Close-ups and Long Shots in Modern Chinese Cinemas 9780824885670

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CLOSE-UPS AND LONG SHOTS IN MODERN CHINESE CINEMAS

CLOSE-UPS AND LONG SHOTS IN MODERN CHINESE CINEMAS Hsiu-Chuang Deppman

University of Hawai‘i Press Honolulu

© 2021 University of Hawai‘i Press All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America 26 25 24 23 22 21  6 5 4 3 2 1 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Deppman, Hsiu-Chuang, author. Title: Close-ups and long shots in modern Chinese cinemas / Hsiu-Chuang Deppman. Description: Honolulu : University of Hawai‘i Press, 2021. | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2020022815 | ISBN 9780824882907 (cloth) | ISBN 9780824885809 (paperback) | ISBN 9780824885670 (pdf) | ISBN 9780824885687 (epub) | ISBN 9780824885694 (kindle edition) Subjects: LCSH: Motion pictures—China—History. | Cinematography—China. Classification: LCC PN1993.5.C6 D47 2021 | DDC 791.430951—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020022815 Cover art: (top) Close-up of Chia-chih’s (Tang Wei) fateful look in Lust, Caution, courtesy of Ang Lee and Universal Pictures; (bottom) long shot of white-shirted woman (Zhao Tao) walking among ruins in I Wish I Knew, courtesy of Jia Zhangke and @Xstream Pictures. University of Hawai‘i Press books are printed on acid-free paper and meet the guidelines for permanence and durability of the Council on Library Resources.

For Jed, who likes to say, “work is joy” and “suffering is the essence of life.”

Contents

Acknowledgments  ix Introduction 1

CHAPTER ONE The Close-up of Mo Yan and Zhang Yimou: Face and Text in Red Sorghum 8

CHAPTER TWO The Art of the Close-up in Lust, Caution: Ang Lee and Eileen Chang 36

Chapter Three Philosophy of the Long Shot in Hou Hsiao-hsien’s The Assassin 68

Chapter Four The Back Shot in Jia Zhangke’s I Wish I Knew 96

viii Contents

Chapter Five Between Close-ups and Long Shots: Medium Shots in Wei Desheng’s Cape No. 7 120

Notes  147 References  159 Selected Filmography  171 Index  173

Acknowledgments

Close-ups and Long Shots in Modern Chinese Cinemas is a labor of love made possible by the generous support of many institutions and people. I thank Oberlin College for a Powers Travel Grant in 2012, two Grants-in-Aid in 2015 and 2019, and a Curriculum Development Grant in 2014. I am grateful to Taiwan’s National Science Council and to Professor Ming-Ju Fan at the Graduate Institute of Taiwanese Literature at National Chengchi University for a Visiting Professorship in 2013–2014. At the outset of this project, I was motivated by a GLCA/Mellon New Directions Initiative Grant in 2012–2013 and the Chiu scholarly exchange program for Taiwan Studies at Oregon State University in 2014. Conversations with friends, students, and colleagues at Oberlin College inspired me to start writing the book. Invited lectures at the Beijing Film Academy, University of Toronto, Michigan State University, Academia Sinica, Reed College, National Chengchi University, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Hamilton College, and the University of Oregon spurred me to refine my arguments on these chapters. I am grateful to the faculty and students at those institutions for their warm responses to my work. Over the years I have benefited from the friendship and intellectual discussions with many admirable scholars working in fields related to this monograph: Wendy Larson, Christopher Lupke, Tze-lan Sang, Kirk Denton, Nicole Huang, Hsiao-yen Peng, Dudley Andrew, Jiwei Xiao, Whitney Dilley, Yingjin Zhang, Michael Berry, Lingzhen Wang, Jessica Tsui-yan Li, Sharon Chialan Wang, and Shu-chin Tsui stand out. Special thanks to Jennifer Bryan for her astute editorial comments.

ix

x Acknowledgments

I thank Ang Lee, Jia Zhangke, Tang Wei, and Zhao Tao for permission to use their images on the cover. David Lee has been most helpful in guiding me through the process of obtaining copyright permission for Lust, Caution. An earlier version of chapter two was published in the 2012 anthology Eileen Chang: Romancing Languages, Cultures and Genres, edited by Kam Louie (Hong Kong University Press). A shorter version of chapter three appeared in the 2019 essay collection The Assassin: Hou Hsiao-Hsien’s World of Tang China, edited by Hsiao-yen Peng (Hong Kong University Press). I am grateful to the two anonymous reviewers for their generous and insightful advice for improving this book. It has been a pleasure working with the editorial team at the University of Hawai‘i Press, whose professionalism and dedication are unparalleled. I am blessed by having the loving support of my family. My daughters Formosa and Ginger model for me creativity and the joy of learning. My sister Hsiu-miao Tsai exemplifies generosity and commitment. My husband, Jed Deppman, the best partner for life, read and commented on drafts of this monograph. His wisdom, love, and encouragement make me appreciate who I am and what I have every day. This book is for him.

Introduction

Close-ups and long shots are celebrated in film studies. Scholars have long been captivated by the close-up for the way its iconicity elevates film to the discourse of art, and by the long shot for its power to present “structural depth” that reinforces the Bazinian “faith in reality.” These shots are so different that few critics have ventured to compare them explicitly, a reluctance that can be attributed in part to the complex relationships film has with politics and reality. Advocates of the close-up tend to understand cinema as an interventionist art that makes reality attractive, a “construction that has impact,” as Sergei Eisenstein puts it, rather than a “static reflection” (1988, 79). By contrast, the long shot seems to embody an organic representation of lived experience that respects the intrinsic logic of facts and their categorical relations (Bazin 2005, 27). What are the grounds for a comparative study when directors operate on such different assumptions about the use and essence of cinema? To explain why filmmakers or movements lean toward one kind of aesthetic strategy or another, it helps to study shot selections within the cultural, historical, and cinematic traditions that produce them. In Chinese film, for example, the deaths of two political leaders—Chiang Kai-shek in Taiwan in 1975 and Mao Zedong in China in 1976—ushered in a new era in which directors felt compelled to reassess Chinese culture in relation to Western imperialism, philosophy, democracy, and capitalism. This self-scrutiny coincided with the global revival of Confucian studies in the 1980s (Dirlik 1995, 229) and led to the rise of the Fifth Generation Movement and Taiwan New Cinema with their signature uses of close-ups and long shots. An iconic figure, Confucius has since become a resurrected 1

2 Introduction

cultural hero helping define and at times defend Chinese ways of looking at the world. Confucius is possibly, Hsu Fu-guan asserts, “the first, most explicit, and the greatest discoverer of artistic spirit in Chinese history” (1966, 5). The ancient sage championed the synergy of practicing music (yue) and ritualism (li) to achieve the perfect virtue (ren).1 In the context of film studies, Confucian ritualism has had a stronger ideological influence than music in shaping the choice for different shots. The ritualistic demand for self-restraint, in particular, dictates the act and intention of each gaze. Confucius once famously instructed his discipline Yan Yuan to be mindful of seeing too much too close: “Do not look at what is contrary to propriety.”2 These and other tenets have solidified Chinese codes of civil behavior for twenty-five hundred years. From Singapore to China and from Taiwan to overseas Chinese communities, the Confucian revival reflects the embeddedness of Chinese ethics in the cultural education of directors, whose shot selections can be seen as both personal stylistic expressions and ethical choices that respond to established norms. This is the grounding idea for Close-ups and Long Shots in Modern Chinese Cinemas, the first book to compare two of the most important shots in Chinese film. Each of the five case studies represents a watershed cultural moment in Chinese cinemas that redefines the evolving relations between film and politics, and each uses systematic aesthetic preferences to achieve their vision. Together, these works provide a comprehensive picture of how directors localize the close-up and the long shot in ways that make them interpretable across many films as bellwethers of social change. For many formalists and aesthetes working in film theory, the invention of the close-up was a game changer. The shot advanced the dramatic appeal of the face by transforming film into art, marking “the moment of the very emergence of film as a discourse” (Doane 2003, 91). For some, the close-up defined the “film’s true terrain” (Balázs 2010, 38) and gave “the soul” to cinema (Epstein 1977, 9). The expressivity of the close-up created, according to Gilles Deleuze, an “affection image” that inspired the audience to feel the passions and emotions of the characters (1986, 89). For feminist film critics, however, the close-up tends to celebrate an intimacy of scrutiny that both magnifies the attractiveness of film and produces an undue pleasure of looking, one that empowers an aggressive sexual instinct to conquer a desirable object. Laura Mulvey (1975), Miriam Hansen (2000), Dai Qing (1993), Claire Johnson (2000), and Ann Kaplan (1983) all point out the danger of a scopophilic gaze that affirms exploitative visual pleasures and perpetuates a voyeuristic desire for the erotic control of a star’s face and body. Psychoanalytical studies suggest that the

Introduction 3

male gaze in mainstream cinema has the power to possess and the malice to annihilate the woman posed as a threat (Kaplan 2000, 121). These unsettling interpretations illustrate why the close-up, a groundbreaking force for some and an objectifying apparatus for others, has become a contested site for debates about film aesthetics and gender politics. Chinese directors complicate these debates further by responding, with varying degrees of awareness and strategy, to doctrines such as the pursuit of the perfect virtue or mercy ren (仁). The perfect virtue, according to Confucius, is built on the principle of restraining oneself to restore ritualism.3 Essentially a manual for good behavior, ritualism is in part a delicate negotiation between familiarity and formality, with the goals of solidifying social order and building new, proper relationships among people. It is both an art and a decree, Confucius explains, to “stay away without appearing estranged and to come close without appearing disrespectful.”4 Cultivating a sensible perception of distance is instrumental to the Chinese directorial configuration of how far or near a screen image should be presented to the audience. Ironically, it is the Confucian demand for propriety that motivates progressive Chinese filmmakers to choose transgressive strategies that expose, for example, the gendered biases of social mores. In the way it embraces excess, the close-up can be conceived as an aesthetic platform to question the legitimacy of a normative patriarchal hierarchy that governs sexual and familial relationships through restraint. The force of the face, with its melodramatic intensity, also allows the filmmakers to craft a hyperbolic visual language that speaks of such forbidden subjects as female desire, transgender identity, and sexual agency. These and other once-taboo topics empower Chinese women to confront the Confucian hierarchy of control. From Wu Yonggang’s The Goddess (1934) to Zhang Yimou’s Red Sorghum (1987) to Chen Kaige’s Yellow Earth (1984) and Farewell My Concubine (1993) to Ann Hui’s Song of the Exile (1990) to Ang Lee’s Lust, Caution (2007), women in the spotlight have invited, endured, and contested the glare of Confucian moral scrutiny. But just as the close-up makes visible a covert desire for female self-realization, the alluring look creates risks. When progressive Chinese directors use the close-up to challenge Confucian misogyny, do they also take pleasure in exploiting female sexuality? Is there a way of speaking about Confucian ethics, gendered biases, and social engagement without objectifying women in the frame? How do filmmakers balance the exhilaration of film as an art of attraction with the moral imperatives for self-restraint? Responding to these complex questions, Hou Hsiao-hsien and Jia Zhangke have adopted a different approach to visualization. They use the

4 Introduction

long shot to project a distant look at women in Chinese cinemas. In their hands, the distance of the shot creates what Peter Wollen describes as “unpleasure,” one of the seven counter-cinema characteristics designed to “dissatisfy” and “change the spectator” (2004, 530–531). Resisting the impulse for instant visual gratification, the long shot maximizes the depth of the field to create hermeneutic ambivalence, allowing directors to experiment with the Confucian instruction to see within limits. The decentering nature of the mise-en-scène makes visible the interdependent and mutable relations between places and people, freeing the protagonist, often a woman, from being framed as an iconic figure, interpretable symbol, and a sexualized object marketed in the mainstream cinema. The diffusive effect of the long shot therefore introduces what Claire Johnson calls “a break between text and ideology” (2000, 30), cultivating a space of ambiguity that restores the visual autonomy of the characters in the picture. Finally, the long shot also assumes what Lúcia Nagib calls the “ethics of realism,” a cinematic “commitment to the truth of the unpredictable event” (2011, 11). Departing from the art of emphasis, the long shot revels in open-endedness, never allowing the viewer to see “what is really happening” (Balázs 2011, 38). The lack of clarity offers an inclusive and natural look of the world that mimics an unfiltered range of broad human viewing experience. The fixed camera or slow pan of a long shot, moreover, creates an organic pairing with a long take, giving the audience time and space to peruse contextual details. The combination produces what André Bazin calls the cinematic presentation of the natural “fact” of life (2005, 35). The traits of civility and sincerity associated with the long shot illustrate a form of Confucian moral realism that sees the world as an ethical universe that has “objective” moral truths and attributes free from human intervention (Liu 2007, 182). Influential New Wave directors see in the long shot a promise to connect Confucian virtues with a neorealist aesthetic, creating a cinema that privileges the nuances of everyday endurance over the drama of heroism and martyrdom in the close-up. Yet if the close-up stirs controversy by making women look vulnerable and transgressive, equally indefinite are the feminist implications of the long shot. How do we interpret the social messages of a frame that conceals more than reveals women’s looks? Does the Confucian decree of respecting privacy foster a climate of repression? Is the long shot able to desexualize women’s appearance in ways that restore their subjectivity? Does distance give the viewer a more complete picture of women in reality? These questions, rarely if ever discussed in film studies, show that the

Introduction 5

long shot is just as stylistically compelling, morally problematic, and theoretically suggestive as the close-up in the study of the complex relations among Confucian ethics, film style, and female power. Close-ups and Long Shots in Modern Chinese Cinemas examines the ethical and feminist implications of these two shots in the works of contemporary Chinese directors. Chinese filmmakers embracing close-ups tend to be more mainstream and textually based than directors using long shots, who prefer long takes to montages, emotional ambivalence to psychological exposition. Studying these choices illuminates major directorial reinterpretations of the Confucian tradition, gives the audience contrasting looks at female agency and elucidates the wide gap between popular cinema and slow cinema in film appreciation. CHAPTER SYNOPSES In chapters one and two, I study the unique literary properties of the closeup in the works of two acclaimed filmmakers, Zhang Yimou and Ang Lee. It is noteworthy that the Chinese term for “close-up,” te xie (特寫), means “special writing,” a literary approach to seeing that stands apart from such other traditions as the English “close-up” (proximity) and the French gros plan (enlargement) because it emphasizes more of the ontological relations between image and word than the spatial formations of distance and scale. For Chinese directors, presenting a blown-up picture can be likened to writing an investigative report, compelling the viewer to see the hieroglyphic nature of the visual script that justifies the hermeneutic logic of reading the face as a text. The textuality of the close-up also helps explain the affinity so many Chinese directors have for literary adaptation. In chapter one, “The Close-up of Zhang Yimou and Mo Yan: Face and Text in Red Sorghum,” I analyze the ways Zhang Yimou visualizes Mo Yan’s literary close-up to highlight the agency of a seeing female subject. Using a wide range of portrait shots, Zhang affords the audience an extensive look at a rebel challenging Confucian propriety by eroticizing the female gaze and the male body. Explosive and transgressive, Zhang’s close-up also models the kind of special writing that showcases the mimetic and reciprocal relations between film and literature. The literary predilections of Chinese cinema become visible in the textuality of Zhang’s image that transcribes Mo Yan’s sensual description into the expressive long take of the face. The collaboration of the two artistic giants in Red Sorghum in the 1980s ushered in a new era of Chinese film and literature in which women became both objects and subjects of sexual exploitation.

6 Introduction

Chapter two, “The Art of the Close-up in Lust, Caution: Ang Lee and Eileen Chang,” presents a moral disappointment for women looking for agency. Departing from Zhang’s close-up of self-liberation, Ang Lee creates from Eileen Chang’s agnostic and “cruel” language a heroine predicated on duplicity and false expectations. Using shot-reverse-shot to great effect, Lee’s close-ups challenge the Confucian moral certainty of knowing right from wrong and sincerity from deceit, exposing, instead, the psychological angst of seeing all that is “perfectly good and perfectly beautiful” as empty rhetoric.5 Lust, Caution adds to the discourse about feminism and Confucianism a postmodern despair about the hypocrisy of idealism. If chapters one and two scrutinize the affective power of seeing in the close-up, chapter three, “Philosophy of the Long Shot in Hou Hsiaohsien’s The Assassin,” analyzes the limits of observation by leaving room for interpretation for the viewer. Hou Hsiao-hsien not only perfects the long shot as a Confucian restraint to manage conflicts but also pioneers a form of medium close-up that stages a Levinasian self-other encounter and renders female agency more visible. Hou creates what I call “closeups in long shots,” a mise-en-scène in which the characters, positioned far away from the camera, see each other up close and yet give the viewer no access to their conversation or facial expressions. His visual algorithm emphasizes perspectival differences between the characters and the audience, inviting us to pay equal attention to space and people. The director also uses distance to establish an unexpected form of gender equality that gives limited access to the looks of both sexes. Whereas Hou Hsiao-hsien’s long shot affords his characters emotional privacy, Jia Zhangke’s long shot reveals the social isolation of everyday people. Chapter four, “The Back Shot in Jia Zhangke’s I Wish I Knew,” examines the distancing effects of the camera capturing back images— therefore often faceless shots—of ordinary individuals as they perform mundane tasks. Hailed as “people’s director,” Jia appoints a female “storywalker,” an unidentified woman perambulating around the city of Shanghai, whose discursive footprints bring together disconnected events, times, spaces, and characters. Her narrative mobility enables her to link and democratize the grievances of all classes and to make visible a shared urban alienation. Framed as an objective witness to human toils, the ethereal character turns the glamorous metropolis inside out, exposing the city’s underbelly, especially its dark history of violence, carnage, and exploitation. Her vantage point affirms a directorial conviction about filmmaking as a performance of social conscience. Jia embraces Peter Wollen’s “unpleasure” that addresses the Confucian educational model of tough

Introduction 7

love: “Can one love the subject without being willing to discipline? Can one stay loyal to the subject without being willing to edify”?6 The long back shot gives the female observer moral and visual integrity to index the myriad capitalist traps and political abuses. Beyond the theoretical spotlight of the close-up and the long shot, there is the neglected middle—the versatile, all-purpose medium shot whose commonplaceness contributes to its invisibility in criticism. Chapter five, “Between Close-ups and Long Shots: Medium Shots in Wei Desheng’s Cape No. 7,” spotlights the narrative attraction of the medium shot whose size and distance stabilize a comparative scale for other shot experiments, positioning itself as a consensus-builder that executes the Confucian negotiation for compromises. In modern cinema, the medium shot reveals its range and versatility especially well in romantic comedy, a popular genre known for being not only “mainstream,” “commercial,” and “shallow” but also “delightful,” “instructive,” and “entertaining.” Cultural critic Raymond Williams explains that the negative connotations of popular forms have long been associated with their “desire to win favor with ordinary people” and to appeal to the masses, tendencies often assumed to compromise the depth and quality of an artwork (2005, 263). Others value the way these desires lead to “art by the people and for the people,” challenging the elitist divisions between high and common cultures. The medium shot visualizes the conflicting conceptions of the popular, eschewing the intensity of the close-up and complexity of the long shot in search of what Confucius calls “the doctrine of the mean.” By design, the shot adopts a “middle way” approach that curtails extreme viewpoints and resolves formalistic contradictions. In contemporary Chinese cinemas, as Wei Desheng’s record-breaking Cape No. 7 (2008) has demonstrated, strategic uses of the medium shot can also create a multiculturalism in which people of different origins meet half-way to share dialogic visions of a changing postmodern community. In the films studied in this book, cultural anxieties about changing social values have motivated directors to explore women’s abilities to eroticize and transgress (Red Sorghum), to reflect and perform (Lust, Caution), to think for oneself and make decisions (The Assassin), to witness and digress (I Wish I Knew), and to enter new cultures and negotiate (Cape No. 7). In each case the director systematically uses shot selections to achieve his vision. These five chapters ultimately prove that Chinese cinemas frame distance in ways that create competing as well as compelling interpretations of women in film.

C H A P T E R

O N E

The Close-up of Mo Yan and Zhang Yimou Face and Text in Red Sorghum

Among contemporary artists, Zhang Yimou (b. 1950) and Mo Yan (b. 1955) are outsized figures in representing Chinese culture. A pioneer of the Fifth Generation movement, Zhang is the single best-known Chinese director in the world and has been “thoroughly associated with an entire national output” (Gateward 2001, VII).1 Equally prominent is 2012 Nobel Laureate Mo Yan, whose experimental fiction combines “folk tales, history, and the contemporary” to tell vivid stories about human suffering (Englund 2012).2 They are trailblazers who shared the genesis of their critical acclaim after Zhang adapted Mo’s novel Red Sorghum (1986) into a film with the same title (1987) and won the prestigious Golden Bear Award in the 1988 Berlin Film Festival. Zhang’s adaptation created such concurrent success for the duo that it can be credited with paving the way for the rise of modern Chinese cinema and literature on the global stage (Y. Wang 1991; Englund 2012; Deppman 2016). Produced during China’s first economic reform (1970s–1980s), the novel and the film powerfully illustrate a communist-Confucian-capitalist society in flux and break new ground in Chinese ethics and aesthetics. The story heroicizes a love affair between a willful bride and a murderous bandit, an audacious liaison that deepens the conflicts between individual passions and social constraints. Full of shocking revelations about wars, sex, and violence, Red Sorghum raises provocative questions about the moral core of Chinese culture at a time when the country was at a crossroads of redefining Confucianism and “capitalism with Chinese characteristics” in the 1980s (Dirlik 1995). 8



The Close-up of Mo Yan and Zhang Yimou 9

Although much maligned during the Chinese Cultural Revolution (1966–1976), Confucianism had enjoyed a notable revival in Singapore and other Sinophone communities before being fully embraced by the Chinese government again in the post-Mao era (Chua 2004; Dirlik 1995). Arif Dirlik argues that this resurrection coincided with the retreat of revolutionary communism, the search for a new national identity, and the glorification of “Orientalized subjectivities” in the global discourse of capitalism (1995, 231–240). These conditions affirmed Confucianism as a cultural and economic force with the potential to unsettle Eurocentrism and to create a “anthropocosmic worldview” empowering a new Sinic voice (Tu 2001, 243–244). Working against the backdrop of this reinvigorated Confucianism, however, Mo and Zhang upended the ethical paradigm of good behaviors with their portraits of unruly heroes. Whereas Confucius emphasized the importance of boundaries and hierarchies in sustaining proper social relations, the artists explored the risks and rewards of sexual and moral transgressions. In one of his most celebrated passages about character building, Confucius explains that “a youth should be filial to parents at home, respectful to elders in society, staying earnest and truthful, and loving all people before being able to approximate goodness” (Confucius 2015, 1.6). This step-by-step instruction demands that one adhere to the process of edification, moving from home to society to philosophy and making filial piety the foundation of human decency. Mo’s Red Sorghum challenges blind faith in these rules. What if some greedy parents marry their daughter to a leper in exchange for a black mule? This is what happens to the teenaged protagonist Little Nine (the narrator’s Grandma) who rails against the trade in public: “You’re no father of mine,” the angry girl threatens her father, “and I forbid you ever to enter my door again” (Mo 1986, 129). Their heated exchange ends with the daughter flinging hot buns in the old man’s face, which “hit like exploding grenades” (129). In the framework of Confucian edicts, her violent outburst is scandalous, but in the changing ideological landscape of the 1980s, her warrior-like behavior is symbolic. She is a grenade-throwing rebel fighting against the patriarchal exploitation of women. Despite the abruptness of her action, the teenager’s revolt is not incidental; it has its root in the protest cultures of the May Fourth Movement (1919) and the Chinese Cultural Revolution, which began with young people attacking authorities perceived to be recalcitrant and enslaving (T. Chow 1960; MacFarquhar 2006). Inspired by both movements, Zhang describes his directorial mindset early in his career: “Those powerful visuals that rebelled against everything that came before us,

10

Chapter One

with absolutely no regard for what consequences might follow, were directly connected with the attitude and psychological state we had back then” (M. Berry 2005, 114). That Zhang was attracted to the energy of insurgency explains why he found Mo’s visceral language cinematically appealing. Mo’s text presented a unique opportunity for him to realize a key principle in filmmaking: a good movie needs to make emotional connections with both director and viewer.3 As a reader, Zhang was deeply moved by what he called “the Northern spirit” in Mo’s story, which is imbued with fearless people living outside the bounds of ritualism and ethical mores (Tan 1999/2000, 8). Zhang praised the writer for his uninhibited illustrations of lust and love for life: “Northerners like the bold, raw energy of the book and the powerful depictions” of resilient folks (M. Berry 2005, 115).4 As a director, Zhang practiced the art of emphasis by focusing on adapting Mo’s iconoclastic representation of Grandma into a feisty, complex image, reinventing the face of modern Chinese cinema. A brief summary of how the shared plot on the page and the screen unfolds will help us understand why their collaboration is groundbreaking. At sixteen, “Grandma” Dai Fenglian (Gong Li) is destined to marry the leprotic son of a prosperous local winery owner, but during the wedding march a failed robbery in the sorghum field brings the bride face to face with the perpetrator and the sedan bearers, exposing her to a world of danger and new possibilities. Mo Yan’s narrative transforms the protagonist into a victim with visions and ambitions. Her actions are driven by a desire for power and sex, making her a controversial heroine who rises against oppression, incites violence, defies filial piety, manipulates authorities, and assumes community leadership to protect self-interest. Her bravado generates spectacular appeal for the reader and exemplifies what Mo Yan describes as an intense “longing for the contentment of love and a life of freedom” (Mo 2006, 34). Zhang finds Mo’s advocacy for female self-determination especially instructive because it validates his own humanistic critique of women’s suffering in the forced marriages of Chinese feudal society.5 Strategically, Zhang’s filmic adaptation uses close-ups to highlight the affectivity of Mo’s characterization. Grandstanding and self-important, close-ups are well positioned to confront the Confucian advocacy for self-restraint, formality, and humility.6 They expose what has once been suppressed—especially the intimate exhibition of the woman as a desired object and a desiring subject, a dual role that has become most visible in Zhang’s aestheticization of close-ups in long takes. In this type of shot, the director gives the face time and space to evolve in ways that invite the audience to see in greater depth the



The Close-up of Mo Yan and Zhang Yimou 11

emotional and intellectual variations of the image. Whereas close-ups alone can be objectifying, because they are often designed to be scrutinized, assessed, and possessed, close-ups in long takes complicate the big picture by adding to the texture of a face an extended appeal for soulsearching. What lies beyond and behind the surface of cinematic attractions? Despite the filmmaker’s progressive intentions, the power and duration of the look are not always interpretable. In fact, Zhang’s stylistic construct presents a paradox: can a director’s camera captivate a woman’s image long enough to set her free? The answer is yes if we consider Zhang’s close-up as a cinematic form of Foucauldian truth-telling and self-caring experience. It gives the subject, often a woman, attention and knowledge of the self by providing her with a platform to express her thoughts and feelings. This freedom of expression helps unbind women from the constraints of such Confucian ethics as “three obediences” that silence a woman’s speech and regulate her behaviors: “Obey her father before marriage; obey her husband after marriage; obey her son in widowhood.”7 These ethical principles create a chain of commands that, shifting the authority from father to husband to son in defining a woman’s life, efface her agency. With the force of cinematic magnification and protraction, however, Zhang’s close-ups in long takes uncover the repressed female will to power, giving his characters the opportunity to turn “its gaze upon itself, to recognize itself in what it is and . . . to recall the truths that issue from it and that it has been able to contemplate” (Foucault 1997, 285). To show how Zhang’s aesthetic makes his characters appear selfconscious and free, I compare three key moments in the novel and film, with each juxtaposition revealing important decisions the director made about how to adapt scenes, characterization, mood, and narrative action from the novel. FACE AND TEXT The novel is narrated from the perspective of a grandson who recounts the critical events in the lives of his parents and grandparents. Mo’s fiction moves nonchronologically from one incident, thought, or memory to another, but the movie reconstructs the story in a linear fashion with a distinct progression. This change suggests that Mo and Zhang are working with different narrative times, Mo exploring the inner life of the characters reminiscing in a discursive rhythm, and Zhang reconstructing a coherent sequence of external actions to produce sequential meanings for the characters and viewers. Their different approaches to storytelling become instantly visible in the intersection of text and image. Zhang’s opening scene highlights the focus

12

Chapter One

of the film—Grandma’s appearance and personality—in a streamlined prioritization that leaps over Mo’s opening chapter, a death march to ambush the Japanese soldiers. To give a fuller picture of what Zhang sees and curates from Mo’s description of Grandma, I quote from the passage that partly serves as the basis of the adaptation. It is 1923 and the bride is being transported in a ceremonial red sedan from her local village to a winery. Grandma was lightheaded and dizzy inside the stuffy sedan chair, her view blocked by a red bridal veil that gave off a pungent mildew odor. She reached out to lift it a crack—Great-Grandmamma had told her not to remove it. A heavy bracelet of twisted silver slid down to her wrist, and as she looked at the coiled-snake design her thoughts grew chaotic and disoriented. A warm wind rustled the emerald-green stalks of sorghum lining the narrow dirt path. Doves cooed in the fields. The delicate powder of petals floated above silvery new ears of waving sorghum. The curtain, embroidered on the inside with a dragon and a phoenix, had faded after years of use, and there was a large stain in the middle. (Mo 1994, 41)8

Mo Yan’s description appeals to fear, pity, and curiosity. Boxed in by the claustrophobic sedan chair, the bride has neither sight nor mobility. She is blindfolded twice over by the red veil she smells (“a pungent mildew odor”) and the red curtain she detests (“a large stain in the middle”), both being signs that divide girlhood from married life and signal transition. Even in these circumstances, Mo captures Grandma’s interest in the world by showing her defiance against her mother’s order: she lifts her veil to scrutinize her surroundings. Her desire to explore and know echoes the way Foucault connects the care of the self to the curiosity about the world: care of the self is “knowledge of the self . . . but also knowledge of a number of rules and acceptable conduct or of principles that are both truths and prescriptions” (1997, 285). These “rules” and “truths” are destabilized when Grandma restores her ability to see and judge by unveiling herself. She first spots a heavy and alien object on her arm, a bracelet whose weight and value indicate a token of binding transaction. Emerging from its devious (“twisted”) and threatening (“coiled-snake design”) appearance is the menace of a contracting grip that unsettles and disorients Grandma. But Mo’s language moves adroitly between inside and outside, fear and hope, to accentuate the contrast between decaying culture and refreshing nature. With “emerald-green stalks” and “silvery new ears,” the sorghum plants look strong and free, injecting into the coffin-like sedan chair an air of growing expectation. Such a complex anatomy of Grandma’s psychology presents a serious challenge to adaptation. Zhang speaks of the perils of making a film too



The Close-up of Mo Yan and Zhang Yimou 13

bookish to be cinematic, of the need to streamline the narrative, and lays out what he values in a literary source and how he brings it to life: In general, I believe in my feelings. If I am moved, I can translate that into visual terms. But as literary works are rich and multiple in meanings, a total translation into film language could be difficult. My way of appropriation appeals to essence and forgoes the form. Or I just select a part and forget the whole. I tend to magnify one aspect and focus on the gist of it . . . films call for simplicity, sensibility, and directness. Only with these things can we produce the strongest impact. Like the adaptation of Red Sorghum, I did not aim at the total representation of the original work. Instead, I elaborated on the theme of “the power of life,” on the question of “humanity” and transformed them into pictorial images. Such a decision is made for the sake of concentration and refinement. (Tam 2001, 118)

For Zhang, film adaptation works best when it highlights the key components of a plot that appeal to the emotions of the audience. His call for “simplicity, sensibility, and directness” is both exemplified and challenged by the opening scene in which he introduces the most important character of the story. He offers a series of tableau views to show Grandma’s dilemma and evokes a universal fear of being in the dark about one’s foreboding future. If Mo Yan illuminates the double blindness of a bride who is anxious about facing a life of constraints, Zhang envisions the absence of light in the prologue by staging a twenty-five-second black screen, with only the voiceover of a “grandson” explaining how the story begins. Slowly fading out of the darkness is the image of an expressionless, decentered young woman who looks straight at the camera and the audience with an unyielding pose (Figure 1.1). Instead of celebrating a double-happiness marriage, the bride wears a severe expression that conveys no joy. Her intense gaze binds the audience

Figure 1.1  Decentered Grandma staring at the camera and the audience.

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to a steely face that, half concealed in the shadow cast by the lighting, is presented as an enigma. Even though Zhang is drawn to simple and direct expressions, the meaning of the opening shot is unsettling. Why is Grandma decentered on the screen? What does the black backdrop signify? Despite the probing scrutiny of his work, Zhang remains an inscrutable director because his representations of the suffering, conniving, aggressive, and beautiful women baffle critics. Is Grandma’s face a commodified image selling Orientalist fantasies “for the casual pleasures of foreigners” (Dai Qing 1993, 336)? Or does it, as Rey Chow claims, expose the oppression of woman to “demote” Chinese patriarchal system from the signified to a signifier (1995, 48)? Sensitive to these interpretations, I suggest that Zhang’s portrait shot contests the logic of an essentialist Confucian edict that emphasizes order and symmetry. A figure being set aside creates a sense of imbalance that insinuates the woman’s unruliness: she resists being typecast as a token for model behavior. Unique and deviant, the bride is positioned to control the narrative and tell the story from her viewpoint. The black backdrop, moreover, erases all contextual distractions and makes the face of Grandma appear as an isolated singular subject. Mary Ann Doane argues that the close-up generally stands out as a special cinematic shot, because it “is most fully associated with the screen as surface, with the annihilation of a sense of depth and its corresponding rules of perspectival realism” (2003, 91). Such lack of depth generates the power of self-containment, because “image becomes, once more, an image rather than a threshold onto a world. Or rather, the world is reduced to this face, this object” (91). If the close-up is a world in itself, Grandma represents a composite picture of many components: hair, face, neck, hand, and ear. Each body part communicates “bondage” to the audience. The second shot, for instance, is an extreme close-up of the bride’s stylized hair and ear, showing the back of her head imprinted with tightening ornaments: net, pins, and braids to hold her (hair) in place (Figure 1.2). A disembodied hand reaches into the screen to fasten a red flower on her head, reinforcing the aura of confinement (Figure 1.3). This makeover exposes blind spots in both bride and viewer. Grandma is being looked at without being able to look; the viewer faces an equal challenge of seeing only the spectacle of a coiffure, not the woman who wears it. The elaborate hairdo highlights the mechanical process of a ritual that erases a woman’ subjectivity. When a reverse shot turns the spotlight back to her face, a blurry profile now fills the screen with a downward gaze, nurturing a feeling of nascent resentment against the imprisoning circumstances (Figure 1.4).

Figure 1.2  Close-up of Grandma’s coiffure.

Figure 1.3  Close-up of Grandma being pinned down.

Figure 1.4  Close-up of Grandma’s inscrutable expression.

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Zhang amplifies the impression of captivity by again showing a pair of off-screen hands putting a bracelet on the bride’s wrist (Figure 1.5). The bracelet resembles a handcuff or silver cangue that solidifies the trade of freedom for status. Whereas in Mo’s novel the bride lays bare her anxiety about how the jewelry’s design triggers an associative fear in the beholder, in the film the close-up of the act of receiving the bracelet is impersonal and ceremonial. Yet the power dynamic between the giver and the recipient demarcates a clear subject-object relation in which the cultural force of ritualism suppresses the movement of thought, idea, or emotion. By the same token, the next shot underpins the oppressive authority of the same shadowy hands, now taking up more than half of the screen to button up the collar of Grandma (Figure 1.6). Given little breathing room to reflect on the implications of her circumstances, Grandma is reduced to what she bears and wears. Taken as a

Figure 1.5  Grandma “handcuffed” by the bracelet.

Figure 1.6  Close-up of the tightening collar.



The Close-up of Mo Yan and Zhang Yimou 17

Figure 1.7  Close-up of a disembodied ear with a dangling earring.

whole, these close-ups give clear examples of her objectification, complete with a rear view of her ear pierced with a long dangling earring (Figure 1.7). Grandma is transformed into just another bride whose disembodied experience of being broken (into different fragments) and fixed (with various ornaments) accentuates both the dissembling and assembling functions of close-ups. With the darkened and blurry backgrounds, these close-ups amount to what Gilles Deleuze calls “the state of Entity,” abstracting themselves “from all spatio-temporal co-ordinates.” The “closeup” he argues, “is not an enlargement and, if it implies a change of dimension, this is an absolute change: a mutation of movement which ceases to be translation in order to become expression” (1986, 96). The absence of temporal and geographical markers enables each shot to illustrate the self-enclosing conditions of a woman’s premarital angst. Instead of assembling a historical figure, these body parts multiply iconic expressions of the female agony. She is one of many, not a “one and only” in the process of being processed. But when the full face of the bride reappears in the subsequent shot, the viewer sees behind her stoic expression an individualized, nuanced desire for self-preservation (Figure 1.8). Does Grandma’s stoicism suggest compliance with the demand for Confucian obedience? Or is her aloofness a sign of indifference that disregards the power of the system to bend her will? Close analysis of the shot sequence reveals that Zhang aspires to create an affective image of what Deleuze calls “admiration,” which “marks a minimum of movement for a maximum of unity reflecting and reflected on the face” (1986, 102). Deleuze distinguishes close-ups that process thought—making the viewer wonder “What are you thinking about?”—from those that process feeling—“What do you sense or feel?” The two, however, are often

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Figure 1.8  A repeat shot of Grandma staring at the camera and the audience.

mixed. If Zhang’s images are intuitively constructed to make the audience feel, his incorporation of Mo Yan’s literary imagery compels the viewer to think. “In so far as it thinks about something, the face has value above all through its surrounding outline, its reflecting unity which raises all the parts to itself. Sometimes, on the contrary, it experiences or feels something, and has value through the intensive series that its parts successively traverse as far as paroxysm, each part taking on a kind of momentary independence” (Deleuze 1986, 88–89). Zhang’s opening scene converges these two Deleuzian poles: the circular motion of returning to the face restores the woman’s ability to feel as well as to think, because she is now as much an object of being appropriated as a subject reflecting on the appropriation. When a strident female voiceover warns against the bridal imprudence of defying matrimonial order, the viewer sees the once-immobilized young woman suddenly become agitated by the demand for self-effacement. Despite the threat of great misfortune, Grandma tears apart her veil to demonstrate her willingness to disobey the prescriptive order (Figures 1.9 and 1.10). Combining fear, anger, and rebellion, her contemplative face is in and of itself a complex diagram of resistance to power. Departing from the subdued self-containment in the preceding close-ups, the newly unveiled bride with a downcast glance appeals to the viewer’s pathos, reflecting Zhang’s populist approach: “An artist’s ideas should be understood naturally through emotions,” Zhang announces. “I think the subject matter of a film should be simple. Only after it is simplified, after the thoughts are simplified, can the capacity and power of emotions [of a film] be strengthened” (Tan 1999/2000, 4). That Zhang emphasizes simplicity highlights his selective narrative focus. Among the myriad topics, moods, and ideas a



The Close-up of Mo Yan and Zhang Yimou 19

Figure 1.9  Grandma covered by a bridal veil.

Figure 1.10  A defiant Grandma restoring her vision.

novel communicates, directors visualize only the parts they consider the most arousing, Zhang’s statement echoes Sergei Eisenstein’s 1924 theory about the montage of film attractions, which sees “cinema as a factor for exercising emotional influence over the masses . . . in the desired direction through a series of calculated pressures on its psyche” (Eisenstein 1988, 39). Although Zhang and his Fifth Generation cohorts have long rejected the explicit politicization of film as agit-prop, in Red Sorghum his focus on a streamlined logic of female exploitation explains an essentialist approach to filmic adaptation, one that fits well into Dudley Andrew’s theory of “fidelity to the spirit.”9 As a reader and an artist, Zhang interprets the “spirit” of Mo’s text as the intensification of a female sexual agency. “I took things as far as they could go visually,” Zhang enthuses, “to capture that mood for rebellion and psychological resistance” (M. Berry 2005, 115). The mood of sexual mutiny is most vividly inscribed in the scaled close-ups, which map out a blueprint for progressive filmmaking.

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THE BRIDE WHO LOOKS If the opening scene exposes the oppressive treatment of women, the subsequent wedding march highlights Grandma’s resistance to objectification. Engaged in the process of subject-formation, the bride brings to the screen her sexual curiosity about the male body, giving herself a privileged viewpoint to unlock the forbidden sights and pleasures. From bondage to freedom, Mo’s tableau “shot” highlights a transformative Grandma who looks for creative ways to subvert the hierarchy of the ceremony. Her resistance begins with voyeurism: Succumbing to the oppressiveness in the carriage, Grandma eased one of her bamboo-shoot toes under the curtain and lifted it a crack to sneak a look outside. She could make out the shapes of the bearers’ statuesque legs poking out from under loose black satin trousers and their big, fleshy feet encased in straw sandals. They raised clouds of dust as they tramped along. Impatiently trying to conjure up an image of their firm, muscular chests, Grandma raised the toe of her shoe and leaned forward. She could see the polished purple scholar-tree poles and the bearers’ broad shoulders beneath them. . . . The men’s bodies emitted the sour smell of sweat. Infatuated by the masculine odor, Grandma breathed in deeply—this ancestor of mine must have been nearly bursting with passion. (Mo 1994, 42; emphasis added)

As the narrative unfolds, the bride’s seemingly innocent peeking initiates a chain of events that will ultimately include adultery, murder, disowning one’s parents, and other life-changing choices. Mo describes her eagerness to see, smell, and imagine the male body as an honest admission of her erotic interest. She breaks down physical and intellectual barriers by acting impulsively to “lift the curtain,” “sneak a look,” “make out the shape,” “conjure up an image,” and “lean forward” to steal a better look of the strange men’s chests. These are the actions of an inquisitive spirit who not only strains to see but also tries to make sense of what she sees. As a result, Mo Yan characterizes what Zhang Yimou calls an “unrestrained force of life and wild attitude toward living,” which celebrates impudence and creativity (E. Li 2001, 75–76). The bride’s desire to know transforms her from a sexualized object into a sexual subject, giving her the power to define and navigate interpersonal relationships. In the novel, this self-determination is most visible in Grandma’s camera-like gaze, zooming in to create literary “close-ups” that trace the movements of her eye and mind: from “bearers’ statuesque legs” and “their big, fleshy feet” to their “firm, muscular chests” and “broad shoulders,” these close-ups isolate the body parts magnified by the



The Close-up of Mo Yan and Zhang Yimou 21

bride’s scrutiny. Mo uses such descriptive, scaled adjectives as “big, fleshy,” “firm, muscular,” and “broad” to underscore the young woman’s appreciation for sensual enormity: these limbs in motion, like the phallic “purple scholar-tree poles,” are connected to a world that promises adventures, opportunities, pleasures, and risks. In Ways of Seeing, John Berger explains that Western artistic traditions create aesthetic ideals that objectify women. He quotes from the German Renaissance painter Albrecht Dürer (1471–1528) that “the ideal nude ought to be constructed by taking the face of one body, the breasts of another, the legs of a third, the shoulders of a fourth, the hands of a fifth—and so on. The result would glorify Man. But the exercise presumed a remarkable indifference to who any one person really was” (Berger 1972, 60). This is indeed the deconstructing effect of the close-up, which moves from one body part to another (excluding the face) without acknowledging the significance of the whole subject. The twist here, however, is that it is a woman who scrutinizes, eroticizes, and fragments the men who are objectified by her look and desire. Zhang celebrates the sexualizing activism of the female gaze in the novel. Since the interior thoughts of Grandma are not accessible to the film viewer without a confessional voiceover, the director puts the audience in her shoes by using point-of-view shots that envision the emotions of anxiety, curiosity, excitement, fear, and sadness. Adding to these expressive cues is a facial close-up that directs the viewer to speculate on the woman’s state of mind. What stokes her agitated imagination and initiates her desire to break the rules? Zhang alternates between these two types of shots to advance the narrative about the evolution of the bride’s emotions. The scene begins with Grandma’s exploratory gaze, which vividly juxtaposes light and shadow, feminine (foot) and masculine (foot), interior and exterior (Figure 1.11).

Figure 1.11  Bride sneaking a peep at the sedan bearer’s feet.

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The heavy drape in the foreground implies that the off-screen space occupied by the bride is oppressively dark and shallow. Meanwhile the well-trodden bright sand demarcates a path, a journey, and signals the carriers’ mobility. Zhang uses these two divided planes to unveil the differences between the two worlds and Grandma’s desire to transgress the border. The contrast between inside and outside, proximity and distance becomes even sharper in the next shot, in which Zhang cuts to a close-up of Grandma in the sedan chair (Figure 1.12). Grandma resembles a paper-cut figure pasted against a wall, anxious to be animated by events or people off the screen. Her face registers the very beginning of a sense of purpose that breaks this passivity and takes interest in what she sees. Zhang then cuts to an eyeline match shot that reveals the target of her gaze: the carriers’ upper bodies glistening with sweat in the sunlight (Figure 1.13).

Figure 1.12  Close-up of Grandma in the sedan chair.

Figure 1.13  A reverse shot of Grandma looking at the bearer’s body.



The Close-up of Mo Yan and Zhang Yimou 23

The curtain on the left transforms both Grandma and the viewer into theatrical spectators: together we are watching the live parade of a glistening male body outside the box. The bride’s scrutiny marks the awakening of a sexual consciousness embracing voyeurism and fetishism. In “Pleasure, Ambivalence, Identification,” Miriam Hansen asks, “If a man is made to occupy the place of the erotic object, how does this affect the organization of the vision? If the desiring look is aligned with the position of a female viewer, does this open up a space for female subjectivity and, by the same token, an alternative conception of visual pleasure?” (2000, 231). Feminist film scholars are skeptical about a simple role reversal that elevates the woman to the position of a viewing subject, because the appropriation of gaze ultimately confirms “the patriarchal logic of vision” and “reinforces the dominant system of aligning sexual difference with a subject/object dichotomy” (231). Despite these concerns, Hansen argues that the reversal “constitutes a textual difference which has to be considered from case to case and cannot be reduced a priori to its symbolic content within a phallocentric economy of signification” (231; emphasis in original). In the case of Red Sorghum, the agency of the look is undeniably self-affirming. At this point, Grandma has gone through two stages in the movie: being looked at and looking. When the film traces a conscious gaze that brings her scopophilic pleasure, the audience sees not just what she sees, but also feels what she feels. Berger suggests that an image reconfigured by a painter’s subjective viewpoint gives the viewer “an immediate sight” as well as “the painter’s experience” of relating to the art work she creates (1972, 59). Grandma can be considered as a painter whose eyes are her paintbrush, sketching out both the figures that attract her and her own emotive responses to that attraction. CLOSE-UPS IN LONG TAKES In the next shot, Zhang’s tighter close-up explains this process of self-revelation, showing the bride’s startled but responsive expression (Figure 1.14). Zhang’s portrait invites the viewer to do a close reading of Grandma’s face as a contoured map of character psychology: we see inscribed in her visage an eager anticipation; her purposeful eyes, parted lips, and dolledup appearance generate a larger-than-life image of desire that courts the camera and the viewer. To this extent, Zhang’s close-ups in long takes may have succeeded in creating a cinema of what Mary Ann Doane calls “the vehicle of presence,” because it expresses a simultaneous desire to possess and be possessed: “The close-up transforms whatever it films into a quasi-tangible thing, producing an intense phenomenological

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Figure 1.14  A tighter close-up of the bride’s desiring look.

experience of presence” and yet “that deeply experienced entity becomes a sign, a text, a surface that demands to be read” (2003, 93–94). In other words, just when Grandma’s look showcases an expressive longing for ownership, it also reveals an auto-erotic desire for staging what Laura Mulvey calls “to-be-looked-at-ness.” As she explains, “traditionally, the woman displayed has functioned on two levels: as erotic object for the characters within the screen story, and as erotic object for the spectator within the auditorium, with a shifting tension between the looks on either side of the screen” (1975, 6–7). At first glance, Mulvey’s critique of classic Hollywood films resonates with critics of Zhang’s close-up as a sell-out that eroticizes and objectifies women’s images for the pleasures of others. However, the chain of events in Red Sorghum challenges assumptions about the inflexibility of the division “active/male and passive/female” on the screen. Zhang’s progressivism is most effective when he shows in the sedan chair not an immutable heroine but the conscious evolution of a bride who becomes aware that “it is seeing which establishes our place in the surrounding world” (Berger 1972, 6). This literal and metaphorical eye-opening process helps Grandma understand how to use the power of her gaze to move people, communicate ideas, and dismantle barriers. Most critics study close-ups as tableaus, but in a single take Zhang creates a changing facial expression that requires multiple interpretations. First, we see a pensive bride with her eyes glancing down (Figure 1.15). It is a self-contained picture that gives away nothing except the impression of “I am thinking.” This is a critical moment at which the act of thinking confirms the formation of the bride as a skeptical subject. All the rules that have shaped the marital institution are now under scrutiny. But



The Close-up of Mo Yan and Zhang Yimou 25

Figure 1.15  The bride thinking and reflecting.

Figure 1.16  The resolute look of a bride figuring out what she likes.

her expression suddenly changes when she appears struck by a special thought or a certain feeling (Figure 1.16). Her eyes become wide open, conveying a sense of intense soul-searching. Her tightening jaw makes her look determined to investigate the source of an attraction that seems elusive and yet within grasp. The shift from downcast glances to wide-open eyes alters the mood in the sedan chair: the bride is ready to leap into action to act out her thoughts. Béla Balázs argues that in human beings “the eyes are more expressive than the neck or shoulders, and a close-up of the eyes irradiates more soul than the entire body in long shot. The director’s task is to discover the eyes of a landscape. Only in close-ups of these details will he grasp the soul of the totality: its mood” (2010, 44). The connection between eyes and mood becomes even more distinct in the subsequent expression: Grandma’s

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Figure 1.17  The bride in a long take expressing her desire.

intensity gives way to a look of yearning, as if she is overpowered by the surge of her libido (Figure 1.17). Her face is now softened by a slightly raised jaw, parted lips, and eyes misty with sexual curiosity. Zhang allows the camera to linger on her face as it moves from thinking to feeling, providing a comprehensive view of her psychological and physical transformation. Although “the relation between what we see and what we know,” as Berger famously says, “is never settled” (1972, 6), Zhang is explicit about the importance of making his female protagonist fearlessly iconic. In fact, her fearlessness or what Mo calls “freedom” and Zhang calls “courage” (Tan 1999/2000, 9) is the single most important personality trait enabling her to explore desire, take care of herself, pursue knowledge, redefine ethics, and subvert power structures. BEAUTY AND THE BEAST My final example reveals how Zhang selectively adapts Mo’s characterization of mood by using shot-reverse-shots to show the affective power of Grandma’s audacity. When the sedan bearers reach the sorghum field, they encounter a robbery. All the carriers and musicians are held up in a corner, while the robber opens the sedan curtain and bends down to squeeze one of Grandma’s bound feet. A smile creased her face, and the man pulled his hand away as though it had been scalded. . . . She rose from the seat, stepped grandly onto the pole, and alit in a tuft of cornflowers. Her gaze traveled from the man to the bearers and musicians. . . . Grandma stood confidently; lightning



The Close-up of Mo Yan and Zhang Yimou 27 crackled in the clouds overhead and shattered her radiant smile into a million shifting shards. The highwayman began pushing her into the sorghum field, his hand never leaving the object at his belt. She stared at Yu Zhan’ao with a feverish look in her eyes. Yu Zhan’ao approached the highwayman, his thin lips curled resolutely, up at one end and down at the other. (Mo 1994, 48)

Grandma’s smile is so unexpected that it shocks the robber. Instead of being frightened, Grandma is calm and poised. Mo uses such adverbs as “grandly” (da da fang fang 大大方方) and “confidently” (shu shi 舒適) to characterize her unhurried compliance with the highwayman’s demands. Notably, she tries to agitate the spectators with an inclusive look at the men: robber, carriers, and musicians. When this general appeal fails to arouse any meaningful action, she directly pleads her case to Yu Zhan’ao, staring at him with “a feverish look in her eyes.” Goldblatt translates kang fen (亢奮) as “feverish,” which highlights the burning delirium of her gaze, but a more literal translation is “excitable,” which captures the way masculine sexual arousal assigns to her gaze a transferable phallic quality. Excitable, feverish Grandma now has the dual mission of mobilizing herself and others. In the novel, Mo describes the bride’s ways of looking to highlight how she exploits the differentiating power of the gaze, using her look to initiate a competitive sport, daring the men to compete for being seen not only as the first respondent to her demand for help but also as fearless and courageous as the woman in front of them. Though under siege, Grandma is off the chair and off the chain, at least temporarily, despite the dire threat of an impending rape. The robbery is a crisis (or wei ji, dangerous opportunity) that gives her a playing field to test her mettle. Mo highlights the brilliance of the bride’s theatrical command of attention with such dramatic description as her being “alit in the tuft of cornflowers” while the lightning “crackled,” “shattering” her radiant smile into “a million shifting shards.” Instead of being minimized, Grandma multiplies; like a lightning strike, her gaze mesmerizes the spectators and electrifies the audience. Zhang identifies in Mo’s description the supremacy of audacity. He juxtaposes close-ups with reaction shots to translate the impact of the bride’s gaze and to maximize her star power that mobilizes the intra-diegetic crowd. When the robber approaches and then threatens her, she first bursts into a smile that lights up the screen (Figure 1.18). Her beaming expression appears anachronistic and dislodges her from the perilous situation. Is she naïve or is she laughing in the face of danger? Her smile displays a kind of disconcerting gratitude and a

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Figure 1.18  Grandma breaking into an enigmatic smile.

Figure 1.19  The masked face of the robber.

willingness to tempt fate and risk adventures. Zhang makes the charming look even more stunning in the next shot when he cuts to the masked robber (Figure 1.19). This is a beauty-and-beast moment. Hidden behind his mask, the robber uses his faceless anonymity as threat and protection. Compared with the bride’s full-screen exposure, the masked man offers the viewer no readable “text” or seductive mystery, only blank self-effacement. His barren look is, however, a farcical act, a cowardly fakery that is later confirmed when his gun turns out to be a twig. The affective power of Zhang’s aesthetic is most visible in the following shot sequence in which the bride interweaves flirtation with moral reprimand in a lengthy exchange of looks leading up to her rescue. Working with his principle of being direct and simple, Zhang cuts be-



The Close-up of Mo Yan and Zhang Yimou 29

Figure 1.20  Grandma’s sidelong glance to mobilize the intradiegetic spectators.

tween medium shots and close-ups to flesh out the attraction of the two protagonists. Grandma and Yu Zhan’ao stand apart from the others because the director gives their faces what Balázs calls “the deeper gaze,” a reflection of Zhang’s sensibility about what matters the most in the scene: the power of seduction. Grandma methodically works the crowd with an urgent appeal to their pathos and ethos, provoking the men, especially Yu, to feel sorry and responsible for her perils. If Balázs is right that “proximity renders details visible” and “appreciation of them all requires time” (2010, 40) then the slow take in the sequence is necessary to give the viewer time to explore the nuanced emotive and ethical attributes in Zhang’s every shot. The exchange of looks starts with a lower angle medium close-up of Grandma turning around to stare at the crew (Figure 1.20). Although critical studies on the significance of the gaze abound, few scholars have analyzed the broad implications of a sidelong glance that brings out a twisted body language and implies a turn of meanings. In Chinese, a sideways look (xie shi 斜视 or xie yan kan ren 斜眼看人) often commands a sense of superiority. This shot, for example, adopts a lower angle to elevate Grandma’s moral standing: her looking down and sideward registers a contempt that appears to reproach the paralysis of the squatting carriers and musicians off the screen. The slanted gaze also speaks of agitation, as if asking why she is the only one standing. Her twisted body signals a forward movement, but her turned head stalls the motion, denaturalizing her position in a way that makes her inaction look forceful and deliberate. When Zhang cuts to a medium reaction shot of the group, the viewer now sees the reciprocal glances multiplied to illuminate the bride’s eminence (Figure 1.21).

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Figure 1.21  A reverse shot of the sedan bearers who appear fearful.

Figure 1.22  Grandma looking back at the group of men.

A higher angle view of the men’s herd-like submission explains Grandma’s condescending, pejorative gaze. These half-naked men appear vulnerable and scared, their boisterous demeanor of moments ago having given way to anxiety, while she shows no fear of being made into victim twice on the same day: first as a feudal bride traded by her father for a black mule and second as a sexual prey about to be raped in plain sight. A cut back to Grandma, now a horizontal medium close-up, displays her scrutinizing, sidelong glance that seems to have locked on a target of interest off the screen (Figure 1.22). Her expression has a sense of tragic resolution that is both imploring and accusatory, exemplifying the specific kind of resistance that Foucault argues “always relies upon the situation against which it struggles” (1997, 168). She turns herself into an active agent to change the situation. “What kind of emotional experience,” continues Foucault, “what kind of relationships, were possible in a world where women in



The Close-up of Mo Yan and Zhang Yimou 31

society had no social, no legal, and no political power?” (1997, 168). Women need to use “that isolation and lack of power” to break out of the “discursive practices” that control them. The idea of turning weakness into strength is akin to the Daoist dialectic that sees “the weak overpowering the strong and the supple overpowering the stiff.”10 Loazi’s counterintuitive principle comes from his famous observation of how water—the softest of all elements— triumphs, without fail, over the strongest and the hardest.11 Whereas Foucault and Laozi describe a general philosophical possibility of turning powerlessness into power, Zhang Yimou offers an arguably more compelling visual strategy: his shot-reverse-shots stage visible but incremental changes in the spatial relations among people, objects, and landscape with the goal of intensifying and justifying Grandma’s gaze. In other words, as his camera moves closer and closer to the bride, it appears simultaneously to ensnare her body and magnify the force of her look. This approximation generates a kind of psychological tension that becomes evident in the reverse shot of the group, which zooms in to show a medium close-up of Yu looking alarmed and anxious (Figure 1.23). With a look that expresses both fear and guilt, he can no longer hide in “the living physiognomy of the crowd” (Balázs 2010, 42). Cutting back to a medium close-up of Grandma, we see an almost identical shot to her previous appearance but with a slightly raised jaw that reiterates a persistent demand (Figure 1.24). The series of shot-reverse-shots connotes as much sexual flirtation as political provocation. Adding to the scopophilic pleasure of watching Grandma looking at Yu Zhan’ao is the call for arms to battle the robber as a common enemy. A reaction shot then shows Yu raising his head higher in response (Figure 1.25).

Figure 1.23  Isolated shot of Yu Zhan’ao in the group.

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Figure 1.24  Grandma unwavering in her gaze.

Figure 1.25  Yu Zhan’ao responding to Grandma’s gaze.

As if he were a puppet being played on the string of gaze, Yu Zhan’ao moves on cue to respond to the crisis. Returning to a tighter close-up of Grandma, we see her being shifted to the left of the screen and slightly disfigured by the sorghum leaves (Figure 1.26). These changes add urgency to her beseeching look. The camera closes in, putting a tighter grip on a face under siege. After a cut back to an intense close-up of Yu, Zhang zooms in to show a more determined hero whose furrowed forehead bears the weight of his conscience (Figure 1.27). A final shot of the exchange puts Grandma in the midst of the sorghum field, being more fully cannibalized by the plants (Figure 1.28). Zhang’s mise-en-scène establishes a mood of foreboding: his closeups increase the proximity among the spectators, the character, and her

Figure 1.26  Grandma slowly cannibalized by the sorghum plants.

Figure 1.27  A tighter shot of Yu Zhan’ao showing his determination to act.

Figure 1.28  Grandma going deeper into the field.

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immediate surroundings. The plants, robber, and viewer are getting closer to her shot by shot. This closing-in compresses time and space in a way that heightens the threat of an imminent danger, but Grandma still wears an ascetic, unruffled expression. Zhang structures the sequence of these shots from medium close-ups to close-ups to intensify the psychological anxiety of the characters and the viewers. From sitting in a sedan chair to standing in the sorghum field, Mo and Zhang repeatedly test Grandma’s adaptability in drastic situations. They explore the differentiating power of her gaze and confirm her aptitude for survival and self-expression. Their formalistic strategies visualize the evolution of a girl in desperate circumstances willfully taking, indeed crafting, control over her desire and life, ultimately embodying their shared philosophical construct of a radically risk-taking, self-creative future personality (Jiao 2001, 6). Early in his career, Zhang identified a key mission in his filmmaking: he wanted to tell a good story about women who were not passive victims in feudal society. He saw in the economy of desire an opportunity for social reform and self-affirmation. Red Sorghum defends the rights of a woman to express her sexual desire and pursue sexual pleasure. The novel and the film sketch a political ideal that corresponds to Foucault’s call for selfcare, voicing a humanistic goal of harnessing the political power of artistic innovation. In Red Sorghum, it is the close-up that helps Zhang and Mo maximize the impact of an aesthetic language on the audience, because the face commands the kind of expressive power that travels across space and time to challenge oppressive social conventions. Encompassing so many complex nuances, the face can always turn crisis into opportunity: a raised jaw, sidelong glance, parted lips, and wide-open eyes all register a woman’s various concerns for improving her emotional and physical wellbeing. Lighting, framing, reaction shots, and close-ups of other objects and body parts further illustrate the contextual elements that mobilize the protagonist’s actions. Despite the feminist caution against the reinforcement of a patriarchal logic of vision by validating the power of the gaze, Red Sorghum affords Grandma the look that goes beyond the scope of objectifying the men she encounters. In fact, her scrutiny appropriates the dynamic among men in ways that she makes them compete for her affection. The gaze is a sport, play, and weapon. Zhang succeeds in giving more weight to the look because he often frames the close-up in a long take, allowing the viewer to see the variations of a character’s expression in a moving portrait. As in the case of



The Close-up of Mo Yan and Zhang Yimou 35

Grandma in the sedan chair, her demeanor changes from curiosity to longing all in one shot. Similarly, in Zhang’s Raise the Red Lantern (1990) the opening medium close-up of Lotus lasts seventy-three seconds, giving the viewer a full picture of how the daughter mourns the death of her father, negotiates with her stepmother about marriage, and tearfully complies with an exploitative pursuit of wealth (Deppman 2010). These close-ups in long takes become even more potent when combined with a series of shot-reverse-shots to contextualize the meaning of every image and tell the story behind Grandma’s transformative agency. Zhang’s movie is bold and controversial because for the first time his aesthetic makes visible a philosophical and textual connection between ethics and sexual liberation. If he positions the self “up close” so often in the film it is because expressing its needs helps establish new moral parameters in society. Grandma fights for her freedom to create the world as it evolves, to care for herself, acquire knowledge, and adapt to social changes. From self-negation to self-affirmation, Zhang stylizes the closeup to illustrate the possibilities of what Foucault calls the liberation of sexuality, highlighting “the practices of freedom by which one could define what is sexual pleasure and erotic, amorous and passionate relationships with others” (1997, 285). Foucault’s “gaze upon itself” accentuates a level of scrutiny best realized in Zhang’s commitment to making the subject see and reflect on its sovereignty. On self-reflection, Mary Ann Doane argues that “the closeup is always, at some level, an autonomous entity, a fragment, a “for-itself,” that presents “a potential semiotic threat to the unity and coherency of the filmic discourse” (2002, 90). In the case of Chinese cinema, this “threat” extends to the integrity of the Confucian ritualism that prefers restraint to release, deference to irreverence. Zhang’s art of emphasis hence gives the viewer expository scopophilia that banishes the virtue of being demure. Ultimately, the close-up in Red Sorghum gives the world audience a fresh look at the extent to which innovative directors like Zhang Yimou are willing to test the ethical limits of a visual language that maximizes women’s sexual autonomy.

C H A P T E R

T W O

The Art of the Close-up in Lust, Caution Ang Lee and Eileen Chang

If Zhang Yimou breaks new ground in modern Chinese cinema, Ang Lee shatters the norm for national Chinese cinema. His 1990s father-knowsbest trilogy riveted critics with its boundary-crossing transnational appeal and sparked a global interest in East-West comparative film studies. Wedding Banquet (1993) won the Golden Bear at the 1993 Berlin International Film Festival, echoing the triumph of Zhang’s Red Sorghum in 1988. Lee’s career blossomed during the resounding success of his martial arts blockbuster Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000) that won the Best Foreign Language Film Category at the 2001 Academy Awards. This diversity of awards, which includes Oscar, Golden Globe, Golden Bear, and Golden Lion, is matched by the range of genres: period drama, family film, neo-Western romance, Marvel comic superhero, survival fantasy, war trauma, and sci-fi thriller, among others. Lee scholarship shows a similar versatility: from comparative philosophies (Arp, Barkman, and McRae 2013) and cultural studies (Darius and Fung 1997; K. Chan 2004; Yeh and Davis 2005; Dilley 2015) to psychoanalysis (Nayar 2011; Coe 2014) and adaptation studies (Deppman 2010; Ding 2011), critics have examined his oeuvre through many lenses. Such an impressive track record demonstrates that Lee, more than any other Chinese-language director, has succeeded in transforming stories from all cultural origins into worldwide blockbusters. But how does a director born and raised on the small island of Taiwan become a Hollywood and art house favorite? One of Lee’s greatest strengths is his ability to synthesize ideas, genres, and practices in ways that invite the viewers to rise above cultural, historical, and national boundaries. He describes, for 36



The Art of the Close-up in Lust, Caution 37

instance, the attraction of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon as “Jane Austen meets Bruce Lee” (Lane 2000), an anachronistic encounter that highlights the thrill and ambition of his cinematic magic. Sensitive to issues of artistic appropriation and cultural authenticity, Lee seeks to create an art without borders by exposing a shared human anxiety about the risks and rewards of translating among languages, cultures, and peoples. Like Zhang Yimou, Ang Lee sees the close-up as the most effective stylistic window into character psychology. Whereas Zhang associates the face with subjectivity and social progressivism, Lee views and presents the symbolic meanings of the portrait shot with caution, questioning whether what one sees is what one should believe. His skepticism emerges from intense intellectual negotiations with the ideas of two iconic figures—Confucius and Sigmund Freud—whose instructive views of altruism and superego help us interpret the psychoses of Lee’s characters. Lee’s 2007 adaptation of Eileen Chang’s 1978 spy thriller Lust, Caution stands out for the way it involves Freudian and Confucian themes and dramatizes the tensions of narcissism and patriotism. The story is about an idealistic college student, Wang Chia-chih (Tang Wei), who is “resolved to do her duty” (E. Chang 2007, 27) by seducing a Japanese collaborator, Mr. Yee (Tony Leung), in order to assassinate him. In the end, her resolution falters because she suspects that the seasoned operator Mr. Yee has fallen in love with her. But the spy chief quickly disproves Chia-chih’s assumption by capturing and executing her and her cohort.1 This unsettling ending prompted Ang Lee’s longtime producer and screenwriter James Schamus to ask, “Why did she do it? . . . What act, exactly, does Wang Chia-chih perform at the fateful moment in the jeweler’s shop when she decides whether or not to go through with the murder of her lover?” (Schamus 2007, 63; emphasis in original). This question haunts readers because the protagonist’s fatal decision appears impulsive, enigmatic, unpatriotic, suicidal, and cruel. Schamus believes that Chang is asking us a rhetorical question to which the answer is yes: “for at the crucial moment when we choose, when we decide, when we exercise our free will, are we not also performing?” (2007, 63; emphasis in original). Chia-chih may never stop performing, but what compels the drama and creates what Lee calls “the juice of the film” (Lyman 2001), I argue, is that both Chang and Lee deny the protagonist the power to exercise free will. Caught in a network of failed negotiations with social relations governed by Confucian ethics and the Freudian superego, the love-struck college girl walks deeper and deeper into the trap of her stage role that strokes her ego and dooms her chances of survival.

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Lee interprets the protagonist and society in these terms in part because he was brought up in a Confucian household but later received a Western education. A second-generation Chinese born in Taiwan in 1954, he moved to the United States for graduate study in 1978, and his crosscultural experience as Taiwanese, Chinese, and American helps him explore identity crises where people are both anchored and alienated by Confucian precepts. Reflecting on his childhood, Lee describes how his father “was a very serious man; very Confucian” and how he first assumed that making films was “getting away from” this Confucian past but later realized that “you always have to come back to your roots” (M. Berry 2005, 329).2 Confucianism is so deeply ingrained in the fabric of Chinese everyday life that Lee sees it as an indomitable cultural force. He embeds a maxim from The Analects in his autobiography: “I daily reflect on my promise to practice three virtues”—truthfulness, sincerity, and diligence (A. Lee 2002, 6).3 But Lee is no conformist. After living under the shadow of his father’s expectations for decades, he was critical of an oppressive, regimented system that stifles creativity. His resistance to Confucianism became more intellectualized after the acute “cultural shock” or “upside down” experience of studying drama at the University of Illinois, where he read about the impact of sex drive, desire, shame, and guilt on the human mind in Western philosophy and literature (A. Lee 2002, 42–44). This academic background helps explain why he is drawn to emotionally repressed characters who share the angst of mediating between places and cultures. Li Mubai, Yu Shu Lien, and Jen Yu in Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, to name but a few, are archetypes for this quest for self-realization because, as Lee puts it, their creator Wang Dulu “was into Freud and Greek tragedy” (M. Berry 2005, 343). Lee attracts both Asian and Euro American art house audiences by making films “in a way that also integrates Western notions of psychoanalytical character development” (Lyman 2001). Adapting to the demands of different markets and cultures, Lee distills from Chang’s tale of love, betrayal, and seduction the pathos of conflicting morals. Although Confucius (an ethicist) and Freud (a psychoanalyst) may seem to have come from different planets because of their culturally encoded influences, Ang Lee brings them together in his adaptation of Chang’s story by focusing not only on character psychologies but also on the complex social relations that help define Chinese identity politics, a recurring topic that personalizes his art: “I feel most at home exploring human relationships,” he explains. “Each time I think I’m drifting away from that, I somehow seem to come back” (M. Berry



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2005, 355). Lee’s thematic choice echoes the Confucian view of the world in which the proper management of interpersonal connections is considered the cornerstone of a civil society. Confucius famously proposes “three cardinal guides and five constant virtues” to stabilize a feudal social order in which “ruler guides subject, father guides son, and husband guides wife.”4 These conservative edicts are as psychologically binding as Freud’s assertion about the disciplinary cultural demands that affect “a person as a neighbor, as a source of help, as another person’s sexual object, as a member of a family and of a State” (Freud 1989b, 48). Both thinkers share the view that civilization ultimately aims to replace “the power of the individual by the power of a community” (Freud 1989b, 49). Chang and Lee find the prescriptive pressures of socialization oddly inspiring because the conflict emerging from coping with different groups of people is often deeply felt and therefore touches the “core emotion” that resonates with readers and viewers.5 In the case of Chia-chih, her trouble begins when she tries but fails to think for herself, creating a crisis of confidence in her interpretation of the multiple narrative strands in her script. Chang and Lee share an interest in identity politics and psychoanalytical drama, and close analyses of passages and scenes reveal how they experiment with literary and filmic techniques by combining interior monologues, flashbacks, and portrait shots to dramatize and at times efface the promise of a romantic tale. Chang uses objectifying “close-ups” to magnify the loss of human autonomy and track multilayered mind games. Lee is able to visualize interwoven abstract feelings such as anxiety, fear, pain, and regret—sometimes belabored in Chang’s free indirect discourse—through the effective use of emotive color scripts, shotreverse-shots, and divided screen planes. Both artists raise questions about the dissonance between image and interpretation, making visible the depth of Chinese cinema’s surface through a woman’s masquerade, a mask of self-preservation that lures prey and evades enemies (A. Lee 2007, 61). TALES OF TWO ARTISTS Born more than three decades apart, Eileen Chang (1920–1995) and Ang Lee (b. 1954) are two of the most influential artists of their generations. Since the publication of her short stories in the magazine Violet (Zi luo lan) in 1943, Chang has remained a popular and critically acclaimed writer in Chinese-speaking communities. From her first collection of short stories

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Romance (Chuan shuo, 1944) to her posthumous novels Little Reunion (Xiao tuan yuan, 2009), Book of Change (Yi jing, 2010), and The Fall of the Pagoda (Lei feng ta, 2010), her work has created an aura, attracting Chinese writers, filmmakers, and critics to interpret her literary style and philosophy.6 Equally remarkable is Ang Lee’s reinvention of Chinese cinema on a global stage. Lee has popularized a traditional Chinese film genre— martial arts cinema—to new audiences in a new century and continued to experiment with film forms in diverse cultural contexts (Deppman 2010, 11–33). At first glance, Chang and Lee seem a generation apart with different talents, but a closer look shows that the two share an important bordercrossing experience that helps shape their aesthetics. Chang moved from China to Hong Kong in 1952 and from Hong Kong to the US in 1955. Lee left Taiwan for the US in 1978 and has since lived and worked in New York. Their transcultural journeys help explain how they represent broad, rich, and complicated human interactions. Chang, for instance, defines art as an expressive means that “provides a unique access to the kind of people to whom we would not have otherwise come close” (E. Chang 1995, 23). Similarly, Lee comments that a recurrent theme in his work is “people in a changing time” (M. Berry 2005, 155). They focus on morally ambivalent figures and seek out aesthetic practices that can express the emotional challenges of people transitioning between places and historical periods. Chang and Lee create intermedial art forms that integrate cinema and literature. As scholars have pointed out, Chang was a movie aficionado, film critic, and screenwriter, and her experience in the film industry gave her an insider’s knowledge about adaptation.7 From her earliest writing, she practiced the visual techniques of close-up, montage, and contrast of light and shadow, novelizing cinematic visions that illustrate the psychological predicaments of her characters.8 By the same token, Ang Lee avidly appreciates popular literature. All ten of his most recent films are adaptations from fiction. “I need material that has the brilliance and research and the heart of other writers,” he explains. “I borrow them. I snatch them” (M. Berry 2005, 340). As a result, his films are steeped in literary techniques such as impersonal narration, flashbacks, and irony. These intermedial practices are further fashioned by a shared interest in melodrama, romance, and other popular genres. Along with Dream of the Red Chamber and Plum in the Golden Vase, Chang reads Zhang Henshui, Somerset Maugham, John le Carré, and James Jones, and speaks often and openly about fame, money, and other rewards of being a successful writer



The Art of the Close-up in Lust, Caution 41

(Shui 2000, 38). Popular as she is among critics and elites, she writes for the masses. The same is true of Lee, a student of Hollywood who relishes commercial success and makes his films accessible to a vast international audience. He writes and adapts scripts that appeal to everyone. His fatherknows-best trilogy, for example, is a series of melodramatic family ethic films (Jia ting lun li pian), a genre that has remained popular in Chinese culture.9 From Jane Austen to Wang Dulu to Eliot Tiber to Ben Fountain, Lee has embraced a wide range of popular fiction and used camera movement, film speed, and editing to build up dramatic tension and enhance the public appreciation of his movies. Among Lee’s sixteen feature films, only two—Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000) and Lust, Caution (2007)—are adaptations from Chinese stories. Lee finds in Chang’s narrative the ambivalence that speaks to his own angst about the false certainty of moral rectitude. Although Lust, Caution is often considered a minor work of her fiction, Chang revised the plot for decades after starting in 1953, publishing it only in 1978 (Cai 2007, 20).10 Because the story presents no clear moral indictment of a womanizing Japan sympathizer who tortured and executed Chinese patriots during the Second Sino-Japanese War (1937–1945), the villain’s survival evoked the wrath of righteous critics. Having grown up in a Confucian family, Lee understands Chang’s apprehension. He compares her compulsive revisions to a criminal who “might return to the scene of a crime, or as a victim might reenact a trauma, reaching for pleasure only by varying and reimagining the pain” (A. Lee 2007, 59). Lee’s analogy draws attention to the psychological entrapment of the tale and expresses his readerly interest in investigating Chang’s detailed construction of a “crime scene” (A. Lee 2007, 59).11 His description of Chang’s “compulsion to repeat” resembles his own return to his Confucian past and echoes Sigmund Freud’s interpretation of “traumatic dreams” in Beyond the Pleasure Principle. Freud describes a patient’s fixation to the originating traumatic experience: “dreams occurring in traumatic neuroses have the characteristic of repeatedly bringing the patient back into the situation of his accident, a situation from which he wakes up in another fright” (1989a, 11–12). Freud is known for quoting literature to support his psychoanalytical studies, and some of his patients’ dreams are akin to Chang’s fiction.12 Lee’s filmic adaptation may therefore be seen as a diagnostic reading of Chang’s story, pointing out the author’s (and his own) masochistic tendency to take pleasure in pain.

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Lee’s interest in psychoanalysis explains his focus on the “cruelty” of Chang’s language and justifies the directorial amplification of the sadistic sexual relationship between Chia-chih and Mr. Yee, a plot addition that earned the film an NC-17 rating. It also invites critics to take a closer look at Chang’s own writerly compulsion: if she knew the risk of writing a controversial story, what motivated her to take the plunge? Chang’s anxiety, one may surmise, was related to her unhappy childhood and fateful marriage, two subjects that have been documented in biographical studies and her own writings.13 Ang Lee understands that Chang’s literary cruelty is in part a response to the constraints that enforce a Confucian social order, gender hierarchy, and moral dualism. In Freudian terms, a person is rendered “neurotic because he cannot tolerate the amount of frustration which society imposes on him in the service of its cultural ideals” (Freud 1989b, 39). Given the intensity of the ideological pressures during the height of the Cold War, when she was writing the story, we can imagine that Chang’s compulsive revision was a way of coping with the Chinese moralism of the 1950s and beyond. “ALL THAT GLITTERS” Shanghai was an “orphan island” that fell to imperial Japan from 1941 to 1945.14 According to Cai Dengshan, Chang’s marriage to the infamous Japan sympathizer Hu Lancheng in 1944 jeopardized her burgeoning career and subjected her to such insults as “a female traitor” during the occupation period (Cai 2007, 24–27). Unsurprisingly, Chang is sensitive to the political and ethical implications of a story that not only exposes the flawed logic of an aborted patriotic act but also concludes with the triumph of a villain.15 Responding to critics who are outraged by her setting a traitor free, Chang asks, “Writing about an antagonist, should we not get into his mind rather than simply scorn or caricature him from an outsider’s viewpoint?” (1995, 23; my translation). Chang’s rhetorical question reveals a defiant vision, one that seeks to broaden and diversify the aesthetic representations of ethically dubious figures. From Qiqiao in Golden Cangue (1944) to Zhenbao in “Red Rose/ White Rose” (1944) to Big Aunt in The Rice-Sprout Song (1954), she created a list of memorable characters and sophisticatedly presented their ignominious self-interest. Lust, Caution is no exception. Systematically, Chang works cinematic techniques into her narrative to pinpoint and amplify the source of societal ailments, especially the loss of human agency in a materialistic environment. Then she exposes the hamartia of a protagonist who, a poor reader of human psychology, tries but fails to transform a grisly spy movie



The Art of the Close-up in Lust, Caution 43

into a romantic comedy. These structural elements are carried out stylistically, and both are immediately evident in the opening scene: Although it was still daylight, the hot lamp was shining full-beam over the mahjong table. Diamond rings flashed under its glare as their wearers clacked and reshuffled their tiles. The tablecloth, tied down over the table legs, stretched out into a sleek plain of blinding white. The harsh artificial light silhouetted to full advantage the generous curve of Chia-chih’s bosom, and laid bare the elegant lines of her hexagonal face, its beauty somehow accentuated by the imperfectly narrow forehead, by the careless, framing wisps of hair. (E. Chang 1997, 10)16

Chang highlights the multiple sources of illumination in the house: daylight, lamp, glaring diamond rings, and blinding white tablecloth. The hot, flashing, cruel lights create a sense of urgency, overexposure, and intensity even as they raise questions about what may be hidden in the shadows. One answer seems to be the loss of human agency, for Chang’s syntax—well caught by the English translator Julia Novell—consistently uses physical objects as the subjects of active verbs: “The hot lamp was shining . . . Diamond rings flashed out . . . The tablecloth . . . stretched out,” and so forth. This striking technique, reminiscent of passages in the European realism of Balzac or Flaubert and in the Marxist idea of reification that turns people into things, eliminates human subjectivity and hints at the subjugation of the characters by their material possessions. Chang’s syntax also makes her description behave more like an objective camera than a third-person omniscient narrator, because it gives these objects such an unrelenting sense of autonomy. Chang is careful, for example, to say that the diamond rings “flashed” under the glare of the lamp “as their wearers clacked and reshuffled their tiles” (emphasis added). Rather than affirming human possession— and here the translator does take liberty by saying “their wearers,” rather than “their diamonds” or “the diamonds they wear” [in Chinese the sentence reads, 一隻隻鑽戒]—this stylistic choice tacitly endows the gems with the power to possess the humans: people are not people, they are vehicles for glitter, diamonds’ “wearers.” Such a subject-object reversal stylistically anticipates the narrative peril of the heroine Chia-chih, who later seems enslaved and objectified by the diamond ring given to her by Mr. Yee. In a similar vein, Chang’s opening sequence constructs an analogy between precious stone and beautiful body, as the competing illuminations light up both the diamonds and Chia-chih. Moving again like a camera, the literary “close-up” blows up the details of her body in a way that seems to eliminate her subjectivity. It begins by showcasing the heroine’s sensual bosom and then ascends, coming to rest on her face which, being

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cut in a hexagonal shape, morphs into a diamond. This analogy foreshadows the way in which Chia-chih will be a glittering toy to Mr. Yee, who plays with lives, as a diamond is to these socialites playing mahjong. Chang’s writing style, especially her hexagonal “diamond” configuration of the subject, evokes the idea of Marxist reification, which characterizes social relations through the laws of commodity, being “consummated in the relation of a thing, of money, to itself” (Marx 384, quoted in Lukács 1971, 94). For Marx and Lukács, reified consciousness transforms traded objects into subjects with “invisible forces that generate their own power” and turns human subjects into passive objects, alienated from their own labor and unable to change the course of their action (10). The abstract qualities of human emotions are now rationalized into things which one “can ‘own’ or ‘dispose of’ like the various objects of the external world” (24). Yet despite the objectification of a woman’s body, Chang resists the narrative temptation to reify Chia-chih’s feelings. Her close-ups and supersaturated lights both expose and conceal the protagonist’s complex self-interpretation. In addition to seductive curves, the protagonist has an “imperfectly narrow forehead” and “careless, framing wisps of hair.” These visible signs of dissonance insinuate Chia-chih’s two-faced subjectobject existence, for she plays the money-minded Mrs. Mai—the bordercrossing and trade-seeking wife of a Hong Kong businessman—as well as an ideologically driven student who becomes ambivalent about the purpose of her mission. Her playacting becomes so convincing that she fatally loses herself in the first role. In the opening paragraph, Chang has already sketched out two key seductive forces—diamonds and the female body—that play off the contrast between light and shadow. Despite the detailed description of the space and her face, the sum of its parts never adds up to a greater whole— Chia-chih remains as undefinable a figure as Mary Ann Doane’s femme fatale: a woman “who never is really what she seems to be” (1991, 1). Her disguise and mystery confound the “masculine structure of the look” and effect “a defamiliarization of female iconography” (26). Chang’s protagonist is not to be read like an open book. She has deadly secrets. FRAME OF REFERENCE Ang Lee captures Chang’s self-objectifying representation but emphasizes the loss of human autonomy in political history rather than in capitalist materiality. Instead of opening with Chang’s object-laden, domestic interior, Lee starts his film with a series of outdoor shots that patch together a historical big picture and accentuate the physical and psychological imprisonment of the characters: it is 1942 in Japanese-occupied Shanghai.



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Whereas Chang parodies the mundane comfort of merrymakers and hints at the darkness underlying a bright, well-lit household, Lee directly portrays the grim reality of a quartered society under siege. Opening the film with a German shepherd—itself an emblem of beauty and cruelty—Lee draws attention to the political crisis plaguing the city and the nation (Figure 2.1). All is under the watchful eyes of a trained foreign guard dog. Lee’s camera then moves upward to capture the steely expression of a guard on the ground (Figure 2.2).

Figure 2.1  Close-up of a German shepherd.

Figure 2.2  Guard #1 with a devious look.

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His sidelong glance and decentered position combine into a devious, suspicious look that complements Lee’s consistent use of a cheerless palette—dark blue and gray—to accentuate the emotional gloom of the outdoor scenes. The blurred background makes the shallow focus on the man’s tilted face seem even more oppressive and menacing, like the German shepherd: he is the attack dog of a rogue regime governed by power and greed. In this distinct close-up, Lee carefully divides the screen into two planes—foreground and background. But, departing from a Jean Renoir–style deep focus that simultaneously presents different actions in two planes, a split that defies any monolithic view of integrated screen action, Lee’s main strategy here is to make the viewer aware of how other narrative threads are deliberately suppressed in order to emphasize the actor’s threatening expression in the foreground. Cutting to a medium long shot of an armed guard patrolling the area from a balcony, Lee aptly sketches a larger picture of a war-torn society divided by race, class, and political allegiance (Figure 2.3). Like Chang’s stylized syntax, Lee’s crisp montage illustrates the occupants’ paralysis in Mr. Yee’s residence under tight security. The irony is that Yee’s power in the collaborationist government both liberates and imprisons him. This double-edged situation (also a trademark of Chang’s writing) is especially visible in the first shot of a later scene in which Yee emerges behind prison bars, where he has just completed the gruesome interrogation of suspected spies (Figure 2.4).

Figure 2.3  Guard #2 patrolling on the balcony.



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Figure 2.4  Mr. Yee behind bars.

Here again we see a clear division of foreground and background, and the blurred background magnifies Yee’s brooding expression, which registers his shady existence: he is literally and metaphorically a man behind bars, tortured by his conscience and ambition. This is a point Ang Lee returns to again and again in the film and in his commentary. He compares Yee, for instance, to a prostitute working for the Japanese (2007, 60). The surname Yee (Yi in pinyin; 易) conveys such meanings as “trade,” “change,” and “easiness,” words that suggest deal-making, instability and shiftiness. By the same token, the fake surname of Chia-chih is Mai (麥), which explicitly rhymes with “sell” (賣), anticipating the tragic trade of her body and life for a romantic fantasy. Chang and Lee make both characters appear self-conscious about how their situations seem analogous to that of prostitutes (E. Chang 2007, 19). Moreover, as Lee points out, the Chinese word for prostitute “chang” (娼) rhymes with “the kill of a tiger” (倀), a word play that suggests that a tiger’s kill can be forced into working “for the tiger, helping to lure more prey into the jungle” (A. Lee 2007, 59). These nuanced psychological entrapments are critical to the exposition by both Chang and Lee of the ambivalent master-slave dynamic that complicates the power structures in interpersonal relationships. But a key difference in their work is the way in which they construct the interaction between humans and spaces. Chang’s narrative moves discursively from the inside outward. Her opening scene blows up the details of the materialistic obsession that provides a fragmented, kaleidoscopic view of a city on edge. Lee moves in the opposite direction, showing how

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the private world gets smaller and more isolated in response to the oppressive political climate. Why does Lee begin by reconstructing a historical reality to which Chang refers more quietly and implicitly? Part of this is Lee’s integration of Chinese aesthetic with Western sensibility: “You go from the setting, to the person, to the looking at nature, to the internal feelings. This was as close as Chinese could get to psychoanalysis. We just didn’t go there directly, only through metaphor” (Lyman 2001). This montage sequence explains the metaphorical pairing of the German shepherd with the roguelooking security guard. But part of the design is also marketing: whereas Chang appeals to a Chinese-speaking readership knowledgeable about its immediate political history, Lee aims to attract a global audience in need of interpretive shots that aid contextual understanding.17 Another point is that Lee stretches out Chang’s twenty-six-page short story (in Chinese) into a 157-minute film; to transform a vignette into an epic, he expands Chang’s densely written introduction into three scenes. Cutting to the interior of Yee’s house in the second scene, Lee shows that Mrs. Yee and her guests are getting ready for another round of mahjong. The contrast between the first two scenes in the film is immediate, not only because of the differences in color and lighting (grayish blue outdoor versus homey soft yellow indoor) but also because of the visible gender and class differences (male guards versus female socialites). This shift takes place in the first shot: we see a maid carrying a tray of desserts upstairs for the guests (Figure 2.5).

Figure 2.5  Interior scene—maid carrying snacks for the socialites.



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Figure 2.6  Close-up of bejeweled hands.

This image sustains an illusion about the stability and continuity of an orderly, stratified world in which hunger, death, revolt, and many other disasters are hidden behind the wall. If Chang parodies the sense of excess by enumerating the sources of illumination, Lee plays up the characters’ sequestered affluence (and boredom) by illustrating their insatiable consumption. A close-up of several manicured hands on the table, for instance, gives a disembodied view of their obsession with gems and their symbolic value (Figure 2.6). Like Chang, Lee uses closeups for the dual purpose of exposure and concealment. Masquerading as one of the socialites, Chia-chih shows her hands the same way the others do. But, in contrast to Chang, who focuses exclusively on the heroine, Lee gives equal attention to all four women: just as their polished nails morph into mahjong tiles, so do all four women function interchangeably as tokens. The blended visual equilibrium suggests that Chia-chih has successfully integrated herself into her staged role as a businessman’s wife. This feat becomes more apparent in a medium close-up in which Chia-chih wears a theatrically bland smile to showcase her uniformity: she’s a tile like the others (Figure 2.7). Yet the playacting of Chia-chih also creates a sense of dissonance that destabilizes the viewer’s ownership of her image and opens up an unexpected opportunity for women to scrutinize the self-other configuration. Chia-chih’s polite smile, genuine and false all at once, mitigates the force of her direct gaze.

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Figure 2.7  Chia-chih’s theatrically bland smile.

“WRITING IN IMAGES” Ang Lee is a leader of global Chinese cinema not because of his obsessions with Confucian and Freudian doctrines but because of his ability to scrutinize human compulsions and find weaknesses in misogynistic ideology. Lee says, “I want Lust, Caution to provoke closer examination of ourselves—not only our sexual desire or our motivations, but how we see the world . . . , so we can peel them off to see the subconscious beneath. Everyone has their own particular lust, but let’s take a look and see what that is” (Davies 2008). Lee’s investigative approach to character psychoses and misogyny is successful in that he is able to adopt what he calls a female perspective: “In my culture, there’s a tradition that when you’re in an overwhelming situation and you don’t know what to do, you put yourself in a woman’s shoes. I guess this makes it easier for me in a dramatic situation to identify more with women than with men” (Davies 2008). This is especially true when we take into account Ang Lee’s own “gender switch” at the beginning of his career: unable to find work, he was a house husband for six years, raising two young children and taking care of domestic chores while his biologist wife supported the family (A. Lee 2002, 51–62). This stay-at-home experience intensifies Lee’s concern with gender issues. A perceptive reader, he recognizes in Chang’s objectifying closeup a feminist effort to make women different from what they are assumed to be so as to render interpretations of their psychologies more complex



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and to incorporate their perspective in self-definition. Both Chang and Lee see in the double-sidedness of playacting the critical power of distance and ambivalence that allows their protagonist to resist what Confucius and Freud say about women. To contextualize the misogynistic cultural logic against which the writer and the director work, I will briefly summarize the key thoughts and practices of the two thinkers and explain why they are important to our understanding of Lust, Caution as a feminist film text. Confucius famously laments, “Only women and despicable men are the most difficult to deal with. If you get too close to them, they become insubordinate. If you stay far away from them, they are resentful.”18 Speaking as a man of letters, Confucius considers the waywardness of women and their likes menacing for junzi the gentleman, because they pose an existential threat to an orderly social system in which the unwieldy needs to be kept at the right distance. Given the severity of his judgment, the sage is nonetheless unclear about why and how he thinks women should be contained. Is the female sex too complicated to be understood and therefore she must not speak? Can we trust the viewpoint of Confucius and his likes who assume women’s “lack of morality” the source of social ills? Chang and Lee challenge these assumptions by using close shots to uncover what has been suppressed: “The woman’s perspective,” Lee explains, “is like the dark side of the moon: it always exists, but it is never exposed, at least not in my culture” (Davies 2008). Lust, Caution is one of the most important texts that gives women a voice, because, Lee states, it “is a story written by a woman from a woman’s point of view, and Wong Chia Chi [Tang Wei] is a strong character” (Davies 2008). In a similar vein, Freud shares with Confucius an urge to restrict women’s self-knowledge. In his lecture “Femininity,” Freud suggests that “throughout history, people have knocked their heads against the riddle of the nature of femininity” (1964, 113). In patronizing fashion, Freud contends that this riddle is only men’s worry: “to those of you who are women this will not apply—you are yourselves the problem” (1964, 113). This statement, as Mary Ann Doane points out, makes two provocative assumptions. Freud’s purpose of studying women is to understand men: “The claim to investigate an otherness is a pretense, haunted by the mirror-effect by means of which the question of the woman reflects only the man’s own ontological doubts” (Doane 1991, 18). Hence the inquiry about femininity is not intended to discover what woman is but to know what men think she is. This priority justifies the second assumption: the woman herself is “the problem” and therefore should be banished from analyzing the nature of femininity, because she is too close to

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her body to see properly and “the lack of a distance between seeing and understanding, the mode of judging, ‘in a flash,’ is conducive to what might be termed as ‘over-identification’ with the image” (Doane 1991, 23– 24). For Freud, the woman’s body “problem” is biological and psychological, and comes, simply speaking, from the castration complex and penis envy. Her sense of deficiency is what makes the woman the object of speculation, not the subject of inquisition. Chang and Lee recognize the arbitrariness of an epistemological order that gives only men the interpretive power. In rebutting the famous writer Yu Wairen’s criticism of Lust, Caution, Chang points out that the critic intentionally misreads and even alters her text to make Chia-chih look immoral (1995, 20–22). Such distortion is doubly ominous when Yu Wairen concludes by suggesting that Eileen Chang needs to be careful in treating a topic of such sensitive nature because of her personal history.19 Mixing fiction with biography, Yu insinuates that Chang is tainted by her characters’ bad behaviors. Despite these moralizing critiques, Chang refuses to be intimidated by hostile male readers. Rejecting the Confucian expectations of a woman to be demure, she accuses Yu of being an “irresponsible” reader who makes false statements about the author and her text. Lust, Caution, Chang argues, presents multiple sides of a complex female character who, like many men, gravitates toward power and narcissistic selfappreciation. An important early moment occurs when Chia-chih becomes intoxicated with the power of her performance after a successful theatrical production. Her response suggests that she has started to become aware of the seduction of masquerade, that she can combine traditionally feminine “looked-at-ness” with masculine control over the signs she gives out while acting. Chia-chih appears “radiant during the playacting,” because she knows that she commands “the full allure of the stage” (E. Chang 1997, 20; my translation) and this exciting new possibility makes her restless all night after the show. Chang “understood playacting and mimicry,” says Ang Lee, noticing a similar structure in her text: “animals, like her characters, use camouflage to evade their enemies and lure their prey” (A. Lee 2007, 61). Camouflage and masquerade give women a defense that frees them from the cultural expectations of compliance and passivity. They can be as active as men in dictating the appropriateness of interpersonal distance, a condition for self-determination that Confucius finds nearly impossible in the management of social relations. Playacting also echoes Freud’s comment about women’s bisexuality, a destabilization of “normative” behaviors that becomes most useful to feminist discussion about the female agency of self-scrutiny.20



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Doane points out that androgyny makes possible a form of masquerade that gives women the necessary distance from herself to take an analytical “second look” (1991, 19).21 Female spectatorship, she argues, can only be possible through masquerade: “The effectivity of masquerade lies precisely in its potential to manufacture a distance from the image, to generate a problematic within which the image is manipulable, producible, and readable by the woman” (32). Becoming another to understand the self, masquerade gives the woman the critical distance to be an observer and to solve her own riddle. In Lust, Caution, Chang examines the power of the feminist masquerade attentively but also suspiciously. She highlights the exhilaration and energy of Chia-chih’s performance on stage and in life. After infiltrating successfully into the Yees’ social circle as the wife of a businessman, the college sophomore returns to the rental house she shares with other compatriots, feeling beside herself: “Resplendent in the high-society costume in which she had performed so supremely, she wanted everyone to stay on to celebrate with her, to carouse with her until morning” (E. Chang 2007, 24). Despite the self-congratulatory excitement, Chia-chih’s desire to stay as someone else as long as possible to remain notable and meaningful carries an air of desperation. The generic conventions of a spy narrative allow Chang and Lee to exploit the multiple personas of a conflicted agent. They investigate not only who she is but also what she plays—a smuggler, a house guest, a business woman, a seductress, a lover, a spy, and an assassin. Masquerade gives her the capacity to step outside herself to study “Chia-chih” as a protean character. “RING OF TRUTH” Chia-chih’s desire to stay in masquerade reveals a troubling weakness in the feminist search for an “out-of-body” female spectatorship through playacting, however. What if Chia-chih fails to differentiate who she is and what she pretends to be? Or if the protagonist becomes the character she assumes, does she still have the critical distance that could enable her path to self-knowledge? Doane and Miriam Hansen have not gone so far as to speculate on the possibilities of women as problematic interpreters of their own experiences. They envision the formation of a female spectator as the first step to challenge the existing power structure. Lust, Caution projects the behind-the-scene consequences of a successful but tragic masquerade. Chang gives Chia-chih the power to scrutinize and the will to speak, but also shows the psychological trappings that distort her observations. The literary close-up projects more of the female

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protagonist’s desire than the viewer’s, obstructing the process of identification that is expected to align the two in a conventional narrative. This is the case of her cruel exposition of Chia-chih’s tragic flaw—hubris. Chia-chih is first blinded by narcissism and then beguiled by the glitter of the diamond, a simulacrum of romantic love that she wishes would be the answer for the riddle she is tasked to solve. Her complacency peaks at the critical scene in the jewelry store in which she sees herself on stage, playing an authorial role and able to rewrite the conclusion of her story. She gains this confidence by holding on to the diamond ring, an object of power that momentarily gives her the illusion of control: She examined the ring under the lamplight, turning it over in her fingers. Sitting by the darkish balcony, she began to imagine that the bright windows and door visible behind her were a cinema screen across which a black-and-white action movie was being shown. She had always hated violent films and was especially terrified by the scenes of spies being tortured by their captors; as a child, she had turned her back whenever a scene became grisly.22

This is an extraordinary, hyperrealist moment: Chia-chih is fantasizing that she is both in a movie theater and on stage, playing the role of a spectator and an actress. From the balcony to the screen, the distance, as Doane would suggest, affords her the agency of self-scrutiny. Yet Hansen argues that the “heterogeneity of the female spectator position . . . extends not only to spatial registers (proximity/distance in relation to the screen as Mary Ann Doane proposes) but to registers of temporality as well . . . for the woman spectator depends upon a memory (on whatever level of consciousness), and thus may reactivate repressed layers of her own psychic history and socialization” (Hansen 2000, 229–230). Chia-chih’s childhood aversion to violent scenes gives the reader insights into her “psychic history” and anticipates her dramatic reaction to the planned action, an assassination she helps create and later destroy. When Chia-chih examines the diamond with her mind’s eye, she confuses “acting” with “living” and begins to walk down a perilous path of changing her narrative mid-stream. She sees in the gem the promise of rewriting her future and her story. It is again a Marxist reification process that transforms the abstraction of love into a commodity. The sparkle of the diamond so consumes and mesmerizes her that she mistakes Mr. Yee’s dutiful dullness for affection: He was an old hand at this: taking his paramours shopping, ministering to their whims, retreating into the background while they made



The Art of the Close-up in Lust, Caution 55 their choices. But there was no cynicism in his smile just then, only a hint of sadness. He sat in silhouette against the lamp; his downcast eyelashes tinged the dull cream of moths’ wings as they rested on his gaunt cheeks. He seemed to wear an expression, she thought, of tender affection. This person truly loves me, she realized all of a sudden. Inside, she felt a raw tremor of shock—then a vague sense of loss. It was too late. (E. Chang 2007, 45–46)23

This description invites us to appreciate how desperately Chia-chih seeks to turn a mundane affair into the kind of heart-throbbing romance that can satisfy her cinematic imagination about how the boy must love the girl because the girl is so irresistible—a satirical reminder of the romantic dreams sold to the world by Hollywood in the 1940s.24 The truth, however, is that Chia-chih is just one of Mr. Yee’s paramours and the trip to the jewelry store is his standard tactic for rewarding sexual favors. Although he usually fades into the background and lets the women and their material desire take center stage, today he is put in the spotlight. Chia-chih scrutinizes his expression as closely as she examines the ring. Analyzing his face like a precious stone, her point-ofview description identifies in his smile a tragic sense of earnestness and in his fluttering eyelashes a tender feminine vulnerability. All of these sentiments solidify “the ring of truth” about how she is the one for whom he must have fallen. But this diamond, like others in the story, is actually a difficult and ironic text, and Chang’s Chia-chih is almost always wrong in making crucial judgments at critical moments. She lends herself, for example, to exploitation by the group of students with whom she works closely to hatch the assassination plot. After losing her virginity to one of the least likable male students to prepare for her role as seductress, she doubts herself momentarily: “ ‘I was an idiot,’ she said to herself, ‘such an idiot.’ Had she been set up, she wondered, from the very beginning of this dead-end drama?” (E. Chang 2007, 26). Chang’s narrator coolly represents Chia-chih as having learned nothing from her past mistakes and seeing only what she wants to see—“This person really loves me.” This false realization allows her emotional reality to override other larger political ideals of loyalty and patriotism. Ultimately, Chia-chih’s downfall derives from her inability to differentiate illusion from reality. Playing the role of a seductress, she is seduced by her own power to seduce and hence fantasizes herself as an irresistible romantic object. As Jean Baudrillard points out, one “cannot seduce

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others, if one has not oneself been seduced” (1990, 81). Chia-chih is indeed captivated by the idea of being loved and hence utters the fatal warning of “run” (or “go fast”) (快走) to show that she has chosen the role of a passionate mistress over and against that of a patriotic assassin.25 Baudrillard explains the conundrum of seduction that deludes others as well as self. “To seduce is to die as reality and reconstitute oneself as illusion. It is to be taken in by one’s own illusion and move in an enchanted world. It is the power of the seductive woman who takes herself for her own desire, and delights in the self-deception in which others, in their turn, will be caught” (Baudrillard 1990, 69; emphasis in original). The jewelry store provides a perfect illusive setting for Chia-chih to plunge into the simulacra of desire in which the seductress is tripped up by her narcissistic ambition to rewrite the ending. NARCISSISM AND MASQUERADE: LOVE YOURSELF AS YOU LOVE OTHERS Baudrillard sees the seducer as both an object and subject of her own seduction. This two-sidedness echoes Freud’s theory of narcissism as “the attitude of a person who treats his own body in the same way in which the body of a sexual object is ordinarily treated” (Freud 1953, 73). For Freud, narcissism begins with the desire for self-preservation: children see their mother-figure as a love-object because she performs vital care for them. But a libidinal disorder occurs when their love-object model is no longer the mother but themselves. They exhibit “a type of object-choice which must be termed “narcissistic” (88). For women, Freud asserts, this narcissistic tendency becomes neurotic, because it creates a “sexual overvaluation” that affects their “choice of object, so that to be loved is a stronger need for them than to love” (1963, 123). This is true of Chia-chih, who prizes her dazzling sexual attraction. “Since the age of twelve or thirteen, she had been no stranger to the admiring male gaze. She knew the game” (E. Chang 2007, 22). Her narcissistic fervor to prove her own desirability prods her to conflate lust with love in the final act. If narcissism is a form of self-aggrandizement, masquerade is by design a ploy for self-effacement. The conflicting goals of the two become most visible in Ang Lee’s dramatic interpretation of Chang’s writing. Combining filmic imageries with a literary sensitivity to emotions, Ang Lee illustrates the author’s vision of Chia-chih’s self-other confrontation by developing an intermedial narrative, experimenting with genre-mixing, and exploring an intense human anxiety about



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self-deception. Lee adopts Chang’s stream-of-consciousness vision in picturing Chia-chih’s fear of violent action film and her infatuation with romance in two lengthy scenes. When the assassination plot in Hong Kong unravels because the Yees have to move back to Shanghai with Wang Ching-wei’s (Wang Jingwei’s) collaborationist government, Lee adds to the film a grisly scene in which the group of frustrated students stab and kill Mr. Yee’s bodyguard, Lao Tsao (Kar Lok Chin). This gruesome confrontation seems to take its cue straight from Chang’s earlier description of Chia-chih in the jewelry store—a “dream” that comes true: “Sitting by the balcony, she began to imagine that the bright windows and door visible behind her were a cinema screen across which a black-and-white action movie was being shown” (E. Chang 2007, 27). Indeed, an action-packed play-within-the-play is being staged right behind the “bright windows and door.” Instead of imagining a violent film with the mind’s eye as Chang’s Chia-chih does, Lee visualizes her deepest fear in mise-en-scène. In figure 2.8, Lee again works with a bluish color scheme to forecast the emotional turmoil of the conflict. Using the French window as a stage screen, Lee divides the shot into different planes and separates Chia-chih from the main action (Figure 2.8). Seeing and being seen, she plays the double role of a character and a spectator, petrified by the raw aggression of her cohorts. Notably, Ang Lee positions Chia-chih in the background, watching the confrontation

Figure 2.8  Chia-chih separated from the main action.

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unfold though the paned window. This obstructive mise-en-scène mimics her limited access to the complete picture of the operation and yet gives her critical distance to assess the situation. Taken as a whole, the group of students constitutes her “object-love” that amounts to what Freud calls the “ego ideal” or “super-ego.”26 It is, by and large, the equivalent of “conscience,” a state of the mind that makes people feel watched and criticized (Freud 1953, 95).27 This object-love also creates “the urge towards union with others in the community,” a longing that explains Chia-chih’s eagerness to measure her self-worth by the group’s collective desire for the common good of the nation (Freud 1989b, 105). Yet the scene of senseless killing challenges their shared idealism and discredits the altruistic goal of her masquerade: what the protagonist sees is not what she thinks she knows. She feels double-crossed. A reversed shot to Chia-chih’s perspective highlights her critical judgment of their action (Figure 2.9). Seeing the conflict through a paned screen, Chia-chih acts as a voyeur of her classmates’ dejected fear. This is a deromanticizing moment: rather than validating their heroism in times of crisis, these students come across as unprepared and terrified. This unseemly sight shakes Chia-chih’s selfconfidence. Lee intensifies her internal crisis by contrasting the depth of the field with the shallowness of her perspective, highlighting her position as an outsider with a partial view of the scene.

Figure 2.9  Chia-chih’s point-of-view shot from the balcony.



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Figure 2.10  Composite view of Chia-chih on the French window.

In the subsequent shot, Lee brings the foreground and background together by adding Chia-chih’s reflection to the window panel, a composite standpoint that confirms her disembodied gaze (Figure 2.10). She is literally and metaphorically seeing the world through the looking glass, a reflective device that forces her to face the danger and futility of her classmates’ actions. Lee blurs the indoor scene to make the focus on her reflection appear all the more ghostly and oppressively shallow—a technique he uses throughout the film. Is this a nightmare or a reality? Chia-chia’s shadowy and ethereal expression suggests that this is a sight that she would have preferred not to have seen or remembered. The murder brings the viewer very close to understanding the horror and paranoia in Chia-chih’s mind: perhaps their plan is too irresponsible, her sexual sacrifice meaningless, and their nationalism born out of arrogance. This scene also best conveys Lee’s interpretation of the complex meanings of cruelty in Chang’s story. Visually, Lee exposes the students’ gratuitous violence and savagery; intellectually, the killing makes both Chiachih and the viewer question whether patriotism is simply a lofty slogan, a pretense to play a dangerous game. Generically, it reveals Chia-chih’s precarious existence as a character caught simultaneously in the different narrative arcs of a thriller and a romance. Both Lee and Chang use the anticlimactic ending to mock the conventional expectations of an action movie. If Lee’s lead-in scene to the jewelry

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store promises a grand shoot-out, the indoor sequence draws attention to the unfolding of a psychological drama. From medium close-ups to closeups, Lee’s camera slowly moves in to highlight the seduction of a romantic gesture. It all begins with the storeowner’s display of the majestic ring (Figure 2.11). Born to be showy, the ring looks beautiful, expensive, and complex. It takes center stage in a way that seems ready to bait and seduce. Leo Lee points out that the words “ring” and “caution” use an identical Chinese character (jie 戒) and hence draws attention to how Chang blurs the distinction between the two (L. Lee 2008, 24). The hieroglyphic origin of the Chinese word, one must add, also brings together two parts: 戈 ge (an ancient Chinese weapon, halberd) and 廾 gong (hold with both hands), creating a combative composition to “forbid” and “admonish.” Jie thus envisions a weaponized restraint, a call to arms against libido and self-indulgence.28 Lee’s directorial interpretation of jie as caution therefore signals a key philosophical difference between the two artists. Chang’s Chinese title ironically embraces the moral overtone of caution and the seductiveness of the ring in equal terms. As a result, the ring in her text takes on a life of its own, embodying the various desires that possess the characters. Lee, however, presents the ring as a forbidden object in a sentimental context. Instead of seeing the stone as an autonomous entity, Lee makes the token emblematic of the lovers’ delicate emotional interdependence. Following the initial presentation of the ring, he uses a series of shot-reverse-shots to

Figure 2.11  Shop owner’s presentation of the ring.



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Figure 2.12  Chia-chih’s refrained but coveted look at the ring.

manifest his vision of how the precious object emotionally connects the two lovers. It all starts with a reaction shot of the protagonist, whose downward glance shows a restrained but emotive appreciation of the ring (Figure 2.12). This close-up perfectly captures Chia-chih’s Janus-faced existence. Negotiating between acting and being, she performs resistance and submission to the seductive script of romance. Lee carefully situates her face in a controlled setting in which her expression is shaped by soft lighting and an affective color scheme. Lee reinforces the emotional significance of the mise-en-scène in the following shot, in which Mr. Yee, sitting beside an ornate lamp, is shown with a look of sly contentment (Figure 2.13). His downcast glance and above-the-fray detachment appear, nonetheless, ambivalent. Does he seem to wear a self-congratulatory smirk, celebrating his sexual prowess? Or is he simply bored by the routine payment for a prized conquest? As with Chia-chih, his smile reveals an overestimation of his power and position. He, too, basks in the euphoria of a narcissistic stupor. Susan Steward describes how “the face reveals a depth and profundity,” because “the eyes and to some degree the mouth are openings onto fathomlessness” (1984, 127). Yet at the moment, Mr. Yee’s cloaking eyes give away nothing, leaving Chia-chih with a limited access to his emotions. Still, as a narcissist nursing her ambition to be a romantic lead, the protagonist trusts her instinct to read his face like an open

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Figure 2.13  Mr. Yee sitting by a lamp.

book: “This person truly loves me, she realized all of a sudden. Inside, she felt a raw tremor of shock—then a vague sense of loss” (E. Chang 2007, 46). Chia-chih moves toward this false recognition, because the “aim and the satisfaction in a narcissistic object-choice is to be loved” (Freud 1953, 98). In search of signs to affirm her conviction of being the one for Mr. Yee, the heroine’s romantic quest threatens to cancel out the higher mission of a self-effacing playacting to fulfill the expectations of an ego ideal. Lee stages the face-off between narcissism and masquerade in a pair of tightly constructed close-ups (Figures 2.14 and 2.15). These symmetrical shot-reverse-shots displays Lee’s (mock) attentiveness to the conventions of a romantic genre that relies on the actors’ nuanced facial expressions, lighting, color script, and an atmospheric soundtrack to cue the viewer’s emotive response to a “love” scene. Although they do not engage each other with their gazes, their tender expressions and gentle glances show a shared viewpoint. Careful analysis of both shots reveals that Lee’s close-ups address the complex self-other dynamic in each frame. Instead of creating an image “for itself” that is “most fully associated with the screen as surface, with the annihilation of a sense of depth” (Doane 2003, 90–91), Lee’s close-up embraces a layered texture that draws attention to the dynamic exchange among the background, midground, and foreground. In figure 2.14, for example, the over-the-shoulder shot positions Mr. Yee in the midground, shadowed by the looming presence of Chia-chih’s foreground profile and



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Figure 2.14  Mr. Yee’s renewed interest in the ring.

Figure 2.15  Chia-chih’s emotional look at the ring.

trailed by the checkered window panels in the back. The woman’s blurry imposition inside the frame gives the viewer a glance of how she takes up space even when the close-up aims to feature his face. She is noticeably there to prod him, watch him, and decipher his thinking. By the same token, the reverse shot shows Mr. Yee lurking in the front-left corner, encroaching on her screen time and space that she was assumed to have

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monopolized. Lee’s portrait shot stands apart from Doane’s definition that sees the close-up mimicking “the effect of a self-sufficient totality. The classical close-up assures us that we can indeed see and grasp the whole, in a moment rich with meaning and affect” (2003, 109). Lee contests such “self-sufficient totality” by revealing that even when one seems alone in the spotlight, a fissure always disrupts the claim of exclusivity, as other intervening forces illustrate the subject’s conscious desire to please people, stay relevant, and remain contextualized. The superegoistic pressure of the close-up is later magnified in the subsequent shot in which the ring draws attention to the pseudomatrimonial gesture. Notably, the ring reemerges not by itself but in a hand-holding that suggests the completion of a binding union (Figure 2.16). Lee’s diamond now initiates a bond that urges Chia-chih and the viewer to see beyond its face value, validating instead its more textured significance. This is also a moment of double masquerades: Mr. Yee the lover pretends to make a promise and Chia-chih the mistress acts to accept it. Lee concludes this romantic interlude with another pair of shotreverse-shots to signal a tricky turn of events (Figures 2.17 and 2.18). Lee uses close-ups of their faces to express two desires: Mr. Yee wants to remain in a love scene in which he is invariably cast as Mr. Right, while Chia-chih—a closet writer—anticipates the imminent threat of genremixing and anxiously seeks to rewrite the ending. Taking up more than two-thirds of the screen and larger than life, these shot-reverse-shots strengthen the literal and symbolic meanings of their face values.

Figure 2.16  A matrimonial handholding.



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Figure 2.17  Close-up of Mr. Yee’s affectionate look.

Figure 2.18  Close-up of Chia-chih’s fateful look.

Lee’s close-up again displays a nuanced construction of overlapping imageries. The disembodied shadow in the foreground shapes the face as a “deep” text in Susan Steward’s terms, “whose meaning is complicated by change and by a constant series of alterations between a reader and an author who is strangely disembodied” (1984, 127). Steward’s

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observation brings us to revisit the generic boundaries destabilized by Chia-chih’s masquerade. Does she play the double role of an author and a reader? Can she choose to be a romantic lead in a melodrama or an action hero in a spy thriller? Earlier we saw how James Schamus interprets the decisive moment as a combination of free will and performance. Chang and Lee both seem more pessimistic, as if by the time Chia-chih reaches the jewelry shop she has unwittingly lost creative control over the narrative patterns she imagines herself to be in. They suggest that the life-saving moment of self-doubt is denied to her because her narcissism has grown too strong and she is inscribed in a Freudian-Confucian system of interpersonal obligations that permits no alternative endings. Despite the cruelty of Chang’s plot and language, Lust, Caution is a captivating tale. The narrative appeals to a wide range of readers who appreciate the generic blend of a story with different emotional realities. Chang juxtaposes a detached, omniscient storyteller with a sentimental, self-delimiting first-person narrator to tease out the competing voices of the protagonist’s narcissistic yearning and nationalistic aspiration. Chia-chih, as Chang and Lee see it, is ensnared within the labyrinth of social relations governed by Marxist reification, Confucian ethics and Freudian superego. The question at the end is not why Chia-chih lets Mr. Yee go or whether they love each other, but rather why one has to believe in being loved by the other. A Marxist reading sees the commodified protagonist as an example of capitalist self-alienation. A Freudian diagnosis considers her condition a narcissistic pursuit of object-libido. A Confucian verdict points out Chia-chih’s problem of not “knowing people” (zhi ren 知人).29 Despite her flaws, Chia-chih makes the best use of what narcissism and masquerade have to offer. With her ruthlessly high self-regard, she adapts to new challenges, takes risks, and questions the ethical dualism in Chinese society that gives women no interpretive space to be an observer or a writer. The feminist breakthrough of Chang and Lee emerges from their shared conviction in creating an opportunity for the protagonist to try to tell a story, to try to read people, and to try to make “indefinable connections to other” (A. Lee 2007, 61). Chang succeeds in exploring the psychological complexity and humanity of morally gray characters in her objectifying literary close-up, and Lee brings into the picture the embedded socialization of the subject in his stylized portrait shots.



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Chang begins her tale with an interior scene whose details embody the sociohistorical tensions of an era. By contrast, Lee starts his film with the historical big picture and then slowly retreats to the inner world of Chang’s psychological narrative. He composes intricate close-ups to capture the nuanced object-subject dynamic in a frame that exposes the limited power of self-determination. Together the writer and the director pioneer new ways of looking at the women who tell stories about what lies behind the mask and the gaze.

C H A P T E R

T H R E E

Philosophy of the Long Shot in Hou Hsiao-hsien’s The Assassin

One of the most revered auteurs in the world, Hou Hsiao-hsien (b. 1947) stands apart from other Chinese-language directors for pioneering the long shot and long take to approximate reality in film. Critics have often praised Hou for his ability to blend voices (Lupke 2016; Huang 2019), integrate memories (Nornes and Yeh 2015; Deppman 2010), and revitalize realisms (K. Chan 2014; M. Berry 2014). Less explored but equally significant is the philosophy of Hou’s style. What motivates Hou to always choose long take over editing and long shot over closeup (Labuza 2015)? Why is such a versatile director committed to a neorealist aesthetic that arguably restricts his creative options? Is this an example of Hou’s directorial mantra, to find freedom in limitations (M. Berry 2005, 251)? These questions are best answered through a careful analysis of Hou’s award-winning masterpiece The Assassin (2015). A nuanced tale about a woman’s search for self-fulfillment, the film showcases many of his stylistic signatures—empty scene, natural lighting, single take, fixed camera, literary sensitivity, measured pace, and minimal dialogue— to illustrate a coming-of-age story about power, politics, and resistance. Like Zhang Yimou’s “Grandma” and Ang Lee’s Chia-chih, Hou’s Yinniang (Shu Qi)—a young lady trained to be a ruthless killer—is a strong female lead who challenges authorities, questions gendered expectations, and embraces individual passion. Twice she fails her mission on purpose, explaining that she is unable to kill the enemy in front of his loved ones. Her master, the princess-nun, however, urges the disciple to “separate the enemy from what he loves before killing him.”1 Such 68



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cold-hearted calculations compel the protagonist to look closely at the rationale for violence. What is the purpose of the assassination? Why should she trust the nun’s order to kill? Is she being exploited as a tool for political vengeance? Hou uses the signature shots to reflect on Yinniang’s struggle with ethical concerns, slowly transforming her from a recluse to a community leader. Her evolution illustrates the director’s vision of how a responsible citizen should behave in a civil society. “Just because some authority tells you to go kill somebody,” Hou explains, “doesn’t mean you should go and kill somebody. I don’t believe that’s the right approach, which you see in my film. I don’t believe we should blindly obey masters” (Guillen 2015). Hou has been a fierce critic of autocratic practices. Having grown up as a second-generation Chinese in Taiwan, he is deeply immersed in a Confucian education that preaches social harmony and mandates political leaders to rule by virtue and propriety, not by law or punishment (Confucius 2015, 2.3). In his famous Taiwan trilogy—City of Sadness (1989), The Puppetmaster (1993), and Good Men, Good Women (1995), for example, he denounces the totalitarian brutality of Japanese colonialism and the Chinese Nationalist Party’s violent repression of the local Taiwanese people (Yip 2004). Two decades later in The Assassin, Hou tells a story about a woman’s quest for moral courage to think and act on her conscience and to reject the political persecution of dissidents. As important as this core thesis is, it has nonetheless garnered little attention from critics. Instead, reviewers of the film often focus on praising the director for achieving “breathtaking new heights of compositional elegance” (J. Chang 2015) and “aesthetic refinement” (Bradshaw 2015) and for creating sumptuous colors, textures, costumes, and architecture (Blichert 2016). These observations, though consistent with the scholarly reception of Hou’s films since the 1980s, focus almost exclusively on his formalistic attributes, overlooking his cultural politics and deeper philosophy. I argue that Hou’s style evolves organically from his interpretation of the Confucian advice for artists: “transmitting without inventing” (shu er bu zuo), an objective approach to storytelling that, Hou states, validates simplicity over embellishment (Burdeau 2000, 92). The long shot embraces the wholeness of a space that gives the viewer a fuller picture of life, whereas the long take invites the audience to take part in the movement of time that allows for an experience of the natural rhythm of an unfolding event. A combination of both attests to Hou’s non-interventional aesthetic and political belief in “leaving the people be”—representing them as who they are, not as who we imagine. Adding to the realism is Hou’s pragmatism that sees freedom of representation as a relativist concept contingent on

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the restrictions of social rules that govern individual action. Limitations, on the other hand, inspire adaptability and innovation. All creative work has limitations; if you didn’t have limitations then there would be no boundaries and you wouldn’t know what to do. But you have to be clear about what your limitations are. Once you know your limitations, they become your biggest assets. You can exercise you[r] imagination however you please within the space of these limitations. (M. Berry 2005, 251)

Hou believes that the expediency of limitations turns self-restraint into an asset of managing setbacks. He applies this logic in three important ways: to redefine martial arts film, to represent women in crisis, and to appropriate Confucian ritualism. I begin this chapter with an analysis of the ways that Hou challenges the generic conventions of martial arts films. Rather than making an action fantasy as expected, he practices realism, grounding “the story of the strange” (chuan qi) “in historical fact and historical reality” (Labuza 2015). Making a fictional form appear realistic generates a stylistic dissonance rarely seen in Chinese cinema. Equally distinctive is the director’s questioning of the black-and-white moral norm in traditional wuxia chivalrous films. The black-clad killer does not embody evil, nor does the whitegowned nun, a self-righteous figure, represent good. This color-coded disorientation deepens the moral complexity of the characters’ behaviors. The generic defiance helps the director envision the emergence of the lady killer’s conscience. As a princess, daughter, and disciple, the assassin is socialized to be subordinate to the king, parents, and master. Despite these constraints, Yinniang disobeys a direct order to murder people. Hou gives her space (long shot) and time (long take) to reflect on the ethics of her mission. Adopting a slow neorealist aesthetic to shoot action sequences, the director creates a stylized contrast of pause and burst in a single take that underscores Yinniang’s prolonged hesitation. It is a narrative suspension that affords the viewer a contemplative moment to imagine the consequences of killing. The reflective effect of these shot selections, I suggest, invites us to theorize the assassin’s moral quandary in the context of the Confucian notion of mercy (ren 仁) and the Lévinasian vision of ethics. Both philosophers posit that nothing is more “affectively disruptive” than a self-Other encounter that forces one to confront, clarify, and validate the social needs for altruism. Finally, Hou demonstrates the evolution of Yinniang’s emotion in what I call “close-ups in long shots,” a juxtaposition of distance and proximity that allows the director to stage the expressive aesthetic of paralysis,



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fear, love, and compassion. As Sergei Eisenstein argues, cinema is “the art of comparisons” (1988, 41), and Hou makes his restraining long shots all the more effective by constructing close-ups that expose as well as suppress impulses. This technique highlights the perspectival distinction between the characters and the audience, the characters seeing each other up close but positioned far away from the audience. The result is that the viewer has to rely on subtle contextual clues to speculate on what transpires between the characters. This filmic practice best manifests Hou’s philosophy of envisioning freedom in limitations, which combines the Daoist aesthetic of seeing more in emptiness with the Confucian practice of ritualistic constraints. Yinniang’s will to power makes possible a philosophical compromise of interpreting Dao not as self-effacement but as a self-validation by becoming-responsible-for-the-other. Seeing the face of the Other, Lévinas argues, creates an ethical response, a spontaneous experience of interruption that preaches: “Thou shalt not kill.” From Laozi’s Daoist principle to the Confucian discipline to the Lévinasian ethics, together these viewpoints sketch a composite picture that helps explain Hou’s complex filmic practice and philosophy. A MARTIAL ARTS FILM UNLIKE OTHERS Martial arts films give Chinese cinema its unique cultural identity. Sporting chivalrous knights-errant with magical fighting skills and righteous behaviors, they often adopt a plot deeply rooted in popular martial arts fiction. One of the early successes was Wen Yimin’s adaptation of the nineteenth-century novelist Wen Kang’s Stories of Heroic Sons and Daughters into a film with the same title in 1927.2 Such literary and cinematic crossfertilization has continued to blossom in the works of many filmmakers. King Hu (1932–1997; Hu Jinquan in pinyin) and Chang Cheh (1923–2002; Zhang Che in pinyin) have inspired numerous contemporary Chinese directors. Wong Kar-wai, Ang Lee, Zhang Yimou, Feng Xiaogang, Chen Kaige, and Yuen Woo-ping (Yuan Heping in pinyin) are among those who have brought the Chinese B movies to international prominence.3 But The Assassin stands out among the increasingly lavish martial arts films not because it is more outlandish, but because of its minimalist action sequences that look uncharacteristically simple and realistic.4 In other words, Hou marries fantasy with realism to challenge the stylistic conventions of a genre that prizes magic and escapism. Rather than using wires or CGI to give his characters superhuman skills to fight above treetops or walk on water, Hou adopts a down-to-earth approach that respects the limits of gravity (Zichuan 2015).

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That Hou emphasizes the importance of realism in a fantasy martial arts film may seem counterintuitive at first glance. For directors like King Hu and Ang Lee, the pleasure of making a martial arts film is that no one takes the story seriously and “that is what is so fun about that genre” (M. Berry 2005, 347). But whereas other artists embrace the freedom of imagination, Hou explores the power of limits. “Everything has its limit,” Hou says often, “and you have to work within these to stay focused. Without limit, you have no direction, so I find them necessary. . . . Within limits, you are free” (Suchenski 2014, 196; emphasis added). These limits refer to the technical and ethical constraints that force filmmakers to work with not only reduced resources but also dominant ideologies to become more adaptable by transforming deficiencies into strengths. Because of the lack of technical support, Hou used natural lighting and on-location shooting in such famous new wave works as The Sandwich Man (1983), The Boys from Fengkuei (1983), and Dust in the Wind (1986), among others. These stylistic signatures have now become the key aesthetic markers of Taiwan New Cinema. Similarly, while making Flowers of Shanghai (1998), Hou had difficulty getting official permits to shoot in outdoor sites in China. He then did only interior shots in sets built in Taiwan, accentuating the symbolic self-enclosure of a pleasure-seeking world in which the characters lived apart from society in nineteenth-century China (M. Berry 2005, 250–251). It was in Flowers of Shanghai that Hou developed the reputation of doing “one scene, one take,” an impressive feat that cemented his auteur stature (Suchenski 2014, 196). In The Assassin, the actresses playing the two main characters Yinniang (Shu Qi) and Lord Tian’s wife Jing Jing Er (Zhou Yun) are not trained martial artists and are therefore unable to perform the critical fighting scene at a level required for an exciting choreography. To compensate for the lack of physical agility and special effects, Hou uses footsteps, chirping birds, birch trees, “empty shots” (kong jing 空鏡), and a swift exchange of blows to generate a “pause-burst-pause” rhythm that leaves room for the viewer’s imagination (Figure 3.1). Hou’s focus on sound and mood makes his film more metaphysical than physical, because his style invites the viewer to see not the competition of characters’ martial arts but the complexity of their raison d’être. “Why do you exist?” the director asks. “How do you deal with your surroundings, with details, with your friends, and with society?” (Suchenski 2014, 193). These existential questions draw attention to the Daoist and Confucian ethical framework within which Hou’s characters, like himself, learn to live: “There has to be a limit. It means freedom to me” (Suchenski 2014, 196). The black-and-white opening of The Assassin is a case in point. Hou pays literal tribute to the symbolism of what the producer Raymond



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Figure 3.1  Fight between Lady Tian and Yinniang in the birch forest.

Chow defines as the generic expectations of martial arts films, which have “clear-cut story lines with black presented as black and white presented white” (Teo 2005, 195). The opening sequence confirms the crisp contrast: a black-clad assassin stands next to a white-gowned nun, creating a visual distinction that recalls a simpler world of absolute morals (Figure 3.2). However, Hou turns the color-coded paradigm of good and evil upside down when the story later reveals that the nun masterminds assassinations and the killer saves lives. Foreshadowing their mixed reputations, Hou subtly integrates both colors in each: Yinniang reveals her white collar underneath the black attire, and the nun holds on to the black handle of the white duster against her white gown. The battle between the two, however, goes beyond personal disputes. The nun and her student embody a moral paradox that prefaces an intense philosophical clash and compromise of Daoism and Confucianism in The Assassin, two schools of thought that point to different interpretations of Dao—the Way—in finding the best cultural practice of being human. For Hou, the quest for Dao resembles the search for “a universal value based on our own critical judgment as well as your respect for people, animals, and nature, which develops in its own way” (Suchenski 2014, 193).

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Figure 3.2  The assassin and the nun in the opening shot.

Daoism, first of all, demands human submission to the laws of nature. After rejecting her second mission, Yinniang makes the pilgrimage to the Wudang Temple to apologize to the nun in person. An establishing shot provides a viewing scale that contrasts the overpowering presence of landscape on the right with the diminutive human figures on the left (Figure 3.3). The largeness of nature symbolically subdues individual will to power. Built as a part of, not apart from, the mountains, the humble dwellings cultivate less a sign of cultural conquest of nature than a self-effacing integration with an existing structure. Yinniang’s apology tour therefore presents to the viewer what the Daoist philosopher Laozi conceives as the proper intellectual order of the world: “Man follows earth; earth follows heaven; heaven follows Dao; Dao follows what is natural.”5 Among the five subjects—man, earth, heaven, Dao, and nature—nature embodies the principle of all principles, shaping the rules that govern the universe. This rationale explains Hou Hsiao-hsien’s privilege of realism in filming a fantasy genre, because it allows him to follow only “what is natural,” using clouds, mist, birds, flowers, wind, mountains, cliffs, and forest to great effect (Zichuan 2015). Hou’s aesthetic pursuit of creativity within limits also signals his appreciation for Laozi’s relativist notion of the world: “All things in the world



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Figure 3.3  The assassin visiting the nun’s Daoist temple to apologize.

are born out of being; being is born out of non-being.”6 The dialectic between “being and non-being” leads to the ineffable meanings of Dao—an existential strategy that embraces the kinetic interaction of oppositional forces, and anticipates “the supple to overcome the stiff”7 and “nonaction to never fail.”8 Translating the logic of nonaction into filmic vocabulary, Hou practices a Daoist vision of stylistic simplicity, using a fixed or slow panning camera, minimal editing, long takes, and nominal dialogues to nuance subtle but important changes in the characters’ interaction with their surroundings. Avoiding quick cuts and elaborate fighting sequences, Hou articulates his filmic Daoism in “empty shots,” creating a state of nothingness that echoes Laozi’s aesthetic theory of “great images being shapeless.”9 Hou’s empty shots thus disrupt the narrative flow to generate mediating pauses that surround more expository movements. One of the most instructive sequences for Hou’s Daoist aesthetic is the face-off between Yinniang and the nun, which leads to a brief but intense physical altercation. Filming “one scene, one take,” Hou uses real time to capture the interplay of transience and immanence in the mountaintop where such fleeting elements as clouds, mist, sunshine, and wind brush over more permanent structures such as valleys and hills. Hou’s camera

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lingers and pans ever so slowly to the right to reveal the motionless master standing on the edge of a cliff. In a customary white gown, she appears as ethereal as the climate surrounding her, standing alone to embrace nature’s caprice (Figure 3.4). Approaching on foot from the lower right is the black-clad disciple. Her solid attire makes her look inflexible. Arguing against her master’s order to kill Lord Tian Ji’an, Yinniang explains her concern over the stability of the State of Weibo. Hou films their calm but bitter dispute with a quiet camera in a single take and long shot, resisting the conventional strategy of using close-ups and shot-reverse-shots to amplify the characters’ emotional distress. Adopting an objective perspective, Hou creates a big picture that gives the viewer both time and space to contemplate the meanings of their dialogue and to speculate on their next move. The detached nun looks into the void, assuming an “out-of-thisworld” (chu shi 出世) position that condemns such mundane concerns as national security and patriarchal lineage that stop Yinniang from enforcing the “pitiless Way” of the sword (jian dao wu qing 劍道無情). Yinniang, on the other hand, keeps her head down and pays her master respect by kneeling on the ground, taking up an “into-the-world” (ru shi 入世)

Figure 3.4  The nun waiting for the assassin on the mountaintop.



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Figure 3.5  Contrast between the nun’s mysticism and the assassin’s earthiness.

approach to life that sees politics as part of existential struggle for survival (Figure 3.5). This mise-en-scène juxtaposes the assassin’s engaging earthiness with the nun’s transcendental mysticism, widening the ideological gap between the two. When Yinniang walks out of the frame, the camera lingers on the nun’s motionless figure. Although she appears statuesque and stoic, the fast moving clouds visibly darken the mood, channeling the nun’s anger against her renegade disciple. In the subsequent two scenes, Hou stylizes Laozi’s famous advice: “teaching without words and advancing with non-action.”10 After the mountaintop meeting, the nun trails her student across a tilted plain as if a predator is stalking its prey (Figure 3.6). Framed again in a long take and long shot, this wide-angled picture gives us an open view of how their resounding silence intensifies the animosity between the two. Whereas the distant view renders the characters’ emotion inaccessible to the audience, their calculating and deliberate steps forecast the confrontation. In his analysis of why Hong Kong kung fu and martial arts films have earned massive commercial successes, David Bordwell points out the importance of “gestural clarity” in films that

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Figure 3.6  The nun stalking the assassin in the prairie.

“provide an unobstructed view of the action” (2001, 79). In the case of The Assassin, it is the clarity of the characters’ aggressive non-action, not talking to or looking at each other, that makes their hostility all the more explosive. When the camera slightly pans to the right, the viewer loses track of the nun who exits on the left (Figure 3.7). Yinniang senses the changing direction of her stalker and slows down before exiting on the right. Devoid of characters and actions, the “empty shot” persists for ten seconds, creating a pause that deepens suspense (Figure 3.8). Critics argue that Hou’s “empty shot” advances his mastery of perception (yi 意), making possible the continuous flow of a specific cinematic ambience that permeates the film (Lin 2004, 20–21). The rough terrain, for example, can be construed as an atmospheric visual canvas that ferries across space and time a perception of unresolved tensions, bringing together memory (from the preceding cat-and-mouse chase) and imagination (of a yet-to-appear picture of action) in the viewer’s mind. In the spirit of finding greatness in shapelessness, this “emptiness” is full of roaring energy. The scene expands the perceptual limit of cinema by inviting the viewer to see, feel, and imagine what lies beyond the frame.

Figure 3.7  The nun exiting the prairie on the left.

Figure 3.8  “Empty shot” of the prairie.

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Figure 3.9  Fight between the nun and the assassin.

Scholars have often compared the “empty shot” to the “blankness” of the Chinese landscape painting, especially the Southern Song Chang’an style (1127–1279), that privileges nature over culture by dwarfing human presence (Zhu Ying 2003; Yau 1987/1988). This interpretive logic also works with Laozi’s argument about “the usefulness of a clay pot that lies in its emptiness.”11 For Laozi, a clay pot is only usable when it is hollow in the middle, so it has the capacity to take in things. Hou adopts a similar reasoning in creating empty shots to actively engage the viewer in making sense of his images. This narrative pause ends when the nun suddenly attacks Yinniang from behind (Figure 3.9). Their six-second fight is swift but forceful. The nun strikes three times to no avail; Yinniang gives one decisive blow that ends the battle. As in the mountaintop scene, the master is left standing still, but this time we see a rare point-of-view shot that traces her gaze: Yinniang moves farther and farther away from the camera, out of the reach of a teacher who had once hoped to capitalize on the success of her coaching to create a killing machine. Unlike conventional back shots that expose the vulnerability of the characters, Hou’s long take and deep focus capture the confidence and defiance of Yinniang’s forward movement (Figure 3.10).



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Figure 3.10  Yinniang walking away from the camera.

Every step increases her self-validation: she is no longer a robotic trainee subject to the control of others; instead, she represents a new generation of female martial artists ready to redefine the Way and choose their own paths. A rare medium shot of the nun exposes her bewilderment (Figure 3.11). Hou again leaves ample room for reflection when his camera stays with the nun’s gaze for seventeen seconds, almost three times as long as the action sequence, to make visible the tear in her gown and the narrowing of her eye expression. What is on her mind that merits such an extensive scrutiny? Noticeably Hou modifies the film speed to present her look in slow motion: she acts outside the normal temporal frame of reference. The nun embraces the Daoist mantra of being and living beyond time. As the story unfolds, we speculate that the philosophical root of the conflict between the nun and the disciple comes from their different interpretations of Dao: Yinniang sees timely engagement in political affairs the only path forward, but the nun, in her disdain for mundane attachments, strives to live above human love and law. Embedded in Yinniang’s resistance to the nun’s Daoist tutelage is a Confucian conception of Dao (道) that champions two key behaviors, “filial piety toward

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Figure 3.11  Medium shot of the nun staring at the moving assassin.

one’s parents and respect for one’s elder brothers.” Both tenets emphasize the importance of familial relationships. Only when a scholarly gentleman (Jun zi君子) works on realizing these basic principles can he see the Way achieve the perfect virtue.12 If Laozi considers the enlightenment of Dao as the ultimate goal of human endeavors, Confucius treats Dao as a means to an end in realizing “mercy” or “the perfect virtue.” When his disciple Yan Yuan asks him about the definition of Dao, Confucius responds, “abiding by the rules of rituals and suppressing individual desires cultivate the path to the perfect virtue.”13 The focus on the practice of “ritual” (li 禮) prioritizes civil behaviors above all, which legitimize political and sexual hierarchies, social etiquettes, and repression of individual desires in ways that align with Hou’s own aesthetic strategies of managing constraints in filmmaking. In The Assassin, Yinniang starts adopting the Confucian system of values incrementally, long before her mountaintop rendezvous with the nun. Tracing the evolution of the assassin from a Daoist to a Confucianist brings us to a pivotal moment in her self-education: she sees in her first aborted assassination the collective experience of being in the community. Hou Hsiao-hsien highlights the essential message in the film: “There



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should never ever be any justification for killing people.”14 This moral imperative contradicts Yinniang’s professional identity and gives her a kind of existential anxiety that can be understood through the ethical philosophies of Confucius and Emmanuel Lévinas. Confucius and Lévinas are both keen on defining “ethics” as “thou shalt not kill” and being responsible for others. For Confucius, to have “mercy,” a key notion in his teachings, is also “to love people” (ai ren 愛人) (2015, 12.22).15 He advises political leaders not to kill the immoral but to model good behaviors for all.16 For Lévinas, on the other hand, ethical exigency occurs when one encounters the Other whose face declares and demands, “thou shalt not kill” (1985, 89). Both philosophers prioritize the impact of interpersonal relationships in shaping subjectivity and self-perception. Ethics is altruistic, they agree, being responsible for the welfare of other people. Confucius famously explains that the man of virtue is someone who, “wishing to establish himself, also seeks to establish others; who, wishing to enlighten himself, also seeks to enlighten others. To be able to judge others by how one judges oneself—this is the way of virtue.”17 This selfOther connection is also critical to Lévinas’s definition of ethics, construed as responsibility for the Other: “I am responsible for a total responsibility, which answers for all the others and for all in the others, even for their responsibility. The I always has one responsibility more than all the others” (1985, 99). For Lévinas, such infinite responsibility is self-effacing, because ethics only reaches its moral height when “being-for-the-others” comes before everything else, including identity, faith, essence, knowledge, and me (1985, 10–11).18 This Other-before-self hierarchy is different from the Confucian self-before-other philosophy. Confucius considers the improvement of the self provides the foundation for all future endeavors.19 Despite different priorities, Confucius and Lévinas are united against violence. Their ethical framework and vocabulary help us explain Yinniang’s evolution from a killer to a savior. “THOU SHALT NOT KILL” Right after the success of her first assignment, Yinniang arrives at the residence of an unnamed official. Perched up high on the ceiling beam, the assassin waits patiently for a chance to strike. In that sunny afternoon, we see not the shadowy threat of an imminent death but a domestic scene of mundane bliss, starring a boy playing catch in front of his doting family. For Hou, a carefully planned mise-en-scène illustrates the complexity of human psychology: “presenting people’s relationships and emotions in

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a confined space was not difficult for me once we had the right spatial details” (Suchenski 2014, 190). These details include the mood, color, and power dynamics between characters. We encounter the patriarch sitting on a raised platform that gives him a commanding authority over a guard in the hallway, three standing female attendants with a vague smile, and a compliant nanny playing with the little boy. It is a hierarchical world in which everyone adheres to a Confucian “system of values” (M. Berry 2005, 266). The ritualistic interaction among the characters observes, in particular, the prescribed behavioral propriety of letting “king be king, minister be minister, father be father, son be son,” a feudal ethical framework that assigns roles and respects boundaries (Figure 3.12).20 These boundaries are manifest in the division of the screen, showing that the father in the foreground takes up more than 50 percent of the space as the others cram into the other half. His isolation on the right allows him to control the action like a puppet master, gesticulating to pull the string of each character. Affirming this invisible power line are the different shades of all the clothing: the head of the household wears darker colors that deepen his authority; the multiple female figures are in

Figure 3.12  Domestic scene of the official and his family.



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light-colored costumes that reinforce their uniformed and placid submission to his rule. This picture presents an unequal but orderly algorithm of power that solidifies the interdependent structure of a community: like the characters, we are all embedded in a network of social relations that have helped shape the meanings of our existence. The “father” is a symbolic figure in an ecosystem in which his death promises to have a domino effect on those around him. When the assassin comes out of hiding during the afternoon siesta, the camera lingers on her intense expression for a long while: the blackclad woman looks at her target with agonizing paralysis (Figure 3.13). This medium shot gives a contextual view of her stiff body language, showing that she is in an in-between state, uncertain about her next step. Hou’s long take intensifies the ponderous nature of her gaze, searching for reasons to justify her mission. A reverse shot then illustrates the cause of her protracted hesitation: father and son are napping peacefully in each other’s arms (Figure 3.14). Basking in the glory of familial love, their faces and bodies droop in drowsy comfort. The medium close-up warms the viewer with an emotional bond that interrupts the assassin’s murderous intent.

Figure 3.13  Yinniang’s agonized look.

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Figure 3.14  Father and son napping together.

As the assassin moves closer to the father and son, we see a shadow cast over the napping duo, alerting the father to the intruder’s presence (Figure 3.15). He throws Yinniang a severe glance that mixes fear with anxiety and determination. This is a striking moment, because the suppliant look not only changes the course of the event but also alters the trajectory of Yinniang’s life. Hou’s rare medium close-up draws attention to what Lévinas describes as a face-to-face encounter between the subject “I” and another person (1985, 95). This experience is “affectively disruptive” for the consciousness of the “I,” which for the first time is able to define its own particularity through the interrogative gaze of the Other (Bergo 2011). The expressiveness of the face is unique because its appearance embodies vulnerability and yet demands compliance. Lévinas explains this paradox: The face is exposed, menaced, as if inviting us to an act of violence. At the same time, the face is what forbids us to kill. . . . The first word of the face is the “Thou shalt not kill.” It is an order. There is a commandment in the appearance of the face, as if a master spoke to me. (1985, 86–89)

In the case of Yinniang, the faces of the father and son speak to her conscience and present to her the signification of an interhuman relationship



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Figure 3.15  Father alarmed by Yinniang’s presence.

in a way that convinces her not only to stop killing but also to “do something for the Other. To Give. To be a human spirit” (Lévinas 1985, 87). Yinniang’s encounter with the face of the Other is therefore a self-redefining moment in which she becomes “responsible for the Other without waiting for reciprocity” (96). This is also the case in her saving Lord Tian’s favorite concubine Hu Ji from the jealous rage of Lady Tian. When the camera pulls back to present a long shot of the room, the full force of the father’s beseeching face is in plain view (Figure 3.16). His gaze is forceful, yet his protective gesture to his son illustrates a parental instinct and a larger political calculation, arguing for the importance of stability and lineage. The mise-en-scène is full of everyday objects and familial intimacy that reinforces what Abé Mark Nornes calls Hou’s mastery in converting a space into a place (2014, 155). Such mundanity also makes Yinniang, dressed as a black angel of death, appear all the more out of place. Engulfed in a sea of grayness—curtains, flooring patterns, clothing, and landscape panels—Yinniang is drowned in a murky composition that expresses her moral ambivalence: does a fatherless state lead to a liberated society or topsy-turvy anarchy? Yinniang’s hesitation speaks volumes about her struggle to assess the pros and cons of subverting a Confucian vision of ritual (li 禮)

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Figure 3.16  Long shot of the father’s beseeching face.

and mercy (ren 仁), two critical notions that anchor a Chinese narrative about order and ethics in the world. Yinniang leaves the scene without saying a word. She has yet to “solidify her Daoist mind” (Dao xin wei jian 道心未堅), the nun asserts. What Yinniang refuses to disclose to the nun is that the father tries to kill her, but she walks away without striking back. She is a model of self-control, rejecting the eye-for-an-eye cycle of revenge. CLOSE-UPS IN LONG SHOTS One of the key characteristics in Hou’s films is the ambience of restraint. In scene after scene his characters remain silent, impassive, or absent. Even when they interact with each other, the viewer often sees them in long shots, so the nature of their communication is not easily discernible. Hou deftly integrates the storytelling convention of liu bai (留白 leave blankness) into a text or image in ways that force the viewer to bridge the visual and narrative gap through interpretation. This is one of the reasons that many people find Hou’s films difficult, because his deliberate vagueness creates an open-ended nonnarrative.



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Hou’s style of restraint makes the reading of the characters’ emotions especially challenging. How do they express their feelings of love, fear, and pain? For most directors, close-ups in shot-reverse-shots are the preferred aesthetic choices for affective expressivity because they have unlimited hermeneutic potential to be studied as a complex map of human psychology (Doane 2003). Hou Hsiao-hsien, however, goes a step further than most in using long shots and back images to illustrate the nuanced transformation of the characters’ relationships. He perfects “close-ups in long shots” to advance his idea about finding freedom in limitations. “Close-ups in long shots” means that the characters see each other up close but they are positioned far away from the camera, so the viewer has no access to their conversation and facial expressions. Instead, we are left with varying interpretive possibilities that sensitize us to the spatial composition of the characters’ physical interaction with the environment and with each other. The context and distance often make visible atmospheric foreboding, moral predicament, and perspectival differences. One of the best examples comes from Yinniang’s budding romance with the young mirror-polisher who later becomes her husband. In a scene right after her fierce battle with Lady Tian, Yinniang is injured. She walks across a desolate prairie, moving farther and farther away from the camera. Entering the frame from the lower right is the young man (Figure 3.17). His prosaic stroll instantly changes the pace of Yinniang, who halts in the center of the frame and tilts slightly to the right while holding her right arm. These almost imperceptible movements cue the young man to quicken his steps and catch up to her. Now the viewer is looking at the back images of the two characters from far away. Yinniang keeps moving but appears sluggish. The young man runs ahead and turns around to face the assassin (Figure 3.18). This is an important Lévinasian moment because Yinniang’s body signals a call for help. Hou has reverted her role from the subject “I” to “the Other” in this particular scene because her face, with all of its signifying power, demands that the young man respond to her needs. “It orders me as one orders someone one commands,” Lévinas explains, “as when one says: ‘Someone’s asking for you’ ” (1985, 97). Indeed, for the first time Yinniang is seeking support, which she later receives in the form of medical attention. Their face-to-face communication, brief but suggestive, draws a perspectival distinction between the characters and the audience. From the characters’ standpoint, the shot indicates a close encounter, which intimates both their physical proximity and ethical exchange of order and service. As the Other, Yinniang appears visibly touched by the subject’s

Figure 3.17  Yinniang followed by the mirror polisher.

Figure 3.18  The mirror-polisher facing Yinniang in a long shot.



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concerning look and perhaps comforting words, but the long shot shields the privacy of their interaction. Have they talked? If yes, what do they say to each other? What does Yinniang see in the mirror-polisher that puts her at ease? What is there in Yinniang that attracts the young sojourner? It is a romance understood between the two but not explained to the audience. Although the long shot obscures their faces, the big picture nuances their feelings for each other. For Hou, the long shot and long take are preconditions for realism, because neither the camera nor the montage intervenes to alter reality captured from an objective viewpoint. I always tend to use long shots since I prefer to show what is happening behind the characters, meaning the objects behind the actors, the landscapes. When you use a long shot, you can better capture reality. I am in favour of realism in movies and am against the theatricalisation of action. I hate explanation in films, especially anything related to psychology, preferring instead that the movie help audiences to bring their own imaginations into the story. (Ganjavie 2015)

The long shot lets the image speak for itself in a way that respects the limits of seeing in a realistic setting. Hou’s camera does not privilege one perspective over another. Staying neutral in presenting information, his story rarely uses dramatic irony to exploit what the characters do not see or know. The Confucian prescription of proper behaviors helps explain why Hou objects to dramatizing action and emotion: “Do not look at what is contrary to propriety; do not listen to what is contrary to propriety; do not speak what is contrary to propriety; do not act on what is contrary to propriety” (2007, 71). These moral guidelines, a blueprint to the realization of ren, roughly translate Hou’s aesthetic of restraint: his long shots suppress both the voyeuristic pleasure of the viewer and emotional outburst of the characters. Even though Yinniang subtly signals her acceptance of the suitor’s affection, no affective sentiment is apparent. Instead, we observe a tentative wait-and-see strategy that shows them walking in lockstep. When they continue moving, the young man turns around to see whether any enemy is hiding in the prairie. His discretion strikes the viewer as a declaration of amorous duty with a touch of Lévinasian ethic: he gains her trust and now becomes responsible for her safety. Despite his aversion to using close-up, Hou is strategic in cutting from the long shot to a rare portrayal of Yinniang’s confessional soliloquy (Figure 3.19). For the first time, her emotions are not filtered through flapping curtains, halting steps, back images, or changing landscapes. Instead,

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Figure 3.19  Yinniang starting to tell the story.

her face lights up the screen and her voice echoes in the void. This medium close-up not only offers the viewer access to her emotions but also gives her a platform to speak to the camera, the characters, and the audience. She forces the viewer, now the subject “I,” to respond to her plea for compassion, because in her tale of sorrow, “the face of the Other is destitute; it is the poor for whom I can do all and to whom I owe all. And me, whoever I may be, but as a ‘first person,’ I am he who finds the resources to respond to the call” (Lévinas 1985, 89). The shift of subjectivity from the characters to the audience forces “me” to face the demands of the Other, transcribed in the medium close-up of Yinniang. She demands the viewer to pay attention to her story, which denounces the patriarchal mistreatment of women. She recounts Princess Jiacheng’s lonely existence in the State of Weibo. Finding no one of her kind to rejoice at life, the princess, the tenth daughter of the Tang Emperor Daizong, feels as lost as the legendary bluebird that sings, dances, and expires in front of a mirror when it is tricked into believing that it has found someone like itself. Princess Jiacheng’s tale is poignant because she is nothing but a pawn in a political scheme: her father Emperor



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Figure 3.20  Father looking stunned by Yinniang’s reproach.

Daizong marries her to Tian Xu, the military ruler of the State of Weibo, to secure a peace treaty between the imperial court and the state in 785 AD (Fahey 2015). Like many before and after her, the princess is born to serve the interests of others. Given the unique emphasis of the scene, we may speculate that Yinniang’s storytelling serves two important narrative functions. Her poignant account indicts the patriarchal objectification of women, a criticism Hou reinforces by panning the camera to the left to implicate Yinniang’s father Nie Feng (Ni Dahong), a token of feudal authority, in perpetuating the cycle of gendered exploitation (Figure 3.20). Hou’s medium shot orients the viewer to the steely paralysis of a father left speechless by his daughter’s reproach. The story also serves to announce Yinniang’s decision to marry the mirror-polisher with whom she shares a philosophy of self-validation. Although Yinniang says nothing about her own situation, Hou’s camera gives a clearer picture of her marriage proposal by shifting the close-up from her face to the suitor’s, a transition that explains the purpose of her directive gaze: she sees in the young man a partner she admires and trusts (Figure 3.21).

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Figure 3.21  Medium close-up of the mirror polisher.

Princess Jiacheng’s story warns her against becoming the bluebird that dies dancing in front of its reflection. Instead of being possessed by the mirror, she is determined to own both the mirror and its maker. In Chinese the character jing 鏡 means both “mirror” (jing zi 鏡子) and “lens” (jing tou 鏡頭), philologically bringing together the idea of using the lens as a mirror to reflect “reality” and seeing the mirror as a metaphor for the lens in the film. The young mirror-polisher can be seen as a directorial alter ego, because the ways he polishes the copper to make images appear resemble the labor of a filmmaker who shoots and edits the film to create a moving picture (Figure 3.22). If Yinniang is a martial artist, the unnamed mirror-polisher is a mediating artist who navigates between the two philosophical interpretations of Dao by becoming a practicing Daoist who also adopts a Confucian ethos of being merciful. Yinniang’s education is finally complete when she sees in the young man the possibility of living in a creative world in which self-love does not conflict with selfless love. This adaptable experience, intersubjective in nature, is what characterizes Hou’s filmic philosophy, a Lévinasian ethic that positions the director as the subject “I” that responds to the demands of the



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Figure 3.22  Mirror polisher and cinematic art.

Other, be it the character, the viewer, or the film itself. As a pioneer, Hou is fearless in testing the limits of martial arts films not by being more spectacular, but by being more realistic about the predicament of negotiating among different ways of thinking, living, and experiencing life as art.

C H A P T E R

F O U R

The Back Shot in Jia Zhangke’s I Wish I Knew

The star of Sixth Generation filmmakers, Jia Zhangke brings stories of the little people to the big screen. Pickpockets, dancers, prostitutes, security guards, bystanders, and factory workers fit his cinematic paradigm of making the everyday noticeable. It is a tenet that governs his documentaries, feature films, and docufiction. From Xiaoshan Going Home (1995) and the hometown trilogy (Pickpocket 1997; Platform 2000; Unknown Pleasures 2002) to The World (2004), 24 City (2008), Mountains May Depart (2015) and Ash Is Purest White (2018), Jia paradoxically effaces and embraces the anonymity of his characters, dramatizing their mundane existence without compromising their familiarity.1 Unlike most directors’ appeal to populism, Jia’s focus on the marginal challenges what he considers to be the commercialized mainstream practice of the Fifth Generation filmmaking. He criticizes such luminaries as Chen Kaige and Zhang Yimou for using film “as a vehicle to describe legend,” thereby transforming “creation into manipulation” (M. Berry 2005, 192).2 Attacking the “opportunism” that plagues Chinese film industry, Jia stresses the urgency of investigating pressing social issues and portraying the transformation of one’s “surroundings” with “sensitivity” (M. Berry 2005, 192–193). Jia’s “here and now” cinema has earned him global acclaim. Critics praise him for his aesthetic commitment to representing a quotidian postsocialist reality and for his intellectual engagement in illustrating the “multivocality and polylocality” of “local cultural identity.”3 These and other tributes nevertheless deepen the irony of how the works of “a people’s director,” as Jia is hailed, attract more international scholars than the 96



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locals about whom the stories are told. His first officially released film, The World (2004), for example, performed poorly in the domestic box office and only broke even with the help of overseas sales (N. Hou 2005). Ticket sales have “nothing to do with creativity,” the director says, explaining why he is not worried about how the award-winning A Touch of Sin (2013) fared in the box office: too much attention to sales “turns an artist into a businessman” (China Radio Network 2014).4 Yet Jia’s above-the-fray defense does not address domestic critics who find his films “boring,” “slow,” and “confusing” (Tang 2005; N. Hou 2005), a contrast in reception that prompts the question of what it is about Jia’s work that polarizes audiences. I argue that an important aesthetic feature in Jia’s films that has gone unnoticed can help explain the divergent audience responses. Jia crafts a counterintuitive look that orients the viewer’s attention not to the characters’ faces but to their backs. Unlike the focused gaze of the facial close-up, the back image, often composed in a long shot, decenters attention. Understated and open ended, the back image seeks no spotlight, eschews stardom, and draws an investigative interest in the interactions between character and surroundings. It has a self-effacing mechanism that creates a sense of egalitarian indistinctiveness and dismantles the usual visual dominance of a protagonist. In short, Jia’s professed unpopularity results from an “interruptive aesthetic” that disavows heroism and character identification, replaces it with democratic plebeianism, and affirms a quotidian that resists institutional power and transnational capital. Jia’s stylistic signature is closely related to another overlooked attribute in his film: a deep connection to Confucian humanism. “The characters in my earlier films,” he explains, have often adopted “a Confucian philosophy of being in the world,” embracing, in particular, the core values of “forbearance and resolution” (Jia 2014). Such restraint is especially important during the economic boom in the post-reform era, because consumerist greed and social inequality—the byproducts of “capitalism with Chinese characteristics”—have become the most destructive forces of our time (Jia 2010, 20). Materialism is a violent addiction, laments Jia, one that justifies the “human act of accumulating wealth as the only purpose in life” and encourages “naked pillaging” (2010, 20; 1997, 20). Filmmaking should be construed as an art of cultural intervention that aims “to inject more humanistic concerns into our economic life” (Jia 2010, 21). Intellectuals (shi), Confucius teaches, need to go the distance by having the “breadth of mind and vigor of resolution” to take on the responsibility of loving people and creating a merciful community (2015, 8.7).5

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This Confucian vision explains why Jia sees in art not a way to a shortterm financial gain but an awesome charge of sensitizing viewers to such critical issues as income inequality and environmental disasters. His aesthetic is inclusive and magnanimous. “I use my camera lens,” the director enthuses, “to focus on all people” (Jia 2014). His back image, in particular, creates contrarian visual languages that underscore the directorial concern about the defacement of the silent majority. This articulation reaches for universal resonance by depicting the invisible lives without sentimentalism and exposing human vulnerability and fallibility with compassion. His resolve to capture an undifferentiated group nonetheless challenges the patience of average viewers, who are accustomed to seeing expository pictures that anchor their perceptual experience. The back image denaturalizes the scopophilic association of seeing with feeling and understanding, making it more difficult for audiences to identify with characters. This emotional distancing has important implications. It allows the director to neutralize the guiding power of the camera in a way that de-sensationalizes the authority of pain and suffering. Jia embraces a form of Confucian self-restraint (ke ji) that echoes Hou Hsiaohsien’s objective cinema: “under the sunlight, people with their love of life have the capacity to endure even the saddest and most horrific events in the world” (Jia 2015a). Channeling Hou’s equilibrium, Jia uses the long shot to give a broad view of how the characters interact with each other and with their environments. Such a big picture often requires a more nuanced interpretation of what one sees or does not see on the screen. Just as the characters who may not know who is looking at them, the audience is unsure about what the characters are thinking and feeling. Have they turned their back to the camera as a form of protest? Is there an air of humility, a sign of indifference, or a gesture of self-preservation in their back image? Jia’s stylistic practice resonates with the feminist study of “everyday” aesthetics. Rita Felski describes “everyday life” as a “secular and democratic concept.” It is secular because it describes a nontranscendental world that “is no longer connected to the miraculous, the magical or the sacred” (1999/2000, 16). It is democratic in the sense that “it recognizes the paramount shared reality of a mundane, material embeddedness in the world” (16). Yet such commonplaceness also distinguishes everyday life from the “exceptional moment” and “the heroic life,” creating a negative connotation of the quotidian “that exists only as something to be transcended, as the realm of monotony, emptiness, and dull compulsion” (17). Such intellectual hostility to mundanity extends to the criticism of women’s sphere, which is often associated with the domestic



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and the ordinary. Defined by negation, women’s domain “has not been that of war, art, philosophy, scientific endeavor, high office. What else is left to women but everyday life, the realm of the insignificant, invisible and yet indispensable?” (17). Challenging the intellectual scorn for the everyday banality, Felski proposes to redefine the concept through three key facets: time, space, and modality. “The temporality of the everyday,” Felski argues, “is that of repetition, the spatial ordering of the everyday is anchored in a sense of home and the characteristic mode of experiencing the everyday is that of habit” (1999/2000, 18). Her investigative approach is especially useful to my study of Jia Zhangke’s representations of the ordinary. His ethic of inclusiveness points out the alienating effects of people overvaluing the industrial drive toward linear progress and wealth accumulation, generating insatiability that perpetuates human discontents. His aesthetic of self-effacement, on the other hand, celebrates the circadian rhythm of life that makes memory, habit, and repetition hallmarks of small pleasures that give meanings to our everyday existence. In this chapter, I begin with analyses of Mountains May Depart (2015), a social drama with a sci-fi edge, and of the breakout realist film Pickpocket (1997) before turning to the provocative docufiction I Wish I Knew (2010). These diverse genres show a bold, inventive spirit that explores new ways of looking at the world from different narrative platforms, forcing the viewer as well as the director to examine such questions as whether money buys happiness, loyalty trumps morality, or a filmmaker can be both an artist and an activist. MOUNTAINS MAY DEPART: BACK IMAGE AND EVERYDAY RESILIENCE In the final scene of Mountains May Depart (2015), it is 2025 and the protagonist Tao still lives in her hometown of Fenyang in Shanxi. All her friends and family have long departed, but she is steadfast in performing a series of everyday tasks—chopping up pork to make dumpling fillings, putting on a heavy coat, finding the dog leash, and taking the dog out for a walk in the snow flurries—actions that have been repeated day after day. For Tao, these familiar activities map out a form of repetition that “is one of the ways in which we organize the world,” Felski writes, “make sense of our environment and stave off the threat of chaos” (1999/2000, 21). Tao’s life, as the story unfolds, is interrupted by multiple losses: her lover, son, husband, marriage, and father all represent the variables that destabilize her vision of domestic bliss, but she prevails by drawing

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strength from the dependability of routine acts. As Tao’s actions illustrate, habits are self-sustaining, because they are “a key factor in the gradual formation of identity as a social and intersubjective process. Quite simply, we become who we are through acts of repetition” (21). These acts of repetition, however, are not mindless or intuitive; they are ritualistic in a way that helps shape a desirable form of identity one aspires to embrace. When Tao walks to the ground near a temple, the audience recognizes the familiar location being a site of her past rendezvous with boys. Her repeated visit to the same place is purposeful; it is a reminiscence of a happier chapter in her life. Jia helps the viewer envision Tao’s thought sequence by replaying the Pet Shop Boys’ 1993 song “Go West,” a vivid reminder of the opening scene in 1999 in which the carefree girl danced with a group of friends to the same tune. Surveying the desolate, wintry landscape with a wistful smile, Tao erases the twenty-six-year lapse by slowly breaking into the same dance she did in her prime. It is a familiar and alienating moment because her happy memory brings back a vibrant past that reasserts itself into a ghostly present. In the last shot, Jia’s camera turns 180 degrees to capture the back of Tao’s dancing image (Figure 4.1). The long shot of the dancer is imbued with the isolation and quietude of death, but she soldiers on. Her quiet energy personifies what Confucius describes as the four key features of the “goodness” in human nature: “the firm, the enduring, the simple, and the modest” (2015, 13.27). There is also a sense of resilience in what Jia characterizes as “Tao’s reunion with her youth” (Jia 2015b). The columbarium pagoda signals the end of a physical journey and yet the protagonist dances to the imagined music that never fades in memory. By incorporating the dance number into Tao’s everyday routines, Jia makes repetition more liberating than

Figure 4.1  Back image of Tao dancing to a familiar tune.



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enslaving, setting her free from the linear constraints of aging and the cyclical threat of mortality. Her back image, at once familiar and distant, creates a retrospection that gives the viewer a fill-in-the-blank power to suture the narrative gaps and to consider together the forces of life and death. Death is an equalizer of people. “From of old,” Confucius says matter-of-factly, “death has been the lot of all men” (2015, 12.7). This final picture shows that what matters in one’s finite existence is not the pursuit of wealth but the experience of love, because all worldly possessions ultimately turn to dust. The Chinese title of the movie Shan he gu ren (山河故人), Jia Zhangke explains, means “time will transform mountains and rivers, but our hearts will remain the same” (Aliza Ma 2016). This aphorism highlights the perpetuity of human emotions and, as melodramatic as it may sound, nuances Jia’s criticism of how contemporary Chinese society trades the Confucian tenet of “loving people” for the capitalist urge to love things.6 The downfall of the tradeoff is especially poignant in the story of Tao’s dejected son “Dollar” who has a transliterated Chinese name Da Le that ironically suggests “realized happiness.” Yet living with his divorced, suicidal father in a state-ofthe-art mansion in Australia, Dollar witnesses only the decay of life. His transpacific nostalgic utterance of his mother’s name “Tao” on the Aussie shore transitions the scene back to China, connecting parent and child telepathically. In the dead of winter, Tao’s back image carries both the weight and the warmth of a bygone era retraceable through familiar dance steps. PICKPOCKET: BACK AGAINST REALITY Jia’s aesthetic of the back is humanistic and complex. Because it is easy to associate a distant shot of a character from behind with the nostalgic act of looking to the past, the back image can also be construed as someone’s fear of facing the future, or someone’s relief of being invisible. If Tao in Mountains May Depart celebrates the existential comfort of remembering love in repetition, Xiao Wu in Pickpocket embodies the risks of personal inertia that result in the blind acceptance of unprocessed social mores. Tracing the disorientation of Xiao Wu in memorable back images, Jia captures the disillusionment of a lost generation unable to transition from a socialist society to a capitalist economy. In the opening sequence, the protagonist Xiao Wu walks onto a bus, turns his back to the audience, lies about being a policeman, and steals someone’s wallet (Figure 4.2).

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Figure 4.2  Xiao Wu on the bus.

Compared with other passengers, who face forward, Xiao Wu, in the menacing medium shot of his back, stands out like a sore thumb. The back image foreshadows his troubled life: jobless and restless, the pickpocket is reluctant to confront a grim future that awaits him, ultimately displaying blind loyalty to both a perfidious childhood friend and a duplicitous brothel lover. He becomes a marked man for a society eager to exorcize its bad elements. Xiao Wu’s descent into ignominy culminates in the final two scenes, in which the director deftly echoes the bus ride by executing two medium shots of his crouching back, his hand first handcuffed to a motorcycle in the police station and later shackled to an electrical pole on the street (Figures 4.3 and 4.4). The shift from indoor to outdoor magnifies the scale of his humiliation. The street scene shows Jia’s critique of a society all too gleeful to lock away petty criminals whose altruism is out of step with a world in pursuit of personal advancement. His friend Xiao Yong, the ex-pickpocket and now an entrepreneur in the “entertainment business,” is, ironically, revered as a community leader who runs a prostitution ring and other illegal businesses. Inscribed in the two back images is therefore an exposition of an ethical myopia that penalizes visible vices but ignores hidden crimes slowly eroding the moral core of society. Jia’s

Figure 4.3  Xiao Wu chained to a motorcycle in a police station.

Figure 4.4  Xiao Wu chained to an electrical pole on the street.

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medium shots intensify the passivity and vulnerability of Xiao Wu, whose “loss of face” (or diu lian 丟臉) deepens his sense of degradation and indignation. These back images are more symbolic than frontal shots because the protagonist’s facelessness gives him an everyman identity whose predicaments are as socially embedded as self-inflicted. In other words, Jia’s aesthetic generates an emotive distance between the viewer and the character and creates a mixed signal of being sympathetic to and critical of Xiao Wu’s downfall. Such ambivalence often alienates the mainstream audience because the shots give no clear moral guidance, but the complex emotions make Jia’s film provocative. The director sees the everyday aesthetic as an expression of “both nostalgia for the concrete and disdain for a life lacking in critical self-reflection” (Felski 1999/2000, 17). Indeed, Jia’s back image registers a lament for the disappearance of communal support and a concern about the inertia that stalls human will to change. His characters, often victims of social circumstances, perpetuate the exploitation that victimizes them. Back images thus have the ability to make visible different blind spots in self-scrutiny. Such examples include the flawed interpersonal communication in Platform (2000), the lover’s deception in The World (2004), the gullibility of good people in Still Life (2006), the workers’ resignation in 24 City (2008), human despair in A Touch of Sin (2013), consuming regrets in Mountains May Depart (2015), and betrayal of loyalty in Ash Is Purest White (2018). But the “hindsight” of human fallibility is not reachable without further visual clarification. Jia often makes his back image more accessible by incorporating conventional shots, such as close-ups, that plant contextual details and embed people in their social framework. Unlike Zhang Yimou, who exploits individual emotional expressivity in the close-up, Jia uses it to magnify the relations between people and places. Jia explains how he introduces the protagonist in the opening sequence of Pickpocket by showing a close-up of his hands to identify his profession and location (Figure 4.5). I decided to open the film with a shot of his hands because he is a pickpocket, a thief, and his hands are the tools of his trade. The package of matches in his hand actually has “Shanxi” written on it. I decided to add this prop in order to provide a spatial reference point to the viewers, which is very important. The whole issue of locale was extremely close to me when I made the film, and I wanted to highlight the fact that this was a story about Shanxi. It was really a rarity for a camera crew to come to a place like Shanxi and face the reality there, so I wanted to make this clear from the beginning. So the hands for the thief and the matches for Shanxi. (M. Berry 2005, 202)



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Figure 4.5  Close-up of Xiao Wu’s hand and matchbox.

Jia expects the viewer to make inferences and gather visual clues from close-ups that detail the character’s culturally rooted behavior, a demand that distinguishes his aesthetic from the self-enclosed systems of signification that other theorists envision. As noted in chapters one and two, Gilles Deleuze, Béla Balázs, and Mary Ann Doane all affirm the autonomy of the close-up. Deleuze sees the close-up as an abstraction “from all spatio-temporal co-ordinates” and raises it “to the state of Entity” (1987, 95–96; emphasis in original). This deterritorialization generates in the spectator a form of pathos that makes the close-up not just part of a whole but a whole in itself (96–97). Analyzing Deleuze’s famous statement that “there is no close-up of the face, the face itself is a close-up,” Mary Ann Doane explains: “this understanding of the face requires that it be completely detached from ordinary notions about its social semiotics” (2003, 94).7 By contrast, Jia uses the blow-up of a detail to augment the viewer’s understanding of social context and to invite the audience to imagine the offscreen elements that contribute to Xiao Wu’s inertia. The hand and the matchbox draw attention to the protagonist’s stained, rolled-up sleeve, another detail that suggests his strained financial situation. Xiao Wu

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wears an oversized Western-styled jacket that looks like a charitable donation. He is a poor thief who gives generous gifts to his friend and lover. The close-up thus paves the way for the subsequent back images that illustrate Xiao Wu’s emotional vulnerability and lack of upward mobility, confirming the harsh economic conditions of a locale with no exit. Instead of divorcing close-ups from social forces, Jia integrates them to show how personal choices are shaped and constrained. These combined effects of the back image and the close-up create a picture of an every-person, be it Xiao Wu in Pickpocket or Tao in Mountains May Depart, who is committed to recovering a past—home, familial love, friendship, childhood, and romance—that is no longer present. Across his films, the journey down memory lane either retreats to the repetition of a symbolic act or crashes into a dead end, generating the mixed emotions of comfort and regret. I WISH I KNEW: DIRECTORIAL BACKSTORY But Jia is more than a storyteller; he is a humanist who sees film as both an art and a medium for social change. Nowhere is his negotiation with the artist-activist paradox more illuminating than the 2010 docufiction I Wish I Knew, a cinematic experiment in the form of a disassociated narrative that combines and gives equal treatment to observations of the masses, interviews of a select few famous people, and an accidental cast of workers, barbers, and passersby who make brief but substantive appearances. Commissioned by the 2010 Shanghai World Expo, I Wish I Knew had the “appearance” of being an officially sponsored propaganda for the city. But, as Tony Rayns writes, Jia accepted the invitation only when “he was given carte blanche to make whatever kind of film he liked” and for the most part the film’s final cut proved that his goal of telling true stories about émigrés from Shanghai was accomplished (Rayns 2010). Another polemic is the film’s original Chinese title Haishang chuanqi (Legend over the Sea): the word “legend” conjures up tales of the strange that distract attention from the ordinary folks. Yet as he loosely interweaves unofficial accounts of Shanghai migrants and expats into the cultural tapestry of the city, Jia uses the word “legend” symbolically and ironically. It is symbolic because of its celebration of docufiction as a genre that embraces the creativity involved in narrating history.8 It is also ironic because the film redefines the notion of the extraordinary not as legendary but as paranormal, creating an anonymous character whose everyday experience appears outof-this-world. Jia appropriates these interpretations of “legend” in two symbolic figures whose narrative functions confound the viewer. One is a



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bronze lion that roars in the opening sequence and throughout the film and the other is a mysterious white-shirted woman (Zhao Tao) wandering around the city at all hours. If the question is why, in a documentary, Jia adds fictional elements that challenge the credibility of his biography of the city, then the answer, I believe, is that these two unsettling characters act as directorial alter egos providing transhistorical views on a postsocialist society in transition. In other words, I Wish I Knew stands out among Jia’s works for the way its reflexivity interrogates a director’s power and limitations in storytelling. Such self-scrutiny exposes the shared challenges the director, the audience, and his social actors all face in a capitalist climate that sees moneymaking as the end rather than a means, creating a toxic marriage between greed and politics. These discontents are interwoven in two narrative strands: stories of the people in the sit-down interviews and sketches of the space in establishing shots. As a chronicler, Jia uses the interviews to expose Shanghai’s dark history of assassination, persecution, exploitation, colonialism, discrimination, and other conflicts. As a humanist, he probes into the story of a metropolis whose insatiable pursuit of wealth produces as much gloom as glamour. The opening sequence of I Wish I Knew highlights a postmodern anxiety by presenting different looks of a moneyed institution, Bank of Communications, that appears inaccessible to average folks. The first shot is an inside-out look at the street (Figure 4.6). Visibly dominating the screen is the back of a lioness, crouching in the middle of the frame confronting a world divided into different compartments: the silhouette of high-rises takes up more than half of the sky, echoing the power harnessed in the bank. Then we see the

Figure 4.6  Opening shot of the lioness’s back.

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dilapidated structure in front of the apartment buildings foretelling a sense of imminent loss. It has a scheduled date with demolition, the future result of which is already evident in the piles of debris in the center of the frame. This opening shot speaks of destruction, obstruction, and rebirth, topics that have gripped Jia Zhangke’s imagination and conscience since the beginning of his career. Discussing his urge to capture the drastic makeover of his hometown of Fenyang, Jia describes the impact of the spatial reconfiguration on his creative vision: There was an ancient road near the neighborhood where I grew up and that entire road was to be torn down. . . . All of this radical change playing out right there before my eyes left me with a pressing urge to shoot it and capture it before it was gone. The interior of China was undergoing this massive transformation—not on the eve of great change or just after great change; it was all happening right there. (M. Berry 2005, 192)

Jia’s documentary professes a similar preservationist desire to capture a changing image before it is completely changed. Unlike the philosophical reflection in Mountains May Depart or the paralyzing inertia in Pickpocket, his camera in I Wish I Knew is more deliberate, often chasing after characters walking away from the scene or seizing images of buildings in the process of being demolished. Rather than envisioning the linear improvement of the city, Jia’s opening sequence moves in a circle, focusing on the statuesque mythical figure, a legendary lioness that thrives on the reproduction of its folklore and imagery. Jia repeats shots of the lioness from different angles. This statue of the “old guard” symbolically challenges the commercialized demand for innovation as advertised in the capitalist conglomeration of the World Expo. It also provides a sign of familiarity, a form of resistance to change. As Felski puts it, within “the maelstrom of contemporary life, change is often imposed on individuals against their will,” and this is especially true when we assume “the superior value of the new” (1999/2000, 21). The immoveable lioness bears witness to the destructive impulse of an industrial drive for progress (Figure 4.7). Scrutinizing the city with a stoic gaze, the lioness confronts the vertical extension of the urban scape. Her first target is the glass high-rise, a haughty sterile building, whose menacing largeness radiates status and control. In a profiled close-up, the iconic figure, while being dusted by a worker’s disembodied hand, looks as if she were barking at the looming threat. Their confrontation becomes intensified when Jia’s camera pulls back to show the visual and ideological contrast between the two (Figure 4.8). One is an impersonal office structure whose checkered windows connote



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Figure 4.7  Lioness and the glass building.

Figure 4.8  Contextual view of the lioness, worker, and building.

multiple and faceless labor; the other is a singular lioness in bronze, bearing mythical traits of honesty, nobility, and loyalty. Despite the lion’s position as a guardian at the bank, Jia’s camera uses the initial back shot to frame her as a keen observer of the rise and fall of those around her. The subsequent shot imagines her venting a collective protest against the encroaching massive development. The paradox of her position and action invites scrutiny. Can the lioness be a guard and a critic at the same time? Does the incongruity of her dual roles echo the predicament of a Chinese director who needs funding and yet condemns the seductive power of the capital? From interviews, we know that Jia is sensitive to the dilemma of being inside and outside the system, and this is reflected in his uneasy relation

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with the Shanghai World Expo. For some, his evolution from an independent filmmaker to a state-sanctioned artist jeopardizes the sincerity of his aesthetic endeavors.9 Others judge that he has remained committed to issues that affect “ordinary contemporary lives.”10 A realistic idealist, then, Jia is practical about what must be done to make his voice heard in society, because he knows that “his social critique is strongest not as a protester on the sidelines but as a legal—and marketable—filmmaker” (Osnos 2009). Such complex activist-artist-populist aspirations force him to reconcile with an evolving reality: My expression, my view on history, my view on the truth must be independent, but I tell myself not to get marginalized, because being marginalized means you can’t do anything. Marginalization can be a kind of pleasant stance . . . but I would rather expend enormous energy trying to dance with the many levels of the era in which we live. (Osnos 2009)

Jia is committed to adopting the Confucian “being in the world” (ru shi) philosophy that, as I discussed earlier, encourages intellectuals to be versatile and persevering, because their serious social responsibilities demand a long and arduous course of action (Confucius 2015, 8.7). Indeed, Jia is determined to shape public discourse about how to improve society. Yet going mainstream has not stopped him from using bold symbolism to articulate a mixed position. If the crouching lioness signals a directorial quandary, the subsequent close-up of the cub embraces procreation, the cycle of life, and love between generations (Figure 4.9). Allegorically, the lioness gives birth to the cub just as Jia begets I Wish I Knew, which is full of children’s nostalgic accounts of their Shanghai parents’ sacrifices and exploits.

Figure 4.9  Magnified view of what is hidden underneath.



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Cut to a reverse shot, Jia’s camera moves across the street to give a contextual view of what sits behind the lions—the Bank of Communications (Figure 4.10). Protected by layers of an obstacle course—the fence, roadblock, piles of rocks, and the lions—the bank is almost impenetrable to ordinary people unable to leap through the hoops. This establishing shot helps frame Jia’s criticism of exclusive economic policies that accelerate the demolition of the old to make room for the nouveaux riches. In light of this industrial boom, Jia cultivates an aesthetic strategy to resist the rush to change. A reverse shot brings the viewer back to where the film starts, the lioness edged to the left of the frame (Figure 4.11). Using slow motion, Jia transforms the filmic world into a surreal, stylized place where speed is no longer a reliable marker for progress. Instead, moving cars and a rock-carrying worker on foot occupy a leveled playing field.

Figure 4.10  Establishing shot of the bank.

Figure 4.11  Angled view of the world.

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When the prologue comes to an end, Jia has already established a vision of telling true stories creatively, a practice that corresponds to his claim: “Surrealism is a crucial part of China’s reality” (A. Chan 2009). However, the subsequent appearance of a fictional nobody in a documentary is still not without controversy. In plain attire, a woman wanders up and down the city, the film, and history. Inside the frame but outside the biography, Zhao has drawn mixed reviews from critics, some praising her as a silent witness to the city’s erasure of its past and others criticizing Jia’s “interstitial indulgences” as unnecessary (Rayns 2010). “Zhao’s scenes,” B. D. Morgan laments, are “largely responsible for the soporific quality of the film’s final third,” and “should have been cut . . . I Wish I Knew has a persistent, neurotic queasiness about its mise-en-scène, the camera loath to rest even on an interviewee” (2010, 2). However, Zhao’s mercurial movement and restless inquiry also enable the film to connect the fixed historical dots revealed by each interviewee’s biography. Zhang Yingjin sees Zhao Tao from a metatextual perspective, as a reflection of Jia’s self-criticism, questioning the director’s own “nostalgic and melodramatic representations of Shanghai” (2015, 244).11 Jia tells reporters that Zhao serves two purposes. On the one hand, she is a city guide who walks the viewer through the times and places of the eighteen interviews. She plays “the role of an invisible person who returns from the past to the present” (Shi and Feng 2010). On the other, her melancholy expresses Jia’s wariness of the film’s limitation to tell only the stories of a few while leaving out the memories of many (Shi and Feng 2010). Her presence mourns the narrative loss of others and her movement brings to view human struggles with stagnation. Combining both functions, Zhao ultimately embodies the ethics and aesthetics of Jia’s signature back shots. Her visible invisibility in the diegetic space is both a conscious selfcritique of and nuanced reproach to the alienating works of mainstream directors, who tend to overlook the stories of the silent majority. Her status as a noncharacter, moreover, gives her a ghostly mobility that helps steer the audience to visit the rarely exposed underbelly of Shanghai and to spotlight the city’s messy past. Still, Zhao Tao’s ahistorical, nonnarrative presence poses a special hermeneutic challenge to the viewer because her moving image remains impenetrable. As the film progresses, she walks on different grounds as a blank figure, giving us neither access to her thoughts nor understanding of her actions. Like the bronze lioness, Zhao is a nonparticipatory observer who gives the space a human scale to measure the distance, mood, and perspective of a changing social milieu.



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Figure 4.12  White-shirted woman walking among ruins.

In her first tour, Zhao as a directorial proxy quietly initiates for the viewer a conversation with a deserted landscape about the missing links between the skyscrapers afar and the broken path forward (Figure 4.12). Traveling down a torn-up road, the ethereal guide connects several disorienting sights: a tattered ground, a gray sky, shadowy high-rises, and a body of drab water. The overcast sky blurs the temporal distinction among dusk, noon, and dawn, and makes one uncertain about what produces the gloom—bad weather, industrial smog, or both. The gray work zone thus creates an image of arrested progress, bringing the viewer face-to-face with what Jia calls “feelings of desperation and devastation” in “a city of ruins” (M. Berry 2005, 200–201). A sense of unreadability in Zhao’s pedestrian stroll embodies the everyday resistance to the dominance of institutional power. If walking is writing the space with one’s body, as what Zhao is doing, then Michel de Certeau is right to argue that this type of meandering produces a fragmented, elliptical, invisible text that is not predictable or legible and therefore not subject to the totalizing control of an administrator or city planner with panoptic power. Writing with footsteps, an “ordinary practitioner” of the city is able to take a nonlinear, discursive path to challenge the goal of “going to places” envisioned by urban strategists. Zhao’s itinerary deviates from the planned routes of an official map and her on-the-ground inscription composes “a manifold story that has neither author nor spectator, shaped out of fragments of trajectories and alterations of spaces: in relation to representations, it remains daily and indefinitely other” (de Certeau 1984, 94).12 Zhao Tao is the “indefinitely Other” in I Wish I Knew. Her enigmatic saunter highlights “a contradiction between the collective mode of

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Figure 4.13  White-shirted woman walking past construction.

administration and individual mode of re-appropriation,” confirming that “spatial practices in fact secretly structure the determining conditions of social life” (de Certeau 1984, 97). Her prosaic viewpoint enables the director to map out the multiform resistance, “tricky and stubborn procedures that elude discipline without being outside the field in which it is exercised, and which should lead us to a theory of everyday practices, of lived space, of the disquieting familiarity of the city” (de Certeau 1984, 97). As the walker slices, glides, and penetrates the cityscape, the director guides us to see the myriad faces of a space divided by economic expectations and operations. In Pudong, the most glamorous district of Shanghai, the solitary itinerant once again tracks down unfinished projects, leading us to a dirt route lined with construction vehicles, engulfing chasms, and bandaged European buildings (Figure 4.13). Turning the city inside out, she later brings us to another work zone where the enormous dirt truck, in the full glory of its machinery, half blocks the view of Shanghai’s famous landmark—Oriental Pearl Tower (Figure 4.14). Judging from the perspective of the three workers on the right, we see a spectatorial divide between an immediate working reality and a distant tourist fantasy. Zhao presents a back alley of the city that features a proletarian view of an urban attraction, the appreciation of which is obstructed by the engine of an economic life. These long shots also represent the director’s studied treatment of Shanghai as a dramatic character whose appearance, psychology, history, action, and personality are important to the understanding of its cultural biography. Jia explains this approach: “We need to talk to the space we



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Figure 4.14  Divided view of Shanghai’s cityscape.

Figure 4.15  Shanghai’s two faces.

occupy, because space is a living entity and only through conversation one is able to find a least disruptive, most functional and best angle for shooting and presenting one’s perspective” (J. Wang 2018; my translation). If Jia sees the city as a living entity, we can compare these construction sites to the exposed innards of a metropolitan underbelly, vital to the build-up of its health but too messy to be embraced. This is the case in Zhao’s fourth tour de force that juxtaposes the city’s two faces (Figure 4.15). On the far side of the Huangpu River sits the shimmering Bund, full of shining architecture and postmodern wonder. On this side, however, is the rusty belt of a shady worksite, looking darkish brown in the encroaching dusk. Jia presents a picture of Shanghai different from the glossy tourist pages. He shows the pain of labor that empowers the city to dazzle visitors.

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The “rationalization of the city,” de Certeau explains, “leads to its mythification in strategic discourses, which are calculations based on the hypothesis or the necessity of its destruction in order to arrive at a final decision” (1984, 95). These calculations privilege progress (time) over space in ways that make the Concept-city become “a place of transformations and appropriations, the object of various kinds of interference but also a subject that is constantly enriched by new attributes . . . simultaneously the machinery and the hero of modernity” (de Certeau 1984, 95). The heroism of the city is most visible in the site of the Shanghai World Expo in which 192 nations participated in “the biggest and best World Expo ever” (Barboza 2010). With record-setting attendance, seventy-three million people visited the theme park of “Better City—Better Life.” But Jia prefigures a different view of the biggest World’s Fair in which Zhao walks the viewer through the sparkling new World Expo Pavilion unoccupied (Figure 4.16). A long shot of the vacant ground generates a disinfected view of numerous identical white stalls, effacing individuality and autonomy in ways that echo the sterile appearance of the glass building in the opening sequence. Never has the back of the sojourner looked more inconspicuous than in this scene: her camouflaged appearance slowly disappears under the glare of a clean white surface. The financial roar of a global event drowns out whatever feeble protest her pedestrian walk evokes. Still, buried beneath the spotless ground is a gnawing reminder of the soiled trail that just emerged on the screen moments ago. Contrasting the pristine center with sullied street corners allows Jia to indict the hypocrisy of public policies, which present an orderly modern picture of the city to the

Figure 4.16  Shanghai Expo Pavilion.



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world by sweeping under the rug questions about workers’ compensation, infrastructure, commercial overdevelopment, and erosion of historical memory. The decentering power of Zhao’s back images fosters a kind of narrative ambiguity that is democratic, multifaceted, and open ended. Her itinerary draws special attention to the growing pain of a metropolis, visualizing “a struggle aimed at revealing and undermining power where it is most invisible and insidious” (Foucault and Deleuze 1972). From an unidentified shipyard worker sitting on the dock to an unnamed middleaged barber looking out from inside the shop to the wistful back image of Fei Mingyi (director Fei Mu’s daughter) reflecting on her father’s legacy to a long shot of the star Rebecca Pan touching up her makeup, the assembly of these individuals, seemingly incidental at first glance, commands a position that gives the audience an inside-out look at “a system of power which blocks, prohibits, and invalidates” the discourse that challenges both the manifest authority of censorship and a unified reading of social reality (Foucault and Deleuze 1972). The diversity of these images hence captures the inspiration, vulnerability, reticence, and eloquence of people whose delicate interactions with their surroundings nuance the multiplicity of their struggle against power, especially the politicized economic engine that seeks to transform them into its objects of exploitation (Figures 4.17–4.20). Together, Jia’s back shots create a centrifugal visual effect, as opposed to the centripetal force of a facial close-up, which demands the audience to make sense of everything they see in the frame. It is a conceptual aesthetic that prefers the complexity of a big picture to the perceptual

Figure 4.17  Dock worker.

Figure 4.18  Barber shop.

Figure 4.19  Fei Mingyi’s backstory.

Figure 4.20  Backside view of Rebeca Pan.



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power of a filmic image. These undefined shots are designed to disrupt conventional visual pleasures by frustrating the viewer’s desire for narrative coherence, voyeurism, and fetishism. Adding texture, tension, and credibility to the representations of every individual, Jia positions himself not only as a Confucian humanist but also as one of Edward Said’s public intellectuals, concerning themselves only minimally to “be there to make [their] audiences feel good” (1988, 12). Instead “the whole point is to be embarrassing, contrary, and even unpleasant” (12). For Said, an intellectual is “an individual with a specific public role in society,” who is not afraid “to raise embarrassing questions, to confront orthodoxy and dogma (rather than to produce them), to be someone who cannot easily be co-opted by governments or corporations, and whose raison d’être is to represent all those people and issues that are routinely forgotten or swept under the rug” (11–21). This definition captures what most critics say about Jia’s resolve to be a fearless voice of social conscience. His films deliver a candid critique of his generation and set him apart from his contemporaries by speaking truth both to power and to the disempowered. His representations of ordinary people are neither heroic nor idealistic, but realistic and hard-edged, and many are trapped by a capitalist greed that drives them to the brink of self-destruction. Ultimately Jia’s aesthetic validates a hindsight of shared human mundanity and fallibility, and his films polish a nostalgic rear-view mirror, making the viewer see a disappearing past that haunts the future.

C H A P T E R

F I V E

Between Close-ups and Long Shots Medium Shots in Wei Desheng’s Cape No. 7

Close-ups and long shots have made Chinese cinemas stand out in the global film industry. Medium shots, however, including medium closeups and medium long shots, have not received as much critical attention despite their popularity in mainstream culture. One reason is that they seem too common to be notable. As “all-purpose” shots, they cover dialogues, body language, and background information (Bordwell and Thompson 2004, 262). Their indistinctiveness strikes a middle ground between extremes: the camera does not approach close enough to be explosive or retreat far enough to be elusive. Yet films composed of mostly medium shots have unique philosophical and aesthetic attributes, even though the link between theme and form in popular works is not always obvious. Nonetheless, they often resonate with theories emphasizing the “golden middle way” or the reconciliation of opposites, especially the Confucian notion of “the doctrine of the mean” that strives to find a proper path of life, advocating moderation of thoughts and behaviors.1 Stylistically, the medium shot combines figures and surroundings to synergize different forms of communication for the audience. Designed to be informative, it has a general ubiquity unsurpassed by other types of shots. We may even speculate that the more medium shots a film has, the more populist appeal it wishes to achieve, because well-designed medium shots help advance the narrative in ways that naturalize invisible editing and move the plot forward without the seeming abruptness of the close-up or the perceived stillness of the long shot. The middling approach paces the flow of storytelling with the Goldilocks approach, neither too fast nor too slow. 120



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Among the popular genres, romantic comedy is most inclined to subscribe to the medium shot, because it is a genre in search of a happy way to create a balanced narrative tone and a mood of equilibrium. In Chinese cinemas, Ang Lee’s Eat Drink Man Woman (1994), Peter Chan’s Comrades, Almost a Love Story (1996), Zhang Yimou’s Happy Times (2002), and Feng Xiaogang’s If You Are the One (2008) are famous examples that use the medium shot effectively. Though light-hearted, these romcoms can be seriously political, challenging the audience to examine the meanings and consequences of finding compromises to solve class, sexual, and racial conflicts. Wei Desheng’s 2008 blockbuster Cape No. 7 is a case in point. A Taiwanese story about love and loss, Cape No. 7 exemplifies the island’s search for a golden mean to negotiate the mixed expectations of being a postcolonial state, a non-nation polity, and an ethnically diverse democracy. The highest grossing domestic movie in Taiwanese history, it attracted local audiences for its humor, optimism, authenticity, and inclusivity (Liang 2013, 9). “Taiwanese people are going through hard times,” Wei observes. “Often they are unable to find the right approach to deal with the feelings of self-loathing and regret and to balance love and hate” about who they are (Y. Chen 2010). An innovative filmmaker, Wei combines the entertaining value of romcoms with the ideological mediation of medium shots to create what he calls a “process of reconciliation” (Y. Chen 2010). As a popular success, Cape No. 7 stands apart from the films of the previous two cinematic movements, Taiwan New Cinema and Taiwan Second Wave. A postmodern drama, it focuses on finding the “glocal” middle ground between a local concern with identity politics and a global interest in defining world citizenship. Wei redraws the cultural border between Taiwanese insiders and outsiders, creating a Homi Bhabha-style “Third Space” that optimistically redefines historical stereotypes and symbols. Finally, Wei’s medium shot gives a wide range of perspectives on what feminism means in contemporary Taiwan. The director charts a medium path of compromises, seeing homemakers and lady bosses as equal partners in advancing progressive social ideas. IT IS ALL ABOUT THE PEOPLE Asked about his goal in shooting Cape No. 7, Wei characterizes his populist approach to romanticize localism: “I wanted to make a film that could move the hearts of people, which was about our local culture, but which could at the same time be commercially successful.”2 Courting Taiwan’s mainstream audience, Wei produced what Peng Hsiao-yen

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calls “a ‘good-looking’ story” that integrates Walter Benjamin-esque elements of storytelling, combining life counsel, the miraculous, humor, and passion to create a “modern Taiwan fairytale” (2010, 126; Benjamin 1968). Interweaving the love stories of two Sino-Japanese couples living six decades apart adds a fantastical appeal to the film that romanticizes a transhistorical and transcultural love affair. Equally compelling is the film’s local cast, who appear “real and natural” to the general moviegoers. “People found them funny,” Wei explains, “not because they said something funny but because they act like people you know.”3 These characters only look “natural” on the screen because Wei configures them exclusively in medium shots, staging a sense of measured, comfortable distance between the viewer and the cast. Such an approach is especially effective in character portraits, in which the viewer is treated to a balanced presentation of body language, surroundings, and movements that seem unthreateningly familiar. Aga’s mother (Pei Hsiao-lan), for example, plays the role of everyone’s mother. She embodies selfless love, radiating domestic bliss and communal good will. When Aga becomes a temporary postal worker, she sews a green motorcycle cover for her son to comply with the traffic law and to announce his newly employed status (Figure 5.1). Wei’s camera following her in and out of the house always keeps the same distance. As a result, her unvarying size creates a sense of visual evenness that anchors the narrative flow. The medium shot provides a mixture of information: her body language speaks of relief and elation about her thirty-something son finally getting a temporary job. Her house is unassuming, full of everyday objects that are more functional

Figure 5.1  Aga’s mother sewing a motorcycle cover.



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Figure 5.2  Aga’s mother delivering a message.

than ornamental. Because her husband “Mr. Representative” is a city councilman fighting against corruption, the modest setting gives credence to his moral righteousness. Aga’s mother is also a messenger, a woman in the middle providing support for all those around her. When Tomoko (Chie Tanaka) asks her to deliver a note to her son, Wei’s medium shot adds to her cheerful presence a feeling of contentment (Figure 5.2). Unlike other genres, romantic comedies tend to make light of human angst. Whereas Tomoko always seems on edge, Aga’s mother provides comic relief with her smile and speech. Despite these successful narrative strategies, Wei’s medium shot and commercial instinct carry risk. When a director shows only what he believes the viewers want to see and hear, what kind of “life counsel” can he give? What are the potential drawbacks for characters acting like “our” friends and neighbors who share similar values? Does Wei’s “going with the flow” ultimately reinforce mainstream stereotypes, ethnic biases, xenophobia, and sexism? Do his placating medium shots shortchange moral conscience by solidifying the existing power structure? The first concerning sign, as I see it, is that Cape No. 7 castigates the protagonist Tomoko, a Mandarin-speaking Japanese model-wannabe, as an obstreperous force in the community and makes visible, albeit in a lighthearted way, an embedded xenophobic sexism. This crowd-pleasing mockery of the Other privileges a local masculine perspective that dictates moral decorum. Yet, as the story unfolds, the film exposes the tensions between Taiwan’s chauvinistic, nativist protectionism and its progressive globalist ambitions. In a meeting on selecting local band members, the committee breaks into a shouting match during which the councilman’s political aide viciously attacks Tomoko’s appearance, ability, and sex (Figure 5.3).

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Figure 5.3  Political aide scolding Tomoko.

Figure 5.4  Tomoko looking furious.

The medium shot establishes a group setting in which, despite the misgivings of others, the aide’s biases and aggression are tepidly condoned. The gang mentality suppresses dissension in a way that propagates a populist fear about the threat of a foreign woman whose commanding position demasculinizes local male authorities. With the all-male formation, the medium shot both challenges and perpetuates the congenial feeling of brotherhood. A reverse shot shows the silenced Tomoko with flaring nostrils and a fuming gaze (Figure 5.4). The intensity of her frustration is nonetheless mitigated by the restrained distance of the medium portrait in which she is surrounded by men indifferent to her outrage. Unlike close-ups that escalate tensions, medium shots give room for a measured response.



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But the band of locals is neither homogenous nor without conflict. Carefully staged in the plot are stereotypical characters from various groups—Hakka, aboriginal, Taiwanese, Chinese, and Japanese-Taiwanese. Such diversity reflects the complexity of Taiwan’s ethnic mixture yet reveals the island’s political anxiety about how to define its cultural authenticity. This confusion of self-definition drew widespread commentary because Wei skews history by allegorizing a postcolonial love affair between Taiwan and Japan, a move that drew cheers from the mainstream audience but jeers from critics. His conciliatory romanticism is manifest in the medium-shot mentality that marries commerce with politics and deflects the trauma of colonial conflicts. Despite Japan’s brutal rule of Taiwan from 1895 to 1945, Taiwan residents often see modern Japan as a political ally, economic partner, and cultural exemplar. Scholars, however, are more sensitive to the “unreflective valorization of Japanese colonial legacy” (Liao 2011) and the rewrite of “the memory of Taiwan’s colonized past” (H. Chen 2014). The reason for such political ambivalence, as Lee Pei-ling points out, comes from the Taiwanese recognition of how the colonizers, in the process of exploiting Taiwan’s resources, also modernized the island through “urban development, electrification, railroading, education, census records, administrative and legal systems, governmental structural, and other types of infrastructure” (2010, 53). For Ivy I-chu Chang, Wei’s film celebrates a “Taiwanese unconscious” that brings together “older generation’s nostalgia, the younger generation’s fetishes, and Japanophilia” (2010, 87). Chialan Sharon Wang suggests that the film’s Japanophilia is more economic than political: “In contemporary Taiwan, Japanese-ness has become more of a fluid commodity than a master signifier of the other that demands assimilation and sustains discrimination in the colonialist discursive practices” (2012, 141). These debates on encoding and decoding Taiwan’s cultural position have made Cape No. 7 a critical case study for a new directorial conception of how Taiwan cinema should respond both to the local audience’s desire for escapism and its anxiety about changing social norms. Wei’s populist approach sets him apart from his predecessors in Taiwan New Cinema and Taiwan Second Wave because he brings into the picture not so much auteurism and realism, as Hou Hsiao-hsien, Edward Yang, and Tsai Mingliang have done, but more a keen focus on consumerism and romanticism that have helped reshape the psyche of Taiwan’s mainstream culture. To understand the impact of Wei’s approach on a new generation of filmmakers, it is important to recall the legacies of the two preceding movements, which still dominate studies of Taiwan cinema today.4

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CAPE NO. 7: TAIWAN THIRD WAVE Since 1982, critics have generally divided Taiwan cinema into two periods: Taiwan New Cinema (1982–1989) and Taiwan Second Wave (1989-present).5 Taiwan New Cinema explored the island’s socioeconomic transition from agriculture to industrialization and analyzed the individual’s psychological angst of adjusting to the changes of family structure in the new economic reality. Hou Hsiao-hsien (Hou Xiaoxian) and Edward Yang (Yang Dechang)— two of the most influential in the movement—cultivated different stylistic signatures. As discussed in chapter three, Hou used long takes, natural lighting, fixed or panning camera, deep staging, on-location shooting, and local dialects to formulate a new filmic vision articulating an emerging nativist consciousness in the island’s democratic movement. Edward Yang, on the other hand, constructed multiple narrative strands, crisp montage, reflexive mise-en-scène, and close-ups to delineate the psychological entrapment of Taiwan’s increasing urbanization, modernization, and political isolation. Although Yang once cast Hou as the male lead in his 1985 film Taipei Story, they represent very different strengths of a new wave that together defied the popular cinemas of healthy realism, martial arts, romantic melodramas, and war pictures that had dominated Taiwanese filmmaking from the 1960s to the 1980s (Yeh 2006; Hong 2011).6 When Taiwan New Cinema faded in 1989, Taiwan’s Second Wave arrived, similarly embracing Taiwan-centered perspectives but also exploring the changing composition of the island’s urban space, tensions between the local and the global, and the disintegration of traditional patriarchal culture and structure. Tsai Mingliang (Cai Mingliang) and Ang Lee (Li An) treated these themes with distinct aesthetic practices, Tsai using simple but open-ended plotlines, coincidences, long takes, long shots, and minimal dialogues, and Lee crafting fast editing, symbolic staging, close-ups, and emotional musical soundtracks. This summary gives us a sense of how Taiwan New Cinema and Taiwan Second Wave, both of which were unpopular with local audiences (with the exception of Ang Lee) but successful in international film festivals, charted different experimental courses in filmmaking. It is difficult to trace real influences of Hou Hsiao-hsien and Edward Yang on the Second Wave directors, who, as critics point out, claim a strong aesthetic affinity with Euro American cinema.7 Nor can we identify clearly shared aesthetic tenets between the two generations. This disjunction raises important questions about the most recent trend, the post-millennium Taiwan Third Wave, or what Sing Song-Yong calls “Post—Taiwan New Cinema,” a movement that uses an m-dash to signal its “difference,” “repetition,” “juxtaposition,” and “surimpression” of its predecessors (Sing 2010, 141–142).



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In Taiwan Third Wave, departing from the previous movements, I see the strategic use of medium shots that highlights three important characteristics. First, new directors are abandoning the neorealist mode of longshot and long-take narration preferred by the established luminaries and choosing instead romantic comedies that parody individual trials and tribulations while celebrating communal hopes and dreams. Second, they are remapping Taiwan’s changing social conditions through stereotypical representations of such disadvantaged groups as ethnic minorities, immigrants, single parents, and the urban poor. Finally, many of Taiwan’s new films endorse a traditional Confucian idea of sexual difference that assigns men and women distinct social functions. This return to gendered expectations defines women as nurturers who help others, especially men, to realize their ambitions. In Cape No. 7, these characteristics converge in a transformational moment when Tomoko finally realizes that she must become an ambassador of good will to connect people. Carrying a handful of symbolic necklace beads, Tomoko walks into the band’s practice room one day with a smile (Figure 5.5). In accented Mandarin, she tells the group that she has brought them souvenirs from the airport. “Health” for Dada the Japanese/Taiwanese little girl, “fortune” for Malasun the Hakka liquor salesman, “craftsmanship” for Frog the motorcycle repairman, “love” for the forlorn aboriginal policeman, and “nobility” for the retired Taiwanese postman. She saves the final necklace—“courage”—for her love interest Aga, an unsuccessful musician and negligent temporary postal worker. Armed with emblems of blessings, the coordinator-interpretermanager seeks to unite people of different ages, abilities, professions, personalities, ethnicities, and desires.

Figure 5.5  Tomoko walking into the band’s practice room.

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Wei’s medium shot is most effective in capturing the spirit of midway compromises. On opening the door, Tomoko stands between inside and outside. Her smile is tangential but expectant, and her figure is neither too imposing nor too self-deprecating. Wei creates a symmetrical framing with Goldilocks proportion that gives her the appropriate size, space, distance, and color (off white and soft yellow) to engineer the beginning of reconciliation among individuals with different political concerns, social interests, and cultural origins. As an outsider, Tomoko began by losing her way in navigating the treacherous cultural map in the community. She encountered, for instance, fierce resistance from the residents to her efforts to negotiate a joint appearance between a Japanese pop star Kousuke Atari and the cacophonous local band. Many townies, especially men, distrusted her professional authority and assume that this foreign woman must know nothing about their way of life. Her intensity aggravated a beach town that prizes its laid-back existence. After a few explosive setbacks, however, Tomoko finds the Confucian doctrine of the mean: “Therefore, the superior man cultivates a friendly harmony, without being weak.”8 She reenergizes her leadership by identifying each member’s unique desire, drawing attention to the detail that matters. It is the knowledge of the people that gives her access to their souls. Analysis of this contextual medium shot explains why Cape No. 7 is successful and controversial.9 It is seductive, funny, and inclusive, but also invites scrutiny for its postcolonial Japanophilia, paternalism, and mixed representations of women. Wei’s complex configuration of Tomoko as an agitator and leader, in particular, has engendered many popular imitations that together are redefining the concept of woman in post-millennium Taiwan cinema. Zheng Fenfen’s Hear Me (2009), Arvin Chen’s Au Revoir Taipei (2010), Wang Yulin and Essay Liu’s Seven Days in Heaven (2010), Giddens Ko’s You Are the Apple of My Eye (2011), Chen Yuxun’s Zone Pro Site (2013), and Ye Tianlun’s Twa Tiu Tiann (2014), to name a few, are all romantic comedies with extensive medium shots that feature strong female leads as organizational figures in the community. You Are the Apple of My Eye, for example, reminiscences about five teenaged boys’ quixotic obsessions with their classmate Shen Chia-yi (Michelle Chen), who embodies virtue, intelligence, courage, and beauty. Their lives revolve around routine competitions for her affection, but her moral rectitude clashes with others’ self-indulgent idiosyncrasies and becomes a flashpoint of personality conflicts. The film ultimately concludes at her wedding, where her admirers, now accomplished professionals in various fields, gather one



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more time to celebrate her march into a new phase of life. You Are the Apple of My Eye was a critical and box-office success and the third highest grossing film of 2011 in Taiwan. The trend continued with Zone Pro Site, a film that celebrated the power of girls to gather from all walks of life to team up for a cooking competition. Not unlike Cape No. 7 and You Are the Apple of My Eye, many of its characters are postmodern stereotypes—brand-conscious fashion girl, zhai nan (宅男 stay-at-home computer geeks), gangsters-turned-chefs, foreign nurse aids, skilled homeless, and benevolent strangers—that share a nostalgic optimism about life, intimacy, and humanity. Combining big stars with an outrageous plot and marketing prowess, Zone Pro Site topped the box office for four weeks. The successes of these Third Wave comedies are inextricably linked to an economic and cultural evolution that has come to embrace the idea of a Tiger Daughter. A fearless, competent, and competitive new female generation, these women were heavily recruited into the work force to help transition the island from an agriculture-based society into a powerhouse of manufacturing industry in the 1970s. Not coincidentally, the decade also gave rise to the island’s first wave of feminism, led by activist leader and future vice president Annette Lü Hsiu-lien (Lü Xiulian). Changing economic conditions, democratization, and new interest in gender equality have given women an increasing level of confidence, ambition, and independence to move beyond marriage and domesticity. Yet behind each Tiger Daughter is a Confucian Father who, despite the changing times, preaches harmony, filial piety, and womanly virtues in appearance, speech, morality, and industry.10 These familiar Confucian values provide ethical guidelines for society to judge and control women who move between jobs, cultures, and countries. One example came from Taiwan’s 2014 election when the popular surgeon-turned-politician Ko Wen-je (Ke Wenzhe) mocked female candidate Chen Yizhen for being too pretty to run for mayor in the southern city of Jiayi: “she is best suited to be a counter girl or a spokesperson for the tourist bureau,” Ko pontificated at a public rally for Chen’s opponent Tu Xingzhe, a physician like himself.11 Despite some pushback against his sexist lookism, Ko received a wide range of public support and triumphed in Taipei’s mayoral election. His victory, however, was not a setback for other female politicians. Tsai Ing-wen (Cai Yingwen) from the Democratic Progressive Party was elected as the island’s first female president in 2016 and won reelection in 2020 with the most ever votes—8.17 million—for a presidential candidate since Taiwan’s direct presidential election began in 1996 (E. Feng 2020).

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Her wins broke the glass ceiling and attested to important political gains in sexual equality, even though gendered biases in popular culture remain. A survey of 2016 Taiwanese films and television shows reveals a continuing trend of casting women to be the objects of desire to incentivize men’s successes. Simon Hung’s 2016 10,000 Miles and Neal Wu’s 2016 At Café 6 are two of the many examples that work with this narrative and visual model. Mainstream media have continued to promote the idea that men are entitled to a less obstructed path to career options than hard-working women. What sets Cape No. 7 apart is its self-conscious representations of such differentiating treatment of the sexes. The following example shows Wei using one master shot to capture the unjust social reality in the opening to the West Gate of Hengchun, a small southern beach town where the story takes place. As night falls, the viewer sees the disgruntled musician Aga arrive at the gate on his motorbike (Figure 5.6). This establishing shot sketches a historic architectural structure with a limited passageway. But without running into any bumps in the road, Aga sails through the entrance, returning to his family home, where his whole supporting network awaits. His politician stepfather Hong Guorong (Ma Rulong) gets him a job at the local post office, buys him a new guitar to nurture his musical talent, offers him an audition with a band, and mobilizes the community to help him deliver boxes of mail. Riding through the gate is therefore a symbolic act. The painless entrance anticipates Aga’s inherent advantages as a native son of the community.

Figure 5.6  Aga riding toward the West Gate.



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Figure 5.7  Minibus too tall to pass through the gate.

After screening Aga’s free pass, Wei’s camera stays put until daybreak to capture the arrival of a minibus full of merrymaking international swimsuit models and their chaperone Tomoko (Figure 5.7). The local bus driver abruptly hits the brakes, complaining that the vehicle is too tall to pass. Tomoko disagrees and implores him to give it a try, but her plea falls on deaf ears. After a few testy exchanges between the two, Tomoko is forced to retreat. She is not able to power her way through the brick ceiling. This barrier is both realistic and metaphorical. The establishing shots offer the viewer a larger context about mobility, paralysis, and access. Despite her professional training, good looks, and linguistic skills, Tomoko gains no entrance into the heart of a small town that is skeptical about her status as an independent foreign woman working for an international talent agency. Wei escalates the tensions between Tomoko and the community in the subsequent photo shoot. Like many postmodern artists, the director is deeply aware of the ways that the camera stages rather than represents reality. Using medium and medium long shots to construct the picturewithin-picture metanarrative, Wei deftly interweaves questions about the camera as a tool of sexual exploitation, an instrument of political protest, and an expressive means of feminist visions.12 Laura Mulvey points out that “analysing pleasure, or beauty, destroys it,” because critical analysis attacks the mainstream ego “to make way for a total negation of the ease and plenitude of the narrative fiction film” (1975, 8). Although Wei’s medium shots reinforce the attraction and comfort of a fictional reality, he also denaturalizes the images by exposing the controlling role of the artist. This exposition amounts to a self-analytical probe into his own craft (Figure 5.8).

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Figure 5.8  Australian photographer.

Figure 5.9  Tomoko preparing models for the shoot.

Blurring the boundary between on-screen and off-screen spaces, Wei parodies the conventional use of the lens as a hidden tool by adding to the union of the three looks—camera, characters, and viewers—the photographer’s professional gaze. This addition reveals the artifice of a pictureperfect illusion and deromanticizes the “spectatorial desire” of voyeurism and fetishism (Doane 2000, 421). If the photographer is a stand-in for the director, Wei makes explicit his unease about marrying art with commerce by laying bare the interplay of politics, power, and capitalism in producing a scopophilic art such as film. He further complicates the framing of women’s “to-be-looked-at-ness” in the reverse shot in which Tomoko buzzes around to prep the models for their pageant (Figure 5.9).



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Figure 5.10  International models flirting with the lens.

In the background, we hear the Australian photographer impatiently asking the chaperone to get out of the picture to expedite the shooting process. The photographer’s command reveals the depth of the director’s double framing, which consciously turns the protagonist’s back against the camera. In contrast to her scantily clothed charges, the Japanese interpreter dresses in plain blue and white, covering half of her face with a large cap and striking a camouflaged pose in a show business that validates an image-as-money paradigm. In the meantime, the crowd appears more enthralled with her act of embellishing the look than the look itself. Tomoko is the irrepressible medium whose worker-bee presence gathers buzz and attention. When order is finally restored, a medium long shot displays the models’ mechanical flirtation with the lens. Wei’s mise-en-scène literalizes the notion of a market place by layering the scene with fresh produce and seductive flesh (Figure 5.10). He combines art, sex, and commerce to stage an ogling crowd that mimics the viewer outside the frame. In film theory, the audience is said to recognize and identify with the characters to maximize the pleasure of looking. Laura Mulvey explains: The cinema satisfies a primordial wish for pleasurable looking, but it also goes further, developing scopophilia in its narcissistic aspect. The conventions of mainstream film focus attention on the human form. Scale, space, stories are all anthropomorphic. Here, curiosity and the wish to look intermingle with a fascination with likeness and recognition: the human face, the human body, the relationship between the human form and its surroundings, the visible presence of the person in the world. (1975, 9)

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Figure 5.11  A stare-fest between Tomoko and “Mr. Representative.”

In the case of Cape No. 7, the diegetic crowd surrounding the six models underscores “curiosity and the wish to look” and plays an important role in guiding the audience’s attention to the staged scopophilia. But all is changed when Aga’s stepfather walks into the picture to disrupt the line Tomoko draws between the spectators and the spectacle (Figure 5.11). Steeped in a Confucian vision of a hierarchical society where “three obligations” dictate behavior—“the official serves the king, the son serves the father, the wife serves the husband”—Hong Guorong sees himself as the lord of the land who runs the show.13 He deliberately chooses a path of most resistance to flex his muscles, but Tomoko is no pushover. A tussle breaks out and the physical comedy ensues. Wei’s medium shot establishes a face-to-face stare-fest, projecting a parallel view of the characters engaged in a delicate power struggle in public. Hiding their respective expressions with his sunglasses and her pink cap, the two take on the allegorical power of political tokens: he is a local barred from a restrictive area and she is an outsider hired to enforce the rules. When the power girl points to another direction in an effort to get the old man to leave the scene, we see the politician’s head tilt slightly backward as if he is taken aback by her brazen command. “Who are you to speak to me this way? Shouldn’t you behave like a subject in my kingdom?” his accusatory gaze seems to suggest (Figure 5.12). The medium shot mitigates the rising tensions by showing the amusing expressions of those surrounding the two, establishing a mood of benevolent annoyance. Ignoring Tomoko’s instruction, Guorong brushes off her defensive hand before forcing his way through (Figure 5.13). Such a direct challenge to her authority speaks of a disdain for compliance and a desire to self-define. He represents a masculine Taiwanese



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Figure 5.12  Tomoko giving directions.

Figure 5.13  “Mr. Representative” forcing his way into the picture.

spirit skeptical about territorial claims that prescribe divisions, restrictions, and suppression. The subsequent shot extends his confrontation with Tomoko to a face-off with the camera, photographer, director, and viewer (Figure 5.14). Charging to the foreground, Guorong provides a strong contrast to the staff around him: confident, authoritative, paternal, and local, he walks straight across the camera’s viewfinder and steals the show from the models. His stroll is deliberate and his look oppositional, as if to challenge others to hold him back. But Guorong is as much an irritating paternalist as a postcolonial hero, because his actions further two political purposes. First, he indicts the sexualized culture that markets his hometown as a

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Figure 5.14  “Mr. Representative” staring at the camera.

tourist attraction for pleasure seekers. Instead of gawking at the beautiful women like everyone else does, he turns his head away from them to strike a moralizing pose of protest. Second, his brazen act foreshadows a war he is about to wage against the mayor who, Hong contends, is selling out Hengchun by ignoring native talents and hiring foreign bands, singers, models, and crew. Hong’s protectionism complicates the notion of “home” and forces the audience to reconsider the binaries of foreign and native, homemaker and homewrecker. Again, the medium shot takes the edge off the seriousness of the provocation; his defiant expression seems more demonstrative than condemning. The black frame inside the frame puts quotation marks around his image and behavior. Given the film’s double play on the metanarrative of the camera, it is tempting to see the confrontation between Tomoko and Guorong not simply as a highlight of oppositions but as a prefiguration of Wei’s cinematic search for an alternative space to build his political argument for a global village. That said, even the most optimistic of the film’s viewers cannot picture the natural birth of a peaceful community after the collision of the two key figures without finding a mediating force to build bridges. This is the reason I believe Aga, the one who needs “courage” in Tomoko’s playbook, helps engineer a utopian space filled with mixed voices and expressions that solidifies the directorial optimism about Taiwan’s adaptable future. Wei’s medium shots deftly bring together the three elements in Celestino Deleyto’s definition of a romantic comedy: a story about love and sex, a transformative space that enables free pursuit of desire, and humor that establishes a benevolent narrative perspective (2009, 29–36). As a



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middleman, Aga performs all these generic conventions and more: he is sandwiched between two different ideological platforms. One is Taiwan’s postcolonial quest for an independent identity shaped by diverse cultural heritages and the other is a postmodern feminist vision that champions women’s freedom for self-determination. The irony of this dual political goal is that Wei ends up pitching the postcolonial chauvinism of the Confucian Father against what might be construed as “feminist colonialism” of the Tiger Daughter because of her aggressive nationalist pride. To defuse the intense political passions, Wei creates a laissez-faire musician who can be anybody or nobody, everywhere or nowhere. His flexibility tests the premises of Bhabha’s Third Space communities and Third Wave feminism. MEETING HALFWAY: THIRD SPACE AND THIRD WAVE FEMINISM Taiwan’s political situation is complex because of its unresolved statehood, which has continued to create diplomatic tensions between China, the US, and Japan.14 After fifty years of Japanese colonial rule of Taiwan, the nationalist party Kuomintang, or KMT, took over the island in 1945 and ethnic tensions between Chinese and Taiwanese flared after the 2/28 Incident in 1947, when scores of local protesters were killed and the oppressive one-party reign of “White Terror” began.15 China’s open door policy in 1978 coincided with Taiwan’s pro-democracy movement, which included the Formosa Incident in 1979 and climaxed when Chen Shuibian of the Democratic Progressive Party won the presidential election in 2000. His presidency breathed new life into the ideological and cultural advocacy for nativist consciousness, which embraced postcolonial heroes like Hong Guorong who stood up to what many considered to be unjust firstworld exploitation of local resources. But for postcolonial Taiwan, the truth is that Japanese colonialism, Chinese one-party rule, and American imperial influence have diversified the island’s cultures in ways that make its claim of a unified identity seem self-defeating. If Guorong’s protectionist definition of “homeland” justifies his impassioned rejection of globalization, his stepson Aga provides a different negotiating model, one that is calmer and more conducive for moving beyond the opposition between “us and them” to find pluralistic common ground. For Bhabha, this “Third Space” is a linguistic free land that exposes the maneuverability of cultural signs and symbols and introduces “an ambivalence in the act of interpretation.” As a result, it “challenges our sense of the historical identity of culture as a homogenizing,

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unifying force, authenticated by the original Past, kept alive in the national tradition of the People” (Bhabha 1994, 36–37). The Third Space, in other words, demystifies the nationalist claim of inheriting one pure, archetypal culture. Aga embodies the “inauthentic” Third Space in his refusal to privilege the pronominal position of the subject I. His indifferent but open attitude is most visible in one of their band practices when Laoma, the aboriginal cop/guitarist, is suddenly inspired to add to the piece Aga wrote earlier a variation of his own “mountain song” (shange) in his native tongue. This is a tense moment, because Laoma infringes on Aga’s double role as a composer and lead singer. At stake are Aga’s masculinity, ethnic pride, and artistic control. His generous response is therefore surprising: “Do as you wish,” he grunts. This tacit approval opens up the floodgates to other throw-ins: a “moon guitar,” a Christian hymn, a harmonica, a drum solo. The band becomes a musical Third Space, a collection of voices, instruments, peoples, and cultures. This process also mimics the BOT (Build-Operate-Transfer) business practice much maligned by Guorong for taking advantage of the locals. The hybrid band dismantles “the politics of polarity” (Bhabha 1994, 39) and contrasts with the politician’s nativist rhetoric orating division and antagonism. Departing from the dualisms, the stepson’s do-as-you-wish tolerance creates a we-are-different-yet-we-are-together community that comes across as an appealing ideological alternative in the make-believe world of Cape No. 7. Aga’s anybody-can-play tolerance unexpectedly ensnares the nationalist feminist Tomoko, who is quick to show the identity card of “I am Japanese” to exact her demands on the one hand and to ignore local customs on the other. Her intensity matches Wei’s model for a Tiger Daughter, arguably born out of, or made possible by, the global influences of American Second Wave and Third Wave feminisms. Given the political, intellectual, and cultural influences of the US on Taiwan, it is not farfetched to suggest that without the US movements there would be no Taiwanese feminism in its current form.16 Although Wei has not commented on gender relations in his films, the diverse representations of powerful women in all walks of life reflect a critical awareness. More specifically, the bellicosity and femininity of Tomoko suggest a possible alliance with American Third Wave feminism, which sees the First Wave falling short of gaining women’s rights and the Second Wave going too far in homogenizing feminist ideas. 17



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A brief summary of Taiwanese and US feminist movements helps contextualize Tomoko’s Third Wave connections. The global reach of the Third Wave advances with the world dominance of the American mediascape and coincides with the rise of the first female Taiwanese vice president Annette Lü Hsiu-lien to power in 2000. Educated in America as a legal scholar, Lü started championing a form of “humanist feminism” in the 1970s that advocated for equal human rights for the sexes.18 Despite her groundbreaking activism, Lü is nonetheless criticized for assuming that a privileged woman’s viewpoint represents everyone else’s perspective. Her aggressive, almost conformist approach created a “relational crisis” similar to that of the American Second Wave. Arguing for universal feminism, the Second Wave alienated women of different classes, cultures, colors, generations, and sexual orientations from one another (Gilligan 1997). To remedy this lack of diversity and perceived inflexibility, Rebecca Walker coined the term “the Third Wave” in 1992, urging women to “search for personal clarity in the midst of systemic destruction, to join in sisterhood with women when often we are divided, to understand power structures with the intention of challenging them” (2001, 80). Third Wave Feminists promised to be more inclusive both by widening the scope of the issues in popular culture, politics, and sexuality, and by adopting a more fluid discourse to discuss them (Laughlin et al. 2010). Analyzing a younger generation’s skepticism about the Second Wave’s polarity, Kathleen Rowe Karlyn points out that popular culture became important to Third Wave feminists because it was a “site of identity-formation and empowerment,” containing motifs for “contesting, rewriting and recoding” reality, not just representing it (2003, 21). Wei’s depiction of female power, I argue, not only captures the cultural ambivalence of a Third Wave aspiration for being mainstream and unique, but also embraces a similar inclusivity that brings together an interpreter/band manager, a single mother/housekeeper, a lady boss/a mother of triplets, a homemaker/mother/politician’s spouse, and a hotel receptionist/gatekeeper. He explores the elasticity of medium shots to highlight women’s ability to play multiple roles at different places. Yet Wei’s ultimate choice of a Japanese girl as a troubleshooter and wavemaker gives Tomoko the kind of mobility and speech rights that elude most Taiwanese women. Paying democratic attention to different female characters in the film, Wei makes Tomoko stand out for her vociferous complaints about career, love, and social expectations. Without seeking the spotlight, she lets the viewer know of her displeasure at playing second fiddle to a modeling group to which she strongly believes she belongs.

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Moreover, she openly disdains the local misfits who are unable to perform in sync. Refusing to accept rejections, Tomoko continues seeking Aga’s romantic attention. Finally, her tenacity pays off when she finds the right address for undelivered mail and saves a long-lost love story from oblivion. Taking into account her sex, work ethic, and Japanese-ness, Wei enunciates Tomoko’s complex struggles with self and world in ways that propel the film into an active search for viable feminist resolutions to build bridges between places, times, and communities. Compared with Tomoko, other women are less confident and more withdrawn. Aga’s mother for example, is the traditional homemaker who exemplifies self-effacing virtues and serves as a compelling antithesis to the young Japanese who embodies the angst and bliss of a modern professional woman thinking for and of herself. Throughout the film, Aga’s mother—often framed in personable but mundane medium shots—works tirelessly and quietly behind the scene, sewing, cleaning, shopping, hosting, and doing laundry. In the economy of good women, she represents a vessel that ferries others’ desires, needs, and ambitions (Figure 5.15). Her role as a go-between medium becomes indelibly iconic in a critical scene where she takes up a middle-of-the-road stance between the egoistic standoff of her two men. Using a wide-angle shot, Wei lines up all three characters horizontally, with Aga leaning on his motorcycle, mother frozen next to the clothesline, and stepfather about to open his car door. Unlike the more compressed and comedic medium shots, this master shot gives depth and darkness to a difficult situation in which the woman is paralyzed by her dual role of being a mother and a wife. Moreover, the mise-en-scène gives both men a kind of mobility that is inaccessible

Figure 5.15  The woman in the middle.



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Figure 5.16  Tomoko breaking a window.

to the woman: they each have vehicles. Aga’s mother, however, remains immobilized on the spot as her statuesque profile accentuates her opaque silence. Such female paralysis at an acute moment is not an isolated example in the film. Other Taiwanese women, though younger and perhaps more educated, share with Aga’s mother the philosophy of enduring, not questioning, what life has to offer. The single mother Lin Mingzhu (Lin Xiaopei) mopes around as a listless housekeeper in the hotel, the boss lady of the motorcycle shop (Li Peizhen) is saddled with an alcoholic husband and naughty triplets, and the hotel receptionist Meiling (Zhang Xinyan) takes to heart the motto of “customers first” in the service industry. Entrenched in their socially constructed roles, these young women seem at least as incapacitated as Aga’s mother, too demure to break free and forge their own paths. Tomoko is different. She defies docility. In a drunken stupor, she staggers to Aga’s house and smashes a window, literalizing her image as a homewrecker (Figure 5.16). Shouting in vain for the postman to come out, she flies into a rage and shatters more windows before falling down on the ground in a crying fit against the unjust world (Figure 5.17). Her violent protest reflects Wei’s strategy of emboldening Tomoko to break homes, communities, and societies that stoke men’s oversized egos. In her soliloquy, she rants, “I am simply doing my job.” The medium shot of Tomoko here is less a picture of her dependence on communal support than a sign of her self-reliance. Her act of breaking and entering materializes the “occult instability which presages powerful cultural changes” (Bhabha 1994, 38). In fact, the Japanese girl is uniquely

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Figure 5.17  Tomoko getting frustrated and sitting on the ground.

positioned to disrupt the Confucian hierarchy of powers between the young and the old, men and women, citizens and officials, because she embodies “an international culture, based not on the exoticism of multiculturalism or the diversity of cultures, but on the inscription and articulation of the culture’s hybridity” (Bhabha 1994, 38; emphasis in original). If Aga’s local band celebrates multicultural ethnic diversity, Tomoko’s one-woman show has the kind of “colonial or postcolonial provenance” that highlights the nature of “ ‘inter’ as “translation and negotiation,” creating an in-between space to reimagine “national, antinationalist histories of the ‘people’ ” (Bhabha 1994, 38–39). Tomoko’s agency goes beyond the multiplicity of her professional identity as an interpreter and band manager; she challenges existing power structures and dismantles barriers. An inevitable question is whether Wei’s plotline would work if Tomoko were Taiwanese. The answer is probably no, because the Japanese girl has the exotic advantage of being free enough from the Confucian grip to be a credible source of disruption without being utterly rejected as morally insolvent. Her defiance and assertiveness can be construed as cultural differences. That said, in a film that has conflicts but no villains, Tomoko’s action elicits strong mixed reactions from people in and outside the screen. Some find her outspoken critiques of Taiwanese men offensive; others see her feminist aggression progressive. In a movie selling the image and language of love, it is no surprise that Wei finds a way of enabling “the third party” Aga to redeem her likeability. To accomplish this, the director combines romantic comedy with a postmodern parody of cinematic artifice, all while embracing a heterogeneity of desires. In the



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grand finale, Wei spotlights all the characters with love interests, transforming the concert into a community of “human togetherness,” where people are simply there to be, not to judge.19 There is no denying that such an open-minded and self-sustaining democratic space attracts idealistic directors as well as hopeful theorists. Yet the dreamscape of different peoples being there and equal is unrealistic. Despite politicians’ attempts to produce an alliance among progressive forces, postcolonial critics show how conflicts inevitably emerge from the different social agendas of class and gender politics. To minimize the antagonism between the two, Bhabha advocates for more effective “political negotiation.”20 He comes short, however, of pointing out what exactly needs to be negotiated to unite these theoretical siblings in the fight against the perceived hegemonic power of an authoritative boss—be it an exploitative government or merciless capitalist enterprise. In other words, who or what is needed to build an alternative paradigm of collective resistance to injustice? Bhabha often addresses issues of race, class, and nation before those of gender, a key reason that I believe his hybrid Third Space cannot fully describe Wei’s utopian vision in Cape No. 7. Wei faces a similar predicament of showing his protagonists’ unequal footing in the film’s sentimental conclusion, but his self-reflexivity creates a surprising openness for critical scrutiny. It all begins with the climactic scene that features a love song for Tomoko (Figure 5.18). Aga interrupts the narrative flow by stopping

Figure 5.18  Aga stopping in the middle of his love song.

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abruptly in the middle of his act to gesture toward Tomoko off stage. A narcissistic nightingale, the lead singer surprises both the audience and the camera with his pleading silence. It is a powerful moment because Aga’s self-muting creates a neither-nor ambivalent pause that spawns a cinematic time lag (“a temporal break in representation”), shifting the lyrical power from himself (the heir apparent to the Confucian Father) to Tomoko. Notably, Wei again uses a medium shot to deliver the promise of a reconciliation between two combative partners, creating a stable frame whose consistency substantiates the immutable nature of love in a romantic comedy (Deleyto 2009, 27). But when Wei’s lens vacillates, searching for the source of enchantment by traveling across the simmering crowd, we see a vigilant cameraman turning around to locate Tomoko before transforming her into a larger-than-life image on the screen (Figure 5.19). In an age of mechanical reproduction, Wei once more identifies the camera as a magnifying glass designed to exercise political intervention and project desirable images. Thus in this conscious exposure is a second representational break: framed by the screen within the screen, Tomoko is virtually transported from off stage to form a simulated partnership with Aga on stage (Figure 5.20). Although this visual relocation mimics traditional cinema’s configuration of women as spectacles in the way Laura Mulvey indicates: “she holds the look, plays to and signifies male desire” (1975, 11), examining Tomoko closely the viewer sees in Wei’s elaborate construction a self-conscious

Figure 5.19  Cameraman finding Tomoko.



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Figure 5.20  Tomoko projected on stage.

exposition of cinematic artifice. Rather than casting an intimate situation where the audience acts out a voyeuristic desire to see the boy getting the girl, the director shows the love affair out in the open, where everyone is called upon to witness a staged, surreal romance in progress. The setting spotlights as much the spectacle of the girl as the performing gaze of the male protagonist, the camera, and the audience complicit in orchestrating the actions to make a spectatorial dream come true. Just as Wei highlights the way his camera tricks us, he emphasizes how different and even incompatible the backgrounds of his two protagonists are. This enables us to see in the clichéd romance a cultural time lag between Aga and Tomoko, making the problematic courtship between an international agent and a native son a site for “unexpected juxtaposition” and “generic discordance” (Bhabha 1994, 218). Blending their experiences in a romance destabilizes the us-them hierarchies that dominate Guorong’s postcolonial dictionary and generates an opportunity for the couple to reinscribe in the viewer’s imagination a new composite identity.21 Ultimately, Aga and Tomoko are characters living on the edge and on the stage, charting an experimental course, ready to switch time zones and look for new possibilities in life. To Taiwan New Cinema’s organic realism, the medium shot of Wei Desheng’s Third Wave film adds romanticism and a glocal consciousness that integrates political ambition with commercial instinct. “Every

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ten years mark a different directorial generation,” Wei states, “and for me the key is to innovate a breakthrough that sets our generation apart from others” (Huang and Zeng 2008). Wei’s breakthrough, though not fully articulated in interviews or recent scholarship, is his creation of a strong, controversial, and at times vulnerable female model, a go-getter who screams and kicks and negotiates her way into the heart of a chauvinistic local community. The different attributes of Tomoko and Aga facilitate Wei’s search for an alternative community, a consensual place free from social antagonism. To make his reconciliatory ideological stance more accessible to a mainstream audience, Wei crafts his film as a romance between the artist and the people and a populist fable about the transformative encounter between a wise old man and a willful girl. But this open mindedness inevitably handicaps Wei’s ability to critique entrenched social issues of sexism and xenophobia. The key roadblock is that, despite his mediating intersubjectivity, Aga still lives happily under the spell of a Confucian Father, whose domineering desire to polarize, justify, and unite forcefully rallies the community around him. In the end, Aga’s indifferent position appears too ready to compromise to effect lasting changes. In spite of his optimism, then, Wei’s film reveals the hidden dangers in embracing the romance of medium shots, because behind each hegemonic claim of being together, different and yet equal, we see quiet acceptance of biases and injustice. Buried in the subconscious of Taiwan’s popular culture is an assumed gender hierarchy that still excludes smart women like Tomoko from getting in and out of the picture at will. Scattered around the island, moreover, are many local Tomokos who cannot so easily get away with challenging the look and viewpoint of a community that, united for a shared goal to prosper, equates economic success with social progress. Although the Tiger Daughter is able to reach the gate, she is still being blocked by the glocalism that values a woman’s good looks but contests her will and ability to work.

Notes

Introduction 1.  In his monumental work The Spirit of Chinese Art (Zhongguo yishu jingshen), Hsu Fuguan (Xu Fuguan) argues that music appeared earlier and became more prominent than ritualism in Confucian “life education” (1966, 3). He demonstrates that Confucius considers music critical to the cultivation of knowledge, beauty, dao, and perfect virtue. In Music, Cosmology, and the Politics of Harmony in Early China, Erica Fox Brindley points out that music was a civilizing force in early China that helped the state consolidate power, orient religion, practice medicine, and reinforce the politics of harmony (2013, 25–42). These and other studies on Confucianism and music hold vast interest for scholars of Chinese cinema but are unfortunately beyond the scope of this book. 2.  The original text comes from chapter 12 of The Analects. Yan Yuan asks Confucius about ways of achieving ren 仁—mercy or the perfect virtue—and Confucius responds: “Look not at what is contrary to propriety; listen not to what is contrary to propriety; speak not what is contrary to propriety; make no movement which is contrary to propriety.” (非禮 勿視, 非禮勿聽, 非禮勿言, 非禮勿動) (see Yan Yuan, Chinese Text Project, translated by James Legge, https://ctext.org/analects/yan-yuan/zh). Throughout the book, I quote from my own slightly modified translation: “Do not look at what is contrary to propriety; do not listen to what is contrary to propriety; do not speak what is contrary to propriety; do not act on what is contrary to propriety.” I expand on the ethical connections between the Confucian precepts of self-restraint and the Chinese directorial preference for long shots in chapter 3, “Philosophy of the Long Shot in Hou Hsiao-hsien’s The Assassin.” 3.  Again in chapter 12 of The Analects, Yan Yuan asks Confucius to define ren, the perfect virtue or mercy. Confucius responds: “Abiding by the rules of rituals and suppressing individual desires cultivates the path to the perfect virtue” (克己復禮為仁) (Xue Er, Chinese Text Project, translated by James Legge, https://ctext.org/analects/xue-er/zh). 4.  The quotation is from chapter 6 of Zhong Shu 中書, a book about the Confucian thought and philosophy of Wang Tong 王通 (560–617). Zhong Shu imitates the structure of The Analects (see https://baike.baidu.com/item/中说). The Chinese text is “遠而不疏, 近而 不狎” (see Chinese Text Project, https://ctext.org/wiki.pl?if=gb&chapter=578993; my translation).

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5.  The term jinshan jinmei盡善盡美 comes from chapter 3 of The Analects, in which Confucius comments that Shao music is “perfectly good and perfectly beautiful” (Ba Yi, Chinese Text Project, translated by James Legge, https://ctext.org/analects/ba-yi/zh). 6.  See chapter 14 of The Analects: “愛之, 能勿勞乎? 忠焉, 能勿誨乎?” (Ba Yi, Chinese Text Project, translated by James Legge, https://ctext.org/analects/ba-yi/zh).

Chapter 1: The Close-up of Mo Yan and Zhang Yimou  1. “Throughout the last twenty years,” writes Michael Berry, “no other director in China has generated as much respect, adoration, controversy, and criticism as Zhang Yimou” (2005, 109), confirming the opinion of many critics. Scholars often affirm the director’s unique ability to excite both mainstream audiences and film researchers. His box office hits have inspired a wide range of critical studies from psychoanalysis and feministMarxism to postcolonialism and poststructuralism, Wendy Larson, Zhang Yiwu, Dai Qing, Lu Tonglin, and Wang Yuejin have offered astute analyses of Zhang’s work, blending praise of his film art with criticism of his self-Orientalizing artifice (see Y. Wang 1991; Q. Dai 1993; Lu 2002; C. Berry and Farquhar 2002; Yiwu Zhang 2015; Larson 2016).   2.  Critical responses to Mo Yan’s novels are nonetheless mixed. Zhu Ling and Yi-tsi Mei Feuerwerker suggest that Mo uses a violent language to construct a form of misogynistic masculinity (Zhu 1993; Feuerwerker 1998). Lu Tonglin and Zhong Xueping argue that Mo’s fiction creates a new form of Chinese heroism, which is sexually liberated and politically defiant (Lu 1995; Zhong 2000). David Der-wei Wang sees in Mo’s complex narrative “a historical space” that accommodates “traditional dialectical on space, time, history, and the ontological hometown (yuanxiang)” (2000, 488), whereas Shelley Chan analyzes Mo’s masculinization of heroic women (2000) and reconfiguration of historical linearity (2011).   3.  Zhang prizes personal directorial connection to the story: When watching a film, I don’t just watch how skillfully the story is told or whether the actors perform well; I look for the director’s inner world, whether his emotions are strong, and what he tries to say. In his film we can discern his emotions, which, whether expressed in a tragedy or a comedy, will move the audience. That is what I call strength. (Tan 1999/2000, 14)

On associative emotions, Daniel Barratt analyzes different models of filmic empathy (2006, 39–54).   4.  A survey of his filmography reveals that Zhang often finds inspiration in popular novels that celebrate the resilience of transgressive female characters. Red Sorghum (1987), Ju Dou (1990), Raise the Red Lantern (1991), Not One Less (1999), The Flowers of War (2011), and Coming Home (2014) are some of the most notable examples. “Literature is the origin of my creativity and the source of future cinematic creations,” Zhang enthuses (Tam 2001, 116). He sees in good literary work an emotional depth that adds to film aesthetic the affective power of expressivity. If the cardinal rule of a good film is to touch the audience, the synergy between fiction and film magnifies the attraction. “In my films, those images that have touched people deeply mostly originated from literature” (117).   5.  In an interview with Mayfair Mei-hui Yang, Zhang explains his humanistic critique of the exploitation of women: “What I want to express is the Chinese people’s oppression and confinement, which has been going on for thousands of years. Women express this more clearly on their bodies (zai tamen shenshang) because they bear a heavier burden than men” (Gateward 2001, 38).  6. Confucius sees modesty as an important virtue, arguing that the path to selfcultivation is through care and respect for other people. (子曰: 修己以敬). (see Xian Wen, Chinese Text Project, http://ctext.org/analects/xian-wen/zh).



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  7.  The Chinese text is as follows: “未嫁從父, 既嫁從夫, 父死從子.” 出自 (禮儀) (喪服) (子夏篇) (see http://so.baike.com/doc/仪礼 丧服 子夏传&isFrom=intoDoc).   8.  I corrected two minor mistranslations in Goldblatt’s version. Instead of “red curtain,” which can be confused with the red curtain of the sedan chair, it should be a “red bridal veil” (罩頭的紅布), which is subject to Grandma’s removal. And it is greatgrandmamma, not great-grandfather, who advised her not to take it off (see Mo 1986, 50).   9.  Dudley Andrew suggests three modes of adaptation: borrowing, intersecting, and transforming sources. Among these, the third mode operates on two assumptions: fidelity to the letter and fidelity to the spirit. “Here it is assumed that the task of adaptation is the reproduction in cinema of something essential about an original text” (1984, 98–100). Andrew argues that “fidelity to the spirit” is nearly impossible because it is an intangible quest for “the original’s tone, values, imagery, and rhythm. . . . The cinéaste presumably must intuit and reproduce the feeling of the original” (100). The opposite, more optimistic point can also be made: with so many factors involved in adaptation, it may always be possible for a director to claim to be faithful to the spirit. 10.  The Chinese text is “弱之勝強, 柔之勝剛” (see no. 78 in Dao De Jing, Chinese Text Project, translated by James Legge, https://ctext.org/dao-de-jing/zh). 11.  The Chinese text is “天下莫柔弱於水, 而攻堅強者莫之能勝, 其無以易之” (see no. 78, Dao De Jing, translated by James Legge, http://ctext.org/dao-de-jing).

Chapter 2: The Art of Close-up in Lust, Caution 1.  Speculations about the source of Chang’s story abound. Cai Dengshan and Haiyan Lee, among others, consider the biography of Zheng Pingru (鄭蘋如 1918–1940), especially her failed assassination of Wang Jingwei’s security chief Ding Mocun (丁默村 1901–1947), to have inspired the plot of Lust, Caution (see Cai 2007; and H. Lee 2010, 650). However, the discovery of the trove of correspondence between Chang and her friend and agent Stephen Soong (宋淇 1919–1996) about the manuscript of Lust, Caution between the 1950s and 1970s reveals that Chang might have adapted the story from Soong’s account of a group of Yenching University (燕京大學) students who organized a cell to assassinate Japanese collaborators in the 1940s. The prototype for Mr. Yee, according to their correspondences, was Chiang Kai-shek’s intelligence chief, Dai Li 戴笠 (see Roland Soong 宋以朗, executor of Eileen Chang’s estate, interview with Cheng Xiaoqin, June 18, 2013, http://epaper.oeeee .com/epaper/C/html/2013-06/18/content_2228995.htm).   2.  Emilie Yeh and Darrell Davis argue that Ang Lee “Confucianizes” Hollywood by renewing “a culture of courtesy, fairness, and sincerity” (2005, 178) and Whitney Dilley and others highlight the importance of Confucian filial piety in his father-knows-best trilogy, which includes Pushing Hands (Tui shou, 推手) in 1991, Wedding Banquet (Xi yan, 喜宴) in 1993 and Eat Drink Man Woman (Yin shi nan nü, 飲食男女) in 1994 (Dilley 2015, 58).   3.  The complete quotation from Confucius’s Analects is as follows: “I daily examine myself on three points: whether in business transaction with others, I may not have been truthful; whether in dealing with friends, I may not have been sincere; whether in learning, I may not have practiced the instructions of my teacher” (吾日三省吾身: 為人謀而不忠乎? 與 朋友交而不信乎? 傳不習乎?) (for a complete database of Analects, see Chinese Text Project, https://ctext.org/dictionary.pl?if=gb&id=1105). I have modified the English translation.   4.  The Chinese text from The Analects is as follows: 君為臣綱, 父為子綱, 夫為妻綱 (jun wei chen gang, fu wei zi gang, fu wei qi gang) (see Chinese Text Project, https://ctext.org /dictionary.pl?if=gb&id=1105).   5.  Given the diversity of Lee’s work, the principle of his filmmaking seems simple: it is a “core emotion,” he explained in 2001, that makes a film work “at a deep level” (Lyman 2001). The 2007 adaptation of Eileen Chang’s 1978 spy thriller Lust, Caution is a

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pure example of how he creates the “primo feeling” that is essential for a good movie. “To me, no writer has ever used the Chinese language as cruelly as Zhang Ailing (Eileen Chang),” Lee proclaims, “and no story of hers is as beautiful or as cruel as Lust, Caution” (A. Lee 2007, 59). Highlighting the cruelty and beauty of Chang’s writing, Lee emphasizes not just any literary language but Chinese, suggesting that he sees precise cultural and linguistic resonances in it.   6.  From Yuan Qiongqiong to Zhong Xiaoyang and from Zhu Tianwen to Hou Hsiaohsien, Chang’s life and work have inspired writers, dramatists, and directors in Hong Kong, Taiwan, overseas Chinese communities, and China (see Y. Chang 1993).   7.  Chang’s experience in the film industry has been well documented. In addition to seeing many of her stories adapted as stage plays and movies, she wrote several film scripts and collaborated with the renowned Hong Kong director Sang Hu in 1947 (see Tay 1994a, 1994b; Liu and Wang 2007; see also Deppman 2010, 61–97).   8.  Both Rey Chow and Leo Ou-fan Lee have analyzed Chang’s writing in light of her cinematic vision (see R. Chow 1991; L. Lee 2001).   9.  See N. Ma 1993; and C. Berry 2003. 10.  Cai 2007, 20. According to the documents provided by Roland Soong, the original title of “Lust, Caution” was “Spyring” or “請客請客” (“Host Host”) in Chinese (see Aiyuan Ma 2008). 11.  “Making our film,” Lee explains, “we didn’t really ‘adapt’ Zhang’s work, we simply kept returning to her theater of cruelty and love until we had enough to make a movie of it” (A. Lee 2007, 59). 12.  One of Freud’s favorite authors is Goethe (see 1989b, 26n4). 13.  For publications of Chang’s biography, see, for example, Zhang Zijing 1996; and Z. Feng 2004. 14.  See, for instance, L. Lee 2001; Fu 2003; and Chi 2009. 15.  When “Lust, Caution” was first published in the Literary Supplement of the China Times in 1978, Yu Wairen (域外人), the penname of the famous science-fiction writer Zhang Xiguo (張系國), wrote a scathing review that criticized Chang’s immorality for “lauding a Chinese traitor.” A month later, Chang published a response defending her position and accusing Yu Wairen of misreading and misinterpreting her story (see Cai 2007; and E. Chang 1995). 16.  A bilingual writer, Chang has done multiple self-translations of her own stories from Chinese to English and from English to Chinese. Chang translated her 1956 English story “Stale Mates: A Story Set in a Time When Love Came to China” into a 1957 Chinese tale “Wusi yishi: luo wentao san mei tuan yuan” (五四遺事: 羅文濤三美團圓) [Regret after the May Fourth Movement: Reunion of Luo Wentao and Three Beauties]. Another example is the four versions of Chang’s most famous novella Golden Cangue based on Jin suo ji (金鎖記). The same story has two other iterations: The Rouge of the North and Yuannü (怨女). Similarly, Chang translated an early Chinese draft of “Lust, Caution” into an English short story titled “The Spyring” in 1952, as mentioned earlier, but it was not published until 2008 when Roland Soong, the executive of Chang’s intellectual property, discovered a trove of correspondences between his parents and Eileen Chang that included at least thirty-four letters discussing the revision of “Lust, Caution.” Among these documents is “The Spyring.” Because Ang Lee’s movie is based on the 1978 published “Lust, Caution” story, to avoid confusion I use only Lovell’s translation. That said, Chang’s translation of an earlier draft strongly merits a separate comparative textual study. For example, here is the opening paragraph in Chang’s “The Spyring”: “Though it was daytime, they had turned on a strong light directly over the taut white tablecloth tied on to the four legs of the mahjong table. Crimson finger-nails, dark against the flat glaring whiteness, scurried among the bamboo tiles as all four pairs of hands stirred the



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tiles up for the next game. Diamond rings flashed in their wake” (Chang 2008; see also Aiyuan Ma 2008). 17.  A good example is Lee’s Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000), where he opens a martial arts film with a five-minute expositional conversation between the two main characters, Yu Shu Lien and Li Mubai. 18.  This is from chapter 17 of The Analects: 子曰: 唯女子與小人為難養也, 近之則不孫, 遠 之則怨. Interpretations of this controversial quotation vary, especially the two terms nü zi (女子) and xiao ren (小人) generate many discussions about what Confucius actually meant (for a thoughtful analysis of this passage, see P. Zhang 2006). 19. It is well known that Chang married a Japanese collaborator Hu Lancheng. Yu Wairen’s original text is as follows: “因为过去的生活背景, 张爱玲女士在处理这类题材时, 尤其 应该特别小心谨慎” (see Chen Xiaoqin 2013). 20.  In his analysis of femininity, Freud admits a theoretical ambivalence in solving the riddle of women when he suggests that “the development of femininity remains exposed to disturbance by the residual phenomena of the early masculine period. . . . Some portion of what we men call ‘enigma of women’ may perhaps be derived from this expression of bisexuality in women’s lives” (Freud 1964, 121). Such developmental “disturbance” destabilizes the binary of passive woman and active man, giving the former an opportunity to acquire the power of the gaze to take a closer look at the ways she is contextualized (Mulvey 1975; Doane 1982; Kaplan 1983; Studlar 1984). 21.  Doane’s full text is enlightening. She suggests that in the Freudian association of femininity with the enigmatic, the other, women appear as indecipherable and yet readable a language as hieroglyphic. Femininity becomes accessible only because “of its status as a pictorial language, a writing in images. For the image is theorized in terms of a certain, closeness, the lack of a distance or gap between sign and referent. Given its iconic characteristics, the relationship between signifier and signified is understood as less arbitrary in imagistic systems of representations in language ‘proper.’ The intimacy of signifier and signified in the iconic sign negates the distance that defines phonetic language. And it is the absence of this crucial distance or gap that also, simultaneously, specifies both the hieroglyphic and the female. This is precisely why Freud evicted the woman from his lecture on femininity. Too close to herself, entangled in her own enigma, she could not step back, could not achieve the distance of a second look” (Doane 1991, 18–19). Doane’s interpretation of reading woman as image through her symbolic identification with a pictorial language corresponds to my earlier analysis of the Chinese conception of the close-up as “special writing” (te xie 特寫). The literariness of the Chinese close-up highlights the proximity of face and text in a way that assimilates the act of looking with the act of reading. The adaptable partnership between Lee the filmmaker as a reader and Chang the writer as a viewer is a case in point. 22.  E. Chang 2007, 39–40. I modified Lovell’s translation substantially here (see E. Chang 1997, 27). 23.  E. Chang 2007, 45–46. I modified Lovell’s translation in this passage. 24.  In “Eileen Chang and Ang Lee at the Movies,” Gina Marchetti details the intertextual cinematic confluence in Lee’s Lust, Caution (2012, 131–154). 25.  Critics have various interpretations of why Chia-chih lets down her guard at this critical moment. Haiyan Lee, for example, suggests that Chang’s Chia-chih is touched by the image of Yee’s vulnerability: “In the film, her utterance of ‘Run’ seems activated by bodily memories—an instance of speaking sexual truth to power, as it were. In the story, by con­ trast, it is the face of a man whose eyelashes are likened to ethereal moth wings that takes Jiazhi to the beyond” (see H. Lee 2010, 648). 26. These are two slightly different terms that mean the same thing, “conscience.” Freud calls it ego ideal (1953, 95–97) and “super ego” (1989b, 100–101).

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27.  Freud’s full text reads, “Recognition of this agency enables us to understand the socalled ‘delusions of being noticed’ or more correctly of being watched . . . A power of this kind, watching, discovering and criticizing all of our intentions, does really exist. Indeed, it exists in every one of us in normal life” (1953, 95; emphasis in original). 28.  For a comprehensive study of the evolution of Chinese languages and cultures, see Chinese Cultural History (Zhongguo wenhua shi 中國文化史) (Gao 2007). 29. In Analects, Book 12, Fan Chi asks Confucius about knowledge and Confucius first responds with “to know people” before elaborating: “Employ the upright and put aside the crooked; in this way the crooked can be made to be upright” (ju zhi cuo zhu wang, neng shi wang zhe zhi舉直錯諸枉, 能使枉者直) (see Chinese Text Project, https://ctext.org/dictionary .pl?if=gb&id=1105).

Chapter 3: Philosophy of the Long Shot in Hou Hsiao-hsien’s The Assassin   1.  The Chinese text is as follows: “先斷其所愛, 然後殺之” (see the complete film script of The Assassin, https://107cine.com/stream/68962).   2.  Critics trace the earliest Chinese martial arts film to Ren Pengnian’s (任彭年) Thief in the Car (車中盜) in 1920, but it was Wen Yimin’s (文逸民) Heroic Sons and Daughters (兒女 英雄) in 1927 that established widely accepted narrative patterns for martial arts films (see Chinese Film Archive 1996).   3.  A few of the famous examples include Wang Kar-wai’s Ashes of Time (Dong xie xi du 東邪西毒 1994), Ang Lee’s Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (Wo hu cang long 臥虎藏龍 2000), Zhang Yimou’s Hero (Ying xiong 英雄 2002) and House of Flying Daggers (Shi mian mai fu 十面 埋伏 2004), Feng Xiaogang’s The Banquet (Ye Yan 夜宴 2006), Chen Kaige’s The Promise (Wu ji 無極 2006), and Yuen Woo-ping’s Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon: The Sword of Destiny (Wo hu cang long qing ming bao jian 臥虎藏龍: 青冥寶劍 2016), among others.   4.  Martial arts films have become more and more action-driven. A Netflix original, Yuen Woo-ping’s (Yuan Heping) 2016 Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon: Sword of Destiny, as mentioned, has over-the-top action sequences that dazzle the audience.   5.  The Chinese text is as follows: “人法地, 地法天, 天法道, 道法自然.” I revised the English translation by Gia-fu Feng and Jane English (Laozi 1989).   6.  The Chinese text is “天下萬物生於有, 有生於無” (see Laozi 600–476 BCE, chapter 40). https://www.daodejing.org/40.html.   7.  The Chinese text for “the supple defeats the stiff” is “柔之克剛” and for “nonaction so as to never fail” is “無為故無敗” (see Laozi, 600–476 BCE, chapters 36 and 64).   8.  Laozi states his relativist and complementary philosophy in chapter 2 of Dao De Jing: “天下皆知美之为美, 恶已; 皆知善, 斯不善矣. 有无之相生也, 难易之相成也, 长短之相刑也, 高下之相盈也, 音声之相和也, 先后之相随, 恒也. 是以圣人居无为之事, 行不言之教, 万物作而弗始 也, 为而弗志也, 成功而弗居也. 夫唯弗居, 是以弗去” (Laozi, 600–476 BC).   9.  The Chinese text is chapter 41 of Dao De Jing: “大象無形” (Laozi, 600–476 BC). 10.  The Chinese text is chapter 43 of Dao De Jing: “不言之教, 無為之益” (Laozi, 600476 BC). 11. The Chinese text is in chapter 11 of Dao De Jing: “埏埴以爲器, 當其無, 有器之用” (Laozi, 600-476 BC). 12.  See chapter 1 in The Analects: “君子務本, 本立而道生. 孝弟也者, 其為仁之本與!” (Xue Er, Chinese Text Project, translated by James Legge, https://ctext.org/analects/xue-er/zh). 13.  See chapter 12 in The Analects: “克己復禮為仁” (Xue Er, Chinese Text Project, translated by James Legge, https://ctext.org/analects/xue-er/zh). 14. The interviewer Zichuan asked Hou Hsiao-hsien, “What is the message of this movie?” Hou responded, “It is meant to say: thou shalt not kill; there should never ever be any justification for killing people” (BBC News, “Dialogue with Hou Xiaoxian: Assassin Nie



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Yinniang Did Not Intend to Insinuate Cross-Strait Politics,” September 17, 2015, http:// www.bbc.com/zhongwen/simp/china/2015/09/150917_iv_hou_hsiaohsien). 15.  In the chapter of Yan Yuan in The Analects in which Fan Chi asks the master to define “mercy.” “To love people,” Confucius responds (2015, 12.22). This simple answer deftly illustrates the hieroglyphic meanings for the character ren (仁) that consists of two parts: “two” (er 二) and “people” (ren 人), a combination that not only stresses the importance of loving the self as well as others, but also indoctrinates the code of interpersonal reciprocity. “Do not do to others,” Confucius instructs, “that you would not wish others to do to you” (ji suo bu yu, wu shi yu ren 己所不欲, 勿施於人) (2015, 12.2). 16.  His disciple Ji Kangzi asks, “Why don’t we kill the immoral to model good behaviors for the people?” Confucius explains that there is no need for a political leader to kill people, because a good leader models good behaviors naturally followed by his people (子為政, 焉用殺? 子欲善, 而民善矣!) (2007, 180). 17.  See Confucius 2007, 83. I modified the English translation of the passage from the online Eno translation (Confucius 2015, 23). 18.  See Lévinas 1985, 10–11. 19. “修身, 齊家, 治國, 平天下” comes from Da xue 大學. It means that one needs to improve oneself before managing a family, ruling a country, or uniting nations. 20.  Hou Hsiao-hsien explains that his films are often about the “old-fashioned” Chinese ideas: Chinese traditions can seem really old-fashioned. For example, the fundamental structure of a family has something to do with phrases like “loyalty, filial obedience, benevolence, love, trust, justice, peace, and equality” or “let the king be a king, the minister a minister, the father a father, and the son a son.” After reading many novels, it is quite easy to understand these relationships and there is a very clear standard you may yearn for. In my opinion, this happens around the world regardless of which country you are in. (Suchenski 2014, 193)

The Confucian statement comes from chapter 12 in The Analects: “君君, 臣臣, 父父, 子 子” (Xue Er, Chinese Text Project, translated by James Legge, https://ctext.org/analects /xue-er/zh).

Chapter 4: The Back Shot in Jia Zhangke’s I Wish I Knew   1.  Jia Zhangke writes in “Xiao Wu” that film must “show concern for ordinary folks and respect, first and foremost, the mundaneness of their existence” (Jia 2010, 31, my translation).   2.  As early as 1997 Jia wrote an op-ed called “My Focus” about Chinese artists’ willingness to go all out to please the commercial tastes of the masses. No one is willing to discuss ‘the current conditions of art and our strategies’ anymore. Instead, artists mock art. Many seem to have found a way of staying away from art to secure their livelihood. They transform creation into manipulation . . . What is left in art if not opportunism? (Jia 2010, 17–18; my translation)

  Twelve years later, in an interview with The New Yorker, Jia Zhangke was more blunt and “accused China’s older filmmakers of churning out big-budget action pictures that neglected the country’s mounting social problems.” These would include Chen Kaige’s martial arts film The Promise (2005) and Zhang Yimou’s period piece Curse of the Golden Flower (2006). Jia believes that these established directors care more about box office than social truths: “When faced with the complexity of real society,” Jia argues, “their hands and feet quiver, and they deliriously shoot a bunch of childish fairy tales.” (Osnos 2009).

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  3.  Many critics have written on Jia’s postsocialist realism (see, for example, Stuckey 2018; McGrath 2007, 2008; Zhang Zhen 2002, 2007; and C. Berry 1995, 2007; on Jia’s exploration of conscious memory and violence, see Xiao 2011, 2015; on his postnostalgic tour de force, see Zhang Yingjin 2015; and on his hometown trilogy, see M. Berry 2009).   4.  China Radio Network, “A Touch of Sin Was Pirated Before Release; It Might Lose Its Box Office Ticket Sales in Mainland China,” March 2, 2014, http://finance.cnr.cn/gs/201403 /t20140302_514970497_1.shtml.   5.  In chapter 8 of The Analects, Confucius’s student Zeng Zi explains the serious responsibilities of shi (士official scholars; intellectuals) who vow to help society achieve the ultimate goal of creating a merciful community. “Intellectuals cannot forgo the breadth of mind or the vigor of resolution, because their responsibilities are serious and their path forward is long and arduous. They consider the goal of achieving mercy their ultimate duty. Is their resolution not weighty? They will not stop until death halts their breath. Is their journey not far-flung?” The original Chinese text is as follows: “曾子曰: ‘士不可以不弘 毅，任重而道遠. 仁以為己任, 不亦重乎?死而後已, 不亦遠乎?’ ” (Tai Bo, Chinese Text Project, my translation, https://ctext.org/analects/xue-er/zh).  6. Receptions of Mountains May Depart have been mixed at home and abroad. Some critics question the weak characterization of Jinsheng (Zhang Yi), the inauthenticity of Dollar’s (Dong Zijian) Australian English, and the directorial compromise to avoid trouble with the Chinese censors. Others point out that the anachronous relationship between Mia (Sylvia Chang) and Dollar appears more “thematic” than “physical” (Pinkerston 2018). These and other criticisms, however, have not diminished Jia’s eloquence about how China has fallen under the spell of the insatiable pursuit of materialism: In the last 20 years, the changes in Chinese society have instilled a new value system. People believe that financial currency goes further than emotional connection, so all of their energy and time is put into the accumulation of economic wealth and they forget about what’s really important. . . . We take for granted that, in all of us, there is a private inner life—something sacred and personal that cannot be touched by any outside force. But have the rapid social, economic, and technological changes in our world begun to insidiously invade that aspect of our lives? That’s what I wanted to explore with this film. (Aliza Ma 2016)

  7.  In addition to citing Balázs and Deleuze, Doane has also referred to studies of closeup by Jacques Aumont, Sergei Eisenstein, and Jean Epstein, arguing that the emergence of close-up marked the moment when cinema was transformed into “an art, a discourse” (2003, 91).   8.  For a discussion of Jia’s docufiction, see Deppman 2014, 188–208.   9.  Jia has transitioned from an underground filmmaker once banned by the Chinese government to an officially approved director since 2004. The World (2004) marked the debut of his “legal” film. Some Chinese intellectuals, however, criticize him for “abandoning his most subversive themes” (Osnos 2009). 10.  Jia received the prestigious Prince Claus Award in 2010 and the award committee praised him for “his committed social engagement in focusing on the realities of ordinary contemporary lives, for his significant contribution to local cultural identity and confidence, and for creatively transcending and altering the frontiers of reality” (http://www .princeclausfund.org/laureate/jia-zhang-ke, accessed January 3, 2020). 11.  In “Empowering Place,” Zhang Yingjin explains: I Wish I Knew is certainly a critical response to Shanghai’s past as history, text and images. As personified in Zhao Tao’s unidentified or unidentifiable figure, the post-nostalgic mode works best as a meta-textual self-critique, interrogating both nostalgic and melodramatic representations of Shanghai past and present through its structure of multivocality and polylocality, and refusing any definite closure of narrative praxis through its repeated haunting as provocative challenges and self-critique. (2015, 244)



Notes to Pages 113–134

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12.  It is instructive to look at the complete quotation by Michel de Certeau: Escaping the imaginary totalizations produced by the eye, the everyday has a certain strangeness that does not surface, or whose surface is only its upper limit, outlining itself against the visible. Within this ensemble, I shall try to locate the practices that are foreign to the “geometrical” or “geographical” space of visual, panoptic, or theoretical constructions. These practices of space refer to a specific form of operations (ways of operating), to “another spatiality” (an anthropological, poetic and mythic experience of space), and to an opaque and blind mobility characteristic of the bustling city. A migrational, or metaphorical, city thus slips into the clear text of the planned and readable city. (1984, 94; emphasis in original)

Chapter 5: Between Close-ups and Long Shots  1. In Analects, Confucius tells his disciple Yong Ye, “The doctrine of the mean should be seen as the highest moral standard. People have not been practicing it for a long time” (子曰, 中庸之為德也, 其至矣乎! 民鮮久矣) (Confucius 2015, 6.29).   2.  Radio Television Hong Kong 2008.  3. Ibid.  4. A quick survey of recent critical studies on Taiwan directors reveals that Hou Hsiao-hsien, Edward Yang, Tsai Mingliang, and Ang Lee dominate the scholarly market (see, for example, Lupke 2016; M. Berry 2014; Suchenski 2014; Udden 2010; Dilley 2015; Anderson 2005; and Lim 2014).   5.  The periodization of Taiwan’s cinematic movements is inconsistent. Although most critics agree on the basic time frame of Taiwan New Cinema from 1982 to 1989, Taiwan Second Wave or what Sing Song-Yong and others call Post Taiwan New Cinema (1990 to today) is at times not considered a separate movement from Taiwan New Cinema (Peng 2010, 127).   6.  For further reference on the different genres of Taiwan cinema, see Hong 2011.  7. Fran Martin and Michelle Bloom, among others, highlight the influence of the French New Wave on Tsai Mingliang’s work (Martin 2003; Bloom 2005).  8. The Doctrine of the Mean (Zhong yong 中庸) is a chapter in Record of Rituals (Li ji 禮記). Along with The Analects, Mencius, and Book of Learning, The Doctrine of the Mean is one of the four books in Confucian studies. I use James Legge’s translation (1893; see also “The Doctrine of the Mean,” http://oaks.nvg.org/the-mean.html). The Chinese text for the quotation is as follows: 故君子和而不流 (see Yong Ye, Chinese Text Project, translation by James Legge, http://ctext.org/analects/yong-ye/zh).   9.  A movie with a modest startup budget of US$156,000 (NT$5 million), Cape No. 7 has grossed more than US$18 million (NT$580,000,000) since its release in August 2008 and has become the highest grossing domestic film in Taiwan’s history. 10.  These four womanly virtues are morality ( fude), apposite speech ( fuyan), proper appearance ( furong), and industry ( fugong). 11.  Zhang Lixun, Shi Wennan, Wang Xuanqi, and Yang Yi. “Women Criticize Ko Wen-je’s Chauvinism for His Hole Theory” (kepi dong dong shuo jiemeimen tongma shazhu 柯P洞洞說 姐 妹們痛罵沙豬), China Times, September 8, 2014, http://www.chinatimes.com/newspapers /20140908000319-260102. 12. The mediating functions of the camera create a metanarrative that aptly recalls Marshall McLuhan’s classic study on media. McLuhan writes, “ ‘the medium is the message’ because it is the medium that shapes and controls the scale and form of human association and action” (1994, 9). 13.  The “three obligations” are often paired with the “five virtues” to form san gang wu chang (三綱五常), which constitutes an important part of Confucius’s political theory. The concept of “three obligations” first appeared in the chapter “Loyalty and Filiality” in Han

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Fei Zi (韓非子), an important Chinese legal philosopher during the Warring Periods. The Chinese text is 臣事君, 子事父, 妻事夫, 三者顺, 天下治; 三者逆, 天下乱 (韩非子 忠孝). The full translation is as follows: “The official serves the king, the son serves the father, the wife serves the husband. If all three proceed smoothly, the world is at peace; if these rules are violated, the world is in chaos” (see Chinese Text Project, http://ctext.org/text.pl?node=2687 &if=gb&show=parallel). For analysis of Confucius’s political philosophy, see Chan and Young 2012. 14.  The US Congress passed the Taiwan Relations Act in 1979 that potentially required the US to intervene militarily if the PRC attacked Taiwan (Pub. L. No. 96-8, 22 USC 3301 [1979], http://www.ait.org.tw/en/taiwan-relations-act.html). 15.  For more on the 2/28 Incident, see Lin 2007. 16.  American women’s social protests resulted in local legal and cultural changes but also swept across the globe and jolted a peripheral nonstate such as Taiwan into taking action against forms of sexual discrimination. The American feminism in Taiwan is rooted in the 1960s ideological and political challenges to the way mainstream culture configured women’s primary social role as homemakers. American activists led to the legal victory of Equal Pay Act in 1963 and continued to fight against domestic violence and appeal for women’s reproductive rights. Meanwhile, Gloria Steinem and Susan Sontag modeled career paths as public intellectuals who wrote and spoke about gendered injustice. All of that was impressive, but Second Wave Feminism had an even more profound impact on Taiwan’s feminist pioneer Annette Lü Hsiu-lien (Lü Xiulian). During the height of the movement, Lü arrived in the US from Taiwan to pursue a comparative law degree at the University of Illinois in 1969. Returning to Taiwan in 1971, she started writing and lecturing about what she called New Feminism. In a public speech at the National Taiwan University in 1972, Lü outlined her argument for equal sexual rights. Her manifesto provoked heated discussions about Taiwan’s gender relations for decades to come and raised political awareness that later led to the legislation of Two Sexes’ Equal Work Act in 2001. That Lü shifted the American Second Wave’s intense focus on women’s issues to a political debate over human rights gave her an ideological platform to advocate for Taiwan democracy and ultimately facilitated her ascension to the island’s first female vice presidency from 2000 to 2008. But her codified language about the propriety of sexual behavior—man acts manly and woman womanly—also recalls the Confucian prescription for traditional values. Her essentialist and humanist viewpoint, not surprisingly, suppresses more nuanced differentiations between the sexes and sanctions, perhaps unwittingly, the chauvinistic views of politicians like Ko Wen-je, who writes in his book White Power: “the rising number of female workers in one particular line of work signals the imminent decline of that profession” (Ko 2014; my translation). 17.  The periodization of feminist movements is related to the rise of feminist film criticism. Riding the wind of the Second Wave Feminism, feminist film criticism has gained a strong foothold in cinema studies in the 1970s. Although such pioneers as Laura Mulvey (1975), Mary Ann Doane (1982, 1991, 2003), Ann Kaplan (1983; 2000), Judith Mayne (1993), Kaja Silverman (1988), and Miriam Hansen (2000) have largely focused on Hollywood narratives, their psychoanalytical readings of gaze, masquerade, spectatorship, and other gender relations have raised valid trans-cultural questions about woman and film in different traditions. 18.  Even though Lü’s core arguments may seem dated today, they were provocative in the 1970s: “Personhood comes before womanhood and manhood,” because regardless of class and race everyone is entitled to the protection of equal human rights; “Be true to what you are.” Don’t act like a man when you are a woman and vice versa; and “Be the best at what you can be.” Sex should not be a limiting factor that precludes women from being considered for equal job opportunities (see Xie 2006, 180).



Notes to Pages 143–145

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19.  I use the notion of “human togetherness” in relation to Hannah Arendt’s consensual community or public sphere where “people are with others and neither for nor against them” (Arendt 1998, 180; emphasis in original). For Arendt, this consensual sphere is a place unperturbed by the warfare, which forces people to take sides. She identifies an indifferent neutral zone that is similar to Bhabha’s Third Space in which “the construction of a political object that is new, neither the one nor the other,” frees human action from the constraints of binary expectations (Bhabha 1994, 25; emphasis in original). Is this theoretically neither-nor community realistic? Not quite, but this lack of realism is something that appeals to Wei’s romanticism since his film sets out to visualize a utopian community. In revising Arendt’s idea of a consensual community, Bhabha argues that, when it comes to “cultural difference and discrimination,” human togetherness cannot be achieved naturally without violence, for it often represents one of the two situations, either “the forces of hegemonic authority” or solidarity among victims “bound against oppression” (191). 20.  Bhabha makes a passionate appeal to finding an alternative theory for the third space: “My illustration attempts to display the importance of the hybrid moment of political change. Here the transformational value of change lies in the rearticulation, or translation, of elements that are neither the One (unitary working class) nor the Other (the politics of gender) but something else besides, which contests the terms and territories of both” (1994, 28; emphasis in original). 21.  As Bhabha puts it matter-of-factly, “The non-synchronous temporality of global and national cultures opens up a cultural space—a third space—where negotiation of incommensurable differences creates a tension peculiar to borderline existence” (1994, 218).

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Selected Filmography

Hou Hsiao-hsien 1980 Cute Girl (Jiu shi liu liu de ta). Hao Ke Record Production. 1981 Cheerful Wind (Feng er ti ta cai). Hao Ke Record Production. 1983 The Green, Green Grass of Home (Zai na he pan qing cao qing). Hao Ke Record Production. 1983  The Boys from Fengkuei (Feng gui lai de ren). Central Motion Pictures Corporation. 1983 The Sandwich Man (Er zi de da wan ou). Central Motion Pictures Corporation. 1984  A Summer at Grandpa’s (Dong dong de jia qi). Central Motion Pictures Corporation. 1985  A Time to Live, A Time to Die (Tong nian wang shi). Central Motion Pictures Corporation. 1986 Dust in the Wind (Lian lian feng chen). Central Motion Pictures Corporation. 1987 Daughter of the Nile (Ni luo he de nü er). Central Motion Pictures Corporation. 1989 A City of Sadness (Bei qing cheng shi). 3H Films. 1993 The Puppetmaster (Xi meng ren sheng). ERA. 1995 Good Men, Good Women (Hao nan, hao nü). 3H Films. 1996 Goodbye South, Goodbye (Nanguo zaijian, nanguo). 3H Films. 1998 Flowers of Shanghai (Hai shang hua). 3H Productions. 2001 Millennium Mambo (Qian xi man bo). 3H Productions. 2005 Three Times (Zui hao de shi guang). 3H Films. 2007 Flight of the Red Balloon (Le voyage du ballon rouge). Margo Films. 2015 The Assassin (Ci ke Nie Yin Niang). Central Motion Pictures. Jia Zhangke 1997 Xiao Wu (aka The Pickpocket). Hu Tong Communications. 2000 Platform (Zhan tai). Hu Tong Communications. 2002 Unknown Pleasures (Ren xiao yao). Hu Tong Communications. 2004 The World (Shi jie). Office Kitano. 2006 Still Life (San xia hao ren). Xstreams Pictures.

171

172

Selected Filmography

2008 2010 2013 2015 2018

24 City (Er shi si cheng ji). Bandai Visual Company. I Wish I Knew (Hai shang chuan qi). Bojie Media. A Touch of Sin (Tian zhu ding). Xstream Pictures. Mountains May Depart (Shan he gu ren). Shanghai Film Group. Ash Is Purest White (Jiang hu er nü). Arte France Cinéma.

Lee, Ang 1991 Pushing Hands (Tui shou). Central Motion Pictures Corporation. 1993 Wedding Banquet (Xi yan). Central Motion Pictures Corporation. 1994 Eat Drink Man Woman (Yin shi nan nü). Central Motion Pictures Corporation. 1995 Sense and Sensibility. Columbia Pictures. 1997 Ice Storm. Fox Searchlight Picture. 1999 Ride with the Devil. Good Machine. 2000 Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (Wo hu cang long). Columbia Pictures. 2001 The Hire: Chosen. Anonymous content. 2003 The Hulk. Universal Pictures. 2005 Brokeback Mountain. Good Machine. 2007 Lust, Caution. Hai Sheng Film Production Company. 2012 Life of Pi. Fox 2000 Pictures. Wei Desheng 2008 Cape No. 7 (Hai jiao qi hao). ARS Film Production. 2011  Warriors of the Rainbow: Seediq Bale I (Sai de ke ba alai: Tai yang qi). ARS Film Production. 2011  Warriors of the Rainbow: Seediq Bale II (Sai de ke ba alai: Cai hong qiao). ARS Film Production. 2017 52Hz: I Love You. ARS Film Production. Zhang Yimou 1987 Red Sorghum (Hong gao liang). Xi’an Film Studio. 1990 Ju Dou. China Film Co-Production Corporation. 1991 Raise the Red Lantern (Da hong deng long gao gao gua). Century Communications. 1992 The Story of Qiu Ju (Qiu ju da guan si). Sil-Metropole Organization. 1994 To Live (Huo zhe). ERA International. 1995 Shanghai Triad (Yao a yao yao dao waipo qiao). Alpha Films. 1997 Keep Cool (You hua hao hao shuo). Guangxi Film Studio. 1999 The Road Home (Wo de fu qin mu qin). Columbia Pictures Film Production. 1999  Not One Less (Yi ge dou bu neng shao). Beijing New Picture Distribution Company. 2000 Happy Times (Xing fu shi guang). Guangxi Film Studio. 2002 Hero (Ying xiong). Beijing New Picture Film Company. 2004 House of Flying Daggers (Shi mian mai fu). Beijing New Picture Film Company. 2005  Riding Alone for Thousands of Miles (Qian li zou dan qi). Beijing New Picture Film Company. 2006  Curse of the Golden Flower (Man cheng jin dai huang jin jia). Beijing New Picture Film Company 2011 The Flowers of War (Jin ling shi san chai). Beijing New Picture Film Co. 2014 Coming Home (Gui lai). Le Vision Pictures. 2018 Shadow (Ying). Perfect Village Entertainment.

Index

aboriginal, 125, 127, 138 action fantasy, 70 adaptability, 34, 70 adaptation, literary, 5; three modes of, 149n7 “admiration,” 17 aesthetic of self-effacement, 99 “affection image,” 2 affective power, 6, 26, 28, 148n4 “affectively disruptive,” 70, 86 agency of the look, 23 agit-prop, 19 ai ren (loving people), 83 altruism, 37, 70, 102 anachronistic, 27 androgyny, 27, 37, 53 anthropocosmic worldview, 9 anthropomorphic, 133 anticlimactic, 59 Arendt, Hannah, 157n19 art of emphasis, 4, 10, 35 Ash Is Purest White (Jiang hu er nü), 96, 104, 172 associative emotions, 148n3 At Café 6 (Liu nong ka fei guan), 130 Au Revoir Taipei (Yi ye tai bei), 128 audacity, 26, 27 Austen, Jane, 37, 41 auteurism, 125 auteur, 68, 72 autocratic practices, 69

back shot, 7, 80, 109, 112, 117 Balázs, Béla, 2, 4, 25, 29, 31, 105 Balzac, 43, 160 barren look, 28 Baudrillard, Jean, 55, 56, 159 Bazin, André, 1, 4, 159 being-for-the-others, 83 Benjamin, Walter, 122, 159 Berger, John, 21, 23, 24, 26, 159 Beyond the Pleasure Principle, 41, 163 Bhabha, Homi, 121, 137–138, 141–143, 145, 157nn19–21, 160 Big Aunt, 42 bisexuality, 52, 151n20 black-and-white, 54 blankness, 80, 88 bondage, 14, 20 Book of Change (yi jing), 40 Bordwell, David, 77 BOT (Build-Operate-Transfer), 138 Boys from Fengkuei, The (Feng gui lai de ren), 72, 171 Brindley, Erica Fox, 147n1, 160 Cai Dengshan, 42, 160 capitalism, 1, 132, 162, 8, 9 capitalism with Chinese characteristics, 97 capitalist: climate, 107; conglomeration, 108; economy 101; enterprise, 147; greed, 119; materiality, 44; self-alienation, 66; traps, 7; urge 101

173

174 Index care of the self, 12, 26 centrifugal, 117 centripetal, 117 CGI, 71 chang (prostitute or the kill of a tiger), 47 Chang Cheh, 71 Chang, Ivy I-chu, 125, 161 Chang’an, 80 character identification, 97 character psychology, 23, 37 chauvinistic, 123, 146, 156n16 Chen Kaige, 71, 96 Chen Shuibian, 137 Chen Yizhen, 129 Chen, Arvin, 128 Chiang Kai-shek, 1, 149n1 Chinese Cultural Revolution, 9 Chinese film and literature, 5 Chinese identity politics, 38 Chinese moralism, 42 Chow, Rey, 14, 150n2 chu shi (confidently), 76 cinematic time lag, 144 City of Sadness (Bei qing cheng shi), 69, 166, 171 close-up: in long shots, 6, 70, 88, 89; in long takes, 10, 11, 23, 35 Cold War, the, 42 comic relief, 123 communist-Confucian-capitalist, 8 compulsion to repeat, 42, concept-city, 116 Confucian: ethics, 3, 5, 11, 37, 66; Father, 129, 137, 144, 146; humanism, 97, 168; moral realism, 4, 165; propriety, 5; ritualism, 2, 35, 70; social order, 42; studies, 1, 155n8 consumerism, 125 contrast of light and shadow, 40 core emotion, 39, 149n5 counter-cinema, 4, 164, 168, counterintuitive, 31, 72, 97 Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (Wo hu cang long), 36–38, 41, 151–152, 160, 164, 167, 172 cruelty, 42, 45, 59, 66, 150n5 cultural authenticity, 37, 125 cultural time lag, 145 Curse of the Golden Flower (Mang cheng jin dai huang jin jia), 153n2, 172

Dao, 73, 75, 81, 82 Dao De Jing (Tao te ching), 149n10, 152n8 Dao xin wei jian (Daoist mind is not solidified), 88 Dao/Confucian concepts: Confucian Dao and music, 147n1; filial piety, 81; path to perfect virtue, 82; ritualistic constraints, 71; ru shi (being-in-thisworld), 76 Dao/Daoist concepts: chu shi (being-out-ofthis-world), 76; empty shots, 75; laws of nature, 74; pitiless way, 76; seeing more in emptiness, 71; supple overpowering the stiff, 31, 75, 149n10, 152n7; Daoism, 73–75 Daoist dialectic, 31 De Certeau, Michel, 113, 114, 116, 155n12, 162 decentered position, 13, 14, 46 deep focus, 46, 80 “deep text,” 65 “deeper gaze, the,” 29 Deleuze, Gilles, 2, 105, 17, 162–163 Deleyto, Celestino, 144, 162 Democratic Progressive Party, 129, 137 differentiating power of the gaze, 27, 34 Ding Mocun, 149n1 Dirlik, Arif, 1, 8, 9, 162 distance and ambivalence, 51 diu lian (to lose face), 104 Doane, Mary Ann: autonomy of the close-up, 23, 35, 62, 105; close-ups and film art, 2, 14; different theories of close-ups, 154n7; face and desire, 132; feminist film criticism, 54, 89, 156n17, 162; Freud and enigma of women, 51–53, 151nn20–21 doctrine of the mean, 7, 120, 128, 155n1, 155n8, 165 docufiction, 96, 99, 106, 154n8, 162 Dollar (da le), 101, 154n6 double blindness, 13 double masquerade, 64 double-sidedness, 51 Dream of the Red Chamber, 40 Dürer, Albrecht, 21 Dust in the Wind (Lian lian feng cheng), 72, 171

da da fang fang (grandly), 27 Dai Fenglian, 10 Dai Li, 149n1 Dai Qing, 2, 14, 148n1, 162

Eat Drink Man Woman (Yin shi nan nü), 121, 149n2, 172 economic reform, 8 ego-ideal, 58, 62, 151n26. See also superego

Eisenstein, Sergei, 1, 19, 71, 154n7, 162 Lévinas, Emmanuel, 71, 83, 86–87, 89, 92, 153n18, 159, 165 emotional ambivalence, 5 empty scene, 68. See also empty shot empty shot, 72, 75, 78–80 enlargement, 5, 17 Equal Pay Act, 156n16 erotic object, 23–24 escapism, 71, 125 Essay Liu, 128 establishing shot, 74, 107, 111, 130, 131 ethic of inclusiveness, 99 ethics of realism, 4, 166 Eurocentrism, 9 European realism, 43 everyday aesthetics, 98 everyday life, 38, 98–99, 162 expository scopophilia, 35 eyeline match shot, 22 face and text, 5, 11, 151n21 Fall of the Pagoda, The (Lei feng ta), 40 “faith in reality,” 1 Farewell My Concubine (Ba wang bie ji), 3 father-knows-best, 149n2 fearlessness, 26 female gaze, 5, 21 “female perspective,” 50 female power, 5, 139 female self-realization, 3 “female traitor,” 42 “feminist colonialism,” 137 feminist film critics, 2 femme fatale, 44 Feng Xiaogang, 71 fetishism, 23, 119, 132 fidelity to the letter, 149n9 fidelity to the spirit, 149 n9 Fifth Generation movement, 1 filial piety, 9, 10, 81, 129, 149n2 film and politics, 2 film attractions, 19 First Wave, 129, 138 “five constant virtues,” 39, 155n13 fixed camera, 4, 68 flashbacks, 39–40 Flaubert, Gustave, 43 Flowers of Shanghai (Hai shang hua), 72, 171 Formosa Incident, 137 Foucault, Michel, 11–12, 30–31, 35, 117, 163 Fountain, Ben, 41

Index 175 Freudian: conscience, 58, 151n26; guilt, 38; superego, 37, 66 Freudian-Confucian, 66 Fude (female virtues), 155n10 Gateward, Frances, 8, 148n5, 163 “gaze upon itself,” 11, 35 ge (halberd), 60 gender hierarchy, 42, 146 “generic discordance,” 145 genre-mixing, 56 “gestural clarity,” 77 glocal, 121, 145 glocalism, 146 Goddess, The (Shen nü), 3 Golden Bear Award, the, 8 Golden Cangue, The (Jin suo ji), 42, 150n16 golden middle way, 120 gong (holding with both hands), 60 Gong Li, 10 Good men, Good Women (Hao nan hao nü), 69, 171 gros plan, 5 Haishang chuanqi (Legend over the sea), 106 Hakka, 125, 127 hamartia, 42 Han Fei Zi, 156–157n13 Hansen, Miriam, 2, 23, 53–54, 156n17, 163 healthy realism, 126 Hear Me (Ting shuo), 128 “here and now,” 96 hermeneutic ambivalence, 4 hexagonal, 43–44 hieroglyphic, 5, 60, 151n21, 153n15 hometown trilogy, 96, 154n3, 160 Hong Guorong (Ma Ju-lung), 130, 134, 137 Hsu Fu-guan, 2, 163 Hu Lancheng, 42 Huangpu River, 115 hubris, 54 Hui, Ann, 3 human agency, 42–43 human togetherness, 143, 157. See also Arendt, Hannah humanist feminism, 139 Hung, Simon, 130 hyperrealist, 54 impersonal narration, 40 intermedial: art forms, 40; narrative, 56 interruptive aesthetic, 97

176 Index intersecting, 149n9 interventionist art, 1 intra-diegetic, 27, 29 invisible editing, 120 irony, 40, 46, 91, 96, 137 Japan sympathizer, 41–42 Japanese colonialism, 69, 137 Japanese-ness, 125, 140 Japanophilia, 125, 128, 161 ji suo bu yu, wu shi yu ren (do not do to others that you would not wish others do to you), 153n15 jia ting lun li pian (family ethic films), 41 jiao dao wu qing (the way of the sword is pitiless), 76 jie (ring, caution), 60 jing tou (lens), 94 jing zi (mirror), 94 jin shan jin mei (perfectly good and perfectly beautiful), 6, 148n5 Johnson, Claire, 2, 4, 164 Jones, James, 40 jun zi (scholarly gentleman), 82 kang fen (feverish, excitable), 27 Kaplan, Ann, 2–3, 151n20, 156n17 Karlyn, Kathleen Rowe, 139, 164 ke ji (self-restraint), 98 King Hu, 71–72 Ko Wen-je, 129, 155n11, 156n16, 164 kong jing, 72. See also empty shot Kousuke Atari, 128 Kuomintang, KMT, 137 Lao Tsao (Kar Lok Chin), 57 Laoma, 138 Laozi, 31, 74, 80, 82 Le Carré, John, 40 Lee Pei-ling, 12, 164 Lee, Leo, 60, 150n8, 164 Legge, James, 147n2 Lévinas, Emmanuel, 71, 83, 86–87, 89, 92, 153n18, 165 li (rituals), 2, 82, 87, 155n8 Li Mubai, 38, 151n17 Li Peizhen, 141 libidinal disorder, 56 Lin Mingzhu (Lin Xiao-pei), 142 linguistic free land, 137 literary close-up, 5, 53, 66

Little Nine, 9 Little Reunion (Xiao tuan yuan), 40 liu bai (leave blankness), 88 lived experience, 1 localism, 121 long take: close-ups in, 10–11, 23–24, 26, 34–35; deep focus and, 80; ethics of, 70; long shot and, 4, 77; of the face, 5; of the gaze, 85; realism, 91, 164; Taiwan New Cinema and, 126–127 looking glass, 59 Lotus, 35 “loving people,” 97, 101. See also ai ren lower angle medium close-up, 29 Lü, Annette Hsiu-lien, 129, 156n16 mahjong, 43–44, 48, 150n16 mai (surname, sell, trade), 44, 47 male gaze, 3, 56 Mao Zedong, 1 Marxist reification, 44, 54, 66 masochistic tendency, 41 masquerade, 39, 52–53, 56, 58, 62, 66, 162 master shot, 130, 140 master-slave dynamic, 47 Maugham, Somerset, 40 May Fourth Movement, 9, 150n16, 161 Mediascape, 139 medium: close-ups, 6, 29–31, 34–35, 49, 60, 85–86, 92–93; long shots, 46, 87, 120, 131, 133; medium reaction shot, 29 Meiling (Zhang Xinyan), 141 metanarrative, 131, 136, 155n12 metatextual, 112, 154n11 middle way, 7, 120 mimicry, 52 mise-en-scène: close-ups in long shots, 6; decentering, 4; establishing mood, 32, 57, 61, 77, 83, 112, 140; metaphor, 133; obstructive, 58; space and place, 87 misogynistic masculinity, 148n2 montage, 19, 40, 46, 48, 91, 126 moral dualism, 42 moral realism, 4, 165 Morgan, B. D., 112, 166 Mountains May Depart (Shan he gu ren), 96, 99, 101, 104, 106, 108, 154n6 “Mr. Representative,” 123, 134–136 multivocality, 96, 154n11 Mulvey, Laura, 2, 24, 131, 133, 144, 151n20, 156n17, 166

Nagib, Lúcia, 4, 166 narcissism, 37, 54, 56, 62, 66, 163 nativist: consciousness 126, 137; protectionism, 123; rhetoric, 138 natural lighting, 68, 72, 126 neorealist aesthetic, 4, 68, 70 New Feminism, 156n16, 168 Nie Feng (Ni Dahong), 93 Nobel Laureate, 8 non-action, 77–78 non-interventional aesthetic, 69 non-nation, 121 noncharacter, 112 nonnarrative, 88, 112 nontranscendental, 98 Nornes, Abé Mark, 68, 87 Northern spirit, the, 10 Novell, Julia, 43 object-libido, 66 “object-love,” 58 objective camera, 43 one scene, one take, 72, 75 open door policy, 137 organic realism, 145 organic representation, 1 Oriental Pearl Tower, 114 Orientalist fantasies, 14 Orientalized subjectivities, 9 “orphan island,” 42 otherness, 51 out-of-body, 53 “over-identification,” 52 paternalism, 128 patriotism, 37, 55, 59 “pause-burst-pause,” 72 “people’s director,” 6, 96 perception (yi), 78 perfect virtue, 2–3, 82, 147nn1–3. See also ren Pickpocket (Xiao wu), 96, 104, 106, 108, 171 Platform (Zhan tai), 96, 104, 171 playacting, 44, 49, 51–53, 62, Plum in the Golden Vase (Jing ping mei), 40 point-of-view shots, 21, 58, 80 politics and reality, 1 politics of polarity, 138 polylocality, 96, 154n11 populist appeal, 120 portrait shots, 5, 14, 37, 39, 64, 66

Index 177 postcolonial hero, 135, 137 postcolonial state, 121 post-Mao era, 9 post-millennium, 126, 128 post-reform, 97 Post—Taiwan New Cinema, 126 power of life, the, 13 power of limits, 72 power of seduction, 29 pragmatism, 69 primo feeling, 150n5 Princess Jiacheng, 92, 94 progressive filmmaking, 19 progressivism, 24, 37 Promise, The (Wu ji), 153n3 propriety, 2–3, 5, 91, 147n2. See also li Protectionism, 123, 136 proximity, 5, 22, 29, 32, 54, 70, 89, 151n21 proximity and distance, 22 psychoanalytical studies, 2, 41 psychological exposition, 5 public intellectuals, 119, 156n16 Puppetmaster, The (Xi meng ren sheng), 69, 171 Pushing Hands (Tui shou), 149n2, 172 Raise the Red Lantern (Da hong deng long gao gao gua), 35, 148n4, 162, 172 raison d’être, 72, 119 Rayns, Tony, 106, 112, 167, reaction shots, 27, 34 realism, 45, 69–72, 74, 91, 125–126, 145, 154n3, 157n19 “Red Rose, White Rose” (Hong mei gui, bai mei gui), 42 reflexive mise-en-scène, 126 reified consciousness, 44 ren (the perfect virtue, mercy) 2, 70, 88, 91, 147nn2–3, 153n15, repressed female will to power, 11 revolutionary communism, 9 Rice-Sprout Song, The (Yang ge), 42 ritualism, 2–3, 10, 16, 35, 147n1. See also li Romance (Chuan shuo), 40 romantic comedy, 7, 121, 136, 142, 144, 162, 166 romantic melodramas, 126 romanticism, 125, 145, 157n19 Rouge of the North, The, 150n16 ru shi (into the world, being in this world) 76, 110

178 Index Said, Edward, 119 san gang wu chang (three cardinal rules and five constant virtues), 39, 155n13 Sandwich Man, The (Er zi de da wan ou), 72, 171 Sang Hu, 150n7 scaled adjectives, 21 scaled close-ups, 19 Schamus, James, 37, 66, 167 scopophilic: art, 132; gaze, 3; pleasure, 23, 31 “second look,” 53, 151n21 Second Sino-Japanese War, 41 Second Wave Feminism, 156nn16–17 seeing female subject, 5 self-affirmation, 34–35 self-aggrandizement, 56 self-care, 34 self-creative, 34 self-deception, 56–57 self-definition, 51, 125 self-determination, 10, 20, 52, 67, 137 self-effacement, 18, 28, 56, 71, 99 self-negation, 35 self-other configuration, 49 self-other encounter, 6, 70 self-Other, 83 self-preservation, 17, 39, 56, 98 self-restraint, 2, 3, 10, 70, 98, 147n2. See also ke ji self-scrutiny, 1, 52, 54, 104, 107, Seven Days in Heaven (Fu hou qi ri), 128 sex drive, 38 sexism, 123, 146 sexual curiosity, 20, 26 sexual subject, 20 sexualized object, 4, 20 sexualizing activism, 21 shame, 38 Shanghai World Expo, 106, 110, 116 Shao music, 148n5 shi (official scholars, intellectuals), 97, 154n5 shot-reverse-shots, 26, 31, 35, 39, 60, 62, 64, 76; close-ups in, 89 shu er bu zuo (transmitting without inventing), 69 Shu Qi, 68, 72 shu shi (confidently), 27 sidelong glance, 29–30, 34, 46 sideways look, 29 simplicity, sensibility, and directness, 23 sincerity, 4, 6, 38, 110, 149n2,

Sing Song-Yong, 126, 155n5, 167 single take, 24, 68, 70, 76 Sinic voice, 9 Sino-Japanese War, 41 Sinophone, 9, 165 Sixth Generation, 96, 167 Song of the Exile (Ke tu qiu hen), 3 Sontag, Susan, 156n16 Soong, Roland, 149n1, 150n10, 150n16 Soong, Stephen, 149n1 Southern Song Chang’an style, 80 special writing (te xie), 5, 151n21 spectatorial desire, 132 Spirit of Chinese Art, The (Zhongguo yishu jingshen), 147n1 Spyring, The (Qing ke, qing ke), 150n10, 150n16, 161 “Stale Mates: A Story set in a Time When Love came to China,” 150n16 “state of Entity, the,” 17, 105 State of Weibo, 76, 92–93 Steinem, Gloria, 156n16 Still Life (San xia hao ren), 104, 171 Stories of Heroic Sons and Daughters (Er nü ying xiong zhuan), 71 story of the strange, the (chuan qi), 70 story-walker, 6 stream-of-consciousness, 57 “structural depth,” 1 subject-formation, 20 surrealism, 112 Tableau “shot,” 20 tableau views, 13 Taipei Story (Qing mei zhu ma), 126 Taiwan New Cinema, 1, 72, 121, 125–126, 155n5, 166 Taiwan Relations Act, 157n14 Taiwan Second Wave, 121, 125–126, 155n5 Taiwan Third Wave, 126–127 Taiwan trilogy, 69 Taiwanese unconscious, 125 Tanaka, Chie, 123 Tang Emperor Daizong, 92 Tang Wei, x, 37, 51 text and ideology, 4 10,000 Miles (Yi wan gong li de yue ding), 130 Third Space, 121, 137–138, 143, 157nn19–21, Third Wave feminism, 137–138 third-person omniscient narrator, 43 three obediences, 11

Tian Ji’an, 72, 76 Tian Xu, 93 Tiber, Eliot, 41 Tiger Daughter, 129, 137–138, 146 to-be-looked-at-ness, 24, 52, 132 transcendental mysticism, 77 transformative agency, 35 “traumatic dreams,” 41 Tsai Ing-wen, 129, 162 Twa Tiu Tiann (Da dao cheng), 128 Two Sexes’ Equal Work Act, 156n16 24 City (Er shi si cheng ji), 96, 104 2/28 Incident, 137 Unknown Pleasures (Ren xiao yao), 96, 160, 171 “unpleasure,” 4, 6 “vehicle of presence, the” 23 Violet (Zi luo lan), 39 voyeurism, 20, 23, 119, 132 Walker, Rebecca, 139, 167 Wang Ching-wei (Wang Jingwei), 57 Wang Dulu, 38, 41 Wang Tong, 147n4 Wang Yulin, 128 Wang, Chialan Sharon, 125, 167 war pictures, 126 Ways of Seeing, 21, 159, Wedding Banquet (Xi yan), 36, 149n2, 172 wei ji (crisis), 27 White Terror, 137, 165 wide-angle shot, 140 Williams, Raymond, 7, 72, 168 Wollen, Peter, 4, 168 Wong Kar-wai, 71 World, The (Shi jie), 96, 104, 154n9, 171

Index 179 writerly compulsion, 42 writing in images, 50, 151n21 Wu Yonggang, 3 Wu, Neal, 130 Wuxia (martial arts) 70 xenophobia, 123, 146 xiao ren (despicable men), 151n18 Xiao Yong, 102 Xiaoshan Going Home (Xiao shan hui jia), 96 xie yan kan ren (looking with a sideways glance), 29 Yan Yuan, 2, 82, 147nn2–3, 153n15 Yellow Earth (Huang tu di), 3, 168 Yenching University, 149n1 yi (surname, change, trade, easiness), 147 You are the Apple of my Eye (Na xie nian, wo men yi qi zhui de nü hai), 128–129 Yu Shu Lien, 38 Yu Wairen (Zhang Xiguo), 52, 150n15, Yu, Jen, 38 Yuannü (the bitter woman) 150n16 yuanxiang (ontological hometown), 148 n2 Yuen Woo-ping, 71, 152nn3–4 Zeng Zi, 154n5 zhai nan (homebound geeks), 129 Zhang Henshui, 40 Zhang Yingjin, 112, 154n3, 154n11, 168 Zhao Tao, x, 107, 112–113 Zhenbao, 42 Zheng Fenfen, 128 Zheng Pingru, 149n1 zhi ren (to know people), 66 zhong yong (Doctrine of the Mean), 155n8. See also doctrine of the mean Zone Pro Site (Zong pu shi), 128–129

About the Author

Hsiu-Chuang Deppman is professor of Chinese and cinema studies at Oberlin College. Her research interests include history of cinema, film adaptation, documentary, media studies, comparative literature, and modern Chinese fiction. She is the author of Adapted for the Screen: The Cultural Politics of Modern Chinese Fiction and Film (University of Hawai’i Press, 2010). She has published on Chinese film, literature, and media in refereed journals and edited volumes.