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Chinese Film Images of Invasion and Resistance

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 February 2009

John H. Weakland
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Extract

It is clear that the Government of the Chinese People's Republic is very concerned about national defence and possible foreign attack – especially from the United States, but increasingly from the Soviet Union also. Obviously, such concerns are largely relatable to both historical and current political and military realities – such as 100-odd years of western and Japanese encroachments on China, the Vietnam war, American military bases around China, Chinese-Soviet border clashes, and both ideological and practical political conflicts between China and the United States, and China and the Soviet Union. At the same time, however, these practical realities alone cannot provide a full basis for understanding the nature and strength of Chinese concerns about potential invasion. In the first place, such attitudes are both too deep and too wide. Traditionally, from long before the West became powerful in Asia, China has been concerned to keep foreigners out or at least carefully restricted, and long before the bitter attacks by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) on “cultural imperialism” this concern extended to economic and cultural as well as direct military or political influence. Second – more generally, but more fundamentally – political behaviour and attitudes are never so neatly and completely rational and compartmentalized as to depend only on the “real” political circumstances. As with anyone else, both what the Chinese perceive as “real” and as “political,” and the significance attributed to these perceptions, depends also on the lenses they use to view the world. And the nature of the lenses used to view international affairs may be shaped by matters that at first seem remote from international relations, and by unconscious and emotional as well as conscious and rational calculations.

Type
Research Article
Information
The China Quarterly , Volume 47 , September 1971 , pp. 439 - 470
Copyright
Copyright © The China Quarterly 1971

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References

1. This viewpoint is analogous to that applied to other aspects of Chinese political culture by Pye, Lucian W., The Spirit of Chinese Politics (Cambridge: M.I.T. Press, 1968)Google Scholar and Solomon, Richard H., “Communication Patterns and the Chinese Revolution,” The China Quarterly, No. 32 (10–12 1967), pp. 88–110.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

2. See Ai-li, , Chin, S., “Modern Chinese Fiction and Family Relations: An Analysis of Kinship, Marriage and the Family in Contemporary Taiwan and Communist Stories,” Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Center for International Studies, Studies in International Communication, Research Paper A/66–9, 12 1966.Google Scholar

3. Abel, Theodora and Hsu, F. L. K., “Some Aspects of Personality of Chinese as Revealed by the Rorschach Test,” Rorschach Research Exchange and Journal of Projective Techniques, Vol. 13 (1949), pp. 285–301.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed

4. Film analysis fundamentally is only a special case of anthropological study of cultural themes and patterns. The methodology of such study has been described simply but vividly by Benedict, Ruth in The Chrysanthemum and the Sword (Boston: Houghton Miffin, 1946), pp. 6–11Google Scholar, and at length and more generally in Weakland, John H., “Method in Cultural Anthropology,” Philosophy of Science, Vol. 18 (1951), pp. 55–69.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

5. E.g., “The Red Lantern – A Working-Class Epic,” Peking Review, No. 48 (24 11 1967), pp. 36–37Google Scholar. Quotations in the description are from this source.

6. It is interesting to note that a correlation between date of production and overtness of family theme exists for these three films, with Daughters of China the earliest and least explicit and Song of Youth in an intermediate position in both respects. A larger sample, however, would be necessary to verify and investigate the significance of this apparent relationship.

7. Hsueh-chin, Tsao, Dream of the Red Chamber, translated by Wang, Chi-chen (New York: Twayne, 1958).Google Scholar

8. See, for example, the stories “Old Customs” and “Hsiao Erh-hei's Mar riage,” in Shu-li, Chao, Rhymes of Li Yu-tsai and Other Stories (Peking: Cultural Press, 1950).Google Scholar

9. The Marriage Law of the People's Republic of China, with explanatory materials (Peking: Foreign Languages Press, 5th reprinting, 1959).Google Scholar

10. The Marriage Law, pp. 1–2.Google Scholar

11. Ying-ch'ao, Teng, “Breaking the Yoke of the Feudal Marriage System,” ii The Marriage Law, pp. 35–36.Google Scholar

12. “What Attitude Should a Husband Take Toward His Wife?,” Jen-min jih-pao (People's Daily) (Peking), 14 10 1964Google Scholar. Translated in Communist China Digest, Vol. 13, No. 140, pp. 139–143.Google Scholar

13. Weakland, John H., “Themes in Chinese Communist Films,” American Anthropologist, Vol. 68 (1966), pp. 478–484.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

14. These data of course depend on the observer's judgment of the relative importance of the characters in the films, since there is no official ranking of them. However, relative importance is usually rather evident, and only considerable error would significantly affect this comparison, or the similar judgmental data to follow.

15. Although further evidence seems hardly necessary, it may be mentioned that there are also a number of secondary female leads in these films, for whom the picture of oppression is much the same.

16. If the “Old China” films are eliminated from the total sample, there remain six films of transitional periods, three films concerned with Old China in part and New China in part, and three films depicting New China exclusively. In these there appear in leading roles six liberated women, plus six liberated women as secondary leads.

17. Cited and discussed in a different but related context in Weakland, John H., “Family Imagery in a Passage by Mao Tse-tung,” World Politics, Vol. 10 (1958), pp. 387–407.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

18. It is also quite possible that even the Communists, although officially feminists, are ambivalent about the extent of Chinese mothers' real family and emotional power and unconsciously would like this reduced, even if the formal position of women is raised.

19. Tsiang, Meng, “Herald of a New China,”Google Scholar in Ling, Ting, Our Children and Others (Hong Kong, 1947).Google Scholar

20. Snow, Edgar, Red Star Over China (New York: Random House, 1938), p. 113.Google Scholar

21. This conversation took place in English. For the sake of fidelity I have retained the actual wording instead of trying to improve the grammar.