Invisible Women: Contemporary Chinese Cinema and Womens Film

Dai Jinhua
Dai J inhua is one of the outstanding younger scholars of the new generation of
Chinese who attended college after the end of the Cultural Revolution in the late
I 970s, when universities became open to admission through college entrance exam-
inations. She is now an associate professor at the Beijing Film Academy where
most of Chinas Fifth Generation filmmakers learned their art, and at the Institute
of Comparative Literature at Beijing University, where she teaches courses on Chi-
nese and Western films, film theory, women in films, and feminism and womens
literature.
Dais writings reflect the impact of Chinas opening to the outside world in the
1980s and I ~ ~ O S , as well as a certain uneasiness with the influence of the West and
of Hong Kong and Taiwan consumer culture in contemporary China. She employs
Western theories (feminist, film, psychoanalytic, and literary) in her analysis and
critique of Chinese films, patriarchal society, and what she euphemistically calls the
mainstream ideology of a powerful political regime. On the other hand, she is
also critical that some Chinese film and literature may be catering more to a West-
positions 3: 0 1995 by Duke University Press
positions 3: 1 Spring 1995 256
ern taste for an exotic and feminized China instead of addressing the pressing
needs of Chinas own cultural and political situations.
Dais works are representative of one of the most trenchant critiques of male-
dominated culture available in China today. In this essay, she addresses the paradox
whereby an official discourse which ostensibly set out to liberate women, and
which thinks of itself as gender neutral, is nevertheless deeply and insidiously
male-centered. Another paradox she considers is that although the Chinese film
industry has one of the worlds largest groups of women directors, very few films
can be said to have a female perspective except for Huang Shuqins Women,
Demon,Human.
This essay was written in 1993 in Beijing and given to me when I visited her
there. The translation here is a slightly edited and condensed version.
May fair Yang, trans.
1. Preface
In China today, women are trapped in a paradoxical dilemma and a vicious
cycle of absurdity. The female sex that emerged on the horizon of history
after the May Fourth movement (1919-1930s), and finally managed to share
the vast heavens with men, has now ironically lost its ability to recognize,
express, and question its own gender power and possibilities. At the same
moment that women began participating in history as liberated women,
they also fell quietly outside historys field of vision as a collective female
body. The arrival of liberation in real life has once again foreclosed the pos-
sibility of women being subjects of discourse and history and has thrown
them into a void.
Undoubtedly, contemporary Chinese women are liberated women. To
this day, China remains a country in which women enjoy more rights and
freedom than in many other places. The Chinese Communist Party did
institute a whole series of social reform measures that did away with
arranged marriages and the buying and selling of brides, closed down
houses of prostitution and reformed prostitutes, organized women to leave
home and participate in public work, banned all kinds of discrimination
against women, and organized publicity campaigns to encourage women to
Dai I i nvi si bl e Women 257
enter into any field of work, especially into traditional male preserves. The
government has put into effect a whole series of laws guaranteeing the
equality of women and men. Contemporary Chinese women enjoy equal
rights of citizenship with men, voting privileges, and equal pay for equal
work. Women possess the right to enter into or dissolve a marriage con-
tract, along with the right to give birth, nurture children, or have an abor-
tion. The All China Womens Federation (Womens Federation), a semiof-
ficial organization found in towns and villages throughout the country, has
become the voice for women on womens issues and the guardian of wom-
ens rights. For women, this has indeed been a cataclysmic change, a histor-
ically unprecedented bestowal of benefits. As Maos sayings go, The times
are now different, men and women are the same. Everything a male com-
rade can do, a female comrade can do as well, and Women hold up half
the sky.
The phrase men and women are the same suggests the equality of men
and women, but it also obliterates the opposition and difference between
male and female. Once women cease to operate within the norms and role
regulations produced for women by a male-dominated culture, male stan-
dards and norms (not the norms that men make up for women, but the
norms and standards of and for men) become the only and the absolute set
of norms. That is the implication of the phrase, Everything a male com-
rade does, a female comrade can do as well. Therefore, this unprecedented
womens liberation, having completed the spiritual liberation of women
and having eradicated their corporal slavery, also renders them unreal and
nonexistent. At the same time that women struggled to free themselves
from historys yoke, they lost their spiritual gender. Women, womens dis-
course, and womens self-expression and self-inquiry have become unneces-
sary and impossible because mainstream ideological discourse has erased
sexual difference. So when the liberated women of China celebrate their
liberation, they must assume the shackles of Freedom.
The womens cultural revolution that should have accompanied the
womens liberation movement was obliterated and postponed indefinitely.
The mainstream ideological discourse of a strong and invincible political
regime inscribed womens liberation as a task already accomplished. All
womens hardships, resistance, and struggles, womens self-consciousness
positions 3: 1 Spring 1995 258
and inner searches, are considered things of the past, of traditional China,
of a bygone era. Any discussion of womens issues premised on making
gender distinctions is labeled political and cultural counterrevolution.
The causes of womens hardship lie not only in the fact that they have no
language of their own, and therefore must constantly struggle under the
yoke of male culture and language, but also in the fact that contemporary
Chinese women have gradually lost the qualities that made them female-
lost the discourse of femaleness. The plight of Hua Mulan, the legendary
female warrior, is precisely the gender predicament of contemporary
women. That is to say, contemporary Chinese women find in Hua Mulan, a
woman who makes herself up as a man, who becomes a hero only through
assuming the role of a man, a most important mirror image. Therefore, we
have a maxim: Chinese women all have a higher vision; they care not for
womens clothing, but favor the warriors attire. Although Chinese
women now share with men the power of discourse, it is a discourse that
deprives them of their gender identity.
In the specific historical period of 1949 through 1976 (the first seventeen
years of the establishment of the New China and the ten years of the Cul-
tural Revolution), the existing narrative of women supposed that only in
Old China, before 1949, did women suffer the tragic fate of exploitation
and humiliation. Moreover, this was considered not a condition imposed on
women only: it was a common destiny shared by all the suffering Chinese
people, as encapsulated by this saying: The old society was a dark, cold
well ten thousand feet deep. We suffering people are trapped at the bottom,
but women are even lower. In other words, the narrative of womens des-
tiny became a signifier for the shared destiny of the laboring masses, the
suffering people. Once the brilliance of the Communist Party brightened
up the sky, and the New China was established, this bitter fate became a
page of history that, once turned over, could be safely forgotten.
The emancipation of women did not necessarily mean that women sud-
denly enjoyed freedom and happiness. On the contrary, it required them to
offer their liberated hearts and bodies to their savior, their emancipator, and
to devote all they had to the Communist Partys grand socialist project. It is
not by being women, but by being warriors that women can enjoy an equal,
or undifferentiated, social status with men. Emancipated Chinese women,
Dai I invisible Women 259
situated in a social and discursive structure where the only standards and
norms are those of men, assume a new nameless burden and experience a
split life and identity. On the one hand, they become people just like men,
and they prop up half the sky with all their strength, or sometimes with
limited strength. On the other hand, they assume the unquestioned respon-
sibilities and roles of traditional women. The new legal system and state
institutions protect women from the tragedy of such a figure as Qin Xian-
glian,* abandoned by her husband, but they do not release women from the
predicament of a Hua Mulan. They even aggravate it. Women inhabit a
ruptured space, carrying a double load of duties and playing two gender
roles: the traditional female and the new masculine warrior.
After 1976 women once more emerged from the horizon of history, but
in a retrogressive movement of Chinese history. Along with earth-shaking
reforms and the liberation of thought, a well-controlled accusatory histori-
cal purge unfolded, through the medium of literature, such as scar litera-
ture (shangheng wenxue) and political reflection literature (zhengzhi fansi
wenxue). I n such narratives, images of women quietly reappeared, images
differentiated from those of men. However, these female images were
merely symbols for victims caught in Chinese history: women were now the
iconic victims of Cultural Revolution calamities and humiliations. Women
became the vehicles for the restoration of traditional womanhood articu-
lated by yet another kind of male-dominated culture. It is as if contempo-
rary Chinese history cannot be reconstructed without first restoring the
image of women and then using it as a means to wipe out the heretical and
reestablish the orthodox. In the face of the unbearable memories of the
recent past, the image of woman becomes the martyr of history. She loses
her spiritual chastity and becomes a sacrificial offering for the reconstruc-
tion of the social order. Woman must bear the burden for societys cru-
elty-it is the image of abused and suffering women that elicits the repen-
tance of society. Even Zhang Zhixin, the sole dissident who spoke out, and
the only truly heroic figure of one billion people during the ten-year Great
Proletariat Cultural Revolution, is turned by men into a traditional fragile
woman. Her role is reduced to that of a delicate comforter of men: Only
when the colorful butterfly fell into the muck, did the world of the poet no
longer seem so dark and grey.4
positions 3: 1 Spring 1995 260
In the face of this new post-Cultural Revolution discourse of gender dif-
ference, the liberated womans yoke of Freedom is shattered, but this new
liberation is unexpectedly accompanied by an old and familiar oppres-
sion. As mainstream ideology weakens, expressions offensive to women
and discriminatory behavior patterns against women have started to surface
in everyday life and the mass media. Sadly, this historical retrogression of
womens social status often enjoys womens approval and even their cooper-
ation. The majority of Chinese women have become weary of the hollow
and false rhetoric of womens liberation. Furthermore, because of the
absence of the female cultural revolution that should have accompanied
the womens liberation movement and because of the erasure of gender dif-
ference, the vast majority of women are confused and ignorant about their
own spiritual gender. Under these circumstances, the revival of gender-sen-
sitive womens writing provides an opportunity for the reemergence of
female subjectivity. It is a historical paradox that this moment of cultural
retrogression has become a turning point, a chance for women to reemerge
on the horizon of history.
Womens writing reemerged on the contemporary Chinese cultural
scene by articulating a rebellious voice and image. The feminist statement
that Women are not moons and do not depend on the light of men to
shine,5 which conjoins social reflexivity with social critique, has developed
into a truly feminist utopian narrative. In contrast to other contemporary
social and cultural achievements, however, feminist consciousness and the
emergence of female subjectivity have been a very difficult and slow
process. Women as a gender group are finally reemerging in history, con-
scious of their collective gender identity. They are engaging in a process of
self-questioning and self-assertion. As the subject of their own discourse,
they are once again challenging male-dominated culture and questioning
the cultural and historical confinements imposed on women. Although
Chinese womens discourse is still in a chaotic state of formulation and con-
struction, significantly, womens awakening and the emergence of womens
dissenting voices are now, as they were during the May Fourth era, linked
to Chinas opening up to the world and the ending of isolationism.
Unlike the May Fourth period, however, this time women have not
joined with men to form alliances like the partnership between the Sons of
Dai I Invisible Women 261
a Young China and May Fourth women.6 Thi s time womens voices are
rather weak. They are broadcast over the vast wilderness of women, but
hardly generate an echo. Indeed, most women find womens revolution and
the feminist voice unfamiliar and irrelevant to them. Feminism faces indif-
ference and even hostility from all levels of the society.
If we understand China between 1976 and 1979 as a time when the old
order was destroyed and a new one was established, then it seems clear that
part of the new order includes the reassertion and consolidation of male
power. The acceleration of economic reform, the open door policy, and
commercialization have all reinforced mens power and sexual discrimina-
tion against women. The social and cultural status of women has deterio-
rated, On the other hand, the self-narration of women has also matured.
I n fact, during what is euphemistically called the process of moderniza-
tion,7 women have been the first to realize that the cultural predicament of
contemporary China has similarities with other Thi rd World countries.
That is to say, along with its economic and cultural penetration, the West
has become an Other with tremendous historical power to castrate the
indigenous cultures it meets. There is a parallel between Thi rd World
national encounters with the West and womens encounters with male cul-
ture within China. The self-narration of liberated women is also analo-
gous to the search for Chinese identity that followed Chinas encounter
with the West, what has been called Chinas marching toward the world.
Consciously or unconsciously, womens writing has become an important
part of the assertion of national culture and its life and death struggle8 to
maintain its uniqueness.
2. Women in Film
It seems to me that 1949 is the appropriate dividing line distinguishing
modern and contemporary literature and the arts. This is because 1949 not
only triggered a series of political changes and a superseding of one power
by another, but also marked a new historical rupture in China. After 1949,
Chinese culture, art, and literature no longer continued the cultural legacy
of the May Fourth movement but, rather, began anew from ground zero.
One could call this starting point a sheet of blank white paper, for draw-
positions 3:l Spring 1995 262
ing the newest and loveliest picture, and for writing the newest and most
graceful writing.9 The womens literature that had quietly appeared in the
1940s now just as quietly disappeared. For various complex political and
historical reasons, this literature did not reappear in the history of Chinese
literature. Nor did Chinese cinema, which had attained a mature form in
the 1930s and I ~ ~ O S , develop further. The only blueprint of contemporary
Chinese literature was the mainstream ideology of the new political regime.
The consequent literary product faithfully repeated and acknowledged the
reigning political discourse in various forms of simple-minded and crude
aesthetic language.
What receded in the decade 1949-1959 as the classical revolutionary cin-
ematic mode was perfected, was not only the image of women constructed
by male desire but also the gaze of desire itself. These were replaced by a set
of rigid and confining political rhetorics of the new cinema. The disappear-
ance of the desiring gaze and desiring language in turn undermined and
dissolved the classical Hollywood mechanism of male-centered cinematic
discourse- that is, male desire and female image, mens voyeurism versus
the female object.10
The decline of the male gaze did not result in a new narrative mode
that negated or opposed patriarchy, however, for the new mode of repre-
sentation was itself a revision of a powerful patriarchal discourse. Rather
than the self-narration of women, these new films narrated women
through an authoritative male perspective. Although images of women
were no longer objectified by the male desiring gaze, women still did not
comprise an autonomous gender group apart from men. Once the desiring
language and the desiring gaze disappeared, the characters on the screen
lost their genders. The gender opposition and distinction between men and
women disappeared and were replaced by class and political difference.
Men and women of the same social class were portrayed like close kin, pure
unsullied brothers and sisters. They could not get sexually involved for they
were the sons and daughters of the same father-the Chinese Commu-
nist Party and the People.
It is precisely this mode of narration that blurs gender difference and cre-
ates a suspension of desire, and which can instead correctly project desire
onto the seat occupied by the spiritual father-the Communist Party, the
Dai I Invi si bl e Women 263
socialist system, and the project of communism. This mode of narration has
successfully actualized what Althusser has called an ideological interpella-
tion, a kind of absolute loyalty that the savior solicits from those whom it
saves. Thi s genderless, asexual imagery and narrative achieves the denial
and latent repression of individual desire and individuality. In this narrative
mode of the classical revolutionary canon, any individual desire is taken as
shameful, dirty, and harmful to that absolute loyalty.
I n this highly politicized and allegorized narration of revolution, what
deserves attention is the image of the new woman, who is saved, or
turned over vanshen]. Her story is about how she grows up into a heroic
woman warrior. I n fact, new woman images appeared in the earliest films
of the New China: The White-Haired Woman [Bai mao nii], directed by Shui
Hua and Wang Bing (1950), and The Sons and Daughters of China, directed
by Lin Zifeng (1950). These stories became the archetypal models for
womens images and Chinese film narratives dealing with women from
949 to 979.
During this period, women became a symbolic object caught up in the
political struggle between the glorious Communist Party and the dark,
abysmal Guomingdang. They are fated to suffer and be humiliated until a
male Communist saves them from the bitter sea of Nationalist domina-
tion.12 Though determined to acquire their spiritual identity and enjoy the
freedom and rights of a liberated New Woman, the purpose of being
redeemed is to sacrifice themselves again to their savior. These liberated
new women will become sexless members of a large collective group iden-
tity-women disguised as men, women who have to dissolve their female
subjectivity and grow up in a large collectivity as women heroes. (See The
Red Detachment of Women Soldiers [Hongse niangx2jun], directed by Xie J in,
9591, and The Song of Youth [Qingchun xhi gel, directed by Cui Wei
[ 19591.) Such a standard revolutionary narrative produced a de-gendered
woman useful as a political and social symbol. It gave us the iron maiden
possessed of iron arms, iron legs, and iron shoulders, and the figure of the
female Communist found in the colloquial saying, she stands on the hill in
a red dress, her finger pointing out the correct revolutionary direction.
Hidden beneath this image of the liberated woman lay a powerful and inte-
grative political hegemony.
positions 3: 1 Spring 1995 264
At the same time, continually used was the classical Earth Mother or
maternal image. In the particular coding system and political rhetoric of
contemporary Chinese cinema, the image of the mother became a core sig-
nifier for the People, an overdetermined image which is a central part of
mainstream ideology. In the classic revolutionary narrative, she and another
core signifier, the Communist Party member, together form an interesting
complementary pair of images: the saved and the savior, the savior and the
saved. As a signifier for the suffering masses, she is at the bottom of the bit-
ter well of social hierarchy, waiting for Communists to save her and enable
her to see the light of day. In her role as the signifier for the People,l3 she is
the original motivating force of history, as well as its savior. She is the
Mother Earth of the Communists. (See Mother [Muqin], directed by Ling
Zifeng [ 19561, and Revolutionary Family [ Gemingjiating], directed by Shui
Hua [ 19641.) Full of traditional feminine virtues, she is a brave, enduring,
and persevering mother. The quiet suffering and sacrificing of this female
image are the only norms available for women in Contemporary China, and
they are implicitly advocated and praised. In fact, the mother image forms a
bridge linking the two periods of contemporary Chinese history and cine-
matic narration of women-1949 to 1976, and 1976 to the present.
Indeed, it was through the deployment of the historical retrogression of
female images from woman warrior to mother that contemporary main-
stream Chinese cinema completed its ideological and narrative transforma-
tion. In Xie J ins 1979 film Oh, Cradle! [Ah, Yaolan!], for instance, a mas-
culinized female military official (who is also represented as alienated from
her femininity) becomes a mother, wife, and woman, because she is
reawakened to maternal love. She finally withdraws from the cinematic
foreground, from history itself, and relinquishes history to men. Although
the members of the reunited family in the films happy ending are not
related by blood and do not share a surname, the film nevertheless achieves
a reversal of the conventional revolutionary narrative ending, which always
showed the individuals loyalty to the party over family and kin. Gone is the
story about the fragmenting of family, which pushed women off the tracks
of tradition and propelled them into the progress of history. Instead, the
reuniting of the family now accomplishes the retrieval of women who have
strayed off the tracks. By representing women restored to their original
Dai I Invisible Women 2 65
maternal role in society, mainstream cinema in New China fulfills the mis-
sion of putting down rebellion and restoring order.
Film representations of woman as Earth Mother in artistic narrative con-
tinue to be overloaded with multiple external forces and functions. They
carry the mission of denouncing events of history, of settling accounts
against history (see the novel Mother, Oh, Mother! [Muqin, ah, muqin!] by Bai
Hua), and of carrying the burden of historical salvation and spiritual con-
solation (see The Legend of Tianyun Mountain [ Tianyunshan chuanqi],
directed by Xie J in [ 19791, the role of Feng J inglan),14 of inexpressible con-
fession (in the same film, see the role of Song Wei), of historical suffering
and of sacrificial offering (see Xie J ins Hibiscus Town [Furong zhen], [ 19871,
the role of Hu Yuyin), and other assorted codings. The woman as found
in the classical cinematic coding system and in traditional thought returns
and once more becomes the empty signifier,iS whose signified conforms to
the standards of men. Women are accused and made to suffer, all for the
sake of mens salvation and historical redemption. Women appear now in
historys field of vision only to be exiled once again outside history.
Through this displacement of women, people (read: men) can then relin-
quish their obsession with the ghost of history and finally bury this corpse.
I n these films, women were never able to exceed the boundaries drawn by
men. J ust as in mainstream films produced during the years 1949-1976,
where the structural absencel6 of the female or of sexual scenes became
the other scene of the political film narrative, now the reappearance of
the female and sexual scenes has become the other scene-a signifier for
the political predicaments in real life and their imaginary resolution.
The Fourth Generation films that appeared around 1979 employed dif-
ferent methods to represent women. Generally speaking, their significance
lies in their challenge to mainstream cinema, to the agenda of politicized
cinematic art. But these mild protests and accusations produce only minor
stories of a major era.Ig In these films, the female image is a signifier for
historys expropriation of men and the internal lack experienced by the
deprived male protagonist. For instance, women are the unattainable love
objects featured in painful stories of unrequited love (such as A-You- Wish
[Ru Yl],19 directed by Huang J ianzhong in 1982, and Teng Wenjis 1981
Awakening [Su xing]). These sorrowful, Platonic, or utopian love stories are
positions 3: 1 Spring 1995 266
devoid of sexual desire, and the female characters are sometimes not even
foregrounded (as in Yang Yanjins Little Street [ 19801). Between the beauti-
ful goddess and the sacrificial offering, the image of women becomes for
the Fourth Generation of film workers the signifier for the youthful dream
which was interrupted by political violence, and for the lack in life and in
the self caused by the castrating force of history.
At the same time that Fourth Generation films brought fresh air into the
cinemas, the Movement of C u 1 t u r a 1 - H is t o r ic a 1 Reflection Lish ilwenh ua
fansi yundong] broke out. This other subversive cultural revolution signaled
the New Era and swept across the Chinese mainland, bringing with it a
profound investigation into reality and its latent cultural conflicts. Given
the fact that the turbulence of the Cultural Revolution was being brought
to a close, and that China had embarked on its historical destiny of mod-
ernization, the movement may be seen as a continuation of the May Fourth
spirit. Taking the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution as its reference
point, it reexamines feudal culture and reevaluates historical inertia in
order to lay the foundation for the process of modernization. At the same
time, it is a reaction against the May Fourth movement, for reflection is also
a search for the roots [xungeng] of the national culture and a new coming to
terms with tradition. It is both an unconscious and a self-conscious attempt
to bridge the cultural rupture between the present and the May Fourth era
and a resistance and opposition to the economic invasion and cultural hege-
mony of the West.
The female images frequently appearing in these narratives once again
become empty signifiers that bear no relationship with the actual living
conditions of real women. The women portrayed in the films of this genre
have become imaginary signifiers20 for a male version of history. A crafty
historical scheme can be detected, for the movement represents another his-
torical retrogression and retreat when it comes to expressing womens
issues. In the national attempt to purge a painful recent history and to
search for cultural roots, womens images have been used once again to pay
back a debt owed to history on behalf of the male world. A recurrent motif
of the search-for-roots cinema is the dry and parched land and a thirsty
man without a woman. Finding a source of water and struggling for a
woman have become the national (male) allegory of existence. Another
Dai I Invi si bl e Women 267
common motif is the story of how a senior, all-powerful malelfather who
has lost his ability to reproduce nevertheless monopolizes a woman. Thi s
motif has generated the image of an East Asian infanticidal culture and its
historical castration of younger men, The singing that greets the joyous dis-
covery of a water source also becomes the symbol for the jubilation that
accompanies finding a woman. I n this way, some of the works engaged in
searching for roots allegorically narrate dismay at extinguishing the race
and the culture.
Still another motif in roots discourse is the opposition between icon
(graphic image) and text (written language). Outside of text, language, and
history are those ancient and steadily persisting forces, nature and space.
Here woman, broad-bottomed and big-breasted, becomes the signifier of
nature-the symbol for the primordial life force and a salvation for
humankind, which lies outside that destructive force which is history.
Therefore, there emerged in films of this period a kind of anthropological
narrative form, a re-telling of the story of men exchanging (or refusing to
exchange) women among themselves. I n Fourth Generation films of this
period of 1982-1985, in which the shared theme of civilization and bar-
barism appears, woman becomes the victim of ignorance and the sacrificial
offering of civilization. I n the works of Ding Yinnan (Against the Light [Ni
p a n g ] , 1982), Teng Wenji (The Village in the City [Dushi li de cunzhuang],
1982, and The Beach [Hai tan], 1984), Hu Binliu (Feelings for the Homeland
[Xiang qing], 1981, and The Sound of the Homeland [Xiang yin], 1983), Wu
Tianming (Old Well [Laojing], 1985 [sic]), and Yan Xueshu (In the Wild
Mountains [Ye shan], I&), woman represents the evolution and salvation of
history and the beast of burden for the impasses of historical development.
Fourth Generation directors interestingly tend to transfer their male desire
and the suppression of male desire, an issue for men, onto images of
women. In films like Xie Feis 1984 A Girl from Hunan [Xiangnu xiaoxiao],
Huang J ianzhongs 1984 The Good Woman [Liangjia f uni i ], and 1986 The
Virtuous Woman [Zhennii], women are once again appropriated as mans
mask.
Almost immediately after the Fifth Generation appeared on the Chinese
cinema scene, it also entered the international cultural field of vision. The
early works of the Fifth Generation rejected the image of woman, rejected
positions 3: 1 Spring 1995 268
narrative altogether (time and the story of man and woman), refused to
engage in cultural and historical symbolism, and shunned any compromise
with mainstream cinema and culture. The classic works of the Fifth Gen-
eration thus became the art of the sons generation.21 I n fact, the Fifth
Generation has pushed the internal contradictions of the reflection move-
ment to the extreme. Therefore, when the Fifth Generation dissolved in
1987, they had to utilize images of women to reenter history, culture, and
narration. I n some of the works of the Fifth Generation, the male gaze of
desire finally returns and constructs the gender specificity of women;
women reappear because of the desiring gaze of men. Some of the positive
influences of the Fifth Generation were that they overcame the historical
rupture caused by the political changes of 1949, completed the reconnec-
tions with pre-Liberation Chinese cinematic tradition, and successfully
burst forth onto the world film scene.
The male desiring gaze at females first appeared in Zhang Yimous 1987
film, Red Sorghum [Hong gaoliang]. The entrance of women not only
granted the Fifth Generation their long-suspended mature adult status and
relieved them of their silent and nameless condition of being the sons gen-
eration, but also served as a turning point for the transformation of the
narrative mode. Afterward, in The Price of Madness [Fengkuang de daijia]
( I 988), a commercialized film by another Fifth Generation film director,
Zhou Xiaowen, women appear under the desiring, eager, yet terrified male
gaze. The reappearance of the image of women in films served as a way of
ending the exile of the imagination and as the representation and resolution
of the cultural crisis faced by men.
Around 1987, the first great wave of commercialization hit China, con-
fronting contemporary Chinese film culture with a new Other. J ust as Chi-
nese women writers perceived the commonalities and internal relationships
between race and gender in the postcolonial cultural milieu, mainland art-
house filmmakers in their struggle for survival also came to realize that
third world cultures faced a dilemma: either escape or be trapped. Unlike
contemporary women writers who adapted gender narrative as a means of
national resistance and of maintaining the autonomy of Chinese culture,
Fifth Generation filmmakers chose a kind of cultural surrender and a self-
imposed internal exile in their own land. They internalized the threaten-
Dai I Invisible Women 269
ing perspective of the Western Other, and from this alien perspective objec-
tified the Chinese national experience and the lessons learned from history.
Such works as Judou (1989) and Raise the Red Lantern [Dahong denglong
gaogao gua] (1991) by Zhang Yimou, and Lqe on a String [Bianzou bianchang]
(1991) and Farewell, My Concubine [Bawang bzeji] (1993) by Chen Kaige
represent this tendency, In Raise the Red Lantern, the invisibility of the male
protagonist, the courtyard house and its ancient construction or museum-
like space, and the rivalries and jealousies of the wives and concubines
together form a national allegory of the struggle for power, an allegory for
the films internal consumption in China. The film is laden with allusions
to the Chinese cultural and historical context. At the same time, in the
Western cultural context, it renders itself an object of [Western] desire and
becomes an expression of the plight of the desiring subject, thus also pro-
viding a viewing position for a Western audience. The Asian setting, the
Asian story, and the Asian beauties together form a spectacle for the West-
ern gaze. In this classical model of looking and being looked at, of male and
female, the film thus places the [Chinese] national culture at the margins of
Western culture and adopts a kind of self-conscious, exoticized, feminized
role and position for Chinese culture.
3. Womens Films
China has one of the worlds largest and most impressive lineups of women
directors. Those who have directed more than two films and continue to
work number more than thirty today. Several- Huang Shuqin, Zhang
Nuanxin, Li Shaohong, Hu Mei, Ni ng Ying, Wang J unzheng, Wang
Haowei, and Guang Chunlan- have earned a world reputation. What
most directly reveals the plight of contemporary Chinese womens culture
and its fight for survival is the fact that, in the first forty years of Chinese
cinematic history, those films that could be called womens films are very
few, if not nonexistent. I n the works of most women directors, it is
extremely difficult to detect the gender of the filmmaker, whether in the
subject matter, story, characterization, narrative mode, or use of cinematic
language and structure. Unlike the literary works of contemporary women
writers, films by women directors seldom exhibit any distinguishing gender
positions 3: 1 Spring 1995 270
markers of the creating subject or any indication of a female style. In addi-
tion to the political and cultural factors of oppression there exists among
contemporary Chinese filmmakers a pervasive and ingrained cultural
bias- call it common sense or the ideology of everyday life. This bias is the
idea that the mark of success for women directors (those women fortunate
enough to have squeezed into the monolithic kingdom of men) lies in their
ability to produce films that look the same as the ones made by men, and in
the extent to which they can master the same subjects that men address. In
other words, female directors adopt a specific Hua Mulan type of social
role: they are women who have successfully made themselves up as men.
The more deeply they hide their own gender specificity and gender iden-
tity, the more they will be outstanding and successful. On the other hand,
those women directors who expose their gender status, or select specific
subjects, or express a certain gender perspective, are seen as lowering them-
selves, as not living up to (mens) standards.
The consensus shared by Chinese filmmakers and intellectuals is that
issues such as womens destiny and feminism are too extravagant for China
to afford at present and should not yet be put on the social and cultural
agenda. Therefore, almost without exception, the majority of women direc-
tors select and address weighty social, political, and historical themes.
Contemporary women directors are purveyors of either mainstream or art
film rather than bold experimentalists from the margins or challengers of
society through anticinema films. I categorize contemporary women direc-
tors into three groups.
Male Guises
In the first category are women who produce important mainstream or art
films, and who successfully assume male guises. From their films alone, it is
not possible to distinguish the gender of each filmmaker. Most of them have
openly or indirectly expressed their disinterest, or even scorn, for films
whose primary theme is women or for womens films.
Wang Ping can be taken as the forerunner of this group. Like most
Third Generation directors, she served as a mainstream filmmaker for the
first seventeen years after 1949. As the only woman director in this period,
Dai I Invi si bl e Women 271
Wang Ping creates works often described as well-known for their natural,
delicate, and lyrical artistic style. Her tone is usually serene, and has a grace-
ful, subtle, and dainty quality.22 I n fact, though, the directors gender is
usually not identifiable. The only hint at her gender is the name given as the
director of the film, the filmmakers signature. On the contrary, the main
feature of Wang Pings films is the political utilitarianism inspired by the
socialist realist mode of art. Her representative works, The Everlasting Elec-
tric Current [Yong bu xiaoshi de dianpo] (1958), Cypress Village [Kuishu
zhuang] (1962), The Sentinel beneath the Neon Light [Nihongdeng xia de
shaobing] (1964), and the large-scale musical epic that she participated in
producing, The East Is Red [Dongfang hong] (1965), can serve as examples.
Followers of Wang Ping include Wang Haowei, Guang Chunlan, Shi
Xiaohua, Shi Shujun, and others. As leading female directors in the major
film studios around the country, they have formed the central force in
mainstream Chinese cinema. Among them, Wang Haoweis important
works of the 1980s, The Enchanting Band [Miren de yuedui] (1982) and The
Village Which Lost Its Faith [Shixin de cunzhuang] (1984), deal with subjects
such as how prospering peasants constructed socialist spiritual culture, and
how Communist Party members regained their credibility among the
masses. The first film won a government film prize from the Ministry of
Culture, and the latter was designated a film for required viewing in party
rectification training courses. In fact, among other films of the same cate-
gory, Wang Haoweis films are even more successful than films made by
male directors in their mastery of and familiarity with the classical socialist
mode of narration. Her films successfully construct a socialist dramatic plot
within the discursive structure of mainstream ideology. The smoothly
developed plot line, the use of classical camera angles and lens language,
and the healthy, cheerful sense of humor have made her films one of the
models for the core values films [zhu xuanlu dianying] of socialist educa-
tion in the New Era.
Guang Chunlan, the most distinguished, if not the only distinguished
female director from the Tian Shan Film Studio of the Xinjiang ethnic
minorities region, has created a special type of mainstream film. This is the
musical narrative commonly said to have ethnic minority characteristics.
Compared with the films of male directors, the female images in her films
positions 3: 1 Spring 1995 272
are even more stereotyped. The pursuit of socialist realist art and the edu-
cational function of film together eclipse all other priorities in Guang
Chunlans productions.
An even younger generation of female directors consider their own
works part of the corpus of the Chinese New Cinema and similarly and
successfully erase their own gender. Although she was late to emerge
among the Fifth Generation, Li Shaohong is undoubtedly a crucial figure
and can be taken here as representative. Her film Bloody Morning [Xuese
qingchen] (1990), based on a novel by Colombian writer Gabriel Garcia
Mhrquez called A Chronicle of a Death Foretold, is certainly one of the mas-
terpieces of post-1989 Chinese cinema. In the film such topics as the crude,
degenerate, and cruel social rituals, the murdering gang without a name
or consciousness, the classical social mentality of passers-by, and the
death throes of a culture which is becoming a cultural relic are dealt with in
a comprehensive and forceful manner. After this, Lis Forty and Not
Deluded [Sishi bu huo] (1992) became one of the most penetrating and
exquisite of urban films in recent years. In her works, however, women are
not given any special attention or expression. To be able to compete with
male directors through the powerful expression of her own chosen aesthetic
and social subject matter is of course something Li Shaohong can take pride
in. Nevertheless, hidden behind such success and pride is a certain camou-
flage of gender, a sort of nonverbal neglect of ones own gender, and an
indifference to the condition of existence and the artistic expression of the
gender group to which one belongs.
Films about Women
The second category of films by women directors reveals an even more typ-
ical and interesting aspect of the cultural predicament of contemporary
Chinese women. I n the late 1980s, several middle-aged women directors
consciously set out to make womens films, and these almost constituted a
minor cinematic trend. These directors included Wang J unzheng (The First
Woman in the Forest [Shanlin xhong touyige nuren], 1987; Women, Taxi,
Women [Nuren TAXI nuren], 1990); Qin Zhiyu (The Love of the Gingko Tree
[Yingxinshu xhi lian], 1987; Miss Julie [Zhuli xiaojie], 1989; A Single Woman
Dai I Invi si bl e Women 273
[Dusheng nuren], I 990); Bao Zhifang (The Golden Fingernail [ Jinse zhijia 1,
1988); Wu Zhennian (Wrong Woman, Real Love [Jianu xhenqing]; a TV
series Women [Nurenmen], 1988-1990); and Dong Kena (Who Is the Third
Party? [Sheishi disanxhe?], 1988; The World of Women [Nuxing shijie], 1990).
It was the first time that middle-aged women filmmakers sought to express
female characteristics in their films. Subjects dealing with children, women,
and things soft and gentle once more became favored topics for women
d irectors.23
What is interesting is that although these films were made by women
directors, present women as the main characters, and are supposed to show
a self-conscious womens perspective, they actually differ very little from
the narrative mode of classical film. They do not establish a clear gender
perspective for the narrating subject, and their position on gender issues is
also unclear and confused. In these women filmmakers attempts to repre-
sent the true nature of womanhood, the vision of women becomes even
more elusive, and the narrative gets stuck somewhere between the unintel-
ligible and the incomprehensible. Attempts on the part of these women
artists to break free from mainstream ideology, to question the classical
male discourse, and to form a female narrative also end up in the same trap.
Their films usually start with an unconventional, antiestablishment repre-
sentation of woman, a so-called female story, but always conclude with a
classical conventional and normative scene. So it is more accurate to say that
these films are a kind of unconscious conformity and toeing-of-the-line, a
kind of male cultures normalizing force expressed through women, than to
say that they proceed from an oppositional and alienated stance. In their
attempt to escape the dominance of male discourse and norms, they end up
adopting another male discourse, which transforms the female narrative
into another male formula. Rather than representing the real and problem-
atic cultural conditions of women, the films themselves become the sacrifi-
cial victims of this real and problematic female culture.
There are probably two reasons for this. First, these women filmmakers
are not able to come up with a real, conscious, and self-reflexive female per-
spective themselves. For the most part, they subscribe to an essentialist
understanding of women, and they conform to traditional morality and
conventional gender values. The historical absence of models for female
positions 3: 1 Spring 1995 274
opposition and womens discourse has created a profound confusion and
ignorance in womens self-perception and gender consciousness.
Second, all the attempts to represent and express the female are confined
to the formation of positive female images and fail to construct a truly
oppositional or subversive discourse. The selection of classical narrative
modes, standard camera angles, and filmic language has predetermined
their failure to escape. One aspect of the filmmaking process that may be an
important responsible factor is that most women directors work with male
screenplay writers and cinematographers. A strange and interesting phe-
nomenon is that contemporary China has plenty of women directors, but
very few women cinematographers, not to mention outstanding ones.
Therefore, at the outset, the scripts written by men already lay down the
narrative structure, the main theme, and a particular moral evaluative
mode. Even more important, as the creator and provider of images, the
basic text of film, the cinematographers gender status predetermines the
position, mode of spectatorship, and angle of vision for the audience. As a
consequence, some of the scenes and shots in these womens films become a
parody of the plot and the female directors original intention. Or at least
we can say that they have undermined the strength of the original design.
As a result, these female directors films can only be called adornments on
mainstream films, or variations thereof.
In this second category, Wang J unzhengs The First Woman in the Forest
and Bao Zhifangs The Golden Fingernail can be taken as representative
works. The confusion of Forest is first revealed by the heterogeneity of the
narrative perspectives. The first-person narrator in the film is a female col-
lege student who goes to the forest to collect materials for writing her script.
An old woodcutter tells her about his lover, a beautiful, weak, sickly prosti-
tute named Little White Shoe, who had died at the hands of a vicious man.
This is a familiar tale about a woman who is humiliated and harmed. In the
film, however, Little White Shoe is actually played by the college student
herself, thus the films narrator assumes a concrete form. This shift of spec-
tatorship position makes the narrator, and the contemporary women view-
ers whom she represents, identify with and experience the prostitutes suf-
ferings. Although innovative, this is obviously not the filmmakers original
intention, which probably meant to represent some kind of female psychol-
Dai I Invisible Women 275
ogy or subconscious. The second half of the film digresses from the preced-
ing narrative point of view, however. With the absence of the old woodcut-
ter, the film turns to tell the story of another prostitute named Goddess of
Strength. She is apparently the favored character of the filmmaker. She is
physically strong, outspoken, courageous, and determined, and she has the
guts to confront the men. But her story very soon turns into a conventional
tale of a self-sacrificing woman, a woman of both motherly love and sexual
love, a forever-nurturing but always-deprived woman. At the end of the
movie, she kneels down on the edge of the mountain, beside the man for
whom she has sacrificed everything and who has done nothing but exploit
her. She swears to heaven that she will establish a home for him and will
bear him children. She is, after all, the First Woman of the Forest. Appar-
ently, she is also the familiar Earth Mother. The whole meaning and value
of her existence lie in her contribution to, her sacrifice for, and her comple-
tion of her mans life and value. Without a doubt, the unraveling of the
Goddess of Strength and her deterioration into the traditional Earth
Mother cancels the filmmakers original intention to juxtapose a strong and
forceful woman against a weak-willed man. It is only through the childlike
man that this strong woman can realize the whole purpose of her life,
which is to establish a family and give birth to children.
Primarily because Fingernail drew on modern daily life and was banned
for its immorality, the film was thought to be complex and intriguing. It is
adapted from a documentary text by Xiang Ya entitled Ten Women?
Accounts of Their Lives, a collection of ten unconventional, or immoral,
womens personal and intimate accounts of their marital, familial, and sex-
ual lives. The director edited these ten stories into an interrelated plot for
the film. As the title indicates, the women in this film become erotically
charged screen images for a sexualized spectatorship. At the same time, the
story of sexuality is transformed into a morality tale, which may be uncon-
ventional, but is in fact one that returns to the most traditional of morali-
ties. I n the film, womens struggle for professional achievement is turned
into a twisted expression of the oppression they have experienced. Friend-
ship between women is depicted as jealousy and mutual exploitation
between them. An open marriage becomes one of the methods for a
woman to keep a man tied down to her. The movie ends in a typical grand
positions 3: 1 Spring 1995 276
reunion scene featuring a wedding ceremony: the unconventional woman
finds a conventional role in marriage; the only unmarried woman in the
film pairs up with a man and they leave shoulder to shoulder. I n the last
scene, this couple is shown sharing a red umbrella and crossing the street on
the zebra-stripe pedestrian lane. As the camera lens zoom downward, the
shot of the zebra stripes, which symbolize the mechanisms of normaliza-
tion, gradually fills up the whole screen. In this way, this film directed by a
woman, with a great deal of female self-consciousness, becomes an
unprecedented reactionary film, a powerful vehicle for the reconstruction
of male domination and normalization in the New Era.
The Re-Emergence of Women
There are not many women directors in the third category of contemporary
Chinese womens films. Already in the early 1980s, the films of Zhang
Nuanxin and Hu Mei presaged a mystical style of Chinese womens films.
I n The Seagull [Sha ou] (1981) and The Chamber of Maidens [Nuer lou]
(1984), not only were the protagonists women, but there was also a kind of
fresh and plaintive female cinematic narrative style. I f we take this con-
struction of a female style in the works of contemporary Chinese women
writers as an intentional female strategy, then we can also view its emer-
gence in film as a historical step forward and a landmark on the difficult
road to the reappearance of the invisible woman.
Womens literature and womens writing started in the May Fourth
period and achieved maturity in the 1940s. Since the I ~ ~ O S , they have also
benefited from the introduction of foreign literature into China and the
translation of Western womens culture and feminist theories. Their works
do not just mediate the temporal gap between the Chinese past and present;
they also negotiate the spatial divide between foreign and native forces. In
the film world, however, contemporary Chinese women directors must deal
with a cinematic tradition almost totally devoid of any female perspective,
as well as their unfamiliarity with Western feminist theories.
As a representative of the Fourth Generation of Chinese directors,
Zhang Nuanxin has taken some common themes shared by filmmakers of
her generation, such as historical deprivation, personal loss, and the feeling
Dai I Invisible Women 277
that everyone has abandoned me, and translated them into a story of a
woman who cherishes honor much more than life itself. I n SeaguZZ, the
female protagonist is deprived of even the opportunity to deal with what in
other times is the cultural dilemma that besets modern women: making a
choice between profession and family, or between superwoman and
domestic wife. A historical calamity robs her of all these possibilities for-
ever. What can be burned are all burned; there is nothing left except the
large stones.24 Consequently, nothing that can be called woman is left in
such a historical ruin. I n Zhangs second film, The Sacrzfice of Youth
[Qingchunji] (1986), a woman comes to a recognition of her own gender in
the historical context of the Cultural Revolution, through the inspiration
gained from her contact with an ethnic minority culture. But what this
recognition brings to her is nothing more than humiliation and embarrass-
ment. I n The Chamber of Maidens, a film by the Fifth Generation director
Hu Mei, the atmosphere is mystical, and things have the quality of flowing
by out of the mists. For the female protagonist, there is a sense of lament
and of the ending of life. What women experienced in this age of historical
disaster cannot form a story, or even a photograph.
Although we see in the films of these two directors the figure of woman
beginning to emerge from the mists and vagueness and beginning to
express herself, the sentiment and style of their films are still not sufficiently
consistent and self-conscious. In the later film directed by Zhang Nuanxin,
Good Morning, Beijing [Beijing, ni zao] (1990), and by Hu Mei, Far From the
Age of War [YuanZi zhanzheng de niandai] (1987), and in a whole succession
of commercialized films, these barely visible traces of woman all but fade
away completely.
I n contemporary Chinese cinema, the sole film that can be irreproach-
ably called a womens film is Woman, Demon, Human [Ren gui qing]
(1987), directed by Huang Shuqing. This is not a radical film filled with
exhilarating destructiveness,*5 but one that merely borrows the story of a
female artist, a woman who performs a male role in Beijing opera, and uses
her life story as a metaphor for the existential and cultural predicament
faced by contemporary Chinese women. The life of this female artist, Qiu
Yun, is depicted as a desperate struggle against womens fate and tragedy.
Every attempt to escape only leads her to suffer and confront her gender
positions 3: 1 Spring 1995 2 78
destiny. The choice she makes to play a man in order to escape this des-
tiny symbolizes the existential plight of modern Chinese women as it subtly
exposes and subverts the classical culture of patriarchy and male discourse.
The role that Qi u Yun plays on the stage is still that of the stereotypical
male hero found in traditional Chinese culture. As a woman playing a man,
however, she intensifies both the conscious and unconscious confusion she
feels in her own gender identity. Furthermore, because the person of the
role (a man) and the person of the performer (a woman) cannot coexist, this
role-playing also plays havoc with, first, the construction female desire/
object of men and, then, the construction woman as the saved/man as the
savior. Thus a classical cultural condition, men saving women, forever
becomes problematical and defective, a womans dream that will never be
fulfilled. Since Qiu Yun plays a mans role, she will never be able to become
the woman who is saved, because the only male who can be her savior exists
in her own performance. Thus the classical positioning of men and women
is shown to be a lie, whose now shattered pieces will be difficult to put back
together again.26
It is evident that todays China is experiencing an unprecedented and
dramatic historical transformation, and is currently negotiating an espe-
cially difficult historical passage. I n this process of rapid modernization and
commercialization, the social and cultural status of women is undergoing a
tragic decline. It seems Chinas historical progress will be completed at the
expense of, and through the retrogression of, womens social position. It may
be that such an overt suppression of women and their very visible status
decline will usher in a more self-conscious and more fundamental womens
resistance. In this process, will women really become a visible portion of
humankind? Will womens film and television, as a sort of marginal cul-
ture, perhaps become a force in the newly established public space (gong-
gong kongjian)? Perhaps, but this writer does not dare to be optimistic or
certain.
Translated by Mayfair Yang
Dai I Invisible Women
Notes
279
[Womens film or female film (nuxin dianying) in Chinese has a triple connotation
because of the flexibility of the adjectival word, nuxin. Womens film can mean ( I ) films
about women, ( 2) films made by women, or (3) films from the female point of view- in other
words, feminist film. I n this essay Dai J inhua is employing the second and especially the
third senses of this term. I wish to thank Ming Fengying, Wang J ing, Tani Barlow, and Li
Weimin for their input into this translation. Trans.]
Mao Zedong, To Sign a Picture for a Woman Soldier, in The Selected Poems of Ma0 Zedong
[Mao zhuxi shici] (Beijing: Renmin wenxue chubanshe, 1963).
2 [Qin Xianglian is a historical and legendary female figure of the Song dynasty who is said to
have been abandoned by her calculating husband, Chen Shimei, after he went to the city. He
later plotted to kill her because he wanted to marry the emperors daughter and rise up in
rank. Today, in mainstream moralistic discourse in China, she represents the plight of
women spurned by their restless husbands who figure in this discourse as immoral in their
lack of loyalty and their shirking familial responsibilities. Trans.]
3 See the films The LRgend of Xanyun Mountain ( I 979), The Little Street ( I 979), and Ru Yi (1980).
4 Lei Shuyan, The Little Grasses Are Singing, in The Little Grasses Are Singing.
5 From the modern drama Here Come the Old Friends with Wind and Rain, by Bai Xifeng, in
Selected Plays of Bai Xifeng [Bai Xtfeng juben xuan] (Beijing: Gongren chubanshe).
6 [Dai does note the similarities between the current Reform era and the May Fourth period:
Both are a kind of Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, . . . both are the sacrificial lambs
and rebels in a revolt against patriarchal power and despotism, and . . . both are part of an
historical act of patricide. Trans.]
7 Fredric J ameson, Third World Literature in the Era of Multinational Capitalism, trans.
Zhang J ingyuan, in Contemporary Film [Dangdai dianying], no. 6 (1989).
8 Ibid.
9 Mao Zedong, Essays on the New Democratism, in The Selected Works of Ma0 Zedong (Bei-
jing: Renmin chubanshe, 1976).
10 See Laura Mulvey, Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema, trans. Zhou Chuanji, in Cine-
matic and Television Culture, vol. I (n.p.: Culture and Art Publishing, n.d.).
I I Louis Althusser, Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses, trans. Li Cun, in Contempo-
rary Cinema, vols. 3-4 (n.p.: n.n., 1987).
12 Dai J inhua and Meng Yue, Emerging from the Historical Horizon [Fuchu lishi dibiao] (city:
Henan renmin chubanshe, 1989).
13 It is the people, and only the people, who are the motive force which creates social history.
Mao Zedong, On the United Front, in Selected WOY& of Ma0 Zedong, 930.
14 See also The Blue Flowers [Lame de hua], directed by Shui Hua, 1979, the roles of Rig Mama
and Niuniu; and The Herukman [Mumaren], directed by Xie J in, 1981, the role of Li Xiuzi, 1981.
I
positions 3: 1 Spring 1995 280
I 5 Mulvey, Visual Pleasure.
16 Editorial board for Film Handbook, J ohn Fords The Young Lincoln, trans. Li Youzhen, in
Structuralism and Semiotics [jiegou zhuyi he fuhaoxue] (n.p.: Sanlian Books, 1987).
17 hi d.
18 Dai J inhua, The Slanted Tower: Rereading Fourth Generation Films, in The Method of
Film Theory and Criticism [Dianying lilun yu piping shouce] (Reijing: Kexue jishu wenxian,
19 [An as-you-wish (ruyi) is a jade talisman believed to bring good luck to its wearer. Trans.]
I n the film, the phrase Each holds a piece of what-they-wish, but the things they wish
for never come true sums up this point about the frustration of male desire and male lack.
20 From the work of French film theorist Christian Metz.
21 Dai J inhua, The Broken Bridge: The Art of the Sons Generation, in Method of Film The-
ory and Criticism.
22 Zhu Ma, ed., Handbook of Films [Dianying shouce] (n.p.: Department of Chinese, Sichuan
Provincial Film Distribution Corp., 1980).
23 It is also at this time that Lu Xiaoya made The Passion [Refian] (1989); Wang Haowei made
The Road Leads Me Home [Cunlu dai wo huzjia] (1990) and Oh, the Fragrant Snow [0,
xiangxue] (1992); and Guang Chunlan made The Little Drummer from the Mountain of Fire
[Huoyanshan Lai de xiao gushou] ( I 992).
24 [This is a reference to the burning of the Summer Palace in Beijing by the Western powers,
which here is a metaphor for the destructiveness of the Cultural Revolution. Trans.]
25 Mulvey, Visual Pleasure.
26 See Dai J inhua, Ren, gui, qing: A Dilemma f or Women, in Method of Film Theory and
Criticism.
993).