Reconstruction Vol. 16, No. 2
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Excess and Affect in Post-Traumatic Cinema: Chen Kaige's Farewell My Concubine (1993) / Eunah Lee
Abstract
Farewell My Concubine (1993), one of the representative works of the Fifth Generation directors, delivers the sentiments and psychological effects and affects of those who live within ongoing upheavals and traumas in modern-nation building. Although the characters themselves do not recognize the incidents as shocking, they need time to mourn and work through their experiences, when they return to normalcy. And yet they are living with continuous and repetitive shocks, so that living with trauma and expecting to encounter it becomes their normalcy, a part of their life.
Keywords: trauma, normalcy, Fifth Generation
<1> Chen Kaige's Farewell My Concubine (霸王别姬 Ba wang bie ji, 1993) is one of the representative films of the so-called Fifth Generation film directors of China. These films have been globally acclaimed for their visual spectacles of extremely stylized scenes and allegorical narratives about China, yet they are often criticized for their "inauthentic"-meaning self-orientalizing and exoticizing-representation of China. For example, Fifth Generation directors were featured and acclaimed in international film festivals: In 1985, Chen Kaige debuted at the Hong Kong International Film Festival with Yellow Earth (1984), and in 1998 Zhang Yimou's Red Sorghum was honored with The Golden Bear Award at the Berlin International Film Festival. Zhang's Judou and Raise the Red Lantern were both nominated and won in various international film festivals, while Farewell My Concubine won the Palme d'Or at the 1993 Cannes Film Festival. In tandem with China's entrance into a new phase of development, the global attention cast on the Fifth Generation directors through their ongoing success at international film festivals reinforced Chinese directors' coming under the influence of the Western gaze.
<2> Many scholars, such as Rey Chow, Sheldon Hsiou Lu, and Yingjin Zhang, have pointed out the self-orientalizing tendency of the films of the Fifth Generation directors, which encouraged western audiences to desire the culture of the Other as an exotic object. Yingjin Zhang, examining Chinese films that have proceeded into the transnational flow, argues that "favorable reviews at international film festivals lead to the production of more ethnographic films, and the wide distribution of such films facilitates their availability for classroom use and therefore influences the agenda of film studies, which in turn reinforces the status of ethnographic films as a dominant genre" (2003: 121). Lu points out that transnational Chinese "art films" have mostly been coproduced with foreign capital, "targeting non-Mainland audiences and international festivals, and distributed outside China" by being involved in transnational production, exhibition, distribution, and consumption in the world market (1997: 9). Rey Chow characterizes Chinese films as "betraying cultural translators"; according to her, the ethnographic films of the Fifth Generation directors are "the toys, the fabricated play forms with which the less powerful (cultures) negotiate the imposition of the agenda of the powerful" by "consciously exoticizing China and revealing China's 'dirty secrets' to the outside world" (2010: 170). She claims that meaningful cultural translation will only be possible when "the visualistic epistemological bases of disciplines," meaning "anthropology and ethnography," are deconstructed by the reductive binary perception between the East and the West.
<3> In the most recent decade, scholarship on Chinese culture and cinema has shifted its focus, however slowly, from authentic representations of realistic China to the aesthetics and politics of delivering the trauma of modern nation-building. For example, in "National Trauma, Global Allegory: reconstruction of collective memory in Tian Zhuangzhuang's The Blue Kite," (2010), Xudong Zhang reads the 1990s films of the Fifth Generation directors as narratives of personal and national trauma, revealing ruptures in history. Referring to 1990s films that gained global recognitions through festival circuits, such as Chen's Farewell My Concubine (1993), Zhang Yimou's To Live (1994) and Tian Zhuangzhuang's The Blue Kite (1993-1994), Zhang suggests that these films' narratives are either of "epics [or] anti-epics" featuring "unstable and even impenetrable aesthetic styles" (2011: 624). The films are counter-narratives that challenge the hegemonies and ideologies of communist China-"the 'grand-narrative' of social revolution and idealism" (2011: 623). Zhang suggests that the Fifth Generation director's auteurist touch might appeal to global spectators through their distinctive style-"the riots of colors, images, and unheard-of stories," while their political stance in content provides "a self-gratifying sense of moral relevance" to the style (2011: 627). In this sense, the spectators' enjoyment is generated in their involvement in "creating the memory of catastrophe," collective memories of trauma while consuming visual spectacles (2011: 627). Their works function as a "common point of reference" for global and domestic spectators to gain access to and to have discourses on "the historical experience of Chinese modernity" (Zhang 2011: 624).
<4> Advancing Zhang's argument, I suggest that Farewell My Concubine (1993), a representative Fifth Generation film, delivers the sentiments and psychological affect of those who live through ongoing upheavals and traumas associated with modern-nation building. Chen's film was born in a cultural climate in which the state underwent violent transplantation of global capitalist practices onto its old system and structure of communism, the so-called socialist market economy. Its mirrors the disjuncture and confusion of Chinese citizens in the 1990s, who experienced directly and indirectly the traumatic violence-the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976) and the Tiananmen Square Massacre (1989)-set in motion by their state, and, who then lived through what I term a "society of rupture." In the aftermath of the Cultural Revolution and Tiananmen Massacre, the Chinese people had no opportunity to heal in the Communist state's partial acceptance of the ideology and practices of the capitalist West, which took place even as the state maintained the social structure established by the Communist party.
<5> Farewell My Concubine depicts the untold stories of oppressed and/or marginalized artists. In the film, the protagonists are performers of Beijing Opera in the twentieth century, meaning they are practitioners of traditional performance arts and thus are subjected to tremendous oppression during the Cultural Revolution. The main characters' personal traumas are shaped, in considerable part, by historical forces, while the narrative developments they experience illuminate the sentiments and sensibility of nostalgia, loss, disorientation, and disillusionment. Adopting the filmic styles and modes of western auteurs, Chen's translations of the old and new China in his cinematic texts constitute an indirect uncovering of the complicated sentiments of people living in times of continuous change and turmoil.
<6> Since its foundation in 1911, the Republic of China (ROC) has experienced ongoing revolutions, wars, and turmoil, which were meant to lead to national progress yet instead brought endless suffering to its people (Berry 2008: 1), not least of which was the civil war that, in 1949, resulted in the ROC becoming the PRC (People's Republic of China). Michael Berry argues that in the twentieth century, the historical trauma generated by Western imperialism and colonization turned into "state violence" toward citizens of PRC as a means to "'discipline and punish' the subjects of a new Chinese nation" (2008: 5). [1] The Cultural Revolution and the Tiananmen Square Massacre are emblematic disciplining processes conducted on citizens' bodies by the State in order to sustain socialist ideologies and reject and annihilate the influences of Western ideologies. However, in the 1990s, the Chinese state accepted Western capitalist practices and open up the nation within the flow of globalization, while holding onto the previous social structure for the continuation of the already constructed social hierarchy.
<7> Jianying Zha describes the society of post-Tiananmen China as having "marched toward economic prosperity, all cheered on by the same old drumroll of 'socialism with Chinese characteristics,'" with neither the "heartwarming, soul-cleansing catharsis" that successful revolution for democracy would have accompanied, nor "the starkly bleak picture of protracted oppression and depression" that might have resulted from cruel restraints and repressions (1997: Kindle Location 198). Instead of political freedom, more economic freedom has been granted since the brutal confrontation in 1989. According to Zha, Deng Xiaoping led "wider, faster and deeper marketization" from 1992, with the outcome that Chinese society, seemingly "wak[ing] up from depressing slumber and suddenly [seeing] a whole world of opportunities," has metamorphosed into a commercialized space. This wave of change has dismantled the old structures, habits, and alliances of Beijing, which in turn has broken "old illusions and romanticisms" (1997: Kindle 309). While the economy has boomed with the private sector's acceleration in post-Tiananmen China, the cultural realm has undergone a different kind of transition. In the post-Mao era of the late seventies and early eighties, discourses of culture regarding "China's distinctive history and heritage" had garnered the enthusiastic attention of Chinese intellectuals-artists, educated urban professionals, and writers (Zha 1633-1636). "Think big" became a motto, and these intellectuals obsessively asked questions about the meanings of culture and civilization, as well as their roles as intellectuals in establishing a civil society. This phenomenon was dubbed a "culture craze" (Zha 1680-1671). However, this passion and the resulting enthusiastic missions of that period ended with the violent repression at Tiananmen Square (Zha 1701), and "Now the feeling had passed" (Zha 1708). Chen's Farwell My Concubine is born from this transitioning cultural and social climate in 1990s China, delivering the sentiments of people living in excess in post-Mao and post-Tiananmen China. The desires of liberal intellectuals in the 1990s to engage with globalization and to be acknowledged by the West are turned into the dialectical aesthetics of high modernist style delivering the pre-modern aesthetics of China.
<8> Farewell My Concubine operates on a double logic that plays its luxurious formal mise-en-scène against the violent, often traumatic history of Chinese social upheaval. In terms of its content, the film delivers a narrative of the traumatic modern-nation building of China, depicting the ruptures and scars in its modern history through the tragic destinies of some of the most marginalized Chinese citizens-performers and prostitutes. Mirroring the tumultuous upheavals caused by shifting political regimes and hegemonies, their personal lives are composed of continuous betrayals and tragedies. However, in terms of form, the film appears as a seamless perfection, appealing to spectators with seductively entrancing scenes composed of carefully articulated, dazzling shots of excess. Almost all the scenes of the film are theatrically set up with meticulously detailed props and framing, which, in most of the film, are composed with symmetrical balance and feature exaggerated color. A disjunction is thus created between the aesthetically charged scenes, mesmerizing spectators with exotic, colorful images, and the tragic narratives of personal and national trauma.
<9> This paper reveals, with Farewell My Concubine, that the rupture of ideology and its practice, in Post-Mao and Post Tiananmen Chinese society, is reflected in the disjuncture between the film's content and form. Nick Davis, in The Desiring-Image, points out that "[c]inema's first challenge was to legibly organize overlapping movements and do so coextensively within the frame, across a sequence, and throughout a film" (2013: 7). Referring to Deleuze, he explains that the forms of national cinemas reflect "their existing ideological and artistic bents" (2013: 7). The aesthetic features of this film reflect the ideologies that the film holds onto, and they appear to change within the narrative development, through Chen's emphasis on traumatic events in Chinese modern history. In his Afterimage: Film, Trauma and the Holocaust (2003), Joshua Hirsch suggests that trauma, in poststructuralist discourses, is perceived as an unpleasant affect existing universally in history rather than as particular abnormal and exceptional events. Films are shown as "the projection of giant images in the dark" that resemble, for spectators, the "mental imagery, memory, fantasy, and dreams" (2003: 7). Given the magical mechanical process of the medium of film, it has the potential to make spectators not only witness to traumatic past events visually but to experience the psychological process of the mental shock of those events through visual and narrative formation. He suggests that posttraumatic cinema is defined, not so much in films including scenes of shocking atrocities, but in films "attempt[ing] to discover a form for presenting that content that mimics some aspects of posttraumatic consciousness itself," the psychological effects and affects that survivors of trauma would live with after "seeing the unthinkable" (2003: 19). Employing as well as challenging Hirsch's delineations on features of posttraumatic cinema, I situate Farewell My Concubine within discourses of posttraumatic cinema. The film operates on a double logic that plays its luxurious formal mise-en-scène against the violent, often traumatic history of Chinese social upheaval. Focusing on this disjuncture, I illuminate the ways in which the film presents a unique aesthetics that delivers the affect of people experiencing a different modern nation-building process than in the West.
<10> Hirsch argues that posttraumatic films challenge and undermine conventions of the historical film genre by making distinctions in the posttraumatic cinema of historical events from classical realist films in the genre of historical films (2003: 9). According to him, classical realist films depict traumatic historical events in seamless narratives, or through chronological depiction of events through an omniscient point of view, making spectators "false eyewitnesses" who obtain a sense of masterfulness toward past traumatic events, such as the Holocaust. The objective and omniscient perspective and seamless narratives presented in realist films draw spectators toward the contents, or "events represented," such that they remain unaware of this filmic format, "the film's own act of presentation" (Hirsch 2003: 21). This type of representation generates "narrative memory," which changes the unrepresentable and inexplicable nature of trauma, or rupture, in history, into elements of normalcy for spectators, without delivering to those spectators the psychological and physical shock of traumatic events (21). As a result, classical realist films nudge spectators toward a false sense of knowing, seeing, and mastering traumatic events in history, while posttraumatic cinema induces the opposite effects and affects (20-21). He attributes this effect to the disappointment of spectators' expectations regarding mainstream narratives in history itself, as well as narrative conventions in the historical film genre (19).
<11> Farewell My Concubine does adopt the classical realist mode by depicting national and personal traumas through an omnipresent point of view. Whenever there is a transition in the historical phase being experienced by his characters, a brief description, which may work as an intertitle for global audiences, appears onscreen: "1924 Beijing-The Warlord Era," "1937 7.7 On the Eve of War with Japan," "1945 Japanese Surrender as Chiang Kai-Shek's Nationalist Army Retakes Beijing," "1948 The Eve of the Nationalist Evacuation to Taiwan. The Communists Have Surrounded the City," "1949 The Communist People's Liberation Army Enters Beijing," "1966 Beijing, The Eve of the Cultural Revolution." These written descriptions inform viewers of the exact dates of events, situating the fictional narrative in the middle of historical junctures. For example, Chen situates the first scene of the two performers, as adults, on the exact date of 7 July, 1937. This was the date of the Marco Polo Bridge Incident, which initiated the Second Sino-Japanese War (1937-1945). The protagonists, known by their stage names, Dieyi and Xiaolou, are wearing dark western suits for a photography session. They then change into traditional clothes for a second photograph. Outside the building, student protesters march and chant, "Down with Japanese imperialism! No invasion by Japan!" When Dieyi and Xiaolou leave the building after the photography session is over, the protestors yell at them about putting on a performance despite the nation's endangerment by the Japanese attack. "You're playing into the hands of the Japanese! How can you put on makeup and sing opera at a time like this?" "You have no feelings for your country." Given the chaotic scene, the earlier intertitle of 1937 as well as all other time indicators are gestures toward setting the tone of the film as objective and realistic. These intertitles suggest an omnipresent narrator guiding spectators through historical events in a seamlessly linear progression.
<12> Chen's film, however, undermines the conventional posttraumatic cinema that Hirsch defines: it is transformed into a hybrid of genres and styles conveying the different psychological affects and effects of the trauma experienced by the Chinese in their modern nation-building process. The form and style employed in the film, of extremely emboldened, exaggerated, and symbolic visuality, which Zhang refers to as a high-modernist style, constantly push audiences to recognize the presentational form of the film, as well. Rather than turning spectators into "fake witnesses," this form, in a way, functions to make spectators aware, through its excess in narrative, that the past events of national and personal trauma depicted in the film are not authentic representations of the past but reconstructed fantasies. At the same time, the motifs of betrayal and abandonment, and scenes of death (suicides) and violence, though altered, are continuously repeated throughout the film. At first, such melodramatic elements compel spectators to engage with the narrative and be imbued in the sentiments of loss and sadness. However, as such narrative motifs are constantly reshown, spectators, probably in the middle of the film, become desensitized to the pattern of shock. To a certain degree, they disengage from the narrative excess of melodrama, yet spectators might sense the posttraumatic psyche of people who have not had the time to mourn for, or work through, much less move on from, the scars of traumatic events. The plot is deployed to fabricate sentiments in spectators to feel the affect of collective trauma, the ongoing violence and turbulence having broken the Chinese people's belief in the grand ideologies that the nation had pursued and embodied.
<13> The Chinese people' loss of trust in the state, and in the revolutionary practices and ideologies endorsed by the State, turns, in this film, into nostalgia toward pre-modern China, as symbolized in the national tradition and aesthetics epitomized by the Beijing Opera. Until the nineteenth century, China had been one of the most powerful empires and had exerted its cultural, sociopolitical, and military power over East and Southeast Asia. However, in the nineteenth century, China experienced a decline through European nations' colonialist invasions-such as the Opium Wars-and through its defeat in the First Sino-Japanese War by Japan, which had already undergone westernization and (modern) militarization. Incursions into China by Western nations and Japan had weakened the empire of the Qing Dynasty, which collapsed in 1911. Chen shapes the narrative of Farewell My Concubine in a particular way, in order to deliver a sense of the (imagined) loss or tragic fall of the Chinese empire by depicting the rebirth, in filmic form, of the traditional arts and aesthetics of China, and its subsequent fall during the Cultural Revolution.
<14> The national tradition and aesthetics symbolized by the Beijing Opera appear, in Farewell My Concubine, more marvelous and exquisite, but fixed, the epitome of purity. In fact, the institutions of and cultures within the Beijing Opera have been modified and changed, throughout the modern nation-building process, in ongoing interaction with Western culture. In addition, partly because its many scenes peddle traditional Chinese customs, accessories and crafts, the film has been criticized for orientalizing and exoticizing China. However, the repetitive usage of the same hairpieces, makeup, and decorative objects and costumes emphasizes the constant efforts in the film to preserve traditional craftsmanship and techniques. A close reading of key scenes reveals that the two main characters keep using the dresses and hairpieces, despite changes in time, while the number of props decreases to indicate the reduced financial means of the theater.
<15> In the first part of the film, the depiction of the inhumane and abusive disciplining process for the theater's child trainees may indeed look like it is revealing the "dirty secrets of China," yet the deployment of the film discloses that the painful discipline imposed on young bodies was a necessary process to perfect their technique, an art in itself. The traditional craftsmanship and techniques of China are different from modern Western philosophies and aesthetics, which are rooted in Renaissance humanism, meaning that art works are viewed as manifestations of humanism. When it comes to certain traditional Chinese aesthetics, losing the self or one's humanity is considered a viable way to achieve the highest level of art, through transcendence of the self to the level of universal and collective consciousness.
<16> Extreme physical pain, which is enforced in order to inscribe artistry and technical mastery onto the trainees' bodies, might seem to contemporary spectators like abuse of the human body, yet it is an effective way to turn human beings into the epitome of certain arts. During the scenes featuring the young trainees, many close-up and medium close-up shots of child characters' bare faces-most of them of the young Dieyi and Xiaolou, known in childhood by their given names Douzi and Shitou-allow the spectators to feel what the children feel, to be affected by their emotions. For example, when Master Guan, a teacher and director of the young trainees, places bricks next to Douzi's ankle for practicing splits on his first day in training, Shitou sees Douzi screaming and crying from the pain and kicks the bricks away for Douzi. Shitou is then subjected to horrible physical punishments for helping Douzi. The scenes are composed of recurring close-up shots of Douzi and Shitou, their faces wet with tears and sweat, though revealing the genuine appreciation and trust that develops between the two. In addition, in many scenes, the camera moves around these trainees, as if from a supervising parental point of view. For example, the first scene in which these trainees perform is shown briefly through a medium shot, and then the camera moves farther away from the stage, behind the seats of a small number of audience members, as if from the perspective of someone who cares about their performance as well as who silently and covertly observes audience members' responses. Not a manifestation of humanity as Renaissance artists in the West have tried to express, but the artists-the Beijing Opera performers in the film-attempt to turn themselves into things, art objects, themselves-to achieve aesthetic transcendence through pain and discipline. This type of art and craftsmanship is only possible under a certain type of system, like a pre-modern culture that enables repression and oppression of trainees' bodies in the name of patronage.
<17> Significantly, the film also announces the end of the days of the Beijing Opera. The culture that allowed young students from impoverished families to undergo such an excessively strict, even abusive, training process, was the culture of patronage. The patronage possible through the corrupt and exploitative custom of the old Dynasty-young dan (female impersonator) performers of the theater were sexually exploited by patrons who belonged to the high society of the Qing Dynasty in its final years-is encapsulated in the taking away of these performers' childhood innocence. For example, when Douzi is called upon by Eunuch Zhang for perverted sexual play, the scene that follows the route by which Douzi is sent to Zhang, carried piggyback by an old servant, again consists of close-up or medium close-up shots that effectively convey the boy' confusion, fear, and anxiety. The camera is set in front of the faces of Douzi and the older servant and moves backwards, as the actors run forward. At the room of the eunuch, who makes the boy urinate in a delicate glass bowl, standing in front of him, the camera again takes Douzi's perspective as he watches the eunuch attaining perverted pleasure in seeing Douzi's action. Douzi's childhood ends with the sexual abuse committed against him by the perverted eunuch, and the depiction of Eunuch Zhang makes spectators feel disgust and shock for the situation, thereby making the boy a victim and the object of sympathy. Under that repressive system, craftsmen and artists made things that were in demand by the elite, yet the era of the old dynasty ends, and this phase of the film likewise ends with the shot of a group picture of all the trainees and Master Guan.
<18> When art and aesthetics reach a particular degree of accomplishment, they are able to transcend their boundaries and limitations within humans who live under limited conditions. Disciplining and practicing techniques, in the end, turn into a certain ideal level of artistic accomplishment. The next phase of the narrative starts with the shot of a photograph of the now grown-up and successful Douzi and Shitou. As the boys turn into young adults, the scenes that frame the two main characters are shown through the perspectives of fans in pursuit of their idols. Douzi and Shitou turn into celebrities of the Beijing Opera, and their mesmerizing performances of scenes from Farewell My Concubine, a famous play of the Beijing Opera, seduce spectators entirely through their acting and alluring mise-en-scène. This transition is likely calculated to imbue spectators with awe and admiration. In one scene, Master Yuan is seated, curiously watching the beginning of a play. The scene turns into a close-up of Dieyi's profile, until he turns his face to the camera, at which point the camera zooms out slowly while Dieyi sings. Dieyi makes intricate gestures and little turns in his face and body, with the flow and rhythm of his singing, and the camera shooting Dieyi actually moves-zooming out-making delicate and subtle directional changes, as if the movement of the camera is mirroring the delicate dancing and gestures of Dieyi. The movement of the camera is as delicate and subtle as Dieyi's movement, drawing spectators into Dieyi's performance such that they might not even realize the delicate turns and gestures made by the camera.
Figure 1. Dieyi sings.
<19> As Dieyi sings a prolonged word, slowly extending his arm and pointing with his finger (Figure 1), the camera zooms out at the same pace. Suddenly, the medium shot shifts to show the cheering adulation of the audience, and the stage, through a high-angle long shot from the right side of the room in the teahouse. It then turns into a medium shot of Master Yuan, who though expressionless, stares at the stage with rapt attention, and finally it again shows Dieyi in a medium shot through a shot-reverse-shot sequence. The manager of the theater hosting Master Yuan asks, "[Y]ou be the judge, Master Yuan. Has he not blurred the distinction between theater and life, male and female?" Master Yuan does not answer the question verbally, but the screen again shows him staring-attentive and mesmerized-at the stage, which is again shown as a series of medium shots of Dieyi and Xiaolou as they perform. At the same time, the diegetic audiences in the film are presented as overwhelmed with a sense of awe and admiration, and the mise-en-scène, camera movement, and camera angles put the extradiegetic spectators of the film into a similar position.
<20> Rather than intending to exoticize or orientalize China by providing constant visual spectacles through the presentation of numerous exotic objects, it appears to be designed to reveal that the craftsmanship existing in pre-modern China has disappeared in the traumatic modern nation-building process. Chen's style is not only a manifestation of Chinese acceptance of Western ideologies and aesthetics, but also represents an effort to regenerate and retranslate their traditional aesthetics in a way that appeals to global audiences. Xudong Zhang argues that a high modernist style, characteristic of the 1990s Fifth Generation directors, is an embodiment of capitalist logic-turning pain into visual spectacles and entertaining pleasures that attract and appeal to global audiences (especially western spectators in international festival circuits). At the same time, those styles and modes generate transcendence in their melodramatic depictions of personal pains that translate into universal and ontological questions of human existence. Zhang suggests:
[T]he undeniable strength and the mesmerizing magic of these films-the works of the Fifth Generation films-lie in their treating personal experience as autonomous, that is, in the disinterested realm of the aesthetic. (2011: 628)
In so doing, they justify such styles and reveal the social and cultural changes of 1990s China, both in its adoption of the Western ideologies of universal humanism and developmental progress, and its recognition of its lack in Chinese history. Zhang contends that these transcendences, or transformation of content through style, fill the ruptures in history. That is to say, the ruptured historical moments in the modern nation-building process of China turn into scenes that ask "an ontological speculation of the ultimate meaning of existence" through focusing on personal stories shown in aesthetically appealing form (2011: 698). I challenge Zhang's argument, however, that the aesthetics adopted in Fifth Generation directors' works function to transform personal and national trauma into transcending moments through "images of personal intimate experience" (2011: 628). I assert, rather, that high modernist style and ontological themes about existence are employed and appropriated in Farewell My Concubine in order to translate the traditional or pre-modern aesthetics and ethics of China for global audiences.
<21> In the film, Dieyi's turning into the character Concubine Yu, through his own confusion between reality and life, is presented as an expression of artistic transcendence and then transforming that self into the perfection of art. The director manifests it with Dieyi's perfect transformation, which his co-actor, Xiaolou, was unable to achieve. Dieyi, on the surface, is the epitome of female beauty, indeed the reincarnation of a beautiful concubine in early Chinese history and a figure in the Peking Opera from which the novel and film are derived. Although Dieyi's loss of identity as male would generally be perceived by modern audiences as disorientation, yet, his losing himself or transcending himself for art's sake is drawing audiences to the film. Likewise, the film's spectators also experience a certain disorientation and confusion though the character that Dieyi plays. His perfect identification with the character-a disorientation of himself-also includes the spectators in this disorientation. Dieyi's effeminized look creates enormous confusion for spectators, because they also see him as a beautiful woman, despite knowing or being aware that he plays this role. At the same time, the director experiments with filmic technique-a modern western art-in order to present this transcending moment of Asian aesthetics through the deployment of unique camera movements.
<22> The camera movement and composition in Chen's film are modernistic but overlaid with an application of the traditional Asian aesthetics and values of balance and harmony. The prevalent composition that the screen employs is a symmetrical frame, shown through a frontal camera angle, as if incorporating Asian or pre-modern aesthetics from architecture and painting, with their prioritization of balance and harmony. Another prevalent camera movement that follows the characters' movement, while capturing it with frontal shots, is also related to traditional Chinese aesthetics: spectators identify with a work of art by looking at it from the front, and appreciate it while walking to the left. In a later scene, after the Japanese forces occupy Beijing, Dieyi performs "Peony Pavilion" privately for the imperialist army, in order to save Xiaolou's life. The situation can be read as the physical and psychological dominance of the Japanese on Chinese bodies and minds. However, Chen also emphasizes how the artistic appeal and aesthetic achievement of Dieyi's performance not only appeals to, but gains respect from, Japanese soldiers. The unfolding of the performance in the scene resembles the traditional Chinese folk art known as shadow theater, or pi ying, which was originally invented to console Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty for the loss of his favorite concubine, although the art form has mainly been entertainment for the masses. The scene of the performance is shown only as silhouettes projected onto the white paper screens of traditional sliding doors, as if the paper wall shields the shame that Dieyi's performance carries.
<23> The silhouettes of the right profiles of the musicians, sitting near a wall in the room, reveal shadows-probably pillars of the building-behind the musicians, and serves to
Figure 2. Dieyi sings again.
distinguish the musicians' location from which Dieyi sings and performs. Dieyi's silhouette, which shows his left profile, suggests that he is not wearing any costumes or hairpieces, but rather simply stands as he sings and performs (Figure 2). The camera moves slowly, from the right to left, to show row after row of seated Japanese soldiers watching Dieyi's performance without so much as blinking. As the camera moves to the left, it reveals fully armed Japanese soldiers standing outside and guarding the room, while the performance is taking place behind sliding doors. The scene changes inside the room, and the actual setting inside is slightly different from the silhouettes-the musicians are seated, facing toward the inside room, which reveals Chen's tactful setting to show the situation, first, as an art form of shadow theater. The performance scene ends with the Japanese generals clapping at the end of Dieyi's performance. His performance for the enemy soldiers underscores the tragic and shameful conditions the Chinese experienced during the Japanese invasion, yet this scene embodies the ways in which the director Chen emphasizes the artistic appeal of Beijing Opera and the aesthetic achievement of Dieyi's performance. In doing so, he brings to the surface the distinction between the colonizer and the colonial subject.
<24> The sense of loss is enhanced by the film's reconstruction of the image of the nation as something authentic, magnificent, and elegantly grand. The fall and rise of the Beijing Opera is thus depicted by Chen, in conjunction with the traumatic nation-building process (and decline) of China. The fall of these opera performers during the Cultural Revolution embodies the end of belief in the ideologies that Communist China had pursued, as it is presented in the form of their denunciation and public shaming during the Cultural Revolution, a time when Maoist ideologies erupted into violence. The Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, remembered as one of the most shocking and painful atrocities in twentieth century China, was a political and social movement to remove all traditional and/or bourgeois forms of culture-old thoughts, culture, customs and habits-remaining in the People's Republic of China. "[T]orture, imprisonment, public humiliation, psychological torture, and forced relocation" were perpetrated against people who were "former landlords, those with connections abroad or to the Nationalist government," intellectuals, and artists, and the decade-long process was accompanied by brutal pain and emotional as well as physical scars (Berry, 2008: 254).
<25> The film's plot follows the main characters up through the time of the Cultural Revolution, at which point the composition of frames slowly but continuously loses its symmetrical balance in depicting the nation's forceful removal of its traditional arts, as epitomized in the film by the Beijing Opera. In one such scene, Dieyi and Xiaolou are violently beaten, denounced, and shamed by a group of Red Guards-college and high school students-who consider themselves as new revolutionary rebels following Chairman Mao's policies. Dieyi and Xiaolou are kneeling down, their faces shown through medium close-up shots, shaken and blurred by the flames of a fire set by the Red Guards to burn objects
Figure 3. The scarlet flames
not endorsed by the Cultural Revolution. Although the characters are framed in the center of the screen, Dieyi's face and hairpiece tilt to the left. The medium close-up shot shows Xiaolou forced to reveal and denounce Dieyi's past. When Xiaolou asks Dieyi if he has had an intimate relationship with Master Yuan, a close-up shot that presents Dieyi's desperate facial expression transitions to a long shot that shows Dieyi standing, while other performers kneel, and a group of Red Guards wearing uniforms and red armbands. Not only is the scene blurry from the constant motion and opacity of scarlet flames, but the camera angle for this shot is slightly tilted, with Dieyi located slightly to the right of center (Figure 3). When he walks forward, revealing long-kept secret-Xiaolou's wife, Juxian, used to be
Figure 4. The denunciation
a prostitute-the camera shot moves, but rather than follow Dieyi's step and movement, it is slightly later than Dieyi's pace and moves in the opposite direction. The camera's movement refuses to mirror Dieyi's movement, and thus creates a disjuncture between the main character and the form (Figure 4).
<26> The intrinsic drive of the narrative, shown in chronological order, represents a lack of development in history, at the same time suggesting the circularity of historical events rather than presenting them in a linear progression. Farewell My Concubine starts from the filmic present, 1989, twenty-three years after the end of the Cultural Revolution; following the opening credits, it restarts from the shared childhood of the two main characters, proceeds to their adolescent days and adulthood, then returns to the filmic present-the opening scene-and ends. The film ends by going back to the setting of the first scene of the film, years after the end of the Cultural Revolution, in a big, dark, empty hall. In that empty hall in the first scene, the two main characters are in full costume and makeup, and they start a conversation with an unknown voice assumed to belong to a keeper or guard of the hall.
Voice: Who are you?
Xiaolou: We're with the opera troupe.
Voice: Oh, I didn't recognize you! I am a great fan of you both.
Xiaolou: Is that so? Thank you.
Voice: It's been over twenty years since you performed together, hasn't it?
Xiaolou: Twenty-one.
Dieyi: Twenty-two.
Xiaolou: Yes, twenty-two years.
Xiaolou: And it's been ten years since we saw each other.
Dieyi: Eleven, Eleven years.
Xiaolou: Eleven. Eleven years.
Voice: It's due to the Gang of Four and the Cultural Revolution. Things are better now. Xiaolou: That's for sure. Everything's fine now.
In the final scene of the film,however, Dieyi, performing Concubine Yu, ends up slitting his throat with a real sword. This moment reminds spectators of the dialogue in the first scene between Xiaolou and the nameless voice. The characters have to be "fine," despite the fact that everything depicted in the film discloses that nothing has been "fine" for people enduring the violence in history. Yet the characters in the film keep moving on, by naturalizing traumatic events as their normalcy. The only thing Dieyi holds onto is his play, but even his play betrays him by making him a symbol of female beauty committing suicide. Chen's Farewell My Concubine depicts people who are betrayed by their own times, historical forces, or ideologies. The films suggest that, in times of massive turmoil, such as that of twentieth-century China, people will inevitably betray themselves and their loved ones in order to survive amid ongoing upheavals. Stated differently, the ideologies of the times have betrayed the beliefs of ordinary Chinese citizens. In the film, main characters yearn for loyalty and love, while they live through the traumatic reality of modernizing China, in which constantly changing politics and ideologies have not allowed people to remain loyal and nurture their love for one another.
<27> Throughout Farewell My Concubine, the heavily made-up face of the concubine gazes at the camera, and by extension, the audience. His face, as an objectified, exoticized, and orientalized image, delivers unbearable sadness. His eyes encounter the eyes of global audiences, haunting them. However, underneath the thick makeup, which is impassible and impenetrable, his heart is heavily scarred without any prospect of healing. Just like the Chinese people cannot, collectively, retell the narrative of the trauma and what led up to it, Dieyi cannot reveal his own experience. The sadness, remorse, and resentment of a man who lived through the times of the turbulent, traumatic historical junctures of modern China, were not something that had to be withheld from global audiences. Yet only the highly embellished image of a man's made-up face and his distant but sad face were allowed to remain seared in the memory of global audiences.
Principal Cast and Crew of Farewell My Concubine (1993)
Director: Chen Kaige
Writers: Lee Pik Wah (novel) (as Lillian Lee); Lee Pik Wah and Lu Wei (screenplay)
Cheng Dieyi (segment "Douzi") (Leslie Cheung)
Duan Xiaolou (segment "Shitou") (Zhang Fengyi)
Juxian (Li Gong)
Acknowledgement: Unless otherwise noted, all images were acquired under a Creative Commons license.
Notes
[1] According to Michael Berry, the Cultural Revolution and the Tiananmen Square Massacre are representative examples of historical trauma as manifestation of state violence to punish and discipline citizens. He writes:
Heeding Mao's call to 'continue the revolution,' countless youths rebelled against their own history, culture, and society only to find themselves the new subjects of state punishment as they were sent to China's frontier land. In 1989,… the result of [the Tiananmen Square Massacre] was a brutal crackdown during which cries for reform were smothered under the sound of rifle fire, the weight of tanks, and the power of a political iron fist. (2008: 5)
Starting from a rally of students demanding reforms to socialist politics and the one-party system of the Chinese Communist Party led by Deng Xiaoping, the Tiananmen Square protest lasted six weeks and involved the active participation of countless ordinary people in China.
Works Cited
Berry, Michael. A History of Pain: Trauma in Modern Chinese Literature and Film. New York, NY: Columbia University Press, 2008.
Chow, Rey, and Paul Bowman. The Rey Chow Reader. New York, NY: Columbia University Press, 2010.
Davis, Nick. The Desiring-Image: Gilles Deleuze and Contemporary Queer Cinema. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2013.
Hirsch, Joshua F. Afterimage: Film, Trauma, and the Holocaust. Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press, 2003.
Lu, Sheldon H. Transnational Chinese Cinemas: Identity, Nationhood, Gender. Honolulu, HI: University of Hawai'i Press, 1997.
Zha, Jianying. China Pop: How Soap Operas, Tabloids, and Bestsellers Are Transforming a Culture. New York, NY: New Press, 1995.
Zhang, Xudong. "National Trauma, Global Allegory: Reconstruction of Collective Memory in Tian Zhuangzhuang's The Blue Kite." Journal of Contemporary China 12.37 (2003): 623.
Zhang, Yingjin. Chinese Cinema. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2011.
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