Colt 212: Worlding Asian Cinemas Instructor: Palita Chunsaengchan Film/Reading Analysis #1 Due to CANVAS on Thursday, October 25, by 11 p.m. Your first reading analysis needs to be 2-3 double-spaced pages with 1-inch margins in 12-point Times New Roman font. Please include a title, your name, and page numbers. Since it is only a 1500-1700-words analysis, long quotes should not be used more than once. Although a short paragraph of summary might be necessary to your assignment introduction, the priority of this assignment should be your critical response to the prompt, the film and the reading. This means that I evaluate this assignment on the basis of how well you engage with the text (both films and readings); how you critically analyze textual evidence in relation to the prompt question you choose, and how you coherently refer to the argument or evidence in the texts to evoke your point of discussion. *Your assignment can be based ONLY on these following film texts: (1) Ju Dou, (2) Farewell My Concubine, (3) Mother India, (4) Pather Panchali, (5) Tokyo Story The following paragraph is meant to prompt your formulation of an analysis. Please keep in mind that I expect your papers to be rigorously structured around a clearly defined argument with a careful use of textual evidence. In Lucia Nagib’s article, “Towards a Positive Definition of World Cinema,” she writes, “In my view, the belief in a centre is as mythic as the quest for origins...cinema has existed for over ten thousand years in the minds of human beings in the form of associative currents, daydreams, sensual experiences and stream of consciousness. The technical discovery only made it reproducible” (30). One can say that this statement is a form of protest to Hollywood aesthetic norms and dominance and the way in which studies of Hollywood films usually depict and make claim over the rest of the world. The statement also opens up a possibility for us to look more closely at films made from different geographical, cultural and political sites than Hollywood as having their own says and values. How does a film that we have watched so far support or illustrate Nagib’s argument? In other words, how does a film of your choice deliberately make an aesthetic or political claim on its own terms and in its own given historical moment? How does it visualize or represent the claim— through “daydreams, sensual experiences, stream of consciousness,” in Nagib’s words, or through other possible forms i.e. theatrical performances, folkloristic communal traditions? Consider both the narrative and the cinematography of the film that you select. Pick at least two scenes to analyze, and close-read how they support your argument; how they decenter the Hollywood norms, or how they give rise to new potential aesthetic insights and political discussions of the given moment. *Please put words count on the last page of your assignment. See the criteria for this assignment on Canvas. Formatting: Block quote If you’re citing a passage of more than two lines, please indent and single space the passage: Nagib goes on in the passage to describe a positive definition of world cinema, ... Films all over the world are thus not confined into tight compartments of their own nationalities, but interconnected with each other according to their relevance at a given historical moment, Colt 212: Worlding Asian Cinemas Instructor: Palita Chunsaengchan regardless of whether they originate in the first, second, or third worlds. (31) The interconnectedness of films that she establishes here... Citations Please include page numbers in parenthesis at the end of the sentence quoted. See above for block quotes (page number after the full stop), and for citation within a sentence (page number before the full stop): Nagib describes film studies that look at films from other sites as having a tradition “to define themselves by differentiation from, or opposition to, Hollywood norms” (29). Evaluation: An “A” paper demonstrates a superior, sustained and consistent level of engagement with a sophisticated problem relevant to the assignment. • The argument is coherent, well argued and provocative. • The evidence is thorough and elucidates numerous facets of a passage in critical detail. • The paper demonstrates rhetorical finesse and holds together stylistically and organizationally. A “B” paper demonstrates competence and an acceptable level of critical engagement with a problem relevant to the assignment. • The argument is adequately coherent, but may be lacking in some detail. • The evidence is structured and thoughtfully presented around the argument, and is, for the most part, well thought through and persuasive. • While there may be some minor problems with grammar and usage, they do not interfere with the persuasiveness of the argument. A “C” paper meets the basic requirements of the assignment, and demonstrates a basic attempt to engage with a problem relevant to the assignment. • The argument may be weakly stated and not necessarily posed as an explicit, main idea. • While the evidence is relevant and drawn from the text, it may be underdeveloped and in need of elaboration. • The grammar and usage are sufficient to make sense of the paper’s general argument, but may not reflect much attention to rhetorical considerations. 11 From National Allegory to Global Commodity The Cinematic Images of Gong Li Copyright © 2011. Taylor and Francis. All rights reserved. Ka F. Wong One of the prevalent images of the New Chinese Cinema manifests itself in a woman. Bold and beautiful, strong and sensual, she is trapped in an oppressive world from which she determinedly struggles, oftentimes in vain, to escape. Emblematic of this popular figure is Gong Li. In Zhang Yimou’s landmark “Red” Trilogy—Red Sorghum (1987), Ju Dou (1989), and Raise the Red Lantern (1991)—the “magnetism” of Gong, for many critics like Bérénice Reynaud, signifies “Chinese-ness, femininity, and mystery outside her own culture” (28). Gong continues to enthrall under other renowned directors—both Chinese and American—such as Chen Kaige, Wong Kar-Wai, and Rob Marshall. Film stars epitomize, as Richard Dyer suggests, “constant features of human existence,” and such “features never exist outside a culturally and historically specific context” (Heavenly 3, 17). From national allegory to global commodity, Gong is a bona fide Chinese star precisely because her onscreen image embodies certain important features—be they real or imagined—of Chinese existence. As Shu-mei Shih explains, postmodern cultural identities have increasingly turned to visuality for construction and representation (8–16). Exemplary of this trend, Gong’s cinematic images have become a critical site to look at how China and Chinese-ness, and to a great degree, Asia as a whole, are depicted, translated, and transformed on the global stage. In this chapter, I examine the cultural presentations of Gong’s star image in specific film texts against the dynamic backdrop of China’s globalization over the past two decades. This is, however, neither a biographical survey of Gong nor a critique on her merit as a performer; instead, my analysis focuses on image production, and on audience consumption of those images. I explore the evolution of Gong’s cinematic persona in four groups of films that trace her emergence from a mainland Chinese actress to a pan-Asian starlet: her rise with Zhang in their initial collaboration in the “Red” Trilogy; their break up in Shanghai Triad (1995); her work in transnational productions such as Hong Kong-based filmmakers’ Chinese Box (Wang 1997), 2046 (Wong 2002), and The Hands (Wong 2004);1 and, last, her recent projects such as the Hollywood picture Memoirs of a Geisha (Marshall 2005) and her reunion with Zhang in Curse of the Golden Flower (2006). Gates, Philippa, and Lisa Funnell. Transnational Asian Identities in Pan-Pacific Cinemas, edited by Philippa Gates, and Lisa Funnell, Taylor and Francis, 2011. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/uoregon/detail.action?docID=957468. Created from uoregon on 2017-05-07 10:29:52. 148 Ka F. Wang Copyright © 2011. Taylor and Francis. All rights reserved. A STAR IS BORN: GONG LI AND THE NEW CHINESE CINEMA Since her debut in Red Sorghum (1987), Gong has been the foremost leading lady of the New Chinese Cinema, especially with Zhang, whose fi rst seven feature films all center on heroines played by her. More than a decade later, she still reigned as “China’s most beautiful person” in China Daily’s national poll in 2006 (China). Gong may not be the most prolific or profitable Chinese actress; nonetheless, she is overwhelmingly elected as a star. Fredric Jameson maintains that “every age is dominated by a privileged form,” whose structure appropriately expresses the “neurosis” of that particular time and place (66). The popularization of Gong’s screen image can be reckoned as an expression of China’s neurosis at the turn of the last century—a concoction of discursive notions, imageries, and feelings that makes up a distinctive sense of “Chinese-ness,” but may have little to do with history or reality. From a postmodern perspective Gong’s cinematic image evokes two notions—femininity and Chinese-ness. Feminist fi lm critics have long argued that, as Laura Mulvey notes, cinema “fi nds its most perfect, fetishistic object in the image of woman” (Fetishism 13). The complex premises of fetishism can be understood in two ways that are germane to this discussion: Freud’s archaic female (mother) body and Marx’s erasure of labor (capitalistic commodity); the image of woman on screen is the “eroticized spectacle” of both the feminine and the commodity (ibid. 13). At once docile and daring, Gong’s star image personifies this split femininity—the archetype “mother–whore” in the Western binary paradigm. Indeed, her roles can be neatly divided along this polarity, which is useful in reading the construction of Gong’s celluloid femininity and her transnational appeal. She is an idealized mother of virtue—such as the loving wife in To Live (Zhang 1994) and the pregnant wife fighting for justice in The Story of Qiu Ju (Zhang 1992). She is also a woman of pleasure—for instance, the brawny prostitute in Farewell My Concubine (Chen 1993) and the enchanting singer in Shanghai Triad. More often than not, she is both at the same time, like the brutalized wife turned adulteress in Ju Dou and the vengeful Empress in Curse of the Golden Flower. Beneath these different roles is an essential core that gives her diverse filmic presences a unity, which, in turn, ratifies the incandescent star image of Gong as the transnational icon of femininity and Chinese-ness. Far from being an unmediated reflection, the star-making process requires a reconstruction that depends on the political, cultural, and semiotic apparatus of its time. Since Deng Xiaoping’s “open-door” policy in the 1980s drastically transformed the economic and social landscape of China, the identity of Chinese artists has been in negotiation, especially on redefining the Chinese self in the complex global network. Many filmmakers found this neurosis best symbolized through the plight of woman and used settings in prerevolutionary China that provided a safer temporal space without Gates, Philippa, and Lisa Funnell. Transnational Asian Identities in Pan-Pacific Cinemas, edited by Philippa Gates, and Lisa Funnell, Taylor and Francis, 2011. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/uoregon/detail.action?docID=957468. Created from uoregon on 2017-05-07 10:29:52. Copyright © 2011. Taylor and Francis. All rights reserved. From National Allegory to Global Commodity 149 provoking government censorship. In these films, woman, the timeless signifier that is always outside the grand historical narrative, also became imperative in rewriting Chinese history (Dai, “Rewriting” 197). Gong’s star image originated from this historical reinvention. In her fi rst three fi lms with Zhang, she takes on the roles of feisty young maidens who similarly battle for love and freedom against female subservience in the Chinese feudal tradition. To read these cinematic presences of Gong as national allegory is tempting. Regarding his Raise the Red Lantern, Zhang notes that “the Chinese people’s oppression and confi nement, which has been going on for thousands of years,” is more clearly expressed on women’s “bodies” (Qtd. in Yang 300). Many critics, such as Chris Berry and Mary Farquhar, consider “Gong Li-as-China,” signifying a spirited nation that defies not only tyrannical patriarchy, but more importantly, communist authority (128–29). Unavoidably, viewing Gong’s image in an allegorical light is bound to invoke the politics of gender and representation. Rey Chow and Jinhua Dai, among others, deem Zhang’s portrayals as “auto-ethnography” and “self-Orientalizing,” respectively. Indeed, Gong’s characters, as subjugated women from the early twentieth century, are instant reminders of The Good Earth’s (Franklin 1937) Chinese heroines of Western cinematic discourse. Gong’s celebrated portrayal of agonizing young women only add to the exoticized “otherness” that, as Dai claims, won “these self-Orientalizing male elite” filmmakers “a ticket to the world” (“Rewriting” 198–99). Notably, pictures of Gong from these films are often used as covers for academic books on such a topic, as if her image alone is enough to underscore the issue at stake. For the transnational Chinese audiences, Gong’s image appropriates the traditional starlet that they have longingly missed. In the Chinese cultural imagination, cinematic femininity is strongly associated with victimization. The tragic silent-movie star Ruan Lingyu, and her equally tragic film roles, have long typified the “mother–whore” figure that became inseparable with early Chinese cinema and that Gong’s heroines still embody today.2 In fact, the press has hailed both Ruan and Gong as the “Chinese Greta Garbos” (Reynaud 21; Roberts 1). Moreover, unlike other contemporary mainland actresses, Gong’s image is not tied to the Communist regime: she is no masculine “dragon lady” or genderless red youth. Even in films that touch on the revolution, like To Live and Farewell My Concubine, Gong’s characters are always the victims. In addition, other internationally renowned Chinese actresses possess an onscreen androgyny—such as Brigitte Lin and Michelle Yeoh—as their most memorable roles consist of cross-dressed martial art heroines.3 Their images are popular not because of their femininity but rather for their gendered performance of masculinity, making Gong the exception: she appears indisputably feminine in all her films, including Hong Kong screwball comedies.4 Consequently, her image kindles a “new geopolitic of desire,” as Shih puts it (86), among Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Chinese diasporic populaces, whose feelings toward China are complicated and, at times, conflicted. Gates, Philippa, and Lisa Funnell. Transnational Asian Identities in Pan-Pacific Cinemas, edited by Philippa Gates, and Lisa Funnell, Taylor and Francis, 2011. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/uoregon/detail.action?docID=957468. Created from uoregon on 2017-05-07 10:29:52. 150 Ka F. Wang Copyright © 2011. Taylor and Francis. All rights reserved. Fascination with a star is the result of multiple social positions that go beyond the film texts (McDonald 187). The public discourse is often complimented by their private life of secrets and scandals. Gong’s alleged affair with her director Zhang—then a married man whose wife stridently refused him a divorce—excited the audiences and fi lled the pages of the tabloids. Proof of their romance was immaterial; what mattered was that they were portrayed as star-crossed lovers. One may recall that almost all prominent Chinese artists of the early twentieth-century were “victims” of arranged marriages.5 Zhang and Gong reenact, or at least were reminiscent of, this neurosis of Chinese modernity. Gong’s celluloid image as a sexualized young woman afflicted by tradition is therefore reconfirmed through the “dramas” of her real life. It should be noted that her fi rst box-office success in Hong Kong and China was A Terracotta Warrior (Ching 1989), in which the couple played ill-fated lovers whose undying romance was reincarnated from the First Emperor’s reign to modern times. Accordingly, her cinematic images in Zhang’s feudalistic films take on further significance. The widely discussed scene in Ju Dou—when Gong’s character, realizing she is being watched by her nephew, offers her bruised body for the voyeur—can be seen as even more complex than a straightforward Mulveyesque statement on the gazing game. In this scene, the point of view of the peeping man, the director, and the audience merge into a single close up shot, and a moment of perfect alignment among the character, image, and performance of Gong is achieved. Ju Dou is very aware of the “gaze.” If the act of the heroine is not simply a “sexual invitation” (Chow, Primitive 166–68; Berry and Farquhar 127), but “a call for justice” (Lau 2; Marchetti, Tian’anmen 3), the actress then also seems willing to bare her own scandalous wounds for the world to see in the hope of finding sympathy. THE LADY FROM SHANGHAI With the release of Shanghai Triad in 1995, the star image of Gong had become a commodity in its own right. Her cinematic image remains feminine and fetishized; only this time her character is glossed with a cosmopolitan allure. Departing from the site of primordial passion, Zhang’s Shanghai Triad shifts its spatial reference to 1930s’ Shanghai, which, Yingjin Zhang argues, has long stood for foreignness, sexuality, and suspect morality in the cultural imaginary of modern China (283). To the postrevolutionary generation who never witnessed its glory, but was spellbound by its myth, Shanghai is what Jameson called “the privileged lost object of desire” (19). In Shanghai Triad, Jewel (Gong) personifies this desirable lost object—a seductive cabaret singer on stage, a trophy of the mob boss off stage, and a secret lover of a treacherous gang member in between. Paralleling China’s transitional experience of globalization in the 1990s, Gong’s fi lmic image also takes on a new façade that is derived from Gates, Philippa, and Lisa Funnell. Transnational Asian Identities in Pan-Pacific Cinemas, edited by Philippa Gates, and Lisa Funnell, Taylor and Francis, 2011. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/uoregon/detail.action?docID=957468. Created from uoregon on 2017-05-07 10:29:52. Copyright © 2011. Taylor and Francis. All rights reserved. From National Allegory to Global Commodity 151 transnational iconography of femininity. Shanghai Triad marks the “break up” of her partnership with Zhang. In order to sustain her star image, the danger, desire, and desperation of her alleged affair with the director was replaced with something equally dangerous, desirable, and desperate—a femme fatale. Dyer describes the femme fatale as “an image of frustration, alive with desire that cannot be satisfied” (Matter 68). In particular, the creation of Jewel draws inspiration from two vixens of 1930s American cinema, Anna May Wong and Marlene Dietrich in Shanghai Express (von Sternberg 1932). Adorned with sparkling red feathers, Gong makes her entrance in the film, paying homage to Wong’s showgirl in Hai Tang (Eichberg 1930) and singing a hit song of the period “Faking Sincerity” (Jia zhengjing). The teasing lyrics are seemingly personal. The “faking” songstress and her pleading to drop the pretense can once more be read as national allegory for an increasingly capitalistic China struggling to keep its socialist appearance.6 The subsequent musical number is an exact copy of Dietrich’s performance in Morocco (von Sternberg 1930), complete with black tuxedo and top hat. From appropriating Wong, the “bordercrossing minor star,” as Yiman Wang maintains, to becoming Dietrich, the Euro-American icon of femme fatale, the transnational exchange of Gong’s cinematic identity was ostensibly completed. Like her Hollywood counterparts, Jewel fully understands her “to-be-looked-at-ness” and knows her life depends on its exhibition. Casting Gong as a popular songstress is crucial to nostalgia fi lms like Shanghai Triad, in which remembrance of the past is mortgaged to music. Music provokes history in a “thoroughgoing and irrevocable fashion,” as Jameson explains, because it mediates the spectators’ sense of “the historical past along with their private or existential ones” (299). Indeed, Shanghai in the 1930s was the capital of a Chinese entertainment industry that produced a string of female music and fi lm stars. Hence, Jewel harks back to the popular “Night Shanghai” sing-song girl image, and Gong’s performances of the songs are the superficial, yet effective, link to the period. Music, however, also serves as a “fundamental class marker”—the index of social “distinction” (Jameson 299), as the raw folk songs in Red Sorghum have now been replaced with Westernized jazzy tunes that exalt the frivolity of the urban bourgeoisie. During the exile of Jewel, the old and new images of Gong are juxtaposed not only visually, but musically. On the idyllic waterfront that alludes to the landscapes of Zhang’s previous films, Jewel befriends a peasant woman and even masquerades as one. She then sings to her goddaughter “Row and Row, Row to the Grandma Bridge,” from which the film draws its Chinese name. The discrepancy between the titles is more than a matter of translation as local and global audiences are urged to look at the fi lm differently: “Row to the Grandma Bridge” is a nostalgic melodrama that rings the bell with a nursery rhyme, and “Shanghai Triad” a period thriller that is suggestive of the noir gangster genre. Despite the different titles, the fate of the Gates, Philippa, and Lisa Funnell. Transnational Asian Identities in Pan-Pacific Cinemas, edited by Philippa Gates, and Lisa Funnell, Taylor and Francis, 2011. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/uoregon/detail.action?docID=957468. Created from uoregon on 2017-05-07 10:29:52. 152 Ka F. Wang leading lady remains the same. The simple peasant and the glamour girl eventually share the doom of death, reasserting Gong’s star image as the ultimate suffering woman. Copyright © 2011. Taylor and Francis. All rights reserved. THE OBJECT OF NOSTALGIA Because her image readily offers dramatic shorthand for suffering femininity and fetishized Chineseness, Gong has been sought after by other Chinese fi lmmakers exploring their visions about China. Attempts by Hong Kong directors to work out their neuroses of identity became more evident as the “expiry” date of 1997 came closer. Rey Chow argues that nostalgia is less about returning to the past than an “effect of temporal dislocation” (Ethics 147). In Chinese Box (1997), 2046 (2002), and The Hands (2004), Gong’s heroines are all displaced figures of nostalgia that embody a different kind of neurosis for transnational fi lmmakers as the colonial territory fi nally realizes its homecoming. The 1997 handover of Hong Kong sets the tone in Wayne Wang’s Chinese Box, with Gong as the “not too subtle symbol” of China (Lu 115). The title is an apparent metaphor for fi n-de-siècle Hong Kong, as a nest of Chinese boxes whose unwrapping reveals nothing but emptiness at their center. Gong plays Vivian, the mainland mistress of a Hong Kong businessman (Michael Hui) and the object of desire of an ailing British reporter (Jeremy Irons). The fi lm’s heavy-handed political allegory needs little elucidation; neither is the tragic romance between a sentimental Caucasian man and a sensual “Oriental” woman an original one. It is of interest, however, to examine how Gong, the fetishized image of Chinese-ness and femininity, manifests in Wang’s imagination. Intertexuality is crucial to the creation of the Chinese seductress in contemporary Hong Kong. Vivian fi rst appears at a New Year’s Eve party that celebrates the arrival of 1997 with the music of “Rose, Rose, I Love you” (Meigui meigui wo ai ni), a prewar pop song that is as equally famous as “Faking Sincerity.” In a later scene, Vivian, similar to Jewel, reveals an affiliation with the Hollywood femme fatale. Holding a cigarette in one hand and a glass of wine in the other, she imitates, with much delight, the dramatic gestures and raspy voice of Dietrich in A Foreign Affair (Wilder 1948). The intertextual reference affi rms Gong’s image of transnational femininity. In contrast, Gong’s costar Maggie Cheung plays a street hustler with a deliberately scarred face and boyish look. It is reasonable to interpret the two figures, Gong’s collected and feminine beauty and Cheung’s talkative and deformed tomboy appearance, as a kind of neurosis toward cosmopolitan Chinese-ness. To borrow Ou-fan Lee’s remarks on nostalgia, Cheung’s Jean (Hong Kong) is “too blatant” in “its Western imitation” and “too eager to prostitute itself to the desires of its colonial master,” but Gong’s Vivian (Shanghai) “for all its foreignness is still Chinese” (327–28). Gates, Philippa, and Lisa Funnell. Transnational Asian Identities in Pan-Pacific Cinemas, edited by Philippa Gates, and Lisa Funnell, Taylor and Francis, 2011. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/uoregon/detail.action?docID=957468. Created from uoregon on 2017-05-07 10:29:52. Copyright © 2011. Taylor and Francis. All rights reserved. From National Allegory to Global Commodity 153 While Gong in Chinese Box does not break out of the “box” of her star image, her Shanghai femme fatale characteristics combine even more intensely in Wong Kar-Wai’s 2046 and The Hands. Wong’s films tend to invoke an uncanny feeling of lost time, which Ackbar Abbas calls déjà disparu—“what is new and unique about the situation is always already gone, and we are left holding [ . . . ] a cluster of memories of what has never been.” (25). It is hard to miss the significance of the title 2046, what will be the 50th anniversary of the 1997, handover when the promise of the unchanged capitalistic system in Hong Kong expires. The story follows the writer Chow Mo-Wan (Tony Leung) down memory lane. One of the affairs he remembers is Gong as Su Lizhen, a dubious gambler who has an identical name with his unrequited love So Laichen—in Cantonese—played by Maggie Cheung. There is another parallel storyline between the weary writer and a gorgeous call girl from the mainland played by Zhang Ziyi. The camera, editing, costumes, and music all suggest she is a surrogate for Gong’s Su Lizhen. Sadly, the new Chinese copy can never replace the old one—suffice it to say the Hong Kong original. All of these women are lost to the wistful man and gradually become the objects of nostalgia. Gong’s Chinese femme fatale thus represents to the Hong Kong filmmaker what Stephen Teo called “China syndrome” (207), a fascinating feeling of kinship mixing with a fear and loathing of the Communist regime, whereas Cheung seems to signify, for both Wang and Wong, the authentic “local” girl. Taking place in 1960s’ Hong Kong, The Hand, one of the three short films in Eros, is also a tribute to nostalgic fetishism. The story centers on the obsessive affair between a young tailor (Chang Chen) and his Shanghaiese courtesan client Miss Hua (Gong), as their relationship develops under the dialectic of submission and domination. Whereas her hands initiated his fi rst erotic experience, his hands created fantastic dresses for her body. The cheongsams that adorned Miss Hua are mementos of feminized and fetishized Chinese-ness as the fashion was a modern sign for urban women in the Republican period. However, the attire does not speak exclusively to the Chinese. In Hollywood cinema, the dress recalls “Orientalist” nostalgia in films like The World of Suzie Wong (Quine 1960), that romanticized the East in the form of the cheongsam-clad lady. Even among the fi lm texts by Wong, the erotic hand of Miss Hua is a reminder of the black-gloved hand of Gong’s Su Lizhen in 2046, and the cheongsam a visual cue of the original So Laichen (Maggie Cheung) from In the Mood for Love (2000). Likewise, visual allusions are accompanied by musical quotes. The popular 1940s’ songs, especially “Wonderful Spring Night” (hao chunxiao), that appears three times, not only bring nostalgia fully to the foreground but also make a parody of the protagonist. If the music reveals anything about the evanescence of youth and beauty, it is Miss Hua herself that nostalgia fi nds as its object. One may take a step further to imagine Gong herself, the “screen goddess” of the New Chinese Cinema (Lu, China 125), as the very object of nostalgia in the new millennium. Gates, Philippa, and Lisa Funnell. Transnational Asian Identities in Pan-Pacific Cinemas, edited by Philippa Gates, and Lisa Funnell, Taylor and Francis, 2011. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/uoregon/detail.action?docID=957468. Created from uoregon on 2017-05-07 10:29:52. 154 Ka F. Wang Copyright © 2011. Taylor and Francis. All rights reserved. PARADOX OF A GLOBAL COMMODITY The notion that Gong’s film presence personifies the object of nostalgia once again highlights the simulacrum of a star image. Miss Hua, Jewel, and even the feudal women in Zhang’s early films, put forward the surfaces of Chineseness and femininity that keep on being repackaged as fetishized commodities. It was inevitable that Gong’s star image became a currency in the global marketplace, typifying the femme fatale from the East. All of Gong’s roles in Hollywood films to date—Memoirs of a Geisha (Marshall 2005), Miami Vice (Mann 2005), and Hannibal Rising (Webber 2007)—are a synergy of this established image. None of these roles are strictly Chinese, however, and her star image alone is seemingly powerful enough to signpost the exotic Asian femininity required in the films. In Miami Vice, Gong is a CubanChinese mistress of a drug lord, a typical femme fatale who eventually falls for the hard-boiled hero. In Hannibal Rising, Gong plays Hannibal Lecter’s elegant aunt, who is not only the embodiment of Asian mysticism but also an object of affection for the young psycho killer. Still, at the end of both films, Gong’s transnational women entail the same predestined sense of tragedy and futility, just like her famed Chinese heroines. The star image of Gong, which is so intricately woven into the imaginative fabric of Chinese-ness, can be both a blessing and a burden. While her entry into Hollywood productions can be seen as a positive step for Asian actors, some fi nd her non-Chinese roles a disturbing sign of post-Orientalism. Hollywood has a notorious history of what Eugene Franklin Wong calls “visual media racism” that sanctifies role segregation, stratification, and stereotyping (Visual 11–13). Merging and mixing cultural symbols from different countries in the East, Hollywood has also fabricated an easily consumable “pan-Asian” image, in which “yellow faces” are substitutable for each other (Marchetti, Romance 2–3; Wong, “Early” 53). What really matters, Ella Shohat argues, is their token “otherness” in opposition to “whiteness” (173). Against this backdrop comes the controversial casting of famous Chinese actresses as Japanese leads in Memoirs of a Geisha, which demonstrates a lack of cultural “awareness in representation” (Bergstrom and Meyers 10). Meanwhile, the film was banned in China for the fear of reigniting the wartime animosity between China and Japan. The promotion of a “pan-Asian” identity, hence, renders a paradox: when globalization blurs national boundaries and allows citizenship to become “flexible” (Ong 1999), if not multiple, national sentiments curiously can turn more pronounced and pointed.7 The Hollywood cross-racial casting controversy notwithstanding, the screen presence of Gong remains uniquely feminized and fetishized. Gong emphasizes that the most important criteria for playing the part is her gender—being a “woman”—rather than her nationality (Roberts 5). The role obviously does not call for just any woman. Rob Marshall’s creation of the geisha has all the imprints of Gong’s cinematic past. The audience fi rst gets a Gates, Philippa, and Lisa Funnell. Transnational Asian Identities in Pan-Pacific Cinemas, edited by Philippa Gates, and Lisa Funnell, Taylor and Francis, 2011. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/uoregon/detail.action?docID=957468. Created from uoregon on 2017-05-07 10:29:52. Copyright © 2011. Taylor and Francis. All rights reserved. From National Allegory to Global Commodity 155 glimpse of Hatsumomo as she examines her “to-be-looked-at-ness” in front of a mirror. Hatsumomo emerges in the next scene with long raven hair and a bright red kimono that references Gong’s suffering Chinese beauties. The voiceover confi rms that the distressed woman is a “legend,” even though time is no longer on her side. Upstaged by the newcomer Sayuri (Zhang Ziyi), Hatsumomo fi nally breaks down, setting the geisha quarter on fi re, which echoes the fi nal house-burning scene in Ju Dou. Capitalizing on her accumulated Chinese filmic images in her Hollywood performances, Gong succeeded in refashioning an exotic Asian cinematic femininity, which is both familiar to and fetishized by the transnational audiences. The haunting and heartbreaking image of Hatsumomo is reincarnated on the Chinese screen in Curse of the Golden Flower (2006). The film marks Gong’s reunion with Zhang after a decade and much has changed in Chinese society since the two parted ways: China has become the world’s second-largest economy and Zhang’s ancient melodrama attempts to amplify its splendor. Curse of the Golden Flower, indeed, seems eager to impress: the kaleidoscopic color palette, the imposing palace set, the lush and lavish costumes, and the legions of uniformed extras mark the apex of his ancient fantasy series that began with Hero (Zhang 2002). The fi lm also previews what would be Zhang’s sumptuous opening and closing ceremonies at the 2008 Beijing Summer Olympics, the purpose of which appears to have been to show off the power of twenty-fi rst-century China. Gong’s character in Curse of the Golden Flower, echoing China’s newly found economic status, is one of excess and extravagance. Literally embellished with gold, Gong revisits her “mother/whore” role as the morally suspicious and mentally tortured Empress. Not only does her heroine have an affair with her stepson (Lie Ye), but she also acts on her resentment by staging a coup against her husband (Chow Yun Fat). The Empress, introduced in the opening scene in which she looks directly into the camera, is a classic femme fatale with unparalleled beauty, unfulfi lled desire, and unspeakable frustration. The corporeal aspect of femininity is heightened to an extreme, as her body sweats and shivers under the tight corset and elaborate headdress. Her breathlessness and shaking hands immediately establish her character as unwell, qualities which the rest of the drama only confi rm. The close-up shots that often cut off her body also imply a large portion of the figure is still outside of the frame. The camera is unable to capture the voluptuous woman in whole, implying an excessive femininity that “does not respect boundaries” or refuses to be contained by them (Doane, Desire 104). Gong’s Empress, even more than her characters in the “Red” Trilogy, illustrates what Rey Chow calls a “primitivism” that sees China as “simultaneously empire and victim” (Primitive 23). Chow argues that the female bodies of the previous heroines are signs of resistance against the monstrosity of power (ibid. 168); the body of the Empress herself then represents, paradoxically, both the empire and its victim. The regal image of Gong, regardless of Gates, Philippa, and Lisa Funnell. Transnational Asian Identities in Pan-Pacific Cinemas, edited by Philippa Gates, and Lisa Funnell, Taylor and Francis, 2011. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/uoregon/detail.action?docID=957468. Created from uoregon on 2017-05-07 10:29:52. 156 Ka F. Wang the grandiose surface, is still suffering, and her body and soul are, bit by bit, destroyed by the patriarch who never loosens his controlling grip. However, her defiance against the law of the father is fruitless. The Emperor reigns supreme at the end and the Empress who betrays him loses everything— perhaps also a remark from the director about his former muse who has become a global star. “Underneath the gold and jade exterior is a rotten heart,” Zhang explains in the DVD commentary. Therefore, the film can be read as another national allegory that the neurosis of Chinese modernity lingers on despite its opulence and success. China may have come out of the feudal ages and reclaimed its past glory as a world class civilization, but the “visual imaginations” of femininity—embodied by Gong’s filmic images— are still the “sacrificial totem,” as Dai points out, that symbolically assuages the collective anxiety of Zhang and the fifth-generation filmmakers, as well as reveals their feelings of political impotence in rewriting history and creating a new “national myth” (Cinema 33–4). Copyright © 2011. Taylor and Francis. All rights reserved. OUT OF THE PAST: GONG LI, NATIONAL ALLEGORY, AND TRANSNATIONAL IDENTITY If, as Mary Ann Doane suggests, “the archaeology of modernity is haunted by the feminine” (Femmes 1), then the screen image of Gong is one of its most compelling artifacts. Since her sensational debut, Gong has fi rmly established a star image that represents a fetishized femininity and Chinese nostalgia. To Berry and Farquhar, Gong’s early images symbolize “China’s suffering and struggle in the globalizing marketplace” (128). Her onscreen body, accordingly, has become the cinematic site and sign of the repressed, the tormented, and the modernized (Cui 240). Although public discourse is important in reading Gong’s films, the private aspects of a star’s image cannot be ignored. What makes Gong’s rise to fame particularly fascinating is the way her image articulates the natural impulses of vanity, desire, and suffering through her clandestine affairs with Zhang. The highly eroticized images of Gong then are not merely allegory of the nation but also psychotherapy for the male director. Their breakup brings her onscreen image even closer to the expectation of a tragic Chinese starlet, as Gong’s cinematic presences become the source of intertextual reference. By the turn of the new millennium, the anxiety of China’s crossover to capitalistic socialism found Gong’s suffering woman assuming the cinematic icon of femme fatale. The fetishization and commoditization of her image is felt mostly in her repeating roles of prostitute or courtesan. For transnational Chinese directors like Wayne Wang and Wong Kar-Wai, she symbolizes the memory of national trauma as well as the object of nostalgia; for Hollywood filmmakers, she is an exotic beauty, a “pan-Asian” leading lady who stands for otherness, mystery, and sensuality. Drawing on her cinematic stardom, Gong’s characters in the first decade of the twenty-first century are the Gates, Philippa, and Lisa Funnell. Transnational Asian Identities in Pan-Pacific Cinemas, edited by Philippa Gates, and Lisa Funnell, Taylor and Francis, 2011. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/uoregon/detail.action?docID=957468. Created from uoregon on 2017-05-07 10:29:52. From National Allegory to Global Commodity 157 pastiche—if not a parody—of her own image, as the image itself becomes, as Jameson terms it, “the final form of commodity reification” (18). Gong’s own conversion to Singaporean citizenship in 2008 reveals another layer of contemporary Chinese-ness that underscores migration and globalization. Conjuring a generalized pan-Asian identity is a tricky business, and Gong’s Chinese star image may work against instead of towards it. Contextualizing the meaning of stars can easily fall into “presenting a reflectionist history of stardom” (McDonald 179), and my goal here has been to historicize such discourse. Chow maintains that Chinese-ness can “never again form any cohesive continuum” in the postmodern era, as it is no longer defi ned by history but has become an “exotic, globally interchangeable part object” (Sentimental 82). Gong’s star image is a product, a reflection, and a stimulus of this “disjointed” sensibility. Her face alone has lent transnational fi lmmakers—for East and West—a powerful reference of Chinese-ness, although her star image itself was built as both artifice and commodity. Her recent role in the World War II thriller Shanghai (Håfström 2010), in which she plays a beauty with a dark secret, recalls her earlier heroines in nostalgic films. Once again, she is not just the wife of the Chinese mob boss (Chow Yun Fat), but also the love interest of an American reporter (John Cusack), thereby reasserting the allure of the new transnational woman. The intertextuality of Gong’s fi lmic images in the last two decades thus provides different vantage points from which to review the globalizing culture of China and its transnational identity perceived by both Chinese and Hollywood fi lmmakers. The image of Gong carries the weight, the wish, and the wound of her generation. It may not tell all the truths, but it is the stuff that dreams are made of. Copyright © 2011. Taylor and Francis. All rights reserved. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS The author would like to thank Wimal Dissanayake for his support and comments on an earlier version of this chapter. NOTES 1. Wong Kar-Wai’s The Hands is one-third of the fi lm Eros, an anthology with two other short fi lms—Steven Soderbergh’s Equilibrium and Michelangelo Antonioni’s Il filo pericoloso delle cose. 2. Ruan Lingyu was one of the most prominent silent movie stars in the 1930s. Her famous roles are all tragic victims of society, such as in Little Toys (Sun 1933), The Goddess (Wu 1934), and New Women (Cai 1935). 3. For a discussion of female actresses in Chinese martial arts fi lms see Kim; Lu; Williams. 4. In Gong’s Hong Kong box-office hits costarring Stephen Chow, such as Flirting Scholar (Lee 1990) and God of Gamblers III (Wong 1993), she is the leading lady complete with “perfect” dubbed Cantonese. Dialect-inflected Gates, Philippa, and Lisa Funnell. Transnational Asian Identities in Pan-Pacific Cinemas, edited by Philippa Gates, and Lisa Funnell, Taylor and Francis, 2011. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/uoregon/detail.action?docID=957468. Created from uoregon on 2017-05-07 10:29:52. 158 Ka F. Wang Cantonese plays a major comedic role in many Hong Kong fi lms, usually a signifier for “country bumpkin.” Such a notion obviously does not go with the image of Gong, the ultimate female star. 5. Both the father of modern Chinese literature, Lu Xun, and the father of modern Chinese art, Xu Beihong, were both known for fighting against their own arranged marriages. 6. Jewel’s song begins with “pretense, pretense, what’s the point of life if it is all pretense!” (假惺惺, 假惺惺, 做人何必假惺惺!). One may read these teasing lyrics as a take not just on sexuality but also Communist China’s turn to capitalism. 7. Chinese “netizens” have recently become a powerful voice in airing public opinion through social networks in spite of government censorship. The netizens are often jingoistic, for example, denouncing the pro-Tibet demonstrations during the 2008 Beijing Olympics or decrying Zhang Ziyi’s playing a Japanese geisha in Memoirs of a Geisha. 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ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/uoregon/detail.action?docID=957468. Created from uoregon on 2017-05-07 10:29:52. 160 Ka F. Wang FILMOGRAPHY Copyright © 2011. Taylor and Francis. All rights reserved. 2046. Dir. Wong Kar-Wai. Mei Ah. 2004. Chinese Box. Dir. Wayne Wang. Trimark. 1997. Curse of the Golden Flower (满城尽带黄金甲) . Dir. Zhang Yimou. Edko. 2006. “Hands, The.” Eros. Dir. Wong Kar-Wai. Jet Tone. 2005 Hannibal Rising. Dir. Peter Webber. Young Hannibal/Carthago. 2007. Ju Dou (菊豆). Dir. Zhang Yimou. China Film. 1989. Miami Vice. Dir. Michael Mann. Universal. 2006. Memoirs of a Geisha. Dir. Rob Marshall. Columbia/DreamWorks SKG/Spy Glass. 2005. Raise the Red Lantern (大红灯笼高高挂). Dir. Zhang Yimou. ERA International/ China Film. 1991. Red Sorghum (红高粱). Dir. Zhang Yimou. Xi’an Film. 1987. Shanghai Triad (摇呀摇, 摇到外婆桥). Dir. Zhang Yimou. Alpha/La Sept Cinéma. 1995. Gates, Philippa, and Lisa Funnell. Transnational Asian Identities in Pan-Pacific Cinemas, edited by Philippa Gates, and Lisa Funnell, Taylor and Francis, 2011. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/uoregon/detail.action?docID=957468. Created from uoregon on 2017-05-07 10:29:52.
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