Intermingled Fascinations : Migration, Displacement and Translation in World Cinema [1 ed.] 9781443831277, 9781443829540

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Intermingled Fascinations

Intermingled Fascinations: Migration, Displacement, and Translation in World Cinema

Edited by

Flannery Wilson and Jane Ramey Correia

Intermingled Fascinations: Migration, Displacement, and Translation in World Cinema, Edited by Flannery Wilson and Jane Ramey Correia This book first published 2011 Cambridge Scholars Publishing 12 Back Chapman Street, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE6 2XX, UK British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Copyright © 2011 by Flannery Wilson and Jane Ramey Correia and contributors All rights for this book reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright owner. ISBN (10): 1-4438-2954-4, ISBN (13): 978-1-4438-2954-0

TABLE OF CONTENTS

List of Film Stills....................................................................................... vii Acknowledgements .................................................................................... ix Introduction ................................................................................................. 1 Flannery Wilson and Jane Ramey Correia Chapter One............................................................................................... 13 Opening the Door to Sino-Italian Cinema Studies: Gianfranco Giagni’s Un cinese a Roma and the Representation of Chinese Migrants in Contemporary Italian Cinema Flannery Wilson Chapter Two .............................................................................................. 45 Contemporary Migration and Unstable Translations: Dai Sijie and Amélie Nothomb Fontaine Lien Chapter Three ............................................................................................ 71 No Place Like Home: Minor Transnationalisms in Jia Zhangke’s The World Regina Yung Lee Chapter Four .............................................................................................. 95 Broken Lives, Fractured Cinema: The Cinematic Representation of Homelessness in French and Japanese Films Jane Ramey Correia Conclusion............................................................................................... 133 Flannery Wilson and Jane Ramey Correia List of Contributors ................................................................................ 139 Index........................................................................................................ 141

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LIST OF FILM STILLS

Fig. 1-1. The Nanjing Bridge as shot by Antonioni’s camera. Fig. 1-2. Massimo and Jing singing “Occhi Orientali”. Fig. 1-3. Li Xiangyang practicing Tai Chi. Fig. 2-1. Luo, Ma, and the Little Seamstress. Fig. 2-2. Amélie peering nervously over her work. Fig. 2-3. Fubuki, in Amélie’s imagination. Fig. 2-4. The final showdown. Fig. 2-5. The Three Gorges Dam on the French news. Fig. 3-1. Tao finally locates her band-aid. Note the costuming on the women in the shot. Fig. 3-2. Title Shot. Note the Eiffel Tower replica centered against the backdrop of Beijing, as well as The World Park monorail at the far right. Fig. 3-4. Two children lost in the snow. Fig. 4-1. The Rashǀmon gate. Fig. 4-2. School children mocking Rokkuchuan as he drives his imaginary train through the slum. Fig. 4-3. The beggar boy picking up discarded cigarette butts for his father next to the shiny, expensive cars. Fig. 4-4. Overview of the circular, run-down, non-descript cités. Fig. 4-5. Saïd calling up to Vinz’s apartment, with a neighbor looking down from an apposing apartment in the background. Fig. 4-6. The projects overwhelm the camera emphasizing their immense size. Fig. 4-7. The camera angles underscore the height and length of the cités and why they were aptly nicknamed “cages à lapins.” Fig. 4-8. Rohmer’s camera acknowledges the anonymity a large city offers and the difficulty in making a connection, even while (especially) amidst a large number of people.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I grew interested in this topic after taking a graduate seminar in the fall of 2007, with Dr. Michelle Bloom, on Orientalism and French and Sinophone cinemas. Because of Michelle’s support, I have continued to remain scholarly engaged in the topic of cross-adaptation in East Asian cinema studies. I would also like to thank Jane, my co-editor, for diligently helping me to complete this project, and, of course, Fontaine and Regina, my engaging colleagues who also happen to be brilliant writers. I would also add a word of thanks to my husband, Ryan Hay. Lastly, I would like to thank my father, George Wilson, for inspiring my original interest in cinema from a very young age, and for filling my head with esoteric, potentially useless knowledge about old films and music that, nevertheless, I will always treasure immensely. —Flannery Wilson I would like to thank my professors Michelle Bloom and Sabine Doran for their time and help editing my chapter as well as for their encouragement, support, and willingness to help me work through complex concepts throughout my graduate school studies. I would also like to thank Flannery, for giving me the opportunity to contribute to this volume as well as co-edit it. It has been a great collaboration. I am greatly indebted to my husband, my mother, and my sister for their unending encouragement and support. —Jane Ramey Correia

INTRODUCTION FLANNERY WILSON AND JANE RAMEY CORREIA

Shih Shu-mei’s book Visuality and Identity: Sinophone Articulations Across the Pacific is a monumental achievement. Throughout the course of the book, Shih succeeds not only in defining the term “Sinophone”— she creates an entirely new concept that she deems the “Sinophone”. Of course, she does not (nor could she be expected to) resist providing a careful definition of the term, as a means of introducing her readers to the notion of the Sinophone so that we will be able follow her later arguments. She broadly defines the Sinophone, therefore, as: “a network of places of cultural production outside China and on the margins of China and Chineseness, where a historical process of heterogenizing and localizing of continental Chinese culture has been taking place for several centuries” (2007, 4). For Shih, the term denotes heteroglossia; Sinitic languages are by their very nature heterogeneous and resist easy classification. One might also compare the Sinophone to other similar concepts such as the Francophone, the Anglophone, or the Hispanophone in that it denotes a certain precarious and potentially problematic connection to the “mothercountry,” yet at the same time, the term is inextricably linked to the “mother-country” by its very nature. The most interesting aspect of Shih’s conception of Sinophone studies is that she is clearly opposed to (what she views as) the essentializing and constrictive practice of linking these studies to “Chinese culture”. Because Sinophone visual practices (films, artwork, etc.) must be situated both locally and globally, Shih argues that the distribution and reception of these visual art forms are carried out in a global capitalist context. This global capitalist context consists, in turn, of a multitude of different identity-types, which Shih lists.1 She sketches out these various types of identities so that the ones that she deems useful to her study of Sinophone visual practices can be analyzed. Again, what Shih does not find useful to her study, are any analyses of these visual practices that would seek to definitively link Chinese culture to the Chinese diaspora. To label

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Introduction

someone as “Chinese,” argues Shih, means to define that person based on how closely he or she fits into the mould of Han identity, which would be utterly restrictive. Shih does not, however, argue for some sort of unrealistically relativistic definition of the Sinophone. The Sinophone, she says, should be thought of residually; this notion should be centered on certain immigrant communities throughout the world, as well as on other locations outside Mainland China such as Taiwan, Singapore, and Britishruled Hong Kong. Because the field of Sinophone studies transforms according to immigrant living conditions, and is associated with certain places, Shih calls for a spatially and temporally specific modus operandi. As a “collective” of responsible scholars in the midst of a developing field, she asks that we utilize Sinophone studies as a means to shatter the myth of Chineseness as a symbolic totality. And yet we remain slightly resistant to and uncomfortable with the term “Sinophone” as coined by Shu-mei Shih. If we take the Sinophone to be defined as: “a network of places of cultural production outside China and on the margins of China and Chineseness…” (2007, 4, my emphasis), then Shih is correct in her assertion that the Sinophone is always an inexact copy of “Chineseness” as defined and predetermined by those on the Chinese Mainland (i.e. of Han decent, Mandarin-speaking, etc.). Yet by willfully excluding Mainland China in her definition of the Sinophone2, Shih reaffirms the dichotomy of dominance/minority resistance from which she seeks to break free. By painting China as the dominant empire that must be destabilized by the outlying Chinese diaspora, she manages not only to separate outlying communities further from the mainland, but also, paradoxically, to reinforce their connection to it. If we are to assume that the world is now “borderless” (2007, 6), why create a needless border between China proper and the marginalized diasporic communities? The idea for this book came about when we (the co-editors) realized that we needed a new way to discuss Sinophone cinema. We would be willing to use the term “Sinophone,” but only if it were to include cinema from the mainland. While we agree with the majority of Shih’s central arguments, (i.e. the idea that diaspora is temporally-marked, that linguistic communities are open and constantly changing), we wanted to create a book with a more inclusive focus. As a result, we have chosen to perform close analyses of a few carefully selected films. The boundaries of our discussion do not encompass all types of visual art—paintings, photographs, or television programs—only films. We cannot be accused of centering our focus too narrowly, since it would suffice to read the titles of our four chapters alone to see that this is far from the case. Our book was created

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with a goal in mind: to be less dominated by political discourse, and more heavily dominated by in-depth analyses of narrative and character development. While Shih constructs a solid thesis about the displacement of the Chinese diaspora and how this relates to and enriches Sinophone visuality, the essays that make up this book seek to advance Shih’s definition of the Sinophone. This collection of essays, written on various examples of transnational cinema, demonstrate that Mainland Chinese cinema must be included in any definition of the Sinophone, and that in-depth cinematic analysis is key to understanding filmic representations of diasporic and displaced communities.

“The Sinophone” Through Character Development Using Shih’s notion of the Sinophone, therefore, we devote the next few pages to a careful analysis of the displacement of character within the narrative of three select films: Wong Kar-wai’s Chungking Express (1994), Hou Hsiao-hsien’s Le voyage du ballon rouge (2007), and Nobohiro Suwa’s H Story (2001). In each of these films, the notion of the Sinophone functions through the development of character. The protagonists themselves are metonyms for Shih’s concept of Chinese diaspora, but in contrasting ways. In Chungking, Cop 663 and Faye are displaced within their own surroundings—namely pre-handover Hong Kong—yet they remain in their “native” environment. In Voyage, Song is displaced from her hometown of Beijing, and thrown into the midst of French culture. H Story is the exact inverse: a French actress is plucked from France and placed in the new and estranging environment of Hiroshima.3 In her introduction, Shih argues that one of the Sinophone’s favorite modes is intertextuality, and that this sort of intertextuality is meant to construct new identities and cultures. Thus by Shih’s definition, Wong Kar-wai’s Chungking Express is an eloquent ode to both intertextuality and heteroglossia. The film consists of at least three audibly distinct languages: Cantonese, Mandarin, and English (although there are a number of others, including Hindi and Japanese). The film was shot in two very distinct areas of Hong Kong: inside and around the Chungking Mansions, and in another well-known area called Central. The Chungking Mansions location was hand-picked by Wong because it is filled with a diverse crowd of people from around the globe on a day to day basis; this is one of its most distinguishing factors. The Mansions are located on the island of Kowloon, which itself is filled with cheap residential accommodations, all types of ethnic restaurants, and exotic shops. The

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Introduction

film’s soundtrack is also incredibly diverse and scales an enormous range of time-periods: Indian music, synthesizers, “California Dreamin” by the Mama’s and the Papa’s, “What a Difference a Day Makes,” by Dinah Washington, and Faye Wong’s own Cantonese cover version of “Dreams” by the Cranberries. The narrative is divided into two stories: the first story centers on the Taiwanese-born cop He Qiwu, who is struggling to get over the fact that his girlfriend, May, recently broke up with him. He Qiwu is lonely, alienated, and essentially trapped by time (he is obsessed with expiration dates, and decides to wait until May first to “formally” get over his girlfriend). The second story, however, makes up the bulk of the film. This section of the narrative centers on the relationship, or lack thereof, between a snack bar server named Faye (Faye Wong) and another cop (#663) who remains unnamed, played by Tony Leung. Like He Qiwu, Faye and Cop 663 are trapped in their own respective temporal and spatial realities, which occasionally overlap. In one noteworthy scene, Faye and Leung stand alone in the snack bar; Faye rests her hand on her face behind the counter and remains still while Leung stands a few feet away sipping his coffee. As if to symbolize their alienation within their environment, Leung and Faye remain trapped in slow motion as the anonymous figures of Hong Kong pass through the frame in a blur. Faye is in love with Leung’ character, but is too shy to tell him. Instead, she dances in his apartment while he is out. One of central visual themes of the second half of the film are airplanes; real airplanes, model airplanes, paper airplanes, and stewardesses (Cop 663’s first girlfriend is a stewardess). Faye longs to leave her isolating job as server, fly away to California and become a stewardess herself, which she does at the end of the film. She escapes. Leung’s character, however, remains trapped in Hong Kong. He waits for hours and hours for Faye to meet him at a restaurant, but she is already gone. This scene is similarly marked by the slow motion/fast motion technique that Wong uses throughout the film: Leung’s character remains fixed while the rest of the world whizzes by. Shih talks at length about the idea of Hong Kong culture as a culture of “dis-appearance,” a culture that was viewed nostalgically around the time of the 1997 turnover by the British. Noting that many Hong Kong cultural theorists at the end of the 20th Century wondered what would come next after this final parting glance of nostalgia, she comments: “Fetishism of the present, whereby the most mundane of everyday practices becomes immediately imbued with historical and symbolic meaning, would have to be replaced with a different temporal logic as the present will no longer by a site of nostalgia” (Shih 2007, 141). This observation perfectly describes

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much of Chungking’s general aesthetics and themes—fetishism of the present moment, and apprehensive worry about the future. These characters are looking for a means of escape, and the plane symbolizes the possibility of departure. As Shih maintains, the political situation of Hong Kong immediately prior to 1997 (this film was made in 1994) is clearly entangled with the artistic concerns of filmmakers, Wong Kar-wai in particular. Although Wong does not specifically address the British turnover in this film, his characters are, arguably, metonymic representations of larger socio-political issues. There are two socio-political points that Shih makes in her introduction that can be related to character development and narrative themes in Hou Hsiao-hsien’s Le voyage du ballon rouge. The first point concerns (self) Orientalism and the second concerns the problem of translation. Beginning with the first point, Shih mentions the phenomenon of Sinophone filmmakers being criticized for attempting to cater to Western tastes in order to garner a bigger box office success (directors like Zhang Yimou for instance). Such directors have been specifically criticized for creating films that condemn the Chinese government while simultaneously exoticizing Chinese cultural symbols. It is interesting to connect the problematic of (self) Orientalism to Voyage, since one might reasonably wonder whether or not Hou (either consciously or subconsciously) engages in it. The film consists of two main women protagonists: Suzanne, the eccentric French woman who performs in puppet-shows, and Song, a Taiwanese film student, hired by Suzanne to baby-sit her son Simon. As Suzanne and Song are driving together in the car together, presumably after meeting for the first time, we initially do not see either of the two characters, only the road in front of them. The entire sequence is shot from their perspective. We hear the voice of Suzanne, who says: “Vous ne semblez pas timide” (you don’t seem timid). Song meekly answers: “Oui je suis timide,” (yes, I am timid) and Suzanne replies “Vous devez être à l’aise” (you should feel at ease). Clearly Suzanne is trying her best to make Song feel comfortable, yet her blatant comments about her new baby-sitter’s personality still have a note of judgment in them, and are perhaps presumptuous-sounding to someone who is not used to being personally critiqued. This initial conversation characterizes the rest of the interactions that occur throughout the film between Song and Suzanne; and, in fact, the two of them never seem to truly “connect” on a deeper level. Hou is making a harsh comment about cultural differences—because Song and Suzanne come from two very different cultures, they are never truly capable of connecting on a human level. At the same time, Hou does

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Introduction

not appear to intentionally orientalize Song; and even if he does, he certainly does not paint Suzanne under a more flattering light. Although she is passive and timid, Song is also intelligent, talented, and interesting. By the same token, although Suzanne is overbearing, crass, and often angry, she is also depicted as warm-hearted. Overall, however, it is Song’s perspective that Hou privileges. Shih also makes an important point about translation, which relates to Hou’s film nicely. She argues that the Sinophone is an imperfect copy of “Chinese culture,” and that it is therefore a form of translation. She remarks: “translation is not an act of one-to-one equivalence, but an event that happens among multiple agents, among multiple local and hegemonic cultures, registering an uncertainty and a complexity that require historically specific decodings” (2007, 5). In Voyage, the “translation scene” (which is actually two scenes pasted together) functions as a cinematic representation of how Shih uses “the Sinophone” in this remark. The sequence starts with the camera focused on a puppet, a Chinese man dressed in traditional garb. We hear the sound of Mandarin being spoken theatrically in the background; only later does the camera pan around to show us the puppeteers’ face. After the puppeteer has recited his poem, the camera pans over to Suzanne, who proceeds to translate and explain the cultural context of the Chinese poem to the French audience (and also to the nonMandarin speaking film spectator, since there are no subtitles). The sequence then fades into the inverse mode of translation: the puppeteer and Suzanne are sitting on a train; Song has now joined them, and is functioning as the new translator. Suzanne gives the puppeteer a postcard, one that supposedly represents something “profoundly Chinese” for Suzanne, even though she purchased it in a British museum. Song translates Suzanne’s rather inane comments for the puppeteer, who responds politely with “merci beaucoup.” As Song continues to translate and carry on a conversation in Mandarin with the puppeteer, Suzanne smiles pleasantly but blankly and gazes out the window. Now Suzanne, not Song, is the “displaced” character, so to speak. However, this is the only scene in the entire film in which Song is placed in the position of mastery over Suzanne. Hou’s film functions, therefore, as a negotiation between French and Chinese, as an imperfect correspondence between cultures that cannot be reduced to a single notion of either the Sinophone or the Francophone. In this sense, Voyage fits nicely into Shih’s paradigm of non-Chinesecentrism. Suwa’s H Story contains an inverted form of the character displacement that is apparent in Voyage. In Suwa’s film, the French woman is no longer the so-called master of her surroundings. On the contrary, the French

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actress is utterly and woefully lost within the context of her surroundings, both literally and figuratively. In the opening scene of the film, the actress (who remains unnamed) must recreate the hotel bedroom scene from Resnais’ Hiroshima mon amour, but she does not understand any of the directions that Suwa gives her. She must therefore have a translator on set with her at every moment to translate from Japanese into French. Also unlike Song, this actress has almost no desire to integrate herself into Japanese society. She is the only French person on set, yet everyone speaks French to her and she to them. When her Japanese co-star asks her if she has seen anything in Hiroshima so far, she answers that she does not like to go out while she is working, and for that reason has only been to the museum. The actress is disturbed not only by the historical events that took place in Hiroshima some sixty years ago; she is disturbed by Duras’ “pretty-sounding” lines. She thinks that the language of the script essentializes and therefore fails to communicate the gravity of the horrific events. “To me, it’s not the way it should be said,” she explains. This is one of the main reasons that the actress feels she cannot sufficiently play her role, and as a result, the director eventually shuts down the shoot. Suwa’s film is multi-layered and self-reflexive. It evades predetermined categories by refusing to fit into a perfectly translatable mould. In this sense, the film manages to fit (although much more loosely) into a discussion of Shih’s notion of the Sinophone. The French actress is culturally displaced on many different levels: within the overall film, within the film within a film, and within her broader cultural environment, both as an actress playing an actress and as the actress in the film within a film. Suwa seems to have Shih’s notion of the global capitalist context in the back recesses of his mind. His film caters to both a French audience/identity and to a Japanese audience/identity, and to anyone who has ever seen Hiroshima mon amour. Although the French actress is displaced within her cultural environment, she is able to find companionship by befriending the Japanese scriptwriter. But the final scene of the film ends in ruins, and we are led to wonder whether the state of their relationship is doomed to fail. The hand that blocks the lens, however, reminds us that this is only a film we are watching. Thus, not only are the characters themselves displaced; so is the film apparatus itself.

Intermingled Fascinations in Transnational Cinemas Using a comparative approach, this collection of essays seeks to build upon and advance the study of Sinophone, Franco-Japanese, Sinofrench, and Sino-Italian transnational cinemas. Though each of the four chapters

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in the volume is written by a separate woman author, all of the essays are connected thematically. Each author has chosen to discuss one or two contemporary transnational films that, for her, exemplify displacement. As a larger unit, this anthology seeks to demonstrate: 1) that in-depth cinematic analysis is key to understanding filmic representations of diasporic and displaced communities in modern Mainland China and Japan, and 2) that because new genres of Sinophone cinema are constantly emerging, the study of transnationalism needs constant re-envisioning and re-inventing. Chapter 1, by Flannery Wilson, is entitled: “Opening the Door to SinoItalian Cinema Studies: Gianfranco Giagni’s Un cinese a Roma and the Representation of Chinese Migrants in Contemporary Italian Cinema.” This essay seeks to answer the question: in what form does Sino-Italian cinema (cinematic exchange between Italy and China) currently exist? What will this type of “hybrid” cinema look like in the future? The chapter focuses primarily on Un cinese a Roma (2004) by Gianfranco Giagni, a film that documents the day-to-day life of a first-generation ChineseItalian forced to live on the peripheries of Rome. Wilson concludes that this film demonstrates the problematic nature of Sino-Italian cinema: though the protagonist of the film, Li Xiangyang, is provided with “cinematic space” in which he is free to express his feelings of alienation, ultimately Giagni’s directorial hand remains apparent throughout. Through her close analysis of this film and others, Wilson argues that the possibility for Sino-Italian cinema in the near future will be more likely when nonnative Italian filmmakers living in Italy are encouraged and funded. Chapter 2, by Fontaine Lien, is entitled: “Contemporary Migration and Unstable Translations: Dai Sijie and Amélie Nothomb.” In this chapter, Lien argues that Dai Sijie's Balzac et la Petite Tailleuse chinoise and Amélie Nothomb's Stupeur et tremblements are both semi-autobiographical experiences of 20th century interhemispherical migrants, written in the mode of “double-exile.”4 The former is written by a Chinese man living in France recalling his time spent under compulsory re-education in China, dispatched into the countryside and away from his childhood home; the latter is written by a Belgian woman in Francophone Europe recalling her unsuccessful attempt to become reintegrated into her country of birth, Japan, as an adult. The original texts themselves provide multiple examples of translation—as performance, affectation, and role-inhabitance—as a means of (re-) education, persuasion, and ingratiation. Contrary to the translators’ intentions, however, Lien argues that the actual effects are mitigated and destabilized after they are received by the intended audience. When these works are, in turn, translated into other

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languages and into cinematic form, additional layers of cross-cultural and cross-lingual trajectories and refractions are created. In particular, Lien notes that Dai Sijie’s ternary role comprising writer, director, and ultimately, “translator” warrants attentive examination. Ultimately, Lien’s essay is a nuanced consideration of these translations, and translations of translations, alongside translator-audience relationships both within and beyond the texts. Chapter 3, by Regina Yung Lee, is entitled “No Place Like Home: Minor Transnationalisms in Jia Zhangke’s The World.” Lee’s chapter takes Shu-mei Shih’s idea of Sinophone film and investigates the theory through the lens of a Mainland Chinese filmmaker, Jia Zhangke. Lee also specifically confronts Shih’s rather controversial claim that “the Sinophone” is only applicable to “minor transnational” locales. As a director, argues Lee, Jia is intimately concerned with language and its positioning within China, as well as the ways in which China is becoming alien to itself. The chapter deals specifically with Jia’s film The World (2004). As Lee observes, The World deals with issues of language and linguistic capability and distancing. She argues that, as a film, The World uses the ability of affect and music to move freely across a boundary not strictly policed by linguistic capability. This relationship between affect, music, and linguistic border crossings is concretized between two of the protagonists, Zhao Tao (a Chinese woman) and Anna (a Russian woman). Chapter 4, by Jane Ramey Correia, is entitled: “Broken Lives, Fractured Cinema: The Cinematic Representation of Homelessness in French and Japanese Films.” In this chapter, Correia examines homelessness as depicted in transnational cinema. She argues that homelessness, one significant instance of urban failure, is driven by an existence in liminal space, outside of defined architectural structures, and yet still governed by social norms. She notes that urban failure begins at forgotten, purposefully over-looked places in the city: in subway stairwells, beneath freeway overpasses, at the periphery of clearly defined neighborhoods. Correia furthermore observes that as the worldwide homeless population increases, especially in the wake of the recent global economic crisis, as well as from revitalization and gentrification movements of cities, the long observed tendency for the public to blame the individual failings of the victim continues. Correia lists Akira Kurosawa and Abdellatif Kechiche as examples of transnational filmmakers who confront this taboo topic in their texts by bringing the problem of urban failure to the public’s consciousness. In particular, she looks at Eric Rohmer’s 1959 film Le Signe du Lion, which

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depicts the protagonist’s agonizing downward fall into poverty, isolation, and homelessness. In the style of Naficy’s “exile cinema,” she argues that Rohmer’s film directs attention to issues of alienation and loss. Correia further argues that, rather than mental illness, addiction, poverty, or ill-fated fortunes, the central problem of homelessness rests with an individual’s alienation from his or her community or in-group. The failure of the community to support or to even recognize the individual allows the victimized homeless population to grow exponentially and forces society to become increasingly fragmented and disjointed. Yet the impoverished, the disadvantaged, and the displaced remain a central part of the world, even when living in the liminal peripheries and crevices of modern cities. Homelessness, urban living, and marginal spaces are not particular to any one city. Correia innovatively moves beyond East-West dualism and area studies to explore global concepts of space, the effects of rapid urbanization (in the past and in the present day) and the problem of homelessness. This anthology celebrates a diverse set of authors who perform close readings of film narratives and characters yet who do not shy away from sociopolitical analyses or post-colonial theory. The project stems from our shared belief that the future of film studies, particularly transnational film studies, rests in the hands of Comparative Literature scholars. Without the ability to interpret translations or subtitles, film scholars would be constricted by their own linguistic boundaries. Rather than argue that it is possible for a film scholar to perform a detailed analysis of a film that is in a “foreign” language, we argue that for the Comparative Literature scholar, doing so is a necessary rite of passage. Each of the four authors comes from a slightly different cultural background, which provides for interesting differences in perspective. Fontaine Lien, for example, divides her time between Los Angeles and Taipei, and speaks both Mandarin and French. Regina Yung Lee is Taiwanese Canadian, and also speaks French and Mandarin. We both speak French, though Flannery also speaks Italian and some Mandarin, and Jane speaks some Japanese. We have specifically chosen to exhibit the work of our colleagues (Lien and Lee) because we know their work on East Asian cinema to be innovative and exciting. This volume seeks to supplement existing academic texts5 such as Olivia Khoo and Sean Metzger’s Futures of Chinese Cinema: Technologies and Temporalities in Chinese Screen Cultures (2009), Zhen Zhang’s The Urban Generation: Chinese Cinema and Society at the Turn of the TwentyFirst Century (2007), and Hamid Naficy’s An Accented Cinema: Exilic and Diasporic Filmmaking (2001). Khoo and Metzger’s volume contains

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an astonishing variety of approaches to film studies. In other words, while the introduction is heavily laden with post-structuralist terminology, later chapters such as the one by Chris Berry tend to downplay the importance of such approaches. Zhang’s book, meanwhile, is entirely focused on China and Chinese cinemas, but does not include investigations of East/West cross-cultural phenomena in cinema. Naficy’s book, finally, is (by no fault of its own) now a decade old, and although the volume addresses themes of displacement and exile in cinema, it does not relate them to East Asian cinema exclusively. As co-editors of the current volume, we believe that—like the aforementioned texts—this collection of selected essays will appeal to film scholars who are interested in issues of migration, translation, cross-cultural fusion, as well as East Asian cinema more generally. We also believe that it will appeal to university students and graduate students in the U.S., East Asia, and internationally, and to scholars of Media, Comparative Literature, Film, and Area Studies.

Works Cited Chungking Express. 1994. Dir. Wong Kar-wai. DVD. Criterion, 2008. H-Story. 2001. Dir. Nobuhiro Suwa. Unavailable in the USA. Hiroshima mon amour. 1959. Dir. Alain Resnais. DVD. Criterion, 2003. Le voyage du ballon rouge. 2007. Dir. Hou Hsiao-hsien. DVD. Ifc, 2008. Metzger, Sean and Khoo, Olivia. 2009. Futures of Chinese Cinema: Technologies and Temporalities in Chinese Screen Cultures. Leeds: Intellect. Naficy, Hamid. 2001. An Accented Cinema: Exilic and Diasporic Filmmaking. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Shih, Shu-mei. 2007. Visuality and Identity: Sinophone Articulations Across the Pacific. Berkeley: University of California Press. Zhang, Zhen. 2007. The Urban Generation: Chinese Cinema and Society at the Turn of the Twenty-First Century. Durham: Duke University Press.

Notes 1

She lists six main kinds of global capitalist identities in fact: fundamentalist, commercialized, legitimizing, epistemic, resistant, and transformative identities. 2 It is not even entirely clear by its very definition that the “Francophone” does not include France, as Shih suggests. “The Anglophone,” for instance, seems to obviously include the U.S. and England.

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Introduction

Clearly, our discussion will go beyond even the notion of the Sinophone, since obviously Japanese, not Mandarin, is the central language of H Story. Our hope, however, is not to perfectly parallel Shih’s notion of the Sinophone, but to show how character displacement functions to emphasize estrangement in a temporally and spatially specific setting. 4 Both of these works are novels and films. 5 This is an abbreviated list.

CHAPTER ONE OPENING THE DOOR TO SINO-ITALIAN CINEMA STUDIES: GIANFRANCO GIAGNI’S UN CINESE A ROMA AND THE REPRESENTATION OF CHINESE MIGRANTS IN CONTEMPORARY ITALIAN CINEMA FLANNERY WILSON

The Sino-Italian On August 6th of 2008, Italy’s Ministry of Cultural Activities (Il Ministero per i Beni e le Attività Culturali) passed a law that creates a tax incentive for companies to reinvest their profits in Italian film production and distribution.1 The law was passed for apparently benevolent reasons, one of the more important being, to attempt to overcome the direct intervention of the Italian government in the filmmaking process, which had previously held the power to decide which projects would receive funding or not. The true benefits of this law remain to be seen, since it is unclear how much actual control of media content the Italian State has relinquished.2 Even if this new law can be interpreted under the most flattering light, the list of stipulations regarding “what constitutes a fundable Italian film” remains large and exclusionary. In order to receive a tax credit from the Ministry, the film must be directed by a “native” Italian, have at least one Italian author, and contain mostly Italian actors speaking the Italian language. While perhaps there is nothing inherently unseemly about such stipulations, I would argue that insofar as the definition of an “Italian film” becomes increasingly laden with selfimposed limitations, the possibility for non-native Italian filmmakers to receive funding to produce films in Italy remains low.3

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The concept “Sino-Italian” is inspired partially by Shu-mei Shih’s work on Sinophone cinema, and also by Michelle Bloom’s term “Sinofrench,” which she defines in terms of cross-cultural connections. My definition of Sino-Italian cinema also stems from the general notion of “hybridity”4 as it relates to contemporary transnational filmmaking. Michelle Bloom, in her article “Contemporary Franco-Chinese Cinema, Translation, Citation, and Imitation in Dai Sijie’s Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress and Tsai Ming-Liang’s What Time is it There?” has coined the term “Sinofrench” in order to describe the cultural fusions and conversations that continue to occur in prolific numbers between China and France. Similarly, Sino-Italian cinema describes films in which crosscultural connections between China and Italy are highlighted. Like the Sinofrench, therefore, my definition of Sino-Italian cinema is relatively broad, and can includes films that are either marginal or mainstream, made and directed either in “greater China” or in Italy, or both. There are several issues that I hope to raise, many of them problems that arise when one investigates Sino-Italian cinema by way of example. In the process of researching and studying examples of the Sino-Italian— cinema that I perceive functions in similar ways to the Sinofrench—I have come to wonder: what makes a film “hybrid” in the first place? Aren’t both the Sinofrench and the Sino-Italian too conceptually vague as they currently stand? Films that appear transnational upon first glance often carry nationalist agendas, and vice versa. It would seem that we need more—not less—precise ways to define transnational, hybrid, and diaspora cinemas. As this research continues, therefore, the concept of “the SinoItalian” will require further retooling and specification. Sino-Italian cinema is, in a very literal sense, a more “problematic” category than Sinofrench cinema. First of all, there are simply less examples of it. But if there truly is a dearth of artistic exchange, follow-up questions remain: does this lack of exchange stem from political issues, post-colonialist issues, or something else entirely? Is contemporary Italian cinema still centered on current national interests above all else, which, in turn, creates an imbalance in the exchange? My hope is that, by outlining and analyzing various examples of Sino-Italian cinema, these issues—and the reasons why they are difficult—will become clearer, even if the problems that I see as inherent to the concept of the “Sino-Italian” are not resolved. As we will see, even well intentioned attempts at cross-cultural understanding can fall short. But rather than point a finger at filmmakers who attempt (and often do not succeed) at bridging cultural gaps, I would urge us to seek out what is lacking in these attempts. Often the missing

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link, so to speak, can be read as a fundamental inability to shift perspectives. Walter Benjamin’s famous observations about translators also apply to filmmakers. Filmmakers are translators in the sense that they must place images syntactically in order to create a narrative. Benjamin notes: “A real translation is transparent, it does not cover the original, does not block its light, but allows the pure language, as though reinforced by its own medium, to shine upon the original all the more fully” (2000, 260).5 The willingness to surrender one’s own (original) mode of interpretation in an uncomfortable setting—or to resist interpretation entirely—is hardly a simple task. Throughout the course of this chapter, I will look first at an example of Sino-Italian cinema that was shot by an Italian director while traveling through China. I will then move to examples of Italian-made films, shot in Italy, and in which the notion of “Chineseness” arises as a thematic constant.6

Antonioni’s Chung Kuo and the Awkward Cinematic Gaze Two of the most prominent examples of Sino-Italian cinema are Bernardo Bertolucci’s The Last Emperor (1986) and Michelangelo Antonioni’s Chung Kuo (1972), which I will discuss at length in a moment. The story behind the making of The Last Emperor is well known because the film ended up winning an Oscar: Bertolucci was granted special access by the Chinese government to shoot his film in the Forbidden City in Beijing. He remains, in fact, the only Western director to have been given permission to film a historical movie in the Forbidden City since the early 1940s. It is difficult to say with absolute certainty why Bertolucci was granted access to the site, but it is likely that the Chinese government under Deng Xiaopeng approved of the Italian director’s communist leanings. Even though Bertolucci’s representation of the Qing Dynasty is hardly one- hundred percent accurate, The Last Emperor exemplifies bi-lateral cinematic exchange between Italy and China, especially in terms of production and distribution. Bertolucci once stated that he wanted to make a film about China: “Because it’s not Italy…the Italian present doesn’t need—or doesn’t want—to be represented onscreen at the moment, at least not by me” (Marcus 2002, 62). The same sentiment might just as well have been expressed by director Gianni Amelio, whose 2006 film La stella che non c’e’ (The Missing Star) was released in international film festivals to mixed reviews. The film stars Sergio Castellitto as Vincenzo Buonavolontà (the surname means “goodwill”), a factory technician who travels to China to find and repair a

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dangerous broken machine that was sold to China after it became obsolete in Italy. He travels the countryside (through Wuhan and up the Yangtze River) with his reluctant companion and translator Liu Hua (Ling Tai) who shows Vincenzo the harsh “realities” of modern life in rural China and—perhaps unsurprisingly—ends up falling in love with him. On the poster for the film, Vincenzo hugs Liu to his chest as if protecting or shielding her from an unkind world. One relatively positive review of the film notes: “Along the way, the usual trappings of such travelogue styled movies comes into play, such as the learning of culture, ideals, food, and basically, the understanding that the world is without strangers, if only one makes an effort to try and connect.”7 The reviewer notes that even though La stella’s storyline is clichéd, the underlying message is well-meaning. In fact, Amelio’s film was based on a 2002 novel by Ermanno Rea entitled La dismissione (The Dismissal) which is similar in all ways but one: the protagonist, Vincenzo Buonocore (“good heart”) never travels to China. Instead, the former technician, who has been laid off from his job at L’Ilva (a steel factory in Naples) meets and falls in love with an Italian woman named Marcella. Italian reviewer Renato Persòli comments that the novel is, in essence, a metaphor for the death of a certain phase of Italian modernity, a time in Italian history in which hard work and social solidarity were encouraged and prized. Rationalizing the nostalgic tone of the novel, Persòli adds: “Muiono con la fabbrica un pezzo di Napoli e l’intero Novecento” (when the factory dies, a piece of Naples—and the entire 19th century—dies with it) (2008). There is a hint, within all of this nostalgia, that Vincenzo longs for a by-gone period in Italy in which the bulk of the industrial labor was done by legal (i.e. native) Italians. Even if this was not Rea’s intent, the story’s nostalgia rings, however faintly, of an anti-immigration sentiment. Amelio’s film, on the other hand, takes Italy out of the past and into the present (Persòli 2008). The Vincenzo of Amelio’s film, though slightly reminiscent of Marco Polo, improves significantly on Rea’s Vincenzo. In many ways, the film signifies a step in the right direction; it was, in fact, the first Italian-Singapore co-production in recent cinematic history (2008). As a filmmaker, moreover, Amelio takes the opportunity to escape from the confines of Rea’s novel as he offers his viewership an “inside” look of the complexities of modern China—from the vast country’s unparalleled beauty to its abject poverty. Audiences do not even have to leave their seats. But herein lies the unfortunate aspect of Amelio’s film. This is the problem that, as we will see, also plagues Antonioni’s Chung Kuo. Certainly, there is something noble (or at least mildly endearing) about the

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act of “reaching out to strangers.” But the more fundamental issue that critics of Amelio’s film seem to ignore is: why is it presupposed that the state of the world is a world “full of strangers?” Furthermore, why should it be the duty of filmmakers to “reach out” to strangers while the viewer sits passively in his seat? The act of photographing an entire country that is presupposed as “Other” is an act that is ever-so-finely balanced between magnanimous intent on the one hand and vague imperialism on the other. Although such films often require viewers to reflect on their own position vis a vis the “strangers” on screen, when the film ends, viewers have been filled with a false sense of accomplishment and are sent on their merry way. Although Antonioni was originally invited by Zhou Enlai to film in China, when Chung Kuo was screened by Mao’s inner circle, the film was condemned and subsequently banned. When the Italian filmmaker heard the news, he was heartbroken (Hilton 1999). In retrospect, it seems that the entire debacle stems from a fundamental misunderstanding. While the Chinese government was under the impression that Antonioni’s film would represent China’s people, places, and customs in an uncritical and “straightforward” way, the film contained commentary and “odd” photographic angles. At one point, for example, Antonioni films the Nanjing Bridge from underneath. Mao’s wife, Jiang Qing, was so insulted by this shot that she denounced the director as anti-Chinese. In the shot that Antonioni uses, a washing line can be seen, which according to Qing, makes the bridge appear unstable, as if it is on the verge of collapse (1999).

Fig. 1-1: The Nanjing Bridge as shot by Antonioni’s camera.

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One contemporary Chinese critic explains the misunderstanding between the Italian director and Mao’s inner circle as follows: “Of course, the camera has a mystic aspect to it, the lens has its own will. Antonioni was aware that, with his camera eye, he captured very real and profound things—things that were not arranged naturally within the frame” (“My Life” 2007).8 The problem lies in differing opinions about photography as an art form, the purposes of it, and how one should go about achieving that purpose. Watching the film, it is evident that Antonioni was genuinely intrigued by the medicine, industry, food, religion, and everyday life in China during the Cultural Revolution. Unfortunately, those aspects of society that Antonioni chose to expose—especially the ways in which he chose to expose them—were taken, altogether, as a one big insult. Susan Sontag, commenting on the film, notes: “While for us photography is intimately connected with discontinuous ways of seeing …in China it is connected only with continuity” (2001, 170). Continuing her already-contentious claim, Sontag explains that, from a Chinese perspective, photography is not meant to capture incomplete or fractured images. Rather, a photograph should exist in order to “reproduce the real” (Sontag 2001, 174). In Mao’s eyes, Sontag concludes, Antonioni was viewed as a thief who stole people’s images and then used them for his own selfish purposes. Sontag simplifies the issue and occasionally approaches a patronizing tone, at one point noting: “The only use the Chinese are allowed to make of their history is didactic: their interest in history is narrow, moralistic, deforming, uncurious. Hence, photography in our sense has no place in their society” (2001, 174). Perhaps when we consider that Sontag wrote this essay in 1976, during Mao’s rule, such generalizations can be overlooked slightly. Nevertheless, she seems to conflate the ruling philosophy of the Chinese government with the mores and beliefs of individuals, suggesting that our notion of photography is opposite to theirs, and that “our” notion is far more sophisticated and subtle. While Sontag is certainly justified in her critique of Mao’s regime, she jumps to some misguided conclusions. Regardless of Sontag’s commentary, or Antonioni’s own desire for political correctness, Chung Kuo is a remarkably ambitious and interesting film. The first scene of the film is shot in Beijing, in Tiananmen Square. Although Antonioni’s camera reveals the large murals of Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin that preside over the square, Antonioni is far more interested in the everyday lives of the Beijing citizens. The director’s own voice-over sets the scene:

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Piazza Tienanmen. A Pechino. In un giorno di maggio. Abbiamo cominciato il nostro breve viaggio nella Cina d’oggi puntando qui le nostre macchine da prese…per i cinesi, questo grande spazio silenzioso è il centro del mondo. La Porta della Pace Celeste è il cuore di Pechino. E Pechino è il centro economico e rivoluzionario della Cina. È la Cina è il Chung Kuo. Il paese di centro. Il nocciolo antico della civiltà del mondo…sono loro, i cinesi, protagonisti di questi nostri appunti filmati. Non pretendiamo di spiegare la Cina. Vogliamo solo cominciare a osservare questo grande reperatorio di volte, di gesti, di abitudini.9

Antonioni clarifies that he is not interested in explaining an entire country through cinema; rather, he is interested in filming the bits and pieces that form something larger yet inexplicable. This is typical Antonioni. As one of the most avant-garde directors of his time, Antonioni was known for his interest in the bits and pieces rather than the “bigger picture” in his cinema. In the final scene of Antonioni’s L’Eclisse (1962), for example, Antonioni’s camera seems to “forget” about the protagonists entirely and focuses instead on empty intersections and forgotten meeting places. In his earlier film L’Avventura (1960), the central mystery of the narrative—the disappearance of Anna (Lea Massari)—is left unresolved intentionally. In the final scene of Zabriskie Point (1970), the icons of mid-century consumerist society—a television, a refrigerator, Wonder Bread, patio furniture—fly through the air in a graceful explosion. In the same vein, in this scene from Chung Kuo, Antonioni explains that he is interested in documenting the gestures, expressions, and faces that he and his film crew encounter while traveling through China. By filming the bits and pieces that make up the whole, the director is true to his cinematic style. In an attempt at modesty, he states that he does not seek to “explain” China—only to explore it. Clearly, he does not intend to offend anyone—not Mao’s government—and certainly not the subjects of his film. If anything, in fact, Chung Kuo portrays Mao’s communism far too apologetically and naively. The voice-over notes that despite strict food rationing, everyone seems to have enough:“Gli abitanti di Pechino sembrano poveri ma non miserabili. Senza lusso, senza fame. Quello che ci colpisce è la qualità della loro vita, così lontana della nostra” (The inhabitants of Beijing seem poor but not miserable. Without luxury, without hunger. What strikes us is the quality of their lives, so far from our own). The phrase: “così lontana della nostra” carries a slightly more ambiguous meaning in Italian than it might if translated directly into English. The word lontana literally means “far” but in this case it can also

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mean “different.” Antonioni is therefore expressing his feelings of foreignness in a country that is “far” in both a literal and a less tangible sense. Furthermore, though the possessive construction la nostra— “our”—appears unproblematic at first, the exact meaning becomes more difficult to pinpoint upon deeper reflection. It is unclear to whom exactly the “la nostra” refers. Presumably, Antonioni is referring to his fellow Italians, but he might also mean “Westerners” more broadly. Indeed, this starts to get tricky, because if we take him to mean “the lives of Italians,” how do non-Italians fit within the schema? Regardless of minor semantic issues, Antonioni missteps in far more serious—and seemingly opposite—directions. On the one hand, Antonioni’s film minimizes the ugliness of the Cultural Revolution, almost to a fault. This being said, considering the fact that the Chinese government only allowed him to film in certain areas, Antonioni cannot be blamed for this misrepresentation entirely. On the other hand, Chung Kuo, as a final product, was so insulting to Mao that the film was banned and Antonioni was charged as an anti-Chinese conspirator. How can such opposing problems possibly coincide? I can only explain it by saying that, in my estimation, although Chung Kuo does showcase Antonioni’s unique talent for capturing small bits of life with his camera, the film feels strained at times. This strained quality most likely stems from the fact that he and his crew were being constantly surveyed and were provided with such limited access. If Sontag is correct in her contention that Mao did not approve of the “oddity” of Antonioni’s photographic angles, then it is easy to see how such an unconventionally shot film might have worried the communist leader. Although Chung Kuo is more aesthetically interesting than Amelio’s La stella che non c’è, both films make similar blunders. As an audience member, there is no need for me to budge from my seat. If I am disinclined to travel outside of my comfort zone in the first place, I can simply tell myself that I have already seen what there is to see of China, at least for now. This is the problem with most travelogue-style films. Strangely, however, unlike other travelogue films, the many forms of Mandarin that can be heard throughout Antonioni’s film are left untranslated. There is a benevolent and a not so benevolent way of interpreting this lack of translation: in the benevolent interpretation, we might think that Antonioni does not translate the Mandarin because he wants to allow his protagonists an unmediated voice. Rather than endow their words with meaning, he allows them to stand alone—to speak for themselves. In a less benevolent interpretation, it might appear that Antonioni was too lazy to translate the Mandarin. Or perhaps he assumes

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that his audience will care only about his own reading of the experience— an experience that is likely to appear unreadable to a large portion of Italian audiences. However we interpret Antonioni’s artistic choices, there is a lesson to be learned from this cinematic experiment. The film exemplifies the delicate, easily ruptured balance that exists between art and life. One might have hoped that the story behind films such as Chung Kuo could have served as a cautionary tale for future Sino-Italian filmmakers. Unfortunately, this was not so.

Italian Cinema and the Problem of “The National” Gianfranco Giagni’s 2004 documentary Un cinese a Roma, like Chung Kuo, does not manage to move beyond superficial representation of Chinese populations. Yet it exemplifies an entirely different type of problem. Despite my belief that defining the parameters of Sino-Italian cinema remains an important task for cinema scholars, Giagni’s film demonstrates another difficult facet of this task. The film documents the struggles of Li Xiangyang, a friend of Giagni’s, and a Beijing-born actor and screenwriter living in Rome. Although Giagni attempts to reach across cultural barriers, his representation of Li and two other Chinese men living in Rome does not break free from cultural stereotypes. The film testifies to the real-life struggles of Chinese-Italians, but does not fundamentally reach beyond Giagni’s own Italian-centered subject position. Furthermore, the film seems purposefully aimed at educating and enlightening an Italian television audience with little previous knowledge of Chinese culture. Interestingly, Giagni’s film fits neatly into Sandra Ponzanesi’s concept of “outlandish cinema” as defined in her article, “Outlandish Cinema, Screening the Other in Italy.” Although she is predominantly interested in cinematic portrayals of Africans in Italian cinema, Ponzanesi defines “outlandish cinema” as: 1) cinema that deviates from the “mainstream” thematically and stylistically, 2) cinema targeted at a white Italian audience that is not well-equipped to develop tolerance on their own, and 3) cinema that creates a feeling of discomfort and forces self-evaluation in that same audience by exhibiting other intolerant Italians (Ponzanesi 2005, 270). In “outlandish cinema,” notes Ponzanesi, “The main characters are peripatetic souls, migrant, nomadic, and transgender subjects who appropriate the metaphor of traveling” (2005, 271). The problem with “outlandish cinema,” concludes Ponzanesi, is that it does not circulate widely in mainstream Italian culture (2005, 278). This same problem holds true for Sino-Italian cinema, which, because of its rarity, is actually in a

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much more dire state than Italian migrant cinema more generally. Furthermore, the recognition of migrant cinema represents only a small step in a much longer process. Unhinging the preconceived notions of immigrants living in Italy will be an arduous process, especially for filmmakers. In “real-life” terms, the Chinese population living in Italy faces a daunting and uncertain future in many ways. Because of Italy’s postcolonial relationship with Africa and Eastern Europe,10 the issue of crosscultural tolerance between these regions is highly publicized and frequently written about by Italian scholars. Italy’s cultural relationship with China, and East Asia more generally, is less concretely defined. The Italian citizenry’s relationship with the Chinese population living in large cities is currently at an impasse. Because locals fear the rise of money laundering and organized crime, Chinese merchants and garment manufacturers living in large cities such as Rome, Milan and Prato are the targets of hate crimes and police raids.11 Certainly, migrant cinema of all varieties must continue to be recognized and discussed by Italian film scholars, and African-Italian cinema is no exception. But the silence surrounding Italian representations of East Asian populations is palpable. Meanwhile, the Sino-Italian, a new genre of hybrid, transnational cinema, is still in the process of emerging. Many current film scholars, myself included, struggle to envision a future for Italian cinema and Italian cinema studies as it becomes increasingly unfashionable to limit oneself to canons or specific “national cinema(s).” Italian film scholar Millicent Marcus has commented: “…film has come to replace literature as the venue for the enactment of the Italian national self” (2007, 268).12 Italy’s national identity, in other words, is in a constant process of reconstruction and renewal. In her book Italian Film in the Shadow of Auschwitz, Marcus looks at films that expose the difficulties of constructing an Italian national identity in the wake of Mussolini’s regime and the Holocaust.13 She argues that the neo-realists and subsequent realists14 confronted unresolved social issues by using the movie screen as a “collective sounding board” for Italians to come to terms with their conflicted identities (15). Marcus’s description of Italian cinema as a “collective sounding board” rests on the broader assumption that film has the potential to reflect the collective consciousness of a nation. Furthermore, Marcus’ argument, namely that ruptures of silence in Italian film are manifestations of Freudian mourning (2007, 17), implies that films function like human subjects. I would rather not take either of these assumptions for granted.

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Instead of looking insularly, one might take a different approach and ask: how does Italian cinema fit into the broader “picture” of world cinema? How do marginalized, immigrant filmmakers or actors fit into the Italian national story? In an effort to answer these questions, some scholars have shifted their focus away from “canonical” movements (e.g. neorealism) to Italian migrant cinema. Graziella Parati, who writes on films made by African-Italians, observes that despite the efforts of a few lone scholars: “…it is still a difficult task to find a consistent body of theoretical work in the Italian context that would help interpret the relationship between migrant and native cultures” (2005, 105). Parati focuses on several examples of African-Italian films—Rachid Benhadj’s L’albero dei destini (1997), Saidu Moussa Ba’s Waalo fendo (1997), and Gianni Amelio’s Lamerica (1994)—noting that these particular films provide more nuanced representations of African protagonists. In films such as these, argues Parati, African-Italian identity is explored from an inside perspective, the space between countries and borders becomes visible, and characters are not objectified or exoticized. In Amelio’s Lamerica, for example, the final scene takes place on a boat on the waters between Albania an Italy. Unfortunately, concludes Parati, films that represent Italy from a transnational perspective are not circulated widely enough to have much of an impact on the average Italian household (2005, 141). The prevalence of anti-African sentiment in Italy is a recognized problem among Italian studies scholars. Chandra Harris, in her article: “Nero Su Bianco, The Africanist Presence in Twentieth-Century Italy and Its Cinematic Representations,” notes that Italian Southerners are derogatorily referred to as marrocchini (Moroccans) by their Northern compatriots (2001, 284). Pasquale Verdicchino, in “Bound by Distance, Rethinking Nationalism through the Italian Diaspora,” argues that Northern Italians continue to view the South as a colony (98). In fact, even today, one of the largest racist organizations in Italy is a political party, the Lega Nord. In addition to holding extreme anti-immigration views, the Lega Nord seeks separation from the South, which they view as nothing more than a “bridge to Africa” (O’Healy 2007, 39). Aine O’Healy, in her essay: “Border Traffic, Reimagining the Voyage to Italy” notes that Italy has a relatively weak sense of national identity: …thanks to late unification, different regional histories of domination by external powers, intractable economic disparities between north and south, and a tradition of strong provincial or regional loyalties over a sense of national belonging. (2007, 39)

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In other words, because of an overall lack of national loyalty among the population, Italian media output is carefully manipulated to create a false sense that a unified front exists. It might therefore make sense that Italian filmmakers have been slow to produce transnational films.15 Italian cinema has always been strongly linked to Italian national identity. In the early 1920s, Mussolini proclaimed the cinema to be the regimes’ “most powerful weapon” (Ben-Ghiat 2001, 71). During that same era, screenplay writer Corrado Pavolini urged the Italian film industry to develop their own “national cinematographic consciousness” in order to better compete with Germany and America (2001, 73). As Ruth Ben-Ghiat notes in her book Fascist Modernities, Italy 1922-1945, the early Italian film industry was under immense pressure to keep up with Hollywood so that the capital would continue to flow (2001, 73). In 1927, the Fascist regime passed a law requiring movie theaters to dedicate one-tenth of all programming to Italian productions. Less than ten years later in 1934, the Direzione Generale di Cinematografia was established to give Italian officials newfound veto power in the actual filmmaking process (2001, 90).16 The first incarnations of Italian realism (pre-neo-realism) featured non-professional actors and location shots of identifiable places so that the Italian audience would identify and feel a collective sense of “national resonance” (2001, 76). Though not an example of realism, Giovanni Pastone’s silent film Cabiria (1914), a film that glorifies colonialism and slavery in the North African Ottoman provinces, is still considered an early Italian cinema masterpiece.17 Derek Duncan, echoing Ben-Ghiat’s arguments, comments that despite the move toward transnationalism (in film studies as a broader category): “Cinema in Italy has been seen as the cultural form in which national identity is most securely located” (2008, 211). Through detailed analyses of the portrayal of Albanian migrants in contemporary Italian cinema,18 Duncan seeks to define how ethnic minorities are represented. He asks us to consider, do these particular films propagate a continuation of Fascistera racialized thinking, thinly disguised as an exploration into the “multicultural”? Or do these films sincerely attempt to invite the Italian viewership to accompany them on a fanciful exploration into the lives of other cultures? These are questions that Duncan is not able to answer fully in the context of this one article, but they are essential. Arriving at a similar but harsher conclusion than Duncan, I argue for the former, more malignant interpretation: despite exceptions to the rule, mainstream “multicultural cinema” in Italy still tends to propagate racialized thinking. While I view Antonioni’s Chung Kuo and Giagni’s Un cinese as examples of Sino-Italian cinema that are relatively sophisticated and well-meaning

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yet slightly askew, some Sino-Italian films are embarrassingly unsophisticated. In the section that follows, I delineate clear examples of films that can be labeled “Sino-Italian” by any broad definition of the term. Yet because these films are so “backward,” they manage only to question the duty of every self-proclaimed cross-cultural filmmaker.

Walking in reverse Quite remarkably, one of the more unfortunate examples of “multicultural” cinema to be released in Italy in recent years was co-written by Gianfranco Giagni and the subject of Un cinese a Roma himself, Li Xiangyang. The film, Questa notte è ancora nostra (This Night is Still Ours), was directed by Paolo Genovese and Luca Miniero and was released in 2008. In addition to this film, Li served as a co-writer for (and bit-part actor in) Silvio Soldini’s Agata e la tempesta (2004), which I discuss later in the chapter, and Ermanno Olmi’s Cantando dietro paraventi (Singing Behind Screens) (2003).19 There are, of course, questions that arise once we become aware of the overlapping connections and collaborations that exist between this close-knit group of writers, directors and actors in the Italian film industry. Is this a testament to the scarcity of Italian screenwriters who are willing or able to work on multi-cultural films? These instances of collaboration are certainly not indicative of anything deeper on their own. The problem arises when we begin to recognize the Orientalist nature of the Sino-Italian films that are being produced. The plot of Questa notte adheres to a standard romantic comedy formula: a twenty-something Roman heartthrob named Massimo (Nicolas Vaparidis) meets and falls in love with Jing (Valentina Izumi), a secondgeneration “Chinese” woman. Though Massimo works for a funeral parlor owned by his father, he is passionate about singing, and dreams of “making it big” with his rock band. When Massimo’s band manager suggests that he find a Chinese singer to join the band and perform a song called “Oriental Eyes” (“Occhi Orientali”) alongside him, he chooses Jing. Unfortunately, Jing’s “hyper-traditional” (ipertradizionalisti) parents have already promised Jing’s hand in marriage to the nephew of a businessman to whom they are indebted. After much turmoil, and some bad jokes about Italians attempting to use chopsticks, Jing and Massimo finally, unsurprisingly, come together despite the cultural barriers that stand in their way. Given that the film was co-produced by Buena Vista International, a subsidiary of Disney,20 it is hardly surprising that the plot is simplistic and

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the characters stereotypical. Yet, because there is a sinister undercurrent to the film’s message, the film cannot be simply brushed aside and labeled a mediocre but innocuous romantic comedy. The decision to cast a Japanese-Italian actress in the role of Jing does not necessarily imply racism on the part of the filmmakers, though it does speak to a disinterest in accuracy.21 Izumi’s mixed-race features match traditional conceptions of both European and Asian beauty. As a second-generation ChineseItalian woman, Jing has been thoroughly “Italianized”; she relates to, identifies herself as, and favors Italian culture. Jing finds her parents’ traditional customs to be annoying and constricting, and she writhes at the notion of being forced to marry someone she does not love. Because she views herself as a “modern Italian woman,” she finds her parents’ wariness of Massimo to be “racist,” and tells them so in one particularly cringe-worthy scene. While there is nothing inherently offensive about the clichéd storyline, the sinister thematic aspects lie in the representations of these characters within the film. Like many second-generation children, Jing has no desire to explore her “Chineseness,” and is in fact eager to shed all of her associations with her parents, and hence with China. Yet despite her fiery disposition, Jing is content in her role as an “exotic” object to be consumed by the Italian male gaze. Through her subjectivity, therefore, the film viewer is invited to share this sense that “China” and Chinese masculinity—as if these were monolithic units—represent reactionary values and old-style greed (the Chinese businessman drives a sports car and wears a fancy suit). “Italy” and Italian masculinity meanwhile, claims the role of modernity, progress, and freedom (as a “rocker,” Massimo’s style is laid back and shabby yet stylish). Lest we suppose that Jing is meant to be viewed by her Italian audience as an independent, modern woman who does not deserve objectification, we might then recall the main tagline from the film: “Il culo non canta ma conta” (the ass doesn’t sing, but it counts). Equally disturbing perhaps, are the Italian critics’22 reactions to the film. Although several critics comment on the cultural inaccuracies within the film, none of them take issue with the film’s portrayal of “Chineseness.” One critic states, “L’incontro/scontro di culture e affrontato superficialmente ma senza volgerità” (the meeting/struggle between cultures is confronted superficially but without vulgarity). Another critic23 remarks that even though the film’s plot is rather banal, “Non abbia l’ambizione di voler descrivere verosimilmente la comunità cinese nella Capitale” (it does not intend to describe realistically the Chinese community in [Rome] the Capital). Although it is certainly true that the

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filmmakers had no intent to portray real-life Chinese-Italian communities in Rome, this fact raises many further questions. What does this lack of desire to represent real-life Chinese populations living in Rome suggest about the writers and directors (Giagni in particular), and does this one instance of ignorance suggest something greater about contemporary Italian cinema? We cannot dismiss Questa notte as an innocuous example of commercial cinema, and moreover, I propose that these negative and potentially harmful cultural stereotypes constantly reappear within contemporary Italian cinema. In order for multicultural cinema to move toward the Sino-Italian and shed itself of Orientalist tendencies, these background cultural assumptions need to be pushed into the forefront and carefully analyzed.

Fig. 1-2: Massimo and Jing singing “Occhi Orientali”.

There is, in fact, a disturbing proliferation of Orientalist films to be found in the “landscape” of contemporary Italian cinema. Although released nearly a decade ago, Carlo Verdone’s C’era un cinese in coma (2000) remains a particularly offensive example of this unfortunate trend. Verdone stars as an agent representing comedians who falls into hard times after his best actor is injured in a car accident. In need of a quick replacement, Verdone’s character hires his driver to fill in for the actor at a comedy club. Despite its title, the film has little to do with the Chinese-

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Italian community; in fact, the title refers to an old racist joke (una barzalletta).24 In the final scene of the film, Verdone recounts the entire joke straight into the camera with all of the relevant “effects”: when impersonating the Chinese man, he shifts his voice to an exaggerated highpitched squeal, and pulls back his eyes with his fingers. Despite the fact that Verdone recounts the joke in the context of an otherwise bittersweet final scene, the stereotype of the effeminate, difficult-to-understand, obtuse Chinese man remains palpably intact.

Li Xiangyang: Chinese actor living in Italy In an effort to shift the national discourse away from racial and ethnic stereotypes, Gianfranco Giagni produced the documentary Un cinese a Roma in 2004. Li, a relatively successful actor and screenwriter, is attempting to find a new apartment because his landlady is planning to sell the building. Unfortunately, Li runs into a significant amount of trouble attempting to find any Italian landlords who are willing to lease to him, simply because he is a “foreigner.” The film highlights the lingering discrimination that continues to exist in modern-day Rome (and Italy in general), against Chinese immigrants. Even though Li is highly respected by other Chinese-Italians living around Rome, and by certain Chinese Mainland media outlets,25 he is barely recognized by or even offered basic civil liberties from his Roman compatriots. There is a stark contrast between how Li is viewed by the Chinese immigrant population and how he is viewed by the Italians; Giagni’s film therefore serves as a testament to this contrast in attitudes. Giagni clearly empathizes with Li, and the film’s audience is meant to emphasize with him as well. By shooting the film predominantly from Li’s perspective, Giagni invites his Italian audience to ponder the existence of the minority “Other” in their own everyday lives. This technique fits with Ponzanesi’s paradigm of “outlandish cinema;” by shifting perspectives, the audience is forced to rethink their own position in relation to Li’s. In this type of thought-provoking cinema, as Ponzanesi observes: “…there are extended amounts of alienation in [the subject’s] attempt to pass as normal” (2005, 271). These moments of alienation should make the audience uncomfortable, and, if nothing else, encourage non-complacency. Unfortunately, the film does not encourage real action against discrimination on the part of Italian citizens.26 Furthermore, because Giagni is an “Italian native” who has chosen to represent the lives of the Chinese population of Rome, the film cannot be labeled true “migrant cinema” according to Duncan’s definition.27 Although it is evident that

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this film project was originally set in motion because of Giagni’s fascination with Chinese-Italian culture, the synopsis that accompanies the film seems only to reinforce Duncan’s point: Tra le varie comunità quella dei cinesi che vivono in Italia ha fama di essere la più misteriosa…eppure guardando un po’altre la superficie scopriamo che italiani e cinesi si somigliano più di quanto si immagini…28

Clearly this synopsis or “tagline” is aimed at the Italian, not the Chinese, community. Even while Giagni purports to delve into the lives of the Chinese population in Rome so that racist stereotypes can be examined, the implication of the tagline tells a different story. The Chinese communities living in Italy are known for being “mysterious,” but only among those who are not a part of it. The tagline offers hope for those “outsiders” (i.e. the “native Italians”) to the Chinese community, who are, in reality, the “insiders,” since they live in the center of Rome and not on the extreme peripheries. The tagline promises that, with the help of this film, the Italian mainstream can now delve into the mysterious world of Chinese culture and learn, perhaps, that Chinese and Italians are not so different from one another after all. This sentiment assumes, of course, that mainstream Italian viewers will come to the film with these preconceived notions about Chinese culture. Again, this speaks to Ponzanesi’s concern that although “outlandish cinema” aims at egalitarianism and inclusiveness, it often does not aim high enough (2005, 278). Giagni, in an interview about the film, claims that he is one of the first filmmakers to document the Chinese community in Rome, because, “È una delle più misteriose, sconosciute, ed impermeabili communità straniere in Italia” (It is one of the most mysterious, unknown, and impermeable foreign communities in Italy). It is for this reason that Giagni felt motivated to document the Chinese-Italian community from an insider’s perspective. Moreover, according to the director, Li fits the profile of a Chinese “intellectual,” living his life in a “concrete, influential way” (un modo concreto…influente).29 It is unclear what Giagni means precisely by this statement. Presumably, Giagni determined that Li would be an interesting subject for a film about Chinese immigrants living in Rome because of Li’s intellectual and artistic leanings. As it turns out, Li is an immensely interesting subject, though my reasoning for stating this differs, perhaps, from Giagni’s. Li Xiangyang stands at the edge of a seemingly bottomless “rabbit hole” that leads down into the depths of racism and discrimination that continue to exist in Italian cinematic discourse.

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As it turns out, and as Giagni’s film explains, Li appeared as a bit player in several major Italian films over the course of the last decade. One of the most noteworthy of these films was Agata e la tempesta (2004), which was directed by the well-known and well-respected Italian director Silvio Soldini. Li’s “big scene” in Soldini’s film (Giagni shows a clip of it) lasts for about two minutes, and comes toward the end of the rather lengthy two-hour film. Li plays the role of a stereotypical “Chinese mystic” who is attempting to help Agata (Licia Maglietta) release her pent-up anxiety and prepare her to live “happily ever after” with her younger Italian boyfriend. Agata wants to know, in particular, why her presence seems to cause lights to flicker and computers to malfunction. Li’s character advises Agata that she is on the verge of transformation, and that her inner energy is looking for a means of escape: Tu donna speciale…il punto di grande cambio…come brucco a farfalla. Energìa cerca uscita…quando tanta energìa, tante uscite…importante lasciare sempre porta aperta…problemi computer, la mia risposta è, le guanti a gomma.30

Although this scene works from a comedic standpoint, and Li plays his small role admirably, his character’s monologue sounds like a pastiche of clichéd fortune cookie lines. Like most Western stereotypical renditions of native Chinese speakers attempting to speak English, Li’s character speaks only in fragments, he omits verbs, articles, and prepositions, and his accent would be considered strong to most Italians. The monologue becomes exponentially more disturbing when we realize that Li likely wrote these lines for himself. Not only has he been cast to fit the role of the Confucian philosopher or “healer,” but moreover, he helped create the role that he embodies. Stemming from the likes of Charlie Chan, Li’s character fits the archetype of the benevolent, emasculated Asian male.31 As an asexual pawn in Agata’s life, Agata uses Li to obtain what she truly wants, the love of an Italian man. In the 1970s, Edward Said stated that: “Orientalism derives from a particular closeness experienced between Britain and France and the Orient.” According to Said, this same Orientalism shifted from Britain and France to the United States after World War II (Said 2000, 4). I contend that twenty-first century examples of Sino-Italian cinema have established the need to re-examine Orientalism in Italy as we simultaneously continue to examine instances of Orientalism in Britain, France and the U.S. The problem lies not only in the stereotypical images and accompanying insensitive discourse, but perhaps more seriously, in the lack of attention given to these issues by both non-academic and academic critics of

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contemporary Italian film.32 More specifically, although there are a large number of academic articles written by Italian film scholars on Silvio Soldini’s films, these articles rarely mention Soldini’s portrayals of ethnic minorities. One particularly clear example of this trend toward “ethnic minority blindness” can be found in Bernadette Luciano’s article: “Rethinking Identity in the Cinema of Silvio Soldini.”33 Although Luciano does not discuss Agata, she does spend a great deal of time analyzing Soldini’s Pane e tulpani (2000), a quasi-prequel to Agata, starring Licia Maglietta as the idealized, almost fetishized “older” woman. As in Agata, Maglietta becomes the unrelenting object of our gaze in this film. Although Maglietta’s character, Rosalba, is cast as an independent, modern woman, Soldini’s obvious fascination with the actress tends to force her into a more-passive-than-active subject position. Maglietta’s presence in both Pane e tulipani and Agata ring true with director Tsai Ming-liang’s34 observation that, as a director: “It is difficult for me to move my camera away from [my favorite actor’s] face. Every director has a face that they like to look at.”35 Tsai also keenly observed that a director chooses a “favorite face” not solely for the purposes of audience consumption, but also for selfish reasons, particularly in the realm of art-house cinema. This directorial selfishness is unashamedly apparent in Agata, and similarly, I find Luciano’s article on the film to exhibit a one-sided mode of analysis. Luciano’s article begins on a reasonable enough note: “In Italy,” she states, “national and cultural identities have recently been deeply altered by new migration patterns and by the implications of closer economic and political union in Europe” (2002, 341). There is nothing particularly controversial about this claim because it is not very specific, though her definition of “migrants” is not clearly stated. Luciano continues by summarizing, as I have, the current skepticism surrounding the notion of national cinema, and the impossibility of locating the nation-state within predefined boundaries (2002, 341). Yet, Luciano’s argument begins to drift back into the traps that she attempts to avoid. Using Rosi Braidotti’s conceptual framework,36 she argues that identity can be defined by mobility: one is either a nomad, an exile or a migrant. Luciano argues that Maglietta’s character (Rosalba) falls into the nomad category (2002, 345). Rosalba, according to Luciano, is nomadic because she has the means to travel. She also has the freedom; Rosalba can choose where and when she wants to travel. On the other hand, Luciano argues that Fernando, the character that Rosalba meets and falls in love with in Venice, falls into the migrant category. Fernando is a migrant, she says, because he has been forced to leave his homeland

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(Iceland) for a crime of passion that he committed. In this sense, Fernando has no choice about where and when he travels. “Ironically,” comments Luciano: rather than an embodiment of other cultures, Fernando has appropriated the values of a disappearing Italian culture. Speaking in the literary language of Ariosto…he represents the bygone Italian glory of the Renaissance. (2002, 346)

Luciano’s categorizations, while perhaps fitting in the context of her argument, miss an essential point. Fernando, insofar as he is a “migrant,” embodies Italian culture more than he does Icelandic culture within the context of this film. By most standards, he resembles an archetypical European, Caucasian male, meaning that he could easily be mistaken for an “Italian” if the film did not tell us otherwise. If Fernando can be labeled a “migrant” then he was a safe choice for the role. Fernando’s function within the narrative is to help Rosalba understand and appreciate her own culture more deeply, not Icelandic culture, nor any other for that matter. It is a mistake not to take into account the fact that Soldini’s films were financed by Italy’s Ministero per i Beni e le Attività Culturali for a reason. The Ministry finances films that it feels will encourage tourism in Italy among Italian natives and foreigners alike. Agata e la tempesta, the film that Li appears in, is no exception to the rule. For these reasons, Luciano’s conclusion that: “Soldini carefully constructs characters and landscapes which allow us to explore the notion of contemporary identity” (2002, 350) rings falsely. Rather, Soldini constructs people, situations, and places that allow us to explore the notion of Italian identity. If Fernando is a “migrant” in Pane e tulipani, then who is Li’s character in Agata? Is he an exile, a migrant, or a nomad? Based on Luciano’s conception of migration, it appears that Li’s character does not fit into Braidotti’s paradigm at all. Li’s function as a character within Soldini’s film has been ignored, and the notion of “true” migration—i.e. migration that does not justify the existence of other Italians—has been noticeably overlooked.

Li Xiangyang: Chinese subject in an Italian film As the protagonist and focus of Giagni’s documentary, Li is finally given the opportunity to “play himself” and share his day-to-day routine with an Italian audience. No longer just a bit-part actor in a Soldini film, Li becomes a three-dimensional human being, forced by circumstance to live in the discriminatory society that is modern-day Rome. His first words

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to the camera, however, are obviously scripted: “Mi chiamo Li Xiangyang. Vengo da Pekino. La Cina. Vivo ora a Roma” (My name is Li Xiangyang. I come from Beijing, China. Now I live in Rome). This brief introduction is followed by a shot of a (presumably) Chinese man singing loudly and operatically in the Piazza Vittorio. The melody he is singing, Santa Lucia, is instantly recognizable to those familiar with traditional Italian melodies or opera singers. The song Santa Lucia was, in fact, one of the first Neopolitan songs to be transcribed from dialect (napuletano) into Italian in the mid nineteenth century.37 The lyrics of the first verse describe a beautiful, peaceful spot on the Neopolitan Bay in the town of Santa Lucia: Sul mare luccica, l’astro d’argento Placida è l’onda, prospero è il vento Venite all’agile barchetta mia, Santa Lucia, Santa Lucia.38

The song that the Chinese man sings in Piazza Vittorio, however, is sung in Mandarin, though the lyrics are more or less transcribed from the Italian.39 The peaceful calmness of the songs’ original lyrics seem lost in this particular Mandarin version; this man is singing Santa Lucia for handouts, attention, or both. Yet he has adopted the song for his own purposes, singing it proudly in his own language, in this sense announcing his refusal to conform to Italian tradition or expectation. He has reclaimed and reinterpreted Santa Lucia for the Chinese-Italians living in Rome, simultaneously reemphasizing its original function as a “song of the people.” In this initial scene, Giagni is clearly if unwittingly attempting to introduce his (mainly Italian) audience to the notion of Chinese-Italian cultural fusion in the most direct way possible. Li speaks directly to the camera in the style of a “confession room” in a reality show; he is the protagonist of this film; the events that unfold are mediated through Li’s perspective. But Giagni’s directorial hand is not entirely invisible. Because he chooses to break up the film into “chapters” or sections labeled with explanatory titles, he seems to assume that for most Italians, this film will serve as a learning, mind-expanding experience. By documenting Li’s experiences as an everyday citizen struggling to exist in an urban environment that views him as a perpetual outsider—hence placing Li in the center role as “Chinese-Italian subject”—Giagni attempts to cultivate Sino-Italian cinematic fusion. Despite his ambitious intentions, however, the director does not manage to shed the influences of his own Italian subjectivity when presenting Li Xiangyang to his audience. The problem

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lies, potentially, in the fact that Giagni himself does not fit into the category of “nomadic subject.” Braidotti’s concept of the “nomadic subject,” though it relies too heavily for my purposes on metaphoric notions of migration, aptly describes the dynamics at work within this documentary. In her introduction to Nomadic Subjects, she explains: Though the image of ‘nomadic subjects’ is inspired by the experience of peoples or cultures that are literally nomadic, the nomadism in question here refers to the kind of critical consciousness that resists settling into socially coded modes of thought and behavior….it is the subversion of set conventions that defines the nomadic state, not the literal act of traveling. (1994, 5)

Fundamentally, Giagni’s film functions as an exposition of the competing urges to remain nomadic while simultaneously realizing the necessity to conform to socially coded modes of thought and behavior. Although Li wants to be given the same rights as any other Italian citizen—the right to live where he wants, the right to be treated respectfully—he does not desire to be fully Italianized to such an extent that his Chinese identity would be lost. In one particular scene, for example, Li is conversing with an Italian female friend, who suggests to him that he “deserves something better” than to live with “strangers” in his apartment. Even though his friend is attempting to help Li lead a better life, Li himself does not see his situation in the same negative light. Li views his roommates as thoughtful people with livelihoods, unique identities, and a willingness to share food with him and pool resources; “non chiamarli stranieri” (don’t call them strangers) he begs her. Li’s refusal to view his Chinese roommates as strangers resonates with Braidotti’s notion of the critical consciousness refusing to conform to conventional modes of thinking. In this case, Li remains a “nomadic subject” by Braidotti’s definition by rejecting the Italian notion that co-habitation with “strangers” equates to living in a less than ideal environment. In another sense, by rejecting Italian conventions, Li is reinforcing his own cultural identity. Although his Italian friends view him as a sort of self-sacrificing martyr, Li views himself as an average man who follows the general laws of Daoism: “When there is no more light in the East, look to the West. When the North is black, look to the South.” Li explains that he almost never shows anger because, for him, amenability is an essential quality. While Italians might view his personality as “weak” or passive, Li views his non-combative attitude as a virtue.

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Like the street performer singing Santa Lucia, Li adapts himself to Italian culture while simultaneously maintaining his Chinese identity. The lyrics of Santa Lucia, though calming and serene, also express a desire to escape from land and literally sail away. Rather than debark his boat and join his friends on land, the sailor who presumably sings Santa Lucia invites his friends to join him on his boat. The sailor has no desire to be land bound because he finds a life fueled by the wind and the waves more appealing. In a similar sense, Li and the street performer share the same nomadic tendencies both with each other and with the sailor off the shores of Santa Lucia. As the director of this documentary, Giagni does well to highlight Li’s nomadism as it relates to his life philosophy. Unlike many native-born Italians, Li is not tethered to a fixed location, career, or person. Even though he is nearly fifty years old, he is not married, nor does he particularly want to be.

Fig. 1-3: Li Xiangyang practicing Tai Chi.

Despite Giagni’s obvious genuine interest in Li’s life, he provides us only with patchy information about the out-of-work actor’s real day-to-day existence. We are led to presume that Li floats between acting jobs and screenwriting gigs, even though we hardly ever see him working in this documentary. Whenever Giagni’s camera follows Li, he is shown browsing in Chinese-owned stores, chatting with friends, wandering the streets, or attempting to find an apartment. Yet it is difficult to believe that Li spends most of his time wandering the streets as a carefree flâneur once

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the documentary cameras have been shut off. Furthermore, there is something inauthentic and even disturbing about the manner in which Giagni presents his protagonist’s existence. Because the film is constantly broken up into titled “chapters”40 by scene changers (dancers dressed in traditional Chinese garb)—hence literally staged—the overall sense of reality is lost. In fact, most of the scenes in the film appear to be staged, if not at least planned in advance. It does not seem likely, for instance, that Li would just happen to encounter his friends wherever he wanders in Rome, nor that Giagni’s camera would just happen to catch all of the philosophical, thought-provoking conversations about life that Li and his friends engage in throughout the film. Moreover, unfortunately, Li’s other Chinese-Italians “friends” are not particularly likeable people. Lim, supposedly one of Li’s closest friends, comes off as arrogant, pretentious, and disparaging towards Li. Lim harasses Li for not being married, and asks him if he is therefore homosexual. Li, clearly not very amused with this line of questioning responds, “Mi prendi in giro!” (you’re making fun of me). Lim constantly attempts to distinguish and separate himself from Li, making statements to the camera such as: “We don’t think alike even though we are both Oriental,” “he can act like a retarded hippy moralist,” and “I’m managing my existence in a foreign country. So is Li. That is the only thing we have in common.” Sometimes the comments are made directly in front of Li. At one point, for example, Lim’s young Italian wife states matter-of-factly to the camera as Li sits in the room: “Lim just looks Oriental. He doesn’t act it,” as if “acting Oriental” were, first of all, an identifiable mode of behavior, and secondly, that this mode of behavior would be unappealing if her husband exhibited it. One gets the feeling from watching these people speak that they are the ones dealing with a significant amount of insecurity. Li’s other “featured friend” is an aspiring Chinese-Italian actor who, for lack of other work, hosts traditional Chinese wedding ceremonies in Rome. “It’s not so easy to become an actor,” Li advises his friend, “and you don’t speak [Italian] very well.” In other words, Li knows that if you cannot speak the language well enough—i.e. fit into the mold that the Italians lay out for foreigners to fit into—you cannot be successful. Li knows this because he functions as an example of the “happy medium” (he is the only Chinese-Italian in the film who has enough courage to stand up for himself, but more importantly, knows when to be quiet). An Italian audience watching this film will not feel threatened by Li because he appears harmless and essentially tells his Chinese-Italian friends to simmer down and stop calling attention to themselves. Although Li is certainly a

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likeable fellow, he is hardly intent on changing the status quo; he does not act to counter the treatment that he or any other “foreigner” receives as a consequence of his or her so-called Otherness. Giagni is all too keen to show Li explaining his pacifist philosophy as a means to account for his passive demeanor. For this reason, as well as those previously elaborated upon, this film more is more depressing than uplifting, despite Giagni’s best efforts to the contrary. I return once more to Said, who notes in his Introduction to Orientalism: In a quite constant way, Orientalism depends for its strategy on this flexible positional superiority, which puts the Westerner in a whole series of possible relationships with the Orient without ever losing him the relative upper hand. (2000, 7, his emphasis)

This notion of “positional superiority” is essential to my analysis and subsequent conclusions regarding Giagni’s documentary. It is clear that certain people in the film, such as Lim’s wife and even Lim himself, are prone to view Chinese-Italians from a Western hegemonic perspective. Giagni lingers on these “characters” for quite a while in an effort, perhaps, to record their snobbery for all to see. Yet, at the same time, Giagni never relinquishes his own positional superiority, (to use Said’s term), which allows him to remain in a different yet equally insidious hegemonic position. By placing himself in the position of the invisible “documenter of reality,” he implicitly promises his viewership an unbiased perspective on Li’s life. Unfortunately, because the majority of scenes within the film appear staged, Giagni never allows his “relative upper hand” to be taken away. Fundamentally, therefore, Un cinese a Roma cannot be classified as a truly bilateral Sino-Italian film, and in fact, remains thoroughly Italian in all the ways that matter most, this is a documentary by an Italian director, designed for an Italian viewership.

Conclusions Films about Italy that are directed by Chinese filmmakers are difficult to categorize as perfectly “Sino-Italian,” but not for the same reasons that the stereotypical Italian-made films are: in order to develop a unique cinematic style, they must seek independence from government funding. Sixth generation filmmakers41 like Wang Xiaoshuai (director of Beijing Bicycle, 2001) are justified in not wanting to appear as if they are copying from Italian Neo-realism. Moreover, even if contemporary Chinese filmmakers cite the influence of Italian cinema on their work, it is difficult

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to explain why such films should not simply be categorized as Sinophone cinema. These issues bring up fruitful points for further research. Throughout this chapter, I have focused on the contemporary Italian film industry in order to show the inherent difficulties involved in differentiating and defining Sino-Italian cinema when so many insensitive examples exist and continue to be produced. Although I believe that the notion of Sino-Italian cinema carries its own set of problems, I also feel that there is a need for a way to describe and analyze different types of transnational or “hybrid” cinema, because they are not all the same. On the one hand, the cross-cultural cinematic exchange that exists between China and Italy is similar in many ways to the exchange that exists between China and France. Because of this similarity, scholars of transnational cinema will certainly have a use for a term to describe this particular phenomenon. On the other hand, the same terminology that can be convenient for descriptive purposes often fails to account for the more superficial variety of “multicultural cinema,” which should, perhaps, be excluded entirely. For instance, although Giagni’s film does not work on a transnational level, it is nevertheless “Sino-Italian” in terms of its subject matter, production, actors, and film crew. Yet Giagni’s film is not exactly “transnational” in the sense that there is little to no reciprocation on the Chinese side—unlike Antonioni, Giagni did not have to get permission to travel to or shoot in China. Li Xiangyang and his friends are provided with “cinematic space” in which they are free to express their feelings of alienation, but ultimately Giagni’s directorial hand remains apparent throughout. My hope is that, despite the particular shortcomings of these films, the possibility for complex, visually sophisticated Sino-Italian cinema will remain real. But there are many obstacles in the way. The Bossi-Fini Law of 2002, which described immigration as a danger and a “necessary evil” (Blondel and Segatti 2003, 171), concretized the hostility and fear surrounding the issue. On the brighter side, Chinese filmmaker Wang Bing’s Le Fossé (The Ditch) (2010) recently garnered attention and acclaim at the Venice Film Festival. Yet some Italian film critics have dismissed the film, arguing that Bing’s powerful portrayal of Chinese political prisoners in the late 1950s would have been better as a documentary. This same critic wrote that the film festival was invaso (invaded) by film orientali (Asian films), and that there were as many Chinese people in Bing’s film as there are at La Grande Muraglia (The Great Wall).42 I am afraid that until Italian film critics refrain from describing Chinese filmmakers as “invaders,” misconceptions among the general population will remain prevalent. Most importantly, until the Italian laws and regulations regarding

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“fundable” filmmaking become more flexible, the unfortunate possibility remains that migrant, hybrid, and transnational cinemas could be relatively voiceless for some time to come.

Works Cited Ben-Ghiat, Ruth. 2001. Fascist Modernities, Italy, 1922-1945. Berkeley: UC Press. Benjamin, Walter. 2000. “The Task of the Translator” in The Translation Studies Reader (Ed. Lawrence Venuti). New York: Routledge. Blondel, Jean and Segatti, Paolo. 2003. Italian Politics, the Second Berlusconi Government. Oxford: Berghahn Books. Bloom, Michelle. 2005. “Contemporary Franco-Chinese Cinema, Translation, Citation, and Imitation in Dai Sijie’s Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress and Tsai Ming-Liang’s What Time is it There?” Quarterly Review of Film and Video, 22.4, 11-20. Braidotti, Rosi. 1994. Nomadic Subjects, Embodiment and Sexual Difference in Contemporary Feminist Theory. New York: Columbia University Press. Bullaro, Grace (ed). 2010. From Terrone to Extracomunitario: New Manifestations of Racism in Contemporary Italian Cinema. Kibworth: Troubador. Crespi, Alberto. 2005. “Wang: cinesi, ve lo da io la Toscana” Il Porto Ritrovato (Sept 21), [http://www.ilportoritrovato.net/html/wang.html]. Accessed Feb. 1, 2011. Donadio, Rachel. 2010. “Chinese Remake the ‘Made in Italy’ Fashion Label.” New York Times, (Sept). [http.//www.nytimes.com /2010/09/13/world/Europe/13prato.html]. Accessed 18 Sept. 2010. Duncan, Derek. 2008. “Italy’s Postcolonial Cinema and Its Histories of Representation.” Italian Studies 63. 2 (Autumn),195-211. —. 2009. “Architectures of the Interior, Desiring the Metropole and the Migrant Imaginary.” Metropolitan Desires Conference, Manchester Metropolitan University, 8 Sept. Harris, Chandra. 2001. “Nero Su Bianco, The Africanist Presence in Twentieth-Century Italy and Its Cinematic Representations.” ItaliAfrica, Bridging Continents and Cultures. (Ed. Sante Matteo). Miami: Forum Italicum. Hilton, Isabel. 1999. “Visions of China: Nanjing Bridge” Time Asia (Sept 27). [http://www.time.com/time/ asia/magazine/99/0927/ nanjing_bridge.html]. Accessed Feb 1, 2011.

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Luciano, Bernadette. 2002. “Rethinking Identity in the Cinema of Silvio Soldini.” Forum for Modern Language Studies, 38.3, 341-51. Marcus, Millicent. 2002. After Fellini, National Cinema in the Postmodern Age. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. —. 2007. Italian Film in the Shadow of Auschwitz. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. —. 2008. “A Coming-Of-Age Story, Some Thought on the Rise of Italian Film Studies in the United States.” Italian Studies, 63.2, (Autumn), 264-69. “My Life: Michelangelo Antonioni’s China” Personal Blog, 2007. (July 31). [http://blog.sina.com.cn/s/blog_4df4a50701000big.html]. Accessed Feb 1, 2011. O’Healy, Àine. “Border Traffic, Reimagining the Voyage to Italy.” 2007. Transnational Feminism in Film and Media Ed. Katarzyna Marciniak, Anikó Imre, and Áine O’Healy. New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 3752. Parati, Graziella. 2005. Migration Italy, The Art of Talking Back in a Destination Culture. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. Persòli, Renato. 2008. “La dismissione di Ermanno Rea e La stella che non c’è di Gianni Amelio,” Carte allineate: recensionni e testi (January 20). [http://cartescoperterecensionietesti.blogspot.com/2008 /01/la-dismissione-di-ermanno-rea-e-stella.html]. Accessed March 28, 2011. Ponzanesi, Sandra. 2005. “Outlandish Cinema, Screening the Other in Italy.” Migrant Cartographies, New Cultural and Literary Spaces in Post-Colonial Europe. (Ed. Sandra Ponzanesi and Daniella Merola). Lanham, MD: Lexington, 267-80. Said, Edward. 1979. Orientalism. New York: Vintage Books. Sontag, Susan. 2001. On Photography (1st Edition). New York: Picador. York, Geoffrey. 2004. “EastSouthWestNorth: Chung Kuo Comes to China” Zona Europa: (Nov 2), 2004. [http://www.zonaeuropa.com/20070803_1.htm]. Accessed Feb. 1, 2011. Verdicchio, Pasquale. 1997. Bound by Distance, Rethinking Nationalism through the Italian Diaspora. Cranbury, NJ: Associated University Presses.

Films Cited Agata e la tempesta (Agatha and the Storm). 2004. Dir. Silvio Soldini. DVD (region 2). Cabiria. 1914. Dir. Giovanni Pastone. DVD. Kino Video, 2000.

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Cantando dietro paraventi (Singing Behind Screens). 2003. Dir. Ermanno Olmi. DVD (region 2 only). C’era Un cinese in coma (A Chinese Man in a Coma). 2000. Dir. Carlo Verdone. Unavailable on DVD. Chung Kuo. 1972. Dir. Michelangelo Antonioni. Unavailable in the U.S. on DVD. La stella che non c’è. (The Missing Star). 2006. Dir. Gianni Amelio, Unavailable on DVD in the U.S. L’albero dei destini (Tree of Destiny). 1997. Dir. Rachid Benhadj. Released for TV. Lamerica. 1994. Dir. Gianni Amelio. DVD. New Yorker Video, 2004. L’Avventura. 1961. Dir. Michelangelo Antonioni. DVD. Criterion, 2001. Pane e tulipani (Bread and Tulips). 2000. Dir. Silvio Soldini. DVD. Sony, 2002. Questa notte è ancora nostra (This Night is Still Ours). 2008. Dir. Paolo Genovese and Luca Miniero. DVD (region 2). Walt Disney. The Last Emperor. 1986. Dir. Bernardo Bertolucci. DVD. Criterion, 2009. Un cinese a Roma (A Chinese Man in Rome). 2004. Dir. Gianfranco Giagni. Unavailable. Waalo fendo (Where the Earth Freezes). 1998. Dir. Mohammed Soudani. Unavailable on DVD. What Time is it There? 2001. Dir. Tsai Ming-Liang. DVD. Fox Lorber, 2002. Zabriskie Point. 1968. Dir. Michelangelo Antonioni. DVD. Warner, 2009.

Notes 1

See: [www.filminginitaly.com]. Berlusconi is listed as a board member/chair of the Ministry. 3 In addition to these new laws, television in Italy has arguably played a role in the current state of the Italian film industry. Millicent Marcus (2002) points out that the deregulation of TV airwaves in 1976 sent Italy on a “television binge” and away from the cinema. As a result, claims Marcus, film lost some of its cultural prestige (10). 4 The term “hybrid” is close in meaning to “transnational” in this case, though the former term is implies cross-cultural and intertextual layering within certain films. 5 See Benjamin’s “The Task of the Translator”. 6 In future research, I hope to focus only on films about Italy by Chinese directors such as Wang Xiaoshuai and Jia Zhangke. I do not discuss these films here only for lack of space, though I do consider them Sino-Italian as well. 7 See: [http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0448131/usercomments.] 8 My translation. 2

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Chapter One

“Tiananmen Square, in Beijing, on a day in May. We begin our brief voyage in modern China, pointing our cameras here…for the Chinese people, this enormous, silent space is the center of the world. The Gate of Heavenly Peace is the heart of Beijing. And Beijing is the economic and revolutionary center of China. And China is ‘Chung Kuo’: the central country. The ancient heart of world civilization…it is they, the Chinese people, who are the protagonists of our cinematic notes. We don’t pretend to explain China; we want only to begin observing this great repertoire of expressions, gestures, and customs” (my translation). 10 Libya, Ethiopia, and Somalia in Africa, Albania in Eastern Europe. African and Eastern European immigrants are still very much discriminated against in Italy. Nigerians are presented by the media mainly as prostitute traffickers. Illegal labor camps for Roma were found in the outskirts of Naples just a few years ago. 11 See, Donatio, “Chinese Remake the ‘Made in Italy’ Fashion Label.” 12 See Marcus (2008) for a further discussion. 13 Such as Rosellini’s Paisà (1946) and Roberto Benigni’s La vita è bella (1998) 14 For instance, Roberto Rossellini, Luchino Vischonti, Vittorio De Sica, and the early Bertolucci and Pasolini. 15 One of the only examples that she lists as a transnational Italian film is Armando Manni’s Elvis and Merilijn (1998), set in Romania, Bulgaria, Yugoslavia and Italy. 16 Prior to this, the Italian government only controlled films post-production. 17 The film is shot beautifully, so there are, of course, aesthetic reasons for this as well. But it should also be noted that Gabriele d’Annunzio, an ultra-nationalist, produced the film. 18 Francesco Munzi’s Saimir (2004) is one of Duncan’s central examples. 19 Both films can be classified as Sino-Italian in some respects. Olmi’s is set on a pirate ship in feudal-era China, and features Chinese and Japanese actors whose voices have been post-dubbed in Italian. 20 Buena Vista International was eliminated as a stand-alone arm of Disney in 2007, though the company continues to distribute DVDs. 21 Similar criticisms have been aimed at Ang Lee’s Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon (2000) because two of the main actors, Chow Yun-fat and Michelle Yeoh, had to learn to speak Mandarin (the predominant language of Mainland China and Taiwan) for the film. So, in this sense, inaccurate casting decisions cannot always be avoided, and are often intentional. 22 Not academic critics per se, but pop culture critics writing reviews and articles on the Internet. 23 See: [http.//www.filmup.it.] 24 The joke is as follows: a policeman (carabiniere) hits a car driven by a Chinese man, who subsequently hits his head on the steering wheel and enters into a coma. The policeman takes him to the hospital and, at his bedside, pleads with the unresponsive man, “please cinè (this is a racist term for a Chinese man), tell them that I didn’t mean to hit you, otherwise they are going to arrest me!” The Chinese man’s only response is, “Suguy mojo aye.” The policeman, frustrated, exclaims: “I still don’t understand what you are saying. Please, tell them I didn’t mean to do it!” The Chinese man only manages to repeat the same phrase again, then dies. In a

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panic, the policeman runs to a Chinese restaurant and asks the cook to translate “suguy mojo aye.” The cook responds: “Suguy mojo aye? Stlano flase davvelo (Italian equivalent of “vely stlange phlase”). It means: get your feet off my oxygen tank!” 25 In one scene, a Chinese TV crew follows Li around the streets of Rome and films his life. 26 Agostino Ferrente’s L’Orchestra di Piazza Vittorio (2006), for example, carries a much stronger anti-discrimination message, and focuses on a much larger set of Italian immigrants. 27 Meaning that the film would be actually produced and directed by the Chinese immigrants living in Italy. 28 See: [http,//www.esperiafilm.it/un_cinese_a_roma.html]. “Among the various communities, the Chinese living in Rome are known for being the most mysterious. But, looking past the superficial, we discover that Italians and Chinese resemble each other more than what could have been imagined.” 29 See youtube interview: [http,//www.youtube.com/watch?v=ggBTHk0cwyg]. 30 You special lady…at the point of great change…like caterpillar to butterfly. Energy looks for exit…when so much energy, so many exits…important to leave door always open…for computer problems, my answer is, rubber gloves. 31 See: [http.//wapedia.mobi/en/ Stereotypes_of _East_Asians_in _the_Western _world#4]. 32 Russo’s edited volume (2010) is an exception. 33 Although Luciano is not the only Italian film scholar guilty of this type of “blindness,” I am using her article because it demonstrates my point in notable ways. 34 A Taiwanese director, born in Malaysia, who creates films that can be described as Sinofrench. 35 From a Q & A at a USC film screening, January 2010. 36 See R. Braidotti. It should be noted, however, that Braidotti’s framework is based in feminist theory; thus she uses the figure of the post-colonial migrant in an almost metaphorical sense. 37 The song has been performed most notably by Enrico Caruso, Mario Lanza, and Elvis Presley. 38 “On the shimmering sea, sky of silver, calm are the waves, thriving is the wind. Come all to my agile boat. Santa Lucia, Santa Lucia.” 39 Though the Mandarin and Italian versions do not match exactly, the title “Santa Lucia” remains the same. 40 For example.: “Li Tries to Find an Apartment,” “Li and his Friend Lim are Very Different,” etc. 41 The term “Sixth Generation filmmaker”, in the context of contemporary Chinese cinema, is used by critics and scholars to refer to a set of directors who share certain similarities. In general, these are filmmakers who grew up in the 1980s, experienced the Tiananmen Square incident, and are wary of state censorship. Because the films by these directors are usually produced without the support of the Chinese government, they are made quickly and without expensive equipment.

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It has been noted that the cinematic style of the Sixth Generation—the preference for handheld cameras, a nonlinear narrative, and a documentary-like feel—has much in common with Italian neorealism, Antonioni, and the French New Wave. Jia Zhangke in particular has cited French New Wave director Robert Bresson as one of his central influences. 42 www.cinefile.biz/?p=20948

CHAPTER TWO CONTEMPORARY MIGRATION AND UNSTABLE TRANSLATIONS: DAI SIJIE AND AMÉLIE NOTHOMB FONTAINE LIEN

Thus far into the 21st century, we appear ready to embrace a more benign form of universality.1 In academia and outside of it, this means that there has been an gradual modification of discourse, aimed ostensibly at moving us beyond those stagnant, unenlightened times characterized by colony, nation, and empire. Scholarly publications and university course catalogues describe the postcolonial, the transnational, and the global, hope-filled keywords that connote a forward trajectory in human progress. In our everyday lives, more than ever, the Internet is connecting people between far corners of the planet; the world’s largest communist state has embraced and welcomed capitalism, “Westernization,” and global conglomerates such as Coca-Cola and Starbucks. As Arif Dirlik (1994, 80) points out, what has emerged is not true universality but a “transnational capitalist class” that “works for transnational capital, facilitates its operations globally, and universalizes the culture and ideology of capitalism.” However, even if we limit our discussion to the social classes that can afford such consumption and mobility, and to those whose access to information has been least politically limited, can we truly say that we live in a “world without borders”? On the surface, this seems to be a preposterous question. One need only to glance at the front pages of news publications, or visit, for example, the United States-Mexico border to receive irrefutable confirmation that a borderless world does not (yet) exist. Yet what has always been implied in the phrase “without borders” is a perceived erasure of barriers to communication, not physical barriers, and a consequent equalization of parties through such an erasure. To put it more simply, in a capitalistic, globalized “world without borders” one may continue to be

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conscious of physical and political divisions between states, but expect communication across all other lines—financial, cultural, linguistic—to be relatively unencumbered. Thus a more accurate question might be: have barriers to globalization as conceived in the utopian formulation “world without borders” been erased or neutralized? For many, travel and migration across large distances have become increasingly affordable, and the sprawling airports that facilitate these journeys carry shelves upon shelves of travel guides that claim easy access to almost any national culture or language. It would seem that given sufficient means, physical and linguistic access are relatively easy to obtain for those who would demand it. Yet what I call “globalization of the self”—adaptation and re-presentation of the self to ensure continued viability across different landscapes—is an endeavor that is far more complex when compared to globalization of a product or a trade. Indeed, the global self becomes complicated by those very commodities that have preceded it in global migration, commodities that have created a complex web of expectations on both sides, which then problematizes one’s globalized subject position. To clarify and to further elaborate on this phenomenon, I have chosen to examine two contemporary accounts of intercontinental or intracontinental migration: Dai Sijie’s Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress (Balzac et la Petite Tailleuse chinoise) and Amélie Nothomb’s Fear and Trembling (Stupeur et tremblements), alongside their respective film adaptations. Both of these authors occupy prestigious positions within the Francophone literary scene, having won numerous literary prizes,2 and their works are highly anticipated when they make an appearance during each year’s rentrée littéraire in France.3 Dai is also a feature film director, though his films are generally less popular than his novels. Nothomb was compelled to write her first novel shortly after her permanent departure from Japan— indeed, she had already begun to write in Japan—and Dai’s first fulllength feature, Chine, ma douleur (1989), as well as his first published novel Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress, draw significantly on his experiences with reeducation in Maoist China. One might draw the tentative yet not unfounded conclusion here that their migratory experiences are significant sources of their creative drives. While to date Nothomb has written three novellas about her experiences in Japan (Stupeur et tremblements, Métaphysique des tubes, and Ni d’Ève ni d’Adam), Dai’s other novels Le Complexe de Di and Par une nuit où la lune ne s’est pas levée are both also migration narratives involving FranceChina and China-France trajectories.

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I am in agreement with those who would destabilize and problematize the reductive East-West binary, which is based on a strictly Eurocentric conception of what is “east” and what is “west.” In terms of any geographical orientation, however, the experiences of Nothomb and Dai are neatly symmetrical with one another, and in this sense are useful in terms of examining their relationship with and use of the French language from two inverse “directions.” In her novel, Nothomb describes herself attempting to leave it, heading east; Dai does just the opposite in recounting his experiences in French. Both of these novels—and their subsequent film adaptations—purportedly contain autobiographical elements and describe two divergent migration tracks that should by no means be equated facilely. Yet, they can both be understood in terms of the fracturing of self that occurs when an individual finds himself or herself in a radically different cultural environment. Under pressure to fit in and survive, the protagonists within these narratives—as well as the authors who narrate their stories—undertake translations,4 interpretations, and performances that do not always serve their intended purpose. The film adaptations are discussed here in terms of their unique properties as visual media in the sense of Shu-mei Shih’s (2007, 6) formulations, in the context of Sinophone cinema and visual art, as follows: “The visual without specificity of linguistic determination ... necessarily opens itself up to the possibility of translinguistic and transcommunity consumption. It is no wonder that the visual has increasingly become the forum and the tool to articulate identity struggles, a desired medium with an expansive reach and a wide appeal.” The film adaptations are possible because they clearly capitalize on the success of their source material, and both have been subtitled and released as in DVD format in the United States. This visual medium provides the sort of “translinguistic and transcommunity consumption” that is potentially more immediate than that of an English translation, which still depends on the reader to generate the visual while reading. But we shall see that these films, like the novels, can be read as yet another kind of “translated” performance that serves as a means of processing and digestion, repackaging and re-presentation, while still presenting “reading” problems of their own. In other words, their articulations of the globalized self are not quite complete.

Background: First Migration The film adaptations of Dai and Nothomb’s works are unique as visual representations of migratory experiences because we can trace their origins to semi-autobiographical material.5 Although the migration recounted in Dai

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Sijie’s novel Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress takes place within the borders of one nation, the experience is no less formidable—and formative. For that nation is China during the Cultural Revolution, and the migration occurs when two youths are sent to a remote mountainous countryside for mandatory Maoist re-education. These two young men— Luo and Ma, who supposedly represents Dai—come from relatively privileged backgrounds (Riding 2005). The novel makes clear the connections between this privilege and Western art, Western literature—in short, Western civilization—creating an East-West dichotomy with education, intellect, and urbanity occupying the symbolic role of the oppositional West in Maoist discourse. Although they had not yet obtained their high school diplomas, the fact that Ma and Luo’s parents are doctors and dentists, “stinking scientific authorities” (Dai 2001, 8), is enough for them to be considered “intellectuals” and thus marked for re-education. Ma and Luo transition from Chengdu, “a city of four million inhabits” (8), to a mountainous area called Phoenix of the Sky from which one has to “tramp across rugged mountain terrain for two days” (12) to reach any sign of civilization. Dai also emphasizes the rustic simplicity of the villagers as compared to the young men, often for comic effect: Ma and Luo both know how to read, yet the illiterate villagers cannot even distinguish between portraits of Karl Marx and Honoré de Balzac; Ma plays the violin skillfully, but the villagers think his expensive instrument is toy; Luo possesses a fascinating contraption called an alarm clock which he can use to apparently manipulate time itself, because the villagers do not know that the hands can be moved. Much later in the novel, Balzac is literally the Western currency with which Ma obtains the services of a doctor, whose “expert eye” (184) recognizes the text as valuable. That this kind of shared expert connoisseurship is out of place in their environment is made evident as Ma thinks, “It was a shock to hear the French author’s name being spoken aloud in this clinical environment, this district hospital in the middle of nowhere” (184). In their new surroundings, Ma and Luo find themselves, at first, putting on performances in order to ingratiate themselves with the villagers or negotiate difficult situations. As Xiaomei Chen (1995, 21) writes, the ultimate aim of the Maoist reeducation program was for these youths to “eventually be accepted by the subalterns, acting like them, and speaking in their voice.” Thus acceptance amongst the villagers is politically important for Ma and Luo. When the two boys are first being inspected by the village headman, Ma defuses the tense atmosphere by playing his violin and disguising a banned Mozart sonata as a tune called “Mozart Is Thinking of Chairman Mao.” Subsequently, the two are sent on

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cinematic reconnaissance missions, charged with viewing films in neighboring villages, then retelling the films in front of an audience of entranced villagers. Though they are “translating” a visual medium into an oral narration, this is a skill at which Luo proves particularly adept: “He took complete control of the narrative, keeping up the suspense, asking the listeners questions, making them respond and correcting their answers. By the time [he] reached the end of the story ... our audience was ecstatic” (Dai 2001, 21-22). In this scene, therefore, Dai shows that a well-told story can be tremendously captivating, no matter how it is told; fiction can be a form of power. Even later, when Ma and Luo both fall in love with a young woman called the Little Seamstress, Luo is determined to transform her into someone “more refined, more cultured” (64) by reading Western literature to her; eventually, both boys take turns reading to the Little Seamstress and basking in her attention. In Dai’s novel, then, performances and storytelling serve self-preservative, pedagogic, and romantic purposes. Most of these elements are unchanged in the film adaptation, except a tellingly added scene where the Little Seamstress (Zhou Xun) declares aloud her preference for Balzac over the famous Chinese writer, Lu Xun. Dai, as film director, here seems conscious of the primary source of the film’s potential viewership — his hundreds of thousands of readers in France.6 Amélie Nothomb’s situation is slightly more complex. Due to her father’s itinerant diplomatic career, she was born in Japan, then raised in China, New York, Burma, Laos, and Bangladesh, among other places (Garcia 2006). Therefore, the migration described in Fear and Trembling is by no means her first; however, it is imbued with a special significance. Nothomb (1993, 85) writes elsewhere that she considers Japan her “pays d’origine”, and: “j’étais persuadée d’être japonaise.”7 After her family moves from Japan, she considered herself to be living in a state of exile (Nothomb 2004, 570), and in Fear and Trembling she writes: “That first exile made such a deep impression on me that I had felt I would do anything to return to the country that for so long I thought of as my native land” (Nothomb 2001, 16). The entire novel chronicles her commitment to the supposedly Japanese principles of humility, subservience, and unquestioning obedience, especially as a subordinate in the workplace, even while she encounters increasingly more difficult ordeals precisely because her supervisors consider her brain to be too “Western” and thus incompatible with Japanese thought. Therefore, for Amélie,8 this migration is a means of reclaiming her past and her origins; accordingly, she performs in order to convince herself and others that she belongs in Japan despite her skin color and nationality.

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The language of theater and performance is utilized throughout the novel. For example, when Amélie performs her calendar-updating duties, she acts like a samurai “miming a merciless struggle … feigning exhaustion … to the banzais! of my delighted spectators” (Nothomb 2001, 20; first two and final emphases added) and is obviously delighted to entertain her coworkers. These performative aspects are, of course, further highlighted as a center of focus in the film adaptation, because she is performing not only for her coworkers but also for the film audience. Even after Amélie recognizes that she has no choice but to resign, she does so in a performative capacity, genuflecting exaggeratedly in front of her nemesis qua superior, Fubuki Mori. She plays the role of an “archetypal underling” and “[recites] her prepared lines” (118); when the climactic moment of her performance arrives, she puts on a “mask of terror” (121) and addresses Fubuki with the “fear and trembling” required when subjects are addressing the Japanese Emperor. The language of reading and interpretation is even more obvious in the original French novel. When Amélie and Mr. Tenshi are both being admonished by Mr. Omochi, Mr. Tenshi’s thoughts are written on his face and she reads the meaning in his eyes;9 when she verbally resigns in front of Mr. Saito, she finds that she is “unable to interpret” (122) his expression.10 As outlined above, as a result of her migration Amélie finds herself having to read and interpret in order to navigate the treacherous corporate environment; her performances also serve self-preservative purposes, but she takes on her role with relish because she badly wants to prove that she belongs in her “pays d’origine.”

First Performance and (Mis)Translation As with textual translation, no “translation” in human interactions is perfectly faithful. Therefore, it is unsurprising that our protagonists’ performances—especially in different cultural environments—have unintended consequences or are misinterpreted; at times, they are the ones who misread or misinterpret. In Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress, at first the effects produced by the performances are largely positive. During Ma’s first performance, the violin-playing, “the peasants’ faces … [soften] under the influence of Mozart’s limpid music” (Dai 2001, 6); even the village headman, so vigilantly suspicious a moment ago, is mollified by his belief that the sonata is a paean to Chairman Mao. Though initially nervous when they begin their “oral performances” of films, Ma and Luo gradually gain confidence as they witness the positive reactions of their enthralled audience, and even adopt the arts of high drama and suspense in order to retain the audience’s engagement. The village headman is so

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pleased with the performance that he allows the boys to continue viewing and re-telling films, allowing them a reprieve from some of their more arduous tasks. After the boys find the suitcase full of books, their storytelling takes on a new dimension as Luo sets out to “re-educate” the Little Seamstress. He also uses the storytelling as a means of courtship and enjoys the attention, delighting in the almost religious effect of one Balzac passage; he tells Ma: “When she’d finished reading … your coat [on which the passage was written] was resting on the flat of her hands, the way a sacred object lies in the palms of the pious” (65). Luo compares Balzac to a wizard that transports the Little Seamstress far away from the mountain village, and, indeed, when the boys narrate Dumas’s The Count of Monte Cristo to the tailor, their village is indeed somehow transformed into Marseilles by the tailor’s newly acquired fashion sensibilities. The fictional universe overtakes reality to such a degree that one passage nearly blurs the distinction all together: “All of a sudden, just as the Count was about to fall in love with the Prosecutor’s daughter, a dark shadowy figure loomed on the threshold holding a torch. The beam of light put the French Count to flight and brought us rapidly back to reality” (116). The “beam of light” actually comes from the village headman’s flashlight; but, for a moment, before Dai brings us back to the present narrative and “back to reality,” we actually believe that we are still in Dumas’s universe as the Count is “put to flight.” Thus, initially, Ma and Luo’s performances have pacifying and powerful transformative qualities, bringing the “briny Mediterranean air” (Dai 2001, 135) and a sense of joie de vivre to the mountain village. However, there are soon unforeseen consequences. Ma’s performance changes as he adapts and reacts to his circumstances, and the violinplaying becomes more than mere appeasement or entertainment, but also a means of navigation and survival. When Ma is abandoned by Luo in favor of the Little Seamstress, he plays the violin only to find that the sound has become “shrill and disagreeable, as if [he] had forgotten how to play” (61); in the film, Ma’s violin music even accompanies the Little Seamstress’s secret abortion procedure and serves as a means of concealment. The sequence in the film not only depicts Ma’s violinplaying as a means of self-expression, but once again drives home the dichotomy between intellectuals who have been exposed to Westernization—in this case, Ma (Liu Ye) and the doctor—and the village headman. The doctor is able to correctly interpret Ma’s change of tune to mean that their secret operation is in danger being discovered, whereas the village headman does not see through the ruse. The close-up on Ma’s

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relieved smirk after his successful deception is an invitation for the audience to identify with the wit of the intellectuals. Despite Luo’s grand plans of “re-educating” the Little Seamstress, and his placing her under Ma’s surveillance when he has to leave the village for two months, he is unaware that she is already planning her great escape. The Little Seamstress herself hints at the changes wrought by the stories, as she is no longer content to simply listen; when she and Luo reenact Edmond and Mercédès’s reunion scene from The Count of Monte Cristo, she describes the sensation of not having complete control over her self-expression: “C’était extraordinaire, j’ai même improvisé un tas de trucs, qui sortaient tout seuls, comme ça, de ma bouche.”11 Significantly, it is during this moment that the Little Seamstress stops being a passive reader and Dai chooses to give her her own voice, in the form of a separate section of the novel where the Seamstress is a first-person narrator for the first and only time. Soon after her abortion, she leaves the village forever, and the shock created by her departure proves that although Luo wanted to transform the Seamstress into his idea of a sophisticated woman, he had not counted on creating such an independent spirit. Ma wonders, in the final chapter of the novel, whether there had been a crucial misreading: “That the ultimate pay-off of this metamorphosis, this feat of Balzacian education, was yet to come did not occur to us ... had we ourselves failed to grasp the essence of the novels we had read to her?” (Dai 2001, 192). The message here is that words and fictions have the power to captivate and transform, but one cannot always anticipate their precise effects; there is always room for misreading, mistranslation, and misinterpretation. Although Amélie is hired to serve as an interpreter for Yumimoto Corporation in Fear and Trembling, it is because of Amélie’s own constant misreading and misinterpretation of her colleagues that she partially precipitates her own demotions to ever-more-demeaning positions and her descent in the esteem of Fubuki. Her downfall is, in essence, a result of a series of misconceptions. She first mistakenly speaks fluent Japanese in front of visitors from another company, then commits the error of taking initiative and performing tasks without asking for permission. Then, she incurs the professional jealousy of Fubuki and the wrath of Mr. Omochi by helping Mr. Tenshi compile a report on Belgian low-fat butter. Finally, she commits her most unpardonable sin when she reaches out to comfort Fubuki at the wrong moment, essentially “[drinking] the final full measure of her shame” (Nothomb 2001, 90). As a result, Amélie is sentenced to cleaning bathrooms for the remainder of her contract at Yumimoto. Whichever side Nothomb’s readers identify with, she herself is careful to not ascribe sole responsibility to any one side in depicting this

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series of misunderstandings. Amélie the narrator does occasionally describe her coworkers with a language that borders on caricature—though she balances these resentful descriptions with fair remarks when she feels they are warranted—but one can argue that Amélie herself is portrayed in a similarly ridiculous manner, given her performance as “samurai of calendars” and her comic ineptitude at the simple task of addition and verification of expense reports. The film adaptation is much more blatant in its caricature, especially in its depictions of Mr. Omochi and Mr. Saito. Instead, Nothomb simply allows the comical situations created by these misunderstandings to occupy center stage throughout the novella, highlighting the inevitability of cultural mistranslation in an exaggerated manner. The irony is all the more pronounced because Amélie was hired as an interpreter, to supposedly facilitate cross-cultural communication, for this multinational corporation that “bought and sold everything on the face of the entire planet” (8). Yumimoto’s economic influence may extend to many countries in the world, but mistranslation is taking place at the heart of its corporate culture. Gradually, Amélie becomes subjugated and erased by this corporate culture and loses the ability to translate altogether; her performances are reduced to outright mimicry which, ironically, culminates in her final moment of empathy with the Japanese. Initially, she is assigned the task of writing the same meaningless letter over and over again, but she is still able to introduce variations. However, when she is assigned to make copies of Mr. Saito’s golf club regulations, to re-copy ledger numbers, and to verify expense reports, she finds that any attempt at reproduction or translation is either willfully misunderstood or an outright failure. Mr. Saito refuses to accept the photocopies, claiming that they are imperfect; Amélie omits or adds zeroes while she is copying out the ledger, and cannot reproduce the balances on the expense reports despite trying “a thousand times” (Nothomb 2001, 55). When she receives her final and most undignified assignment—that of cleaning and stocking the bathrooms— she seizes the opportunity to prove her “Japaneseness”: “Anyone else in my situation would have quit. But not if they were Japanese … I would survive. I would do what a Japanese would have done” (94). Accepting the challenge, Amélie performs her role—that of a stereotypically docile and subservient Japanese employee—faithfully, unwaveringly. When her contract expires and she tenders her resignation to each one of her superiors according to Japanese tradition, she imagines feeling genuinely Japanese when she delivers her last verbal resignation to the president of the company: “I was never more Japanese than when I offered my resignation to Mister Haneda. My embarrassment was genuine, and

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expressed itself in a tense smile and stifled hiccups” (128). In Fear and Trembling, Amélie’s determination to perform her “Japanese” role nonetheless results in disaster due to the inevitable failures of translation that occur throughout the novella. Having examined these mistranslations, misinterpretations, and performances with unintended consequences, it should be noted that towards the end of both journeys, the protagonists encounter that which is untranslatable. In Balzac, one of Luo and the Little Seamstress’s trysts at the waterfall is narrated from three points of view – the old miller’s, Luo’s, and the Little Seamstress’s. It is within this narrative timeframe that Luo finds out that his mother is ill and that he has been granted a leave of absence, and the motives for the Little Seamstress’s departure are examined at least obliquely. By using three points of view to narrate the different perspectives involved in these moments, Dai is presenting three parts of a scene that does not have one singular translation. The three perspectives, when combined, approaches but does not entirely resemble the truth. The old miller is seized with longing for a youth that cannot be recaptured while spying on the young couple’s lovemaking; Luo cannot help but feel hopeless about his prospects of returning home; the Little Seamstress excitedly recounts the sensations she experiences when listening to tales and reenacting them. Each narration contains elements missing from the others, and each narrator cannot possibly know what the others are feeling. The film handles this moment of untranslatability by combining parts of this scene with Ma’s visit to the old miller, itself significantly more condensed and simplified when compared to its counter-episode in the novel. In the film, a scene where Ma listens to the old miller sing an erotic riddle is cross-cut with a separate scene where Luo (Chen Kun) and the Little Seamstress make love in the river. Just as Ma does not understand the old miller’s erotic riddle, he is diegetically barred from comprehending the erotic pleasure experienced exclusively between his two friends. Later in the novel, when Ma visits an old preacher and inadvertently witnesses his final moments, he also encounters the untranslatable: a Latin prayer that escapes the understanding of Ma and the preacher’s family members. For Amélie, the moment of absolute incomprehension comes when she witnesses Mr. Omochi’s horrible invective directed at Fubuki. Previously, she had told Mr. Saito, “Perhaps the Japanese brain is capable of forcing itself to forget a language. The Western brain doesn’t have that facility,” in response to his request that she “[not] understand Japanese anymore” (Nothomb 2001, 12). However, during Fubuki’s moment of crisis, Amélie states that Mr. Omochi’s voice contained “such a scoria of fatty rage that

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[she] understood almost nothing of what he was actually saying” (84); in the film adaptation, Amélie (Sylvie Testud) states in voiceover that her ears had suddenly become “hermeneutically sealed to the Japanese language.” Her incomprehension becomes ours when Mr. Omochi’s diatribe is obscured, both by Amélie’s voiceover narration which is describing Mr. Omochi’s metaphorical rape instead of actually stating what he is saying, and by the subtitles that can only translate what Amélie is saying. Fubuki’s face also does not betray any emotion; the many closeups on it during this sequence merely reveal its inscrutability. Within these migration narratives, certain subjective experiences within the human psyche—cruelty, shame, and death, for example—are not mistranslated or misinterpreted; they are simply and absolutely untranslatable.

Novelization: Second Performance and Translation For both Nothomb and Dai, the events in the novels take place in the relatively distant past. After his re-education, Dai emigrated to France to study and then pursue a career in filmmaking and has adapted Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress into a film himself; Nothomb “returned” to Europe and became a prolific bestselling author. In their capacities as director and writer, both have made a career out of “performing” their own lives, by “throwing themselves into the [public] view” as Amélie so frequently does in Fear and Trembling. The adapted literary “performances” on display in these two works can be read as the authors’ digestion of, distancing from, and subsequent translation of their own experiences for public consumption. The film adaptations are already second adaptations. All of these performances are transnational endeavors that, in themselves, involve a significant amount of cultural translation. Naturally, both Dai and Nothomb must translate remembered dialogues in order for them to be comprehensible, while additional translation, dubbing, and subtitling are necessary when these works are republished or screened elsewhere. But what other kinds of “translations” do Dai and Nothomb perform in order to sell their literary products, in the sense of both monetary transaction and cultural acceptance? Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress as both novel and film is unabashedly romantic, nostalgic, and contains obvious traces of fictionalization; they are presented as one man’s subjective memories of his youth.12 Dai as Ma narrates the novel’s events in a semi-conversational manner, freely revising a statement or interrupting with reminders or background information. For example, Ma first tells us that Luo is the master of a phoenix, then immediately begins the next section by

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retracting: “Actually, it wasn’t really a phoenix but a proud rooster … [under] the somewhat dusty glass cover of Luo’s alarm clock” (Dai 2001, 14). When he mentions Four-Eyes, he reminds the reader conversationally: “Remember? We were on our way to see him when we had our encounter with the tailor …” (47). This kind of narrative style, though not immediately indicative of fictionality, at least distinguishes itself from stark realism and allows the possibility of romanticization and more imaginative play. Later in the novel, the Little Seamstress prompts the reader directly with an oral storytelling device: “Fifty years from now the ugly scar will still be there, on my middle finger. Go on, feel it” (156). Her remark invites the reader to directly verify her story by touch, while simultaneously and paradoxically highlighting the artificiality of this narrative “trick.” The language Dai uses in the novel is also highly romantic in instances such as the extended description of the tailor’s new outfits and Ma’s description of the Little Seamstress’s enchanting effect on both of the adolescents. In his interviews, Dai repeatedly claims that the novel is about love and the power of literature, shifting the focus away from the political events that precipitated the migration in the first place (Dai 2000b; Riding 2005; Yu 2002). In the novel, Ma gives us “a few words about reeducation” (Dai 2001, 6)—two pages of words, to be exact—but does not provide any other direct commentary on the political situation.13 From that point forward, the narrative is mostly focused on Ma and Luo’s relationship with their first love, the Little Seamstress, a relationship that is in turn shaped and colored by their French tutors Balzac, Hugo, Dumas, Flaubert, Rolland, etc. Luo’s conceives of “education” as a kind of mission civilisatrice, as opposed to his own re-education in the mountains, applied directly to the person of the Little Seamstress; Ma constantly compares his own situation to those of the characters he encounters while reading, drawing on them for moral support when needed. Dai’s novel is definitely not lacking in political satire—most notably instantiated in the character of the village headman, and in Four Eyes’s appropriation of folk songs into clumsy political ditties—but I see no reason not to take Dai’s remark at face value. The novel is a sort of Bildungsroman dominated by the romanticized sentiments of adolescence, and its most biting satire is applied not to any political event, but to the way in which Ma and Luo’s own too-naïve misreadings and performances backfire when their greatest “project,” the Little Seamstress, leaves forever.14 Otherwise, this significant period in China’s cultural past is viewed through the lens of nostalgia and romanticism. The aforementioned instances of lighthearted satire never distract from the main love stories

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being told: Ma and Luo’s love of the Little Seamstress, and their love of fiction, of Western literature, placed on the highest of pedestals. One specific instance of mythologization in the novel may be pinpointed: the episode where and Ma and Luo visit the old miller in order to obtain “authentic” folk songs. In yet another example of Ma and Luo’s knack for opportunistic performance, they don borrowed army uniforms in order to give the old miller the impression that they are revolutionary cadres on an important party mission. Language is also part of the performance: though they are both Sichuan natives, Ma pretends to only speak Mandarin, while Luo literally “acts” as an interpreter for the old miller’s Sichuan dialect. The old miller is in turn deeply impressed that the young men are from “the big city in the north” (Beijing), and that they speak the “official language” (Dai 2001, 71-72). This scene brings to mind one of the Chinese classics, Xi You Ji (۫ሏಖ), translated as Journey to the West or Adventures of the Monkey King. In this Ming Dynasty classic, the Monkey King is tasked with traveling to the “West” (ostensibly India) to obtain Buddhist sutras; in Balzac, Ma and Luo make a “pilgrimage” to the old miller to obtain popular ballads for Four-Eyes. Under the Maoist program, such “sincere, authentic folk songs full of romantic realism” (67), though not Buddhist sutras, are treated with religious reverence. Just as the Monkey King is promised freedom if he successfully helps the monk Xuanzang retrieve the sutras, Four Eyes believes that his publication of these authentic pieces of local color will liberate him from his arduous reeducation. In Xi You Ji, the sometimes disobedient monkey hero famously wears a band of iron on his head, which tightens whenever he is in need of discipline or punishment; in the Balzac episode, Ma’s head aches “from [the old miller’s] tight-fitting cap, which [feels] … like a metal clamp on [his] skull” (74).15 By introducing parallels between his story and a popular classic novel to which most Chinese people—educated elite or not—are introduced in their childhoods, Dai draws attention to the fictionality of his narrative, and to the mythical dimensions this fictionalized past has grown to occupy in his subjective identity. The film adaptation, directed by Dai, likewise emphasizes its own romanticism and subjectivity (Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress 2002). Ma’s voiceover narration introduces key moments in the story, just as he narrates his past in the novel. Any depiction of the villagers’ arduous lives is limited to their interactions with the main characters, especially in their capacities as audiences for Ma and Luo’s various performances. Just prior to the film’s dramatic resolution, there is an extended flash-forward sequence where Ma and Luo reunite after 15 years and relive their years in the mountain village via video footage. This interruption, not present in

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the novel, points once again to the fact that the main events in the film are past events being remembered, and to the difference between the boys’ remote, rural, nostalgic past and a present filled with the noise of modern appliances and traffic, and the real demands of work and family. In the present, Ma’s bookshelves are filled with books, but none are being read. Significantly, it is here that the film introduces a present-day catalyst to yet another migration: this time, the inhabitants of the area where Ma and Luo spent their youth are forced to relocate due to the Chinese government’s Three Gorges Dam project, which began construction in late 1994. It is a news report on this project that prompts Ma to return to China, yet once he arrives, the film opts not to directly portray any of the controversy associated with this massive construction project, which forced millions of residents to relocate and destroyed countless archaeological sites and relics. Instead, the focus quickly shifts back to Ma’s personal quest to find the Little Seamstress again, and to the villagers’ twilight candlelit ceremony for the dead. The disappearing past is only invoked obliquely and referenced in terms of personal loss, and not in terms of much more politicizable large-scale cultural and economic losses. Elsewhere, the film contains several lingering shots of the beautiful Sichuan mountains, and its digitally-enhanced fantasy ending sequence, where the Yangtze River submerges the village and the faint ghostly images of Luo, Ma, and the Little Seamstress to the tune of a Beethoven concerto, is golden-hued and nostalgic. Both the novel and the film participate in mythologization in the sense that they de-emphasize the actual historical catalysts of migration—the Cultural Revolution and the Three Gorges Dam project—in order to highlight the narrative’s romantic and sentimental elements.

Fig. 2-1: Luo, Ma, and the Little Seamstress.

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For Nothomb, mythologization, simplification, and generalization serve simultaneously to emphasize the “Japaneseness” of her tale as well as to explain why she failed at Yumimoto Corporation.16 These techniques also add humorous and familiar Orientalist elements that make the novel more entertaining for Nothomb’s readers. In her imagination, Amélie throws herself out of the window and “into the view” (Nothomb 2001, 18) as a means of temporarily escaping her daily drudgery but also as a sort of repeated performance for the reader. While engaging in this performance and mentally flying over the Tokyo cityscape, she is in a position of mastery but too far away to see potential observers in any detail. Likewise, the novel’s Japanese characters are stereotypical and not examined indepth. Some of them are given cartoonish names that conveniently summarize their general traits: Mr. Omochi is primarily characterized as a coarse, obese lump of a human being, so, aptly, his name derives from the addition of the honorific “o” (ር) to “mochi,” which is a small round Japanese sweet rice cake; Mr. Tenshi is one of the few people at Yumimoto who treat Amélie with respect and kindness, therefore, fittingly, Amélie tells us that “‘tenshi’ means ‘angel’ … he [wears] his name extremely well” (25). Nothomb’s language in the novel deliberately invokes a mythologized past of Japan that is very much entrenched in Western imaginations. Amélie describes herself as a “friendly white geisha” (Nothomb 2001, 16) or a samurai; in some instances, Nothomb’s diction actually brings to mind Pierre Loti, the French writer and naval officer whose late nineteenth-century travelogue Madame Chrysanthème is a thematic predecessor to the Orientalist Madame Butterfly (Chiba 1998, 18). Nothomb essentializes Fubuki as “the incarnation of Japanese beauty”—suggesting that there is only one type of Japanese beauty—and repeatedly links Fubuki’s appearance with “the nadeshiko (carnation), a nostalgic symbol of the young Japanese virgin in former times” (7). We may recall that Loti’s Madame Chrysanthème is filled with female Japanese characters typified as beautiful flowers or fruits via romantic but reductive first names.17 In addition, in the original French text Nothomb describes the typical Japanese woman as “une œuvre d’art inaccessible à l’entendement” (Nothomb 1999, 87),18 words that bring to mind Loti’s (1921, 70) description of Japanese women as having “recently escaped from the panel of some screen” and lacking intellectual capacities. For both Nothomb and Loti, these “works of art” are meant to be admired, not understood; in these romanticized pasts, distinguishing character traits are flattened or erased in favor of aesthetic representation.

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Interestingly, Amélie also borrows Loti’s language when describing herself. In order to link herself more closely to Fubuki and to this mythical Japan, Amélie exclaims to the latter: “[We’re] both daughters of Kansai [Province]! That’s where the heart of the old Japan still beats” (Nothomb 2001, 16). In Madame Chrysanthème, when Loti (1921, 7) first arrives at the port of Nagasaki, he also imagines that behind the crowded international area “probably the true old Japanese Nagasaki … still exists.” Like Loti, Amélie uses poetic language to describe the past without providing any evidence that she truly understands the purported “old Japan,” even calling the villages in which she and Fubuki grew up “mythological places” (16). In Amélie’s most miserable months as a bathroom cleaner, she imagines that as a result of her defenestrations, “there must be pieces of [her] body all over Tokyo” (114); she is the “white geisha,” the Belgian Madame Butterfly who kills herself for the object of her affection – in this case, Japan. By foregrounding these essentialist and mythological Japanese elements, Nothomb also provides a possible explanation for her failures: How can she possibly understand such cartoonish characters? How could a rational, pragmatic Westerner, the “Christ of computers” (58), possibly be compatible with the antiquated Japan of geishas and samurais? Like Dai, in retelling the past Nothomb poeticizes her experiences and “translates” her performance for her audience, her readers. Both authors deliberately present a romanticized past that has been stripped of details that would distract from the re-presentation they wish to ultimately create.

Film Adaptations: Third Performance Both Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress and Fear and Trembling were adapted into films that qualify as additional “translations” of the migratory experience. Though these two adaptations are significantly less popular than their source novels and have received less critical attention, they warrant examination as cinematic works precisely due to their status as adaptations—that is, as multiply translated works, originating themselves from moments of translation in the protagonists’ lives.

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Fig. 2-2. Amélie peering nervously over her work.

The film adaptation of Fear and Trembling, directed by Alain Corneau and starring Sylvie Testud and Kaori Tsuji as Amélie and Fubuki, mirrors the novel quite faithfully and effectively illustrates several of the points discussed above (Stupeur et tremblements 2003). The visual contrast between Testud’s hair—frizzy and unruly—and Tsuji’s perfectly coiffed hair emphasizes the perceived difference between the supposedly “Western” and the “incarnation of Japanese beauty.” In addition, Testud’s voiceover narration in French is frequently dubbed over the Japanese dialogue, temporarily denying the audience access to the Japanese language – in these instances, subtitles are only given for the French, and the Japanese is left untranslated; due to the louder voiceover, the Japanese would nonetheless remain inaudible to those who do understand the language. As mentioned earlier, this “untranslatability” is used particularly effectively in the scene where Mr. Omochi verbally abuses Fubuki. Amélie suddenly finds Japanese incomprehensible; the audience is also denied access. And whereas in the novella Amélie uses Loti’s essentialist fetishizing language to describe Fubuki, the film repeatedly subjects Fubuki to Amélie’s (and the audience’s) voyeuristic, fantasizing gaze.

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Fig. 2-3. Fubuki, in Amélie’s imagination.

As another consequence of the story’s translation into film, viewers who are more familiar with the Japanese language will be able to instantly recognize that Testud’s Japanese, though competent and fluid, is accented and thus betrays Amélie’s status as foreigner, despite her best attempts to become Japanese. The film’s visual and aural properties emphasize the obstacles that stand in the way of Amélie’s desire to translate and perform perfectly. Perhaps these side effects of “film translation” are unintended, but the film’s citation of other films deliberately destabilizes any interpretive authority held by either side of Amélie’s playful East-West dichotomy. Both in the novella and the film, Amélie brings up Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence as an example of two individuals from different sides of that binary coming to a tentative understanding. In the novella, Amélie tells Fubuki, “There’s the same difference between you and me as there is between Ryuichi Sakamoto and David Bowie ... Misunderstandings hide a genuine desire to understand one another” (Nothomb 2001, 110). And in both novella and film, Fubuki flatly dismisses Amélie’s interpretation of the film on the basis that Amélie looks nothing like Bowie. Though Fubuki is almost certainly disagreeing with Amélie out of spite, this conversation highlights the fact that no single reading of a film is final. Amélie sees reconciliation, but Fubuki finds unbridgeable difference between Sakamoto and Bowie, and between herself and Amélie. Indeed, Amélie may discover moral support for her translations in one film, but unavoidable violence in another, as she fantasizes about facing off against Fubuki with a gun battle reminiscent of those in John

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Woo films, among others. If Gore Vidal is correct that “film has become the lingua franca of our time” (quoted in Shih 2007, 8), it is clearly one that, like any other language, is still subject to fluid and, at times, deliberate misinterpretation and mistranslation.

Fig. 2-4. The final showdown.

Interestingly enough, however, the film does provide further validation of Amélie’s “Japanification,” however partially accomplished. The novella’s final paragraphs describe Amélie’s return to Europe and successful publication of her first novel; Fubuki’s congratulatory missive, “written in elegant Japanese characters,” brings her “great happiness” (Nothomb 2001, 132). In the film, this scene has Fubuki writing the letter on stationery imprinted with sakura blossoms, carefully drawing those “elegant Japanese characters,” untranslated, using a traditional calligraphy pen. The camera zooms in on Amélie’s face, clearly emotional, as she reads the letter, as a dissolve into Fubuki’s thoughtful expression as she considers her writing symbolically bridges the gap between the two former adversaries. Amélie has finally made a connection with her symbol of Japan. Subsequently, the scene transitions to Amélie and Fubuki sitting together, facing the Japanese rock garden. This sequence may be read as a final closure for Amélie, because the film begins with shots of Amélie sitting alone in front of the same garden. She is first shown as a child, then as an adult as Amélie begins to narrate her experience in Japan as a corporate employee. One of the final cuts of the film transforms both Amélie and Fubuki into children again, visually connoting renewed access

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to that mythic Japan once barred to Amélie-as-adult. Although she failed to integrate herself into a Japanese corporation, she has at least, according to the film’s visuals, achieved a further degree of “Japanification.” In the film’s final shot, the camera pans left from Amélie and Fubuki, framing the silent Zen garden as the credits roll. Whatever final understanding Amélie may have gained has not been translated for us. Dai Sijie’s self-directed film adaptation of Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress (2002) is an even more striking re-presentation of the self. Although the film contains many changes to the novel’s version of events—notably those involving the characters of Four-Eyes and the old miller—it is, in essence, also a nostalgic ode to the past, repackaged for consumption as entertainment. As mentioned earlier, the film takes us briefly into the future just before the final resolution of the novel’s events; this interlude allows the characters Ma and Luo to view the past from a position of superiority and through filters of mythology and romanticism, not unlike what Dai has done in writing the novel itself. The film shows us that Ma and Luo are doing quite well for themselves in the present: Ma is a professional violinist and can afford to purchase Yves Saint-Laurent perfume for the Little Seamstress; Luo’s wife proudly announces that Luo is now a dentistry professor with national authority.19 Their past in reeducation comes to Ma through a French-language news report on the construction of the Three Gorges Dam, with the anchor narrating over television footage of the Yangtze River and impacted villages; the past is only confronted through the filtering layers of the television screen and the French language. Ma’s passive reception of a China “repackaged” for French television echoes the film viewer’s position vis-à-vis Dai’s film, which presents the China of Dai’s past reshaped into a classical cinematic narrative. When Ma is browsing the airport’s duty-free store for perfume, a store clerk asks him for whom the purchase is intended, and he replies, “Une petite tailleuse chinoise,” effectively rechristening the Little Seamstress with the name that simultaneously emphasizes her status as the novel’s titular character who is romanced by Balzac and other French writers, and deprives her of any true identity; the mythologization continues. When Ma returns to the village and asks for the Little Seamstress, a shy teenage girl comes forward; the departed Little Seamstress has literally been replaced by yet another, as if to confirm that there will always be a Little Seamstress “type” in the village, and that the girl’s identity is not as important as her role. In present day Shanghai, when Ma and Luo are watching Ma’s video footage of his visit, Luo remarks that he hears voices coming from the grotto where they had hid the banned books, and Ma’s deliberately enigmatic reply that “it was

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[their] voices … over 20 years ago” allows the film to segue back into the novel’s resolution—the Little Seamstress’s departure—while underlining the fact that the past still haunts the present. The addition of the flashforward sequences is the biggest difference between the film and the novel, and since Dai is the author of both works, this interlude may be read as yet another adapted performance of his own experiences.

Fig. 2-5. The Three Gorges Dam on the French news.

Conclusion At first glance, Chinese émigré writer-filmmaker Dai Sijie and prolific Belgian writer Amélie Nothomb have only two things in common: their written language and their popularity. It is easy to consider them in terms of the archetypal division between “East” and “West,” a schema still very much in circulation, however problematically and apologetically. In this reading, Dai romanticizes Western literature as an embodiment of freedom and individuality, and Nothomb deliberately exaggerates differences between West and East, emphasizing Japanese beauty and the Western mind. Yet their flight paths converge in these two narratives of migration and its accompanying translations and performances; the disparate trajectories approach a shared axis of globalization of the self, an ongoing, problematic process. In one of his comparative literature projects—though he rejects the notion that they are such—Alain Badiou speaks simultaneously of “untranslatability” and a “comparatisme quand même” (Apter 2006, 54), a paradoxical philosophy that Emily Apter (2006, 57) summarizes as “a way of confronting the bare truth of translational dysfunction, while soldiering on.” In both of these migration narratives—within and beyond the text— the performers encounter the problematic, even the untranslatable; yet,

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they “soldier on,” re-translating these experiences into popular novels and films to which many are able to relate. These tertiary translations, however, pose reading problems of their own in both their status as text with visual and aural properties, and their status as repackaged personal experiences, already based on problematic translation, that must then be “re-translated” into filmic entertainment that holds mass appeal. Multiple translations and multiply-inflected performances do not invalidate the truth of any one subject’s experiences, but demonstrate that “[i]n every possible sense, translation is necessary but impossible” (Spivak 2000, 13). If, however, “translational dysfunction” is inevitable in this “age of globalization,”20 then we as viewers and readers must bear the responsibility of viewing, reading—and interpreting—these multiple layers with care.

Works Cited Albin Michel. 2010. “Une forme de vie: Amélie Nothomb - Rentrée littéraire 2010.” Accessed December 17. http://www.albin-michel.fr/rentree-litteraire/auteurs/amelie-nothomb. Apter, Emily. 2006. “‘Je ne crois pas beaucoup à la littérature comparée’: Universal Poetics and Postcolonial Comparatism.” In Comparative Literature in an Age of Globalization, edited by Haun Saussy, 54-62. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press. Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress. 2002. Directed by Dai Sijie. New York: Empire Pictures, 2005. DVD. Chen, Xiaomei. 1995. Occidentalism: A Theory of Counter-Discourse in Post-Mao China. New York: Oxford University Press. Chevaillier, Flore. 2011. “Commercialization and Cultural Misreading in Dai Sijie’s Balzac et la Petite Tailleuse chinoise.” Forum for Modern Language Studies 47: 60-74. Chiba, Yoko. 1998. “Japonisme: East-West Renaissance in the Late 19th Century.” Mosaic: A Journal for the Interdisciplinary Study of Literature. 31 (2): 1-20. Chine, ma douleur. 1989. Directed by Dai Sijie. Paris: OF2B Editions, 2006. DVD. Dai, Sijie. 2000a. Balzac et la Petite Tailleuse chinoise. Paris: Gallimard. —. 2000b. Interview by Bernard Pivot. Bouillon de culture. Antenne 2. January 21. http://www.ina.fr/archivespourtous/index.php?vue=notice &id_notice=I00013379. —. 2001. Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress. Translated by Ina Rilke. New York: Alfred A. Knopf. —. 2003. Le Complexe de Di. Paris: Gallimard.

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Dirlik, Arif. 1994. After the Revolution: Waking to Global Capitalism. Hanover: University Press of New England. Editions Gallimard. 2002. Dai Sijie profile page. http://www.gallimard.fr/catalog/html/event/index/index_daisijie .html. Garcia, Daniel. 2006. “Les silences d’Amélie.” LiRE, September 1. http://www.lexpress.fr/culture/livre/les-silences-d-amelie_811533 .html. Hsieh, Yvonne. 2002. “Splendeurs et misères des mots: Balzac et la Petite Tailleuse chinoise de Dai Sijie,” Études francophones 17 (1): 93-105. Jaccomard, Hélène. 2002. “Le fabuleux destin d’Amélie Nothomb.” Esprit créateur 42 (4): 45-57. Livre de Poche. 2010. “Le Petit Amélie illustré.” Accessed December 12. http://www.livredepoche.com/dossier-du-mois/amelie-nothomb/index. htm. Loti, Pierre. 1921. Madame Chrysanthème. Translated by Laura Ensor. New York: Boni and Liveright. Nothomb, Amélie. 1993. Le Sabotage amoureux. Paris: Albin Michel. —. 1999. Stupeur et tremblements. Paris: Albin Michel. —. 2001. Fear and Trembling. Translated by Adriana Hunter. New York: St. Martin’s Press. —. 2004. “Entretien avec Amélie Nothomb.” By Mark D. Lee. French Review 77: 562-75. Riding, Alan. 2005. “Artistic Odyssey: Film to Fiction to Film.” New York Times, July 27. http://www.nytimes.com /2005/07/27/movies/Movies Features/27balz.html. Shih, Shu-mei. 2007. Visuality and Identity: Sinophone Articulations Across the Pacific. Berkeley: University of California Press. Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty. 2000. “Translation as Culture.” parallax 6 (1): 13-24. Stupeur et tremblements. 2003. Directed by Alain Corneau. Chicago: Home Vision, 2005. DVD. Trierweiler, Valérie. 2011. “Rentrée littéraire, des stars et un jardin.” Paris Match, January 1. http://www .parismatch.com/CultureMatch/Livres/Actu/Rentree-litteraire-Angot-Besson-AssoulineDelerme-Orban -Jardin-Roze-236055. Yu, Sen-lun. 2002. “Romantic boyhood memories of a Chinese filmmaker.” Taipei Times, May 20. http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/feat/archives/2002/05/20/136866.

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Notes 1

Michelle Bloom’s France and Asia seminar at the University of California, Riverside, along with her valuable suggestions and critique, have contributed immensely to the formation of this essay. An earlier version was presented at the 2008 annual conference of the American Association of Chinese Studies. 2 See Chevaillier (2011, 62), along with Dai and Nothomb’s authors’ pages at Editions Gallimard (2002) and Livre de Poche (2010) for a list of works published and awards won. 3 See, for example, Albin Michel’s (2010) press page for Nothomb’s most recent work, Une forme de vie, published in 2010, and Trierweiler (2011) on Dai’s Trois vies chinoises, appearing in 2011. 4 I generally use “translation” throughout this essay in the sense of cultural translation—attempting to understand, and make understand, individuals as they have been shaped by their respective cultural and linguistic backgrounds, that are in turn different from one’s own milieu—and not in the sense of (written) translation as being distinct from (oral) interpretation. Likewise, “interpretation” here is simply an act of hermeneutics. 5 My preference is for this term over Serge Doubrovsky’s autofiction; both denote a commingling of the true with some degree of the fictive and/or the imaginary, and are sufficiently distinct from autobiographical works, which are usually thought of as containing less fictionalization. 6 See Chevaillier (2011, 62) for a summary of the novel’s sales figures in France. 7 “Country of origin”; “I was convinced that I was Japanese.” Original French texts will be cited only if no English translation was available, if the English translation differs significantly, or if the French provides necessary clarification. In these cases, I provide my own translation in a footnote. 8 Hereafter, “Amélie” refers to the first person narrator in Fear and Trembling, and “Nothomb” refers to the author. Additional clarification will be provided where necessary. 9 From the French original: “Il y était écrit: « Nous allons vivre une épreuve abominable … »” (Nothomb 1999, 41) and “Dans ses yeux, je lus: « Taisez-vous, par pitié! »” (43); “It was written there: ‘We are about to experience an abominable ordeal’” and “In his eyes, I read, ‘For pity’s sake, be quiet!’” 10 The French original has, “Je ne parvenais pas à traduire …” (Nothomb 1999, 161). 11 Citation is from the original French text (Nothomb 1999, 180), which I translate as follows: “It was extraordinary. I even invented a bunch of things that were coming out of my mouth, all by themselves, just like that.” The English version has, “There I was, improvising away, saying all sorts of things off the top of my head” (Nothomb 2001, 155), which seems to give the Little Seamstress more control over her spontaneous performance because “off the top of my head” still implies self-invention and is not simply “things coming out of one’s mouth.”

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12 The characters in the novel, while supposedly based on real people, also make appearances in other more obviously fictional works by Dai such as Le Complexe de Di, Par une nuit où la lune ne s’est pas levée, and the film Chine, ma douleur. 13 Chevaillier (2011, 64) also discusses the novel’s foregrounding of playful EastWest dichotomies over serious historical descriptions that certain readers might have expected. 14 I am thus in agreement with Chevaillier (2011, 67) that, contrary to critics’ accusations that Dai is unabashedly “selling out” China in order to glorify his adopted country, this ending “clearly complicates the boys’ relationship to European role models, and thus reveals that Dai does not merely condemn the ideals of the Cultural Revolution to praise European political models.” Chevaillier’s article also devotes much attention to the same issues of misreading, but does so in the context of the novel’s promotion and reception, and its perceived “self-orientalization.” Yvonne Hsieh’s (2002) article has a similar reading of the novel as well. And though it is beyond the scope of this essay, one could easily make the argument that Dai’s (2003) Le Complexe de Di also satirizes the rote misreadings of French philosophers performed by its protagonist. 15 The French is “un veritable cercle de fer qui serrait de plus en plus mon crane” (“a veritable circle of iron that was gripping my skull ever more tightly”) (Dai 2000a, 88), which is an exact description of what happens to the Monkey King when the band on his head tightens. 16 As Hélène Jaccomard (2002, 47) comments, mythologization (“mythification”) and hyperbole is a constant feature of Nothomb’s semi-autobiographical works. 17 See Loti (1921) for examples of names such as (Mesdames) Prune, Fraise, Zinia, Jonquille, Campanule, and, of course, Madame Chrysanthème. 18 “A work of art inaccessible to understanding.” Adriana Hunter translates the same phrase as “a moving work of art” (Nothomb 2001, 65). 19 Per subtitles; the original Mandarin states that Luo is a professor and receives a special stipend from the State Council. 20 The anthology in which Apter’s essay appears is titled Comparative Literature in an Age of Globalization.

CHAPTER THREE NO PLACE LIKE HOME: MINOR TRANSNATIONALISMS IN JIA ZHANGKE’S THE WORLD (₥䟛) REGINA YUNG LEE

The power of language is made most concrete through the complications of the spoken word in Jia Zhangke’s 2004 film The World, where putonghua vies with Shanxi dialect. In The World, this sense of nostalgic monoethnicity manifests itself in the commonplace assumptions of putonghua—Normal Speech or Standardized Mandarin—as default language, not a dialect or even a conscious choice. However, the linguistically unified ideological nation demonstrates a self-evident artificiality, which emphasizes in turn the constructed nature of national identity and mother tongue. Jia’s film demonstrates a subtle understanding of the ways in which China's seemingly monolithic construction fractures when reconsidered through linguistic, temporal, or cultural frames. World Park Bejing (࣫ҀϪ⬠݀ು) is a theme park located on the outskirts of the city, which includes replicas of the world’s best-known monuments and identifiable locations. The World Park’s tagline, “See the world without leaving Beijing,” scrolls across the screen right before the film’s own title appears; the contradictions inherent in that single line form a part of the film’s significant tensions. Through its judicious uses of putonghua, as well as its general critique of The World Park’s ideological projection of a unified China, The World brings Chineseness itself into question, opening up a way to read or render “Sinophonality”—Shu-mei Shih’s language-based, regionally-inflected designation—within mainland texts. In this way, Shih’s powerful mode of redefining peripheries can also account for the contingency and destabilization of Chineseness from within its putative borders by linking minor transnationalisms through linguistic difference to point out alienation from an increasingly fabricated

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and retrenched center. Reading Sinophonality within The World renders the film’s fascination with linguistic separation and surface construction as ironic critiques of the mainland’s unity, as expressed in the film’s deployment of putonghua as a policing of borders (use between strangers) or as official policy (work-related interactions, recorded instructions). The film shows that “Sinophonality”, as an idea, does not have to be decentralized from its own origins. Jia’s film problematizes definitions of Chineseness, deepens discussions of geopolitically-based belonging, and complicates linguistic identification. Yet the film also cannot be read in simple allegorical terms. It avoids the clichéd visual codes that so often tend to link arthouse films with a recognizable auteur. A consideration of the relationship between Tao and Anna (two of the main protagonists) will show that words themselves are not the crucial component of their comprehension; rather, it is their shared participation in the brutal economies of The World Park that forms the basis of their mutual understanding. Political allegories couched in language recede within the relationships at The World Park, as uncanny space and bodily destruction combine within the compass of Jia’s technical mastery. This chapter seeks to examine the theme of “dialect as access” within the film, while showing that the film complicates its own reading through the moments of non-linguistic understanding between the women characters. The chapter also discusses Jia’s filmic techniques, which govern vision and environment in The World. In order to demonstrate the contrived nature of linguistic purity, the fundamental artificiality attending the creation of The World Park’s closed system is underscored. The consistent auditory juxtaposition of conversations in dialect and the (often recorded) instructions in putonghua demonstrate this strange halfawareness of artifice as surely as the caravan of security guards, laughingly carrying water bottles across a replica of the Pyramids. Outside of the layered complexity of Sinophonality, Tao and Anna share a deep, linguistically-noncompliant comprehension. This comprehension leads to Tao’s shattering understanding of the desperate measures that Anna must go to in order to leave. The doubled language barrier (Ana speaks Russian) is demolished by their shared experience of profound exploitation and entrapment. Taken together, the film is a series of intimate analyses of individual narratives. The film allows for potentially allegorical readings while simultaneously refuting their limitations through a masterful appropriation and deployment of arthouse filmic techniques. In 2004, director Jia Zhangke released The World, his first film within the compass of the Chinese Film Board’s official regulation and support. Jia’s earlier works, already recipients of considerable critical acclaim

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outside of China, had been available within China only through vaguely clandestine means: the brown paper bags, the certain video shops. According to Michael Berry, “[f]or most Chinese audiences, these bootleg VCDs in the little brown paper bags sold at shady video stores throughout China’s cities were the only way they could see the films of Jia Zhangke” (2009, 7). The titillation of illegitimacy proved a selling point outside of the PRC, but Jia’s own rationale for first embracing and then abandoning his “underground” status reflects a prosaic acknowledgment of his working conditions. In her article on the Chinese underground film movement, Valerie Jaffee writes that “[i]n many ways, the story of Chinese underground cinema has for a long time been a myth ripe for dismantling” (Jaffee 2007 “sensesofcinema”), a welcome acknowledgment of the polarized designations and easy descriptions still prevalent within marketing campaigns for many of the “Sixth Generation” directors’ films. Jaffee presents the designation “Banned in China” in terms of orientalist self-satisfaction: by viewing a film banned by a country perceived to be oppressive and anti-egalitarian, the viewer validates “an updated version of Orientalism that treasures the idea of Chinese intellectuals as oppressed fighters for whom every act of representation is political” (Jaffee 2007 “sensesofcinema”). This rarefied auteur-activist role finds both traction and friction in Jia’s film. Jia’s stated desire to have his work seen in theaters by members of the Chinese public seems like a desire for legitimation, but despite its official sanction, The World is hardly an encomium on the People’s Republic. The film’s demonstration of putonghua’s positionality at the centre of an artificial monolinguicity—against a backdrop of to-scale replicas—creates a provocative commentary on official policies of linguistic and cultural unity. All of this is wrapped in the superficial glow and dislocated dreamscape of The World Park. Jia’s next films overtly address aspects of digital representation, expanding his films’ distinctive meldings of arthouse and documentary techniques to trace the passages between political and personal invention, as well as documentary and fictionalized narrative.

Revisioning China, Revising The Camera-Eye The techniques of arthouse film form a subtle reiteration of The World’s larger critique: just as Shanxi’s presence destabilizes the flattening homogenization of putonghua, so does the work of Jia and his cinematographer and sometime associate producer, Yu Likwai. The visual language or “dialect” of the New Wave acts as a form of warning, a

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guarded but actualized reminder to see beyond the artificial boundaries of the national allegory that are in place within the film. One of these techniques is the presence and importance of the “deep field” as filmic technique within The World. Jia’s camera deliberately refuses the flat screen, imparting depth and dimension to its frames. Right from the beginning, the moving camera records Tao’s loud search for a bandage through the backstage chaos preceding the nightly show, while the deep field behind her moving figure reveals the blank dingy corridors filled with props and costumed dancers.

Fig. 3-1. Tao finally locates her band-aid. Note the costuming on the women in the shot.

The film opens as Tao, one of the performers at The World Park, is looking for a bandage. Her near-ritualistic, repetitive request carries the camera across all the dressing rooms until we reach her own, where she howls her request in frustration, which finally produces a result. Tao heads around the corner to be greeted with the scene in Fig. 3-1, ersatz costumes and all. Tao’s obsessive odyssey takes the camera from room to room, full of chattering young performers gearing up for the night’s show, their multicultural finery and thick makeup looking very overdone under the yellowing fluorescents. Tao’s opening challenge – “Does anyone have a bandage?” – is finally met, and Tao goes around a set of mirrors to find three other women dressed for the show, in Korean hanbok, Chinese qipao, and something Eastern European. Along with Tao’s Indian princess outfit, the women’s easy conversation combined with their stereotypical clothing, form an early taste of The World Park’s peculiar and exploitative synthetics. The

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women stream out onto the dance floor, and the cool pulse of the Show Soundtrack can be heard as the ambient camera moves through the dancers’ ranks, their glitter and gleam already stripped through the camera’s previous uncovering of backstage life. Each night’s show is like this. It is no accident that the opening scene is about the covering of small, repetitive wounds. Jia has chosen a relentlessly mundane opening, one which reveals both the number of performers and their dilapidated surroundings, bathed in those fluorescents, an acridity which gradually shades into prominence as the film progresses. The acridity of the light and the mundanity of Tao’s passage are made more prominent by the distant smiles and closeupperfect staging of the performance scene: as Tao finally applies her longsought bandage, Lim Giong’s musical score for the nightly performance begins its haunting echo. Meanwhile, the aural atmosphere – always a critical part of Jia’s films – is filled with far too many voices to follow. As the lights come up on a pre-2001 New York skyline (“Our Twin Towers are still standing,” Taisheng will later note), the ambient-electro score drowns out the performers’ cheerful backstage chatter as they stream onto the stage and the lights shift from yellow to gold. The instrumental score, beautiful at first, becomes increasingly hollow with each repetition of the stage show, looping over and eventually silencing the complicated outworkings of each performer’s personal pain. The camera cuts from Tao’s exit to the now-empty backstage corridors as Lim’s score continues to play; the unglamorous exposed piping and silent artifacts of performance are as much a part of the show as anything happening onstage. The diptych of Band-Aid and nightly performance passes through Tao’s monorail trip, from which the camera seems to digress in order to follow a caravan of chattering guards carrying water pitchers. The camera also records The World Park’s slogan, appearing as the caravan crosses the to-scale replicas of the pyramids. The caravan gives way to the title shot’s long take: in the foreground, a worker dressed in nondescript clothes carries a huge pack of what seems to be recyclables while the Eiffel Tower replica looms behind him, pasted against the Beijing skyline. He turns to look into the camera, then trudges on, as a recorded voice speaking putonghua indistinctly welcomes visitors to The World Park. Meanwhile, the film’s title fades out of the sky. The shot is distinctly reminiscent of the landscape paintings of Classical antiquity, even as smog fills the sky, the monorail moves in its endless circle, and the worker trudges out of the shot. The monorail’s restless movement provides a disruption of the still

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camera. The worker’s weary movement toward the camera finally puts the Eiffel Tower replica into perspective. The camera is still throughout the long take, centering the Eiffel Tower replica against the city in what is certainly a gesture toward the French New Wave. But the shot also throws into question both the postivist conception of national belonging as well as the individual cost of sustaining authenticity. The worker in the foreground is separated from both the Eiffel Tower and The World Park monorail, moving along his entirely flat, foregrounded plane. If there is an intersection or collision, it will not occur in this scene. In contrast with Truffaut’s exhilarating and fast-moving takes, the still camera here relegates the Eiffel Tower to the background. It is not necessarily ironic: the dispossessed citizens of Beijing cannot reach even the illusory glory of pretend-travel which The World Park provides, their passports are not nascent or stolen, but – as visualized in this opening juxtaposition – simply unimaginable. Taken together, these opening scenes function as a brief introduction to the film’s major themes: the mass presence of counterfeits, and moreover, the costly individual passages within them.

Fig. 3-2. Title Shot. Note the Eiffel Tower replica centered against the backdrop of Beijing, as well as The World Park monorail at the far right.

The filmic techniques used to capture and frame the narratives are themselves worthy of note. Jia Zhangke and Yu Likwai have developed between them a set of methodologies notable for their melding of both amateur and auteur with the documentary. While they make full use of the middle-distance shots and digital medium of what might be termed an indie aesthetic, Jia’s films also contain the sustained deep field, minuteslong takes, and deliberately engineered tonal palettes which lend arthouse

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films their technical burnish. These are not merely the weary “checklist of ‘East Asian art film attributes’”, which Shelly Kraicer appends to his critique of foreign film fest programmers, but also another methodology for meaning-making: not just the output of an auteur, but also a narrative and thematic depth which disallows mere shallow readings. In Jia’s case, the documentary lens is co-opted for the purposes of arthouse films, rendering the distinction of artificial and actual narratives in the same tones, with the same methods. Thus, Jia levies his own substantial critique of the viewer’s expectations of documentary film, requiring an opening up (and, perhaps, a gathering in) of the concept of vérité itself.1 The tendency to read Chinese films through national allegory has yet to subside, at least in English-language review. This desire to read these films as a commentary on recent historical change is underlined by Jia’s avowed close attention to historical significance and social change as a director. Jia’s later films have tended closely toward a hybridization of documentary and the dramatic, often to unsettling effect. However, seen from another angle, the melding of story and documentary into a single narrative event emphasizes the constructed nature of national allegory. The extreme artifactuality2 of Jia’s films, while self-evidently a commentary on China’s modernization and urban development, also point out their constructed and agential dimensions, enlarging the nation out of an allegorical and singular state. This second layer of meaning resides in the deep field of the film’s interpretive mesh. We read the film outside of the framework of national allegory by taking the politicized representational power of language performances, technologized interpellation, and globalized simulacra as mediated by the lens itself. The camera’s methodologies provide simultaneous reinterpretations through the visual techniques spread by the French and Italian films of the New Wave and Neorealism. Yet beyond the immediate spot-the-reference moments, the film remains insistent that it can and must be taken on its own merit, not as national allegory, but as an arthouse masterpiece. The documentary techniques perform the same function as the long still take in The World: a sense of many lives spilling out through the story, discontinuous with each other, raucous, blaring. The auteuresque3 cinematic gestures evident throughout Jia’s work become a method of requiring complex readings, requiring analysis and commentary, just as poststructuralist theory’s specific methodologies required careful attention to the strategic deployment of each new word. The elaborate mise-enscène for the stage scenes carry the viewer through the initial éblouissement in the close camerawork to the dreariness of overexposure, the forced

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smiles and harsh makeup lines, the increasingly claustrophobic close camera, the meaningless dazzle of motion and sound. The most entertainment-focused part of the film is the most choreographed, the least interesting – and the most revealing. “I think that in Chinese society today there are a lot of moments where what’s going on could be called a show,” Jia says in an interview with Valerie Jaffee (2007 “sensesofcinema”). Jaffee notes that Jia uses the English word show, a brief meaningful interpellation of the spectacle’s successful Anglophonization in the 21st century, tied to the world’s gentle pressure on the United States as a cultural producer par excellence. The concept of performing one’s way through life is hardly new. Yet seen within the compass of the performative aspects of dialect and compassion, the employees of The World Park demonstrate that it is not just the centrality of the text, but also the sacrifices of their bodies within the Park’s economies of scale. More, the ubiquity of Sinophone4 plurality in their interrelations, the seemingly-automatic movement between the dialects belied by the need to convincingly render a nostalgic home, both embody and perform its continuation and presence through the lapses into dialect. To reinterpret, perhaps what Jia’s film has arranged is not a show, but a shewing, an aestheticized, ecstatic revelation of artifactuality framed within the lives and bodies so intricately interpolated in its construction and continuation in The World Park.

Rethinking Sinophonality: Minor Transnationalisms in Major Centers According to Shu-Mei Shih, a term that is neither “Chinese” nor “diaspora” is necessary to describe the categorization she is calling the Sinophone5 because despite the great efforts of many, the word “Chinese” has little to no actual meaning as a unifying descriptor. For Shih, Chineseness presupposes and privileges a kind of national fantasy based on a putative geographic unity, as the primary measure of presence, identity, and awareness. In the introduction to Visuality and Identity, Shih argues that beyond the dearth of meaning in “Chinese” as an ethnic signifier, the historical meaning of that term is profoundly Han-centric, serving to conceal the great preponderance of ethnic diversity within China itself: The Chinese language, as it is generally assumed and understood, is nothing but the standardized language imposed by the state, that is, the language of the Han, the Hanyu; the Chinese, as we know them, are

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largely limited to the Han, and Chinese culture refers mainly to the culture of the Han. The term “ethnic Chinese” is therefore a serious misnomer, since Chineseness is not an ethnicity but many ethnicities. (Shih 2007, 24)

This call for the interrogation of Chineseness as a designator of identity, ethnicity, and belonging profoundly de-ranges its power, both within and outside of the academy. In her introduction to her edited collection, Modern Chinese Literary and Cultural Studies: Reimagining a Field, Rey Chow points to the definition’s ideological foundations in what she considers both insular and exclusionary terms, from within the sinological academic circles, and from within the national project itself. In a move reminiscent of her work in “The Protestant Ethnic”— in which she also discusses the confessional ethnic subject’s implications for pedagogy and critique — Chow discusses the ethnic supplement of Chineseness, appended to a series of literary and theoretical concerns, as a response invested in maintaining geopolitical stability and peripheries. She considers these responses in terms that she guardedly but repeatedly considers racist, “a type of representational copula-tion forced at the juncture between literature and ethnicity” (2000, 15). Chow’s critique of the nationalist allegory as a facile reading of contemporary Chinese film relies on the intricate construction of implication and expectation which result from that reading’s interpellation within a kind of Chineseness, “part and parcel of the fraught dynamic of coercive mimeticism” (2002, 116). Shih picks up the argument here, demanding that Chineseness be considered in terms of its nation-building project. Like Rey Chow, Shih argues that Chineseness is an artifact of nationalist desire, a fetish with an alarmingly quick uptake in both scholarly and political fields. She also points out the (myriad) ways in which Chineseness is not an accurate descriptor of a language or an ethnicity, especially emphasizing its inconsistency in designating groups, which contain either the language or the ethnicity as “Chinese” enough. Shih also considers the elision between “Chinese” and “Han” at length, which is only a surprise to those not aware of the massive diversity and uneven power differentials of ethnic groupings situated within East Asia. She relies on the power of these linguistic differentiations and visual imageries as ways to escape the rigidity of the classification, and focuses on areas peripheral to the mainland in order to make her point. In the allergic movement of Chow and Shih away from the monolithic China constructed in Anglophone sinology there is a subtle accusation of both the object-construction from the academic fields and the Han-centric construction of Chineseness from within China itself. This helps explain the prominence of Taiwan, Hong Kong—and to a lesser extent, Korea and Japan—in Shih’s discussion.

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Instead of castigating the academy for its misuse of Chineseness as an imposition and proscription upon those who might be called Chinese, Shih proposes doing away with Chineseness almost entirely. Through a series of specific examples demonstrating the clash of linguistic, ethnic, and geographic descriptors, Shih argues that Chineseness should only exist as a designation of nationality. Thus, she renders its instrumentality within linguistic and ethnic contexts very clear, substantiating Chow’s position by changing the objectionable parameters of imposed definition. Shih also clearly delineates the Sinophone as a temporary and changeable parameter, based on the work done by those within the Sinophone, as opposed to those who study it: The Sinophone is a place-based, everyday practice and experience, and thus it is a historical formation that constantly undergoes transformation reflecting local needs and conditions. It can be a site of both a longing for and a rejection of various constructions of Chineseness; it can be a site of both nationalism of the long-distance kind, anti-China politics, or even nonrelation with China, whether real or imaginary. (2007, 30)

Shih envisions the Sinophone as a less-fraught and more accurate designation of linguistically-based commonality. While this is attractive, it runs headlong into the problems set up from within the community she calls Zhong-Gang-Tai: that of ethnicity-related class-based accents, mutual unintelligibility, and the continual pressure upon the periphery from their national governments. While her terminology does go some way toward addressing the issues that Chow raises, I contend that it cannot be used to address the nationalist consolidation of identities—mediated through forms of linguistic purity and mandated by various governmental bodies— from within the Sinophone countries themselves. The logic of the wound, which Chow elucidates, is not entirely countered by the periphery and mutuality of Shih’s formulation. Specifically, in not addressing Mainland China, Shih’s terminology puts a spotlight on the peripheral communities she most wishes to address. However, Shih has also provided the first steps toward a response to the increasingly important issue of how to discuss Chineseness in less reductive ways. Similarly, Chow’s edited volume can be considered her response to those in the Anglophone academy whose construction of Chineseness have tended to remand it to the form of an ethnic supplement. In both cases, Shih and Chow struggle to reimagine not just a field, but the terminology of the humanities, in ways that are both frustratingly imperfect and very productive – and absolutely necessary to the work of reconfiguration of the individual ethnic subject.

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Shih’s sharply argued statement for the creation of the Sinophone (as a categorization to replace the Chinese or the Mandarin-speaking) does not come solely from the fluid flow of related linguistic markers within the geographic region designated East Asia. Instead of arguing for the prevalence of a single Chineseness, Shih contends that the languages which make up Sinophonality, or the state of speaking Chinese, are not singular, or singularizable, and that China and its diasporas can be recognized instead as populations that shift in relation with each other—not that of center to periphery, because no center exists. The Sinophone designation deliberately flattens some historical aspects in order to cut off the speculative fiction of “trueness” or authenticity, substituting linguistic presence and accent-based diversity instead. Shih’s linguistically-focused discussion brings attention to the rich cultural production of various Sinophonalities, but remains largely silent on the linguistic fractures and variances within the mainland itself. Yet, the supposition that China itself is made up of various Sinophonalities forms a far harsher critique of the mainland’s own antihistorical urges than any analysis of “diasporic literatures” could dream of enacting. Michael Berry’s seemingly innocuous discussion of Jia’s production team is interesting in this regard: With a partnership formed just on the eve of the historic 1997 handover of Hong Kong, the relationship between Jia and his HK partners would foreshadow the rapid integration of the HK and PRC film industries in the post-handover years. At the same time, this particular trans-China cinematic collaboration would go on to produce some of the most exciting and visionary cinematic works of contemporary Chinese cinema. (Berry 2009, 23)

The fact that Berry can use the term “trans-China” here and mean it, simply and unambiguously, suggests that the Sinophonality of media culture has spread within the East Asian sphere, while managing to include the so-called centre as another form of the marginalized. Instead of relying on China’s monolithic self-imaginary and artificially-maintained linguistic imperialisation, Berry’s offhand characterization of Jia Zhangke’s PRCHK artistic production team as “trans-China” encapsulates the wideness needed to open up the term of Sinophonality to include the minor transnationalisms Shih is so interested in elsewhere. It would seem, then, that denying a similarly minor key to Jia’s work—itself filmed in polyglot versions of Chinese—would constitute a matter of strict ideological commitment based only on the desire to break free from the PRC as a monolinguistic and monocultural entity. As Lu Tonglin puts it, “Despite

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the recent surge of Chinese nationalism, the picture of contemporary Chinese society is much more fragmentary and complicated than this ambiguous expression ‘China’ may convey” (2008, 166). Shih’s deliberate move away from the mainland toward Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore, and other Sinophone communities on the so-called periphery of China, while commendable in certain respects, is also too stringent: there ought to be a way in which her powerful articulation of the Sinophone is able to approach the work of a mainland director like Jia Zhangke, who is performing a critique very much in line with Shih’s. In fact, Shih’s Sinophonality, that “precarious and problematic relation to China” (2007, 30), comes to the fore in Jia’s film. In The World, Jia demonstrates a precisely articulated awareness of fractured Sinophone voices within a specific, urban fantastic space through his use of a specific provincial dialect (Shanxi) placed at odds with the Northern dialect (putonghua) in use throughout the alienated urban other-space. The idea of a mono-ethnic, linguistically-unified China is quickly demonstrated to be as artificial as any of the other replicas on display in The World Park: putonghua exists between Jia’s characters only because they cannot otherwise communicate with each other, and at best, it conveys a collapsing and sometimes overtly damaging concept of home or belonging.

The Politics of putonghua in The World Park Although China seeks modernity, pursuing it with near-relentless focus and drive, The World questions the ability of the vast majority of China’s peoples to access that supposedly West-facing openness. The film’s title shot perfectly encompasses the genuine incomprehension of the workers faced with the alienating intrusion of The World Park; from the opening scenes, Jia’s doubt about the viability of The World Park’s ideological project is clear. The World Park melds several layers of fiction, belief and desire through its meticulous to-scale replicas, assertions of unification and control narrated in putonghua to both attendees and workers alike. Sheldon Lu calls this aspect of the film “a mockery of globalization,” underscoring its nationalist tinge (Lu 2008, 5). Lu points out the constructed falsity and the intertwined ideological positioning of the national dialect and The World Park: “set in 21st-century Beijing, the film uses language in a way that connotes more than a provincial dialect; it intervenes in the mixed premodern, modern, and postmodern condition of China at large” (Lu 2008, 5, emphasis added). Unfortunately, Lu’s use of the word “ordinary viewer” unwittingly cements the centrality of putonghua outside of China itself, even as he deliberately points out that

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“[t]he film uses Shanxi dialect, spoken by Tao, Taisheng, and the people from their native city of Fenyang. The local dialect spoken by these characters clashes with the anonymous, universal putonghua blaring from the park’s loudspeakers” (2008, 7). What Lu calls “great disparity and non-synchronicity” (2008, 7) is also representable in terms of the pluralizing or fracture of the subject (what I call “subject-selves”); speaking in tongues as a matter of course. While dialect and dialogues form integral parts of the film, the patterns of imitations and fabrications laced throughout appropriately reflect the inability of the spoken word to hold the entirety of meaning the speakers wish to convey. Anna and Tao’s final meeting in the club bathroom reiterates their sympathy, expressed through their hands and voices, while Taisheng’s expression of grief outside Little Sister’s hospital room mirrors Tao’s when faced with Qun’s treacherous text: silence. Like their spectacular costumes and military-influenced uniforms, Tao and Taisheng perform identities affirmed and applauded by the tourists and directors who supervise and watch their work, not comprehending the magnitude of the deceptions involved. Lu’s description of the Shanxi dialect as “defamiliarizing, alienating and distancing” positions the “ordinary viewer” as someone who only speaks putonghua and therefore stands outside most of the cultural groups in the People’s Republic. This defamiliarization reveals the depth of the parallels Jia’s film draws between performance and speech act, speech and genuine communion. As Dennis Lim puts it, “The World emphasizes that the illusion of interconnectedness does not equal (or even enable) the experience of mobility.” Although I do not necessarily find Lu’s imputation of deliberate “mockery” (2008, 7) as convincing as Lim’s analysis of Jia’s artistic statement, the determined flattening of affect and difference between provinces and the city through putonghua deserves further consideration. Its existence reflects a facet of the ideological constructs built into and constructed within The World Park: according to the Park, not only is there one language in China, China is itself large enough to contain the world. Why should one desire, or be able, to travel beyond its borders? There is nothing real outside of them, after all. But this repressive stance is overturned by a far more fragmented and removed physical representation; no meticulous one-third scale model, just a childhood song and a worn photograph: a husband, standing in front of a restaurant in Belleville, a neighborhood in Paris--one which contains a Chinatown, another smallscale replica of an irremediably distant space. Like Anna’s sister, whom

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the viewer only knows through her song, Qun’s husband stands outside of the construct proof that something exists beyond the borders of China. There is a strong break between the vagaries and inconsistencies of the spoken word and the solidity of the written word throughout the film. Tao and Taisheng’s relationship is defined through declarations of need and insufficiency, but breaks when Tao discovers Qun’s text message, solid evidence of a betrayal. In the same way, Han Sanming’s promise to look after Little Sister6 is not only crushed with his body, but revealed as unnecessary through Little Sister’s orderly, final list of debts; that small slip of paper demonstrates both self-sufficiency and awareness of his rapidly oncoming death. But even as the reduction of lives into texts is made manifestly concrete, it is also bypassed (and therefore questioned) through the near-wordless relationship between Anna and Tao. The women share few words in common, but both understand the longing for the world outside The World Park, that world for which Ulan Bator and Paris become metonymic. The entire World Park, with its investments in replication and simulation, can only construct scale models, but it can never hope to construct “the real”. The park remains in stasis, a herd of chattering water-carrying guards, the closest its Egypt will ever get to the caravans of the Sahara. Putonghua in The World functions to erase difference, even as the Shanxi dialect works against that disappearance, sharply indicting its most basic assumption: that all Chinese speak the same Chinese, and that there is only one China. More – that only one China actually exists, and that it speaks putonghua. But while dialect is the site of Jia’s politicized rejection of similitude, it is also the location of specific artistic construct, the artifactuality of the spoken word. In an article on the specific permutations of dialect in Jia’s films, Jin Liu is careful to point out the ways in which Jia has transmuted or reshaped approaches to local dialect and home ground into narratives of their own, constructing them from his actors’ own dialects and experiences. “Note that the actors are allowed to speak their native dialects, which are not necessarily the dialects their characters would have spoken,” says Liu, referring to both Xiao Wu and Platform, two parts of Jia’s earlier Hometown Trilogy. “On the one hand, this is at odds with the director’s desire for cinematic verisimilitude.... On the other hand, the disregard [for] the appropriate and realistic use of dialects may indicate, to some degree, that the use of local languages is aimed more at creating an atmosphere than at conveying a particular message or speech” (Liu 2006, 168). Liu’s acute sensitivity to differences in dialect allow this careful parsing of intonations; identifying persistent local difference must lead to a consideration of the persistence as well as the difference. It is deceptive to

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say that the dialects are “at odds” with one another; they are constructed in this manner to open the way for the viewer to account for authenticity beyond what is normally deemed “appropriate and realistic.” Strikingly, the film’s linguistically-rendered uncertainties, redundancies and insufficiencies are undermined by the genuine understanding shared by Anna and Tao. Instead of relying on the feebleness and uncertainty of spoken communication, the two women demonstrate a profound communion instead, delineated through shared circumstance and high empathy, touched only lightly with words. In this reading, the unimaginability of Ulan Bator becomes the possibility of both genuine connection and escape from their hyperreal surroundings, reachable only through the tenuous human link of a shared song. The way the music bleeds over from the stage to the scene, from the small table to the nighttime ride across the park, seems to reinforce such a reading of the spillage from artifice to empathy. In contrast to the oblivious Taisheng, Anna and Tao are aware of their limited comprehension of each other’s realities; their lack of a common functional language unmasks the breadth of the distance between them. For Taisheng, this reality is obscured by the putonghua he uses to communicate with Qun; their locationless speech foreshadows their directionless nonpermanence, a small metonym for the kinds of relationships extant within the conceptual reach of The World Park. However, Anna and Tao forge their profound connection outside of language, only referencing that dream of commonality in passing – and find that they do not require it to comprehend each other after all. The music of The World Park is particularly notable, not just for its beauty, but for its inter- and intradiegetic commentary. The song that Anna and Zhao Tao sing to each other (“Ulan Bator,” with all its intimations of departure for a better life, a fantastically real place away from The World Park) joins the electronic soundscape surrounding the action with barely a hitch as Tao rides the monorail to her next destination. The fantasy of easy communication and effortless travel reveal themselves in that dreamy smile, recalling the animated magic carpet and its wistful desire for tangible commonality. The movement from that unaccompanied duet, wavering through the dingy air, to the pitch-perfect instrumental paired with Zhao Tao's nighttime ride on the ever-present monorail, illustrates the gulf between this song and the lush, despairing music of the nightly dances, which only becomes more haunting with each weary repetition.

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One Size Fits All: Space, Counterfeits, and Replicas in The World Park For Naoki Sakai, identity is a spatial and structural construct, rendered political by boundaries, capable of polarizing issues of travel and communication across languages and racial boundaries. Sakai considers the problematic construction of national identity in terms of a nationalist figure that requires the positionality and fixedness of an Otherland to which the nation can assign its invasive Others: “An individual is able to feel fully embraced in a nation only as long as he is confident that he is distinct from those who are unable to belong there,” he says. “Yet, the definition of those who are unable to belong there is historically fluid and almost contingent. Discrimination against foreigners or those of ‘alien origins’ is, therefore, a prerequisite for the sense of certainty in national belonging” (2004, 251). But within the designated borders themselves lies the desire for a mythic singularity, a point of origin which can be called up when commonality is in need. In “Nation and the Mother Tongue,” Sakai draws the link from this desired “originary singularity” to the establishment of a potentially exclusionary sameness. The linguistic aspects of Sakai’s “co-figurative model”7 arise in terms of the differences in spoken dialect within The World Park. Shanxi, the dialect of Tao and Taisheng’s hometown, is the most prominent spoken language in the film. Evading the erasure of difference within the subtitles, the Shanxi dialect signifies the presence of someone else who remembers a shared home or past. In this sense, the dialect participates in the nostalgic construct of that home. The Beijing dialect, the putonghua mandated by the Chinese government, also appears as the lingua franca of The World Park, a rendition of China in microcosm within the communities of workers. The construction site’s use of standardized Mandarin demonstrates an awareness of its necessity—“otherwise nobody can understand anyone,” the worker tells Taisheng as Little Sister looks around the park in wonder. Just as the Shanxi dialect constructs the provincial workers’ uncomprehending response to The World Park, the putonghua dialect— official and constructed as universally transparent—functions as a regulatory embodiment of the official party line: there is only this one China, which is also the World. Not even written words can break through its borders, as Tao demonstrates when she hands her ex-boyfriend’s passport back to him with a self-deprecating smile, saying, “I can’t read [understand] it.” The other main source of putonghua is the anonymous Park announcer, whose voice blandly advises safety precautions and offers details on the

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Eiffel Tower replica. Coming from everywhere and nowhere on the screen, these announcements destroy directionality and blur distance, reducing the sharp apparatus of vision to the bland stillness of aurality. The World deals specifically in dialects, using putonghua to mark the distance between people who cannot touch or understand each other at home, in their own dialects. This sets up another binary, temporal, between urbanized and not. The title shot—a peasant in traditional clothing wearing a bedding roll, looking at the Eiffel Tower replica in seeming incomprehension—supports the film’s central preoccupation with the inability of communication. It also serves as a continuous marker of linguistic similarity with accented differences, the same type of Sinophone articulations that Shih describes, but from within the most central of China’s areas: Beijing. But even the city cannot replace ersatz with “the real”, and Qun the counterfeiter quickly and completely understands the depth and compulsion of The World Park’s encompassing deceptions. Taisheng invites Qun to return with him to The World Park in case her visa application is unsuccessful, claiming that his Park has the Eiffel Tower, the Arc de Triomphe, “… all that French stuff,” he says, gesturing expansively. Qun cuts him short with a sharp look and a brief reminder of the transparent insufficiency of his proffered scale model. The World Park, all he can offer, is nowhere close to the world itself; it contains neither Belleville nor her husband. In this moment of clarity, Belleville becomes the location of conflicting impositions, desire and nostalgia clashing along its every seam. The World Park is once again clearly connoted in terms of what it does not have and cannot ever be. Aspiring to all things, it becomes nowhere in particular when faced with Qun’s specific knowledge and eventual access; through her passport, she has literally realized the difference between The World and the world. Like the dream of unity embedded in putonghua, The World Park is thus revealed as an elaborate performance, a known fabrication that only works if it remains unexamined and uncontested. Throughout the film, characters use putonghua in one circumstance: when in the company of those from other linguistic subgroups, with those who do not speak like “home.” This is the dialect of displacement, of homelessness. The only other place it is heard is in the sterile announcements that periodically sound across The World Park’s series of replicas, spoken to no one in particular. The performers and the work gang that constructs buildings beside The World Park speak to each other only in putonghua—no other communication is possible, since the workers come from linguistic areas all over China. Shanxi becomes the language of intimacy, signaling the presence of some kind of community. Significantly,

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in Taisheng and Tao’s relationship they speak Shanxi, but when Taisheng has another relationship with Qun, they speak in putonghua. But Qun, a gifted maker of counterfeit designer materials, also recognizes both The World Park and her relationship with Taisheng for what they are: replicas to scale, both interesting in their own ways, but having little in common with Paris, where Qun's husband is waiting for her. Why should she go see a replica of the Eiffel Tower? Qun turns down Taisheng's invitation with a quiet, but clearly dismissive question: “Why should I go see it? My husband’s not there.” With this simple observation, she undoes the ability of The World Park to do more than imitate reality. Likewise, she undoes the ability of her relationship with Taisheng to be more than a sham. Soon, neither will hold meaning for her, as her passport takes her somewhere Taisheng literally cannot imagine.

“I Don’t Believe You Can Predict Our Ending”: Snow Falls on The World In Jia Zhangke’s assessment of Sixth Generation film, he provides a roundabout defense against both artistic stagnation and bureaucratic stiflement in the continuing vitality and productivity of creative filmmaking, aligning himself with the Sixth Generation even as he acknowledges that movements can end. He concludes with a poem by Bei Dao, but adds a single line: “I do not believe you can predict our future”. This seemingly rather sweeping statement has already been articulated in his own works, which stop more than they end. The World, with its intensely contained longing and replication, might or might not be the exception. The profoundly enigmatic ending of the film is preceded by the subtle reiteration of homelessness: Taisheng, having finally located Tao, meets her at Wei’s old apartment. The camera moves from the ironic double happiness icon on the door to the uncomfortable stillness between the couple. Their inconclusive reconciliation is followed by the gas poisoning, almost the last moment of the film. The two bodies that are carried down the steps have no one to mourn over them; the mourning white of snow, finally fallen on Beijing that year, slowly covering their shrouded bodies almost certainly indicates a kind of death. But the voiceover, coming after the tense fade to black, troubles the definition of any FINE, refusing the bodily rejection of, say, Michelangelo Antonioni’s eclipse8, for some kind of story that carries on past the body’s end.

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Fig. 3-4. Two children lost in the snow.

The last scene of the film is both harrowing and mundane: after their silent and unresolved meeting, Tao and Taisheng are discovered the next morning by the landlord of Wei’s apartment, where Tao has fled while Wei is on her honeymoon with Niu. The double-happiness symbol on Wei’s door becomes doubly ironic as both couples fall to some kind of self-immolation; Niu’s attempted burning echoes his ersatz self-worth, while the roiling kettle in the tense scene between Tao and Taisheng not only focuses their turmoil and unrest, but sources it in the ultimately damaging energy of the gas burner. There has been gas poisoning during the night; a result, perhaps, of the attempt to stay warm as snow falls on Beijing at last. Anonymous sets of hands and feet bring Tao and Taisheng down the steps to lay them side by side in the snow, wrapped like dolls or shrouded like corpses, and stand around them in a muttering half-circle, voices crossing over and piling up, lamenting the couple’s failure to heed previous instructions. The scene fades to silence and blackout as the snow continues to fall; into the silent dark, Taisheng speaks, and Tao answers: “Are we dead?” “No. This is only our beginning.”

Taisheng’s voice, hoarse and hushed, is recognizably speaking in dialect. Tao’s reply is flattened nearly to tonelessness, her final slurred whisper almost indecipherable. The possibility of Tao and Taisheng’s survival is belied by the gritty layer of snow, the high hot flames of the gas incinerator, and the mourning color sifting coolly down from the sky. The couple’s life, and their death, simultaneously occupy the final screen’s indeterminate blank, commingling to produce its darkness.

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The voiceover would seem to argue for a less pessimistic ending, juxtaposing the viewer’s hopes and fears on the unrelieved blackness of the scene. It is possible that they have survived. But there is also another version of events: since within The World Park neither Tao nor Taisheng can approach anything resembling full participation or self-direction, nor can they reach the economic valuation which would allow them to buy themselves freedom, their only path of escape from the Park is through death. But the unquietness, the darker layer of meaning beneath the façades, is held in that troubling voiceover itself, speaking after death, into the dark: Tao insists that this is only their beginning. If so, then two other simultaneous moments arrive in the deep field, which functions auditorially at this last extreme. In one, the full stop of the last scene is belied by the voices, moving their owners forward in time outside the scene, past the compass of the film, into some other, outside reality, which The World Park (and therefore the film) can never comprehend. In the other, the same – only the outside-reality is the single guaranteed escape the two lovers can take from the encroaching World Park. In this moment, they exit the Park and move into death. The voiceover demonstrates the horrible economics of their escape: along with Little Sister and Anna, Tao and Taisheng have paid the toll of their bodies and passed away, finally out of the World Park. They have gained entrance at last to another world, perhaps another life.

Conclusion The persistence of linguistic difference in Jia’s filmography becomes particularly pointed in The World. While on the surface, the linguistic markers indicating regionalized difference support a reading of political allegory, the film also requires a reconfiguration of Sinophonality. Through the relationships in the film, putonghua is rendered as one dialect among others, a form of communication employed within certain social parameters, not as a standard for communication. Instead, putonghua becomes the language of unfamiliarity, homelessness, and mindless repetition; its use an acknowledgement of some form of estrangement. These movements of linguistic construction track onto Shu-mei Shih’s concept of Sinophone articulation, specifically in the interplay between the Shanxi dialect and putonghua. The major Sinophone articulation at work is precisely that of incoherence in the service of a continual colonization. In the moment of speech, in the movement from dialect to putonghua, there is a refusal to substitute a sterile replica for some unknowable and changing articulation that must question the replica’s enunciative power.

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Putonghua in the film functions to erase difference, even as the Shanxi dialect works against that disappearance, sharply indicting its most basic assumption: that all Chinese speak the same Chinese, that there is only one China, that only one China exists, and that it speaks putonghua. The film’s intricate melding of Shanxi and putonghua functions to sway, counter and resist that unitary assumption. Instead of being only a self-aware commentary on the nature of pastiche, the World Park in The World exists to satisfy the desire for the exotic by bringing an ersatz version of it to the outskirts of Beijing. The park suggests that it is enough to have taken the tours, to have ascended the scale model of the Eiffel Tower and pushed up the leaning tower in a photo, and that being out in the world is unnecessary for true comprehension of it. However, the park’s existence only highlights the falsity and fabrication within its borders, inherent in every level of communication beyond the wordless moments of gaze and touch. The film juxtaposes the aspirational desire to achieve a reality outside of China and the longing for genuine connection between human beings in order to critique The World Park’s assertions of sufficiency. Within this juxtaposition, the virtual or desirable “at one” of Chineseness breaks into the plural, artifactual Sinophone, reorganizing to include persistence of multiplicity and heterogeny within the claimed oneness. Thus, the claim of oneness must contend with the “at odds,” what Shih might call the “minor.” The injured dancers, alienated guards, and crushed workers of The World Park provide their crucial witness, provoking a strengthened awareness of commonalities while requiring close examination of purported cohesiveness. To pass outside the Park is to break through its monorail’s encircling borders and expose its façades, and then recognize that its final lines validate unpredictability, in a language that shifts between dialects, through a death, which may or may not be a beginning.

Works Cited Berry, Michael. 2009. “Jia Zhangke’s ‘Hometown Trilogy’: Xiao Wu, Platform, Unknown Pleasures (BFI Film Classics).” London: Palgrave Macmillan. Chow, Rey. 2000. “Introduction: On Chineseness as a Theoretical Problem.” Modern Chinese Literary and Cultural Studies: Reimagining a Field. Ed. Rey Chow. Durham: Duke U P, 1-25. —. 2002. The Protestant Ethnic and the Spirit of Capitalism. New York: Columbia U P.

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Jaffee, Valerie. 2007. “Bringing The World to the Nation: Jia Zhangke and the Legitimation of Chinese Underground Film.” Senses of Cinema 32 (2004). n. pag. 10 Dec. Jia Zhangke. 2004. “Interview with Jia Zhang-ke, director of The World.” With David Walsh. World Socialist Web Site, 29 Sept. n. pag.

Accessed 10 Dec 2007. —. 2007. “An Interview with Jia Zhangke.” With Valerie Jaffee. Senses of Cinema 32(2004). n. pag. 10 Dec. —. 2010. “Speaking of the Sixth Generation: I don’t believe you can predict our ending.” Trans. Isabella Tianzi Cai. Dgenerate Films, 10 November. n. pag. Web. Accessed 2 Feb 2011. Kraicer, Shelly. 2010. “Chinese Wasteland: Jia Zhangke's Still Life.” Cinema Scope 29. Web. 23 May. Lim, Dennis. 2005. “Lonely Planet: The next best thing: Jia's youthful dreamers want The World but settle for ersatz replica.” The Village Voice. 28 Jun. n. pag. Web. 10 Dec 2007. Liu, Jin J. 2006. “The Rhetoric of Local Languages as the Marginal: Chinese Underground and Independent Films by Jia Zhangke and Others.” Modern Chinese Literature and Culture 18(2): 163-205. Lu, Sheldon. 2007. “Dialect and modernity in 21st century Sinophone cinema.” Jump Cut: A Review of Contemporary Media 49, n. pag. Web. 16 Oct 2007. Lu, Tonglin. 2008. “Fantasy and reality of a virtual China in Jia Zhangke's film The World.” Journal of Chinese Cinemas 2.3: 168-179. Sakai, Naoki. 2004. “Two Negations: Fear of Being Excluded and the Logic of Self-Esteem.” Novel 37:3 (Summer): 229-257. —. 2007. “Asia and Co-figuration.” 2007-2008 Lecture Series: The New Comparative Literature. University of California, Riverside, Riverside, CA. 5 Nov. Shih, Shu-Mei. 2007. Visuality and Identity: Sinophone Articulations across the Pacific. Los Angeles: University of California Press. .

The World (₥䟛 Shijie). 2005. Perf. Chen Taisheng, Han Sanming, Zhao Tao. Dir. Jia Zhangke. DVD. Zeitgeist Films.

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Notes 1

Jia’s more recent films deliberately confound this differentiation, especially in 24 City, which intersperses actual workers with well-known actors across a series of often-wrenching interviews. 24 City sustained critique for this method of presentation from reviewers who considered its melding of acting with interviews to be at best disingenuous. Others praised Jia’s provocative restructuring of audience expectation and trust with regard to documentary film, and more fundamentally, with regard to the camera-eye itself. However, it is also possible to read this particular aspect of 24 City as yet another facet of Jia’s fascination with the reconstruction of nostalgic memory, with its dedication to reproduction and performance, and the concomitant impossibility of its unrefined and perfect capture. 2 This is a term that I coined by way of Deleuze, originating from a play on the words: artifact, artifice, fact, and artificial. 3 Reminiscent of the auteur style. 4 The term “Sinophone” is capitalized for the sake of simplicity and consistency within this chapter. The term can also be written “sinophone”. 5 There is an entire discussion that must happen regarding the capitalization of the designation, specifically tied to its vagrant or contingent designation. However, in the interests of consistency, I follow Shu-mei Shih’s example in capitalizing the name throughout this paper. 6 I have chosen to use the translation of Er Guniang’s designation because it is not a name; he explicitly requested that Tao refer to him by that nickname. It is a link back to his childhood, but also an inadvertent reinforcing of the namelessness of the provincial workers in the capital, workers who can only stare in incomprehension across the wide gulf of water toward the incongruous silhouette of the Eiffel Tower at a one-third scale, soaring above the Beijing skyline, which is rising to meet it. 7 Sakai’s “co-figurative model” takes the exclusion of the Other as foundational to the construction of nationalist identity. 8 In Antonioni’s film L’Eclisse (1962), the possibility for a world without the protagonists (i.e. the “bodies”) is explored in the final scene.

CHAPTER FOUR BROKEN LIVES, FRACTURED CINEMA: THE CINEMATIC REPRESENTATION OF HOMELESSNESS IN FRENCH AND JAPANESE FILMS JANE RAMEY CORREIA

“There but for the grace of God go I.” ––Anonymous “Show me an alley, show me a train / Show me a hobo who sleeps out in the rain / And I'll show you a young man / With many reasons why / There but for fortune, go you or I.” ––Phil Ochs

Introduction This chapter articulates the way in which homelessness is depicted on film in France and Japan through cinematic analysis of five films: Akira Kurosawa’s Rashǀmon (1950) and Dodesukaden (1970), Eric Rohmer’s Le Signe du Lion (1959), Mathieu Kassovitz’s La Haine (1995), and Abdellatif Kechiche’s L’Esquive (2005). Homelessness, one significant instance of urban failure, is driven by an existence in liminal space, outside of defined architectural structures, and yet still governed by social norms. I suggest that urban failure begins at forgotten, purposefully overlooked places in the city: in subway stairwells, beneath freeway overpasses, at the periphery of clearly defined neighborhoods. I illustrate how these places of juncture, liminal spaces, provide housing for the transient and homeless. I argue that these four filmmakers, in the style of Hamid Naficy’s “exile cinema,” confront this taboo topic in their texts by bringing the problem of urban failure to the public’s consciousness.

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In particular, Kurosawa’s films capture life in liminality and the survival methods of the poor while creating an aesthetic of vagrancy and stability. In Kurosawa’s film Rashǀmon, I consider two related questions: first, what is a border (of what does it consist), and second, what are the conditions of that liminal space? The border-world of Kurosawa’s Rashǀmon gate is isolated, unstable, devastated, and dangerous. It is on the very fringe of society, and if the world was flat, it could seemingly fall off with little to no consequence. With this understanding of a liminal place, I analyze representations of people living in discarded regions and the effects the architecture and the physical surroundings of the liminal places have on them. Dodesukaden, La Haine, and L’Esquive all highlight urban failure of liminal space and the social disenfranchisement of those living in such places. The segregated space of the slum in Dodesukaden has a similar peripheral status as the Parisian banlieue locals in La Haine and L’Esquive. Moreover, the youths in La Haine, the high school students in L’Esquive, and the community of slum dwellers in Dodesukaden have all been exiled from society. I propose that the juxtaposition of city and slum/banlieue scenes in La Haine and Dodesukaden offers a jarring contrast between two lifestyles and underscores the vast cultural divide between people of the same nationality (Japanese or French) who are living essentially in the same area. In addition, Kassovitz and Kechiche’s banlieue films illuminate the conditions that breed hopelessness and disenfranchisement. (La Haine studies three youths who are attempting to transgress their marginal existence by moving through spatial boundaries, while L’Esquive studies high school students who are attempting a linguistic border crossing). Each of these three films features characters that are forsaken by mainstream society and that remain imprisoned by their surroundings. Kurosawa, Kassovitz, and Kechiche’s camera underline the physical boundaries between the marginalized people and mainstream society: the piles of trash and debris that line the slum isolate the characters in Dodesukaden and, in the two French films, the high rise housing projects imprison the banlieue characters. However, these three films also champion the sense of community and camaraderie that is felt by those who are bound together by their collective marginalized status. Lack of social resource is secondary to physical impediments that the characters face in their already marginalized status. Dodesukaden, La Haine, and L’Esquive, while they do successfully illustrate the devastation and pain of living in liminal circumstances, exiled and without resource, they do not express the lack of social network that is often the cause of homelessness. Le Signe du Lion shows poverty

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and homelessness from the more realistic angle of loneliness and alienation from society. A much earlier film, made in 1959, it offers a direct look at one character’s agonizing downward fall into poverty, isolation, and homelessness and it successfully directs early attention to issues of alienation and loss. This film stresses the lack of social resource, which leads to a life of vagrancy and which is at the heart of homelessness and marginality. It also emphasizes the liminal status of the protagonist in that only public, in-between places (such as doorways, sidewalks, and bridges) are accessible to him. Kurosawa’s 1950 film Rashǀmon and its frame, the Rashǀmon gate, provide an overall frame for this chapter. Thieves, the dead, and the weary frequent this forsaken place on the uttermost fringe of society. The ruined gate’s representation of liminality, as a lost and forgotten place of exile, is timeless. However, the concept of exile implies exile from a particular place, as well as the possibility, however faint, of return to and reunion with that place (Naficy 2001). Therefore, I address liminal, peripheral spaces in relation to the central, desired space. These five films, when analyzed as a unit, offer a transnational image of homeless in liminal places, a picture that is ruled by a lack of social resources and controlled by the physical layout and environment of the peripheral place.

Liminality Creates Possibility in Rashǀmon’s Frame Rashǀmon seeks to question reality by relating four different versions of a rape and a murder with each witness claiming to tell the truth. Rashǀmon opens in a torrential rainstorm1 with a shot of the entire devastated Rashǀmon gate, half of it completely destroyed. The world around the gate appears post-apocalyptic and chaotic. The ruined state of the gate only adds to the despair; however, its massive size, if nothing else, offers some sense of shelter from the storm, if not comfort. The initial wide angle shot of the gate, a signature of Kurosawa’s film style, welcomes the viewer into this no-man’s land and includes the viewer in the frame. At least seven separate shots zoom in on the gate, cropping parts of it out, overwhelming the camera. This technique of moving from wide angle to increasingly zoomed shots focuses the viewers’ attention; in this way, Kurosawa offers both the frame and the theme in the opening cuts. No longer able to encompass the whole gate in a single shot, the camera settles its gaze on two figures, a priest and a woodcutter, squatting in the lower level and staring out into the rain. The width of the wooden beam framing the shot, supporting the enormous gate, is larger than the two figures sitting next to each other. The camera captures the pouring

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rain and closes in on a third character, a commoner, running through the water toward the dry refuge of the gate. All are disheveled with ripped and ragged clothing. The scene, accordingly, is one of both refuge and misery.

Fig. 4-1. The Rashǀmon gate.

Kurosawa authentically replicates the period of civil wars and the devastation of twelfth century Kyoto in the setting for his film. Dating back to the twelfth century Heian period, the Rashǀmon gate appeared in a collection of stories entitled Tales of Times Now Past: Sixty-Two Stories from a Medieval Japanese Collection, which related the culture and history of the period, translated by Marian Ury. In 1915, Ryunosuke Akutagawa chose two of these anecdotes: “How a thief climbed to the upper story of the Rasho gate and saw a corpse” and “How a man who was accompanying his wife to Tamba Province got trussed up at Oeyama” and created his own short stories from them, entitled “Rashǀmon” and “In A Grove,” from which Kurosawa created his 1950 film. Akutagawa describes in his stories: “Kyoto had been rapidly declining,” and the past several years had brought “a series of calamities, earthquakes, whirlwinds, and fires” (Akutagawa 1952, 34, 32). Desperation and hopelessness is close at hand. Unburied corpses are deposited at the gate: “After dark it

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was so ghostly that no one dared approach” (Akutagawa 1952, 32). The government was on the downfall and provinces were seizing more and more control (Prince 1991). The priest remarks: “War, earthquakes, winds, fire, famine, the plague, year after years, it’s been nothing but disasters” (Rashǀmon), The commoner comments in the film that on the top of the gate, there are at least five or six unclaimed dead bodies. Moreover, by situating his film at the ruined Rashǀmon gate, which is located in such a remote place between known and unknown worlds, Kurosawa creates the possibility for a fantastical tale, one of questionable morals, and an unknowable reality. The gate is therefore more than a location for the telling of the story; it frames the story, offering valuable information about time period and life conditions. Kurosawa’s numerous cuts from a large number of angles serve to inspect and study the gate in an attempt to grasp its size, for only camera shots at a great distance can encompass the entire Rashǀmon gate. As the shots zoom closer, centering on the characters at the gate, the viewer experiences the way in which Kurosawa encompasses the overall picture before narrowing his gaze. This narrowing of gaze resonates with Gilles Deleuze’s (1986) description of Kurosawa as “the breathEncompasser.” Specifically, Deleuze calls attention to Kurosawa’s method of starting with a wide-angle, all encompassing shot and moving to closer ones: One does not begin with an individual, going on to indicate the number, the street, the locality, the town; one starts off, on the contrary, from the walls, the town, then one designates the large block, then the locality, finally the space in which to seek the unknown woman. One does not move from the unknown woman to the givens capable of determining her; one starts off from all the givens, and one moves down from them to mark the limits within which the unknown woman is contained. (188)

As Deleuze explains it, Kurosawa expresses the situation in its entirety before revealing the action of the film. All the givens of a particular situation must be known upfront. Through the wide-angle shots of the gate, the viewer comes to understand the gate as more than a dry refuge from the rain. The gate, signifying one of the entrances to Kyoto, represents a place of entrance to the city as well as a barrier between the savage outside world and a safe civilized life within the city walls. The choice of the gate, a marker of the border between two worlds, allows Kurosawa the freedom to question our perception of truth. As Keiko MacDonald (2000) writes: the gate “symbolizes the boundary between two worlds: an entrance from one level of existence to another”

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(47). The border area, which does indeed mark the possibility for a new beginning or a change of way of being, regularly becomes home to those outcaste from society: the suffering, the poor, and the unclaimed corpses. MacDonald suggests: “Kurosawa’s film retains the original function of the gate” (47) as a division between two worlds, a waiting place as well as a place of contemplation and change. She astutely remarks: “The gate has become a world in itself, a microcosm representing the religious, moral, and political chaos prevailing in twelfth-century Japan” (47); it is “a world deformed beyond redemption” (47). The gate holds the characteristics of a liminal space, a transitional place between two distinct locations. As an inbetween space, the gate is free from society’s watchful eye: bodies can be disposed of, people can rest and contemplate life, and the gate itself can even be broken apart. To this end, the gate is the ideal place for the woodcutter and priest to relate the events they have just witnessed. The priest comments that the trial he has just witnessed and the events that it revealed may finally cause him to loose his faith in the human soul. Moaning, the woodcutter repeats: “I don’t understand it; I don’t understand it at all.” Breaking pieces of wood off the decrepit gate to make a fire, and noticing that the rain is not letting up, the commoner asks them to tell their story. The camera seems to analyze the situation as it watches the commoner look up at the rain; then, the camera pans upward to see the rain; next, the camera looks downward from the sky at the rain falling on the roof and pouring off of it; and finally, it settles on the dwarfed men squatting below, ready to hear the story. Interestingly, although the liminal space of the gate should be a less stable place, for Kurosawa’s camera, the gate is a known, understandable place in contrast to the world within Kyoto’s walls, which through the telling of stories becomes less certain and knowable. Stephen Prince (1991) notes that the “restructuring of sound-image relationships” (134), which are common to the scenes depicting the rape and murder, does not occur in the scenes shot at the gate: “Many scenes such as those at the Rashǀmon gate that frame the narrative, are realized in conventional terms. The sound merely supports the images, and no conflict develops between what we see and what the characters are saying” (134).2 The lack of manipulation of the frame adds a greater degree of realism to the setting, and highlights the devastation due to the natural disasters and political unrest of the late twelfth century Heian era. The image of the ruined gate becomes a symbol for the ruinous period and reinforces the helplessness and hopelessness of people in this time period. Because Kurosawa realizes the frame-shots in conventional terms, the viewer is

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likely to question the authenticity of each story rendered within the film’s frame. The viewer is furthermore likely to trust the depiction of the gateworld, and to feel overwhelmed by the “complete desolation” (Richie 1996, 71) and devastation at the gate. Since the gate functions as a frame and a constant, with consistent sound-image camera shots (we hear what we expect to hear based on the visual image), we, as viewers, do not tend to question the gate or anything that occurs at that location. Rather, it is the main storyline (four different versions of a murder) within the frame of the gate that we question. Kurosawa plays with light, image, and sound in the telling and retelling of the rape and murder, and his technique of light and shadow takes on a role of its own within the film. David Bordwell (2004) calls this lighting in the forest “dappled lighting” (197), because only a speckling of light reaches the characters and the ground. In the forest, the sunlight attempts to penetrate the shadowy times; however, instead, it “uncovers a world of relative reality” (Buehrer 1990, 46). Prince (1991) suggests: “The extensive patterns of light and shadow in the film were meant by Kurosawa to suggest a kind of spiritual and emotional labyrinth” (130). In addition, what occurs in the grove is filmed silently, what Prince calls “purely visual passages” (131-132). Kurosawa (1982) writes in his autobiography: These strange impulses of the human heart would be expressed through the use of an elaborately fashioned play of light and shadow. In the film, people going astray in the thicket of their hearts would wander into a wider wilderness, so I moved the setting to a large forest. (182)

Kurosawa’s frequent cuts and his mobile camera help to retain interest in repeated material (Richie 1996, 78). Donald Richie (1996) comments that the four hundred and eight shots in the body of the film (which is more than twice the number in most Japanese films of this time) create a “mosaic” and “make it possible to feel the film” (79). The lighting, the lack of dialogue, and the frequent cuts do offer an overall sense of the events of the film but they do not reveal the truth or show who committed the murder. Richie (1996) believes that Kurosawa is not questioning truth [as Akutagawa is], but reality: “No one––the priest, woodcutter, husband, bandit, medium––lied. They all told the story the way they saw it, the way they believed it, and they all told the truth” (75). Reality becomes relative in the film and the characters “reveal not the action but themselves” (Richie 1996, 75).3 Concerned less about reality and more about redemption, Kurosawa constructs a hopeful ending to the film: the woodcutter offers to care for an abandoned baby. Richie (1996) comments: “Neither anarchist nor misanthrope, he insists upon hope, upon

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the possibility of gratuitous action” (70). This hopeful ending offers a positive worldview and shifts the audience’s attendance away from the relative reality. Beverly Buehrer (1990) writes: “Compassion has become a hallmark of Kurosawa films” (46). The occurrence of redemption and the story of the baby occur in the frame of the story with its secure imagesound relations, at the Rashǀmon gate, which is outside the general story of the rape and murder. Because the woodcutter’s redemptive act of saving and caring for the baby occurs within the frame of the story (outside the grove)4, we have faith in its authenticity and are left with a sense of hope and compassion.

Dodesukaden and the Peripheral Slum Kurosawa reveals a similar compassion in his film Dodesukaden (1970), based on Shugoro Yamamoto’s collection of short stories entitled The Town Without Seasons; however, this film is jarringly different than Kurosawa’s other films. In his film Kurosawa seeks to reveal the “randomly intersecting lives” (Prince 1991, 255) of a community of downtrodden slum dwellers, barred from mainstream society. It is “an episodic portrait” (251) in the sense that the viewer follows the lives of characters, within eight distinct stories, that occasionally cross paths. Kurosawa’s characters, impoverished, delusional, and with a lack of resources, are excluded from society and live a “precarious existence on the periphery of the human world” (253). Kurosawa does not question how their lives reached such a low place, nor does he attempt to “fix” their problems. Rather, through the character of Tamba, he accepts them without judgment, as a witness to their plight of poverty and fantasy, and as a friend to those with few resources in their own otherwise forsaken place. The film opens with Rokkuchuan, a mentally handicapped boy, smiling at two trolleys going by Rokkuchuan and his mother’s home, a small tin shack at one end of a Tokyo slum. Unlike Rashǀmon or his other films such as Ran (1985), Kagemusha (1980), or The Seven Samurai (1954), Kurosawa does not offer an over arching picture. In Dodesukaden, he starts with a portrait of a character about whom we know nothing. In fact, the camera close up focuses on Rokkuchuan’s smiling face, excluding much else from the lens. The viewer only hears the trains rumbling over the tracks and sees their reflection in the windows of his home, but never witnesses them directly. The reflection adds to the sense of fantasy and delusion that is centerfold in this film, blurring the lines between reality and fantasy. The mainstream, outside world appears as only a dream—and

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an unreachable one at that—to the inhabitants of this slum-world. Exiled to the slum, there is little chance for reunion or acceptance into mainstream society. These passing trolleys are one of the few elusive connections that the inhabitants of the shantytown have with the outside world.5 James Goodwin (1994) notes in his text on Kurosawa entitled, Akira Kurosawa and Intertextual Cinema: “The shantytown opens onto the broader social world and it is linked directly to modern, urban Japan. The most obvious link is the trolley line” (218). Rokkuchuan, obsessed with trolleys, believes he is the conductor of a train with an unreliable maintenance crew. His delusion leads him to carefully inspect his imaginary trolley, which is just outside his home alongside a rubbish heap, before he starts to drive the trolley through the slum to his neighbors’ hovels. His insistent pantomimes reveal both a vivid fantasy world and the tenuous grasp6 he has on the world just outside of the slum. As Rokkuchuan begins to drive his train, Kurosawa’s camera pans to show a narrow path through a dump before focusing from front, side, and back angles on the boy calling “dodesukaden,” the onomatopoeic sound for “train” rumbling over the tracks. Surprisingly, the film’s soundtrack blows steam, clacks over the rails, and creaks the brakes in sympathetic commiseration, validating the boy’s delusions as the train stops in front of Tamba, the kindly father figure of the decrepit village. In the opening sequence, as Rokkuchuan is driving his trolley, school children scream names and throw rocks and other things at him. The school children are well dressed, with shiny black backpacks and caps on their heads. A dirty pond divides Rokkuchuan and the dump from the children and the outside world. The children, safely separate from Rokkuchuan and the dump, secure in their position, attack from behind a guardrail. The muddy pond might as well be an ocean, the guardrail an impenetrable prison wall assuring that the two worlds, although they are certainly linked by the passing trolley as well as other markers, will not intertwine. Prince (1991) comments: “Affluent Japan, a world where people really ride trolleys, is distant and unattainable” (256-257). Although the peripheral world of the slum and the rest of Japanese society exist side-by-side, the differences (namely environmental, physical and lifestyle) between the two create a large gulf.

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Fig. 4-2. School children mocking Rokkuchuan as he drives his imaginary train through the slum.

The inhabitants reflect the landscape as the landscape reflects the inhabitants as in a Balzacian milieu, further dividing the slum dwellers from the rest of mainstream society, their lifestyle, and the material objects of the foreign world. Erich Auerbach (2003) notes in his seminal text Mimesis that for Balzac: Every milieu becomes a moral and physical atmosphere which impregnates the landscape, the dwelling, furniture, implements, clothing, physique, character, surroundings, ideas, activities, and fates of men, and at the same time the general historical situation reappears as a total atmosphere which envelops all its several milieux. (473)

Auerbach (2003) explains the relation between the character Madame Vauquer in Balzac’s Père Goriot and her pension as a: “harmony between her person and what we… call her milieu” (470). The same is true for the characters in Dodesukaden’s slum: their miserable surroundings do indeed replicate the misery they feel in their lives. In addition, the brightly, somewhat psychedelically painted set reflects mania and delusions from which some of the characters suffer. As Deleuze (1989) writes: “The cinema does not just present images, it surrounds them with a world” (68). Kurosawa does indeed create a separate world in Dodesukaden, one that is significantly isolated from society in spite of its proximity to it, and it is a narrow space, holding only

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a small piece of society in its grasp. Goodwin (1994) calls Dodesukaden’s landscape a “wasteland” (217). Prince (1991) describes it as: “a depressing industrial landscape, a slag-heap littered with corroding automobile frames, rusting slabs of metal, and mountains of unidentifiable rubbish. It stretches to the horizon. No trees are visible. No birds sing” (256). The dividing markers of the guardrail and pond, the debris that line the path through the slum, and the real trolleys at which Rokkuchuan gazes (and which the viewers can only see as a reflection on his shack’s painted windows) all add to the sense of alienation and marginalization that further isolates the impoverished living in this peripheral world. As in Emile Zola’s L’Assommoir7, all action of the film save one scene occurs in this slum of tin shacks next to a dump. In Dodesukaden it is the lonely beggar boy who enters mainstream society to seek food for himself and his dreamer father from the cooks through the backdoor of restaurant kitchens. The boy’s adventure is our only glimpse into the cityscape of mainstream society. In a series of six long takes, we see the boy outside of the slum, visiting the kitchens, and collecting food: (shot 1) the boy is on the sidewalk alongside cars, picking up scraps and cigarette butts and placing them in his pail; (shot 2) at the first kitchen, a kind chef gives the boy fish and instructs him to cook it first; (shot 3) the boy opens a sliding door into another kitchen where a woman quickly shoos him away; (shot 4) he is inside another kitchen collecting food while a chef cooks next to him, and he adds broth to one pot and noodles to another; (shot 5) he enters the last kitchen where an unkind woman pours cigarettes over perfectly good food telling him that he can have none of it and asking him to leave; meanwhile the chef instructs him to wait, tells the woman not to be cruel, and gives the boy food; and (shot 6) the boy has returned to the slum and is approaching the shell of a Volkswagen bug where he and his father live. During the entire three-minute sequence, the boy speaks only twice: to say thank you to the chefs. Notably, we do not see how the boy enters the world outside the slum. Kurosawa’s choice, to jump from the world of the slum to the world outside, serves to further connect the two places by locating them within immediate distance of each other. When the camera cuts between the slum and the city, it appears that the boy teleports: in one scene he is in the slum with his father, in the next he is in the city. The seeming proximity of the two places is betrayed, however, by the shiny, new, clean cars, the flashing lights, and the electric signs of the restaurants where people order, eat, and pay for their dinner. The modern city is strikingly foreign from the corner of society that the ragged, dirty, unkempt, beggar boy inhabits.

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Fig. 4-3. The beggar boy picking up discarded cigarette butts for his father next to the shiny, expensive cars.

The little boy of the slum-world has (somehow) entered (invaded) mainstream society and wanders the streets alone searching for food and picking up discarded cigarettes for his father. The camera remains still as the child drifts through, emphasizing the boy’s transient place in the world while strengthening the secure position of the new, shiny cars of the materialistic world. In this frozen moment, city life continues to pass as the film’s soundtrack captures the sounds of cars and buzzing city life. The stillness of the camera seems to allow the boy to find what he needs, silently and furtively. A child belongs to the space of playgrounds and schools. Even if we were to accept, as Kurosawa suggests, that this particular child has suffered such misfortune that he will spend his life living in a dilapidated car, caring for himself and his father, to see the child outside of his assigned environment, drifting through society, would be a shock to our idealized understanding of reality. Moreover, Kurosawa directly implicates the mainstream society in this juxtaposition because it is that world, and its lack of social resources, which has allowed a child to fall so far. The first cut opens with a shot of shiny cars; and as the boy enters from the right side of the screen, he is tiny and dirty in comparison. (See figure 4-3.) “The boy is dwarfed by the city’s automobiles” (Goodwin 1994, 218). He enters each restaurant from the kitchen’s back door; the boy and the viewer never actually see the dining area of the restaurants or the

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patrons. Even when inside the mainstream world, the boy is held at arm’s length and always remains an outsider. When the boy returns home, the camera jumps again from the last kitchen to the boy approaching his dirty old automobile shell, his father sleeping inside. The camera-cut back to the slum shows the actual proximity between the places, while the contrasting images reinforce their metaphorical distance. Though the pond and guardrail that are visible in the opening scenes act as a strong boundary, the possibility to move between city and slum becomes a reality when the little boy is able to cross it. How one can pass between the two places remains a mystery.

No hero, No solution Kurosawa’s camera offers an inside look into a world that is often ignored or forgotten. In Tokyo (as with most big cities), with its bright neon signs, tall office buildings, and millions of bustling salarymen8, it is easy to overlook the cracks in society and the peripheral areas that exist just an arm’s reach away. Kenny Loui writes in his text Tokyo Phantasmagoria: Like Haussmann’s Paris, Tokyo hides its socio-economic differentials behind aesthetically pleasing structures and displays. The homeless, not only in San’ya, but throughout Japan, are ultimately ignored and forgotten, seen as nothing more than insignificant blights in a society that values material wealth. (46)

Kurosawa attempts to shine a light on one instance of urban failure and bring the impoverished and homeless into mainstream society’s consciousness. However, despite the intimacy of the camera—sitting beside his characters, chatting with them at the water pump, sharing in their drunken revelries—the viewer feels removed from them and their plight. The film is observational, non-judgmental, and non-emotional. Richie (1996) notes that the film’s static quality, which he believes is its “most serious limitation” arises “from the absence of any alternative to the never-ending dialectic of suffering and reverie in which its characters are ensnared” (191). The limiting aspects of the static quality, however, serve to reinforce the seriousness of the social epidemic. In Dodesukaden Kurosawa straightforwardly articulates that there is a social problem, that it cannot be erased, that it is not disappearing on its own, and that he does not have a solution to it. The static, episodic quality of the film, therefore, disrupts the flow of the narrative. Prince notes that Kurosawa’s previous films had been rigidly

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structured: at the plot’s center, a hero becomes hemmed in by societal norms. Of Dodesukaden, Prince (1996) writes: Kurosawa finds a social space that is open and permeable, free of confining social duties and group norms, but this openness is also an emptiness in which the laws of structure are replaced by the free form of random encounters. The social space is open because the condition of poverty has replaced and leveled the characters’ former roles and positions. For Kurosawa, the linear narrative was a structure of commitment… Because everyone is blighted by their poverty in Dodesukaden, because the human figure has become as expressionistic a feature of the landscape as decaying cards, because abandonment by society has obliterated the possibility of heroism, narrativity––as a symptom of all this––breaks down. The narrative becomes diffuse and nonlinear and organizes the lives of its characters as a series of tangents, briefly and arbitrarily interconnected. (255)

The lack of structured space in the film is possible because of the peripheral location of the slum. In liminal places, which are outside of mainstream society and therefore free from social rules, structures break down. Yet the freedom from societal norms results in cultural abandonment and disengagement. The characters in the slums are left to fend for themselves. Moreover, their poverty, their delusions, and their fringe way of life compete with a highly structured, law-abiding society. In this way, the impoverished are effectively condemned (by the taunting children and by the women matrons in the restaurants) to remain in a state of miserable poverty. The slum dwellers’ spatialized, liminal position outside of mainstream society and in opposition to (and free from) the societal structures allows normative members of society to ridicule, ignore, or condemn them. The lack of narrative or episodic feel to the film distances the spectator from the problems of the slum dwellers. Brent Strang (2008) in his article “Beyond Genre and Logos: A Cinema of Cruelty in Dodes’ka-den and Titus argues: “Instead of being carried away horizontally on the track of emotional identification [as in a narrative structure], viewers are fixed in a vertical relationship with the image, assimilating its charge in episodic segments” (“cinephile”). Strang further argues that the lack of Aristotelian narrative arc flattens the storyline, erases any opportunity for catharsis, and creates discomfort for the viewer. Strang proposes that the sideways meandering narrative situated in a trashed slum unhinges the viewer; specifically, he cites the scene involving the rag picker Hei and his estranged wife.

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Though the viewer is indeed “unhinged” from watching Dodesukaden, I would argue that the physical structures of the slum––the trash heaps, the dirty pond, the crumbling shacks, and broken car––and the dejected emotional states of the characters offer no solution to the social problem of poverty and homelessness that Kurosawa is addressing. The viewer is left hopeless by the lack of answer and feels disassociated from the slumscape. Kurosawa’s goal in the film is not to drive people to social change but to instill the necessity of acceptance. Again, differing greatly from his other films, there is no hero in Dodesukaden who is attempting to better himself, to merge with the rest of society, or to solve a larger question. In the typical exposition of a Kurosawa film, explains Deleuze (1986), all givens are disclosed, the situation is understood, and a large question for the hero to address is brought up. Kurosawa poses a question without a clear solution, and throughout the rest of the film, the hero chooses one particular path to address it. In Dodesukaden, Kurosawa raises a very clear question as to the best way to address social ailments such as poverty and homelessness. However, there is no hero to find a possible solution. All of the characters in the eight intertwining tales suffer from despair, delusions, dreams, and drunkenness and there is no forward movement, no narrative force, to alter their situations. Moreover, their impoverishment is “fixed and unchangeable,” as none of them have the strength to affect change. The character of Tamba, who has the “strength and wisdom to empathize with those most devastated… approaches these people in the spirit of accepting them as they are, the one kindness he can bestow” (Richie 1996, 187). Kurosawa suggests, through the characters of Tamba and the chefs, “that the best we can do in the brutal, poisoned class-society of the present is [to] ameliorate evil in small ways” (187-188).9 In his attempt to instill compassion and acceptance into the viewer, Kurosawa successfully creates a jarringly bleak world of misery and despair. The architecture of the slum, in striking contrast to that of the city, seems cruel to the sensibilities of the viewers and adds to a sense of hopelessness in the characters. Assuming that the viewer is able to accept and refrain from judging the less fortunate, Kurosawa allows the viewer to disassociate from his downtrodden characters. Our inability to identify with the impoverished characters within the film has a distancing effect: although Kurosawa and his camera appear to be in communion with the community, the viewer remains on the outside, disconnected but observing. Though we might feel sympathy, we do not necessarily envision our own lives reaching this level of destitution. This lack of empathy occurs, in part, because Kurosawa

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does not explain how the characters came to live in the slum. Was it the loss of a job? The loss of a social network? Depression? Insanity? I agree with Kurosawa’s implication: how they arrived in the slum is not important. However, his observational camera does not call on the viewer to change the situation, and worse, makes it difficult for the viewers to relate to the characters on screen. The viewer is most likely to identify with the generous chefs or with accepting Tamba: we give the beggar boy fish; we tell his father to take him to see a doctor when he is ill; we are sympathetic; and therefore, we are absolved. Moreover, Kurosawa’s refusal, in Richie’s words, to “treat the themes of pain and suffering in a dark and heavy manner was highly conscious” (1996, 185); he wants the film to be light and bright, not depressing. However, this choice of a lighter mood, brought about in part through his use of vivid, primary colors, also takes away the sting of their reality, which is only realized in the cuts between city and slum. Perhaps a truly realistic depiction would overwhelm the viewer and turn him or her off from any action. Nevertheless, Kurosawa’s method within the slum does not go far enough. Kurosawa is clear that his goal was not to propose a solution, not to inspire social change, and not to offer voyeuristic pleasure, but rather to suggest acceptance and compassion is the best we can do. However, what is the role of cinema if not to provide some insight into culture and motivate the spectator to alter the circumstances around him? Kurosawa’s answer to the problem of homelessness and poverty in the world is unsatisfying at best.

Vertigo in the Banlieue: La Haine and L’Esquive Mathieu Kassovitz’s film La Haine and Abdellatif Kechiche’s film L’Esquive create a dislocation of self within a sense of vertigo caused by the architecture of the films’ settings: the banlieue. Both films deal with the banlieue––the dangerous, riotous, violent suburbs of Paris––and the tall, overwhelming tenements in which the protagonists live. These often circular apartment buildings form a sort of fishbowl, capturing the youths that live within and creating a sense of vertigo, capture, and desolation for both the youths and the viewers as the camera pans upwards. According to An Etymological Dictionary of the French Language (1882), a banlieue [ban, “justice;” lieue, “league10”] is: “properly the extent of a ban, is the territory within which a ban is of force…, and thence a territory subject to one jurisdiction” (Brachet 1882, 49). Therefore, the banlieue refers to the zone around a city that is under the

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city’s rule. These areas around the city are physically (as well as culturally) isolated from Paris. Amy Siciliano (2007) comments that the banlieues are also segregated from neighboring areas and commercial centers: “Chanteloup-de-Vignes (the cité where La Haine was filmed) was designed with no direct access to the neighbouring village of La Noë––it was, quite simply, surrounded by a sea of empty fields” (216). The suburb of Le Petit Nanterre (9,000 inhabitants) is separated from the rest of Nanterre (76,000 inhabitants) by a river and train tracks (Mejías 2008). Clichy-sous-Bois, the poorest of all banlieues with unemployment at fortyfive percent and the site of the 2005 riots, does not even have a train or metro station. In order to leave this area, inhabitants need a car (Mejías 2008). Siciliano, quoting a study by France’s Institut d’Aménagement et d’Urbanisme, wrote: “In 82 neighbourhoods surrounding Greater Paris, residents had to travel between one and two miles, usually crossing railway tracks or highways, just to reach a shopping complex or movie theatre” (2007, 216). Isolated from the city as well as from other outlying areas, the residents suffer a sense of alienation, dislocation, and entrapment. Mathieu Kassovitz in La Haine (1995) highlights the separation and isolation of banlieue regions and constructs a similar dichotomy between city and slum (as in Dodesukaden) when his three protagonists cross the border from their home in the Paris banlieue to Paris city proper. After rioting and learning that one of their friends is in a coma after a police beating, Vinz, Saïd, and Hubert, a Jew, an Arab, and an African respectively, ride the RER into Paris with the intent of both temporarily fleeing the drama of the banlieue and retrieving money from a friend. While on the train, Hubert stares first straight-ahead and then out the window. The camera follows his gaze and focuses on a billboard reading: “Le Monde est à vous” (The World is yours). This concept is as foreign to him as Paris is. The world is not his; Hubert feels constrained by the banlieue, by trying to eek out an existence without getting in trouble with the police, and by staying safe from the violence of his neighborhood. Unlike in Dodesukaden, we see at least part of the transition from banlieue to city: the train ride. However, the hour-long journey lasts only fifty seconds on film and consists of only four takes. Similar to Dodesukaden, the teens spend the next hours attempting to interact with the city and its people and fail. From the train scene, the camera cuts to a long Parisian boulevard-vista lined with traditional Haussmannian apartment buildings with the banlieue youths looking out from behind a railing over the street. While their perspective on the city is advantageous (from above, looking down), they remain separate from it. Siciliano (2007)

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comments: “Most ‘banlieue’ films share a common theme of a ‘journey’ between the banlieue and the city––often plagued with difficulty and dwelling on an acute socio-spatial divide” (214). This theme of a journey is not only common to banlieue films but to many texts dealing with liminal space and those living in it as I noted in L’Assommoir and Dodesukaden. In La Haine, the Parisian space is foreign to the boys’ sensibilities and they spend the rest of the night socially incapable of interacting with it. In less than two hours after entering Paris, the police pick up Saïd and Hubert for disturbing the peace. The policemen rough up the two protagonists and question whether or not their names sound “French.” Vinz, who evades police capture, wanders alone, alienated from the world around him. Even while in a car with friends, he stares, tired and lost, out of the window, unable to connect socially, culturally in a world that is foreign to his own. The multi-ethnic trio breaks the homogenous image of solidarité that the nation so often put forth. Ginette Vincendeau (2005) and Siciliano (2007) note that the multi-ethnic youths create an image of the new France “subverting bleu-blanc-rouge, (the national colours of France), for black-blanc-beur (black-white-Arab)” (Siciliano 2007, 219). However, their ethnic “otherness” is only part of their affront against mainstream French society. The larger issue is their “cultural ‘otherness’ as residents of the banlieue” (220) notes Siciliano (2007). Ginette Vincendeau (2005) furthers this point: Despite their contrasting skin colour and religious signs (a Muslim Fatma’s hand for Saïd, a Jewish Star of David for Vinz, a Catholic cross for Hubert), their shared habitat, clothing and language reinforce their common identity as banlieue boys. (58)

Sociologist Loic Wacquant “uses the term anti-ghetto to affirm that ‘European banlieues are heterogeneous. The marginalisation of their inhabitants does not stem from race or ethnicity; but rather from social class’” (Mejías 2008). Regardless of ethnicity, the three are grouped together as one because of “the shared experiences of unemployment and cohabitation” (Naficy 2001, 99), because of their similar social class, which is determined by their peripheral residence on the fringe of Parisian society. Everyday life in the banlieue, often viewed as marred by crime, violence, insecurity, and poverty, disrupts the idealized (however inaccurate) Parisian lifestyle of luxury, wealth, and comfort. Not all Parisian banlieues are in such dire straits. The ones to the west of Paris, such as Versailles and St.-Germain-en-Laye, are known for being wealthy, predominantly white, and safe places to live. In addition, they both boast

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chateaux and are on RER lines. Moreover, Paris is neither free from crime nor poverty. However, certain banlieues, such as Chanteloup-de-Vignes and Clichy-sous-Bois, which are home to predominantly poorer people, do experience more violence, more crime, and are more dangerous than Paris’ city center. Upon missing the last train, the trio is effectively homeless for one night in Paris, a place both foreign spatially and culturally. With no way to return to the banlieue and no place to sleep, the three protagonists wander the streets of Paris. Similar to Gervaise and her wedding party wandering lost and disconnected among the paintings in the Louvre in L’Assommoir, the boys study the modern art pieces in a gallery opening but cannot make sense of them. In the first cut, Vinz and Saïd are staring into the camera with confused and mildly disgusted looks. Saïd walks away, shaking his head repeating the word “frightening.” Vinz calls Hubert, who had been examining a three-dimensional work of four white bottles connected together and attached to the opposing wall, over to see the art piece. The camera takes a reverse cut of the wall revealing a ceramic, plump dog, with large blank eyes in a sitting position, mounted to the wall askew. After another look, the boys give up their attempt to understand the modern art in the gallery and start consuming the spread of appetizers and drinks set out on a table. They attempt to have a conversation with some women at the gallery, but the women find them overly aggressive and are disgusted. Saïd is initially attracted to a black woman who has just entered with a friend. He cajoles Hubert into approaching them on his behalf. The conversation begins innocently enough as Hubert introduces himself and explains that his friend is “trop romantique et trop timide; super cool et trop gentil; C’est un poète, quoi.” […very romantic and very shy… super cool and very nice… He’s a real poet.] The women agree to speak with Hubert and Saïd; however, as Saïd enters the conversation, the situation takes a turn for the worse. Saïd immediately comments that the women are looking “fine” and asks for a phone number. The women are taken aback, question his supposed “shyness,” and comment that they were willing to talk but that he, like most men, is only interested in sexual relations. The conversation escalates, their voices rise, and they create a scene breaking champagne glasses and knocking over a table as they leave. Their failing here is not due to their ethnicity. (Initially the women are happy to talk to the black and to the Arab. In fact, one of women asks Hubert if they had met before, and he responds warmly: “No, but I wish we had.” As Saïd approaches, she smiles back at Hubert enticingly.) Their failing is due to not knowing, and thus not following, the social code. Life

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in the banlieue has not prepared them for late night art openings with champagne and servers in suits. The three youths are culturally inept and do not know the accepted way to flirt with women in this scene; the women in turn do not accept them and, in fact, shun them. As foreigners, they are unable to assimilate into the group and, in turn, they make a scene while being forced to leave by an older white man (likely, the gallery owner). He comments as if to provide a reason for their behavior: “Le malaise des banlieue.” [The malaise of the ghetto.] Assimilation, according to the Oxford English Dictionary (2010), is: “The action of making or becoming like; the state of being like; similarity, resemblance, likeness” ().11 The youths and those in the art gallery are not “similar”, and neither group blends with the other to gain a cultural “resemblance”. Teske and Nelson (1974) believe that assimilation is a process of “interpenetration.” For assimilation to occur, each group must fuse with the other. They define assimilation as: A process of interpenetration and fusion in which persons and groups acquire the memories, sentiments, and attitudes of other persons or groups; and, by sharing their experience and history, are incorporated with them in a common cultural life. (359)

Assimilation, by this definition, necessitates that the target community accept the newcomer(s). Although living side-by-side, those from the banlieue and those from Paris proper do not have shared memories or shared experiences. Rowdy, insulting, violent, and poor, the three protagonists serve as “spatialized, racialized” (Siciliano 2007, 220), and cultural markers of the banlieue, whereas the wealthy, up-scale, white, champagne drinking, art crowd are spatialized, racialized, and cultural markers of Paris and an idealized French persona. Siciliano (2007) concludes: All poor youth from the cité are likely targets of police brutality, recalibrating conventional notions of racism from a “legitimately” biological platform, to a “legitimately” cultural one, where a particular “style of life” or “way of being” becomes crucial to French identity. (220)

Although they are all French, these characters live in separate spheres with different ways of life. The Parisians in the art gallery scene wish to remain separate in order to protect their lifestyle, which can only remain superior and more desirable if contrasted to a less desirable one. The banlieue remains an exiled yet important part of French culture in that it serves to

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elevate mainstream society, just as the burakumin in Japan in the early nineteenth century was a similarly necessary part of Japanese society. The Parisians, therefore, have a vested interest in keeping the troubled youth exiled to the banlieue with little chance of assimilation or acceptance. On the train ride home, which consists of two takes and lasts only seventeen seconds (although it is an hour in length in reality), the three friends sit apart from each other in silence. They arrive back in the banlieue at six in the morning. Again, the transition is especially quick in contrast to their night in Paris, which lasted on screen for nearly an hour. The brevity of the train ride scene creates a drastic shift in perspective from the cityscape to the banlieue world in which they live, similar to the camera cuts between the slum and the city in Dodesukaden. The initial shot of the city and its boulevard resonates in stark contrast to the camera views of the banlieue tenements, or cités, captured just minutes before. The flat, run-down, cardboard-like walls of the circular projects in no way resemble the fancy façades of the Parisian buildings. The cités are modern, bland, non-descript housing structures in harsh contrast to the old, elegant, Second Empire apartment houses in Paris.

Fig. 4-4. Overview of the circular, run-down, non-descript cités.

The architecture of the two locations offers insight into the two separate cultures and the buildings of the banlieue grow out of the ground like barriers to entrap their inhabitants. This style of façade architecture originated during Baron Haussmann’s recreation of Paris during the Second Empire in the 1850’s and 60’s. As he carefully sculpted the most central areas of Paris, evicting tens of thousands from their homes in overly cramped central quarters, tall tenements rose up on the liminal outskirts of Paris becoming home to the displaced as well as the new

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immigrants streaming into the city from their rural homes looking for work and a better life. In the 1920’s, Le Corbusier proposed futuristic high-rise apartment-towers, which became home to the Algerians and Tunisians among other immigrants who moved to France from 1955 to 1975, when the unemployment rate was exceptionally low (Vincendeau 2005). Ginette Vincendeau (2005) notes in her study of La Haine that the present-day banlieue had been semi-rural before World War II. During the post-war period, France’s “economic boom and rapid expansion of Paris during the ‘trente glorieuses’ (1945-1975)… demanded a massive building programme to house both immigrants and French workers, who flocked to the city” (Vincendeau 2005, 17). In the 1960s, architects constructed large, industrial, concrete apartment housing known as the grands ensembles and predominantly referred to as HLM (habitation à loyer modéré), which ‘boasted’ four-thousand apartments in La Courneuve, three-thousand in Aulnay-sous-bois, and a shocking twelve-thousand in Sarcelles (17, 18). Vincendeau (2005) explains that the tenements were built as long walls (barres) of high-rise tower blocks (tours), “filled with grids of identical flats nicknamed ‘rabbit hutches’ (cages à lapins)” (18). She continues: Although the HLMs were social housing that, with hot water and central heating, constituted progress, their disadvantages quickly became apparent: paper-thin walls, permanently broken-down lifts, damp cellars; few shops and cafés, and a lack of cultural venues… The term cité replaced HLM as the symbol of so-called “difficult,” “sensitive” or even “hot” areas. (18)

Vincendeau’s description is notably similar to the apartment house with the long hallways and paper-thin walls in which Zola’s Gervaise lived in L’Assommoir, except that in Gervaise’s neighborhood there were plenty of stores, restaurants, and bars. Today, the banlieue projects continue to dot the outskirts of Paris. These enormous apartment buildings still house immigrants as well as the struggling and the poor who have been expunged from, or never allowed entrance to, Paris proper. The infrastructure that Haussmann had designed easily connects the periphery to the center by grand thoroughfares; however, in La Haine and L’Esquive, the banlieue is a distinct world separate from the city with its own culture and dialect. Kassovitz captures the tall, enclosed semi-circle of tenements on camera when in one scene, Saïd calls up to Vinz’s apartment. His voice echoes along the tenement walls while others shout at him and he appears as if in a fishbowl, surrounded by the looming buildings.

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Fig. 4-5. Saïd calling up to Vinz’s apartment, with a neighbor looking down from an apposing apartment in the background.

The camera moves between Saïd’s face, capturing it at different angles, and the tenements towering above him. In one shot, the camera is below Saïd, with his neck and his upturned chin in the center of the picture, further emphasizing the height of the buildings. In the same shot, the opposing tenement is in the background with a person who appears on screen as smaller than Saïd’s nose looking out of the window. This cacophony of sounds––Saïd’s hollering, Vinz’s sister’s calling down to him, and the neighbor’s yelling from his window––make it difficult to keep track of the voices and the camera swings widely from Saïd’s central position trying to focus on the various characters within the drama. Here, time stands still, seemingly as an eternal present that simultaneously captures the socio-historical past of the banlieue and its culture. The tenements encircling and capturing Saïd reflect both his actual situation and the larger story of the banlieue, its culture, and its past. A similar semi-circle of tall, non-descript, tenement buildings, where all the protagonists live, dominates the setting of L’Esquive (2003). The continuous façade of the apartments stretch through each scene. According to Henri Lefebvre, façades are designed only to be seen; they create a purely visual space. With the façade of prison, which corresponds to the façade of the family, one perceives the outside only. What lies behind the exterior wall, is captured or imprisoned within (Lefebvre 1991, 144). However, L’Esquive inverts the façade, holding the camera captive along with the students, documenting life within their prison. Just as Sharon Marcus analyzes the microcosms behind the façade in her study of the interiorization of bourgeois apartment dwellings, L’Esquive similarly looks behind the projects of the banlieue, which act as a collective face

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holding all the students together and hidden from the outside mainstream society. The bourgeoisie’s “lived space” is a private realm free from the public’s eye, explains Lefebvre (1991, 145). In L’Esquive, the students’ “lived space” is always public surrounded by the tenements, for us, the viewers, to watch and examine. Within the walls of their prison, no space is private. The students are simultaneously quarantined and marginalized in their peripheral existence. Therefore, the large, high-rise apartment buildings work as boundaries in the film to hold the students and their families captive. The projects fill entire camera shots; they overwhelm both the camera’s eye and our eyes, which can never see the buildings in their entirety. They dominate the landscape in nearly all the scenes in the film, whether as the backdrop for the students’ conversations outside, or as viewed through an apartment or classroom’s window.

Fig. 4-6. The projects overwhelm the camera emphasizing their immense size.

The projects exert the same overbearing force on their tenants that Gervaise’s intimidating tenement exerts on her. Their overbearing presence chains the students to the scene; guarding them, watching them, refusing to allow them to leave. The destitute buildings take on anthropomorphic properties, acting as both prison and guard, and the buildings become representations of a much greater force, that of the nation-state, that desires to hold certain struggling groups apart from mainstream society. Constructed during the post war period under the direction of President Charles De Gaulle, the cités (or HLM, habitation à loyer modéré) were to

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house immigrants and laborers who at that time were flocking to the city in search of work (Vincendeau 2005). Because of the large numbers of people, these 1960s concrete buildings, called the grands ensembles, were built outside Paris with little access to the city (Vincendeau 2005). Socialist President François Mitterand had attempted a revitalization project of the banlieues during the deindustrialization period of 1975-1990 when many were loosing their jobs and unable to find new work (Siciliano 2007). The intention of Banlieues 89, as the project was called, was to unify all French under the notion of “equality” (taken from the French Revolution of 1789), which unfortunately simultaneously excluded and silenced the history of French colonization (Siciliano 2007). In addition, Siciliano (2007) writes: the projects “did little to tackle structural unemployment nor systemic racism, and the numbers of those without work in the banlieues continued to escalate” (216). President Jacques Chirac, elected in May 1995 immediately following Mitterand, designed his campaign around “‘a global politics against exclusion’ that targeted the estimated six million French people living below the poverty line and their worsening social exclusion” (Vincendeau 2005, 16-17). In October 1995, Chirac announced his “Marshall plan for the banlieue,” which was a plan for “national urban integration” (Vincendeau 2005, 19). According to Siciliano (2007), what emerged instead “was a renewed form of colonial governance” (217). Siciliano (2007) further notes that the Interior Minister implemented “changes to the penal code to allow prison sentences for public order violations such as loitering in their entrance ways and stairwells––policies which targeted the most visible of infractions to aid in successful prosecution” (217). This “intensive policing” and “militarization of housing projects” resulted in a large number of juvenile offences, which triggered more resources and funds to be poured into the criminal justice system (Siciliano 2007, 217). Although the French government has developed projects and programs to revitalize the forsaken banlieue regions, the actual results have not been successful. As a matter of fact, they have at times created a greater sense of isolation and marginalization. From this history, the high-rise, public housing, apartment towers, designed and built by the government, do indeed function as an instrument of the state, by keeping the largely poor, minority populations who occupy them isolated and discontented from the city center and its resources.

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Fig. 4-7. The camera angles underscore the height and length of the cités and why they were aptly nicknamed “cages à lapins.”

In L’Esquive and in La Haine, the scene is designed as an inverted panopticon. The students exist in a fishbowl under continuous surveillance by the buildings. As Foucault observes (1995), the architectural layout assures the subjugation of people (Foucault 348). Similarly, Lefebvre (1991) notes that power hides under the organization of space. I would extend Foucault and Lefebvre’s notions of space as power to my reading of the film: the students and other youths are ultimately unable to transcend their spatial boundaries and therefore suffer from social and physical immobility. The architectural design of the cités and their surroundings does intend to keep the inhabitants imprisoned together. As noted above, many of the poorer banlieues are cut off from Paris as well as from the neighboring banlieues because of a lack of trains and other sources of public transit. In order to leave the project, a person needs a car. In addition, the design of the cités, which are often twenty stories in height, with long, flat façades, creates extended walls, which act as barriers to the world outside the neighborhood, serving to isolate the inhabitants. Hans-Georg Gadamer (1997) informs us: “Architecture gives shape to space” (134). Space is what surrounds everything that exists within it (in space). Lefebvre notes that social space is produced by architects; cultures come alive within this space. The multi-ethnic world becomes merged into a solid existence of violence, poverty, and fear. The youths of La Haine are aware of their dismal existence in this border world. In exile cinema, Naficy (2001) writes: “The representation of life in exile and diaspora… tends to stress claustrophobia and temporality” (5). This feeling of

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claustrophobia is present in the banlieue films. At one point Vinz comments that they live in rat holes. In a conversation with his mother, Hubert repeats: “J’en ai marre la cité. J’en ai marre… Il faut que je parte.” [I’m sick of the banlieue… I need to get out.] His mother responds kindly but dismissively asking him to please go to the store and buy some lettuce on his way out. Her remark reflects a certain amount of cynicism but also a deeper understanding of the situation: leaving the banlieue is nearly impossible. They are locked into a dangerous existence in this peripheral world and are unable to move beyond it or effectively change their situation. In contrast, the high school students in L’Esquive are desperately trying to master the eighteenth century French of Marivaux as they are working on a class production of his play Les jeux de l’amour et du hazard. Just as they are not able to cross the spatial boundary of the immense projects as the protagonists in La Haine do (however unsuccessfully), they are unable to transcend the linguistic boundaries. Director Kechiche adeptly juxtaposes the multi-ethnic slang of the adolescent, multicultural protagonists known as verlan, with the polished rhetoric of eighteenth century French, illustrating the students’ abilities to occupy the space of marginal society, while only able to imitate the space of “acceptable” society. Vincendeau (2005) comments that verlan,12 like all slang, is a “marker or identity… It designates a group, a clan, stressing its cohesion against the outside world” (26); therefore, those who use it further isolate themselves from mainstream society. The students attempt to cross the linguistic boundary by learning the eighteenth century French style of expression; however, the necessity of learning a ‘new’ language strengthens the foreignness of their banlieue from French society. In this coming-of-age film, the students’ success is only an internal awareness of social and spatial boundaries as they remain on the outskirts, never entering or merging into Parisian society. Their linguistic failings are mimicked in the limitations imposed by architecture. The film reflects the lessons of Marivaux and illustrates that the sentiments of eighteenth century French society still apply to twenty-first century French culture. In one scene, Lydia, the protagonist, questions how well they should impersonate their characters. Should the rich woman act like an ideal maid? Or should some of her lady-like qualities bleed through in the performance? The teacher explains the impossibility of not having some bleed through, which is reflected in the protagonists’ quick ability to shift back into their everyday, salacious, profanity-filled slang from the eighteenth century dialogue. The teacher instructs:

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The teacher continues to explain that regardless of how someone dresses him or herself, regardless of whatever mask or disguise he or she chooses to don, language and culture will always betray that person. The way that we express ourselves betrays our place of origin, and thus, there is no chance to transcend our place in society. We see devastating social immobility throughout French literature: in Marivaux’s eighteenth century play, in Zola’s Rougon-Macquart novels of the late nineteenth century13, in Kassovitz’s La Haine and the banlieue riots, and now in L’Esquive, which continues to reproduce the same ideology. When different social classes intertwine, they rarely assimilate to each other and consistently reveal themselves via their language, manners, and methods of expression. Les riches tombent amoureux de qui dans la pièce ? Des riches. Les pauvres tombent amoureux de qui dans la pièce ? Des pauvres. Donc, ils se reconnaissent malgré de déguisements. Et ils tombent amoureux de leur même classe sociale. Marivaux nous dit : On est conditionné, complètement conditionné par son milieu d’origine. (L’Esquive) [Who do the rich fall for? The rich. And who do the poor fall for? The poor. They recognize each other despite their disguises. They fall in love within their own social class… Marivaux says that we’re conditioned by our original milieu. (L’Esquive)]

Therefore, in Marivaux’s Les jeux de l’amour et du hazard as in L’Esquive there is no chance for upward mobility.14 The students, similar to Hubert’s fate in La Haine, are destined to remain in the banlieue surrounded by the apartment projects, some more than twenty floors in height. The teacher implores one student, Krimo15, who plays Arlequin, to “leave himself to reach a new language,” a new way of being. She yells: “Sors-toi!” [Leave yourself!], but Krimo is unable to transcend himself and his current cultural frame of mind. Defeated, he walks out of class and refuses to perform in the play. Assimilation is the transition from a place of alienation to one of acceptance both of and by the target community. The physical force of architecture and landscape impedes the process; the tenements hold the high school students apart in exile.

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However, in all these films, L’Esquive, La Haine, and Dodesukaden, there is a sense of camaraderie among the characters. In L’Esquive, the high school students have formed cliques and groups of friends. We see them in constant conversation with one another. In La Haine, although the youths are more fragmented, the characters clearly exist within a larger community and the three protagonists have strong bonds with each other and remain together even in intense situations of drama and violence. In Dodesukaden, the characters regularly cross paths and intermingle with each other in the center of the slum: six women gather every day at the water pump in the center, chatting and gossiping as the other characters come and go; Rokkuchuan drives his imaginary trolley through the center, the two drunken men swap wives and homes crisscrossing their paths, the beggar boy with the dreamer father live in car shell just off from the center. In fact, all homes except Rokkuchuan’s form a semi-circle around the water pump. Kurosawa’s choice of layout creates an intimate environment in which the characters live, certainly cut off from the rest of society, but within their own tight-knit community. None of the characters, save Hei and his estranged wife, seem lonely. Even the girl who is raped by her alcoholic uncle has a kind aunt and a young bike messenger admirer who gives her small thoughts while on his route.

Loneliness, Isolation, and Le Signe du Lion It is the issue of loneliness in relation to the poor and the homeless that is most clear in French New Wave director Eric Rohmer’s Le Signe du Lion (1962). An indolent, loud, brash, American musician, living in Paris, becomes overwhelmed by debt after he learns he is not receiving an inheritance from his deceased aunt as he had previously thought. He has no family and most of his friends are away. The few friends who remain in the city refuse to lend him any more money and recommend that he find either a job or a woman who could support him. He recognizes that no woman would want him in his filthy, unkempt state. He also acknowledges that his music has never earned him a cent in his life; however, he makes no attempt to find another job; and therefore, he is forced into becoming homeless, living on the streets, sleeping on benches or by the Seine. The lack of social network is not only a symptom of homeless people but also often a significant cause of their plight. “Crisis”, a United Kingdom charity and research center on homelessness, and other homeless organizations have found that the main cause of homelessness is the breakdown of social networks and estrangement from families (Crisis and

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Smith 2008). Nearly thirty-eight percent of homeless people spend all their time alone; less than one-third spend time with non-homeless people; and more than half reported that they have no ties to their family (Crisis and Warnes 2003). Extended isolation destroys coping mechanisms and weakens social abilities including conversations skills, general knowledge, and employability (Crisis and Smith 2008). Moreover, isolation causes one in four homeless who have found housing to return to the streets because they are unable to sustain their tenancy (Crisis and Lemos 2000). It is this ambiance of isolation that is so prevalent in Le Signe du Lion. Aimée Isreal-Pelletier (2005) cites an interview in which Rohmer tells Jean Douchet about the importance of ambiance within his films: “He is less and less interested in dramatic effects and more interested in ambiance––the presence of all that surrounds the narrative” (39). The sense of isolation and alienation in the film awakens the viewer to what is perhaps the most serious problem of the homeless. The film, then, is driven more by the ambiance than by the actions of the protagonist, the unlikeable Pierre Wesselrin. Pierre Wesselrin is an American living in a foreign country ostensibly far away from his family. Moreover, we know his aunt, who had been living in Europe, is dead and he is estranged from his cousin, who inherits all the aunt’s money. Since the film is set during the summer, by the time he is really in dire straits, most of his friends, like most Parisians, have departed for their long, August vacations and he finds himself alone in the city. We come to learn that the few friends who remain have already lent him a good sum of money and refuse to give him any more. He has eradicated his social network, and therefore, having nowhere to turn for help, and no place to sleep, he is forced to live on the streets. Rohmer’s camera takes numerous shots of Pierre attempting to make a connection: he endlessly endeavors to call people; however, he either has the wrong number or the friend is not home. He rings the bell a few friends’ residences, visits a few businesses inquiring after friends and acquaintances, but everyone seems to be away on vacation. The film therefore captures both the mood of Paris in August (one of idle holiday) as well as “how easily one can change form a ‘normal,’ static inhabitant of a city into a mobile tourist or vagabond” (Mazierska 2002, 234). Through the unanswered phone calls, Rohmer expresses that Pierre’s homeless situation is indeed due to a lack of social network and support. Had JeanFrançois or any of his other friends not been on vacation, Pierre’s situation may never have become so dire. Moreover, the lack of response to his requests for help silence his voice in the film. As the film progresses, the only time he speaks is to try to reach someone, to beg to be allowed to stay

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another night at a hotel, or to ask a friend for more money. All of his interactions are reduced to bartering and begging for basic needs. The camera follows Pierre as he walks the city of Paris. As viewers, we follow him too, also in silence, watching the cars pass by, seeing the bright lights of restaurants and city life, and hearing the sounds of the city and the conversations of others. In one scene, Pierre, listening to a violinist, sits on a bench just outside of a café where Parisians are eating and drinking. In another scene, he sits on a park bench listening to a petty conversation among three women over how much a few drinks cost that they are enjoying. He is clearly tired and thirsty with no resources to obtain a drink. In a third episode, he has returned to the Seine and sees people eating and laughing. He nearly steals a family’s picnic leftovers; however, a dog barks and scares him away. The series of scenes featuring the protagonist creates an ambiance for the film of Paris (its streets, its parks, and the Seine) and the numerous anonymous faces that create a cityscape. Israel-Pelletier (2005) writes: “All these features are not the backdrop to the narrative, but constitute the very fabric of social discourse and Rohmer’s vision of contemporary life, the illusion of the real” (40).

Fig. 4-8. Rohmer’s camera acknowledges the anonymity a large city offers and the difficulty in making a connection, even while (especially) amidst a large number of people.

The surrounding environment is brought out through the movement and travels of the protagonist. Israel-Pelletier (2005) notes: “Rohmer’s films are traversed by movement… His characters are almost always on the move, criss-crossing space and visually agitated… Characters stroll,

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pace, drive cars, ride trains, buses, bicycles; they cover a lot of ground” (42, 43). Even in all of his walking and travels, Pierre consistently returns to the Seine, almost in search of a home. Each day as he travels the city, searching for food or for a friend to help him, he always returns to the river. Pierre is seeking a home he no longer has. As a sans domicile fixe of SDF, he is forced to live a life in constant transition, which Rohmer puts forth as unstable and undesirable. Ewa Mazierska (2002) writes: “The moral of his films is that transition is bad, unless it fulfils the function of a ‘rite of passage’ to permanence and stability” (244). For Pierre, his situation is only temporary as he is saved at the end of the film; however, for the more than 100,000 homeless worldwide16, homelessness is not a rite of passage but a permanent lifestyle of often-undesired instability. Pierre speaks remarkably little throughout most of the film save an occasional “excuse me” or another inquiry into the whereabouts of a friend. This lack of speech is tightly contrasted with the constant conversations of others. In addition, in nearly every shot, the camera captures Pierre among other people; however, he does not interact with them, which only further emphasizes his isolation. A camera shot of him alone is always followed by another shot with people, emphasizing that people are always just a frame away. The only moments that he is alone for an extended period of time occur after the restaurants and bars have closed and after everyone has gone home. He is left on the street, forced to sleep hunched over a café table, sprawled out over a doorway, or curled up on a concrete bench on a bridge. After his third night on the streets, hungry and dirty, he picks through the trashed remnants of a street market and finally returns to the Seine where he is able to ask another homeless man if he has any food to share. Since his fall into an unwanted, transient lifestyle, this moment is the first time he has asked a stranger for food. Their similar plight creates an instant kinship. The two become companions and Pierre lets this man take care of him as the homeless man pushes lazy Pierre through the streets of Paris in an old baby buggy. As his friends return from vacation, they learn that Pierre’s cousin has died and finally he has indeed inherited a great sum of money. However, they can no longer find him. He has stopped coming to their places, and instead wanders aimlessly through Paris, drinking and sinking further into a state of isolation. It is the sense of isolation that is the driving force in the film. Of Rohmer’s later film Le Rayon Vert (1986), Israel-Pelletier (2005) comments that the central character, Delphine, “occupies cinematic space,” but “she has not been central to us” (42). The same is true for Pierre. The camera follows both characters throughout the films; however,

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we as viewers, are “preoccupied” by the ambiance that Rohmer created through the interactions between the characters and the rich physical landscape he captures on film. Israel-Pelletier (2005) explains: “This way of positioning the character between her own self-importance and our general indifference to her is prevalent in Rohmer, and explains our feeling of detachment from many of his characters. We are not meant to like them, because they are flawed and morally weak” (42). The spectators have little sympathy for an out-of-work musician who expects his friends to care for him and who does not attempt to obtain even a part-time job. In the final scene when his friend, Jean-François, tells Pierre that his cousin Christian is dead and that he will inherit everything, the camera follows Pierre closely, first as he is lying on the ground cursing people and the stone, and then as he stands elated and relieved. He stares straight ahead as his two friends and the other homeless man look at him. As the friends carry Pierre off scene to their car, the crowd that has formed follows, but the camera remains focused on the other homeless man, dumbfounded as his friend walks off. He tries to climb into JeanFrançois’s car with Pierre but two journalists hold him back. Pierre calls out to the homeless man that he will see him tomorrow, but he is left alone in the street as the car drives away with the crowd staring at him, mocking him. In this way, Rohmer effectively focuses the camera and our minds on the isolation of the homeless again. And he leaves this thought lingering as the credits role. The situation of the nameless homeless man in the film is at the center of the film’s sense of despair and isolation.

Conclusion Mental illness, addiction, poverty, or ill-fated fortunes, are not the central problem of homelessness. Rather, the problem rests with an individual’s alienation from his or her community or in-group. The failing of the community to support, or even recognize, the individual allows the victimized homeless population to grow exponentially and forces society to become increasingly fragmented and disjointed. Yet, the impoverished, the disadvantaged, and minorities will always be a part of the world, even when living in the liminal peripheries and crevices of modern cities. The protagonists of the films that are analyzed in this chapter are living in exile. In the style of Naficy’s (2001) “exile cinema,” they do all desire to return to the their homelands, however improbable that may be. Moreover, the films depict an idealized picture of the target environment––wealth, fancy cars, and elaborate dinners out in Tokyo; art galleries, restaurants, champagne, parties, and grand apartments in Paris. The desired lifestyle

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appears much grander in comparison. These films have begun to locate the displaced, namely the impoverished and the homeless. Homelessness, urban living, and marginal spaces are not particular to any one city; therefore, through examining French and Japanese films, this chapter has attempted to move away from East-West dualism and area studies to explore global concepts of space, the effects of rapid urbanization at its onset and today, and the problem of homelessness, which has no boundaries.

Works Cited/Consulted Akutagawa, Ryunosuke. 1952. “In a Grove.” In Rashǀmon and Other Stories. Translated by Takashi Kojima. New York: Liveright. —. 1952. “Rashǀmon.” In Rashǀmon and Other Stories. Translated by Takashi Kojima. New York: Liveright. “Assimilation, n.” 2010. Oxford English Dictionary. 2nd ed. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989; online version November 2010. . Earlier version first published in New English Dictionary, 1885. Auerbach, Erich. 2003. Mimesis: the Representation of Reality in Western Literature. Translated by Willard Trask. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Bordwell, David, and Kristin Thompson. 2004. Film Art: An Introduction. 7th ed. San Francisco: University of Wisconsin. Brachet, Auguste. 1882. “Banlieue.” An etymological dictionary of the French language: crowned by the French Academy. 3rd ed. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Buehrer, Beverly Bare. 1990. Japanese Films: A Filmography and Commentary, 1921-1989. North Carolina: McFarland and Company. Capdevila, Gustavo. 2005. “More Than 100 Million Homeless Worldwide.” Geneva: Inter Press Service,

Crisis, and Gerard Lemos. 2000 Homelessness and Loneliness: The want of conviviality. London: Crisis. Crisis, and Smith, J. et al. 2008. Valuable Lives: capabilities and resilience amongst single homeless people. London: Crisis. Crisis, and Anthony Warnes, Maureen Crane, Naomi Whitehead, and Ruby Fu. 2003. Homelessness Factfile. London, Crisis. Deleuze, Gilles. 1986. Cinema I: The Movement-Image. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

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—. 1989. Cinema II: The Time-Image. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Dodesukaden. 1970. Directed by Akira Kurosawa. New York: The Criterion Collection, 2009. DVD. Foucault, Michel. 1995. Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison. Translated by Alan Sheridan. New York: Vintage Books, A Division of Random House. —. 1997. “Space, Knowledge, and Power: interview conducted with Paul Rabinow.” In Rethinking Architecture: A reader in Cultural Theory. Edited by Neil Leach. New York: Routledge. Gadamer, Hans-Georg. 1997. “The Ontological Foundation of the Occasional and the Decorative.” In Rethinking Architecture: A reader in Cultural Theory. Edited by Neil Leach. New York: Routledge. Goodwin, James. 1994. Akira Kurosawa and Intertextual Cinema. Baltimore: The John Hopkins University Press. Harvey, David. 2006. Paris, the Capital of Modernity. New York: Routledge. Israel-Pelletier, Aimée. 2005. “Godard, Rohmer, and Rancière’s PhraseImage.” In SubStance 34, issue 108, no. 3: 33-46. University of Wisconsin Press. Kurosawa, Akira. 1982. Something Like An Autobiography. Translated by Audie E. Bock. New York: Alfred A. Knopf. La Haine. 1995. Directed by Mathieu Kassovitz. New York: The Criterion Collection, 2007. DVD. Lefebvre, Henri. 1991. The Production of Space. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing. Le Signe du Lion. 1962. Directed by Eric Rohmer. London: Artificial Eye, World Cinema LTD, 2006. DVD. (region 2 only) L’Esquive. 2005. Directed by Abdellatif Kechiche. New York: New Yorker Films, 2005. DVD. Loui, Kenny. Tokyo Phantasmagoria: An Analysis of Politics and Commodity Capitalism in Modern Japan Through the Eyes of Water Benjamin. Boca Raton, FL: dissertation.com, 2008. MacDonald, Keiko. 2000. From Book to Screen: Modern Japanese Literature in Film. New York: M. E. Sharpe. Marcus, Sharon. 1999. Apartment Stories. Los Angeles: University of California Press. Mazierska, Ewa. 2002. “Road to authenticity and stability: Representation of holidays, relocation and movement in the films of Eric Rohmer.” In Tourist Studies 2 no. 3 (December 2002): 223–246. London: Sage Publications.

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Mejías, Marta Palacín. 2008. “Paris Subburbs: Place of Exile.” In Cafebabel.com: the European Magazine. (June 2, 2008).

Naficy, Hamid. 2001. An Accented Cinema: Exilic and Diasporic Filmmaking. New Jersey: Princeton University Press. Prince, Stephen. 1991. The Warrior’s Camera: The Cinema of Akira Kurosawa. New Jersey: Princeton University Press. Rashǀmon. 1950. Directed by Akira Kurosawa. New York: The Criterion Collection, 2009. DVD. Richie, Donald. 1996. The Films of Akira Kurosawa. Los Angeles: University of California Press. —. 2001. A Hundred Years of Japanese Film. New York: Kodansha International. Siciliano, Amy. 2007. “La Haine: Framing the ‘Urban Outcasts.’ In ACME: An International E-Journal for Critical Geographies 6, no.2: 211-230. Strang, Brent. 2008. “Beyond Genre and Logos: A Cinema of Cruelty in Dodes’ka-den and Titus.” In Cinephile: The University of British Columbia’s Film Journal: “Post Genre” 4. (Summer 2008). < http://cinephile.ca/archives/volume-4-post-genre/beyond-logoscinema-of-cruelty/> Teske, Raymond H. C., and Bardin H. Nelson. 1974. “Acculturation and Assimilation: A Clarification.” In American Ethnologist 1 no. 2 (May 1974): 351-367. Blackwell Publishing on behalf of the American Anthropological Association. Ury, Marian. 1979. Tales of Times Now Past: Sixty-Two Stories from a Medieval Japanese Collection. Michigan: University of Michigan. Vincendeau, Ginette. 2005. “La Haine” (Mathieu Kassovitz, 1995). Champagne, IL: University of Illinois Press. Virilio, Paul. 1997. “The Overexposed City.” In Rethinking Architecture: A reader in Cultural Theory. Edited by Neil Leach. New York: Routledge.

Notes 1

Gilles Deleuze (1986) calls Kurosawa “one of the greatest film-makers of rain” (188). 2 Prince therefore questions if Rashǀmon is a modernist film since the restructuring is not consistent. However, the rest of his argument is outside the scope of this chapter.

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Richie (1996) discusses in detail the question of reality in the film: “The film is about a rape (and a murder) but, more than this, it is about the reality of these events. Precisely, it is about what five people think this reality consists of. How a thing happens may reflect nothing about the thing itself but it must reflect something about the person involved in the happening and supplying the how” (75). He continues: “The people reveal not the action but themselves” (in the telling and the retelling)” and that reality escapes more quickly in a traumatic experience, fraught with emotion (75). Richie explains that Kurosawa imposes limitations on his villains: “They see themselves as a kind of person to whom only certain actions, certain alternatives are open. In the effort to create themselves they only codify; in the effort to free themselves… they limit themselves… This limitation of spirit, this tacit agreement (social in scope) that one is and cannot become, is one feudalistic precept which plagues the country to this day” (76). 4 The sound-image relationship of the camera shots at the gate is stable and expected, and therefore we trust what occurs at the gate. Within the main storyline of the murder and the rape, the sound-image relationship is restructured and less consistent, which contributes to the unknowable reality. 5 Similarly, the RER trains, which connect Paris to its suburbs, are the only link between the youth in La Haine and mainstream Parisian society. I will discuss this shortly. 6 Or a lost connection. 7 In L’Assommoir, which depicts the misery of the inhabitants in a decrepit tenement on the outskirts of Paris, the entire story occurs in and around the tenement except for one scene when the heroine, Gervaise, and her wedding party have an outing to the Louvre in the center of Paris. There are two, brief, additional scenes at the end of the novel, when Gervaise leaves her neighborhood to visit her dying husband in the hospital Sainte-Anne. 8 A “salaryman” is Japanese businessman, usually someone who works for a corporation, and the term is often associated with a middleclass lifestyle. 9 Richie views Tamba as being at the film’s moral center. 10 The banlieues were considered to be one lieue, which is four kilometers, wide (Vincendeau 17). 11 Its first definition. Assimilation’s second and sixth definitions respectively are: “2. The becoming conformed to; conformity with… 6. The process whereby the individual acquires new ideas, by interpreting presented ideas and experiences in relation to the existing contents of his mind. Used with some manner of qualification or specification by various writers” (). 12 Common verlan terms include beur (arabe, arab), meuf (femme, woman), and ‘laisse béton’ (laisse tomber, drop it/leave it be). “Verlan is an ancient form of back-slang revived in the 1970s, in which syllables are inverted” (Vincendeau 25). 13 The wedding trip to the Louvre in Zola’s L’Assommoir is another example of this idea. In addition, in Zola’s novel Nana, Nana becomes somewhat wealthy and frequented by some of the most upstanding men; however, she dies poor, alone, and of smallpox in the end.

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The direct citation from the subtitled film is of the teacher speaking to the students: “No chance and no love. Love in the usual sense, pure love, that is. Usually you fall in love with the inner being, not with what’s around it… We stick together. Even disguised, we cannot escape our origins. So when you play rich people or poor people, playing those same roles, they can manage it at times but the origins are there and they often fail. Reflexes return. … Imitating is only ever imitating. These two recognize each other. Their love, the purest feeling, is influenced by their origins.” 15 Krimo joins the cast of the play because of a crush on Lydia, who plays the lead. He struggles to learn his lines, and he has trouble articulating the words as well as projecting his voice. He eventually gives up and does not perform in the play. 16 As reported by the United Nations in 2005, this number reflects only those with no housing whatsoever and does not include those living in semi-permanent structures including cars, tents, abandoned buildings, etc. One billion individuals worldwide lack adequate housing (Capdevila online).

CONCLUSION FLANNERY WILSON AND JANE RAMEY CORREIA

This book marks an attempt to examine the transnational, cultural issues bridging the typical East-West binary through a cross-cultural, comparative approach. As a whole, our study seeks to move past area studies and examine communication between diverse cultures, their similarities and differences. We believe that it is important to study cinematic attempts (however flawed or failed) to reach a more stable, understanding and accepting globalized world. Each writer has a different yet interesting analytical style. As a writer, Flannery Wilson avoids obscurity whenever possible; she writes about film in a straightforward, decipherable mode. In Chapter One, Wilson studies Sino-Italian film, which she defines as more than a “cinematic interaction” between a Sinophone country and Italy. Sino-Italian cinema would, ideally, attempt to bridge cultural gaps and “reach beyond superficial representations of China by the Italians.” Wilson analyzes Gianfranco Giagni’s 2004 documentary Un cinese a Roma, which, she argues, “does not move beyond a superficial representation and is therefore a failed attempt at Sino-Italian cinema.” While Giagni does attempt to break through cultural boundaries, he only succeeds at reproducing cultural stereotypes as he documents the struggles of a Chinese born screenwriter living in Rome. Wilson suggests that Un cinese a Roma is closer to Sandra Ponzanesi’s concept of “outlandish cinema” in that it is targeted at a white Italian audience with seemingly little knowledge of Chinese culture. In addition, the film creates a feeling of discomfort; it forces self-evaluation; and its main characters are transient or nomadic. While she is concerned about the stringent Italian laws that govern funding for films, Wilson holds out hope that future Italian-made films will achieve greater East-West hybridity, and that Italian filmmakers will create more accurate conceptions of Chinese-Italians, without an underlying racialized discourse.

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Fontaine Lien’s writing style is also quite clear and direct; she pieces her thoughts together and chooses her words with care. In Chapter Two, Lien notes that the world is becoming increasingly “global” in the breakdown of communication boundaries via the Internet and social networking. Even the physical borders between countries are growing ever more precarious. Key words such as “postcolonial,” “transnational,” and “global” are appearing in scholarly presses and everyday discourse, which underscores our forward trajectory past area studies, national identities, and cultural boundaries. Lien notes that a “world without borders” implies the “erasure of barriers to communication, not physical barriers.” Financial, cultural, and linguistic communication is increasingly affordable and accessible. However, the openness of communication is not without problems. Lien writes that the “globalization of the self—adaptation and re-presentation of the self to ensure continued viability across different landscapes—is an endeavor that is far more complex when compared to globalization of a product or a trade.” Lien analyzes the intercontinental and intracontinental migration in two texts in both their literary and filmic versions: Dai Sijie’s Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress (Balzac et la Petite Tailleuse chinoise) and Amélie Nothomb’s Fear and Trembling (Stupeur et tremblements). These two works, which “destabilize and problematize the reductive East-West binary,” can be understood “in terms of the fracturing of self that occurs when an individual finds himself or herself in a radically different cultural environment.” Driven by a desire to assimilate to the target cultures of Japanese and Chinese, Lien argues that the protagonists of the narratives attempt cultural translations, interpretations and performances. Both writers, Dai and Nothomb, effectively create a poeticized version of their particular situations. “Dai romanticizes Western literature as embodiment of freedom and individuality, and Nothomb deliberately exaggerates differences between West and East, emphasizing Japanese beauty and the Western mind.” The stories “disparate trajectories approach a shared axis of globalization of the self, an ongoing, problematic process.” Lien also addresses the numerous levels of translation and interpretation present in the narratives. Both narratives contain autobiographical elements repackaged for the reader and viewer. The elements of the narratives bridge international borders while problematizing transnational understandings of culture. Reinterpreted filmic versions with subtitles for mass appeal and for international audiences are created as well. Lien writes: “Multiple translations and multiply-inflected performances do not invalidate the truth of any one subject’s experiences,” but they do make an accurate translation impossible. She concludes with a warning: “If,

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however, “translational dysfunction” is inevitable in this “age of globalization,” then we as viewers and readers must bear the responsibility of viewing, reading—and interpreting—these multiple layers with care.” Regina Yung Lee prizes descriptive language, and possesses a considerable talent for the poetic analysis of cinema. In Chapter Three, Lee analyzes the power of language in Jia Zhangke’s The World, “where putonghua [Normal Speech or Standardized Mandarin] vies with Shanxi dialect.” The importance of dialect in the film illustrates the heterogeneity of China, the “constructed nature of national identity and mother tongue,” and The World Park’s artificiality, rather than its “ideological projection of a unified China.” Lee argues: “Jia’s film troubles definitions of Chineseness, deepens discussions of geopolitically-based belonging, and complicates linguistic identification.” Through the characters’ conversations in the film, putonghua, Lee comments, “is rendered as one dialect among others, a form of communication employed within certain social parameters, not as a standard for communication.” In fact, putonghua becomes the language of “unfamiliarity, homelessness, and mindless repetition.” Using putonghua indicates a certain estrangement argues Lee. The blending of the Shanxi dialect and putonghua fractures the image of a homogenous China, which only knows and speaks putonghua, into a multiplicity of cultures. In addition, The World Park itself, which suggests, through its replicas of monuments, that “being out in the world is unnecessary for true comprehension of it.” Lee notes that the linguistic acrobatics in the film belie that idea and instead underscore the fabrication and artificiality apparent inside the park’s borders. Jane Ramey Correia has an incredible knack for thoroughness, complexity, and a dedication to both sociologic and literary research. In the fourth chapter of this book, Correia argues that homelessness occurs in liminal space, outside of defined architectural structures. Places of juncture provide housing for the transient and homeless. Correia first analyzes the architectural components that define a border region including its isolation, instability and significant poverty. Film, she notes, offers the special ability to juxtapose images of the city and slum/banlieue, which emphasizes the cultural divide between the poor and the rest of a city’s inhabitants, regardless of national identity. Then, she analyzes the effects of living in a border region through cinematic analysis of two Parisian banlieue films Kassovitz’s La Haine and Kechiche’s L’Esquive and one fictitious slum that Kurosawa creates in Dodesukaden. The cameras of the three directors underscore the physical boundaries between the marginalized people and mainstream society. Correia notes: “The piles of trash and debris which line the slum isolate the characters in

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Dodesukaden and the high rise housing projects imprison the banlieue characters in the two French films.” She concludes by noting the significance of community and social network, which is accurately captured in Rohmer’s Le Signe du Lion. “Rather than mental illness, addiction, poverty, or ill-fated fortunes, the central problem of homelessness rests with an individual’s alienation from his or her community or in-group.” While she has only considered films created by Japanese and French directors, Correia’s argument suggests that marginal living is not particular to one city. Therefore, she challenges East-West dualism conceptions, seeks to create a global concept of space, and to address the transnational social ailment of homelessness unaffected by national boundaries. These four chapters, while disparate in their arguments, relate in more ways than their use and analysis of film. All of the authors are concerned with moving past area studies and establishing a more culturally transparent world. Although director Giagni is unable to fully breach cultural boundaries and only reproduces cultural stereotypes, his attempt is significant and well intentioned and shows an interest in working through cultural differences and improving communication. The migratory narratives of Nothomb and Dai also endeavor to cross boundaries and enhance communication, which is the central tension in Jia’s The World. Importantly, The World first highlights the plurality of culture existing in China through dialect. Jia (and Lee) recognize the necessity of acknowledging the diversity even within one national culture before making an effort to embrace its similarities and differences. Similarly, each culture suffers from social ailments such as poverty and homelessness, which we need to recognize as well. The youths in La Haine and L’Esquive as well as the slum dwellers in Dodesukaden are architecturally isolated in a state of poverty divided from mainstream society. In La Haine the multi-ethnicity of the protagonists do not create their marginal status; rather it is their socio-economic status that keeps the youths divided from the rest of Parisian society. Social ailments exist in all cultures; these issues freely cross over normally restrictive national borders linking nations and creating a more globalized world. While fraught with problems of misunderstandings, stereotypes, untranslatable instances, and lack of communication, continued efforts in transnational relations will eventually develop a more open world, free from boundaries. We hope to encourage further studies in transnational communication and look forward to an increasingly borderless world.

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Rather than focus on the particulars of terminology, which can be a tedious task, we have sought to dedicate this book, first and foremost, to the close study of films. Each film exemplifies this new notion of cinematic hybridity—we are studying cinema that integrates themes of migration and displacement and translates these themes onto the screen in new and interesting ways. Together, this collection of film essays might well be called “intermingled fascinations.” The authors chose to write about the films that they did because each film fascinates them in some way. The practice of introducing ideas only to anticipate possible objections is not, in our view, the purpose of good film analysis. We are hesitant to replicate the methods of scholars who neutralize the valid practice of film analysis by placing film into a broader category with painting and photographs and labeling it “visual culture.” Once every sort of visual medium is conveniently lumped together into one category, it becomes easier to make claims about the state of culture that are difficult to deny, but also difficult to validate. The race to see who can point to the outermost level of hegemony and hypocrisy within an ever-shrinking circle of scholars is not a particularly rewarding one. Diasporic communities (such as the Sinophone) are able to articulate themselves and make their presence known—using “hybrid” forms of language or dialects—with the help of this very same visual media. But one might very well point out that the very populations that are in need of representation are usually the ones that do not have access to film equipment or funding or the means necessary to distribute any “visual culture” that they may or may not produce. Power structures will always exist in the film industry. Thus, rather than take culture, history, or the current state of global affairs as starting points for the discussion of films, we prefer the inverse. We have chosen certain films as starting points, and then supplemented our analyses, as needed, by way of historical research. Fundamentally, it is not the terminology that is particularly important or interesting, but rather, the films themselves. It is easy to forget, when writing about cinema, that one’s appreciation for movies as works of art can (and often should) be separated from the theoretical analyses that goes along with it. We seem to forget sometimes that filmmakers are cinephiles themselves, and with a much larger fan-base to please. Many films scholars, for example, have noted that the seemingly oxymoronic balance between a-historicism and realism that is characteristic of contemporary Chinese filmmaking is directly correlated to China’s ambivalent, shifting identity. While this observation may be apt, this apparent balance between a-historicism and realism is, in fact, not oxymoronic at all, but rather, a

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near perfect example of cinematic hybridity. Hybrid cinema highlights convergences, cross-overs and influences, reincarnates the “ghosts” of cinemas past, and weaves it all into something entirely new. It is the filmmaker’s love of movies—not his or her national identity—that allows for the creation of complex webs of cinematic intertextuality. Resonating with this sentiment, Gilberto Perez eloquently remarks: “…if all that interested me about art, about film, were what is wrong with it, I would not be spending much time with film or with art. It is because I like film…that I have written this book. And I have mostly written about films that I like” (19-20). We are all too often distracted with the task of figuring out “what is wrong with film” as we move farther and farther away from the view that artistic criticism can be an end unto itself. Hybrid cinema is a vast concept; it can be used to refer to an enormous range of contemporary transnational cinema, good cinema or bad cinema, art house films or popular films. Despite our feeling that hybrid cinema is poised to take the place of “national” cinemas, and perhaps even cast a shadow of doubt on transnationalism, we would be careful to warn against conflating criticism with theory. Avoiding this common trap is the best way to avoid forgetting, down the line, why we chose to write about cinema in the first place.

CONTRIBUTORS

JANE RAMEY CORREIA–– Jane teaches French, literature, and film. Her research interests include: Japanese and French 19th and 20th Century Literature, Spatial Theory, Liminality, Memory, and Film. In the spring of 2010 she won the Barricelli Memorial Grant for her paper entitled: “The Architecture of Homelessness: Space, Marginality, and Exile in Modern French and Japanese Literature.” She currently resides with her husband and their two cats in Venice, California. REGINA YUNG LEE–– Regina teaches French and literature at UC Riverside. She speaks French and Mandarin. Her research interests include: Science Studies, Feminist Theory, Film Theory, French and Francophone literatures, and Critical Theory. Her most recent paper: “The Recap as Translation in English Language K-Drama Fandoms” was presented at the American Comparative Literature Association conference in April 2011 in Vancouver. She currently resides with her husband in Riverside, California. FONTAINE LIEN–– Fontaine teaches French, Heritage Chinese, and literature at UC Riverside. Her research interests include: Fantastic and speculative literature, pop culture and media studies, Sinophone and Anglophone modern and contemporary literature, and 19th century French literature. She currently resides in Riverside, California with no husband and no cats. FLANNERY WILSON–– Flannery teaches Italian, French, and film, and she is learning Mandarin. Among other pieces, she has published an article on Wong Kar-Wai and Deleuze in Modern Chinese Literature and Culture. She is interested in the cinematic connections between France, Italy and greater China. She currently lives in Upland, California with her husband, dog, and cat.

INDEX

affect, 9, 83, 109 Agata e la tempesta, 25, 30, 32, 40 Akutagawa, Ryunosuke, 98, 99, 101, 128 Albin, Michel, 66, 67, 68 alienation, 4, 8, 10, 28, 38, 97, 105, 111, 122, 124, 127, 136 Antonioni, Michelangelo, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 24, 38, 40, 41, 88 Apter, Emily, 65, 66, 69 architecture, 96, 109, 110, 115, 121, 122 arthouse, 31, 72, 73, 76, 77 artifactuality, 77, 78, 84 artificiality, 56, 71, 72, 135 assimilatation, 114, 122, 134 assimilation, 114, 115, 122, 128, 130, 131 Auerbach, Erich, 104, 128 auteur, 72, 73, 76, 93 authenticity, 76, 81, 85, 101, 102, 129 Badiou, Alain, 65 Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress, 14, 39, 46, 48, 50, 55, 57, 60, 64, 66, 134 Balzac et la petite tailleuse chinoise, 8 Balzac, Honoré de, 8, 14, 39, 46, 48, 49, 50, 51, 54, 55, 56, 57, 60, 64, 66, 67, 104, 134 banlieue, 96, 110, 111, 112, 113, 114, 115, 116, 117, 119, 120, 121, 122, 131, 135 barrier, 21, 25, 45, 46, 72, 99, 115, 120, 134 Beijing, 3, 15, 18, 19, 21, 33, 42, 57, 75, 76, 82, 86, 87, 88, 89, 91, 93

Belgian, 8, 52, 60, 65 belonging, 23, 76, 79, 82, 86, 135 Ben-Ghiat, Ruth, 24, 39 Benjamin, Walter, 15, 39 Berry, Michael, 11, 73, 81, 91 Bertolucci, Bernardo, 15, 41, 42 Bildungsroman, 56 Blondel, Jean, 38, 39 Bloom, Michelle, 14, 39, 68 border, 2, 9, 23, 45, 46, 48, 53, 71, 72, 83, 84, 86, 91, 96, 99, 111, 120, 134, 135, 136 border crossing, 9 Bordwell, David, 101, 128 Bossi-Fini Law, 38 boundary, 2, 9, 10, 31, 74, 86, 96, 99, 107, 118, 120, 121, 128, 133, 134, 135, 136 Brachet, Auguste, 110, 128 Braidotti, Rosi, 31, 32, 34, 39, 43 Buehrer, Beverly, 101, 102, 128 C’era un cinese in coma, 27, 41 Cabiria, 24, 40 Cantando dietro paraventi, 25, 41 Capdevila, Gustavo, 128, 132 Chen, Xiaomei, 48, 54, 66, 92 Chevaillier, Flore, 66, 68, 69 Chiba, Yoko, 59, 66 Chine, ma douleur, 46, 66, 69 Chinese, 1, 2, 3, 5, 6, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 17, 18, 20, 21, 22, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38, 39, 41, 42, 43, 46, 48, 49, 50, 55, 57, 60, 64, 65, 66, 67, 68, 72, 73, 74, 77, 78, 79, 80, 81, 84, 86, 91, 92, 133, 134, 137, 139 Chirac, Jacques, 119 Chow, Rey, 42, 79, 80, 91

142 Chung Kuo, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 24, 40, 41, 42 Chungking Express, 3, 11 cinema of cruelty, 108, 130 cité, 115, 118, 120 claustrophobia, 78, 120 communication, 45, 53, 85, 86, 87, 90, 91, 133, 134, 135, 136 community, 2, 3, 8, 10, 26, 27, 28, 29, 43, 80, 82, 86, 87, 96, 102, 109, 114, 122, 123, 127, 136, 137 Corneau, Alain, 61, 67 Crespi, Alberto, 39 cross-cultural, 9, 11, 14, 22, 25, 38, 41, 53, 133 Cultural Revolution, 18, 20, 48, 58, 69 Dai, Sijie, 8, 9, 14, 39, 45, 46, 47, 48, 49, 50, 51, 52, 54, 55, 56, 57, 60, 64, 65, 66, 67, 68, 69, 134, 136 De Gaulle, Charles, 118 Deleuze, Gilles, 93, 99, 104, 109, 128, 130, 139 dialect, 33, 57, 71, 72, 73, 78, 82, 83, 84, 85, 86, 87, 89, 90, 91, 116, 135, 136, 137 diaspora, 1, 2, 3, 10, 11, 14, 78, 120, 130, 137 Dirlik, Arif, 45, 67 dislocation, 110, 111 displacement, 3, 6, 7, 8, 11, 12, 87, 115, 128, 137 documentary, 21, 28, 32, 34, 35, 37, 38, 73, 76, 77, 93, 133 Dodesukaden, 95, 96, 102, 104, 105, 107, 108, 109, 111, 115, 123, 129 Donadio, Rachel, 39 Duncan, Derek, 24, 28, 29, 39, 42 East-West, 10, 11, 47, 48, 62, 65, 66, 69, 128, 133, 134, 136 ethnicity, 79, 80, 112, 113 exile, 8, 10, 11, 31, 32, 49, 95, 96, 97, 114, 115, 120, 122, 127, 130

Index fabrication, 87, 91, 135 Fear and Trembling, 46, 49, 52, 54, 55, 60, 61, 67, 68, 134 Foucault, Michel, 120, 129 French, 3, 5, 6, 7, 9, 10, 47, 48, 50, 51, 56, 59, 61, 64, 65, 67, 68, 69, 76, 77, 87, 95, 96, 110, 112, 114, 116, 119, 121, 122, 123, 128, 136, 139 Gadamer, Hans-Georg, 120, 129 Garcia, Daniel, 49, 67 Giagni, Gianfranco, 8, 13, 21, 24, 25, 27, 28, 29, 30, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38, 41, 133, 136 global, 1, 7, 9, 10, 11, 45, 46, 119, 128, 136, 137 globalization, 46, 65, 66, 134, 135 globalized, 45, 46, 47, 77, 133, 136 Goodwin, James, 103, 105, 106, 129 Harris, Chandra, 23, 39 Harvey, David, 129 Haussmann, Georges-Eugène, 107, 115, 116 heteroglossia, 1, 3 Hilton, Isabel, 39 Hiroshima mon amour, 7, 11 homeland, 31, 127 homelessness, 9, 10, 87, 88, 90, 95, 96, 97, 107, 113, 123, 124, 126, 127, 128, 135, 136 Hsieh, Yvonne, 67, 69 H-Story, 11 hybrid, 8, 14, 22, 39, 41, 77, 133, 137, 138 identity, 1, 7, 22, 23, 24, 31, 32, 34, 35, 47, 57, 64, 71, 78, 79, 86, 112, 114, 121, 135, 137 immobility, 120, 122 interpretation, 10, 15, 20, 21, 23, 24, 50, 51, 62, 68, 134 isolation, 10, 97, 111, 119, 124, 126, 127, 135 Israel-Pelletier, Aimée, 125, 126, 127, 129 Italian, 8, 10, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28,

Intermingled Fascinations 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38, 39, 40, 42, 43, 77, 133, 139 Jaccomard, Hélène, 67, 69 Jaffee, Valerie, 73, 78, 92 Japanese, 3, 7, 9, 10, 12, 26, 42, 49, 50, 52, 53, 54, 59, 60, 61, 62, 63, 65, 68, 95, 96, 98, 101, 103, 115, 128, 129, 130, 131, 134, 136, 139 Jia, Zhangke, 9, 71, 72, 73, 74, 75, 76, 77, 78, 81, 82, 83, 84, 88, 90, 91, 92, 93, 135, 136 Journey to the West, 57 Kassovitz, Mathieu, 95, 96, 110, 111, 116, 122, 129, 130 Kechiche, Abdellatif, 9, 95, 96, 110, 121, 129, 135 Kraicer, Shelly, 77, 92 Kurosawa, 131 Kurosawa, Akira, 9, 95, 96, 97, 98, 99, 100, 101, 102, 103, 104, 105, 106, 107, 108, 109, 110, 123, 129, 130, 135 L’albero dei destini, 23, 41 L’Assommoir, 105, 112, 113, 116, 131 L’Avventura, 19 L’Eclisse, 19 L’Esquive, 95, 96, 110, 116, 117, 120, 121, 122, 123, 129 La Haine, 95, 96, 110, 111, 112, 116, 120, 121, 122, 123, 129, 130, 131 La stella che non c’è, 20, 40, 41 Lamerica, 23, 41 language, 1, 3, 7, 9, 10, 12, 13, 15, 32, 33, 36, 42, 46, 47, 50, 53, 54, 56, 57, 59, 60, 61, 62, 64, 65, 71, 72, 73, 77, 78, 79, 81, 82, 83, 84, 85, 86, 87, 90, 112, 121, 122, 128, 135, 137 Le Signe du Lion, 9, 95, 96, 123, 124, 129, 136 Le voyage du ballon rouge, 3, 5, 11 Lefebvre, Henri, 117, 118, 120, 129

143

Les jeux de l’amour et du hazard, 121, 122 Lim, Dennis, 36, 37, 43, 75, 83, 92 liminality, 9, 10, 95, 96, 97, 100, 108, 112, 115, 127, 135 linguistics, 2, 9, 10, 46, 47, 68, 71, 72, 73, 79, 80, 81, 86, 87, 90, 96, 121, 134, 135 Liu, Jin, 16, 51, 84, 92 loneliness, 97, 123 Loti, Pierre, 59, 60, 61, 67, 69 Loui, Kenny, 107, 129 Lu, Sheldon, 83, 92 Lu, Tonglin, 81, 92 Luciano, Bernadette, 31, 32, 40, 43 MacDonald, Keiko, 99, 100, 129 Madame Butterfly, 59, 60 Madame Chrysanthème, 59, 60, 67, 69 Mandarin, 2, 3, 6, 10, 20, 33, 42, 57, 69, 71, 81, 86, 135, 139 Mao, Tse-Tung, 17, 18, 19, 20, 48, 50, 66 Marcus, Millicent, 40 Marcus, Sharon, 117, 129 marginality, 97, 105, 119 marginalized, 23, 81, 96, 118, 135 Mazierska, Ewa, 124, 126, 129 Mejías, Marta, 111, 112, 130 Metzger, Sean, 10, 11 migrant, 8, 21, 22, 23, 24, 28, 31, 32, 39, 43 migration, 11, 31, 32, 34, 46, 47, 49, 50, 55, 56, 58, 65, 134, 137 migratory, 46, 47, 60, 136 milieu, 68, 104, 122 minorities, 10, 24, 31, 127 misinterpretation, 52, 63 mistranslation, 52, 53, 63 Mitterand, François, 119 monoethnicity, 71 multicultural, 24, 27, 38, 74, 121 multi-ethnic, 112, 120, 121, 136 music, 4, 9, 50, 51, 85, 123 Naficy, Hamid, 10, 11, 95, 97, 112, 120, 127, 130

144 national, 22, 31, 45, 48, 71, 77, 79, 86, 118 national allegory, 74, 77 nationalism, 80, 82 nationality, 49, 80, 96 New Wave, 73, 76, 77, 123 nomadic, 21, 31, 34, 35, 133 Nothomb, Amélie, 8, 45, 46, 47, 49, 50, 52, 53, 54, 55, 59, 60, 62, 63, 65, 66, 67, 68, 69, 134, 136 O’Healy, Àine, 23, 40 Orientalism, 25, 27, 30, 37, 40, 59, 73 Other, 17, 21, 28, 40, 86, 92, 93, 128 outlandish cinema, 21, 28, 29, 40, 133 Pane e tulipani, 31, 32, 41 panopticon, 120 Parati, Graziella, 23, 40 Paris, 66, 67, 83, 84, 88, 107, 110, 111, 112, 113, 114, 115, 116, 119, 120, 123, 124, 125, 126, 127, 129, 130, 131 Père Goriot, 104 Perez, Gilberto, 138 performance, 8, 47, 48, 49, 50, 51, 53, 54, 55, 56, 57, 59, 60, 65, 66, 68, 75, 77, 83, 87, 93, 121, 134 periphery, 8, 9, 10, 29, 79, 80, 81, 82, 95, 96, 97, 102, 103, 105, 107, 108, 112, 116, 118, 121, 127 Persòli, Renato, 16, 40 Ponzanesi, Sandra, 21, 28, 29, 40, 133 postcolonial, 45, 134 poverty, 10, 16, 96, 102, 108, 112, 119, 120, 127, 135, 136 Prince, Stephen, 99, 100, 101, 102, 103, 105, 107, 108, 130 putonghua, 71, 72, 73, 75, 82, 83, 84, 85, 86, 87, 90, 91, 135 Questa notte è ancora nostra, 25, 41 racialized, 24, 114, 133

Index Rashǀmon, 95, 96, 97, 98, 99, 100, 102, 128, 130 re-education, 8, 46, 48, 55, 56, 57, 64 Resnais, Alain, 7, 11 Richie, Donald, 101, 107, 109, 110, 130, 131 Riding, Alan, 48, 56, 67 rite of passage, 10, 126 Rohmer, Eric, 9, 10, 95, 123, 124, 125, 126, 127, 129, 136 Rome, 8, 21, 22, 26, 28, 29, 32, 33, 36, 41, 43, 133 Said, Edward, 30, 37, 40 Sakai, Naoki, 86, 92 Shanxi, 71, 73, 83, 84, 86, 87, 90, 135 Shih, Shu-Mei, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 9, 11, 12, 14, 47, 63, 67, 71, 78, 79, 80, 81, 82, 87, 90, 91, 92, 93 Siciliano, Amy, 111, 112, 114, 119, 130 Sinofrench, 7, 14, 43 Sinoitalian, 7, 8, 13, 14, 15, 21, 22, 24, 25, 27, 30, 33, 37, 38, 42, 133 Sinophonality, 71, 72, 78, 81, 82, 90 Sinophone, 1, 2, 3, 5, 6, 7, 9, 11, 12, 14, 38, 47, 67, 78, 80, 81, 82, 87, 90, 91, 92, 93, 133, 137, 139 slum, 96, 102, 103, 104, 105, 106, 107, 108, 109, 110, 111, 115, 123, 135, 136 social change, 77, 109, 110 social code, 113 social network, 96, 110, 123, 124, 136 Soldini, Silvio, 25, 30, 31, 32, 40, 41 Sontag, Susan, 18, 20, 40 space, 8, 9, 10, 23, 38, 42, 72, 82, 83, 86, 95, 96, 97, 100, 108, 112, 117, 120, 121, 125, 126, 128, 129, 135, 139 spatialized, 108, 114 Spivak Gayatri Chakravorty, 66, 67

Intermingled Fascinations Strang, Brent, 108, 130 Stupeur et tremblements, 8, 46, 61, 67, 134 Teske, Raymond, 114, 130 The Count of Monte Cristo, 51, 52 The Last Emperor, 15, 41 The World, 9, 71, 72, 73, 77, 82, 83, 87, 88, 90, 91, 92, 97, 111, 127, 135, 136 Three Gorges Dam, 58, 64, 65 Tokyo, 59, 60, 102, 107, 127, 129 transient, 95, 106, 126, 133, 135 transition, 48, 100, 111, 115, 122, 126 translation, 5, 6, 8, 9, 10, 11, 15, 20, 42, 47, 50, 53, 54, 55, 60, 62, 65, 66, 68, 92, 93, 134 transnational, 3, 7, 9, 10, 14, 22, 23, 24, 38, 39, 41, 42, 45, 55, 97, 133, 134, 136, 138 transnationalism, 24, 138 transnationalisms, 71, 81 Trierweiler, Valérie, 67, 68 Tsai, Ming-Liang, 14, 31, 39, 41

145

Un Cinese a Roma, 8, 13, 21, 25, 28, 37, 41, 133 urban, 9, 10, 33, 77, 82, 95, 96, 103, 107, 119, 128 urbanization, 10, 128 Ury, Marian, 98, 130 vagrancy, 96, 97 Verdicchio, Pasquale, 40 verlan, 121, 131 Vincendeau, Ginette, 112, 116, 119, 121, 130, 131 violence, 62, 111, 112, 120, 123 violent, 110, 114 Virilio, Paul, 130 Waalo fendo, 23, 41 What Time is it There?, 14, 39, 41 World Park, 71, 72, 73, 74, 75, 76, 78, 82, 83, 84, 85, 86, 87, 90, 91, 135 York, Geoffrey, 39, 40, 49, 66, 67, 75, 91, 128, 129, 130 Yu, Sen-lun, 56, 67, 73, 76 Zabriskie Point, 19 Zhang, Zhen, 5, 10, 11, 92 Zola, Emile, 105, 116, 122, 131