and computer imaging is produced in Hong Kong. Hong Kong is a significant location for the mass media that floods mainland China after the opening up and reforms. One of the most important Chinese animated films is also one of the most obscure: Siu Sin (aka Xiao Qian, The Chinese Ghost Story: The Tsui Hark Animation) was produced in 1997 in Hong Kong. This film is not included in histories of “Chinese animation” although The Tsui Hark Animation is one of the first animated films in either Hong Kong or China to use computer animation to such a degree. The Tsui Hark Animation purports to be an animated version of the Tsui Hark-produced films Sinnui Yauwan / Qiannü youhun (A Chinese Ghost Story, 1987). This was not the first time Tsui Hark would experiment with hybrid technologies. Shushan: Xin Shushan jianxin (Zu: Warriors From the Magic Mountain) is an important example of film technology transfer and Hong Kong New Wave cinema, that veritable auteur baptism of genre cinema. As Andrew Schroeder shows, Zu has been favorably compared to Star Wars, but the film was a financial failure when it was first released. Schroeder argues that while Zu borrowed from films like Star Wars, Star Wars itself “already deployed pastiche aesthetics on multiple levels . . . 1930s serials melted with 1940s war films, 1950s westerns, and Japanese samurai epics . . . ” (Schroeder 2004: 39). While Hong Kong cinema is often accused of mimicking Hollywood blockbusters, both Star Wars and Zu are already pastiches of pastiches. Schroeder shows the way Zu was the product of different generations of special effects.26 Recognizing the need for expertise in employing this technology, Tsui invited special effects people from the U.S. to help out with production. By the end of the 1980s, Tsui would supplement these early experiments with digital technologies. Like Zu, The Tsui Hark Animation was not a financial success and remains a relatively lesser-known film. Although The Tsui Hark Animation is tacitly an animated version of A Chinese Ghost Story, A Chinese Ghost Story was a version of Pu Songling’s zhiguai story Nie Xiaoqian, which had already been filmed as Qiannü youhun (The Enchanting Shadow, 1960) and parodied in the final section of Liaozhai zhiyi (Fairy, Ghost, Vixen, 1965). Thus while The Tsui Hark Animation purports to be a cel- and computer-animated layer on a Tsui Hark live-action film, Tsui’s A Chinese Ghost Story was already a remake, another cinematic layer on adaptations of a well-known ghost story. The animated film becomes another layer over a key text that has been rehearsed and reworked repeatedly in Chinese narrative discourse (Moskowitz 2004). The ghost story genre itself has a particular resonance in Hong Kong, where ghost culture continues up to the present. As Chen Yun notes, while anti-superstition campaigns attempted to eradicate belief in ghosts in both Republican and Communist China, the British colonialists left ghosts alone in the colony (2010: 3). Cel retains a bright-colored flatness and quick movement in The Tsui Hark Animation, while digital images maintain a fluidity of movement, adding a texture and depth for the backgrounds. With regard to the medium itself, The Tsui Hark

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Animation was, to borrow Schroeder’s term, prefigurative of animation production as a technical and transnational form in China and Japan. Only two years later the SAFS would release their own cel-3D hybrid Bao liandeng (Lotus Lantern). Tsui’s willingness to combine cel and computer modeling for background and figures would become prominent in Ritaro’s Metropolis in 2001.27 The veteran Japanese animator and director Endo Tetsuya was character animation director for Tsui’s animation and the combination of cel and computer animation provides a mediatic counterpart to the metaphorical relations between the living and the dead and a denouement that involves an attempt by the protagonists to become reincarnated. Certain scenes of the ghost city in The Tsui Hark Animation bear striking similarity to Miyazaki’s Sen to Chihiro no Kamikakushi (Spirited Away), released two years later. But Tsui’s ghost city is ironically localized in the commercial district of Mong Kok, Hong Kong, the location of the Sinocenter, a large mall of several stories of small shops that caters to fans of anime, manga, computer games, music, and fan culture in general. Ian Condry makes the case for what he calls the “democratic capitalism” of manga production in Japan. Condry acknowledges that the anime industry is threatened by the long hours and low pay, but he stresses the role of manga in the popularity of anime. The popularity of manga is not reliant on promotion and advertising, but rather the popularity of titles among readers, and “about 60% of anime programs are based on manga series.” As Condry puts it: “Manga’s success as a media form relies on the feedback loop between producers and audiences” (Condry 2013: 106–107). Of course, what works in one market cannot be simply imported into another market, especially for content like manga and anime linked to local audiences. But the success of Japanese manga and anime globally is really quite remarkable. In Hong Kong and Taiwan, Japanese manga and anime have been a part of local mass media and popular culture for some time. There is still a gap between the content of the two forms in the PRC, where more freedom exists in print than in television and film. The Zhiyin manke manga weekly is published in Wuhan and boasts a readership of 7.2 million. At its height in 1995, the Japanese Weekly Shonen Jump had a readership of 6.53 million (see “The Rise and Fall of Weekly Shonen Jump”). But the relationship between manga and anime in the Chinese market is not nearly as close as it is in Japan. To date, one series employing the manga to anime model used in Japan has been produced. Mengli ren (The Dreaming Girl, 2005) was based on a 1996 manga series by Yao Feila “serialized over a few years and proven to be critically successful with a large number of young readers.” The series focuses on a 16-year-old young woman named Li Mengling, her three male friends and a young American woman named Cowboy (Niuzai). They first meet over the Internet: “The series shines a light on the everyday experiences of growing up, reflects the open-minded and optimistic attitudes of contemporary young people, and expresses their uniquely rich emotional life while revealing their healthy and vibrant imaginations.” The series was considered a “positive reinforcement film for young people,” and “the first Central Television production to target youth.” The series was

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described as “the first domestically produced animated series to deliberately employ a realistic style, and first attempt in China to use new style manga to produce an animated television program.”28 Directed by Li Jianping, presently the Dean of the School of Animation at the Beijing Film Academy, Mengli ren (The Dreaming Girl) first aired in 2005 and is now available online. The manga resembles Japanese manga stylization more than the television series. The television series uses a slightly different animation style, just differentiated enough so the series would not be mistaken for a Japanese anime (the characters’ eyes and mouths are key here). In addition, the series story arcs would not be mistaken for a Japanese series. The first episode opens with a dream that parodies a science fiction anime. Military helicopters defend the seaside city, the series setting, from a tentacled octopus-like monster. Complaining about the inconvenience of the situation, Mengling runs out onto a street and, holding a jeweled bracelet above her head, shouts bianshen! (change!) to become Chaonengli shaonü, a “super girl.” She wears an oddly designed costume that includes a redbordered yellow heart, a red cape, and a hat or pilot’s helmet including goggles. Super girl Mengling defeats the monster, and a prince in a flying carriage descends from the sky to thank her for maintaining peace. But a police car with a wailing siren follows the prince. Her father angrily leaps out to slap parking tickets on the prince’s carriage. This is followed by a brief battle between Menling and her father who fires a missile that circles her and explodes, becoming the sound of an alarm clock in her father’s hand as he reminds her in a somewhat mocking tone that it is time to wake up for school. Thus, in the first episode a clear distinction is made between a world of dreams and a “real” world consistently undercut for the duration of a series that features daydreams and night dreams. Perhaps the most peculiar character is Menling’s father. Far from a figure of authority, her cartoon-watching father is either indifferent (one night she returns home late and he ignores her while watching a Gundam-style cartoon on television) or overly doting (as when he pays a young man to deliver flowers to her on Valentine’s Day). The series begins like a shojo29 or young women’s series, but very quickly Menling befriends three young men who live in a large house above the ocean called yuzhou de jiayuan, the “home of the universe.” This young men’s space is a rationalist utopian space of scientific knowledge and computers. They play a game involving mysterious coordinates for a treasure hunt on the Internet seemingly orchestrated by an online persona, Cowboy, revealed to be a young American girl who joins the crew a few episodes later. The deliberately slow action of the plot does not resemble Japanese anime. The series remains rooted in a didacticism that might not appeal to an audience used to the themes and pacing of Japanese anime. The Dreaming Girl relies on an understated style to construct a postmodern youth cultural space that references online culture, print media like manga, other animation, and popular music (one of the young men plays guitar and sings). Situated in an intertextual world of popular culture, Mengling is a figure for contemporary mass culture and for Chinese urban, middle-class culture in the twenty-first century, including the economic reach of the State and industry of the PRC. In the second episode, after Mengling

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dives in the water to save someone and is mistaken by a film production crew for a stunt-person, she dreams (or has she drowned?) and faces a tribunal in hell right out of Chinese popular religion where she is judged for her transgressions (which include being late for school), is put in a cangue, and tossed out into space. Here she meets xiao jingling An’ni Duo’er, a fairy-like woman with wings and a wand, who promises to grant her almost all her wishes (except for those she is unable to grant). After Mengling starts to fly (“No need to stick out your arms, you’re not a plane!”) she becomes separated from the fairy and ends up in a market either in the Middle East or Africa. The ambiguity of this scene is not unproblematic since all Mengling seems able to do is ask the way to China over and over, and the first person she meets is primitivized; he has dark skin, a long beard and hair, and bones in his ears. He also chases her around the marketplace, threatening her with a club. I would never read the figure in an animated television series of a young woman from the PRC unable to communicate with her interlocutors in a foreign country as a national development allegory. However, since the image is derived from a manga first published in the mid-1990s and reproduced in cel animation in 2005, allegorizing the image is very tempting since this scene, this particular tableau, marks an upward arc in bilateral trade between the PRC and countries on the continent of Africa, when investments first started to rise dramatically during this period.30 Mengling and the fairy visit space a number of times and linger by a space station, “Century no. 3.” In Episode Six, while flying around the space station, the fairy and Mengling discuss the idea of dreaming and mention the well-known story of the philosopher Zhuangzi who dreamed he was a butterfly but awoke wondering whether he was a man dreaming he was a butterfly or a butterfly dreaming he was a man (see p. 104 n. 31 for a version of this story). The scene of two characters talking about dreams and the Zhuangzi story as they fly around a space station is a well chosen multivalent trope for media in the digital age that adds resonance to The Dreaming Girl as she looks back at the planet, two years after the PRC launched its first manned spaceflight. The reference to Zhuanzi’s famous image may seem slightly clichéd in the context of Mengling’s dream, but the trope resonates in new ways beside a satellite, a figure of technological transmission within a medium that represents its spectator self-referentially as a young woman who reads manga and watches animation and who is, in turn, animated. Beyond the somewhat didactic message, the representation of the “healthy and vibrant imaginations” of contemporary youth, The Dreaming Girl marks a moment of global consciousness in the contemporary PRC (Figure 6.1). The transposition of book into film is not an unusual event in China, where literary adaptation remains a perennial component of film and television production. The novelist Guo Jingming began adapting his own novel Xiao shidai (Tiny Times) in film starting in 2013. Guo is a one-man industry, publishing novels and manga, even a manga reboot of Canonization of the Gods. The Xi Yangyang (Pleasant Sheep) animation franchise, about a group of sheep forever threatened but never caught by a wolf, began in 2005, one year after the publication of Langtu teng (Wolf Totem) by Jiang Rong, a sprawling autobiographical novel about the experiences of a young Chinese man sent to live with Mongolian herders during the

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Figure 6.1 The Dreaming Girl, 2005

Cultural Revolution. John Crespi has suggested a link between the Wolf Totem and Xi Yangyang.31 Wolf Totem spawned imitations, children’s versions, and a liveaction film. The bestseller seems to have inspired a renewed interest in Mongolian culture, including pop music. Xi Yangyang taps into a popular phenomenon in a comic and commercial manner by exploiting a structure of feeling for Mongolian culture and transferring this into a very successful television, film, and merchandise franchise. The SAFS production Yongshi (Warrior) also shows links to the popularity of Wolf Totem and Mongolian culture in mass media. Warrior was completed in 2007 for the fiftieth anniversary of the SAFS. Reputed to have taken up to four years to complete, the film is supposed to have cost 15 million RMB (Wu Shiran 2007). It is difficult to believe the film was only the seventh or eighth feature-length film from the SAFS and the second film to use digital technology. The film is richly shot, and the story of a young Mongolian named Bate’er who returns to have revenge on the man who killed his father is nuanced and well-paced dramatically. The soundtrack employs Mongolian throat singing and features two songs (available in Mandarin and Mongolian). The film takes place in a distant past, and while it is undoubtedly framed as a national-style animation about a minority group, the film an exceptional full cel animation that positions itself outside the dominance of either American or Japanese animation styles. The characters are ethnicized, but the main protagonists are humanized and treated as subjectivities with depth and individuality, not merely stereotyped. Warrior deserves more recognition for what the producers accomplished within the all-important genre of nationalities representation in the PRC, no less problematic than representation of natives or aboriginals in American cinema. The protagonist’s wolf’s head necklace shines in significant moments throughout the film, a reminder of the literary pedigree of the last animated feature of the SAFS.

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In addition to possible links to a bestselling novel, Xi Yangyang also follows a basic chase structure evident in another recent series, Xiong chu mo (The Boonie Bears), a 3D animation about two bears continually pursued by a logger. The bears prevent the logger from destroying the forest, while the logger wants to get rid of the bears. Despite the different animation media (Flash and 3D), both series hearken back to the genre developed in American animation in the 1940s and 1950s, especially by Warner Brothers and MGM.32 The dynamic is simple: a cat wants to capture a bird or mouse, but despite absurdly violent and Sisyphean effort, he never catches his prey. Norman Klein refers to a formula for early American animation that used a “nuisance,” a character that basically annoyed other characters in order to set the dynamic in motion for the seven-minute theatrical short (1993: 42–46). For better or worse, series such as Xi Yangyang and The Boonie Bears have a presence in the animation market and have spawned similar series based on the chase-and-never-catch motif. The Boonie Bears inserts a fine environmental parable, but like Xi Yangyang, it is mostly a chase series filled with action and comic violence. Wu (2014) and Voci (2010) note the importance of Flash animation for independent production. One of the drawbacks of Flash is that since the movement is largely determined by a function of the program, if the animator merely relies upon the program without supplying in-between movements, movement tends to appear sudden and jerky, the images flat and layered. In Flash, a human figure can be broken up into components and at times this shows up as heads, limbs and bodies moving as separate layers. Hutoon, a small production company of online content located in the trendy art space in Beijing called 798, uses Flash in original and sometimes shocking ways. The first time I heard of Hutoon was on the Modern Chinese Literature and Culture (MCLC) listserv of a reposted short piece titled 2011 Tuzi nian hesui pian (2011 Year of the Rabbit Card Film) (Denton 2011). The 3.45-minute short features a little boy named Kuangkuang (pronounced “kwangkwang”), whose head is shaped like a speech bubble. Kuangkuang falls asleep and dreams about a world of rabbits that are violently abused by tigers. The story includes references to news stories that were well known the year before concerning tainted baby formula and milk, a story about the son of a police chief who had struck and killed a pedestrian, and the systematic demolition of properties on behalf of urban developers. The rabbits rise and attack the tigers (the film bears resemblance to Xi Yangyang) in a startlingly violent manner, and the short ends as Kuangkuang wakes up, laughs, and exclaims “Truly a meaningful year!” as his mother calls him to come and make dumplings with her. The posting analyzed the 3.45-minute short as a political allegory, saying “[t]his video is actually inciting people to subvert state power.” The video seemed subversive, but the short is framed as a dream, after all. And features of Flash animation movement may determine aspects of the violence. When I spoke to the director Pi San about the short, he unequivocally denied that the short was politically motivated.33 Pi San said that Weibo had just started and it seemed as if there was so much bad news all of a sudden. The short was a comment on media saturation, not politics. Whatever the case may be, Kuangkuang riji is a remarkable

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Figure 6.2 Kuangkuang riji, 2010

online series (Hutoon productions are available online on sites in China and on their YouTube channel). Kuangkuang and his schoolmates are stick figures with word-bubble heads, which links these figures to manhua and to text itself. Kuangkuang clearly satirizes images of social conformity and power. In a few episodes, Kuangkuang and two of his schoolmates, a boy and girl, mimic an old version of the Bejing Film Studio ident (see figure 6.2), the trinity of worker, soldier, and peasant. Paofu Xiaojie (Miss Puff) is another Hutoon online series produced for Youku, an online platform similar to YouTube, but with more in-house content. Miss Puff is difficult to describe. Miss Puff episodes last anywhere from around seven or eight minutes up to over twenty minutes. When I visited the studio, there were thirty or so animators. Like the Kuangkuang shorts, Hutoon employs Flash, but for Miss Puff also uses rotoscoping (the use of filmed live actors as models for figure movement). Some episodes feature closing credits with live actor scenes in split screen with animated scenes from the episode. The backgrounds are often filmed on location, so the series juxtaposes Flash animated figures on “real” backgrounds. The theme music uses drawn out notes on electric guitar, and the voicing gives the impression of proximity to the listener. Either this is an accident of the recording process or it is deliberate, like the sensually whispering female voice of the second season. The intimate voicing is an important aspect of a series which is probably listened to with earphones and watched on computer or cell phone

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Figure 6.3 Miss Puff, 2012

screens. While film studies theory may mourn the loss of the theater screen, the small hand-held screen provides a new privatized intimacy. Miss Puff is targeted to young urbanites in China. With her large eyes framed by the curls of her hair, her long slender body fetishized in the credits of each episode, Miss Puff manages to be erotic without sexualizing the main character. Her personality is expressed through her remarkably expressive face, her interactions with other characters, her fashion, the consumer items she possesses (which are, like the photographic backgrounds, often photographed “real” objects), and her tone of voice (see Figure 6.3). By the end of the first season she is joined by three friends: Miss Ruo (Xiao Ruo), a petite young woman who enjoys indulging in selfies; Super Mario (Chaoji Mali), a sexually ambiguous young man; and Miss 13 (Shisan Yao), a buxom and selfconfident redhead. These characters are not merely tag-alongs for the main protagonist, but provide problems to be solved by Miss Puff in certain episodes in addition to variety in character and plot. Miss Puff is a multivalent figure, but Season One, Episode Two provides a convenient feminist trope for the figure of this young woman. In Paofu xiaojie de yaokongban (Miss Puff ’s Remote Control), Miss Puff resembles a modern woman, a reminder of the xin nüxing, the New Woman of the 1920s and ’30s in China, epitomized in the 1935 film of the same name. In this particular episode, the opening scenes reference early cinema and early animation with a series of Eadweard Muybridge-like shots of a rider on a horse. However, Miss Puff is not a modern woman. She inhabits a considerably more liminal region of contemporary urban life and human relations. The “remote control” of this episode ironically stands for Miss Puff’s boyfriend in this episode, a photographer who slowly begins controlling her, the way she dresses, the way she stands, even the way she eats. Miss Puff does not show a strong political tendency. Instead, a

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subtle and understated didacticism emerges, with a final line to close each episode added by the protagonist herself. The best example of this gentle didacticism is Episode Three in the Huayang ji, the unnumbered “season of desire” titled Meiyou shouji de Baobo·Dilun (Bob Dyan Without a Cell Phone). In this episode Miss Puff is bothered when she cannot even communicate with her friends at an outdoor café because each is occupied by their devices. Miss Puff challenges her friends to put down the devices. The initial challenge is a failure, but by the end of the episode everyone puts down their phones and talks to each other after she reads a love letter written by Bob Dylan, with “Blowing in the Wind” playing in the background. Several images are used: images inside cell phone screens, photographs of the background where they are supposed to be sitting, and images of the characters. Thus the “real,” the “digital,” the “animated,” and the “photographed” are represented in an image montage about human intimacy in the digital age. Paola Voci suggests a notion of “lightness” to account for new media. Her strategy is to construct a postmodern concept that acknowledges “the grey areas, of nuances and variations” (2010: 199). Voci is careful to avoid the binaries such as official and unofficial, mainstream and avant-garde. However, the problem about discovering and selecting new media remains an issue for researchers. Short of starting corporate media centers to track and monitor production within a particular market or markets, the individual researcher is left to her or his own resources and preferences. Voci’s browsing leads her to reveal an important problem with lightness when she reads Te Wei’s Where is Mama? and Ah Da’s 36 Characters as examples of “light animation” because neither constructs “a more ambitious narrative either based on Chinese traditional culture or imbued with socialist propaganda and nationalist rhetoric” (2010: 51–52). The cultural politics of SAFS productions were nevertheless anchored to particular histories that make “lightness” a problematically unhistorical descriptive term. Sun Xun’s studio is located in another artist’s community called Heiqiao (Black Bridge). Sun Xun is a political animator, and this shows up in the historic resonance of his films. Since 2007 Sun has been producing a film series. Sun’s films are filled with stark, beautiful, nightmarish imagery. Sun’s animation represents the intersection between the single picture, the series, the series of cels in an animated film, and the animation series made up of single episodes. The reproduction of images in printing is refigured as the reproduction of drawings in an animated series. Each cel can potentially be sold as a single painting. The process of Sun’s work (and the studio that takes his name) is a reinscription of the meishu pian, the “fine arts film,” a form of filmmaking that claims to be a type of animated painting. The fine arts film was from the beginning a claim, a conceit, a proposition about the animated film that implied a common ancestry in the fine arts sector. Moshushi dang yu si wuya (The Magician Party and the Dead Crow, 2013) uses the anaglyph method of red and cyan separation for the 3D effect. A papier-mâché peacock had to be manipulated by a number of people like a giant marionette that threatened to smother the users. The film brilliantly

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Figure 6.4 A film about behavior that hasn’t been defined in the midst of the revolution, 2011

parodies the concept of “3D” so prevalent in contemporary media. The magicians are like faceless René Magritte bourgeois tricksters, undercutting their position while maintaining a position of power by stealth. Sun Xun’s radical series of animated woodcuts, Yi chang geming zhong hai mei laideji dingyi de xingwei (A film about behavior that hasn’t been defined in the midst of the revolution, 2012) resonates with art historic discourse. Sun uses the revolutionary woodcut to animate inturning subjectivity (see Figure 6.4). Not necessarily an antagonistic subjectivity but an Other subject. The revolution is historically predefined by the dirigeants, the organizers. Woodcuts were promoted in China in the 1930s by the modern writer Lu Xun. Looking to Europe and the U.S. for his models, Lu Xun promoted the woodcut as a medium for political instruction, as a medium to represent and express social exploitation in visual terms. But in Europe the woodcut was also a fine arts promotional tool, with individual prints serving as salable works that promoted artists and studios (the reproduced image as a commercial representation to promote the purchase of originals). Many viewers of woodcuts at the time would not have had the opportunity to see the woodblock in situ and would have had to settle for lithographic or other forms of reproduction in magazines and newspapers (Reed 2004: 88–127; Macdonald 2011). The woodblock print was a woodblock effect, an image of crosshatching and chiaroscuro that increased drama and emotional expression as content. Sun Xun’s A film about behavior that hasn’t been defined in the midst of the revolution is one example in his work’s manifestation of lignes de fuite. Translated in English as “lines of escape,” the term is used to describe a language that has gone beyond the representational (Deleuze and Guattari 1986; 1987). But “lignes de fuite” are “perspective lines,” a term from visual studies, abstractions of the

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geometrical analysis of the visual field. The perspective lines converge in the vanishing point. Sun Xun’s A film about behavior that hasn’t been defined in the midst of the revolution subjectivizes the revolutionary woodcut, reiterating the medium as a post-revolutionary form linked to the artist as an individual, as a subjectivity. Sun Xun represents the woodcut as a woodcut effect. At the same time, the “fine arts film” is reinscribed in the labor-intensive, “by hand” method of mass reproduction. The reproduction of signs in animation in twenty-firstcentury China recalls the concept of production, as the animation medium is materialized by hand productive labor, materials, costs. The animated film reiterated as meishu pian, the fine arts film. Animation is a medium that is becoming significant in many areas that have little or nothing to do with film, or even the cinema of attractions. Susan Buchan’s term “pervasive animation” (2013) is a starting point to describe the way animation is distributed on a large array of platforms, not just in film-based media, but in everyday life, on search engines, cell phones, in subway cars, on GPS devices. In China, just as it has in many countries, animation has virtually flooded every corner of media. The State has taken a strong interest in television programming, and it seems that the industry is mostly focused on providing appropriate domestic content. Online animation seems to be a bit more edgy as a result, with Youku and other sites producing in-house series for viewing on personal devices. McLuhan’s language often sounded like hype at times and contained an ambiguity regarding the media and technologies he described, but his concept of medium was based on a contrast between a lost past and an emergent present, born out of electronic media. For McLuhan, the simplest form of medium was the electric light: “Since electric energy is independent of the place or kind of work-operation, it creates patterns of decentralism and diversity in the work to be done. This is a logic that appears plainly enough in the difference between firelight and electric light, for example. Persons grouped around a fire or candle for warmth or light are less able to pursue independent thoughts, or even tasks, than people supplied with electric light. In the same way, the social and educational patterns latent in automation are those of self-employment and artistic autonomy” (McLuhan 1994: 359). This rather quaint contrast between a collective huddled around a fire or candle and an individual using a light bulb captures McLuhan’s concept of media as the great privatizing force of Western technology. But such individualization is hardly democratic. For McLuhan, the electronic nervous system was filled with manipulating advertisers and governments delivering tedious messages. The nomadic potential of McLuhan’s media is just that, a potential, but in itself it is just so much electronic noise. That we have successfully developed privatized devices with glowing screens to deliver our content is a marvel of our post-industrial information economy. But privatization is often mistaken for power, when it only means satisfying a consumerist desire with a corporate product. McLuhan was often enthusiastic about media, but he was in the end a political realist. Content still holds a significant place in this study. I come to animation studies as a student of literature. Animation has been transformed into a rather cumbersome

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state project in the PRC. As an aspect of the entertainment industry, animation can be large scale, employing hundreds of people, or small scale, employing no more than a few dozen. In 2010 an independent animator named Liu Jian produced a feature-length film called Citeng wo (Piercing I), a film he had largely produced by himself on a Wacom tablet. The animation is simple and extraordinarily effective. If one wanted to maintain McLuhan’s insistence on the determination of the medium, the story is as sparse as the technology, a tale of two young men with very little to do. Nevertheless, the narrative relies on tried and true aspects of film exposition, and the story draws to a conclusion in fine style using what Xu Changlin refers to as qiao, as in wu qiao bu cheng shu, no story without coincidence, as the last few minutes involve a number of ineluctable and violent coincidences. Liu’s work is a brilliant piece of noir animation with a contemporary backdrop. Menghui Jinsha cheng (Dreams of Jinsha) was nominated for an Academy Award in 2010. The film was supposed to have taken five years to produce at a cost of eleven million U.S. dollars, the highest cost for an animated film in China. The film is stunning. A fantasy based on a recently discovered ancient civilization, the largely cel-animated film contains some of the highest quality animation produced in China to date. The backgrounds, the character designs, the excellently timed full animation, everything about this film is lush and carefully directed except the plot which plods in a back and forth between a utopian contemporary urban world and a fictional archeological facsimile of an ancient civilization (the weight of civilization is heavy in Chinese animation). But Dreams of Jinsha wasn’t the first “Chinese” animated film to have been nominated for an academy award. That honor goes to a film, albeit produced outside of China, by a Chinese-Canadian filmmaker named Shuibo Wang. Sunrise Over Tian’anmen is an autobiographical animated film of around half an hour long. The film uses mostly English, but the visual style clearly emerges from Chinese and international visual culture. Wan Laiming turned Sun Wukong into a trope for the history of animation, and Shuibo Wang uses his own biography to animate a story of the nation. Wang’s narrative constructs a parallel between national history and the individual subject. Wang was a trained painter from the Central Academy of Fine Arts, and the animation style is the epitome of fine arts animation. In the half-minute before the title of the film appears Wang uses twelve different paintings to introduce one of the main figures of the film, Chairman Mao. In one scene, the film-Wang returns to Jinan, his hometown, to reminisce about the comic books he grew up with. The background is an idealized painting from memory, as juxtaposed figures float above a young boy reading a comic book and Wang’s voice-over announces the beginning of the Cultural Revolution, and the image goes up in flames. Even “fine arts” animation is linked to mass media. Using revolutionary art interspersed with Chinese and Western art, childhood drawings, photographs, collage, and hand drawn cels, art history becomes history. While the film was produced in Canada, Wang’s film partakes of the significant moment of art history in the PRC, when artists like Wang Guangyi and Huang Yihan were looking to Pop Art and reinterpreting the revolutionary period and Chinese culture in general (see Figure 6.5). The fine arts

Industry and animation

203

Figure 6.5 Sunrise Over Tian’anmen, 1997

film reinserts an elite, academically trained artist into a mass medium. The reinscription of the apparently outdated, privileged solitary artist figure and her/his “by hand” process ironically pushes the serial mass medium of animation into a privatized, individualized mode of the reproduction of signs. In an anachronistically contradictory way, independent animation mirrors the privatized consumer as an individualized producer. Light and heavy, animation of the PRC is both and neither-nor. Animation is now a full-fledged industry and growing thanks to, and despite, State support. The elephant in the room is the State, specifically the Party and its relationship to cultural production and cultural producers. However, the problem is not necessarily with the object but the spectator. Niklas Luhmann notes the problem of describing mass media: “What is involved is an observation which generates the conditions of its own possibility and in this sense occurs autopoietically” (2000: 97). The critique of mass media emerges from within mass media: “one cannot comprehend the ‘reality of the mass media’ if one sees its task in providing relevant information about the world and measuring its failure, its distortion of reality, its manipulation of opinion against this – as if it could be otherwise” (2000: 98). Within our present global network of mass media systems, a critique of one national mass media system implicitly emerges from within another. I am not denying the possibility of critique, but any critique should begin from a modicum of self-consciousness. Mass media determines representation. Finding a position outside of mass media is a universal problem.

204

Industry and animation

Animation in China, even online animation, has embraced the series. Two series deserve mention. Kui Ba is a beautiful full-animated anime with background and some figures in 3D. The title is a series of three ninety-minute films so far, the first produced by Vasoon and Toonmax, the second by Vasoon and the third by Vasoon and Wanda Media, a corporation with important links to the Party and the State. The basic premise, provided in a prologue in the first film, is that Kui Ba is a creature of destruction who awakens every 333 years. The protagonist is a small animalboy found and adopted by a man trained to be a yao xia, a type of wandering martial artist with supernatural powers. Ironically, this young boy is actually Kui Ba and the boy and his father both enlist in a national army to fight Kui Ba. Yao Zhongli noted the plot is structured like a series but within the format of a featurelength film. The films seem to be trying to cover too much, many characters are introduced, but we have no idea who these characters are except for brief greytinted, sentimental backstories inserted during the action. This animation styled like anime nevertheless begins in the manner of Uproar in Heaven with a sort of “sky piercing spear” and pillar (a magical phallus) and a supernatural birth for the protagonist. But funding such a big budget production is difficult and, remarkably, animation producers still have great difficulty getting a grasp of the market in their own country. The first Kui Ba only made a tenth of its budget back in ticket sales. The only place for independent animation remains the Internet, but even here, clicks have not as yet been efficiently monetized. Producers in China insist on targeting younger rather than older audiences. Kui Ba is an epic in search of an audience, always deferring recognition of the hero for a future, climactic battle.34 On the other end of the scale and consistent with the emergence of Flash in the first decade of the twenty-first century (Wu 2014: 63–68), online independent Flash animation continues to be a predominant form for animators in China. Baozou manhua, the Baozou comics, is more than an animation site; it is an all-round parody franchise. The word baozou is a compound made up of the word for a violent or sudden movement (bao) and the verb zou for “to walk.” The word connotes a loss of control etymologically linked to words used in Japanese mecha anime, a genre that featured large robots often controlled by human drivers (Kui Ba also references mecha). The images are basically “Rage Comics,” simple, ready-made images ordered into panels and pages and uploaded by users. These crudely simple images can be traced to 4chan users beginning around 2008. Baozou manhua is a website, but they have branched out to live action stand-up, parody, and many forms of Flash animated shorts, games, and apps (“When you’re shitting, you must read the Baozou Daily”). The Baozou sites are heavily commercialized; nevertheless, they have emerged within transnational online culture. The use of such imagery is supplemented by found images and screen grabs and local Internet slang and puns. The animation consists of simple rage comic images with a computerized voice telling gags as well as more elaborate Flash animated shorts. Baozou also does anime parodies and has started a series of animated stories of the strange, mini horror stories suggested by viewers. The jokes are vulgar, violent, straightforward, and most certainly politically incorrect. The recent crackdown does not seem to have affected their sites. Anyways, most independent

Industry and animation

205

Chinese animation is available on YouTube. Perhaps this animation is a good example of “lightness,” but the humor is scatological and abrasive at times. New methodology is needed for this type of media. One short Baozou video uploaded around 2013 is called “Introducing Chinese Sayings” and features a number of retellings of well known chengyu, those fixed, often four-word expressions so essential to understanding written and spoken Chinese. One clip retells the Han Feizi story about the expression zixiang maodun, an expression used to describe a contradictory person or situation (the word for contradiction is comprised of a compound word that means literally “spear-shield”). A man sold spears and shields in the marketplace. The man claimed no shield could withstand his spears, and no spears could pierce his shield, a self-contradiction. In the original, the crowd laughs at the man. In the Baozou version, a clever person walks out from the crowd and says: “You say your spears are the sharpest and your shields are the strongest, well, I’ll take one spear and one shield at a 70% discount.” In this case, perhaps such light humor can be just as appropriately described as cheap. For cultural production in the PRC, the first task is rarely an oppositional position vis-à-vis the government or politics in general. The first task is survival in the marketplace.

Notes 1 Bruce Lee was more than an “ethnic” actor, he was a positively masculine figure of discipline and violence available on screen and in print representations in comic books. 2 See Horkheimer and Adorno, “Preface” 2002: xix. 3 See Filmography, Ritaro 2002. 4 On the surface in the context of “China,” see Frederic Jameson 1984: 75; 1991, 28–29. This “surface” dialogue cannot be reduced to a “referent called China.” A “surface” can also signify “pre-linguistic” encounters of the student of Chinese as a Foreign Language. Such surfaces are not necessarily “orientalist.” They are produced haphazardly, articulated by a series of agents who may or may not be partaking of particular academic traditions of orientalist construction. 5 1972: 327. The Shen Congwen story Leyda discusses, Bianchang (Border Town), will be made into a film in 1984. 6 See the interviews in the film The Lost Magic of the Shanghai Art Studios. 7 Viewed repeatedly during the months of June and July, 2014. 8 In conversation with the author, Shanghai, July 8, 2014. 9 The frame for TV series in the PRC remains fifty-two for fifty-two weeks, or a division of that number by half, as twenty-six, or into quarters, as thirteen. 10 Dai Jinhua 1999: 398, cited in Noble 2000: 170–171. 11 Also, see Harriet Evans (2003) on the importance of the female subject in the language of liberation and emancipation in the early PRC. 12 I employ the French term dirigeant to translate laoban in this chapter. The term means “director,” “manager,” “leader,” etc. From the verb “diriger,” to manage, to direct, to steer, etc. 13 Zhongda zhanlüe juece – jiakuai fazhan disan chanye (Significant strategic policy – rapidly develop the tertiary industries), cited in Keane 2007: 67; 169, note 6. A CNKI keyword search of wenhua chanye yields 7080 results, with the earliest result from 2001. 14 In conversation with the author June 4, 2014. As of June 29, 2013, this organization is now under the umbrella organ Zhongguo wenhua chanye xiehui, the China Cultural Industry Association.

206 15 16 17 18

19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34

Industry and animation

Thanks to Yao Xuying for allowing me to quote from this document. In conversation with the author, June 6, 2010; also see Xue 2007. In conversation with the author, June 3, 2010. See “Guanyu 2011 niandu quanguo dianshi donghua pian zhizuo faxing qingkuang de tonggao” (Annual report on national television animation production for the year 2011), cited in Yamada 2013: 2. Production dipped to 3715 hours and 38 minutes in 2012, and just 3412 hours and 32 minutes in 2013. See the website for Zhonghua Renmin Gongheguo guojia xinwen chuban guangdian zongju (State Administration of Press, Publication, Radio, Film and Television of the People’s Republic of China). The language is telling: “The Ministry of Culture Goes After Violent and Terroristic Cartoons . . .” (Zhou Wei 2015). The ban seems mostly aimed at popular Japanese series. This was attested by the enormous and quite popular booth occupied by the series’ producers at the 10th China International Cartoon and Game Expo in Shanghai, July 10, 2014. One producer in Beijing (who wished to remain anonymous) claimed the government paid subsidies to producers, who in turn had to pay local broadcasters for air time and this was one way to maintain capital flow. Hyashi 2009, cited in Condry 15. Schickel 1997: 172–173. How long did these golden days at Disney last for the employees? Snow White was finished by 1937 and by 1941 studios in Hollywood, including Disney, were embroiled in union disputes (Schickel 1997: 249–262). Blue Cat is an educational cartoon that has been broadcast since 1999. See Filmography. In conversation with the author, June 6, 2010; also see Xue 2007. Zu employs “three distinct but interrelated networks: 1) Wire-work choreography, 2) conventional miniatures, make-up, pyrotechnics, and set design, and 3) optical compositing, rotoscoping, and matte painting . . .” (2004: 44–45). Metropolis is discussed for precisely those reasons in an excellent article by Tom LaMarre (2006) From ad copy for Mengli ren (The Dreaming Girl), February 14, 2001. Thanks to the director Li Jianping for allowing me to use this text. Shōnen (shaonan) for young man, and shōjo (shaonü) for young woman, are Japanese terms for broad categories of gender-targeted juvenile manga and anime. “. . . during the 1990s Sino-African trade grew by 700% . . .” (see Servant 2005). In conversation with the author. At Warner, the Sylvester the Cat and Tweety Bird shorts were a good example of this, while at MGM Tom and Jerry was a franchise that continues under different producers to this day. In conversation with the author July 1, 2014. Investment came to around thirty five million RMB (Shen Ding 2013).

Glossary

2011 Tuzi nian hesui pian

2011 ᅡᕅถਰჄຜ

Ah Ma ta zhen liaobuqi!

‫ئ‬൐ვᒔ೑‫܃‬໠ī

Ao Bing

‫ۡف‬

Ao Guang

‫ف‬৘

Ashima

‫ئ‬ဣ൒

Bai

ٛ

Baimao nü

ٛ൵฼

Baixue gongzhu

ٛዏডᔇ

ban yanzhe tamen de shenghuo gushi

٫ጃᔷზඑ࠲တનী်

Bao Jigui

‫ڑ‬૟৩

Bao Lei

‫ڀ‬౽

Bao liandeng

‫ڌ‬ಱ࠴

bao yaobao

‫ڀ‬ጱ‫ڀ‬

Baozou manhua

‫ڏ‬ᕑ൦੧

Ba te’er

ّᄔ࣋

bense

‫ڤ‬࿁

bianshen

‫ۊ‬ဃ

biao jingzhi

‫ۓ‬ஐᓒ

Bihua li de gushi

‫ۀ‬੧ಓ࠲ী်

bijutsu

美術

Bin Bin

ۘۘ

bixia

‫ۃ‬ሤ

bixing

‫ڮ‬኏

208

Glossary

bujing meishu

‫܄‬ஐඊၭ

Bushi duoyu de chensi – kan Meiguo donghua pian Bianxing jingang yougan

‫܃‬ဿࢰᏊ࠲‫ݫ‬႖pp௶ඊৰࡿ੧ຜ ‫ۊ‬ኒ୮३Ꮊ।

Cai Chusheng

‫ިܔ‬တ

cailiao

‫܌‬ೕ

Canglang shihua

‫ܟ‬౯ဣ੪

Chang Che

ᑳ‫ݣ‬

Chaoji Mali

‫ݖ‬૒൒ಚ

Chaonengli shaonü

‫ݖ‬จಬ࿯฼

chaozuo

‫ݞ‬ᕩ

chatu

‫ܭ‬ᅚ

Chen Baichen

‫ݬ‬ٛ‫ݨ‬

Chen Bochui

‫ݬ‬۶߁

chengfen

‫ݳ‬ई

Chen Huangmei

‫੾ݬ‬඄

Chen Qijia

‫ݬ‬໖૭

Chentang guan

‫ݬ‬ჽৎ

Chen Yi

‫ݬ‬፫

Chen Yun

陳雲

chen zai

‫ݦ‬ᐦ

Chen Zhifo

‫ݬ‬ᒾढ

chou

‫ޝ‬

chou baba

‫ޞ‬ٚٚ

chuangxin

߀ኆ

chuangyi

߀፪

Chuangzao fuyou minzu fengge de Zhongguo meishu dianying

߀ᐸनᎯරᕗङঅ࠲ᓠৰඊၭࡕ᎚

Citeng wo

ߘᄗᇒ

Dai



Dai Jinhua

ࠃ୳੤

daibiao

ࠆ‫ۓ‬

Glossary daiti

ࠆᄢ

Danao tiangong

߾ขᄨঢ

dangdai

ࠟࠆ

Dan Sheng

ࠞတ

Dao de Jing

࠮࠰஍

Dao Meilan

ࠤඊౠ

Datou erzi xiaotou baba

߿ᅕࣉᕅብᅕٚٚ

da tuanyaun

߿ᅣ᏾

Da yuejin wansui

߿ᐊ୶ᆐჄ

Deng Xiaoping

鄧小平

dianxing

ࡒኑ

dianying lianhuanhua

ࡕ᎚ಲੱ੧

dianying xingshi

ࡕ᎚ኒဵ

Dianying yishu

ࡕ᎚፝ၭ

Dianying yishu cidian

ࡕ᎚፝ၭߖࡒ

Dianying yishu, ziliao congkan

ࡕ᎚፝ၭᔼೕߠ௱

ding changjing

ࡸ‫݋‬ஐ

dingshen fa

ࡸဃࣚ

di san chanye, fuwu ye

ࡈྱ݂ጽĶरᇱጽ

ditan chanye

࠻ჸ݂ጽ

diwang

࠾ᆓ

Dongbei dianying zhipianchang

ࡻ‫ࡕڗ‬᎚ᓖຜ‫ݑ‬

dong de dongxi

ࡿ࠲ࡻᇷ

Dongfang hong

ࡻ࣯੄

Donghua dianying tongshi

ࡿ੧ࡕ᎚ᅆု

donghuapian

ࡿ੧ຜ

dongman

ࡿ൦

Duan Xiaoxuan

࢞ቦឤ

duibi

ࢤ‫ڮ‬

Dunhuang

ࢨઇ

Dushi fengguang

ࢌ၈ङ৘

209

210

Glossary

Endo Tetsuya

ᐂᄕᒊጺ

erhu

࣎੒

“Fandui dang bagu”

vࣦࢤُࠡিw

Fang Cheng

࣯‫ݳ‬

Fang Ming

࣯ශ

fanying

ࣦ᎝

fanying xianshi

ࣦ᎝ሸိ

Fengzhen yanyi

औဇጃ፭

Fujian

षଦ

fusu

ैႯ

Gai Jiaotian

ज़୎ᄨ

Gai Jiaotian de wutai yishu

ज़୎ᄨ࠲ᇨფ፝ၭ

ganyu chicheng fengfu de xiangxiang

०Ꮔ‫ݼޅ‬ओॏ࠲ቍቕ

gexin

ঃኆ

gexing

ঊኘ

guai



Guangdian zongju guanyu youxiu guochan pian tuijian bochu banfa de tongzhi

৙ࡕᕎஶৎᏄᎯኧৰ݂ຜᅤ଒ۭ‫ޠ‬ ٰࣚ࠲ᅆᒺ

Guangdong

৙ࡻ

Guanlan gaoshou

৖౞ॳ၎

gudai

঻ࠆ

gudaishi

঻ࠆု

guochang xi

৳‫݋‬ሙ

guocui

ৰ߮

guocui hua

ৰ߮੧

Guo houshan

৳ੇ࿓

guohua

ৰ੧

Guoji wenhua yu duo meiti yishu

ৰ૦ᇄ੩Ꮥࢰඇᄡ፝ၭ

Guojia dongman youxi chanye zhenxing jidi

ৰ૮ࡿ൦Ꮈሙ݂ጽᒟ኏ળࡆ

Guo Jingming

৯ஔශ

Glossary guomin xing

ৰරኘ

Guowei renqiwang

ৱᆶཿ໨ᆓ

guoxue

ৰው

Guo Youyong

৯ᎻᎬ

guqin

঻༫

gushi

ী်

gushipian

ী်ຜ

guzhuang pian

঻ᔢຜ

guzhuang xi, lishi xi

঻ᔢሙĶಞုሙ

haha jing

৴৴க

Haha xiaodian

৴৴ብࡘ

haishi fazhan guojia

ੳဿࣔᑧৰ૮

Hakujaden

白蛇傳

hang



haodong

ਛࡿ

hao mama

ਛ൐൐

Heiqiao

ਲ༗

hengsao yiqie niugui sheshen

ਹ྾ፃ༢ัৣ࿵ဇ

Hiyao Miyazaki

宮﨑駿

Hongdengji

੄࠴ૣ

Hong Kong

ቅ९

Honglou meng

੄഍඘

Hongweibing zaofanpai

੄ᇀ۞ᐸࣦ๗

Hong xing de shanshan

੄ኋ࠲࿗࿗

Hong Xuntao

ੁዚᄊ

houjin baogu

੉୯‫঻ڇ‬

Hulu xiongdi

ੑഓኚࡊ

Hua Junwu

੤௝ᇤ

Huangdi meng

઄ࡉ඘

Huangmei

઀ඁሙ

Huang Mei

੾඄

211

212

Glossary

Huang Yihan

઀ፃ᩹

Huayang ji

੢ጟ૚

huanxiang

੽ቍ

huanxiang de chengfen

੽ቍ࠲‫ݳ‬ई

huanxiang de yitu

੽ቍ࠲፪ᅚ

Huazhong ren

੧ᓠཿ

huodong de xiyangjing

નࡿᇷጙக

huoguo yangmin de zui’e huodong

રৰጐර࠲ᕡࣁનࡿ

jiajie

૵୦

jian



Jiang Qing

ଫ༲

Jiang Rong

ନྊ

Jiang Zemin

ଫᐿර

jianzhu

ଦᔎ

Jiao’ao de jiangjun

଼‫࠲م‬଩௜

Jiaotong daxue

ହᅆ߿ው

jibai yiwei hei

ૢٛ፜ᆪਲ

jiegou

ୟয

jiewei wenti

ୟᆲᇊᄞ

Jiezi huazhuan

୤ᕅ੧޷

Jigong dou xishuai

૟ডࢇῖῚ

jin



Jinan

૟෻

jindaishi

୺ࠆု

jing



jingdian

஍ࡒ

jingshen liangshi

஋ဇಾါ

jingtou

கᅕ

jingzhi

஋ᓒ

Jin hou zhandou xiao zuzhi

୮ੇᑫࢇብᕛᒿ

Jinhu nüshen

୮੖฼ဇ

Glossary jinqian

୮ༀ

Jinse de hailuo

୮࿁࠲৻൅

jintian de yishu

୯ᄨ࠲፝ၭ

Jin Xi

୷ለ

Jinzha

୮ᠺ

jiqiao

૘༛

Jishu gexin

૘ၭঃኆ

Ji Yun

૩ᱸ

juti tezheng yu biaoxian

ிᄡᄔᒥᏕ‫ۓ‬ሸ

kaitou

௬ᅕ

katong yidai

௪ᅆፃࠆ

katong zhi qiantu

௪ᅆᒾ༂ᅜ

ke’ai

ఋ‫ز‬

kexue jiaoyupian

ఈው୊Ꮷຜ

kong jingtou

గகᅕ

Kongque Gongzhu

ఙཬডᔇ

Kongque guo

ఙཬৰ

kuadan shi

దࠜဵ

Kuangkuang

ᡓᡓ

Kuangkuang riji

ᡓᡓྉૣ

Kuazhang yu shufu

దᑳᏕၞर

Kui Ba

ిْ

Kujira

くじら

Kunqu

౉ཌ

Langtu teng

౫ᅚᄖ

Lanmao

ౚ൲

Lanmu Luonuo

ౠᇡെ෴

lao baixing

౳ٝኙ

laoban

౳٩

Lao She

౳࿷

Lao shuji

౳ၡૣ

213

214

Glossary

Lei Feng de gushi

౻घ࠲ী်

lian



Liang Shanbo

ೀ࿓۶

Liaozhai zhiyi

ೊᑙᓎ፴

Li Jing

ಒ஘

Li Keran

ಒఋི

Li Keruo

ಒ఍ྩ

Li Lili

ಌಖಖ

Li Mengling

ಒ඘೧

ling



Lingxiao dian

೮ቘ࡜

Lin Wenxiao

೜ᇄቨ

Lin Zexu

೜ᐾኰ

linzhan moqiang

೟ᑫෑ་

lishi

ಞု

Li Tianwang

ಒᄨᆓ

Liu Chi

೻‫ލ‬

Liu Jian

೻ଟ

Liu Sanjie

೻ྱୡ

Liu Zhide

೻ᓎ࠰

Li Yu

李漁

li zhunao

ನᔇ฀

Longtang shu

ุჿၡ

Longwang Ao Guang

ഀᆓ‫ف‬৘

luohui he juzhong

ൌ઒ਥேᓥ

manhua

൦੧

Manshu Eiga Kyokai

満洲映画協会

Maodun lun

൶ࢬൃ

meigong

ඊচ

meigong ke

ඊচఈ

meishu

ඊၭ

Glossary Meishu dianying

ඊၭࡕ᎚

Meishu pian

ඊၭຜ

meishu pian de tedian

ඊၭຜ࠲ᄔࡑ

Meishu pian de yishu xugou

ඊၭຜ࠲፝ၭክয

Meiyou shouji de Baobo·Dilun

අᎺ၎઴࠲‫ڑ‬۲j࠽ി

Mengbanjia

ᚼ٪૯

Menghui Jinzha cheng

඘઒୮࿉‫ݱ‬

Mengli ren

඘ಓཿ

mian ru fufen, chun si tushu,yan yun jingguang

ධྛॉऍĶ߉ႠᅝᓹĶጁᐗ஋৘

minjia chuanshuo

ර଀޷ႏ

minjian gushi

ර଀ী်

minjian yishijia

ර଀፝ၭ૮

minzu

රᕗ

minzu chuantong

රᕗ޷ᅑ

minzu de dongxi

රᕗ࠲ࡻᇷ

minzu de xinli zhuangtai

රᕗ࠲ኈ಑ᔦშ

minzu fengge

රᕗङঅ

minzuhua he qunzhonghua de tese

රᕗ੩ਥ཮ᓪ੩࠲ᄔ࿁

minzu tedian

රᕗᄔࡑ

minzu wei

රᕗᆶ

minzu wenhua de yichan

රᕗᇄ੩࠲ፍ݂

minzu xiqu

රᕗሙཌ

minzu xingge

රᕗኘঅ

minzu xingshi

රᕗኒဵ

minzu yishu

රᕗ፝ၭ

Mochinaga Tadahito

‫ހ‬Ꭺᓋཾ

Mong Kok

ᆘ୅

Moshushi dang yu si wuya

ීၭသᏕႚᇚዡ

Mudi

෭࠿

Muzha

෪ᠺ

215

216

Glossary

Nanma Ruona

婻麻喏娜

Nan Ruona

喃婼娜

Nanyang dongman xueyuan

෻ጙࡿ൦ውᐆ

naohai

ข৻

Na you zheyang guan ma de?

෰Ꮊᒐጟ৒ൕ࠲ʼn

Nezha

෰ᠺ

Nezha faji

෰ᠺࣔ↋

Nezha naohai

෰ᠺข৻

nianhua

ถ੧

Nie Xiaoqian

ภብᗱ

niu gui she shen

ัৣ࿵ဇ

Niuzai

ัᕂ

ni xinong longwang, hai mieshi tianting,zui shang tian zui

ฏሙุഀᆓĶੳඹ။ᄨᅃĶ ᕡ࿥ᄩᕡ

odango

お団子

Ōfuji Noburō

߿ᄕ኉౭

ouduan silian

่࢟႙ಲ

Pan Jinlian

๙୮ಱ

Paofu xiaojie

๫᜙ብୡ

Paofu xiaojie de yaokongban

๫᜙ብୡ࠲ጫచ٩

pimawen

᫄ൕᇂ

Pingtan

ະࠝ

pipa

຋๑

Pi San

ດྱ

Pu Songlin

蒲松齡

Qian Jiajun

ༀ૮௧

Qianjun bang zaofan pai

໹௛‫ٸ‬ᐸࣦ๗

Qiannü youhun

ᗱ฼Ꭾત

Qianyuan shan

໾᏶࿓

qiao



Qi Baishi

໛ٛဧ

Glossary qi juese

໠୅࿁

qingjing

༻ஐ

Qinshi mingyue

༪ဩශᐎ

quanli

ཛྷಬ

quwei

མᆶ

Randeng daoren

཰࠴࠮ཿ

renmin xing

ཿරኘ

Renshen wawa

ཿ‫ܖ‬ᅼᅼ

renwu

ཿᇯ

Ren xiao yao

ྂ᪞ጫ

ruan kexue

ྡఈው

ruyi

ྛ፪

Saishang fengyun

ྯ࿥ङᐒ

Saiyûki

西遊記

san dao bajiaoshan

ྱ࠯‫ى‬଴࿞

san ge daibiao

ྱঊࠆ‫ۓ‬

Sanguo yanyi

ྱৰጃ፭

san tuchu

ྱᅙ‫ޠ‬

Sen to Chihiro no Kamikakushi

千と千尋の神隠し

Shanghai meishu zhipianchang

࿥৻ඊၭᓖຜ‫ݑ‬

shanghen wenxue

࿡ਲ਼ᇄው

shanghen yishu

࿡ਲ਼፝ၭ

Shanshui qing

࿓ႈ༻

Shan Zhonglang

࿓ᓠ౫

shaonan

࿯෼

shaonü

࿯฼

Shehui zhuyi shichang jingji shiqi

࿽છᔇ፭၈‫݋‬஍૟ဩ໊

sheji

࿾ૢ

shen



Shen bi

ဇ‫ڰ‬

sheng



217

218

Glossary

shenguai

ဇৌ

shenguai dianying

ဇৌࡕ᎚

shenguai xiaoshuo

ဇৌብႏ

shenhua

ဇ੪

shenhua gushi

ဇ੪ী်

shenhua he tonghua

ဇ੪ਥᅍ੪

shenjian

ဇଙ

shensi

ဇ႖

shenxian

ဇራ

shezhi

࿹ᓖ

Shiji niangniang

ဧᶔปป

Shi Nai’an

အ෹᥾

Shisan Yao

ဦྱጣ

Shiwu guan

ဦᇥৗ

shiyan

၌ጏ

shiyan de pianduan

၌ጏ࠲ຜ࢞

shi yi ge Zhongguo gulao de minjian gushi

ဿፃঊᓠৰ঻౳࠲ර଀ী်

Shuibo Wang

ႈ‫ۼ‬ᆓ

Shuihu zhuan

ႈ᨜޷

shuimo donghua pian

ႈ෗ࡿ੧ຜ

Shushan: Xin Shushan jianxin

ኆၩ࿓ଡሢ

Sinnui Yauwan

ብᗱᎮત

Siren bang

႞ཿ‫ٳ‬

sishu, wujing

႞ၡĶᇥ஍

Siu Sin

ብᗱ

Song Hui

Ⴈᲅ

Sui-Tang yingxiong zhuan

Ⴟᄂᎌኟ޷

Sun Wukong

჉ᇲగ

Sun Wukong zhandou dui

჉ᇲగᑫࢇࢣ

Sun Xun

჉ዞ

Glossary

219

Sun Yuzhou

჉Ꮨᓶ

Taibai jinxing

ყٛ୮ኋ

Taiwan

ფᆃ

Taiyi zhenren

ყፚᒔཿ

tamen gaoxing de tai zao le!

ვඑॳ኏࠲ყᐳ೑ī

Tetsuwan Atomu

鉄腕アトム

Te Wei

ᄔᆰ

Tezuka Osamu

手塚 治虫

Tiananmen

ᄨ‫ض‬ඏ

tiangong

ᄨঢ

tianma xingkong

ᄨൕኔగ

tianshen longzhong

ᄨဇഀᓦ

Tianshu qitan

ᄨၡ໖ჳ

tianzai renhuo

ᄨᐢཿર

Tibet Inu Monogatari: Kin’iro no Dao Jie

チベット犬物語:金色のドージェ

ticai

ᄞ‫܌‬

Tieshan gongzhu

ᄶ࿞ডᔇ

tonghua

ᅍ੪

Tsui Hark

ኰ఍

tuanyuan

ᅣ᏾

Wan Chaochen

ᆐ‫ݨݖ‬

Wan Dihuan

ᆐࡁ᪌

Wang Bin

ᆓ۞

Wang Fuzhi

ᆓतᒾ

Wang Genfa

ᆓ঍ࣔ

Wang Guangyi

ᆓ৙፭

Wang Hongwen

ᆓੁᇄ

Wang Liuyi

ᆓ೿ፃ

Wang Qi

ᆓᮋ

Wang Shuchen

ᆓၯ‫ݪ‬

220

Glossary

Wan Guchan

ᆐ঻ῢ

Wang Zhaowen

ᆓ‫ݙ‬ᇅ

Wan Laiming

ᆐ‱ස

Washeng shili chu shanquan

ᅺဏဦಓ‫ޠ‬࿓ཞ

wawa nianhua

ᅼᅼถ੧

Weibo

ᆢ۱

Wengzhong zhuobie

ᇍᓠᔯ‫۔‬

wenhua chanye

ᇄ੩݂ጽ

wenhua gongye

ᇄ੩চጽ

Wen Mo

ᇄ෗

Wenshu Guangfa Tianzun

ᇄၚ৙ࣚᄨᕢ

Wenxin diaolong

ᇄኈ࡟ഀ

wo guo chuantong xiqu

ᇒৰ޷ᅑሙཌ

wo yi ren zuo shi yi ren dang

ᇒፃཿᕨ်ፃཿࠟ

wudu

ᇞ࢑

Wuhan

ᇤ਒

wujing

ᇤ஛

wuqiao bu chengshu

ᇞ༛‫ݳ܃‬ၡ

wusheng

ᇤတ

wushi

ᇗသ

Wu Song

ᇤႣ

Wu Song da hu

ᇤႣ߾ੜ

wuxia

ᇤሢ

Wuya weishenme shi heide?

ᇚዡᆪဪൾဿਲ࠲ʼn

Wu Yingju

ᇢ᎐ெ

Wu Zuoren

吳作人

xiangong

ራঢ

Xiang chuantong wenyi tansheng qiubao – dianying minzu xingshi wenti xuexi biji

ቔ޷ᅑᇄ፝ჹလཅ‫ڌ‬ķࡕ᎚රᕗኒ ဵᇊᄞውሒ‫ૣڰ‬

xiangong

ራঢ

Glossary xiannü

ራ฼

xianshi shenghuo

ሸိတન

xiao daoju

ብ࠮ி

xiao dongwu

ብࡿᇯ

Xiaohao shou

ብਝ၎

Xiao Hua

ብ੢

xiao jingling Anni Duo’er

ብ஋೯‫ض‬ฉࢰ࣋

Xiao kedou zhao mama

ብᾺᾅᒀ൐൐

xiao luohui

ብൌ઒

xiao meimei

ብඍඍ

Xiao Qian

ብᗱ

Xiao Ruo

ብྨ

Xiao shidai

ብဩࠆ

xiaoxu

ብ኶

Xiao Yong

ብᎬ

xiaozhuan

ብᔟ

xiesheng

ቸတ

xieyin

ቷ፼

xifu

ሖष

xiju dianying

ሙேࡕ᎚

xili

ሖಕ

xing



xin nüxing

ኆ฼ኘ

Xin renlai

ኆཿ಄

xinsheng

ኆတ

xinwen jilupian

ኆᇅ૩തຜ

xiyangjing

ᇷጙக

Xi Yangyang yu Hui tailang zhi niuqi chongtian

ሔጘጘᏕઌყ౫ᒾั໨‫ޏ‬ᄨ

Xiyou ji

ᇷᎸૣ

Xiyue qitong

ᇷᐌ໖ᅍ

221

222

Glossary

xizhimojie

ሚᒶ෕୘

Xuandong katong

ᵁࡿ௪ᅆ

xuannian

ዀบ

xuannian jiqiao

ዀบ૘༛

Xu Changlin

ኰ݅ೞ

Xue Yanping

ዌጆອ

Xu Jingda

ኰஐ߻

Xunniu shitu

ዖัဦᅚ

Xu Zhonglin

許仲琳

yaksha (yecha)

ፁ‫ܮ‬

Yan Dingxian

ድࡸሾ

Yan Fu

ድै

Yang Hansheng

ጚਊΌ

Yang Liping

ጔಚຬ

Yang Wenjing

ድᇄஎ

Yang Xiaoyan

ጔብጋ

Yang Zhijun

ጔᓎ௜

Yan Yu

嚴羽

yaoguai

ጣৌ

Yao Feila

ጮࣹ౑

Yao Hui

ጮᲅ

yaomo

ጣී

Yao Wenyuan

ጮᇄ᏶

yao xia

ጣሢ

Yao Zhongli

ጮᓢಕ

Ye Qianyu

ጾ༅Ꮢ

Yewai de zaoyu

ጸᆀ࠲ᐮᏠ

Yezonghui li de wu ge ren

ፁᕎછಓ࠲ᇥঊཿ

Yi chang geming zhong hai mei laideji dingyi de xingwei

ፃ‫݋‬ঃෆᓠੳඅ ౘ࠱ૌࡸ፭࠲ኔᆪ

Yi fu Zhuang jin

ፃफᘍ୳

Glossary yi lin tou

ፃ೦ᅕ

yingxiong

ᎌኟ

Yin Shi

፻၇

yinxiong xingge

ᎌኟኘঅ

Yishu · shichang

፝ၭj၈‫݋‬

yishu zuopin

፝ၭᕩວ

Yi zhi xie

ፃᓋተ

Yongshi

Ꭼ့

Youku

Ꭿణ

you yuan

Ꮊᐁ

Yuan Gong

ᏸড

Yuan Ying

ᏸᎏ

Yu Feng

Ꮮङ

Yutong

Ꮠᅍ

yuzhou de jiayuan

Ꮨᓶ࠲૮ᏼ

zainan

ᐢ෽

Zai Yan’an Wenyi zuotan hui shang de jianghua

ᐦዹ‫ض‬ᇄ፝ᕫჴછ࿥࠲ର੪

Zang ao

‫ܠ‬᰷

Zang gou Duoji

‫ܠ‬ভࢰ૆

zaofan

ᐸࣦ

zaofan youli

ᐸࣦᎺ಑

zaoxing

ᐸኑ

zaoxing yishu

ᐸኑ፝ၭ

Zhang Ailing

ᑳ‫ز‬೧

Zhang Chunqiao

ᑳ߆༗

Zhang Ding

ᑳᖾ

Zhang Junxiang

ᑳ௧ቋ

Zhang Guangyu

ᑳ৘Ꮨ

Zhang Shijie

ᑳ့୚

Zhang Songlin

ᑳႣ೜

223

224

Glossary

Zhao Shutun

ᒇၯᅫ

zhe jianzhi shi zaofan le!

ᒐ଎ᓁဿᐸࣦ೑ī

zhengjiu

ᒪந

Zhengtu: zouxiang bainian de zhongguo donghua

ᒥᅜńᕑቔٝถ࠲ᓠৰࡿ੧

zhen shige hao yang’er de!

ᒔဿঊਛጟࣉ࠲ī

zhi



zhiguai

ᓎৌ

Zhiyin manke

ᒺ፼൦ఏ

Zhongguo de chuantong yishu fengge

ᓠৰ࠲޷ᅑ፝ၭङঅ

Zhongguo donghua jingdian

ᓠৰࡿ੧஍ࡒ

Zhongguo donghua xuehui

ᓠৰࡿ੧ቱછ

“Zhongguo gongchandang zai minzu zhanzheng de diwei”

“ᓠৰন݂ࠡᐦරᕗᑫᒧ࠲ࡆᆻ”

Zhongguo hua

ᓠৰ੧

Zhongguo xuepai

ᓠৰው๗

Zhongguo zou xiang shijie

ᓠৰᕑቔး୥

zhonghou

ᓪੇ

Zhong Kui

ᓣᖌ

Zhongyang meishu xueyuan

ᓠ጑ඊၭውᐆ

Zhou Enlai

ᓬࣇౘ

Zhou Zuoren

ᓬᕩཿ

zhuaji wawa

ᔗ૆ᅼᅼ

Zhuangzi

ᔡᕅ

Zhubajie chi xigua

ᓽُୢ‫ݾ‬ᇷ৅

zhuxian

ᔇቁ

Zhu Yingtai

ᔕᎌფ

zibenjia

ᔼ‫ڤ‬૮

Zigu yingxiong chu shaonian

ᕆ঻ᎌኟ‫ޠ‬࿯ถ

zijin

ᔼ୮

ziran zaihai

ᕆ཯ᐢ৾

Glossary ziwen

ᕆᖬ

zixiang maodun

ᕆቂ൶ࢬ

zongjiao

ᕎ୅

zou xiang shichang

ᕑቔ၈‫݋‬

Zuji huisheng: Zhongguo donghua 80 nian zuopin ji

ᕕિ઒ဏńᓠৰࡿ੧ถᕩວો

225

Filmography

Ah Shi Ma (Ashma), d. Liu Qiong, Shanghai: Haiyan, 1964. Bambi, d. David Hand, Burbank: Disney, 1942. Bao liandeng (Lotus Lantern), d. Chang Guangxi, SAFS, 1999. Baozou manhua – donghua xilie di yi dan – Zhongguo chengyu jieshuo (Baozou comics – animation series first shot “Introducing Chinese Sayings”). Baozou Comics, Xi’an: Momo xinxi, 2013. Beauty and the Beast, d. Gary Trousdale, Kirk Wise, Burbank: Walt Disney, 1991. Bronenosets Po’tyomkin (Battleship Potemkin), d. Sergei Eisenstein, Moscow: Mosfilm, 1925. Ceteng wo (Piercing I), d. Liu Jian, Nanjing: Le-Joy Animation, 2010. Chuzhoy golos (Someone Else’s Voice), d. Ivan Ivanov-Vano, Moscow: Soyuzmultfilm, 1949. Commando Duck, d. Jack King, Burbank: Disney, 1944. Dalu (The Big Road), d. Sun Yu, Shanghai: Lianhua, 1934. Danao tiangong shang/xia ji (Uproar in Heaven, parts 1 and 2), d. Wan Laiming, Shanghai: SAFS, 1961; 1964. Das Wirtshaus im Spessart (The Spessart Inn), d. Kurt Hoffmann, Geiselgasteig: Georg Witt-Film GmbH, 1958. Die Abenteuer des Prinzen Achmed (The Adventures of Prince Achmed), d. Lotte Reiniger, Weimar Republic Comenius-Film GmbH, 1926. Dumbo, d. Sam Armstrong et al., Burbank: Disney, 1941. Dushi fengguang (Scenes of the City), d. Mu Yuanzhi, Shanghai: Diantong, 1935. Fangxue yihou (After School), d. Unknown, Shanghai: SAFS, 1972. Haikuo tiankong: Zhongguo donghua dianying bashinian (As Far as the Eye can See: 80 years of Chinese animation), d. Zhang Feng, Chen Guo, Lin Guanggu, Shanghai: SAFS, 2006. Hakujaden (Legend of the White Snake), d. Yabushita Taiji, Okabe Kazuhiko, Tokyo: Toei, 1958. Hao pengyou (Good Friend), d. Te Wei, Shanghai: SAFS, 1954. Haru no uta (Song of Spring), d. Ōfuji Noburo, Tokyo: Chiyogami Eigasha, 1931. Hongse niangzi jun (Red Detachment of Women), d. Xie Jin, Shanghai: Tianma, 1961. Hongse niangzi jun (Red Detachment of Women)(ballet), d. China Ballet Troupe, Beijing: Beijing Film Studio, 1970. Hua zhong ren (The Person in the Picture), d. Wang Bin, Changchun: Changchun dianying, 1958. Hulu xiongdi (The Calabash Brothers), d. Hu Jinqing et al., Shanghai: SAFS, 1986.

Filmography

227

Jigong dou xishuai (Crazy Ji and the Fighting Crickets), d. Wan Guchan, Shanghai: SAFS, 1959. Jiao’ao de jiangjun (The Arrogant General), d. Te Wei, Shanghai: SAFS, 1956. Jinhou xiangyao (The Golden Monkey Subdues the Demoness), d. Te Wei, Yan Dingxian, Lin Wenxiao, Shanghai: SAFS, 1985. Jinse de hailuo (The Golden Conch), d. Wan Guchan, Qian Yunda, Shanghai: SAFS, 1963. Jinsha huimeng (Dreams of Jinsha), d. Chan Daming, Hangzhou: Hangzhou C&L Digital, 2010. Kitaj v ogne (China in Flames), d. Nikolai Khodataev, Zenon Komisarenko, and Yuri Merkulov, Moscow: Kino-Moskva, 1925. Kongque gongzhu (Princess Peacock), d., Jin Xi, Shanghai: SAFS, 1963. Kongque gongzhu (Princess Peacock), d., Zhu Jinming et al., Beijing: Beijing dianying, 1982. Kujira (Whale), d. Ōfuji Noburo, Tokyo: Chiyogami Eigasha, 1952. Kuangkuang riji (The Diary of Kuangkuang) (online series, about 17 episodes), d. Pi San, Beijing: Hutoon, 2009.. Kui Ba, d. Wang Chuan, Beijing: Vasoon; Shanghai: Toonmax, 2011. Kui Ba II, d., Wang Chuan, Beijing: Vasoon, 2013. Kui Ba III, d., Wang Chuan, Zhou Jie, Zhang Gang, Beijing: Vasoon, Wanda, 2014. Lan mao (Blue Cat) (3000+ episodes), d. He Mengfan et al., Changsha: Hunan Lan Mao chuanmei (and others), 1999–present. Liaozhai zhiyi (Fairy, Ghost, Vixen), d. Huang Tang, Hong Kong: Cathay, 1965. The Lion King, d. Roger Allers and Rob Minkoff, Burbank: Disney, 1994. La Merle/The Blackbird, d. Norman McLaren, Toronto: National Film Board of Canada, 1958. Lei Feng de gushi (The Story of Lei Feng) (30 episodes), d. Pang Bo, CCTV Shao’er, Shenyang: Shenyang chunqiu dongman wenhua, 2010. Lin Zexu, d. Zheng Junli, Shanghai: Haiyan, 1959. Liu Sanjie (Third Sister Liu), d. Su Li, Changchun: Changchun dianying, 1960. Lonesome Ghosts, d. Burt Gillett, Burbank: Disney, 1937. The Lost Magic of the Shanghai Art Studios, d. Marie-Claire Quiquemelle and Julien Gaurichon. DVD, Filmmakers Library 2007. The Making of Bambi: a Prince is Born, Burbank: Walt Disney Studios, 1994. Mengli ren (The Dreaming Girl) (26 episodes), d. Li Jianping, Beijing: Zhongyang dianshi donghua, 2005. Metropolis, d. Rintaro, Tokyo: Madhouse, 2001. Moshushi dang yu si wuya (The Magician Party and the Dead Crow), d. Sun Xun, Beijing: Beijing: π ge donghua gongzuo she, 2013. Mudi (The Oxherd’s Flute), d. Te Wei, Qian Jiajun, Shanghai: SAFS, 1963. Mura Matsuri (The Village Festival),d. Ōfuji Noburo, Tokyo: Chiyogami Eigasha, 1930. Nezha (Na Cha the Great), d. Chang Che, Hong Kong: Shaw Brothers, 1974. Nezha chuanqi (The Legend of Nezha) (52 episodes), d. Zhang Li, Beijing: Zhongyang dianshi, 2003. Nezha Naohai (Nezha Conquers the Dragon King), d. Wang Shuchen, Yan Dingxian, Shanghai: SAFS, 1979. Paofu xiaojie (Miss Puff) (88 episodes and counting), d. Pi San, Beijing: Hutoon, 2011–present. Qiannü youhun (The Enchanting Shadow), d. Li Han-hsiang, Hong Kong: Shaw Brothers, 1960.

228

Filmography

Qinshi mingyue (The Legend of Qin) (100+ episodes), d. Shen Leping, Hangzhou: Xuanji keji, 2007–present. Rensengguo (Ginseng), Yan Dingxian, Shanghai: SAFS, 1981. Ritaro. “Animax Special: The Making of Metropolis, Filmmaker Interviews,” Disc 2, Sony, Columbia, 2002. Translator Unknown. Rythmetic, d. Evelyn Lambart, Norman McLaren, Toronto: NFB, 1956. Saishang fengyun (Storm on the Border), d. Ying Yunwei, Beijing: China Film Company, 1940. Saiyûki (Journey to the West, aka, Alakazam the Great), d. Shirakawa Daisaku, Yabushita Taiji, Tokyo: Toei Animation, 1960. Sanguo yanyi (Romance of the Three Kingdoms), d. Zhu Min, Shen Shoulin, Taiga Shunji, Beijing: Huihuang donghua; Tokyo: Takara Tomy, 2009. Sen to Chihiro no Kamikakushi (Spirited Away), d. Miyazaki Hayao, Tokyo: Studio Ghibli, 2001. Shanshan de hongxing (Sparkling Red Star), d. Li Jun, Li Ang, Beijing: Ba yi, 1974. Shanshui qing (The Feeling of Mountains and Streams), d. Te Wei, Shanghai: SAFS, 1988. Shen bi (The Magic Brush), d., Jin Xi, Shanghai: SAFS: 1956. Shuimo donghua pian (Ink-brush animated film), d., not credited, Shanghai: SAFS, 1960. Sinnui Yauwan/Qiannü youhun (A Chinese Ghost Story), d. Ching Siu-tung, Hong Kong: Film Workshop, 1987. Siu Sin/Xiao Qian (The Chinese Ghost Story: The Tsui Hark Animation), d. Andrew Chen, Hong Kong: Film Workshop, 1997. Sky Trooper, d. Jack King, Burbank: Disney, 1942. Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, d. William Cottrell et al., Burbank: Walt Disney, 1937. Sui-Tang yingxiong zhuan (Tales of Heroes from the Sui and Tang Dynasties) (52 episodes), d. Wang Genfa, Shanghai: SAFS, 2003. Sunrise Over Tiananmen Square, d. Shuibo Wang, Montreal: NFB, 1997. Suramu Danku, (Guanlan gaoshou, Slam Dunk) (101 episodes), d. Nobutaka Nishizawa, Tokyo: Toei, 1990–1996. Te Wei yu Zhongguo shuimo donghua (Te Wei and Chinese Ink–Brush Animation, Disc 2, documentary), Te Wei jingdian donghua (Chinese Classic Animation), Shanghai: SAFS, 2004. Tetsuwan Atomu (Astroboy) (193 episodes), d. Tezuka Osamu, Tokyo: Mushi, 1963–1966. Three Caballeros, d. Norman Ferguson et al., Burbank: Disney, 1943. Tianshu qitan (Secrets of the Heavenly Book), d. Wang Shuchen, Qian Yunda, Shanghai: SAFS, 1983. Tibet Inu Monogatari: Kin’iro no Dao Jie; Zang Ao Duoji (The Tibetan Dog), d. Kojima Masayuki Tokyo: Madhouse, 2011. 2011 Tuzi nian hesui pian (2011 Year of the Rabbit Card Film), d. San Pi, Beijing: Hutoon, 2011. Victory Through Air Power, d. Perce Pearce, Burbank: Disney, 1943. Voskreseniye (Resurrection), d. Mikhail Shvejtser, Moscow: Mosfilm, 1960, 1962. Wuya weishenme shi heide (Why Is the Crow Black?), d. Qian Jijun and Li Keruo, Shanghai: Shanghai dianying, 1955. Xi yangyang yu huitai lang (Xi Yangyang and the Big Bad Wolf) (over 1000 episodes), various directors, Guangzhou: Guangdong yuanchuang dongli wenhua chuanbo, 2005–present. Xiyou ji (Journey to the West) (52 episodes), d. Fang Runnan, Beijing: Zhongyang dianshi, 1999.

Filmography

229

Xiyue qitong (The Strange Boy from the Western Mountain), d. Jin Xi, Shanghai: SAFS, 1985. Xiaohao shou (The Little Bugler), d. Wang Shuchen, Yan Dingxian, Shanghai: SAFS, 1973. Xiao Hua (Little Flower), d. Shi Qian, Beijing: Beijing Film, 1979. Xiao kedou zhao mama (Where is Mama?), d. Te Wei, Shanghai: SAFS, 1960. Xiao pengyou (Little Friend), d. Te Wei, Shanghai: Shanghai dianying, 1954. Xiao wanyi (Little Toys), d. Sun Yu, Shanghai: Lianhua, 1933. Xin Shushan jianxia (Zu: Warriors from Magic Mountain), d. Tsui Hark, Hong Kong, Golden Harvest, 1983. Xiong chu mo (The Boonie Bears) (300+ episodes), various directors, Shenzhen: Huaqiang shuzi donghua, 2012–present. Yewai de zaoyu (Encounters in the Wild), d. Wan Liaming, Wang Shuchen, Shanghai: Shanghai dianying, 1955. Yi chang geming zhong hai mei laideji dingyi de xingwei (A film about behavior that hasn’t been defined in the midst of the revolution), d. Sun Xun, Beijing: π ge donghua gongzuo she, 2011. Yi fu Zhuang jin (A Zhuang Brocade), d. Qian Jiajun, Shanghai: SAFS, 1959. Yi zhi xie (One Shoe), d. Jin Xi, Shanghai: SAFS, 1959. Yingxiong er nü (Heroic Sons and Daughters), d. Wu Zhaodi, Changhun: Changchun Film, 1964. Yongshi (Warrior), d. Wang Jiashi, Shanghai: SAFS: 2007. Yutong (Fisherboy), d. Wan Guchan, Shanghai: SAFS, 1959. Zhubajie chi xigua (Pigsy Eats Watermelon), d. Wan Guchan, Shanghai: SAFS, 1958. Zigu yingxiong chu shaonian (Heroic Children in History) (100 episodes), d. Yan Dingxian et al., Shanghai: SAFS, 1996.

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Index

Abel-Rémusat, Jean-Pierre, 55–6 Adventures of Prince Achmed, The (Reiniger); Princess Peacock linked to scene in, 119 Agee, James, 68, 71 Althusser, Louis, 173 n.20 animation: and auratic imagery, 14 n.13, 22, 43–5, 117, 153, 177; and guzhuang xi (historical costume drama), 81, 91, 146; and fine arts claims (see also guohua), 37, 99, 101, 102, 110, 199; and huanxiang (the fantastic), 82–3, 112–13, 130–1; and institutions of knowledge, 4, 5, 6–7, 10, 58, 59–75, 78–104, 105–13; as genre film, 1, 4, 17, 81, 127, 130, 146, 165, 171, 191; as meishu pian, meishu dianying (see also meishu pian), 4, 7, 106–8, 111–12, 130–3, 199–201; as national industry, 2–4, 174–205; as postmodern mode of production, 6–13, 35, 89, 174, 183, 187 area studies, 51–61, 64–6; rupture with Sinology, 51–2 Arrogant General, The (see also Shanghai Animation Film Studio; Te Wei), 91–3 Bao Jigui, 2, 181 Baozou manhua (rage comics and website), 204–5 Baudrillard, Jean, 7–8, 103 n.14, 183 Berry, Chris, 63, 79, 80, 81, 89, 116, 147, 152, 155, 162, 167 Bourdieu, Pierre, 176, 184 Buchan, Suzanne, 201 Cai Chusheng, 100 Cao Yu, 43

Chan, Hok-lam, 138 Chan, Joseph Man, 179 Chang, Eileen (see also Zhang Ailing), 60–1 Chen Baichen, 106 Chen Bochui, 108–9 Chen Qijia and Hui Song, 186 Chen, Xiaomei, 8, 10, 81, 168 Chen Yi (Vice-Premier), 93, 94, 96 Chen Zhifo, 97 Chow, Rey, 60–2, 64 Clark, Paul, 81, 87–8, 102 n.3, 109, 115, 116, 173 n.15 Condry, Ian, 189, 192 Crespi, John, 195 Croizier, Ralph C., 63 Dai Jinhua, 181 Dal Lago, Francesca, 9 Danao tiangong (see Uproar in Heaven) Debord, Guy, 10 Deleuze, Gilles, 9, 37–8 Deleuze, Giles, and Felix Guattari, 200–1 Dirlik, Arif, 5–6 “Discussion of Animated Film”: and Da yuejin wansui (Long Live the Great Leap Forward), 106; and Mao’s “Talks at the Yan’an Conference on Literature and Art,” 105; and “national style” (minzu de dongxi, minzu fengge), 106, 111, 113; and Wan Guchan on cutout animation, 106–8; and Yi fu Zhuang jin (A Zhuang Brocade), 105, 111, 112, 113, 114; and Yi zhi xie (One Shoe), 113; and Zhubajie chi xigua (Pigsy Eats Watermelon, 1958), 109; on Disney style, 111, 113; participants, 105

248

Index

Disney Studios: Commando Duck, 69; Sky Trooper, 68–9; Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, 30, 66, 68–9, 71–2, 98, 117, 189; Three Caballeros, The, 70–1; and use of doppler shift sound effect, 68–9, 71; Victory Through Air Power, 68 Donald, Stephanie, 162 dongman, 1, 185, 186 doppler effect, the, 68–9, 71 Dushi fengguang (see Scenes of the City), 40–1 Eberhard, Wolfram, 62–3, 81, 87; and guzhuang xi (costume dramas), 63, 81; and popular or genre cinema, 62–3 Eisenstein, Sergei, 42–3, 163–4 (see also plasmatics) Epstein, Mikhail, 10 Erjavec, Aleš, 9–10 Evans, Paul M., 51 Fairbank, John K., 49–53 Farquhar, Mary, 78 film studies, in Chinese studies, 59–65 Foster, Hal, 11 Fisherboy (see also Shanghai Animation Film Studio; Wan Guchan), 44, 109–10; as mixed-media animation that combines cel, cutout, and stop-motion, 112 Foucault, Michel, 54–5 Gang of Four, 139, 147, 150, 155 guohua (traditional ink-brush painting), 94, 96–8, 99, 100, 101, 102, 110, 182; Zhongguo hua, 96 guzhuang xi (historic, costume dramas) (see also animation; Eberhard, Wolfram), 63, 80–1, 91, 146 Guo Jingming, 194 Hayhoe, Ruth, 6 Hakujaden (Legend of the White Snake, Yabushita and Okabe), 3–4 Honey, David B., 57 Honig, Emily, 143 Hsia, C.T., 27, 60–1 Hua Junwu, 87, 93 Huang Mei, 113 Huang Yihan, 182

Humboldt, Wilhelm von, 55 Hung, Chang-tai, 87, 88, 130 Hutoon Studio, 196–8 Jameson, Fredric, 5, 13 n.9, 33, 103 n.14, 187, 205 n.4 Ji Yun, 84 Jia Zhaozeng, 179–180 Jiang Rong, 194–5 Jiang Zemin, 180–1, 183–4, 185, 186; and Three Represents, the (San ge daibiao), 183–4; letter to SAFS, 180–1 Jiao’ao de jiangjun (see Arrogant General and Te Wei, Arrogant General, The) Jin Xi, 114, 115, 116, 118, 130–3; and Princess Peacock, 114–16, 118; writing on animation, 130–3 Katong yidai (The Cartoon Generation), 182 Keane, Michael, 184, 185, 186 Klein, Norman M., 196 Kongque gongzhu (see Princess Peacock) Kristeva, Julia, 11, 14 n.12 Lacan, Jacques, 95, 107; mirror stage, 95, 177 LaMarre, Thomas, 67, 69, 71, 107, 130, 133 n.2, 173 n.20 Lee, Gregory B., 56 Lee, Haiyan, 11 Lefebvre, Henri, 103 n.14 Leslie, Esther, 65–6, 68–9, 98, 117 Leyda, Jay, 62, 63, 78, 108, 111, 116, 174–5; on national style, 174–5 Li Jianping, 193–4; Mengli Ren 192–4 Li Shaochun, 20–1, 22 Liu Chi, 105, 113 Liu, Kang, 184 Liu Sanjie (Third Sister Liu), 31, 79, 105; released the same year as A Zhuang Brocade, 105 Lü Peng, 49–50, 96, 97, 98 Lü Peng and Yi Dan, 167 Luhmann, Niklas, 180, 203 Lyotard, Jean-François, 6, 7, 182 Ma Ning, 162 Manshu Eiga Kyokai, the Manchuria Film Association, 3

Index manhua (type of cartoon), 1, 2, 17, 34, 73, 87, 185, 197 Mao Zedong, 8, 12, 15, 18, 20, 26–7, 29, 30, 44, 80, 88, 105, 125, 132, 146, 150, 182, 183; and national style, 80; and On Contradiction, 132, 182; and Sun Wukong, 20, 27, 30; and “Talks at the Yan’an Conference on Literature and Art,” 12, 18, 26, 150; and rumored resemblance to Jade Emperor in Uproar in Heaven, 29, 46 n.18, 146; image of, as reproducible image, 14 n.13, 20, 177, 202 Mazhen Fang, 12 McLuhan, Marshall, 7–8, 180, 187, 201, 202 meishu, meishu pian (see also animation); meishu pian, animated film, 7, 49, 83, 84, 97, 99, 106, 130–1, 199–201, 202–3; meishu pian as national style, 78–104; as conceptual categories and institutional practices, 4, 7; as derived from bijutsu, Japanese term for fine arts, 4; as design in film (meishu, meigong ke), 7, 18; linked to special effects, 17 Menghui Jinsha cheng (Dreams of Jinsha), 202 Mengli ren (see Li Jianping Dreaming Girl, The) 192–3 Ministry of Culture, the (censorship of Internet content) 188 modern Chinese literature studies, as supplement to area studies, 60–2 Mudi (see, Te Wei, Oxherd’s Flute, The) Mulvey, Laura, 61, 76 n.23 Mu Shiying, 48–9 Napier, Susan J., 172 n.9 national style, 3–4, 43, 78–104, 106, 110–11, 113–14, 119, 124, 125, 132, 142–3, 153, 169, 175, 182, 188, 195; and possible religious connotations, 110, 111, 112, 124, 127, 142–3; and misrecognition, 90–1, 95, 100; and National Essence movement, 86–7, 96–7; and Zhou Zuoren aesthetics of locality and place, 86–7; Leyda on, 175; Zhou Enlai on, 80–1, 82, 85

249

Nezha Conquers the Dragon King (see also Shanghai Animation Film Studio), 136–72; epiphanic shot (Ma Ning), 162; and montage, 153, 157, 160, 162–3; and Na Cha the Great (Nezha), 144, 170–1; and scar art and literature, 167–8; and Xiao Hua (Little Flower), 166–7; as rebirth of material suppressed during the Cultural Revolution, 147, 166, 172; as representation of the Cultural Revolution, 152, 155, 167, 173 n.16; rebirth scene as overdetermined, 167 Nezha naohai (see Wang Shuchen, Nezha Conquers the Dragon King, see also “Discussion of Animated Film”; Shanghai Animation Film Studio) Noble, Jonathan, 181–2 Ōfuji Noburō, 112 Ogawa Hiromitsu, 4 orientalism, 53–4, 56–7, 58–9 Orientalism (see also Said, Edward), 53–4, 56–8; and limits of literary methodology in readings of mass media, 57–8 Owen, Stephen, 93 Peasant Painting of Huhsien [Hu] County, 8–9 philology, 53–9; Humboldt et al classify Chinese as ungrammatical language, 54–5 Pi San, 196 plasmatics (Eisenstein); plasmatics in Wan Laiming, 40–2 postmodernism: as form of cultural production, 8–10; and modernist loss of referent, 89, 103 n.14; as a period designation, 5–6, 50; as rationalized institution of knowledge, 6–7; as rationalization of labor force, 35; as reproduction of signs, 9, 183, 184, 187; simulacra (see simulacra, simulacrum); as surface, 174, 205 n.4 Power, Natsu Onoda, 29–30 Princess Peacock, 114–16, 118; and deployment of alliance, 120–2; linked to Disney Princess franchise, 117, 119–22; linked to Reiniger’s The Adventures of Prince Achmed, 119; and representation

250

Index

of minority culture, 114, 115, 116, 121, 123–6; as romance, 114, 117, 119, 121, 126–9 Pu Songling, 84, 191 Qi Baishi, 94, 95–6, 97, 98, 99, 100, 104 n.28 Quiquemelle, Marie-Claire, 3, 33, 78, 94, 175 Reiniger, Lotte, 112, 119 Said, Edward, 53–4, 56–8, 61, 76 n.21; humanist reading of Foucault, 54 Saiyûki (see Tezuka Osamu) San ge daibiao (see Jiang Zemin, Three Represents, the) Sangren, Paul Stephen, 138, 141, 147 Schickel, Richard, 69, 77 n.37, 189 Schlegel, August Wilhelm von, 55 Schlegel, Friedrich von, 55 Schroeder, Andrew, 191, 192 Schwartz, Benjamin, 53–4, 59 Shanshui qing (see Shanghai Animation Film Studio, Te Wei, Wang Shuchen, Feeling of Mountains and Streams, The) Shanghai Animation Film Studio (SAFS), 1–4, 13, 29, 34, 37, 41, 65, 83–4, 89–92, 94, 96–7, 102, 105–6, 108–14, 127, 146, 148, 153, 162, 168, 176, 178–9, 180–1, 190, 195, 199; Arrogant General, The (see also Te Wei), 91–3; Feeling of Mountains and Streams, The (see also Te Wei; Wang Shuchen), 168–9; Fisherboy (see also Wan Guchan), 44, 109–10; Ink-brush animated film (see also Te Wei), 98–100; Nezha Conquers the Dragon King (see also Wang Shuchen), 136–72; Oxherd’s Flute, The (see also Te Wei), 96, 101–2; Princess Peacock (see also Jin Xi), 114–16, 118; Secrets of the Heavenly Book (see also Wang Shuchen), 169; Uproar in Heaven (see also Wan Laiming), 7, 15–45; Where is mama? (see also Te Wei), 94–6, 100–1; Yi fu Zhuang jin (A Zhuang Brocade) (see also “Discussion of Animated Film”), 44, 105, 111, 112, 113, 114, 124, 125; Yongshi (Warrior), 195; Zhubajie

chi xigua (Pigsy Eats Watermelon) (see also Wan Guchan; “Discussion of Animated Film”), 106, 109 Shanghai meishu dianying zhipianchang (see Shanghai Animation Film Studio) Shih, Shu-mei, 103 n.13 Shouzu yuan (Rent Collection Courtyard ), 10–13 Shuimo donghua pian (1960 experimental short, see Te Wei, Ink-brush animated film) simulacra, simulacrum, 7–13; as abstracted representation, 13, 48, 99, 183, 187; as copy as original of itself, 9, 10, 13 n.9, 37; as simulation, 10, 11, 150, 183; as spectacle, 10 Sinology, 51–3, 55–7, 59–61; as philological discipline that recognized Chinese as a language, 55 State Administration of Press, Publication, Radio, Film and Television of the People’s Republic of China, 206 n.18 Sullivan, Michael, 34, 97 Sun Xun, 199–201 Sunrise Over Tian’anmen (see Wang, Shuibo) Sun, Hongmei, 20, 25, 27 Sun Wukong (the Monkey King): as literary figure, 20–3, 31, 46 n.5; as mediatic figure, 16, 20, 23–4, 31–2, 34–42; as political figure, 19–20, 23, 26–7, 42–5; compared to Songokū (Saiyûki), 29–30 Tang, Xiaobing, 8–9, 95 Te Wei (see also Shanghai Animation Film Studio), 82–4, 90, 91, 92, 93, 94, 102, 103 n.15, 104 n.32, 175, 180; and Arrogant General, The, 91–3; and Feeling of Mountains and Streams, The, 168–9; and Ink-brush animated film, 98–100; and Oxherd’s Flute, The, 96, 101–2; and Where is mama? 94–6, 100–1; on national style, 82–4 Teo, Stephen, 81 Tetsuwan Atomu (see Tezuka Osamu, Astro Boy) Tezuka Osamu, 29–30, 107–8, 148, 163–4; Astroboy, 107–8, 148, 163–4; Saiyûki, 3, 29–30, 144

Index Tianshu qitan (see Shanghai Animated Film Studio, Wang Shuchen, Secrets of the Heavenly Book) Trnka, Jiří, 116, 130 Uproar in Heaven (see also Shanghai Animation Film Studio), 7, 15–45; and reworking of opera, 20–1, 22–3, 27; and Saiyûki (Shirakawa and Yabushita), 29–30; as parable of Chinese revolution (Wagner), 19–20; Cultural Revolution readings, 29 Virilio, Paul, 77 n.37 Voci, Paola, 1, 196, 199 Wagner, Rudolf, 19–20 Wan Brothers, 15–18, 40–2, 66–7, 72–5; and Scenes from the City, 66–7; and Princess Iron Fan, 72–5 Wan Guchan, 106–8, 110, 111–12; and Fisherboy, 110–13; cutout animation as limited animation, 106–8; Jigong dou xishuai (Crazy Ji and the Fighting Crickets), 108; Jinse de hailuo (The Golden Conch), 108, 116; Pigsy Eats Watermelon, 109, 111–12 Wan Laiming, 15–16, 18–19, 21, 23, 28–9, 32–4, 37, 40, 66, 71–2, 78, 176, 202; and Cultural Revolution, 28–9; and Encounters in the Wild, 176; and Princess Iron Fan (see also Wan Brothers, the), 71–5; and Uproar in Heaven (see also Shanghai Animation Film Studio), 15–45; reading of Hundred Flowers Campaign, 32–3 Wang Genfa, 47 n.23, 179 Wang Liuyi, 2 Wang Shuchen, 136, 147–50, 162, 168–9, 176; endings, 168–72; and Feeling of Mountains and Streams, The (see also Shanghai Animation Film Studio; Te Wei), 168–9; and Nezha Conquers the Dragon King (see also Shanghai Animation Film Studio), 139, 142, 147, 148, 172 n.11 and 13; Secrets of the Heavenly Book (see also Shanghai Animation Film Studio), 169; use of montage, 162 Wang, Shuibo, 202–3; Sunrise Over Tian’anmen, 202–3

251

Warhol, Andy, 9, 37 Weber, Max, 4–5 Wells, Paul, 30, 65, 71 Weng Ouhong, 20–1, 22, 46 n.5 Wright, Arthur F., 56 Wu, Weihua, 1, 4, 77 n.45, 78, 82, 94–5 Wu Yingju, 116; music for Jinse de hailuo (The Golden Conch), 116; music for Princess Peacock, 116 Wu Zuoren, 111 Xi Yangyang yu Hui tailang (Pleasant Goat and Big Grey Wolf ) (series and features), 186, 194–5; as chase formula cartoon, 196 Xiao kedou zhao mama (see Shanghai Animation Film Studio; Te Wei, Where is Mama?) Xiong chu mo (The Boonie Bears), 196; as chase formula cartoon, 196 Xu Changlin, 85–7, 97, 119, 123, 202 Xue Yanping, 186, 190 Yamada Ken-ichi, 187–8 Yan Wenjing, 111 Yang Hansheng, 106 Yao Zhongli, 178–9, 204 Yi fu Zhuang jin (A Zhuang Brocade) (see also “Discussion of Animated Film”; Shanghai Animation Film Studio) 44, 105, 111, 112, 113, 114, 124; and transcendental space in Princess Peacock and Uproar in Heaven, 124–5; released the same year as Third Sister Liu, 105 Yutong (see Fisherboy; Wang Guchan) Zhang Ailing (see also Eileen Chang), 48–9 Zhang Ding, 142 Zhang Guangyu, 15, 23, 34–5, 39, 105, 112 Zhang Junxiang, 88–9 Zhang Shijie, 109 Zhang Songlin, 78–9, 81, 82, 84, 89–90 Zhang, Xudong, 5–6 Zhang, Yingjin, 64, 79, 81, 113, 124, 134 n.14 Zhang Zhengyu, 39

252

Index

Zhonghua Renmin Gongheguo guojia xinwen chuban guangdian zongju (see State Administration of Press, Publication, Radio, Film and Television of the People’s Republic of China) Zhonghua Renmín Gongheguo wenhuabu (see Ministry of Culture, the)

Zhou Zuoren, 86–6 Zhu Bajie chi xigua (see Wang Guchan, Pigsy Eats Watermelon, see also “Discussion of Animated Film,” Shanghai Animation Film Studio) “Zuotan meishu dianying” (see “Discussion of Animated Film”)