”RED
HEROINE” (”Hong Xia”)
Film by Wen
Yimin, China, 1929
Review by
Stine Marie Jacobsen
”Episode six of RED
HEROINE (a.k.a. RED KNIGHT-ERRANT), the only surviving episode of
the 13-part serial, is also one of the few complete and earliest
extant silent martial arts films.” Amazing how closely this film
resembles early American silent films in acting and
setting.
”By
concentrating on the motif of flying – the genre’s trademark – this
chapter addresses technology and social transgression, and their
implications for new perceptions of the body.” Instead of Zhang
Zhen’s focus on old and new
technology and on Walter Benjamin’s historical explanation of the
phenomenon of flying, I think the idea of flying women was then and
has since become a sign of female emancipation. For example the
early film ” Meshes of the
Afternoon” by artist Maya Deren
from 1942. Contemporary video artists like Eija Liiisa Atthila and
Simone Aaberg Kærn, Atthila dealing with the dream of flying in a
fictional sense and Kærn with first a fictional and then a real
dream of flying. Our heroine is flying for emancipation and even
her name ”Yun Mei” means ”maiden of the clouds”. The supernatural
powers had a positive reaction from the Chinese people in general,
besides the Nationalist and left-wing writers that thought martial
arts films to be misleading and corrupting. The idea of being able
to fly away was appealing to the Chinese people and it therefore
also came to symbolize emancipation for the people. ”The mass
appeal of the genre’s anarchism, both on and off screen, obviously
caused the paranoid reaction of the fledging regime.”
”The film is never less
than a robust telling of a young woman’s transformation from abject
victim to resolute warrior.” Even so that is the truth, the harem
girls demand a great deal of attention from an audience. Not until
the scene, where the evil general is showing the young girl which
he’s about to marry, the execution of her father, I came to think
of the last scene of Pasolini’s ”Salo”. The same decadence that
Pasolini so elegantly and brutally portrayed an upper ruling class
in, reminds me of the way the general in ”Red Heroine” leads his
life. Surrounded by harem girls, that at first seem like victims,
but then come about just as corrupted as the general seems very
similar to the development in ”Salo”, where the victims gradually
evolve into perpetrators. As a social critique this is a brilliant
strategy and it’s amazing to see this in a martial arts film from
1929. ”Realizing the social significance of the petty urbanities,
the Nationalist regime, which Shen equated with other contemporary
”fascist regimes” in Italy, Germany, and Japan, was nevertheless
eager to stabilize or appease this expanding social power.”
May Fourth writers like
Shen Yanbing (Mao Dun) wrote: ”They cheer at the appearance of the
flying Hong Gu, not so much because she is played by the female
star Hu Die, as because she is a swordswoman and the protagonist in
the film...For them a shadow play (yingxi) is really not ”play” but
reality!”
”When spectators began to burn incense inside the
theater and kowtow to knightly and mythical spirits onscreen.” the
film had really become reality and the audience was getting hope
from the screen. Not only did the martial arts film come to
represent the emancipation of women, but a whole population of
disappointed and disillusioned Chinese people. It came to be opium
for the people and threatened to overtake the power of Communism.
Is that still a threat? Could Hollywood overtake politics? Can you
numb a people with ”play”?
Cheng-Sim
Lim, ”Red Heroine”, in Heroic
Grace, op. Cit,
31
Zhang Zhen,
Excerpt from the ”Introduction” & Chapter: ”The Anarchic Body
Language of the Martial Arts Film”, in An Amorous History
of the Silver Screen, Chicago &
Londres: U of Chicago Press, 2005, 203
http://www.women2003.dk/artists.php?id=2
http://www.skysisters.com/
Zhang Zhen,
Excerpt from the ”Introduction” & Chapter: ”The Anarchic Body
Language of the Martial Arts Film”, in An Amorous History
of the Silver Screen, Chicago &
Londres: U of Chicago Press, 2005, 236
Cheng-Sim
Lim, ”Red Heroine”, in Heroic
Grace, op. Cit,
31
Zhang Zhen,
Excerpt from the ”Introduction” & Chapter: ”The Anarchic Body
Language of the Martial Arts Film”, in An Amorous History
of the Silver Screen, Chicago &
Londres: U of Chicago Press, 2005, 239
Ibid.,
238
Ibid., 242
”CLANS OF
INTRIGUE” (”Chu Liuxiang”)
Film by Chu
Yuan/Chor Yuen, Hong Kong, 1977
Review by
Stine Marie Jacobsen
The
history of ”Clans of Intrigue” was adapted from Chinese writer, Gu
Long. He was known for being inspired by the Wuxia novels and
Western literature and culture, such as the James Bond movies.
Hsiang, the hero in this film, has very similar traits to Bond. He
likes to gamble, is dressed like a gypsy, has a harem of women and
is a slick master thief.
The gypsy uniform gives the impression of
a spiritual person, but then again we are continously reminded that
our hero is human. Think of the scene, where Hsiang has been
drugged by the women in the Palace Magic Water. The Western James
Bond would have had a mechanical device to keep him safe from the
sedative gas. Our Eastern hero has a nose that clogs, we see him
use a nasal spray all the time. Imagine James Bond using a nasal
spray! That would make him look weak and vulnerable. In ”Clans of
Intrigue”, it becomes a natural
and also supernatural way of making Hsiang seem like a strong hero,
because he doesn’t need help from technology. The Eastern martial
arts honor shines through, the hero’s kung fu fist is stronger than
any Western weapon can be!
But Hsiang
is also to be understood as a portrait of a somewhat downtrodden
hero. Hsiang is introduced to us as a thief. ”Despised by society,
the martial arts hero could offset his marginalization by
displaying unsuspected skills: ”in the fictional martial arts
world...cripples, beggars, thieves, women
and
scholars may be weak in appearance, but are often martial arts
experts.” The whole film shows Hsiang prove his innocence to
another clan, the Palace Magic Water clan. He is not on some
governmental mission like James Bond, he is on a mission to clear
his name and fight injustice towards his persona, by revealing a
conspiracy against him. Hsiang’s fight becomes poetic in the way
that one can understand it, as an individuals fight against an
injustice society.
The rivalry between hero and villain in the
casino scene and the evil mute guy also closely resembles the
classic evil henchman from Goldfinger, and a lot of other James
Bond movies. In this film, the mute has a golden chain and is very
strong, He neither has any technological devices, but is a figure
of nature and strengthened by fantasy. It’s as if the film is
pointing out that, when everything has been taking away from you,
there is still the ability to fantasize and create myth.
The lack
of technology introduces the space of philosophy and myth. We hear
Hsiang’s ’friend’ (later enemy) say: ”Men make water dirty”, which
leaves us with a statement of a prevailing spirituality, that
covers the supernatural needs. Man should not hunt for artificial
solutions, but should find it in man himself. But man is also
false, dirty and deceitful, so man has to prove his worth through
’good deeds’.
In a brief moment we are made to believe, that our hero eats a
human arm, but only to find out shortly after that the arm is fake.
”Confronted with the unknown, man invents his own explanations, and
with idealizations, myths intrude, which is why the abstract and
the mythical are synthesized in wu xia
film and
fiction.” If myth is man’s way of explaining the meeting with the
unexplainable, what does Hsiang’s zombie ritual signify? Ng Ho
seems to suggest a need for an abstract element in film, not
everything should be archetypical and cliché.
Besides being
reminded of Hsiang’s humanity, the fake cannibal scene refers to
shamanism. ”Since the traditional Chinese consciousness was rife
with superstitions, the jiudai
gradually
emerged as a figure of immense mystical powers.” The jiu dai was
the Chinese version of a gypsy. Hsiang is somewhat portrayed as a
gypsy, but it seems to be a joke on superstition, that the film
leads us to be believe for a brief moment that he is a cannibal. He
is still just a human, yet a hero, and still ambigiuous. There is
no pure good and bad in martial arts films. ”...”the martial arts
world is a universe of clearly-defined opposites”. In reality, the
demarcation between good and evil in the World of the Vagrants was
extremely dubious.” Hsiang is just as much a zombie and gypsy,
hence dead and
alive, as
he is a hero.
”Women are
less confined, their freedom of movement is greater, they can
travel and fight. Yet, unlike what happens in the melodrama, the
real subject of the diegesis is not the woman, but the male body,
and women, fighting or not, often end up as pawns -
yet
their function within the diegesis keeps
changing.” This becomes
verbally true in ”Clans of Intrigue”, where the plot gradually
reveals that the villain is a former woman, who through pure will,
has transformed into a man. Hsiang says in the beginning of the
film: ”The girls from Palace Magic Water come and go when they
wish”. We hear alien-like music, when we encounter these women,
that are portrayed witch-like or superhumans. We realize, that we
are in a theatrical and fantastical world of make-belief, a
shamanistic, utopian world, where one can change and transgress
gender out of pure will. Thus, the Confucian element is still
there, the women are evil and deceitful creatures.
Xiong
Yaohua (Chinese: 熊耀华)
(1937 – September 21, 1985), who wrote under the pen name Gu Long
(traditional Chinese: 古龍;
simplified Chinese: 古龙),
was a Taiwanese writer of wuxia novels...It was said that Gu Long
was not only influenced by Chinese wuxia fiction, but also by
Western works such as those by Ernest Hemmingway, Jack London and
John Steinbeck, as well as philosophers like Friedrich
Nietzsche.Well known modern wuxia writers like Jinyong and Liang
Yusheng took the "orthodox route" to writing wuxia fiction, using
history, culture and philosophy to create winning works. Initially,
Gu Long wanted to go down the same path, but his directions changed
after being exposed to Western works like the James
Bond series and The
Godfather novels. The influence of these works, which relied on the
idiosyncrasies of human life, razor-sharp wit, poetic philosophies,
mysterious plots and spine-tingling thrills to achieve success,
enabled Gu Long to come up with a unique way of writing.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gu_Long
Bérénice
Reynaud, ”The Jiang Hu”, 9
Ng Ho,
”Jiang Hu Revisited: Toward a Reconstruction of the Martial Arts
World,” in A Study of the Hong
Kong Martial Arts Film, Lau Shing-Hon, ed.,
Hong Kong: Urban Council, 1980, 73
Ng Ho, op.
cit., 80
Ng Ho, op.
cit., 74
Bérénice
Reynaud, ”The Jiang Hu”, 10
”COME DRINK WITH ME”
(”Dai Zui Xia”)
Film by
King Hu, Hong Kong, 1966
Review by
Stine Marie Jacobsen
”The
principles of Hu’s cinema
opera are based on what the
director observed as the basic characteristics of Bejing opera,
expressed in the following points: 1/ more symbolism than realism;
2/ the performers may leap out of their characters to assume the
role of a third person narrator; 3/ the integration of musical
effect with action; 4/ a stress on the stage entrances of each
character.” I think this is a very central passage in Stephen Teo’s
text, that points out very precisely the parameters that define the
work of King Hu: style.
Stephen Teo refers that Hu himself
admitted being more interested in filmic language than narration
and theme. One notices the opera inspiration and symbolic language
from the very opening scenes. The villain is dressed in white and
wears white face paint, which according to opera color coding
refers to evilness and death. A horse is seen running across the
landscape in a very picturesque manner and through-out the film the
fights are elegantly choreographed, reminiscencing dance rather
than martial arts. Not any wonder Hu got known as a cinematic
stylist.
My
interest though lies in the renewal of the role of the female
fighter. ”Golden Swallow” is the name of the heroine. As the name
suggests it is an ambiguous name to give a heroine. Ironically, the
male hero is called ’Drunken Cat’ and our heroine ’Golden Swallow’,
which means she is a bird the cat could eat if he wanted or should
we read ”swallow” as a verb and it suddenly introduces a more
sexual connotation?
”Apart
from this, it must be said the character is superficially
developed, her impact being derived from the novel conception of a
female fighter rather than from any interpretation of the
character.” Here Stephen Teo changes his focus from the stylistic
opera theme of masquerade to an almost political discussion. He
argues how Hu operates with character types and masquerade, but
does not explain in depths what he means by ”superficially
developed”. Even though he discusses the role of the female
fighter, I don’t think he links his arguments well enough.
”The
dialectic that Hu creates concerns the role of woman in the heroic
world of men. On the one hand, she conforms to the Confucian ideal
of womanhood: the silent, chaste woman, conversant with the arts of
song and poetry. On the other hand, she is the equal of any male
warrior or soldier, surpassing the normal Confucian male in deeds
of valour.” If Teo would have linked this analysis with his prior
observation, I think he would have been closer to an explanation to
the heroine’s ”lack of personality”, realizing Hu’s deliberate play
with ambiguity, by masquerading her in both reality and fiction.
A
very interesting fact is, that the audience at the time the film
was made, did not know whether they should perceive the fact that
Golden Swallow was a woman as an actor playing a man’s part or a
woman as a fighter. The audience knew from theater that women
played roles, hence they were let in an ambiguous position until
the film reveals that she is a woman in the film. Again, to argue
with Teo’s comment on the woman’s so called ’lack of personality’,
why does he not incorporate this issue and elaborate further on
this subject?
Our
intellectual (anti-)hero ’Drunken Cat’ tells our heroine ”to look
more than fight”. A very direct reference to Bejing opera, where ”
a character departs from his nominal role to manifest as an
invigilating third-person observer”. Our male hero is hiding behind
a drunken image and therefore avoids unnecessary fights, whereas
our heroine is portrayed opposite, taking every fight that comes
along. Teo mentions Hu’s
refiguration of the female and male fighter, and I think this shows
Hu’s strategy of turning the woman into a male fighter, as a
sincere liberation of the female image. Hu even wanted the audience
to be unsure of how to perceive the female character.
Laura
Mulvey discusses the image of woman: ”Ultimately, the meaning of
woman is sexual difference, the absence of the penis as visually
ascertainable, the material evidence on which is based the
castration complex essential for the organization of entrance to
the symbolic order and the law of the father.” Mulvey explains the
male fear of woman by referring to their lack of male genitals.
Because the heroine is a female, she undergoes a regressive change
in the film. As soon as her gender is discovered, the male fighters
start treating her in sexual context. It is almost as if Hu is
commenting on this as a fact, showing the woman as a fighter to the
very end and at the same time portraying the men negatively. We
even see our heroine fall on her knees at the feet of ’Drunken
Cat’, isn’t that an almost non-gender related gesture? I would see
it more like a defeat in talent, not gender. To argue with Mulvey
who writes: ”The presence of woman is an indispensable element of
spectacle in normal narrative film, yet her visual presence tends
to work against the development of a story line, to freeze the flow
of action in moments of erotic contemplation”, compared to other
Martial Arts films, we still see the woman fight and fulfill her
mission after having meet the male counterpart.
Still, the fact
that both Mulvey and Stephen Teo focus on a latent patriarchal
system, both arguing that she is a fighting as a male fighter
enhances the ambiguous role of women in cinema and prevents the
discourse to expand.
Stephen
Teo, ”Only the Valiant: King Hu and His Cinema Opera”, in Law Kar,
ed., Transcending the
Times: King Hu and Eileen Chang, The 22nd Hong Kong International
Film Festival, Provisional Urban
Council of Hong Kong, 1998, 20
This
species has a small, fragmented and declining range and population,
and consequently qualifies as vulnerable. It has declined massively
since the 19th century, but the rate of decline has slowed with its
increasing rarity.
http://www.birdlife.org/datazone/species/index.html?action=SpcHTMDetails.asp&sid=7085&m=0
Stephen
Teo, ”Only the Valiant: King Hu and His Cinema Opera”, in Law Kar,
ed., Transcending the
Times: King Hu and Eileen Chang, The 22nd Hong Kong International
Film Festival, Provisional Urban
Council of Hong Kong, 1998, 22
Ibid.,
21-22
Ibid., 22
Laura
Mulvey, ”Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema”, in Constance
Peuley, ed., Feminism and Film
Theory, New York; Routledge,
1988, 64
Ibid., 62
”INTIMATE CONFESSIONS
OF A CHINESE COURTISAN”
(”AI NU”)
Film by
Yuen Chor, 1972, Hong Kong
Review by
Stine Marie Jacobsen
The film
takes place in and around a Chinese brothel with scenes that are
very seductive in color and decor. We stay in interior settings and
hardly see any landscape as common for the genre. Only in two
scenes where we see kidnapped girls being transported, did we find
ourselves in a forest.
There are few scenes outside of arrivals
and departure, but the film is mainly constructed as a body, whose
inside we never leave. The heroine and Chinese titel, ”Ai Nu”,
means love slave and suggests that we are inside of a female body,
caught in slavery. Somehow the English titel leaves out the history
of slavery and brings in a more soft-porn angle. ”...for a number
of the women who had arrived illegally in the Crown Colony with
only clothes on their back, prostitution was often the only
option”.
Very early
in the film, we are introduced to two female ’heroines’, a lesbian
brothel madam and a young kidnapped girl, Ai Nu, who is forced into
prostitution. The brothel madam, Betty Tei Pei, is portrayed as a
witch and a monster, an evil perversion of a patriarchal system,
which she is made and ruled by. The kidnapped heroine, Ainu,
finally subdues to the system, but with a secret plan of revenge.
Ironically she learns the female Crane fighting style from the
brothel madam, who is in love with Ai Nu. The tools become the
downfall of the brothel, as she turns these against them in an
internal deceitful game, which mirrors the corruption and
malfunction of the patriarchal system itself. ”Belonging to no man
in particular, but sold to all, she is in-between:
her profession gives her an intimate knowledge of men, and yet she
is their mortal enemy.” and ”Yet it seems that the ”protection”
enjoyed by the brothel is due to the power of Ai Nu’s rich
patrons.” I believe Chor’s critique is that they are deceitful and
”lie through their
bodies”, because of how
society has made them. They are actual consequences of their
enemies and their position as marginalized.
Ai Nu
tells the brothel madam, ”I think I am becoming you” and ”we are
one being”. Actually suggesting this as true to the audience. The
whole film is like an internal struggle. In the end when Ai Nu has
fulfilled her mission, it’s as if she cannot return to who she was,
when she was kidnapped. Her deceit and masquerade have become real.
She is the same person as the brothel madam. She therefore has to
die when the brothel mother commits suicide. Even the film
originally had a subtitle revealing that the brothel mother herself
was kidnapped.
The film is so sophisticated in its multiple layers
of meaning, that interpretations are endless. I prefer the idea of
viewing the two women as one person. Like in Bergman’s ”Persona”
from 1966, it becomes an interesting journey and portrayal of a
woman’s inner mind. Suddenly we can view the film as a struggle of
a woman’s divided mind. Bearing in mind how the conditions were for
women, we realize how hard it most have been for women having to
subdue and adapt themselves to a patriarchal system, being inside
of the system, yet still outside in a marginalized zone.
Bearing in
mind the myth of Yao Ji, a chinese female figure, resembling the
figure of Atlas from Greek mythology, our heroines deaths in the
end bears a beautiful signature of liberation. Liberation from an
earthly prison. ”This tale of ”falling from grace,” from divinity
to abjection, of the subjection of feminine powers to the
reprobation and constraints of the patriarchy society seems to be a
universal trope”
Seeing the two women as one being, explains why
the brothel madam refuses to realize Ai
Nu’s revenge plan. It is
as if we as audience watch her internally played out and we
understand the ‘role playing’ in the film as part of her fantasy.
Like when you as a child would hold your hands in front of your
eyes and believe that people couldn’t see you. ”A utopian reversed
world” as Bérénice Reynaud calls it.
Bérénice
Reynaud, ”Some Comments on Intimate
Confessions of a Chinese Courtisan” (Ai
Nu, 1972, Hong Kong, Shaw
Brothers, Chu Yuan/Chor Yuen) – unpublished manuscript,
15
Ibid.,
13
Ibid.,
14
Ibid.,
4
Ibid., 12
Ibid.,
15
”EXECUTIONERS FROM
SHAOLIN” (”Hong Xiguan”)
Film by Lau
Kar-leung
Review by
Stine Marie Jacobsen
Something
very central in Executioners from Shaolin, is the lacking
master-pupil relationship between father and son. The son, Wending,
is being trained by his mother, Fang Yongchun, because his father,
Hong Xiguan, is busy training his kung fu Tiger style enabling him
to revenge his dead master.
Hong refuses to learn the kung fu
Crane style that the mother masters and hereby refuses to continue
History and heredity. ”The subject constructed from History
therefore goes on to generate more History, to create, (as in the
master-pupil relationship) more figures in his Historical
image...History is a corpus of fragmented differences; it only
exists when it is activated by the learning process, and is brought
together for a specific purpose.” His refusal is a refusal of his
own being and ”The war between the sexes is enacted as a
competition between the ”Tiger” and ”Crane” styles of kung fu....”
Hong refuses his own continuation in history and his death is
therefore self-inflicted. His isolation from wife and son turns out
to be his downfall. There is a strong family morality to be found
in Executioners from Shaolin. ”By transposing the family into the
martial arts genre, Liu puts its basic premises-of hereditary,
coherence, loyalty and identity, into crises.”
Similar to
the final scene in ”Dirty Ho” where the door slams in front of the
pupil Ho, the upcoming downfall of Hong is already suggested to the
viewer in the scene where Wending uses the Crane style to do a head
lock with his legs on his father, repeating the same gesture as his
mother did on their wedding night, only this time unbreakable. ”The
gesture represents not only the reiteration of the impossibility of
Ho’s entry into the same sphere as Wang, but also the end of
fictional play. That is, the pupil can never become the master and,
whatever relationship is formed, or instruction given, has been a
game, an illusion.” In Executioners from Shaolin there is no
master-pupil relationship between father and son, only between
mother and son such relationship exists. In comparison to ”Dirty
Ho”, because Wending partially learns the Tiger style and masters
the Crane style, he can become more powerful than his father.
”In
fact, it becomes difficult to distinguish, in the physical pacing
as to who is actually learning from whom. The conclusion is
that there are no more
masters (left), only pupils, subjects
to be constructed: But of what and by what? The answer is
”writing”. Wending learns the Tiger style from a book that his
father also studied. Garcia talks about how this is to be
understood as a self-referential point in the film. Referring to
the similarities of pupil/actor and master/film director.
The son
never beats the mother, but actually beats the father in a headlock
and later on achieves to kill the evil eunuch master Bai Mei.
Wending masters both kung fu styles of Crane and Tiger, hence a
hybrid style of the mother and father. The two styles symbolize a
union of feminine and masculine, a direct opposite of the master
Bai Mei, who has become a monster without any gender. ”In
Executioners, this strategy is genetic, a biological experiment
where Tiger and Crane are crossed with a resulting ”perversion”
that is necessary for the eradication (rather like a vaccine) of a
disease in nature.”
If Bai Mei is the disease, why does Roger
Garcia call Wending a ”perversion”? Because he possesses both
genders? Shouldn’t that be considered as a balanced natural
characteristic?
As far as
it goes on the subject of fighting skills, Fang Yongchun and Hong
Xiguan seem to be equal. An actual fight between the two is
stopped, so the question remains unanswered. They ”seem” equal, but
after marriage they transform; Hong is training his fighting skills
for the sake of revenge and Fang is knitting and doing housewife
chores for the sake of upbringing their son. Their roles are
restored, but only on the exterior.
”You might
turn into a girl if you practice too much” Say some boys teasing
Wending during his practice. The boys don’t tease Wending about his
very female clothing, but tease him because his mother is training
him. Their taunting is directed to an interior point. ”Reshuffling
the boundaries of gender at the level of the performative and the
masquerade, the martial arts film betrays a real anxiety about
femininity as essence,
and not only about female power”. At the marriage ceremony between
Wendings parents, the friends of the father are acting like
teenagers. One guy says ”This woman is feisty”, another one says ”I
am not afraid of the bride”, and you wonder if they are men or
little scared boys.
Fang Yongchun’s transformation entails ”From
alluring sex object she is elevated to the status of
Mother/Goddess, yet is us given, like the Red Heroine, or the
Deaf-Mute Heroine, a chance to fight the villain herself.” Her
feistiness is almost completely gone after the marriage. She is
only seen training her son, but while doing household chores at the
same time! As if she would be perverted being a mother that fights,
hence we don’t get to see her in combat.
”Yet, unlike what happens
in the melodrama, the real subject of the diegesis is not the
woman, but the male body, and women, fighting or not, often end up
as pawns – yet their function
within the diegeses keeps changing.” Fang Yongchun goes
from being a feisty and strong woman to being a mother that ”gives
away her powers” to her son. Her son becomes an image of her and
the father, but thus is still a man. ”As the Wuxia pian upholds the
primacy of the phallus, it is therefore logical that it represents
a playful mode of enacting the sexual impasse.” This could maybe
also explain the homoerotic tensions in the movie. As the text in
”The Book, the Goddess and the Hero: Sexual Politics in the Chinese
Martial Arts Film” by Reynaud suggest, the fight is to be
understood as a sexual act. The men are not allowed to be seen ”in
action” with women and we therefore encounter them more typical in
fight with men. Hong only fights Fang in the beginning of the film,
but event his fight is not fulfilled. The man can only finish a
fight with another man, which suggests a homosexual potency and
lack of heterosexual interest. The ”sexual impasse” is explained in
the film within and leaves the audience with a somewhat latent
consolidation.
”The Autarkic World of
Liu Chia-Liang” by Roger Garcia, p.124
”The Book, the Goddess
and the Hero: Sexual Politics in the Chinese Martial Arts Film” by
Bérénice
Reynaud,
Senses of Cinema, p. 5
”The Autarkic World of
Liu Chia-Liang” by Roger Garcia, p.128-129
Ibid.,
p.130-131
Ibid.,
p.131
Ibid.,
p.132
”The Book, the Goddess
and the Hero: Sexual Politics in the Chinese Martial Arts Film” by
Bérénice
Reynaud,
Senses of Cinema, p. 4
Ibid., p.
5
Ibid., p.
2
”FONG SAI YUK” (”Fang
Shiyu”)
Film by
Corey Yuen Kwai, Hong Kong, 1993
Review by
Stine Marie Jacobsen
The film
portrays the Chinese legendary hero Fong Sai-Yuk, played by Jet Li.
Fong Sai-Yuk was a member of the Red Flower Society, also known as
the Red Lotus Society, that in wuxia novels was known for fighting
the Manchu-run Ching Dynasty with an agency to win back their
country.
What really interests
me about ”Fong Sai Yuk” is the portrayal of the mother, played by
actress Josephine Siao. The mother role and function remind me so
much of Pudovkin’s ”Mother” from 1926. Just as in Pudovkin’s film,
we encounter a mother in ”Fong Sai Yuk” that is used as a tool to
represent or simulate a strong nation during a time of revolution.
The word ”tool” is the right word to use in relation to ”Mother”,
but a wrong word to use in relation to ”Fong Sai Yuk”, because the
film seeks to do a parody exactly on the phenomenon of utilizing
women to insinuate and symbolize a strong nation.
”These
lady generals and knight-ladies are not fighting for female
liberation, rather they fight to preserve the authority of men.
When the male faces danger, the female is there to save him. She
defends the home and the country, so that the authority of the male
may be maintained.” This syndrome is so obviously made fun of in
”Fong Sai Yuk”, that we can no longer speak of the mother in the
terms that Sek Kei describes women in martial art films. ”The
tradition of the weak male hero has brought about a double
transformation of the female type in relation to man: the first
transformation turns a woman into someone who is even weaker than
the weak man; the second transformation makes the woman into
someone who is strong so that she may support the weak man. When
these two types are fused together, the result is the ’classic
ideal Chinese woman’: one who is both a weak woman and a
knight-lady; one who can fight the male of the species yet poses no
threat to him.” The mother in ”Fong Sai Yuk” is not weak, because
her character is aware of her ’meta-role’. She seems not to be
subdued to the past patriarchal Confucian system. It seems more
like the Mother and son are hybrids, a mix of each other. The
mother takes on the role of her son, Fong Sai Yuk and the son
appears more as daughter, helping her with her hair and being
concerned with his mother and at the same time distanced from the
father. Fong Sai Yuk lives through her mother. The mother even asks
her son the question: ”Have you lost your virginity?” and breaks
with a conventional family pattern. She is the real hero in the
film and I think the title and name ”Fong Sai Yuk” should be
related as much to her as her son.
”The rise
of young female stars was due to the need to cater to the fantasies
and aspirations of housewives in the audience, particularly those
women who worked part time in certain home industries to increase
their family incomes.”
The mother dresses up as a man and ends a
fight with the new local Manchu governor’s wife that her son flees
from. The general’s wife falls in love with the mother and they
tell each other: ” We will meet in another life”, ironically
commenting on the Confucian taboo and impossibility of lesbian
love. The love between the women cannot happen in the film, but has
to transgress to an outside realm of the film.
”Mother
comes to save you”, the mother ironically shouts. We know this is
such a cliché that we can only laugh with her. The whole film is
such a ”I-know-you-know” parody, that it is enjoyable to see the
mother’s character act out the trope of mother as nation. To quote
the critic Berenice Reynaud: ”When a genre has exhausted itself it
turns to parody”. ”Fong Sai Yuk” is a result of an exhausted genre,
but nevertheless through the parody finds a way to once again show
us an amazing martial art film.
Sek Kei,
”The War between the Cantonese and Mandarin Cinema in the Sixties
or How the Beautiful Women Lost to Action Men,” in
The
Restless Breed: Cantonese Stars of the Sixties,
Stephen Teo
ed., Hong Kong: 20th Hong Kong International Film Festival/Urban
Council, 1996, 31
Ibid.,
31
Ibid.,
30
”ONE-ARMED SWORDSMAN”
(”Dubi Dao”)
Film by
Zhang Che/Chang Cheh, Hong Kong 1967
Review by
Stine Marie Jacobsen
The Text
and the Hero.
The hero
in this film, Fang Gang, is a handicapped, self-taught, strong and
feminine man under a great deal of suffering. ”The psychopathology
of this masochism......It could clearly be understood as the
product of various levels of repression: celibacy as a repression
of mature sexuality, narcissism as a repression of the
psychological ’other’. It could also be read as a system of
’masks’, a reading that connects with Wang’s characteristic
impassivity of expression but also one that relates to the
deflected homosexuality of Chang Cheh’s films (where a pervasive
homosexual ambience that need not
identify itself as such is constantly
apotheosized in images of the virile martyrdom, disembowelment and
the like).” Fang Gang is never seen kissing or having sex in the
film. He rejects a woman who then cuts off his arm and symbolically
castrates him from his profession as a martial arts fighter. He
throughout the film seems to be repressed and discontent,
constantly looking back at what he had and no longer has.
”Zhang saw
himself as a reformist who sought to break long-held conventions in
the Hong Kong film Industry. First on his list was the convention
of the weak leading man. Zhang considered that the male image had
suffered for nearly twenty years because of the long reign of
female stars in traditional soft genres such as the
wenyi
(literary
art) melodramas and huangmei
diao operetta films, the two
genres that preceded the wuxia
film in
popularity.” To enforce a new image of a strong man, Zhang
understood the power of having a handicapped hero who still fights
to the very end, as a very convincing new ideal man. In the Western
style one could say, all odds are against him: an incomplete
training manual, a broken sword and only one arm.
Zhang
himself stated that: ”Throughout the whole world, the female sex
make up the absolute majority of the audience. Hence, the status of
male performers is more important than that of the female.” Hence
his interest lied in the image of the man and the women had a
somewhat transparent role. Whenever the woman was involved, it was
always directed to the underlying sexual relations between the men.
Ironically, one of the villains says, ”The woman cannot see the
toy”. As Zhang himself stated: ”Two things symbolize men -violence
and sex”, the sex didn’t really imply women. His concern seemed to
reflect more on the construction of masculinity. He introduces
masculinity as needs of showing off, to fight. Something our hero
is no longer allowed to, but seems to be in a constant urge or need
to.
”The
characteristics of Zhang’s male heroic archetype can be summed up
in the term yang
gang, which translates as
’staunch masculinity’: yang
denoting
the male principle and gang
indicating
firmness or strength. Basically it is the Chinese expression of
machismo.” Zhang seemed more interested in the construction of
masculinity and reinserting a stronger male image into the
wuxia
tradition.
”...new school’s objective, as Zhang defined it, was to create
young, brash, and reckless heroes with a high mortality rate.
Zhang’s heroes are in many respects anti-heroes, marked by the
traits of independence and free-thinking whose behavior challenged
Confucian patriarchal norms.” Our hero Fang Gang is seen very early
on in the film leaving the martial arts world, because of his
proletarian roots.
Zhang
commented on his film being reflections of reality, commenting on
the Chinese Cultural Revolution. ”There is a congruence here of
operatic violence and historicist violence, which is the key to
understand the wuxia
cinema.” At
the same time as the film is pointing at its inner explanation to
violence, it criticizes the contemporary cultural and political
situation of China.
”In Zhang’s yang
gang universe, the
patriarchy is either weak, corrupt, or in the process of
decline-..” Fang gang leaves the Martial Arts world in the end and
his master breaks his sword out of sorrow of loss of successor and
also because he blames Martial Arts for all the death and
mutilation. Is it also an alternative choice of being a proletarian
rather than a Martial Arts fighter? Somehow there must have been a
very ambiguous situation in Hong Kong at the time this film was
made. Ironically Hong Kong was becoming a capitalistic system and
this film seems to nostalgialize some loss that could be read as
societal. His arm will never grow back and like society, once
progressed, there is no turning back.
Tony Rayns,
”Wand Yu: The Agony and the Ecstacy,” in Lau Shing-Hon, ed., A
Study of the Hong Kong Martial Arts film, Hong Kong: Urban Council,
1980, 99-100
Stephen
Teo, ”Shaw’s Wuxia
Films: The
Macho Self-Fashioning of Zhang Che/ Chang Cheh, ”in Wong Ain-ling,
ed., The Shaw Screen - A
Preliminary Study, Hong Kong: HK Film
Archive, 2003, 147
Ibid.,
148
Ibid.,
153
Ibid.,
149
Ibid., 150
Ibid.,
152
Ibid.,
150
PEKING OPERA BLUES
(”Dao Ma Dan”)
Film by
Tsui Hark/Xu Ke, Hong Kong 1986.
Review by
Stine Marie Jacobsen
What a hybrid and
amazing film! The film has enormous energy and dynamics.
The
original Chinese title ”Dao Ma Dan” means ”Knife horse Actresses”
and refers to the style of Peking Opera, when male actors played
the roles of female warriors and women were not allowed on stage.
One can talk about this film as a ”double-theatricalization moving
in two directions: it was the performance of a performance of
gender and a self-referential act of acting as masking
(in a
figurative sense), i.e. the disguise of identity.” This was written
concerning early Chinese theater, which as the title suggests is an
all-dominating reference point and inspiration source for this
film. Thus this is a film with three female heroines, that seem to
be comically commenting on theatre as a male dominated world.
The
opening credits show a very theatrical male performer, various
instruments, weapons and costumes from Peking Opera. We are
literally led into the film in a Peking Opera setting.
The opening
scene introduces a woman singing and playing for a rich group of
people and a general. A riot breaks out and we are hurled into a
chain reaction of events. The girl, Pat Neil, steels a box of
jewels from the rich group, that end on a carriage going to a
theater, were we meet the second heroine, Sheung Hung, the daughter
of the theatre owner. Our third heroine, Tsao Wan, the daughter of
a general is also at the theatre, where she is meeting with
revolutionaries. The three women gradually build a bond of
sisterhood.
”Peking Opera Blues” knows its history. The three
female heroines are more or less all a mix of stereotypical male
impersonators of women. ”A number of fixed gestures are used, and
the impersonator wears a female mask corresponding to the kind of
woman he is portraying: chingyi,
an elegant
lady, huatan,
a lower-class woman, or taomatan,
an Amazon or militant.” They are all fierce and strong, but all
comical derivations off of the notion of ”Warrior”, ”Goddess” and
”Prostitute”. But these notions are created in a male-dominated
system. Thus, the heroines in ”Peking Opera Blues” are constructed
to parody male impressions and constructions of women. As a kind of
pay back of all the mockery the Peking Opera has done to women.
We
shortly encounter a group of transvestites in the theatre as
mocking images of femininity. They are overreacting, hysterical and
sensitive, a monstrous result from having no women in theater. But
the main transvestite is the general daughter is dressed as a man
and says, ”I can move more freely dressed as a man”. Tsao Wan
fictionally takes over the role as the male transvestite.
”Ackroyd’s last comment contextualizes Chinese opera in terms of
sexuality and points to a significant aspect of Chinese opera: the
fact that its transvestism, acted in highly stylized conventions,
transgresses ”natural” categories of sexuality.” The film is filled
with references like this.
Castration
is often mentioned as to balance the inequality between the sexes.
The theatre father tells his daughter, ”If you want to act,
reincarnate as a man”. Serious conversations are introduced to us
as jokes, as parody.
The men are portrayed as idiots. The general
moves like a clown and they all keep on asking: ”Did you see any
guerillas?”. The men insinuate, that women are something to be
afraid of. Sheung Hung, the daughter of the theatre, states: ”All
guerillas are women, what about your mum?”, posing the question of
equality in a joke. But in reality the guerilla is the other, the
woman.
Peking
Opera was originally created by the working class. ”Peking opera is
not feudalistic at all. Emperors and ministers are often objects of
ridicule...” Zhang Che discusses the ban and censorship of Peking
Opera, and points out why a specific style of Peking Opera called
’huangmei diao’ became so popular a style for film. ”Its emphasis
on plot development also makes it a suitable candidate for film
adaptation.” ’Huangmei diao’ was a provinsial style, that did not
involve as much training as the conventional eight or forever
years, and therefore focused more on plot. Many who could not
afford or had access to education, such as the working class, could
engage in this style of opera. Also, this was the first tradition
that incorporated the mixing of sexes. Thinking of later martial
arts film and literature, that focused on the working class, it
explains the use of ’Huangmei diao’. ”Peking Opera was originally a
folk art.”
”The ultimate irony of Peking Opera
Blues is that the victory
contained within the film is really an empty one. In the tapestry
of history, the characters' struggles have really no effect on
China's future, nor on the destiny of the people. Following the
events in the film, China reverted to internal strife and more
years of "revolution." The characters only won one battle in a war
which they eventually lost.” I can’t help but bring in this great
citation to my paper, as it really emphasizes the tragic-comical
aspect of the film.
Consequently, the film
touches upon the importance of political satire and how laughter
can be a successful and cathartic tool to invite viewers into a
serious historical tragedy. Even the film points this out, as it
starts with a seemingly continuously hysterical laughter from a
masked male actor! In the end our group of heroes and heroines ride
out like in a Western film. The film ends and ironically states,
”Thus the Chinese Revolution started all over again”, as to refer
to their long cultural struggle. What else is there to do, but
laugh at a tragic-comical aspect of an almost endless revolution?!
Siu Leung
Li, Cross Dressing in
Chinese Opera, Hong Kong: Hong Kong U
Press, 2003, Chapter 2, ”A Theater of Cross-Dressing: A Revisionist
History”, (excerpt), 34-35
Ibid.,
(excerpt), 37
Ibid.,
(excerpt), 37
Zhang
Che/Chang Cheh, A
Memoir, Hong Kong: Hong Kong
Film Archive, 2004, 143
Wu Zuguang,
Huang & Mei Shaowu, Peking Opera and
Mei Lanfang, Beijing:New World
Press, 1980, 6
http://www.lovehkfilm.com/reviews/peking_opera_blues.htm
”RAINING IN THE
MOUNTAIN” (”Kongshan Lingyu”)
Film by
King Hu/Hu Jinguan, Hong Kong 1979
Review by
Stine Marie Jacobsen
The preface to
Raining
in the Mountain is shown on paper
scrolls, introducing the central object of desire in the film:
sacred mantras written on a scroll of paper.
The sacred scroll is
handwritten by Tripitaka and is kept safe in a Temple called Three
Treasure Temple. The three treasures are the learning and
philosophy of Buddha, Darma and Priesthood.
We
encounter the characters of the film, Esquire Wen, a rich man and
General Wang as they are arriving at the temple, both accompanied
by their hired thieves, the female White Fox and her male partner
Gold Lock and the Generals has his right hand, Zhang Cheng. Esquire
Wen and General Wang both have plans to steal the sacred scroll and
a game of deceit and conspiracy sets in. Also, a convict, Qui Ming,
a poor man of good heart and unrightfully charged with crime,
arrives at the temple to serve his penalty. At the same time of the
conspiracy, the temple is in search of a new spiritual leader,
which only adds even more deceit to the game.
”The first
half of the film is devoted to the exposition of several layers of
characters, from light to heavy, from simple to complex. Humanity
achieves a certain elevated standard from complexity to simplicity,
from the level of thieves (White Fox and Zhang Cheng) to the level
of the elevated soul (Qui Ming). Thus, the viewer should grasp the
essence of Zen”. Ng Ho points out the labyrinthic state of mind,
that the characters find themselves in, and underlines how the
viewer should identify with their internal journey. Thus, Qui Ming
is not the only elevated soul, but I will get to that later. Zen
philosophy is the central theme (and teaching) of this film. As we
judge as viewers, in some cases wrongly believing that another monk
will be chosen as the leader and not Qui Ming, we come to
understand the vastness and beauty of Zen. ”Where does the white
go, when the snow melts ?”, a famous Zen question poses and leaves
it for a never-ending internal discourse.
The film
reminds me of the books, In the Name of the
Rose by Umberto Eco
and Jorge
Luis Borges’ The Library of
Babel. Both are about a
library with a labyrinthic architecture, the first one has a
forbidden comical book and the second describes the interior of the
library of Babel, that contained all the books and languages in the
world, functioning as a search to become nearer God. The temple in
the film introduces the same aspect of a maze, but the labyrinth is
not only secluded to the library, but flows through every corner of
the temple, as if to say there is no focal point of the sacred. The
architecture is a symbol of Zen, a very non-material philosophy,
which can never be limited into a scroll.
”Raining in the
Mountain” turns the monastery
from a solid, symmetrical mass into a booby-trapped maze of walls
and jutting rooftops which obscure and then reveal the characters.”
The architecture is an allegory of the characters. ”There is more
here than meets the eye”, as one of them says and it points out the
characters themselves as mazes.
The two powerful men strive for
the sacred scroll, but are taught a lesson later in the film, where
the scroll is burnt by the new spiritual leader Qui Ming, as he
renounces that the ’power lies not within the scroll, but the
teachings of it.” Zen is all about an eternal search. The journey
itself is more important, than reaching your destination.
Qui Ming
makes several copies of the scroll, but burns the original, that
incidentally looses its value and ’aura’ to the material obsessed
characters, Esquire Wen and General Wang, to use a Walter Benjamin
term, but not to men with a ’heart of zen’.
Like we see Qui Ming
’rewarded’ for his pure heart throughout the film, we see in the
end, how he offers the same chance of forgiveness and purification
to White Fox. She as Ming also from working class, is the only
other character allowed to transform into a better person. The film
presents her in the end as a thief by need and with no interest in
the scroll and earthly material belongings. A ’real’ Zen
ending.
The
Tripitaka (Sanskrit, lit. three
baskets), Tipitaka (Pāli) is
the formal term for a Buddhist canon of scriptures. Many different
versions of the canon have existed throughout the Buddhist world,
containing an enormous variety of texts. The oldest and most
widely-known version is the Pāli Canon of the Theravāda school.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tripitaka
Ng Ho,
”King Hu and the Aesthetics of Space,” Law Kar, ed.,
Transcending the
Times, op. cit. 46
David
Bordwell, ”Richness Through Imperfection: King Hu and the Glimpse,”
Ibid. 35
Benjamin
used the word "aura" to refer to the sense of awe and reverence one
presumably
experienced
in the presence of unique works of art. According to Benjamin, this
aura inheres not
in the
object itself but rather in external attributes such as its known
line of ownership, its
restricted
exhibition, its publicized authenticity, or its cultural value.
Aura is thus indicative of
art's
traditional association with primitive, feudal, or bourgeois
structures of power and its
further
association with magic and (religious or secular) ritual. With the
advent of art's
mechanical
reproducibility, and the development of forms of art (such as film)
in which there is
no actual
original, the experience of art could be freed from place and
ritual and instead brought
under the
gaze and control of a mass audience, leading to a shattering of the
aura. "For the first
time in
world history," Benjamin wrote, "mechanical reproduction
emancipates the work of art
from its
parasitical dependence on ritual."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
The_Work_of_Art_in_the_Age_of_Mechanical_Reproduction
“SWORDSMAN II“
(“Xiao'ao Jianghu II, Dongfang Bubai“)
Film by
Ching Siu-tung/Cheng Xiaodong, Hong Kong, 1992
Review by
Stine Marie Jacobsen
The focus of this paper
will be to uncover the meaning and use of language in
Swordsman
II, where the power of
the spoken and written word is prevalent.
The evil
villain in this film is ”Asia the Invincible”. Asia has stolen a
sacred scroll and has unveiled the secrets of the powers of this
scroll with powerful words. Asia castrates himself, because this is
the only way to enhance his power. Enhancing his power involves a
transformation into a woman. Asia’s body changes rapidly into a
feminine body, but the last to change is his voice. The voice, the
one human tool that speaks the word.
The power
of the word seems also to run sideways with the fighting
techniques. I have never seen this used in such an extent as in
this film.
Every time the fighters are using a specific fighting
technique, like ”Essence Absorbing Skill!” or ”Division Hand!”,
they shout it out loud. Words are so powerful in this film, that by
shouting them while fighting, it makes the fighters stronger.
”Don’t mention my metamorphosis” we hear Asia tell his lover, as
if afraid that the saying of the actual happening will kill it.
”Put your tongue into the vase”, is another situation, where the
withholding of words is important.
It makes
me think of Adorno, who speaks in his writings about this inability
to speak into the core of a subject. The sacred scroll represents a
state of things before the law, before things become part of the
symbolic order. Reading Judith Butler’s Gender Trouble, where she
speaks about Lacan’s theories of language as a structure that is
loaded with gender, the use of language (the spoken word) in
Swordsman
II, suddenly unveils
itself as an amazingly powerful and dangerous tool. And we all know
that every tool can be a weapon.
”The binary relation between
culture and nature promotes a relationship of hierarchy in which
culture freely ”imposes” meaning onto nature, and hence renders it
into an ”Other” to be appropriated to its own limitless uses,
safeguarding the ideality of the signifier and the structure of
signification on the model of domination”
In the scene, where Asia
tell his lover not to mention his transformation, he is afraid that
the words could impose change onto his biological transformation
from man to woman.
Butler writes how many theorists, like Lacan,
have stated that the cultural structure is that man is the beholder
of the signifier, reason and action, whereas woman is the body and
part of nature. Will the mentioning of his transformation reinstate
the distinction between the sexes, and annihilate his quest in
mastering both, as a woman? Asia is not becoming a ’real’ woman.
”She reflects
masculine
identity precisely through being the site of its absence.” Asia is
afraid to loose control over his transformation and his
masculinity, which would make him a real woman. Asia never becomes
a real woman, but stays in an in-between-state-of-gender, as a
monstrous version of both sexes.
I don’t agree with Helen Hok-Sze
Leung when she writes, ”The monstrosity of power corruption is
symbolized not only in the fact of castration but in the very
process of bodily transition from male to female.” I don’t think we
are meant to see his transformation as a complete transformation
from male to female. I render it as if , even though Asia’s voice
changes into a female voice in the end, Asia is kept in the realm
of ”not quite man” or ”not quite woman” as Leung writes it. Who are
we to know? I believe the strong performative mask of femininity
Asia delivers, would be an argument to use.
Language
was for the structuralist a totalitarian system that effected our
structuring of culture and ourselves. ”The totality
and
closure
of language
is both presumed and contested within structuralism. Although
Saussure understands the relationship of signifier and signified to
be arbitrary, he places this arbitrary relation within a
necessarily complete linguistic system.” As for in
Swordsman
II, the use of language
and the withholding of language makes sense in the aspect of
transgression and spirituality. If Asia is to transgress into
another gender, and behold the powers of both genders at the same
time, he must also transgress the spoken word. His new being cannot
cohere with the use of language, if appearance is a product from
signification. ”For Lacan, the subject comes into being-that is,
begins to posture as a self-grounding signifier within
language-only on the condition of a primary repression of the
pre-individuated incestuous pleasures associated with the (now
repressed) maternal body.” Language becomes dangerous, because it
threatens to categorize Asia as either male or female!
It’s as if
the film states that by not speaking or using words, the power of
literature, which means the power of communication, we will end
with misconceptions of eachother. Like in this film, where the hero
Ling thinks, that Asia is a Japanese woman, because she does not
speak and believes that she is attracted to him, where in reality
she is deceiving him.
There is a constant displacement of sound
and words taking place in this film. Think of the woman who holds
the instrument in the end of the film and does not play it, as if
not speaking, not making sound. The sound comes from the film
itself, as if it’s a return to reality.
Judith
Butler, Chapter II, “Prohibition, Psychoanalysis and the
Heterosexual Matrix” (excerpt) in Gender
Trouble,New York & London:
Routledge, 1990 & 1999, 48
Ibid.,
50
Helen
Hok-Sze Leung, “Unsung Heroes: Reading Transgender Subjectivities
in Hong Kong Action Cinema” (Web Version, excerpt),
3
Judith
Butler, 57