IN SEARCH OF LAUGHTER IN MAOIST CHINA:
CHINESE COMEDY FILM 1949-1966
DISSERTATION
Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for
The Degree Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate School of
The Ohio State University
By
Ying Bao, M.A.
*****
The Ohio State University
2008
Dissertation Committee:
Approved by
Professor Kirk A. Denton, Adviser
Professor Mark Bender
Professor J. Ronald Green
Professor Patricia Sieber
_____________________
Adviser
East Asian Languages and Literatures
Graduate Program
Copyright by
Ying Bao
2008
ABSTRACT
This dissertation is a revisionist study examining the production and consumption
of comedy film—a genre that has suffered from relative critical and theoretical neglect in
film studies—in a culturally understudied period from 1949 to 1966 in the People’s
Republic of China. Utilizing a multidisciplinary approach, it scrutinizes the ideological,
artistic, and industrial contexts as well as the distinctive textures of Chinese comedy films
produced in the so-called “Seventeen Years” period (1949-1966). Taking comedy film as
a contested site where different ideologies, traditions, and practices collide and negotiate,
I go beyond the current canon of Chinese film studies and unearth forgotten films and
talents to retrieve the heterogeneity of Chinese cinema. The varieties of comedy
examined—mostly notably the contemporary social satires in the mid-1950s, the socalled “eulogistic comedies,” and comedian-centered comedies in dialect and period
comedies, as well as lighthearted comedies of the late 1950s and the early 1960s—
problematize issues of genre, modernity, nation, gender, class, sublimity, and everyday
ii
life in light of the “culture of laughter” (Bakhtin) within a heavily politicized national
cinema.
Situating my study in the current scholarship of comedy and Chinese cinema,
Chapter 1 historicizes the genre of comedy and provides an overview of its definitions in
both Western cinema and Chinese cultural criticism. Using Unfinished Comedy—a 1957
satire banned before its completion—as a starting point, Chapter 2 revisits the crisis of
the genre in the early years of the PRC and examines the tensions between artistic
autonomy and the control of the authorities through a case study of the director Lü Ban.
Chapter 3 looks into the mechanism of how ideal social relations were imagined and
articulated in eulogistic comedy. Chapter 4 focuses on dialect comedies and film
adaptations of folk comedies across regional divisions, which engage a complex dialogue
between the local and the national. Chapter 5 examines how filmmakers tried to fuse
satire and eulogy in lighthearted comedies of family life and work life. The epilogue
reflects on how comedy films transcend a binary opposition between propaganda and
entertainment, and it seeks to prompt further studies on the resonance of films from the
Mao era in contemporary China.
iii
Dedicated to
Mom, Dad, Kang, and Keyu
In love and appreciation
iv
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
William Arthur Ward has a famous quote: “The mediocre teacher tells. The good
teacher explains. The superior teacher demonstrates. The great teacher inspires.” I am
truly privileged to have a group of great teachers who have inspired me in my pursuit of
knowledge and self-realization. I would like to thank above all my dissertation committee
members for their unfailing support, guidance, encouragement, and patience. I am
immensely grateful to my adviser Professor Kirk A. Denton for his faith, insight, humor,
generosity, integrity, critical feedback, and tolerance that have seen me through my
graduate work. Being his advisee and research assistant was my most rewarding and
enjoyable experience at the Ohio State University. I am deeply indebted to the many
stimulating conversations with Professor Patricia Sieber, whose sharp intellectual insight,
high expectations, moral support, and generous help were a constant source of inspiration
and encouragement. Many thanks to Professor Mark Bender for prompting me to rethink
Chinese national culture with his expertise in Chinese oral traditions and folk cultures
and for offering much needed advice at many critical moments in my graduate life. And I
greatly appreciate the inspiration and guidance from Professor J. Ronald Green, whose
v
genuine passion for alternative cinema and amazing knowledge of film history are
instrumental to the entire project.
I am also grateful to Professor Marjorie Chan for her affecting intellectual
enthusiasm and professionalism; to my former Professor Xiaomei Chen, who now
teaches at University of California, Davis, for her enthusiastic encouragement and
intellectual stimulation that helped initiating this project six years ago; to Professor
Weihong Bao at Columbia University for sharing her perspectives and expertise on film
studies with me. I have also benefited from courses and conversations with Professors
Julia Andrews, Cynthia Brokaw, Christopher Reed, Meow Hui Goh at OSU, Chen Ruilin
from Tsinghua University, and Dai Jinhua from Peking University.
I must also thank Hong Kong scholar King Cheng for generously sending me his
new publication on the history of Chinese comedy film and encouraging me to take on
this study; Nicolai Volland at Singapore National University for offering critical
feedback and generously sharing research resource with me; Greg Lewis at Weber State
University for his remarkable effort of introducing PRC films to the English-speaking
classrooms; Hu Ying and Jeff Wasserstrom at University of California, Irvine, for their
enthusiastic feedbacks on my research; Rao Shuguang at China Film Archive for kindly
answering my questions about his book on Chinese comedy film.
I am truly grateful to Debbie Knicely for her good sense of humor, care, and
administrative expertise. An exceptional debt of gratitude is owed to Peace Lee and Brian
Bare for years of friendship and generous help. Sai Bhatawadekar is deeply appreciated
for being such a wonderful friend who shares with me her perspectives on academia and
vi
life. Thanks also go to Ping-Chuan Peng, Yan Jing, Pat McAloon, Li Minggang,
Chunsheng Yang, Yunxin, Tim, and many others for their friendship and help.
I also want to thank various funding bodies at OSU: Department of East Asian
Languages and Literatures for years of graduate associateship; PEGS Grant, OIA
International Travel Grant, and College of Humanities’ Small Grant for enabling me to
conduct research in Shanghai in 2003 and 2006.
No words can express enough my gratitude and appreciation for my entire family.
Without their unconditional love, understanding and unfailing support at all emotional,
intellectual, and practical levels, I would never have come this far. My husband Kang has
made my academic pursuits possible with his love, care, faith, perception, encouragement,
and most generous support. My father Bao Zhonghao and mother Lin Xiuqing have
nurtured my intellectual curiosity and given me the freedom to follow my heart since I
was a little girl. Cao Tingwu and Liu Yiping have always been there for me whenever I
need help. Bao Jie helped me obtaining research materials and has taken upon a lot of my
share of family duty. The last but not the least, my son Keyu, who once thought of me as
the funniest mom in the world, has been constantly bringing pleasant surprises and
wonders to my life. He has shown me the power of humor and curiosity and makes life
more interesting and all worthwhile for me. It is to my family that this dissertation is
dedicated.
vii
VITA
October 1972…………………………...
Born in Shangrao, P.R. China
1992…………………………………….
B. A. Chinese Language and Literature
Jiangxi University
1995…………………………………….
M. A. Literary Criticism
Nanjing Normal University
1995—2000…………………………….
Lecturer, Jiangnan University
2002…………………………………….
M. A. East Asian Languages and Literatures
The Ohio State University
2001—2004…………………………….
Graduate Teaching Associate
The Ohio State University
2005—2008……………………………
Graduate Research Associate
The Ohio State University
Spring 2008…………………………….
Visiting Instructor of Chinese
Denison University
PUBLICATIONS
Bao, Ying. “Whose Voice to be Heard? Narrative Strategies and Self-Identity in Fifth
Chinese Daughter, The Woman Warrior, and Typical American.” Comparative Literature:
East & West Vol. 7, No. 1 (2005). 83–99.
Bao, Ying. “Hu Mage.” In Edward L. Davis, ed., Encyclopedia of Contemporary Chinese
Culture. London: Routledge, 2005, pp. 262–63.
viii
Bao, Ying. “Liu Suola.” Co-author: Lily Xiaohong Lee. In Edward L. Davis, ed.,
Encyclopedia of Contemporary Chinese Culture. London: Routledge, 2005, p. 346.
Bao, Ying. “Yang Yi.” In Edward L. Davis, ed., Encyclopedia of Contemporary Chinese
Culture. London: Routledge, 2005, p. 693.
Bao, Ying. “Religion, Rebellion, and Revolution: Zhao Shuli and ‘Little Erhei’s
Marriage’.” CUEAGA Conference 2004 Conference Proceedings CD, University of
Colorado, Boulder, 2004.
Bao, Ying. “New Interpretation of Meng Haoran’s ‘Spring Dawning’ (Chun xiao).” Coauthor: Kang Cao. Academic Journal of Suzhou University 4 (2000). [In Chinese]
Bao, Ying. “An Analysis of the Major Difficulties in Teaching Basic Writing.” Academic
Journal of Jiangnan University 14:1 (1998). [In Chinese]
Bao, Ying. “On Deng Xiaoping’s Conception of Writing.” Writing 160 (1997). [In
Chinese]
FIELDS OF STUDY
Major Field: East Asian Languages and Literatures
Specialization: Modern Chinese Literature, Performance, and Media Studies
(Advisor: Professor Kirk A. Denton)
Minor Fields:
Film Studies (Professor J. Ronald Green)
Oral Tradition and Folk Culture (Professor Mark Bender)
ix
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Page
Abstract ……………………………………………………………………………
ii
Dedication ………………………………………………………………………… iv
Acknowledgements ………………………………………………………………. v
Vita ……………………………………………………………………………….. viii
List of Figures …………………………………………………………………….. xi
Chapters
1. Introduction …………………………………………………………………….. 1
2. The Problematics of Comedy and The Case of Lü Ban .……………………….. 39
3. Eulogistic Comedy and Socialist Utopia ………………………………………. 80
4. Dialect Comedy and Intranational Chinese Cinema ..…………………………..137
5. Lighthearted Comedy of Family Life and Work Life …………………………. 172
6. Conclusion ……………………………………………………………………... 206
Filmography ……………………………………………………………………… 212
Bibliography ……………………………………………………………………... 220
x
LIST OF FIGURES
Figures
Pages
2.1-2.6: The authoritative critic Yi Bangzi (“Comrade Bludgeon”) being dis-empowered
by laughter in Unfinished Comedy…………………………………………………76
2.7-2.8: "Comrade Bludgeon" makes his lonely exit through backstage and is literally
struck by a bludgeon………………………………………………………………. 77
2.9: Film ad for A Difficult Couple (Huannan fuqi, dir: Han Langen, 1950)………77
2.10: Film ad of Stories of Movie Fans (Yingmi zhuan, dir. Hong Mo, 1950) in DZDY
1950……………………………………………………………………………….. 78
2.11: The new director assumes the position of spectator in Before the New Director
Arrives……………………………………………………………………………. 78
2.12: Section Chief Niu under the interrogation of the intrusive camera in Before the
New Director Arrives…………………………………………………………….. 79
2.13: A political cartoon by cartoonist Mi Gu condemning Lü Ban’s “poisonous films”
in DZDY 18 (1957). The characters on the left reel (in the shape of traditional Chinese
coin) reads “Lü Ban’s comedy,” and the one on the right reads “masterful artist.”
…………………………………………………………………………………… 79
3.1-3.2: Anthropological gaze…………………………………………………… 133
3.3: Anthropological gaze reversed……………………………………………… 133
3.4-3.5: Apeng as the object of female gaze while the exposure of the viewing subject
Golden Flower, who is quietly observing him while hiding her face behind a straw hat, is
delayed…………………………………………………………………………… 133
3. 6: Republican star Shangguan Yunzhu plays the doctor (front right); Wu Yin plays the
grandmother of the sick child (front left)………………………………………... 134
xi
3.7-3.8: Duan Zhigao, on the left margin of the frame, is at a loss when his composition
of worksong does not work; but his unsuccessful participation quickly shifts to an
advantageous position as an observer………………………………………………. 134
3.9: Autoerotic gaze—Golden Flower’s moment of acknowledging her own
desire…………………………………………………………………………….….. 134
3.7-3.8: Ma Tianmin affectionately takes up a photo and the following POV shot reveals
the objects of his gaze but leaves the audience to guess which one is his romantic
interest……………………………………………………………………………… 135
3.9-3.10: Liu Ping examines Ma’s photo with affection and the following POV shot of
the photo objectifies Ma as her love interest. Then she asks: “Did he himself propose this
[to go on a formal date]?”………………………………………….………………. 135
3.11-3.12: Sister Fatty gazes upon Master Resolver on the photo ………………… 135
3.13-3.14: The highly choreographed chorus number teasing Sister Fatty in the harvest
field………………………………………………………………………………… 136
3.11-3.12: The railway worker tells Duan: “Bear likes people treat it politely. If you smile
at it, it will definitely not hurt you.” Later in the film, when Duan encounters a bear for
real, he remembers the worker’s words and forces smile at the bear..….…………. 136
4.1-4.2: Illustrations of the characters designed by famous cartoonist Zhang Leping for
the 1962 huajixi script of The House of Seventy-Two Tenants……………………. 170
4.3: Sanmao is overwhelmed by Shanghai the sin city. The cityscape, which he could not
realistically see on location, is superimposed over his awe-struck face……………170
4.4-4.5: Qiao Xi as the trickster and the demure “bride.”…………………………. 171
4.6-4.7: Sanmao learns to steal hat; Sanmao cannot decide if the teacher’s head is
“pumpkin-shaped” or “winter melon-shaped” so he brings in the real things to
compare. ……………………………………………………………………………171
4. 8-4.9: Bagu screaming is matched with the shrieking trumpet in the next scene in the
dance hall.…………………………………………………………………………. 171
5.1-5.2: The fight between the couple becomes slapstick when Xiwang is pushed down to
the ground and Shuangshuang laughs through her tears……………….………….. 201
5.3-5.4: Male space and female space are demarcated clearly……………………. 201
xii
5.5-5.6: The rhythmic sound of Jiafang’s hair clippers is cut to the sound of marching
train; Jiafang’s hypocritical husband is confronted by his friend Zhao, who knows his
tricks, in front of a clueless customer at the barbershop…………………………… 201
5.7: “We are all female barbers. That’s why this is called March Eighth
Barbershop!”……………………………………………………………………….. 202
5.8: “It’s him (to be blamed)!” Director Jia points to his distorted image in the
mirror. ………………………………………………………………………………202
5.9: “These are all for you!” Director Jia hands over washboard, scissors, rolling pole,
and apron to Jiafang, who accepts them with a frown.…………………………….. 202
5.10-5.11: Mao Zedong’s inscription of “Learning from Lei Feng” provides the
background of Satisfied or Not and inspires Xiao Yang to change his work
attitude………………………………………………………………………………203
5.12-5.13: Xiao Yang’s forced smile confuses and scares customers away……….. 203
5.14-5.15: Old Li and the Giant (Dalishi) are locked in the factory freezer, together with
butchered pigs; the Giant and his team are play tug-of-war with a rural team in the nearby
village. ……………………………………………………………………………... 203
5.16-5.17: The living space is shared by people who monitor, interact, and influence each
other; the leisure is organized and shared by people who do physical exercise
together……………………………………………………………………………... 204
5.18-5.19: The well-managed breakfast table and the well-managed kids who courtly give
preference to others………………………………………………………………… 204
5.20-5.21: The rejuvenated, youthful, and smiling mother is in contrast to the old and
weary housewife image of her………………………………………………………204
5. 22: The three Lis are doing taichi together in the common terrace of their apartment
building……………………………………………………………………………... 205
xiii
CHAPTER 1
INTRODUCTION
…The ambivalence of comedy reappears in its social meanings, for
comedy is both hatred and revel, rebellion and defense, attack and escape.
It is revolutionary and conservative. Socially, it is both sympathy and
persecution.
--Wylie Sypher. Comedy, 1956
…rather than taking ideology as a starting point and looking at how
movies show ideology, we can perhaps take movies as a starting point and
examine how they harbor, transform, exceed, and undermine political
ideology. If we start this way, we may see contradictions where we would
most expect ideological homogeneity, and need not be vexed by movies
that don’t seem to “fit.”
--Linda Schulte. Entertaining the Third Reich. 1996
This dissertation is a revisionist study of the production and consumption of comedy
film—a genre that has suffered from relative critical and theoretical neglect in film
studies—in the generally understudied period from 1949 to 1966 in the People’s Republic
of China (PRC). The title—In Search of Laughter in Maoist China— implies a double
search. It refers, on the one hand, to my attempt to retrieve the laughter in Chinese
cinema in the early Mao era and, on the other hand, to the filmmakers’ conscious efforts
1
to make films in the comedy genres during this era. Utilizing a multidisciplinary
approach, I scrutinize the ideological, social, artistic, discursive, and institutional contexts
and the distinctive textures of Chinese comedy films produced in the so-called
“Seventeen Years” period (1949-1966) in the PRC. Taking comedy film as a contested
site where different ideologies, traditions, and practices collide and negotiate, I go
beyond the current canon of Chinese film studies and unearth forgotten films and talents
to retrieve the heterogeneity of Chinese cinema.
The varieties of comedy examined—mostly notably the contemporary social
satires in the mid-1950s, the so-called “eulogistic comedies” (gesongxing xiju),
comedian-centered comedies in dialect and period comedies, as well as lighthearted
comedies of the late 1950s and the early 1960s—problematize issues of genre and call for
a re-examination of modernity, gender, class, everyday life, and sublimity in light of the
“culture of laughter” (Bakhtin) within a heavily politicized national cinema. The presence
of dialect comedies in the cinema further complicates the double-edged nationalization
process, in which the nation has to both exploit and diffuse regional culture.
Rethinking the New China Cinema1 in the Mao Era
Although films have been made in China for over a century, it is only over the past two
decades that Chinese cinema has established itself as a legitimate area of study in
Western film scholarship and in China studies in English language. Whereas the early
booms of Chinese film production in the 1930s and late 1940s and the Chinese New
1
New China Cinema should be distinguished from “New Chinese Cinema.” The former is associated with
the political term “New China” of the Chinese Communist state established in 1949; the latter is used to
refer to the post-Mao Chinese cinema (1978-), featuring the Fifth Generation films.
2
Wave since the 1980s have been recognized as dynamic works of art that can be
subversive of the dominant culture, films made in the early PRC (1949–1966) are often
dismissed as merely propagandist products of a totalitarian socialist regime and remain
largely unknown to the rest of the world. Paul Clark’s Chinese Cinema: Culture and
Politics Since 1949 (1988) remains the only monograph in English focusing on Chinese
cinema in the Mao era. Clark’s pioneering study, however, as Greg Lewis (2005: 163)
points out, seems “reluctant to look beyond the overarching theme of ‘politics in
command’”—that is, Clark looks a film only through the lens of politics. Yingjin Zhang’s
Chinese National Cinema (2004), while it includes full chapters on Hong Kong and
Taiwan cinemas, spends only 27 (out of 328) pages on the Seventeen Years. Chris
Berry’s anthology Chinese Film in Focus: 25 New Takes (2003) includes only one article
(out of 25) dealing with a film from this period. With few exceptions, films from the
early PRC period assume a minor presence in compilations of essays on Chinese cinema.
The fast growing literature on Chinese cinema mostly casts its attention to the issues of
(trans)nationality in the early and contemporary periods. Berry and Farquhar (2006: 14)
acknowledge that “[t]he recent attention to the transnational has reversed the bias in the
other direction, with the Maoist period of national isolation and socialism-in-one-country
suffering from relative neglect today.” On the whole, Maoist filmmakers’ conscious
efforts to negotiate with politics, to appropriate various cultural traditions, and to
strengthen the entertainment function of film media and promote film as one of the major
mass media, have not received sufficient attention.
This neglect—as well as the simplistic reduction of Maoist cinema to political
propaganda—have been contested by a few scholars, who call for a re-examination of the
3
seemingly homogeneous Maoist literature and cinema from broader, cultural studies
perspectives. For example, Esther Yau (1990, ix) argues in her dissertation about film
discourse on women from 1949 to1965 that “propaganda is conceptually inadequate to
describe the cultural significance of this political cinema.” Meng Yue (1993) brings out
the polyphonic elements in Chinese political culture in her inspiring analysis of the
transformations and adaptations of the Bai mao nü (The white-haired girl) story. In
China, this revisionist trend has produced a series of articles re-reading the so-called “red
classics” (hongse jingdian) and “rewriting Chinese film history” in journals like Dangdai
dianying (Contemporary Cinema). In the light of the centennial anniversary of Chinese
cinema in 2005, a series of monographs approaching the history of Chinese cinema from
various perspectives have been published, with the Maoist era as an integral part (e.g.,
Meng L. 2002, Yin and Ling 2002, Li D. 2004, Rao 2005a, Cheng 2005, etc.). Outside
academia, there has also been growing interest in re-issuing and remaking “red classics”
into popular cultural products for commercial consumption.2 Robert Chi (2003: 152)
notes in his critical reading of Hongse niangzi jun (Red Detachment of Women; dir. Xie
Jin, 1960) that
the increased willingness within China to re-examine the Maoist period
(roughly 1949-1979) in both academic and non-academic discourses, and
the increasingly varied and sophisticated ways in which cultural theory has
informed Asian studies, it has become both possible and necessary to fit the
Maoist period back into China’s long twentieth century.
2
For discussions of the phenomenon of remaking “red classics,” see, for example, Xie Xizhang’s “You
duoshao jingdian ju keyi chongpai?” (How many classics can be remade?), available at
http://yule.sohu.com/2004/04/12/84/article219808468.shtml
4
Greg Lewis, a film historian who has been working on a much-needed project—
“Translating New China’s Cinema for English-Speaking Audiences”—at Weber State
University since 2002, suggests,
Film-makers’ earnest and vigorous depictions of the common people and their
lives, and of economic reconstruction, offer educators the opportunity to
humanize a people and an era that has often been demonized in the West and
to reflect explicit aspects of cultural history unknown to non-Chinese
audiences. (Lewis 2004: 61)
Indeed, with the critical perspective that temporal distance from the era affords and the
availability of film products from that period, a focused study of the Maoist period allows
us to identify the continuities in Chinese cultural history between the pre- and postrevolutionary periods, while acknowledging the very serious discontinuities and ruptures
that have conventionally been the focus of research. It is also important to recognize
filmmakers’ individual agency, the restraints on it, and the complex process of cultural
production in China, without reducing it to a faceless collective history.
Among the “varied and sophisticated ways” (Chi 2003: 152) of cultural studies,
genre provides an alternative perspective to the modes of film production and
consumption, particularly in an industry that generally puts political acceptance over
artistic excellence. “Through a constant interplay between the latest instance and the
history of a particular form,” as Leo Braudy (Mast, Cohen and Braudy 1992: 440) argues,
“genre films can call upon a potential of aesthetic complexity that would be denied if the
art defined itself only in terms of its greatest and most inimitable works.” For its
connection to cinematic tradition and its intimate interaction with its audience, genre
study allows us to discuss film in both contextual and textual terms. Henry Jenkins and
5
Kristine Brunovska Karnick perceive genre history as something “seeped in personal
memories and fantasies.” As they explain,
The construction of the genre’s history in terms of a series of golden ages
and declines reflects the personal needs of the writers [of film history] as
much as an institutional need to understand our cultural past…what got
discussed was what the writers could remember, often removed from its
larger cultural context. Later writers adopted, almost without question,
established canons of silent comedy, with the result that lesser-known
figures became hazy memories and then disappeared altogether. (Jenkins
and Karnick 1995: 2)
This is particularly true in Chinese film studies. When historiography of Maoist cinema
has been preoccupied with the grand narratives and been conditioned by politics and
ideology, it has many blind spots. Comedy study is just one of them. However, as the
Russian scholar Mikhail Bakhtin states powerfully in his classic Rabelais and His World
(1968: 474), “we cannot understand cultural and literary life and the struggle of
mankind’s historical past if we ignore that peculiar folk humor that always existed and
was never merged with the official culture of the ruling classes.” In order to understand
the cultural dynamics and struggle of Chinese people’s history that are still relevant to
Chinese society today, it is necessary to look beyond the current canon and look beneath
the surface of a presumably politicized culture. A revisionist approach to the genre of
comedy is one tactic in retrieving the complexity of Chinese film history and cultural
history more generally.
My thesis is that comedy film is by nature a site of irreducible heterogeneity.
Whatever the definition may be, comedy is associated with a range of the emotional
reactions centered around laughter, from joy, happiness, appreciation, satisfaction to
cynicism, defiance, silliness, embarrassment, and bitterness. It draws from various
6
traditions, including political satire, utopia, folk humor, classic Hollywood, and Soviet
models, and cannot be easily reduced to a monolithic political statement. Neither can the
history of film production in the Mao era be treated as a homogeneous process. The study
will scrutinize the interplay between aesthetic, ideological, psychological, institutional,
material, technological, intellectual, discursive, and socio-political conditions in which
comedy films were produced and consumed in the Seventeen Years, to shed new light on
this highly politicized yet culturally complicated period.
Comedy in Western Cinema Studies
Comedy, as the editors of Film Theory and Criticism (Mast, Cohen, and Braudy 1992:
429) point out, is an Aristotelian generic term that has been regularly applied to films.
This long ancestry in aesthetics, however, does not make film comedy any more
theoretically established or systematically researched. Film comedy has been
acknowledged as one of the most popular, yet, critically neglected and hard-to-define
genres in film studies (e.g. Horton 1991, Sutton 2000, King 2002). One of the primary
difficulties in theorizing comedy lies in the fact that, as Gregg Rickman (2001: xiv) puts
it, “Comedy is not a single, discrete genre.” Except for the basic agreement that comedy
films should elicit laughter from the audience (though what is laughable can be very
culturally specific and everyone’s sense of the comic is different), there have been hardly
any totalizing theories that have successfully generalized the forms, themes, values, styles,
structure, functions, and other characteristics of the genre. As Andrew Horton (1991: 2)
points out, “The vastness of the territory, which includes the nature of laughter, humor,
the comic, satire, parody, farce, burlesque, the grotesque, the lyrical, romance,
7
metacomedy, and wit, precludes facile generalization.” Because of the difficulty in
generalization, Geoff King (2002: 2) proposes that comedy in film is probably “best
understood as a mode, rather than as a genre, if these various different degrees of comedy
are to be taken into account.” But in common usage, film comedy is still perceived as a
generic term and used as a descriptive label that distinguishes some films from others. If
we treat genres as “mythic edifices to be deconstructed,” they would be “valuable for
study because generic analysis could easily involve the consideration of economic and
historical contexts (conditions of production and consumption), conventions and mythic
functions (semiotic codes and structural patterns), and the place of particular filmmakers
within genres (tradition and the individual auteur)” (Grant 2003: xvii). What motivates
these classifications and denominations of films? What connections can we establish
between “each new instance of the genre and its past tradition and manifestations?” (Mast,
Cohen, and Braudy 1992: 430) Do these “handy descriptive tags actually refer[…] to true
traditions of film practice” (Grant 2003: xvi)? We can, and necessarily need to, discuss
the umbrella term “film comedy” and its (sub)genres in the light of film genre theory.
The word genre, originally a French term (with Latin root) meaning “type” or
“class,” has been widely used in literary and media studies as a way of examining the
system of conventions whereby forms establish patterns of repetition. Genre theory has
become a popular critical tool in film studies since the late 1960s. On the one hand, in
mainstream film production, filmmakers and distributors often rely on generic patterns to
standardize production procedures, to enhance audience expectations, and sometimes to
create an institutional or personal identity associated with a specific genre (these practices
may also explain why movies, like bananas, come in bunches). For example, Mack
8
Sennett and his Keystone Studios were the brand name of the one- or two-reel silent
slapstick comedies that became the single most vital American film genre of the 1920s.
John Ford, though he had directed film in many other genres, made a statement before the
Director’s Guild, that “My name's John Ford. I make Westerns.” And audience will
always expect suspense in the films of Alfred Hitchcock, as he is “the master of
suspense.” As David Bordwell and Kristin Thompson (1993: 81) state, “Genres are based
on a tacit agreement between filmmakers and audience.” Genre study situates individual
films in a larger system where similarities and differences among texts may be readily
recognized.
On the other hand, while genre theory acknowledges that the conventions and
rules have influenced film production and reception, the connotation and categorization
of film genre have never been fixed or consistently defined, because the conventions and
rules in filmmaking are constantly changing in different socio-historical contexts.
Depending on a range of specific contextual factors, a film may be categorized
generically by its setting (e.g. western, war, historical, etc.), the emotional reactions that
it intends to invoke (e.g. comedy, horror, weepie, etc.), its aesthetic style (such as film
noir, romance, avant garde, etc.), its subject matter (e.g. crime, fantasy, sci-fi, etc.), or
media (e.g. musical, animation, etc.). Categorization of a film may also change over time.
These designations are not mutually exclusive and may crossbreed freely, and there is
often considerable theoretical disagreement about the definition of specific genres. Take
screwball comedy, for example: to some critics, the term “screwball” denotes a very
specific type of film from a very specific moment in time—a “fleeting subgenre” that
“was popular during the ‘New Deal’ portion of the Great Depression” and receded in less
9
than a decade (e.g. Byrge and Miller 1991: 1); to some others, the concept of those speedfueled farces instigated by aggressive, even eccentric women has become interchangeable
with the broader historical category of “romantic comedy,” a catch-all name for any film
that includes both lovers and laughter (e.g. Harvey 1987); and there are still others who
view the terms of “screwball comedy” and “romantic comedy” as juxtaposable categories
that need to be differentiated from each other. For example, Wes D. Gehring published
two books on screwball comedy, Screwball Comedy: Defining a Film Genre (1983) and
Romantic Vs. Screwball Comedy: Charting the Difference (2003), trying to outline
exactly how the two genres differ in detail, i.e. screwball’s propensity for cynicism vs.
romantic comedy’s penchant for sentimentality, screwball’s emphasis on comedy over
coupling vs. romantic comedy’s love-conquers-all ideology. Throughout film history,
film practitioners (filmmakers, producers, distributors), general audiences, and critics
alike constantly challenge the stability of generic designations of film, highlighting the
idea of genres as discursive constructs that are subject to multiple revisions and
redefinitions by different groups in specific socio-historical contexts.
Provoking laughter is a basic element that has been part of the film medium from
its beginning, and making audience laugh developed along with the technological
advance of the medium. The early cinema, in Tom Gunning’s (1986) term, was by nature
a “cinema of attraction” that emphasized visual spectacle. Modern cinema began with
laughter and awe when people watched the mischievous boy playing tricks on the
gardener in the Lumiere Brothers’ L’Arroseur arose (1895), or the pretentious scientists
accompanied by their scantily-clad female assistants launching a spectacular trip to the
moon (made possible by his illusionist use of trick photography) in George Melies’s
10
satirical sci-fi Le Voyage dans la Lune (1902). Early cinema relied heavily on physical
gags and visual humor as its most powerful device to attract audiences. As Walter Kerr
illustrates in his seminal work The Silent Clowns (1975), comedy was ideal for the early
silent films, because it is dependent on visual action and physicality rather than sound.
Influenced by the circus, vaudeville, burlesque, pantomime, the comic strip, and the
chase films of the French actor Max Linder, Mack Sennett’s Keystone comedies
established some major comic conventions that can only be found in film (for example, a
film technique that shoots the pictures at a slow camera speed and then accelerates the
frames in the projector during playback, thus making the screen action more frantic and
zany). Among the four greatest comedians in the silent era—Chaplin, Keaton, Lloyd, and
Langdon, each with his own trademark—Keaton demonstrates the strongest generic
consciousness in utilizing the film medium for comic effect. For example, his Sherlock Jr.
(1924) has a sophisticated film-within-a-film structure in which the small-town cinema
projectionist dreams he enters the movie he is projecting and becomes Sherlock Jr. to
investigate and solve a crime that eventually leads to his winning of the girl in “real life.”
While Keaton’s performance in the film still invokes vaudeville, many comic effects
come from the fantastic editing of the dream sequence, which calls attention to the film
medium itself and frees film comedy from theatrical conventions.
With the arrival of the “talkies,” slapstick went into decline and the flexible
expression of the silent clowns was restricted. Comedy was transformed, however, and
began to be refined as a verbal as well as visual art form, with new themes, techniques,
and written characterizations. Comic effect was derived largely from witty dialogue and
verbal humor between teamed performers. Some of the most popular comedian teams
11
included Laurel and Hardy, the Three Stooges, the Marx Brothers, and Abbott and
Costello. And as noted above, screwball comedy became the most prominent new genre
in the 1930s and 1940s, a reaction to (and a result of) the development of sound film, the
social disturbance of the Depression, as well as the implementation of the Production
Code. Generally utilizing contrastive attributions or personalities, such as rich vs. poor,
educated vs. uneducated, intelligent vs. stupid, aggressive vs. passive, of their female and
male protagonists, screwball comedies were characterized by social satire, comedic relief
through zany, fast-paced and unusual events, sight gags, sarcasm, screwy plot twists or
identity reversals, and precisely-timed, fast-paced verbal dueling and witty sarcastic
dialogue—blending the wacky with the sophisticated. Frank Capra's 1934 It Happened
One Night, a film about the romance between a runaway heiress and a broke newspaper
reporter, is commonly considered the seminal example of this genre. Capra used his
privileged and plebian characters to mix up audience expectations about both social class
and gender to remake the American couple. As Byrge and Miller (1991: 3) nicely
summarize, in screwball comedy,
improbable events, mistaken identities, and ominously misleading
circumstantial evidence quickly compounded upon each other albeit by
seemingly logical progression, until a frantic conclusion in which even the
impending marriage gives only faint promise of providing some whit of order
as antidote to the previous narrative chaos.
Similar narrative structure, rhythm, and the reversal/disruption of gender roles and class
consciousness as comic mechanism are exemplified in other screwball classics such as
My Man Godfrey (1936), Bringing Up Baby (1938), His Girl Friday (1940), Sullivan’s
Travel (1941). Although the term “screwball” may have lost currency as an active film
genre after the mid-1940s, elements of classic screwball comedy can still be found in
12
more recent films, such as The Seven Year Itch (1955), Some Like it Hot (1959), A Fish
Called Wanda (1988), and You've Got Mail (1998).
Although comedy films enjoyed great popularity in the silent era and the 1930s to
1940s, they did not receive serious scholarly attention. Many contemporary scholars
noticed that comedy films were generally viewed as inferior to other genres, a bias in
Western culture passed down from Aristotle, who designated comedy an artistic imitation
of men of an “inferior moral bent.”3 It was not until the end of the 1960s that film critics
like Raymond Durgnat (The Crazy Mirror, 1969) and Gerald Mast (The Comic Mind,
1973) started publishing books devoted to the subject of film comedy, calling for serious
attention to the genre. Durgnat defines comedy broadly as something opposed to tragedy
and including drama with a happy ending. He suggests that slapstick comedies “weren’t
only comic, and poetic, but reflected some tensions in American society more accurately
than one might expect” (Durgnat 1969: 13). Using the image of the distorting mirror as a
metaphor of the relationship between comedy and contemporary society, he attempts a
psycho-sociological approach to American film comedy. And he explains that the New
Deal spirit and the continuing Depression in the 1930s “created a taste for films which
were optimistic but escapist, which offered the audiences the wish-fulfillment of that
cosy, innocent, solid, family life which the Depression continued to destroy or endanger”
(135). Mast, on the other hand, tries to justify film comedy’s position in high culture by
presenting a historical survey of what he calls the “most significant minds that have
3
For centuries, definitions of comedy tended to follow the lines set down by Aristotle: “Comedy is an
imitation of persons of an inferior moral bent… It consists in some blunder or ugliness that does not cause
pain or disaster, an obvious example being the comic mask which is ugly and distorted but not painful.”
See Feibleman 1962: 76, 79.
13
worked with the comic-film form” (Mast 1973: 20).4 Like Durgnat, Mast also sees comic
film as a reflection of the relation between man and society and evaluates film comedy in
terms of its ability to “achieve something that is more than simply funny” (25). Unlike
Durgnat, his approach to comic film is a more structuralist one that grounds his
observations on plot, theme, and character development in the comedy films. For Mast,
comedy film is made “respectable” by aligning it with the serio-comic tradition of
twentieth-century literature that would feature Joyce, Beckett, Brecht, Bellow, and Heller.
Although still flawed and insufficient, Durgnat’s and Mast’s pioneering studies
established film comedy as a valid academic field inviting serious research. More recent
studies approach the genre from various perspectives: some focus on the career and
personal styles of individual comedians (Gehring 1980); some on history and generic
characteristics of (sub)genres like slapstick (Dale 2000), screwball (Gehring 1983 and
2003, Byrge and Miller 1991), and romantic comedy (Harvey 1987, Glitre 2006); some
discuss issues of class and gender in film comedy (Rowe 1995, Beach 2002); some others
conduct theoretical examinations of the formal, socio-historic-political and industrial
contexts of film comedy (Horton 1991, King 2002), as well as national and historical
development of film comedy in filmmaking traditions other than Hollywood (so far there
have been studies on British film comedy and Soviet satire, see Horton 1993, Sutton
2003). These studies illustrate the multiple dimensions of film comedy and deepen our
understanding of the concept of genre (sometimes in a confusing way because their views
of genre are not always clearly defined).
4
Probably under the influence of auteur theory, Mast (1973: 20) dismisses those comic performers who
“exerted little control over the antics they performed and no control over the way those antics were shot,
edited, and scored.”
14
Genre remains a useful critical tool because it serves both as a description and as
a form of classification of multiple texts. Whether we consider film comedy a single
genre or an umbrella term for many genres (or subgenres) that provoke laughter, we need
to place individual films within a certain filmmaking tradition; only in relation to other
films in its genre can a film be meaningfully analyzed.
Comedy in Chinese Cultural Criticism
Deriving from Aristotle’s notion of the essential quality of each poetic category, Western
genre studies tend to essentialize genres as something transhistorical and align them with
archetypes and myths that are expressive of broad and universal human concerns (Altman
1999: 20). However, as more and more contemporary intellectuals have recognized, a
universalizing, humanist discourse elides the specificity of cultural difference and masks
oppressive, intercultural relations such as colonialism, and hierarchical power relations
based on class, gender, and race (E. Ann Kaplan in Dissanayake 1993). Genre, like
anything else in cultural production, is generated and has to be perceived in specific
socio-historical and aesthetic contexts. Every concept is culture-specific, and things
become more complex when such concepts go through a process of “translingual
practice” (in Lydia Liu’s [1995] term)—that is, transplanted from one cultural-historical
context to another.
The distinction between tragedy and comedy has a long established history in the
Western literary and philosophical traditions, but they find no equivalents in traditional
China. It was not until the late Qing period that the neologisms of beiju (tragedy) and xiju
(comedy) emerged in Chinese literary criticism as an attempt to differentiate modern
15
forms from the traditional and to incorporate Chinese literature into the discourse of
“world literature.” In her discussion of the transcultural assimilation of the concept
“tragedy,” Patricia Sieber (2003: 15) points out: “In many ways, the modern Chinese
critical production of ‘tragedy’ sought to revise the peripheral position accorded to
Chinese plays, and by extension Chinese culture, in nineteenth-century European
criticism, especially in the imperialist second half of the century.” Genre definitions are
loaded with (trans)nationalistic, intellectual, and personal agendas. Wang Guowei (18871927), sharing a view with some Japanese and Chinese commentators who felt that the
lack of tragedies made Chinese drama inferior to other traditions, concluded that China
had no dramatic tragedies to speak of and only granted that Honglou meng (Dream of the
red chamber)—the most influential Chinese novel—“embodied a tragic sensibility, with
the main protagonist, Jia Baoyu, qualifying for the highest form of tragic
consciousness.”5 In Wang Guowei’s seminal 1904 essay, “Honglou meng pinglun” (A
Critique of Dream in the Red Chamber), the Chinese national spirit (wuguoren zhi
jingshen) was described as “secular” (shijiande) and “happy-go-lucky” (letiande), a spirit
that infiltrates its theater and fiction with happy endings (Wang in Liang 1989: 2: 112).
To Wang, the fact that Dream of the Red Chamber departs from the Chinese national
spirit and its comedic tradition is the product of its being philosophical (zhexuede),
universal (yuzhoude), literary (wenxuede), and absolutely tragic (chetou chewei zhi beiju
ye).6
5
Patricia Sieber, “Introduction,” in Sieber 2003: 23-32. It should be noted that in Wang Guowei’s last work
on drama, Song Yuan xiqi kao (On Song and Yuan drama) (1912), he identified seven well-known Chinese
plays as tragedies, although he had earlier lamented the lack of a Chinese tragic drama.
6
Ibid, 113.
16
Wang Guowei was not alone in his concern that traditional Chinese literature failed
to conform to Western aesthetic and literary categories (from a modern-cum-Western
view). The “father of modern Chinese literature,” Lu Xun (1957: 2: 97), claimed in a
1925 essay:7
All the world is a stage: tragedy shows how what is worthwhile in life is
shattered, comedy shows how what is worthless is torn to pieces, and satire
is a simplified form of comedy. Yet passion and humour alike are foes of
this ten-sight disease, for both of them are destructive although they destroy
different things. As long as China suffers from this disease, we shall have
no madmen like Rousseau, and not a single great dramatist or satiric poet
either. All China will have will be characters in a comedy, or in something
which is neither comedy nor tragedy, a life spent among the ten sights
which are modeled each on the other, in which everyone suffers from the
ten-sight disease.
Although this statement is made in a polemical essay instead of an academic article like
Wang’s, Lu Xun’s rhetorical characterization has nevertheless been taken seriously as an
influential definition of tragedy and comedy often quoted in modern Chinese literary
criticism, and Lu Xun himself is often viewed as a master of comic writing and a theorist
of comedy.8 In the afore-quoted passage, Lu Xun expresses a similar sentiment to Wang
7
“Ten-sight disease” is a term coined by Lu Xun in this article, “More Thoughts on the Collapse of Leifeng
Pagoda,” translated in Yang Hsien-yi and Gladys Yang, Selected Works of Lu Hsun (Peking: Foreign
Languages Press, 1957), Volume 2, 94-100. Aggrieved at people’s lament on the collapse of Leifeng
Pagoda as a loss of the so-called “Ten Sights of the West Lake” (Xihu shijing) in Hangzhou, Lu Xun wrote
this article to attack the ossification of tradition and the inhibition of creativity in the traditional Chinese
cultural system. For a historical background of the “Ten Views of West Lake,” see Wang (2000): 73-122.
8
See, for example, Wei 1998: 1. To illustrate that the “most important artistic and aesthetic function of
comedy is its serious life criticism (rensheng piping)”, Lu Xun’s definition is quoted together with Hegel,
who thinks that comedy is to let what is valueless, fake, and self-contradictory end in self-destruction. And
Lu Xun, along with Lao Zi, Confucius, Zhuang Zi, Handan Chun, Xu Wei, Li Yu, Lin Shu, Lin Yutang,
Lao She, and Wang Meng, is listed among the masters of comedy or humor writing in Zhongguo xiju
wenxue cidian (Guangzhou: Guangdong gaodeng jiaoyu chubanshe, 1991: 2). And in the same dictionary,
under the entry for Lu Xun, it is stated that Lu Xun made great contributions to the theory and production
of comic literature. And again, the discourse that “comedy shows how what is worthless is torn to pieces”
is quoted. See Zhongguo xiju wenxue cidian, 304-5.
17
Guowei in regard to the absence of certain literary genres as an organic problem in
Chinese culture. But Lu Xun moves away from Wang’s ambiguous attitude toward
Chinese comedy9 and in his radically iconoclastic stance finds no tragedy or comedy at
all in the Chinese literary tradition. Lu Xun’s definition of tragedy and comedy may be
read on two levels. First, it can be read on the level of cultural criticism. Out of his
consistent concern with destruction and creation, as manifested in many of his works, Lu
Xun uses tragedy and comedy metaphorically and realistically as cultural force. He
believes that only in consciousness of social problems lies hope for social change. By
making the polemical statement that a disease in Chinese tradition inhibits the emergence
of tragic or comedic writers and satiric poets, Lu Xun called for transforming China both
literarily and sociopolitically (a “cultural-intellectualistic approach” in Lin Yü-sheng’s
term). Although Lu Xun does not predict that writers of tragedy and comedy or satiric
poets will necessarily emerge after the extinction of the disease, we do find in his
statement the assumption held by the first two generations of modern Chinese
intelligentsia: change of worldview will bring about a change of the system of symbols,
values, and beliefs, which would in turn precipitate political, social, and economic
changes.10 The urgency for producing a certain literary or aesthetic genre is thus
incorporated into the bigger project of social transformation.
9
In “Honglou meng pinglun,” while Wang Guowei argues that China doesn’t have dramatic tragedies to
speak of, he in fact doesn’t explicitly state if there were dramatic comedies in traditional China. When he
talks about “xiju” (comedy), he seems to be talking about comedy in general instead of a specific tradition
or works.
10
See Lin Yü-sheng 1979: 26-27. Lin uses the term “cultural-intellectualistic approach” to refer to the
prevailing belief in modern Chinese intellectuals that cultural change is the foundation for all other
necessary changes.
18
On the second level, we can read the passage from the perspective of literary
criticism. First of all, tragedy and comedy are artistic forms and creative representations
of the process of destruction, though each seeks to destroy different things. Lu Xun’s
definition may be understood as a description of the tension between the author and
subject matter. In defining tragedy as destroying the worthwhile and comedy as tearing
up the worthless, Lu Xun suggests a pre-existing value judgment and emotional reaction
of the author toward the subject matter in literary creation. A writer has to have a critical
attitude to differentiate the worthwhile from the worthless in order to expose the
problems in life and represent them in different literary genres and with different literary
techniques. To him, the aesthetic choice of tragedy or comedy comes from a largely
ethical and intellectual verdict. By differentiating “xiju zuojia” (comedic writer) and
“xijude renwu” (comic figure), Lu Xun makes conceptual distinction between comedy, as
a certain form of art, and the comic, as a certain laughable quality. While comic figures
represent the frailty of life, comedic writers represent the “destroyers who will bring
about reforms” (gexin de pohuaizhe), and whose hearts “are lit up by an ideal” (neixin
you lixiang de guang) (Lu 1957: 99). Therefore, with the hope that Chinese society might
be improved through tearing the worthless old tradition to pieces, comedy—and tragedy
as well—functions as a literary device to inspire social transformation.
Satire derives in large part from ancient Greek and Roman literature. It was in
1509 when the word “satire” entered the English language and its significations have
steadily grown ever since (Worcester 1940: 3). Unlike the late appearance of the Chinese
term “xiju” for comedy, satire finds an equivalent, “fengci,” in classical Chinese literary
criticism. The term “fengci 讽刺” appeared in some early classics like the Shijing (Book
19
of odes) as “fengci 风刺,” which means satirizing with tactful and insinuating language
(wanyan yinyu) (Liu 1991: 10). But Lu Xun is obviously unsatisfied with traditional
Chinese satirical literature. In Chapter 23 of his A Brief History of Chinese Fiction, Lu
Xun writes that although there was a history of fiction containing ridicule—beginning in
the Jin (265-420), developing in the Tang (618-907), and popular in the Ming (13681644)—these works are generally irrational for their exaggerated depiction of the ugly
and negative characters to set off positive heroes. Few works have descriptions with
depth and sharp critiques, and they often only focus on a specific person or family instead
of offering general social criticism of injustice. The language used in that fiction amounts
to direct invective (manma) that has nothing to do with insinuation and tact (wanqu)
satire.11 In traditional Chinese fiction, Lu Xun gives high credits only to Rulin waishi
(The scholars) as an unqualified satirical novel, because it targets contemporary social
problems and has good humor and tactful criticism.12 Lu Xun’s view is very close to what
David Worcester (1940: 16) describes in The Art of Satire: “Invective falls into two
divisions. One lies within the province of satire, one outside it…This gross invective, or
abuse, is distinguished from satiric invective by direct, intense sincerity of expression.
Satiric invective shows detachment, indirection, and complexity in the author’s attitude.”
11
David Worcester describes in his The Art of Satire (1940: 16), “The spectrum-analysis of satire runs from
the red of invective at one end to the violet of the most delicate irony at the other. Beyond either end of the
scale, literature runs off into forms that are not perceptible as satire.” He makes differentiation between the
gross invective, or abuse, and satiric invective in terms of the author’s attitude: there is direct, intense
sincerity of expression in the former, while the later shows detachment, indirection, and complexity. The
description is pretty close to Lu Xun’s criticism to traditional Chinese fictions in terms of satire and the
literary practice as exemplified in the satires in his short stories.
12
See Lu Xun, Zhongguo xiaoshuo shilue (A Brief History of Chinese Fiction), 189.
20
As I discuss later, the author’s attitude plays an important role in social satire. The issue
of what to satirize is both aesthetic and political.
It was along the same lines of social reform and literary concerns that Lu Xun
(1957: 97) deemed satire the “simplified form of comedy.” He wrote several articles on
satire and tried to define it in a modern context. On March 2, 1933, he wrote two essays
on satire and humor. Humor as a concept denoting comic form is another modern
neologism, coined by Lin Yutang who transliterated “humor” into the Chinese term
“youmo,” originally meaning silence.13 Lin published two articles on humor in 1924 to
introduce humor and through his life enthusiastically promoted humorous literature as an
antidote to social problems and a “panacea” for changing the national spirit. Humorous
literature became very popular in China in the 1930s. But Lu Xun adopted a more
cautious attitude toward the imported form of humor and the light treatment of social
problems in the name of humor. As he puts in “From Satire to Humour,” the “satirists
today” distinguish themselves as satirists “precisely because they satirize this society of
‘educated intellectuals’” in order to change society, instead of satirizing the illiterate or
the oppressed to make the “educated intellectuals” laugh (Lu 1957: 3: 225). The
obligation to transform society makes him feel that humorous literature, which often
slides into “laughter for laughter’s sake,” was in the social context of China at that time
bound to either change into satire or degenerate into “joking” (Lu 1957: 3: 226). Lu Xun
lists three reasons in the article for the inappropriateness of humor: “‘Humour’ is not one
of our native products, the Chinese are not a ‘humorous’ people, and this is not an age in
13
See the entry of Lin Yutang in Zhongguo xiju wenxue cidian, 307-8. For a critical study of the emergence
of humor discourse in Shanghai in the 1930s, see Sohigian 2007.
21
which it is easy to have a sense of humour.”14 On its surface, the statement sounds more
or less deterministic, but Lu Xun has his rationale for constructing a new, serious,
socially-oriented literary mode in opposition to light entertainment. In another article
written on the same day, “From Humour to Gravity,” he expounds on how rigid social
conditions deprived people of their right to be happy and humorous, thus answering the
questions about why the Chinese are not a “humorous” people and why “this is not an age
in which it is easy to have a sense of humour.”15 Again, Lu Xun’s pessimistic view on the
fate of humor in China goes back to his cultural criticism toward his contemporary
society instead of an isolated case of literary critique.
Lu Xun’s 1935 essay “On Satire” tries to correct the traditional prejudice that
treats satire as being unorthodox and lacking in virtue, by praising the truthful power of
satire in revealing absurd reality.16 “What is Satire?”—written about two months later—
might be the best source for the gist of Lu Xun’s views on satire. He states at the
beginning of the article, “I believe that when a writer uses concise or even rather
14
Ibid, 226. For further study, an examination of what kind of humor Lu Xun was against at that time is
needed.
15
Lu Xun, “From Humour to Gravity,” in Selected Works of Lu Hsun (1957), Vol. 3, 227-8. In the article,
he restates the two directions of humor at the beginning: first, to change into satire and be satirized and
persecuted, or, to degenerate into joking in a Westernized form while its nature remains the same as the
problems of traditional society. By quoting some current events, he further points out, even this
degeneration might not be able to survive in a society that common people have to shoulder the blame for
the nation’s crisis and be forced to put on artificial gravity for whatever reasons.
16
Lu Xun is not alone in promoting satirical literature as a serious literary form with transformative power.
Feng Xuefeng’s 1930 essay on “Fengci wenxue yu shehui gaige” (Satirical Literature and Social
Reformation), which was published on Mengya Monthly under the pen name Cheng Wenying, also
criticizes the prevailing negative view on satirical literature and shallow treatment of comical literature as
just to be funny or amusing. From an overt Marxist theoretical stance, Feng argues that satirical literature is
usually produced in ages when the old social system has intense conflicts with new social ideals and
satirists are idealists who aim at destroying the old system to construct new ideal society. And Lu Xun’s
ideal future society, as Feng suggests, is “socialism and the Communist Party,” the only ism and party that
Lu Xun never derided but support. But Lu Xun’s two 1935 essays do not have to be read in this explicit
political perspective. Lu Xun’s writing is more implicit, complicated, and politically independent.
22
exaggerated language—of course this must be done artistically—to tell the truth about
certain aspects of some group of people, those written about call the work a ‘satire.’”17
Although this is not exactly a theoretical definition, Lu Xun’s view of satire as an
aesthetic form touches upon some important issues of literary modernization in China.
The essay is worth of quoting at length:
Truth is the life of satire: not necessarily true happenings that have
occurred, but at least things that could happen. So satire is neither
“fabrications” nor “slander,” neither “revealing secrets” nor simply
recording “sensational news” and “strange phenomena.” The events
described take place publicly and frequently, but since they are usually
considered quite commonplace they are naturally passed over. Yet these
events are irrational, ridiculous, disgusting or even detestable. It is only
because they have gone on till men are accustomed to them that even in
public and among the masses they occasion no surprise, yet specially
pointed out they create a sensation…
… it is the art of satire to concern itself deliberately with such matters,
bringing out their essence, even with exaggeration. The same incident
carelessly and unartistically recorded would not be satire, nor would
anyone be affected by it… In certain societies the more common an
incident, the more prevalent, the more suited it is for satire.
Although the satirist is generally hated by those whom he satirizes, his
intentions are often good, he writes hoping that these men will change for
the better, not to push some group under water. By the time a satirist
appears in a group, however, that group is already doomed. Certainly
writing cannot save it. Hence his efforts are generally vain or may even
have an opposite effect, for while he merely exposes shortcomings or
iniquities, this is utilized by another group hostile to his. I fancy this other
group must look on matters rather differently from those satirized,
regarding this as “exposure” instead of “satire.”
If a work looks satirical but lacks a positive aim and genuine passion,
simply convincing its readers that there is nothing good in the world,
nothing worth doing, this in not satire but “cynicism.”18
17
Lu Xun, “What is Satire?” in Selected Works of Lu Hsun (1957), vol. 4, 183.
18
Ibid, 183-5.
23
The most noticeable concern of the essay is the emphasis on the authorial representation
of the truth with the hope of changing the society for the better. Of course, the “truth” is a
heavily loaded term that means different things to different people. In Lu Xun’s
description, the “truth” is not a mimesis of the reality but the logic of the reality, which,
by the way, is also frequently quoted in contemporary Chinese literary criticism as one
definition of zhenshi (lit. truth), or of realism more generally. Not all facets of reality
should be the subject matter of satire. What is vital for satire is the “irrational, ridiculous,
disgusting or even detestable” everydayness that people have got so accustomed to that
they do not even see it. So it is the satirists’ duty to reveal the falseness and absurdity of
traditional ideology. Although Lu Xun does not directly address the issue of realism, his
explanation of truth echoes and enhances the May Fourth construction of realism as a tool
for the transformation of Chinese culture and society (see M. Anderson 1990, Denton
1996, etc.). Second, Lu Xun takes note of the importance of the artistry and authorial
attitude of a satirist, that is, an author’s ability to perceive and represent the “truth” of the
reality in terms of language. Two skills, jinglian (bringing out the essence) and kuazhang
(exaggeration), are emphasized here as characteristics of satirical writing. And he
underlines the positive aim and genuine passion toward changing the world in satirical
writing and thus differentiates satire from “cynicism” (lengchao) in terms of authorial
attitude.
Diran John Sohigian (2007: 142) points out in his study of the 1930’s debates
over humor and satire: “The refusal of humorists to accept what in Blanchot’s terms is a
sadistic mastery of ‘truth’ clashed furiously in the 1930s with the May Fourth
enlightenment project of dialectic reasoning and scientific knowledge.” Ironically, this
24
“dialectic reasoning” valued by May Fourth intellectuals became a dangerous project in
postrevolutionary China, when the primary concern of the new regime was to legitimize
and reinforce its newly acquired power. Any critical laughter with subversive potential
was viewed as a threat. It is exactly because of this association of satire with “claim to
truth” that satirical comedy became a dangerous genre and was suppressed. When the
“cruelty of the human butcher”19 is supposedly dead along with the “old society,” satire
becomes a problem that threatens the legitimacy of the new regime. As Sohigian (2007:
151) puts it, “Serious literary work had to be unworked...”
Comedy in Chinese Cinema
Chinese cinema is, of course, a product of modern technology and global imperialism.
From the very beginning, Chinese cinema was imbued with a tension between Western
influence and indigenous culture. Film arrived in China only a few months after its world
premiere by the Lumière Brothers in the Grand Café in Paris on December 28, 1895. This
new medium was introduced as "Xiyang yingxi," or “Western shadow play,” which
related it to both its Western origin and China’s millenary-old indigenous tradition of
shadow play. The earliest films shown in Chinese theaters (in many early cases,
entertainment quarters) were French and American comic shorts.
As a response to the flood of foreign films, in 1905 Chinese started exploring film
production of their own by drawing inspiration from both Western models and the local
theatrical traditions. According to historical records, the first two fictional short films
19
Sohigian (2007: 149) writes “Lu Xun supposedly described Lin Yutang as one who ‘laughs away the
cruelty of the human butcher,’ in which the human butcher was the executioner and the cruelty a
beheading.”
25
made in China—Nanfu nanqi (A difficult couple, a.k.a. The Wedding Night; produced by
Zheng Zhengqiu and Zhang Shichuan, 1913) and Zhuangzi shi qi (Zhuangzi tests his wife;
produced by Li Minwei, 1913)—introduced narrative as well as comedy into Chinese
screen. A Difficult Couple is a social satire of the custom of arranged marriage in the
director Zheng Zhengqiu’s hometown, Chaozhou. The story features stage actors’
exaggerated performance, with physical comedy and mockery of the trivial rituals of
traditional weddings. Zhuangzi Tests His Wife, an adaptation from the Cantonese opera
Zhuangzi’s Butterfly Dream, has a comic plot in which Zhuangzi, the ancient philosopher,
pretends to be dead in order to test his wife Madame Tian’s faithfulness. Galvanized by
the flood of imported slapstick films from France and the U.S. in the 1910s and 1920s
(Max Linder, Buster Keaton and Charlie Chaplin were very popular among Chinese
audiences), most Chinese early shorts are also comedies featuring funny stories and
exaggerated physical gags. According to incomplete statistics, from 1905 to 1923 there
were about fifty fictional films produced, most of them were shorts of less than four reels.
Among these shorts, twenty-four can be identified as comedy films (Rao 2005c: 47). The
earliest extant fictional short, Laogong zhi aiqing (Laborer’s love, also known as
Romance of a fruit merchant, 1922), presents a comic view of reality with a modern
sensibility. The film is a romantic comedy about a carpenter-turned-fruit vendor who
wins the hand of an unsuccessful doctor’s daughter, by arranging more business for his
future father-in-law through ruses. The bold visuals and narrative style indicate maturing
film techniques in early Chinese cinema.
As far as terminology is concerned, xiju, the contemporary term for comedy, was
not used in the Chinese silent era. Instead, comic films were usually termed “huajipian”
26
(farcical film) or “xiaopian” (amusing film). According to a survey in Beijing in 1928,
domestic films in China were categorized into romance (aiqingpian 爱情片), martial arts
(wuxiapian), fantasy (shenguaipian), weepie (aiqingpian 哀情片), historical film
(lishipian), farcical (huajipian), costume drama (guzhuangpian), etc. (Rao 2005c, 49),
which indicates that at least one type of comic film had been established as a genre in
Chinese early cinema. In the 1930s, comic shorts developed into feature films but the
dominant mode was still slapstick that emphasized physical gags, although the series of
“Mr. Wang” comedies adapted from artist Ye Qianyu’s comic strips demonstrated a more
reality-based tendency of comedy of manners and promoted Tang Jie as a prominent
comedian.
When the ideological intervention in filmmaking was enhanced under the shadow
of Japanese invasion in the 1930s, many left-leaning filmmakers considered slapstick
improper at a moment of national crisis. Tragicomedy that features serious social
concerns in a humorous manner became a favored choice of progressive filmmakers.
Malu tianshi (Street angel, 1934) and Shizi jietou (Crossroads, 1937) are two good
examples of this aesthetic preference. The former makes full use of the audio-visual
characteristics of the cinematographic art, and in a lucid, humorous, and meaningful style,
shows a picture of the lowest stratum of society (including prostitutes, a singsong girl, a
trumpeter, a newspaper vendor, a barber, and a petty newspaper stall owner in
metropolitan Shanghai) struggling against social oppression. The latter, employing the
comic device of a wall that is comparable to the “Walls of Jerico” in Capra’s It Happened
One Night (1934), is structured around a bittersweet romance between two unemployed
27
college graduates who share a rental apartment divided by a wall but who do not know
each other’s identity until the end of the film.
Compared to the tragicomedy mode of the pre-war period, social satire and
comedy of manners dominate post-war Chinese cinema. Zhang Junxiang’s Huanxiang
riji (Diary of homecoming, 1947) and Chenglong kuaixu (Lucky son-in-law, 1948)
satirize the social corruption under the Nationalist regime after the war through comic
situations of misunderstood or switched identity. Sang Hu’s Taitai wanshui (Long live
the mistress, 1947), the script of which was written by the reknown writer Eileen Chang,
is a sophisticated comedy of manners about a middle-class wife struggling to deal with a
touchy mother-in-law, selfish parents, and dealing with her husband’s career and
extramarital affair. The smooth narrative, subtle humor, and virtuoso visual wit of the
film are comparable to the “Lubitsch touch.”20
The lively comic spirit of the post-war period, however, was quickly deemed
inappropriate after the transition of political power from the Nationalists to the
Communists in 1949. The dominant mode of filmmaking in the first few years of New
China was (melo)drama, which offered moral clarification and celebrated the triumph of
revolutionary virtues over reactionary villainy. The primary task of literature and art was
to legitimize the new social order. The playful or satirical comic spirit was quickly
replaced by the euphoria of embracing the serious socialist cause. In the first five years
after the establishment of the PRC, a total of ninety-five feature films were produced, but
very few could be categorized as “typical” comedy films (Cheng 2005, 90; Rao 2005a:
140). It was not until 1956, when the Communist proposed a so-called democratic reform
20
For a discussion on the relation between Lubitsch’s films and Sang Hu, see Sato Tadao 2005: 75-78.
28
campaign—in Mao’s formulation, “let a hundred flowers bloom, and a hundred schools
of thought contend”—that a number of satirical comedy films were produced. Important
works include three films directed by Lü Ban—Xin juzhang daolai yiqian (Before the
new director arrives, 1956), Buju xiaojie de ren (The man who doesn’t bother about
trifles, 1956), and Wei [meiyou] wancheng de xiju (The unfinished comedy, 1957)—
which satirized contemporary social problems like bureaucracy, immorality, corruption,
narrow-mindedness, etc. Others like Ruci duoqing (So full of passions, 1956), Xun ai ji
(Seeking Love, 1957) focus on moral issues in romance and marriage. But this
exploration of new themes and styles of comedy was soon put to an end by the AntiRightist Campaign in 1957, when the Party cracked down on dissent. The dedicated
comedy director Lü Ban was purged and never made another film.
The heavy-handed political and ideological intervention does not mean that
filmmakers were totally passive in their art. The emergence of the new Chinese film
comedy genre, “gesongxing xiju” (eulogistic comedy), or “shehuizhuyi xin xiju” (socialist
new comedy), is particularly illustrative of the conflicts and negotiations among official
rhetoric, genre conventions, folk humor, cultural psychology, social concerns, and film
techniques in their cinematic representation of a state-sanctioned popular culture. For
example, My Day Off (1959), with a clear didactic purpose of promoting selfless devotion
to socialist construction in the Great Leap Forward period (1958-60), is a light-hearted
comedy of the hero’s activities over the course of a single day. The film received rave
reviews upon national release as a paradigmic eulogistic comedy in which all the
characters are positive figures. Despite its serious socialist message, the film manages to
be funny through comic devices like misunderstanding, coincidence, unrevealed identity,
29
incongruity, etc. And all these devices are presented in a realistic visual style that utilizes
location shooting, continuity editing, and linear narrative. The success of My Day Off,
together with Five Golden Flowers, which features beautiful (and exotic) people,
landscape, costumes, and customs in the ethnic minority area in southwest China and a
romantic story of a boy’s adventure in search of his sweetheart, launched a fervent
discussion of the new genre “eulogistic comedy” and harbingered the flourishing of
comic film production from 1959 to 1965. Hong Kong scholar King Cheng (2005)
categorizes the comedy films produced in the period into eulogistic comedy, sport
comedy, socialist didactic comedy (shejiao xijupian), life comedy or lighthearted comedy
(shenghuo xiju or qing xiju), farce, and folktale adaptation.
In the late 1950s and the early 1960s, there were also a few comedy films
produced and distributed in several local dialects even though Mandarin was officially
adopted as the national standard language. The use of dialect has significant meaning;
dialect has generative and subversive potential for what Bakhtin calls the
“carnivalesque”—a form of linguistic or social interaction that emphasizes the creativity
of the common people (the speech of the marketplace as opposed to that of the official
culture or the ruling classes) (Beach 2002, 12). Sanmao xue shengyi (Sanmao learns to
do business; dir. Huang Zuolin, 1958) is a filmic adaptation of a popular Shanghai
farcical play. The film retains a variety of dialects spoken by the characters who are
stereotypically associated with distinct social groups in the polyglot state of Shanghai
everyday life. And Zhua Zhuangding (Drafting able-bodied men; dir. Wu Xue, Shen Yan,
1963), another filmic adaptation of a stage comedy written in the late 1940s, is a political
satire against the corrupt Nationalist militia and is rendered entirely in the local language
30
of Sichuan. Qishier jia fangke (The house of seventy-two tenants; dir. Wang Weiyi,
1963), originally a stage comedy created in 1952 and set in 1940s Shanghai (Wang and
Wang 2001: 353), was transplanted to Guangzhou and made into a Cantonese-speaking
eponymous film by Pearl River Studio in 1963 (and was then remade by the Shaw Bros.
in Hong Kong in 1973 and distributed in both Cantonese and Mandarin soundtracks). By
changing the setting of the story from Shanghai to pre-war Guangzhou and using
Cantonese as the spoken language, the adaptations localize both content and style to
address the social problems more effectively for Cantonese-speaking audiences. And the
comical regional flavor of the setting and the linguistic practice obviously contributes to
the long-lasting popularity of the films. The regional flavor of these dialect films shows
that the targeted audiences are often locally defined and there were conscious efforts to
make films for local consumptions only—as evidenced in the bilingual soundtracks of
some of the films.
Comedy film was totally abandoned (so were most film genres, except for the
newly coined “revolutionary model play”) during the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976).
But the late 1970s saw a revival of several (sub)genres of film comedy, such as
lighthearted film comedies, romantic comedy, social satire, and political satire. And in
the late 1990s, film director Feng Xiaogang became the emblematic figure for a new
category of comic film, the “New Year’s celebration film.” This new type of comedy is
defined by its distribution strategy during the Chinese New Year holiday season as well
as its carnivalesque aesthetics that mingle screwball-like witty repartee between
humorous protagonists—often a man and a woman who have a romantic interest in each
other—with mild political cynicism that appealed to disillusioned urbanites.
31
Through this general survey of the historical development of film comedy in
China, I want to highlight the fact that genre is defined and developed in specific sociohistorical contexts and should be discussed accordingly. A structuralist/formalist
approach to the basic comic mechanism in film would be helpful in finding similarities
and differences in various comedy traditions. Nor should one neglect the fact that
Chinese film comedy has been influenced by Western comic traditions in many ways.
However, it is necessary to discuss these genre(s) on their own terms. A universal or
transhistorical reading of the so-called “eulogistic comedy” or “Socialist didactic
comedy” would not be productive because it cannot answer questions such as why certain
representations emerge at a specific time, whose possible interests specific images serve,
what institutional constraints have on image production, where the inventions meet the
conventions, etc. These are the concerns of this dissertation.
Methodology and Structure
Based on the understanding that genre is culturally and historically defined and
constantly redefined, my research on comedy film in Maoist China is necessarily
historical and contextual. By placing the genre in its historical, critical, cultural, and
industrial contexts, it is possible to discern a much more complex process through which
certain film comedies are produced and acquire multiple, sometimes conflicting
meanings. My contextual framework is supported by close textual analysis.
Recognizing the heavy-handed political and ideological intervention in film
production and disruption of the Republican-era comedy tradition in the early PRC period,
I suggest that the comedy filmmakers were nevertheless active in exploring new themes
32
and artistic expressions in Maoist China. Efforts to make comedy both entertaining and
didactic can be seen in the contemporary social satires of the mid-1950s, “eulogistic
comedy films” promoting “New Socialist (Wo)Man” in the late 1950s and early 1960s,
family comedy films featuring gender (and often class) collisions, and dialect and opera
comedy films in the late 1950s-early 1960s. Instead of seeing comedies in the Mao era as
failures for rejecting Western narrative modes and for “propagating” the political agendas
of the day, I see the films as a contested field where different socio-cultural, ideological,
and artistic traditions collide and negotiate. Informed by both Western comedy theories
and Chinese comic traditions, I approach these comedy films from a cultural studies
perspective. Interdisciplinary in nature, I combine text-based genre study, which
investigates structure and formal conventions of film, with a historical approach that
engages the socio-political, cultural, as well as industrial contexts of film production and
reception. I do not treat comedy film as an isolated genre with a fixed definition (nor will
I try to provide a definition of Chinese comedy film after the fact), but to picture a
complicated process of cultural production and consumption, in which indigenous and
foreign traditions are appropriated and transformed. As Susan Sontag (1987: 99) said in
her concluding remarks delivered at the 1986 Film Symposium on humor in cinema, “A
definition would have to be either reductive or extremely abstract.” Or as Andrew Horton
(1991: 1) has pointed out, nothing is inherently funny, satiric, tragic, or absurd. It is all
about context and perspective. I do not select my film samplings from a pre-defined
concept of comedy but look into what has been presented and received as comedy film in
the early PRC period.
33
Roughly following a chronological order of comic filmmaking in the Seventeen
Years, I structure my study around subcategories of comedy and the critical issues
associated with them. Using Unfinished Comedy—a 1957 satire that was banned before
its completion—as a starting point, Chapter 2, “The Problematics of Comedy and The
Case of Lü Ban,” revisits the crisis of the genre in the early years of the new regime
through a case study of the director Lü Ban. It historicizes the genre and reconstructs the
artists’ struggles against contradictory ideological and cultural agendas. With a strong
sense of self-reflexivity, Unfinished Comedy is a rarely-seen metacinematic reflection on
how artists respond to their immediate sociopolitical and artistic context with comedy as
their focus. The film’s multilayered narrative addresses sensitive issues of social criticism,
the relationship between mass culture and political discourse, and conflicts between
artistic autonomy and control by the authorities. The film itself and the attack on it and its
filmmakers expose deeply-rooted social anxieties about satirical comedy and the tensions
between the artists who demanded autonomy and the Party that was enforcing allembracing control. By drawing attention to official censorship and audience reception,
this chapter examines how film as representational art is under the surveillance of the
Party, and how the audience’s viewing habit of making a direct connection to reality
inhibits the development of satire and influences the thematic and formal style of Chinese
film.
Nevertheless, following the ban of and attack on Unfinished Comedy, comedy did
not disappear from Chinese screens; instead, it took a significant shift toward “eulogistic
comedy” (gesongxing xiju) and produced some popular films. This genre shift, as I argue
in Chapter 3, is in essence a strategic move from satire to utopia, two modes that are
34
“linked in a complex network of genetic, historical, and formal relationships” (Elliot
1970: 1). Going back to the literary debates between Lin Yutang and Lu Xun over humor
and satire in the 1930s, as well as the issue of satire in Mao Zedong’s “Yanan Talks” in
the 1940s, I argue that the genre shifting of 1957 is not only an immediate result of the
Anti-Rightist Campaign but has its root in the tensions and conflicts between elite culture
and popular culture generated by the anxieties of modernizing Chinese society.
Chapter 3, “Eulogistic Comedy and Socialist Utopia,” focuses on the production
and discourse of eulogistic comedy. Through close reading of three key films in the
changing contexts from the “euphoric lyrical age” in the Great Leap Forward period
(1958-1960) to the ensuing economic hardship (1961-1963), I look into the mechanism of
how ideal social relations were imagined and articulated. Departing from the
conventional view of Chinese filmmakers’ compliance to the dominant state and
ideological apparatus in this transformation to eulogistic comedy, I argue for the
filmmakers’ agency and give them credit for cinematic innovations that reconcile the
aesthetic needs of film as art and popular entertainment with the volatile political climate.
And rather than echoing many scholars’ unquestioned assumptions that value satire over
other comedy subgenres, I argue that the heavy-handed political control in effect forced
artists to search for alternatives and to a certain extent released Chinese filmmakers’
comic energy in more diverse and subtle ways, which produced comedy films in styles
that would otherwise have been marginalized by elite discourse. Although not claiming
that the non-satirical comedies in the late 1950s and early 1960s offered a fully
satisfactory alternative position that challenged the dominant ideology, I show that the
filmmakers were able to create a utopian space addressing everyday desires and fantasies,
35
therefore providing a psychic outlet in an intensified political climate. Moreover, the root
of emergence of “eulogistic comedy” may be traced back to the Chinese conception of
“xiju,” which is not an exact equivalent to the Western notion of comedy because the
word “xi” suggests being happy and pleased rather than being funny and satirical, and the
dominant mode of Chinese comedy is situational rather than comedian-led.
Chapter 4, “Dialect Comedy and the Intranational Chinese Cinema,” focuses on
dialect comedy and period comedy adapted from regional performing traditions. The use
of dialect involves issues of regional comic traditions, identity politics and stereotypes,
negotiations between nationalization and localization of cinema, etc. The first section of
the chapter is a historical study of linguistic practices in Chinese cinema, examining how
state policies toward dialect have influenced industrial practices in cinema. Compared to
the Nationalist government’s ban on dialect films in the 1930s, the PRC government’s
tolerant—if not encouraging—attitude toward dialect films exposes a more complex and
ambiguous relationship between politics and arts. Dialect films serve as a tool of creating
a vivid and broad image of an “imagined community” (B. Anderson 1983), at the same
time as marking a distinct local identity. In the second section, I look into the role of
locality in dialect comedy and examine how dialect comedy informs us of the paradoxical
relationship between the local and the national in cultural production. To produce and
distribute dialect comedies across regional boundaries contributes to the narration,
imagination, and appreciation of a modern and diverse national community. Third, I
examine the revival of comedian traditions—particularly the clown characters—on
screen. Dialect and period comedies distinguish themselves by creating vivid roles of the
fool and the trickster with a freewheeling comic spirit. The grotesque body and verbal
36
gags depart from the rational social satire and eulogistic comedy but seek to solicit
spontaneous laughter. These filmic adaptations of stage comedies also show an effort to
reconcile theatrical and cinematic aesthetics.
Chapter 5, “Lighthearted Comedy of Family Life and Work Life,” examines how
filmmakers tried to fuse satire and eulogy in lighthearted comedies of family life and
work life. Central themes include marriage, family, gender configuration, and social roles.
If the eulogistic comedies draw on and transform the romantic comedy tradition basically
along the line of boy-meets-girl-and-live-happily-ever-after narrative, the lighthearted
comedies often depict domestic conflicts after marriage or identity crisis in a
reconfigured society. Laughter—fusion of cheerfulness and well-meaning satire—is used
as an corrective tool to advocate the new social, political, and moral values, particularly
redefining women’s space in society. The films, despite their obvious links to the
immediate political movements that the state promulgated at the time, still provide
innovative and rich entertainment and complicated ideological messages in everyday
situations.
Finally, in my “Epilogue,” I revisit an illustrative scene in Big Li, Little Li, and
Old Li to reflect on how propaganda may be understood by the filmmakers. The division
between propaganda and entertainment, after all, may neither be that clear-cut nor
mutually exclusive. And individual agency and individual difference should not be
glossed over, even in a totalitarian society.
37
Caveats
While I make every effort to historicize the comedy genre, this dissertation is not
intended to be a comprehensive history of PRC comedy film. The scope of this study is
logistically limited by the availability of the films and film-related print materials. Some
discussion is based on second-hand description of films that I have not had an
opportunity to view. Selective though it is, I hope that it will serve as both an introduction
to Maoist comedy film and an exploration of matters that have not been addressed, such
as industry background, production practices, and above all structure and style of a
marginalized film genre.
Although comedy in film studies is most often rendered as “film comedy,” I use
the term “comedy film” for two reasons. First, I hope to maintain the word order in
Chinese terminology, which is “xiju dianying” (comedy-film); second, instead of using
“comic film,” which can include any film with comic elements, I want to emphasize the
generic nature of the term “comedy” to modify “film” as being conventionally perceived
and accepted in their original contexts. The conceptions of comedy and what is funny are
historically and culturally constructed, therefore constantly changing. We have to put the
films back to their original socio-cultural context from a historical perspective, and take
into consideration the changing perception of what comedy is over a range of time. I
study the films that have been labeled “comedy” during the Seventeen Years, even
though some of the films may not fit today’s expectations for comedy at all.
38
CHAPTER 2
THE PROBLEMATICS OF COMEDY AND THE CASE OF LÜ BAN
All the world is a stage: tragedy shows how what is worthwhile in life is
shattered, comedy shows how what is worthless is torn to pieces, and
satire is a simplified form of comedy.
--Lu Xun, 1925
In this strange and fascinating climate I became what people call a
humorist or satirist. Probably it is as people say: when life is too
miserable one cannot but be comical; otherwise one will die of sadness.
--Lin Yutang, 1936
Satire is always necessary. But there are several kinds of satire, each with
a different attitude, satire to deal with our enemies, satire to deal with our
allies, and satire to deal with our own ranks. We are not opposed to satire
in general; what we must abolish is the abuse of satire.
--Mao Zedong, 1942
Introduction
Much has been written about the conflicts and negotiations between the Chinese
Communist Party-state and China’s writers in the 1950s.1 The struggles, resistance, and
1
See, for example, Goldman 1967, Wagner 1990 and 1992, Schoenhals 1992.
39
negotiations of filmmakers in the New China Cinema, however, have yet to receive much
critical attention.2 This chapter opens with a case study of Unfinished Comedy (dir. Lü
Ban, 1957),3 a contemporary social satire that was banned before its release. Using this
particular film as a starting point, I trace the intellectual, political, and industrial4
anxieties surrounding satirical comedy, and delineate how these anxieties and tensions
were generated in the particular political-historical contexts and affected the trajectory of
the history of Chinese comedy film. By drawing attention to three historical moments that
were key to modern Chinese comedy theorization and production—the 1930s debates
over satire and humor, the 1942 Yan’an Talks, and the 1959-62 discussions over
“socialist new comedy”—I want to highlight that the genre of comedy is a contested site
where contradictory ideological and cultural agendas collide and negotiate. Departing
from the conventional view of Chinese filmmakers’ compliance to the dominant state and
ideological apparatus in the transformation of eulogistic comedy, I would like to explore
the filmmakers’ agency and recognize their cinematic innovations that reconcile the
2
Paul Clark’s 1987 Chinese Cinema is a pioneering work on the tensions between art and politics—or in
his rhetoric, tensions between Shanghai and Yan’an—since 1949. However, the filmmakers’ conscious
efforts in negotiating with and appropriating different cultural traditions, and strengthening the
entertainment function of film media and promoting film as one of the major mass media, are not given
sufficient attention in his study.
3
Most books and articles cite this film title as Wei wancheng de xiju 未完成的喜剧, as this is the proposed
title that was publicized before and during the film’s production. Being banned before its release, the film
has never been publicly screened in theaters. However, a VCD (Video Compat Disc) version of the film
was released by the Changchun Film Studio and distributed by Guangzhou Beauty Ltd. in around 2005
(undated) under the title Meiyou wancheng de xiju 没有完成的喜剧. The textual history of this film still
needs further research.
4
The industrial dimension of the PRC cinema is often overshadowed by the cinema’s dominating political
mode and thus has gone understudied. However, a revisionist study of the archival materials would expose
the underlying financial conflicts. For example, a critical attack on Lü Ban lists one of his crimes as
boasting of directors’ importance in studio operations: “he shamelessly asserted that directors fed the studio
and that even the car of the studio head was provided by directors” (Anon. 1957: 7).
40
aesthetic needs of film as art and popular entertainment with the volatile political and
cultural climate. As Lin Yutang’s quote in the epigraph5 notes, comedy (humor and satire
in particular) could function as a survival tool comforting audiences who would
otherwise be overwhelmed by a gloomy reality. Although I do not claim that the satirical
comedies in the mid-1950s offered a fully satisfactory alternative position challenging the
dominant ideology, I demonstrate that the filmmakers at least attempted to create a
cinematic space accommodating their frustration and anger over an ideologically rigid,
brutal and corrupt system. As illustrated by Lü Ban’s case, under the auspices of the
Hundred Flowers movement, the filmmakers made a pointed and intentional attack
against the Party’s stifling film policy.
Furthermore, non-narrative elements (Karnick and Jenkins 1995)—or nonrepresentational elements (Dyer 1981)—such as performance segments, color, texture,
rhythm, camerawork, music cues, etc., constitute a large part of viewing pleasure in
comedy film in general. I would argue that visual pleasure is also a legitimate mode with
which to approach cultural production and consumption in Maoist cinema. As Andrea
Rinke shows in her study of the very popular GDR (German Democratic Republic)
entertainment film Die Legende von Paul und Paula (The Legend of Paul and Paula; dir.
Heiner Carow, 1973), some of the subversive elements of the film stem directly from its
status as entertainment, appealing to the emotions rather than the intellect (Holmes and
Smith 2000: 4, 53). A similar argument can be made regarding Chinese comedy films
from the mid-1950s to early 1960s. In a social context in which personal enjoyment was
discouraged and suppressed for the greater good of a collective society, being
5
Lin Yutang, “Lin Yutang zizhuan” (part 2), Yijing (Unofficial Text), November 20, 1936, 24. Cited in
Diran 2007: 152.
41
entertaining itself could shed light on the hidden structures of diverse desires and thus
could be potentially subversive.
Unfinished Comedy: Crisis of Genre
At the end of Unfinished Comedy, after watching three film-within-film comic skits,
Comrade Yi Bangzi,6 the hard-to-please “authority in literary criticism” (wenyijie
quanwei de pipingjia),7 dismisses the skits for failing to be comedy: “I don’t think these
are comedy. Absolutely not comedy! Comedy should first of all make people laugh;
however, after watching these, I feel angry!” After a medium shot of a serious looking Yi,
the film proceeds to a series of reaction shots of other audience members who laugh at his
remarks: first a long shot establishing the audience as a group, then close-ups of women
laughing loudly, poking at each other, and casting disdainful looks at Yi [see figs. 2.1
through 2.5]. The audiences’ laughter and Yi’s failure to laugh or to appreciate laughter
draw a clear line of demarcation between the subject and object of laughter. Alienated by
the laughter, Yi looks totally out of place. In the following close-up, more off-screen
laughter is generated by the sheer contrast between Yi’s excessive seriousness8 and his
6
In the film, the character’s name is introduced as“easy-brook-purple” 易浜紫; however, the name is an
unmistakable homophone of popular expression 一棒子(打死) “(to kill with) a bludgeon,” which usually
refers to sadistic/abusive criticism that negates everything in one simple conclusion. And one of the
characters in the film actually uses the expression to criticize Yi.
7
As interpreted by many insiders of Chinese film industry, Yi looks suspiciously like the by-then vice
director of Film Bureau and vice minister of Culture Chen Huangmei himself. Rao (2005a: 144) hints on
the resemblance of the character Yi Bangzi to some real personality in terms of his appearance and position
as literary critic, but does not provide the name of whom audience may relate the character to. However,
Cheng (2005: 97) points out Yi’s appearance bears resemblance to Chen Huangmei and notes (116) that
this view is shared by many people in Chinese film circles. Comparing Yi’s appearance in the film to
Chen’s photo, one will agree on their striking resemblance, particularly the hairstyle and glasses.
8
Here Diran John Sohigian’s (2007: 145) reading of Lin Yutang’s differentiation of two realms of Chinese
discourse and sensibility would be appropriate, even though Lin’s statement was made in 1924 in a
42
ridiculous look with a pair of glasses as thick as beer bottle and bald forehead with
protruding hair on the sides, while he indignantly proclaims that “these are not xiju
(comic-drama), but nuju (angry-drama)” 9 [fig. 2.6]. Failing to understand the laughter
from the audience, he continues his harangue in jerky body movements that may remind
one of the actor Fang Hua’s well-known performance of the Japanese “devil” Captain
Matsui in Pingyuan youji dui (Guerrillas on the plain; dir. Su Li and Wu Zhaodi, 1955)
released just two years earlier. Yi reprimands them:
What are you laughing at?! What’s so funny about this?! Why don’t I feel
it funny at all? Art! Art should be sublime and sacred. An artist should be
an engineer of human soul. He should stand higher and see farther than
others [at the same moment his glasses are falling, which instigates more
laughter]. He should absolutely not be wearing a pair of over 2000-degree
glasses examining the tiny world in front of his eyes…
Reaction shots show that the onscreen director Li is obviously upset and the laughter
among the audience is gradually replaced by solemn contemplation while Yi goes on,
Ah, we should praise the future, praise new life, praise the great, lofty
cause, instead of being obsessed with the everyday trivialities like
housework and love affairs. What are the values of representing these
different sociohistorical context: “the realm of the serious becomes one of false, oppressive, static, and stiff
posturing yet, at the same time, lack of the nonserious in his realm makes it all the more laughable,
frivolous, and superfluous.” For an in-depth study of the 1930s debates over satire versus humor, see
Sohigian 2007.
9
Of course there is no such thing as “nuju”; it is a term coined by the character Yi Bangzi. The shifting of
“xi” to “nu” (angry) as a contrast confirms that comedy is a “relational concept” which, as Susan Sontag
points out, always presupposes a polar term: “Like ‘left,’ which presupposes ‘right,’ and ‘up,’ which
presupposes ‘down,’ the humorous never functions as a notion by itself. A contrast is always being
presumed” (Sontag 1987: 100). When used alone, “xi” usually means to “be happy, pleased, be fond of.” It
is only when used in the combination word “xiju” that the word acquires the connotation of “being comic.”
In Chinese, the antithesis of “xi” is not necessarily “bei”(being sad, tragic), but more likely to be “nu.” For
instance, in idioms, there are “beixi jiaojia” 悲喜交加 (a mixture of happy and sad feelings) and “xinu
wuchang” 喜怒无常 (unpredictable in being happy or irritated). Choosing “nu” as contrast to “xi” further
suggests an understanding of comedy as something pleasing rather than funny and potentially subversive,
which, as I discuss in more detail in the next chapter, would be the underlying cultural psychology beneath
the significant genre shifting from contemporary social satire to the so-called “eulogistic comedy”
(gesongxing xiju) in late 1950s. The association of anger with comedy viewing experience also confirms
the aggressive nature of satire.
43
petty matters?! This is definitely not the task of art! Altogether, in my
view, these three programs are absolutely no good.
His concluding remark enrages a journalist, who stands up to him: “Don’t rush to kill
everything with one bludgeon (xian buyao yibangzi dasi). Let’s have a public
performance and see what the audience has to say.” Seeing no point of arguing with her,
Yi prepares to retreat from the site. But Director Li tells him that the front door is closed
and he needs to make his exit through the backstage. With other characters withdrawn
from the screen and solemn orchestral musical accompaniment suddenly emerging, the
final sequence becomes highly allegorical, both visually and aurally. The unwelcome
critic slowly ascends the steps, fumbles his way through the empty, modernist-styled
backstage. Stumbling, he touches a loosened column. A beam falls off and hits him on
the head. The film ends with his fall (see figs. 2.7-2.8).10
This 1957 film is of particular interest in the study of PRC comedy film history.
On the one hand, textually speaking, framed in a film-within-film structure, it is a treatise
about the crisis in comedy filmmaking in the new political economy of the PRC. With a
strong sense of self-reflexivity, it is a rarely-seen metacinematic reflection on how artists
respond to their immediate sociopolitical and artistic context with comedy as their focus.
What to laugh at is at once a political problem and an aesthetic issue. The film’s
multilayered narrative of a former comic duo reuniting at Changchun Film Studio to
10
The film may have had an alternative ending from what we see in the released VCD version. According
to Wang and Wang (2001: 139), the film ends with the angry critic accidentally stepping on a curtain,
which falls off and covers him. Qi (2006: 125) gives a more detailed citation of the scripted ending, in
which following being struck by the falling beam, the critic continues fumbling his way out. He first bumps
into a backdrop. He looks up and sees it having “Let A Hundred Flowers Bloom” written on. He turns
around but bumps into another backdrop board, reading “Let A Hundred Schools of Thought Contend.” He
turns around and around, having no way out. Shambling, he walks toward the curtain, and the curtain falls
and engulfs him.
44
make some comedy shorts addresses sensitive issues of social criticism, the relationship
between mass culture and political discourse, and conflicts between artistic autonomy and
control by the authorities. The film itself and the attack on the film and its filmmakers
expose deeply rooted social anxieties about satirical comedy and the tensions between the
artists who demanded autonomy and the Party who was enforcing all-embracing control.
On the other hand, historically speaking, the film signifies a turning point in
Chinese comedy filmmaking. As film historians generally agree, the first few years of the
New China produced very few (if any) comedy films.11 They first flourished in the
Hundred Flowers period (May 1956-June 1957) when, encouraged by the Party’s
solicitation for open criticism, there was a surge of production of contemporary social
satires.12 However, these films were soon criticized and banned in the so-called “ba
11
See, for example, Luo 1961, Ma Debo 1992, Ma Ning 1987, Li 2002, Zhou 2002, Rao 2005a, and Cheng
2005. To some scholars (Li 2004, Rao 2005a), there are still a few films produced in the early years of the
PRC that could be considered comedy or at least comic, including Women fufu zhijian (Between a couple;
dir. Zheng Junli, 1951), Putao shu le de shihou (When grapes are ripe; dir. Wang Jiayi, 1952), Jiehun (The
wedding; dir. Yan Gong, 1953), and Zhao Xiaolan (dir. Lin Yang, 1953). The comic elements in Shi Hui’s
Wo zhe yi beizi (This life of mine, 1950) and Guan lianzhang (Captain Guan, 1951) have also been noted as
embodying a continuation of the Republican-era comic spirit (Rao 2005a). Meiguo zhi chuang (Window on
America, 1952), adapted for the screen by Huang Zuolin from an original Soviet text, codirected by and
starring Shi Hui, is acclaimed as “a very stylish satire” (Rao 2005a: 140n) and “a surprisingly effective
comedy” (Pickowicz 2007: 283). As Paul Pickowicz (2007) details in his account of Shi Hui’s painful
experiences in adapting himself to the new regime, most of these films were either criticized or did not
receive much critical attention and went into oblivion. Probably for these historical reasons and lack of
available materials, Cheng (2005) considers the opera film Lian yin (Burning seal, 1955) the first comedy
film in New China.
12
This batch of contemporary social satire includes the triptych of comedies by Lü Ban (Before the New
Director Arrives, The Man Who Doesn’t Bother About Trifles, Unfinished Comedy), Qiuchang fengbo
(Disturbance on the playground, dir. Mao Yu, 1956), Xun ai ji (Seeking love, dir. Wang Yan, 1956), San ge
zhanyou (Three comrades, dir. Wang Shaoyan, 1957), Xingfu (Happiness, dir. Xu Changlin, 1956), and two
stage play adaptations—Shui shi bei paoqi de ren (Who’s been abandoned, 1958) and Tan qin ji (A visit to
relatives, 1958), all being criticized in the following “ba baiqi” (removing white flags) campaign. Who’s
Been Abandoned did not pass the censorship. A Visit to Relatives was revised drastically. There is also Fang
Ying’s Ruoci duoqing (So full of passions, 1956), which falls in category of satire but escaped attack
probably because its satirized object is only a calculating woman seeking an ideal marriage, not touching
the social system or Party cadre. Even so, it was still criticized by some audience for portraying someone
from nurse profession in a negative light.
45
baiqi” (removing the white flag) campaign, accused of “abusing satire and maliciously
attacking the Party leadership and the new society under the pretext of ‘reflecting reality’
(fanying zhenshi) and ‘getting involved in life’ (ganyu shenghuo)” (Chen 1958 [2006]: 2:
232). Foreshadowed by the film’s inauspicious title, Unfinished Comedy indeed became a
comedy unfinished. Born in the relative liberalization during the Hundred Flowers
movement (1956-1957), which was soon curtailed by the ensuing Anti-Rightist campaign,
the film was banned before its completion and has never been publicly screened in the
theater. It ended the veteran director Lü Ban’s career and headed the list of 1957’s
“poisonous weeds” (Leyda 1972: 220) .13 Not only was Lü Ban viciously attacked,14 the
genre of comedy—satirical comedy in particular15 —became a minefield for filmmakers.
Nevertheless, following the ban of and attack on Unfinished Comedy, comedy did not
disappear from Chinese screens; instead, it took a significant shift toward crowd and
state-pleasing “eulogistic comedy,” which will be the focus of Chapter 3.
In the following sections, I situate Lü Ban and satirical comedy more generally in
its socio-historical context. First, I provide a brief biological sketch of Lü. As a veteran
13
The metaphors of “poisonous weeds” vis-à-vis “fragrant flowers” appeared in early 1957, when the first
Hundred Flower movement was still ongoing. Mao spoke at a meeting of the Eleventh Session (Enlarged)
of the Supreme State Conference in February 27, 1957, criticizing ossification of mind and calling for
exposing “poisonous weeds” at the same time as letting “fragrant flowers blossom.” The revised speech
was published under the title "Guanyu zhengque chuli renmin neibu maodun de wenti” (On the correct
handling of contradictions among the people) in Renmin ribao (June 19, 1957). Early in the film, when
encouraged by still friendly critic Yi Bangzi, Han Langen modestly says, “I am just worried that instead of
growing a blooming flower, we grow a pot of weeds.” His unintended misgiving offers poignant insight to
the intellectuals’ reservation toward the Hundred Flower movement.
14
Some other people who got involved in the film were also attacked, including the scriptwriter Luo Tai,
the starring comedian duo Han Langen and Yin Xiucen, as well as Zhong Dianfei and He Chi, who were
accused of having given Lü Ban suggestions on making these comedy films and for some other “crimes.”
15
The sudden abstention of social satire is not a phenomenon particular to comedy film only. It is an all-out
cultural campaign in many genres in literature and performing arts. For study on Chinese historical drama,
see Wagner 1990; on the transformation of Chinese prose, see Wagner 1992; on xiangsheng (lit. “face and
voice,” often translated as “cross-talk”), see Kaikkonen 1990 and Link 2007.
46
director who started his career as a comedian in the Leftist cinema in Republican
Shanghai and established his directorial status with a series of revolutionary dramas in
the early years of the PRC, his case sheds light on the complex relationship between
artists and the state. Then, I trace how comic treatment in film was gradually expelled
from screens in the first few years of the new regime. The subsequent shortage of film
production and the audience attendance exponentially increased, however, prompted the
Party leadership—which was fragmented and ridden with infighting—to temporarily
adopt more relaxed policies toward cultural production. Encouraged by the Hundred
Flowers liberalization, the years 1956-1957 saw the revival of contemporary social satire,
at which point Lü Ban contributed three films, including the notorious Unfinished
Comedy. Through close readings of the individual films, particularly Unfinished Comedy,
I examine the filmmakers’ criticism of the heavy-handed suppression of creativity in the
arts sector.
Lü Ban’s Belated Dream and Nightmare of Comedy
Before being condemned as an anti-Party rightist in 1957, Lü Ban (1913-1976) had been
a veteran filmmaker and Communist Party member for over fifteen years. Born as Hao
Enxing in Shanxi, he began his initial training in acting, costume design, and directing at
age 17 with the Film Actor Training School of the United Photoplay Service (Lianhua
dianying yanyuan yangchengsuo) in Beijing. He went to Shanghai in 1936, where he first
performed in amateur theater. Recommended by the rising film star Zhao Dan, he made
his screen debut as the optimistic and mischievous poor artist Xiao Tang in Shen Xilin’s
romantic comedy Shizi jietou (Crossroads, 1937). After his appearance in this and a few
47
other films, he was praised as an “Oriental Chaplin” for his pathos-filled comedic
performances (Lü 1951 [2006]: 1: 220). After the War of Resistance Against Japan
began, he joined the Shanghai Third Salvation Theatrical Troup (Shanghai jiuwang yanju
san dui), traveling upstream along the Yangtze River to propagate national salvation. His
production of opening skits to performances for army soldiers and rural audiences were
so popular that he considered his own performance “suitable for both high and low, both
refined and popular” (gaodi xianyi, yasu gongshang) (Lü 1951 [2006]: 1: 220). He went
to study at the Military and Political University of the War of Resistance Against Japan
(Kangri junzheng daxue) in Yanan for a few months in 1938 and then toured in northern
China. From 1948, he started working at the Northeast Film Studio (predecessor of
Changchun Studio) and participated in the production of Qiao (Bridge), which is
commonly considered the first feature film in the New China Cinema.
Despite Lü Ban’s background as a comedian, for the first seven years of the new
regime, before making his triptych of comedies, he was a high-profile director of a few
well-received revolutionary melodramas, including Lüliang yingxiong (Heroes of Lüliang
Mountain, 1950, co-directed with Yi Lin), Xin Ernü yingxiong zhuan (New heroes and
heroines, 1951, co-directed with Shi Dongshan), Liu hao men (Gate No. 6, 1952),
Yingxiong siji (A heroic driver, 1954), and musical film Huanghe da hechang (Chorus of
the Yellow River, 1955). In an interview with Dazhong dianying (Popular Cinema) in
1956 after the successful release of his first comedy film, Before the New Director
Arrives, Lü Ban stated that he always had a particular interest in comedy and believed in
people’s need for entertainment:
48
I was a comedian back twenty years ago. I love comedy very much. For all
these years, I have always wished to make some comedy films. This wish
started being actualized with Before the New Director Arrives. We are
now making The Man Who Doesn’t Bother about Trifles and Ruci aiqing
([sic] Such a love).16 These three films are just some short features (xiao
pianzi). [We use them] as experiments to test the water (kankan
hangqing)… People need comedy films. They need to have a good laugh
after work. Therefore, we decided to formally establish a comedy
production group… Our wish is not only to develop comedy in the film
medium, but also create comedy with a national style (minzu fengge).17
One wonders from this interview: What caused this delay in fulfilling his comedic
passion? Why was it not until 1956 that comedy filmmaking started thriving? Why would
they make small-scale experiments of comedy films to “test the water” first? What would
be their conception of comedy with “national style”?
Scholars have provided various explanations for the lack of comedy films in the
first seven years of the PRC. In an article written in 1961, [Luo] Yijun points out the
general lack of comedy films and lack of audience and critical attention to comic films
like Jiehun (The Wedding) between 1949 and 1956. He reasoned, “it was probably
because [the filmmakers] were not sure about whether comedy style is suitable to reflect
the new social life and how to reflect the new social life.”18 Twenty-six years later, Luo
would re-examine the phenomenon and ascribe the main reason to the heroic zeitgeist of
the times: “In the early years of the new regime, the victory of the Revolution engaged
the whole nation in soaring revolutionary passions, while the comic spirit was in a state
16
This must be a typo of Ruci duoqing (So amorous, 1956), directed by Fang Ying based on a screenplay
written by Luo Tai, Lü Ban’s collaborator in Unfinished Comedy.
17
See “Dianying gongzuozhe 1957 nian de dongxiang” (Filmmakers’ plans for 1957), DZDY 17 (1956).
18
Yijun, “Shi lun shehuizhuyi de dianying xiju” (A tentative discourse of socialist film comedy), DYYS 2
(1961), reprinted in XJDYTLJ, 106.
49
of repression.”19 Another Chinese film scholar, Ma Debo, blames the dogmatic art
policies and theories that forced filmmakers to devote their energies only to workers,
peasants, and soldiers and to the bright side of life: “If anyone represents any
shortcoming in a hero, it would be ‘looking for scars in a hero;’ if anyone reflects any
negative things in society, it would be ‘bringing shame on socialism.’” Due to the
campaign against the film Life of Wu Xun, censorship was tightened. As Ma points out,
“it was hard enough for an ordinary drama to pass the censorship, let alone comedy” (Ma
[1981] 1992: 416). Meng Liye takes a similar view, saying that the early years of the
PRC lacked the proper cultural environment for comedy. He points out that the Korean
War and subsequent political campaigns oriented people toward the heroic and martial:
In such a social cultural atmosphere, the main function of literature and
arts still followed the principle of “unify the people, edify the people,
attack the enemy, and annihilate the enemy” (tuanjie renmin, jiaoyu
renmin, daji diren, xiaomie diren) formed in wartime. Aesthetics focused
on pursuing intense dramatic conflicts and representation of weighty
emotions (chenzhong de qinggan). Sublimity and grandeur are the basic
aesthetic modalities (shenmei xingtai). Comedy and laughter temporarily
had a hard time to enter the revolutionary artists’ aesthetic field of vision
(geming wenyijia de shenmei shiye).” (Meng L. 2002: 230)
Indeed, comedy as a genre was notably underdeveloped and marginalized in the period
from 1949 to 1955. The dominant mode of filmmaking in the first few years of New
China was (melo)dramas that offer moral edification and celebrate the triumph of
revolutionary virtue over reactionary villainy. The urgent task for the New China cinema
was to legitimize the new social order by appealing to people’s emotion. This was
illustrated in the two slogans— “worker-peasant-soldier films” (gongnongbing dianying)
19
Luo Yijun, “Xiju de fugui” (The return of comedy), DZDY 7 (1987).
50
and “representing grand subject matters” (xie zhongda ticai)—that had been promulgated
as guidelines for filmmaking in the formative years of PRC cinema.20
While I agree with these scholars that the playful and satirical comic spirit in the
post-war Republic was quickly supplanted by the grand narrative of revolution in the
socialist transformation of cinema, nevertheless I want to highlight the transitional nature
of the first few years of the new regime. As recent historiography of early PRC history
strives to show, the socialist transformation in China was not a homogeneous process or
merely a top-down campaign.21 As Chapter 1 has argued, as far as comedy is concerned,
the radicalization of literature and art and the political reading of satire and humor started
as early as the late 1920s and early 1930s. Lu Xun’s canonical polemics on satire and
comedy in the late 1920s and early 1930s have valorized satire as a serious literary form
aimed at destroying the old system to construct a new ideal society. However, the
transformation of cinema—as both commercial and cultural institution—involved more
complex interactions between state policies and artists’ and industrialists’ self-adjustment
to the new regime, as the following section illustrates.
Continuum and Ostracism of Comic Entertainment: 1949-1951
In recent years, scholars have noted the transitional nature of the first two years of the
new regime. In her study of the Left-Wing cinema movement in the 1930s, Laikwan Pang
(2002: 148) points out, “Ironically and inevitably, Chinese filmmakers were also largely
influenced by the Hollywood mode of practice. While their spectators were habituated to
20
For a critique of these two slogans, see Chen 1989: 71-72.
21
For a discussion of the development of the Western historiography of the PRC, see Brown and Pickowicz
(2007: 1-18).
51
the American form of filmmaking, the Chinese filmmakers themselves also considered
Hollywood productions as their greatest source of inspiration.” The policymakers of the
New China cinema also recognized this fact. As the following passage from a speech by
Xia Yan—the Deputy Director of the Office of Cultural Commission—presented at a
movie theater association’s meeting indicates, the Party leadership in the cinema world
was fully aware that people’s social and cultural practices could not be changed suddenly:
“We can change the old political system overnight, but not people’s habits and taste for
things…for this and other reasons, we decided not to do anything too drastic about
American films”22 Zhiwei Xiao’s (2004) and Paul Pickowicz’s (2007) archival research
demonstrate that in the two-year period from April 1949 through May 1951 many
hundreds of prerevolution Chinese films were shown in Shanghai and that “Western film
culture was still very much a part of the immediate postrevolutionary scene” (Pickowicz
2007: 262).
In the first two years of the new regime, at least in the private studios in Shanghai,
comedy was still a popular genre among the audience and was still actually being made,
but comic filmmaking had been already complicated by the new political demands and
filmmakers’ survival instincts. As a result, the films often deliver contradictory messages
mediated by different conventions of political propaganda, industrial conventions, and
mass culture. Jay Leyda (1972: 187) has correctly pointed out that at the time, “China’s
original film base, Shanghai, remained the largest producer, but it was also a constant
source of political anxiety: ‘Were the influence of the past and of America still too
22
“Xia Yan fu zhuren zai yingyuan zuotanhui shang de tanhua”(Deputy director Xia Yan’s speech at the
movie theater association’s meeting), Wenhui bao, 26 April 1950, cited in Xiao 2004: 69.
52
strong?’” The anxiety was clearly felt by both the artists and the state and was reflected in
the institutional censorship from the state apparatus, discursive censorship from mediated
audience response,23 as well as filmmakers’ self-censorship. As early as August-October
1949, the Shanghai-based Wenhui bao (Wenhui daily) ran discussions on whether artists
should represent the petite bourgeoisie in their work, and many filmmakers participated
in the discussions. Many argued that treating the transformation and rebirth of the urban
petite bourgeoisie would expand the representational scope of new culture, citing Mao
Zedong’s “Talks at the Yan’an Forum on Literature and Art” (1942). In these remarks,
Mao considered workers, peasants, soldiers, and urban petite bourgeoisie as “the four
kinds of people who constitute the overwhelming majority of the Chinese nation, the
broadest masses of the people” (Denton 1996: 465).
The key concepts here are “transformation” and “rebirth.” At the end of the
political satire Crows and Sparrows (1949), whose production straddles the historical
threshold of power transfer,24 the residents in the house celebrate the coming of the New
Year and the new society after the villain Hou Yibo and his mistress have fled. While Mr.
Kong puts up a traditional spring couplet about sending off the old and welcoming the
23
Because of the dominating principle of literature and arts to “serve the people,” audiences’ opinions were
supposed to be taken seriously. However, only mediated audiences’ response would be “heard” and form a
“public” discourse regulating film industry practices. For example, Popular Cinema 5 (1950) published a
reader’s letter requesting the magazine to systematically publish articles criticizing “poisonous American
films.” The editor responded that they were gradually cleaning out the negative influence of American
films by introducing more progressive films and that criticizing individual American films was not the only
way to achieve the goal, and solicited contribution from audiences who had personal experience of being
corrupted by American films. It was not surprising that the following issues published audiences’ personal
accounts of how they were misled by American films before Liberation.
24
The shooting of Crows and Sparrows was finished a few days before the People’s Liberation Army
entered Shanghai on May 2, 1949, but was edited and synchronized after the new administration was
established (Leyda 1972: 175). It is therefore a transitional film that is usually grouped into Republican
cinema (e.g. Cheng 2005, Rao 2005a).
53
new, Mr. Hua, the timid bourgeois intellectual, whose political consciousness has been
raised by his recent suffering in jail, makes a comment:
The New Year is coming. The new society is coming. As for us, we need to
transform our mentality to become new. We who are from the old society
have many old problems. So we too need to get rid of the old and set up the
new, to start from the beginning and earnestly learn how to be new men.
Although the film ends with a new-year celebration, Mr. Hua’s remarks leave an
alarming message for “people from the old society,” which would soon reverberate in the
real world. While the state enhanced its top-down ideological control and industrial
regulation, filmmakers also tried hard to cater to the expectations of the new regime and
the industrial conventions. In the process, the slapstick tradition in Republican
commercial cinema gradually gave way to political didacticism.
In the director’s notes about the comedy film Huannan fuqi (A difficult couple,
1950), Han Langen, the comedian-turned director and owner of the private Huichang
studio who also starred in the film, made a comparison between his performance in his
previous slapstick comedies and the current one. After expressing his admiration for the
CCP government’s effective policies of stabilizing the market economy, he wrote:
Reading newspapers and watching Soviet films helped me a lot. They
make a lot of sense (hen you daoli) to me and helped me make much
progress. In particular, there was one speech by [Deputy] Director Xia
Yan to us filmmakers whose every sentence really affected me (juju dou
zuan dao wo naozi li qu le). Indeed, film should help the people’s
government propagate its policies and educate the people. I can’t go on to
fall off for no good reason. Today, my audience’s [ideological] level
(shuiping) is still low. We have to take one step at a time. But I resolved to
bring something good into my falling. For example, I fall in A Difficult
Couple, but it is different. It is because the poor protagonist couldn’t pay
back usury and was kicked by the local tyrant’s henchmen…Therefore,
although the audience laughed, they would feel that something was not
right and grieve for the oppressed laborer…I want to start over. The Han
54
Langen who specialized in slapstick (zhuan yan hunao xi) is gone now.
(Han 1950: 18)
I quote this passage at length because it shows how a commercial comedy filmmaker25
interpreted and handled the social changes in comedy in this transitional time. It could
reflect a heart-felt appreciation of positive social changes after Liberation (Han lists a
well-disciplined army, a dedicated government ready to serve the people, and more
importantly, a stabilized market), as well as a strategy for surviving in the new political
environment. On the one hand, Han realized the significance of ideology in the new
cinema and tried to infuse slapstick with a political message of class oppression; on the
other hand, as a commercial filmmaker, he was also keenly aware of the composition of
his audience, who were habituated to commercial cinema. This attempt at synchronizing
commercial practices with ideological changes was clearly reflected in the film’s
advertisement. In addition to a sensational storyline of landlord’s exploitation of poor
common people, the film was marketed as a “comedic blockbuster” (xiju jupian) “full of
gags” (xiaoliao fengfu) that would promise one to “laugh nonstop from the beginning to
the end” [see fig. 2.9].
A Difficult Couple, however, did not get much critical attention and quickly fell
into oblivion. The outbreak of the Korean War (1950-1953) and China’s involvement in
the war and anti-American propaganda brought another satirical comedy, Yingmi zhuan
(Story of movie fans; dir. Hong Mo, 1950), which exposed the negative influence of
25
I use the term “commercial” as contrast to more “socially-concerned intellectual cinema” (Laikwan
Pang’s term), although the two categories can not be clear-cut nor exclusive. Han’s commercially
successful slapsticks in the wartime Shanghai (the Isolated Island period, 1937-1941)), which used to be
neglected in standard film histories, have been re-evaluated positively in Rao Shuguang’s (2005a: 100)
recent study for providing entertainment and relief to the people who saw no future in the occupied area.
55
Hollywood movies on Chinese youth culture, to the center of media attention in August
1950.
The original film copy of Story of Movie Fans has been lost. But the media
coverage and discussions of the film in the magazine Popular Cinema inform us of the
awkward marriage between conventional industrial practice and new propagandist
ideology. Story of Movie Fans was based on a short story written by the veteran stage and
film director Huang Zuolin around 1945. Out of indignation over the cultural hegemony
of American culture as embodied in Hollywood films flooding postwar China, the
Western-educated Huang wrote the comedy satirizing two young movie fans who were
obsessed with the fantasy world that Hollywood movies created. In 1950, the private
Datong studio produced the film under financial stress, probably trying to capitalize on
the ongoing campaign of de-Hollywoodization in Chinese cinema.26 As we see from the
film ads running in Popular Cinema in 1950, a mixture of new ideology and
industrial/cultural conventions was at work, which shows the film industry’s effort of
maintaining both political correctness and commercial appeal [see fig. 2.10]. While the
film was advertised as “a new-style satirical farce against American imperialist cultural
invasion” (fan Meidi wenhua qinlue xinxing naoju), it obviously continued the
conventional industrial practice of projecting star power. Not only were images of the
male and female leads in western-style dress featured on the center of the ads, other
prominent elements of the film’s attraction were also publicized on the ad: Jimmy King
and His Orchestra, the “King of Shanghai (Jazz) Music;” and “Hollywood songs” sung
26
For studies of the purging of Hollywood influence in the first two years of PRC, see Xiao 2004; Rao and
Shao 2006.
56
by Yan Huizhu, the Beijing opera star and socialite who played the female lead in the
film. The Western lifestyle and Hollywood model that the film was supposed to criticize
in effect became part of its appeal, and this was quickly picked up by critics and audience.
In the symposia of filmmakers, critics, and audiences organized by Popular
Cinema in August 1950, many attendees pointed out the ambiguities in the film’s moral
message. The discussions still focused mainly on film techniques; for instance, Xia Yan
confirmed the positive intention of the film and pointed out its weakness in satirizing and
the inconsistency in the film’s style where some parts were exaggerated and comical
while others were realistic (xieshi). But in the filmmakers’ criticism and self-criticism, an
intensified anxiety about cleansing themselves from the influence of the past can be
sensed. Accomplished scenarist Chen Baichen made a harsher critique, which would be
typical of self-criticism of intellectuals in later political campaigns: “Ideological reform is
hard. One may sit on the physical ‘butt’ on the side of workers, peasants, and soldiers, but
the spiritual ‘butt’ (linghun de pigu) is far away from the workers, peasants, and soldiers.
The virus deep down in the soul sometimes can’t be seen by oneself.”27 As the editor and
film critic Wang Shizhen’s concluding message pointed out, “representational technique
(biaoxian shoufa) is a serious ideological battleground; a certain ideology dictates a
certain technique. In this regard, we should press on with learning from Soviet films, so
as to expel the remains of Hollywood influence.”28 Film styles and techniques had
already become politicized and soon there would be less and less space for entertainment
that was perceived as “capitalistic.” The film was criticized for beautifying its target of
27
“Dianying gongzuozhe tan Yingmi zhuan” (Filmmakers on Story of Movie Fans). DZDY 5 (1950): 17.
28
Ibid, 18.
57
criticism (e.g., the unnecessarily long and detailed dancehall scenes worked as appeal
rather than repellent), being ambiguous in its moral message, and following the
Hollywood model of filmmaking that it was supposed to criticize, etc. Together with
other light comedies, it went into oblivion and eventually got lost to film history.29
It became obvious that the co-existence of light entertainment and sublimity
required by the grand narrative of revolution would become difficult, and because of the
longstanding view of comedy being concerned with “low” or “inferior” characters and
therefore frivolous, comic treatments became a more and more sensitive issue. As Diran
John Sohigian (2007: 145) has pointed out in his reading of Lin Yutang’s differentiation
between the serious and nonserious, “the serious does not permit levity or laughter; it is a
realm of stern moralism that seeks to perfectly order the world.” An exclusion of the
nonserious could be found in the post-revolutionary moralism. Anything deviating from
the serious revolutionary moralism was perceived as a potential threat to the “perfect
order”—it was, therefore, blasphemous and would be attacked, and the filmmakers would
be forced to conduct self-criticism.
In the context of the nationwide campaign launched by Mao Zedong himself
against Wu Xun zhuan (The life of Wu Xun; dir. Sun Yu, 1951),30 Shi Hui, one of the
29
The film has not been mentioned in any existing film histories, not even included in comprehensive
catalogues such as Zhongguo yishu yingpian bianmu (1981) or Zhongguo yingpian dadian (2001).
30
Directed by veteran director Sun Yu, The Life of Wu Xun is a biopic of Wu Xun, a poverty-stricken
peasant in the Qing dynasty dedicated to raising money for free education of poor kids. The film received
positive reviews initially, which was perceived by Mao Zedong as a symptom of ideological confusion in
the cultural domain. He wrote an editorial, entitled “Yingdang zhongshi dianying Wuxun zhuan de taolun”
(Ought to emphasize the discussion on the film The Life of Wu Xun) and published in People’s Daily on
May 20 1951. In the editorial, Mao criticizes the film for “madly praising feudal culture” and “stigmatizing
peasants’ revolutionary struggles and misrepresenting Chinese history” (Mao 1951 in Wu 2006: 1: 92-93).
The editorial launched a nationwide campaign of rectification that “halted feature production in the state
studios for a year and a half, while the leading newspapers continued to pick new targets from the private
studio releases, accusing them of spreading humanism and petit-bourgeois sentiment” (Zhang 2004: 198).
58
greatest actors in Chinese theater and cinema and an outstanding film director, ran afoul
of the authorities for his lively portrayal of a PLA (People’s Liberation Army) officer
with a humorous touch in Guan lianzhang (Captain Guan, 1951). In 1950, Chen Bo’er,
the director of the Art Section of the Central Film Bureau, proposed that filmmakers
should create screen heroes with “masculine beauty” (yanggang zhi mei). She further
detailed the requirements: to utilize the best elements to create the protagonist, to project
their high ideological level (gaodu de sixiangxing), to represent noble national character
and morals (gaoshang de minzu pinge), and to portray them as physically strong and
handsome (jianmei), vivacious and happy (huopo yukuai de) (Chen 1950: 65). Shi Hui’s
humorous treatment of Captain Guan was criticized for “portraying the PLA as an army
that is vulgar, uncultured, and ignorant,” “distorting the revolutionary humanism with
vulgar petit-bourgeois humanism,” and being a “serious misrepresentation of the image
of the PLA,” etc. (Rao 2005a: 137).31
It was during the campaign against The Life of Wu Xun that Lü Ban first learned
his lesson of avoiding comedy. In November 1951, he published an essay in Wenyi bao
(Literary gazette) to review his “erroneous thoughts.” In the essay, he gave an example of
his “extremely nonserious, low taste of petty urbanities” (ji bu yansu de xiaoshimin diji
quwei) and “senseless, vacuous, and vulgar techniques” (hao wu sixiang, hao wu neirong
de yongsu shoufa): in a scene in Heroes of Lüliang Mountain, the militia arrayed real and
fake landmines to confuse the enemy, and among the fakes a chamber pot was buried.
31
For an in-depth study of Shi Hui’s career after 1949, see Pickowicz 2007. Similarly, A Married Couple,
directed by Zheng Junli in the spirit of the late 1940s social comedies, was said to “cater to the vulgar,
petit-bourgeois tastes of unreformed Shanghai audiences.” For a brief account of the criticisms of both
films, see Clark 1987: 51.
59
The audience laughed out loud when they saw the Japanese enemy dig it out. Lü Ban
apologized for his playfulness, “Although this arrangement intended to satirize the enemy,
the guffaw that it provoked in effect diluted the seriousness and militancy of the militia’s
heroic fight against the enemy” (Lü [1951] 2006: 1: 222). The overwhelming concerns of
creating new revolutionary mythology at this point of time demanded sublimation and
glorification that should not be diminished by trivial and heterogeneous entertaining
elements. If we relate this to what the fictional critic Yi Bangzi would say about art in
Unfinished Comedy five years later—as quoted in the first section of this paper—that
“Art should be sublime and sacred. An artist should be an engineer of the human soul,” it
is not difficult to understand what Lü Ban tried to criticize. The ostracism of the
freewheeling comic spirit by the grand narrative of revolution helps explain why Lü Ban
and many other filmmakers avoided the comedy genre and why only satire of a
designated target (e.g. American capitalist in Window on America) and cheerful stories of
socialist new (wo)men (e.g. the young couple in Wedding) welcoming the new social
order could be made. This resulted in very low production value in the first few years of
the PRC.
The Hundred Flowers Movement and the Revival of Satire: 1956-1957
By the end of 1955, the socialist transformation of industry and agriculture in the new
regime had been successfully completed. The economic development stimulated demands
for more diverse cultural activities. However, frustrated by the tightened political control
initiated by the consecutive campaigns attacking dissenters in literature and art circles,
the creativity of filmmakers had been greatly repressed. As a result, there had been a
60
serious shortage of film scripts and lack of performing opportunities for established
actors. Chen Huangmei, the Vice Minister of Culture and the Director of the Film Bureau,
published an essay addressing the restriction on subject matter and the cliché and rigid
film form.32 In another report to a Writer’s Association meeting in March 1956, Chen
Huangmei, on behalf of the Party’s leadership in cinema, proposed seven categories of
subject matters for scriptwriters to work on, among which comedy and satirical shorts
were listed.33 Seeing that political dogmatism and aesthetic formalism had seriously
demoralized the intellectual community, whose services were much needed, the Party
adopted a more liberal policy. In a speech of May 2, 1956, Mao Zedong coined the
slogans of “let a hundred flowers bloom, let a hundred schools of thought content”
(baihua qifang, baijia zhengming), which was soon published in Lu Dingyi’s subsequent
explanation of these slogans on May 26, 1956.
After some initial hesitation, filmmakers vented their frustrations, mainly with
dogmatism, sectarianism, formulism (gongshihua), and excessive interference from the
cultural leadership in artists’ work, and called for more respect for Chinese artistic
heritage and more space for artistic freedom.34 On November 14, 1956, Wenhui bao in
Shanghai published a short review, “Why Were There So Few Good Domestic Films?”,
32
Chen Huangmei, “Guanyu dianying yishu de ‘bai hua qi fang’,” Zhongguo dianying 1 (1956). Cited in Li
2004: 103-104.
33
See Chen 1956 [2006]: 2: 19. The seven categories include: (1) contemporary social struggles and new
social life, particularly those of worker, youth, children, and ethnic minority; (2) epics of Chinese
revolutionary history, particularly the struggles led by the Party in various revolutionary periods; (3) stories
of Chinese national history, historical figures, and cultural achievements; (4) adaptation of classical and
modern literary canons, such as The Water Margins, works of Lu Xun, Mao Dun, Ba Jin, Lao She, Cao Yu
etc.; (5) adaptation of folklores and folk stories with national characters; (6) documentation of local
operatic arts, musical and dance performances; and (7) various subjects that suit comedy and satirical
shorts.
34
For a selection of critical essays published during this movement, see Wu 2006, Vol. 2.
61
which precipitated heated discussions. Some responses criticized the formulaic narrative
of domestic films, its lack of a national style and blind modeling after Soviet cinema, and
its neglect of people’s diverse cultural needs. Some complained about the inefficient and
destructive censorship. Some cited audience attendance to illustrate the failure of
domestic films to appeal to local audiences, who reportedly refused to attend movies with
factory or rural settings (Li [1957] 2006: 2: 75). A contemporary observed that peasants
in Suzhou disliked “rural films” (nongcun pian) but enjoyed opera, war films, and Hong
Kong films (Zhong [1956] 2006: 2: 22). Han Fei, a comedian who had been active in
Republican Shanghai and in postwar Hong Kong before returning to Shanghai in 1952,
wrote an essay (Han [1956] 2006: 2: 57) complaining about the lack of performing
opportunity: “How difficult it is to make a comedy after Liberation! Some critics,
including some cadres, wouldn’t allow workers, peasants, and soldiers to appear on stage
or screen in a comic role. Otherwise, it would be a misrepresentation and humiliation of
the working class!” Citing favorable reception of Happiness from workers, he called on
screenwriters to break away from dogmatism and write more comedies, because “the
audience welcomes comedy and I love performing in comedies.”
Lü Ban, on the other hand, adopting a more cynical attitude toward the movement,
allegedly said, “There is no spring at Changchun [lit. everlasting spring, the name of the
city where the Changchun Film Studio is located]; all seasons are winter,” at a
symposium organized by the Jilin Provincial Party Committee (Anon. 1957: 7).35 Yet, he
saw the possibility of realizing his agenda of using comedy as entertainment and social
35
In Unfinished Comedy, trying to encourage the comedian duo to feel free to make comedies, Yi Bangzi
says, “it is cold here in Changchun, but it is rationally cold” (leng ye leng de lixing). It could be an in-joke
referring to the party leadership’s response to his remarks on their coldness.
62
intervention, even though he had doubts and reservations. According to Qi Xiaoping
(2006: 113), he had been planning on making comedies since 1954.36 In that year, he
organized and headed the Chuntian xiju she (Spring comedy society), which included
actor Zhao Ziyue, xiangsheng artists Ma Sanli and Hou Baolin, comic writer He Chi, film
actor and director Xie Tian, etc. (Anon. 1957: 7-8). Within the Changchun Studio, he
formed a “Comedy Film Research Group” with screenwriter Luo Tai, and later recruited
actors Yin Xiucen and Han Langen, who both starred in Unfinished Comedy. Lü Ban
served as the group’s director. The plan was to “train actors and revise scripts” through
stage rehearsals before making them into films.37 Now with the encouragement from the
state apparatus, cries for comedy became more prominent and the production of social
satire seemed more doable and acceptable.
Their first production was Before the New Director Arrives, often considered the
first contemporary social satire under the new regime.38 As mentioned earlier in the
chapter, it was a short feature that was supposed to “test the water.” The screenplay was
adapted from He Qiu’s 1954 popular and award-winning one-act play (Clark 1987: 77). It
is a caricature of a snobbish, prudish, ignorant, and corrupt bureaucrat who abuses his
political position to indulge his personal interests. Having learned his lesson from
36
This could have been stimulated by the great popularity of He Chi’s xiangsheng piece “Buying
Monkeys,” performed by Ma Sanli and Zhang Qingshen. For a discussion on the transformation of the
xiangsheng art in the early years of the PRC, see Link 2007.
37
Report of filmmakers’ New Year plans. See “Dianying gongzuozhe 1957 nian de dongxiang,” DZDY 17
(1956). They even considered expanding the society into a comedy film studio in the future. But the plan
had to be aborted when his career ended in 1957; and Lü was accused of “splitting the troops of literature
and arts” (fenlie wenyi duiwu).
38
Both Story of Movie Fans and A Glimpse of America are satires targeting a distanced object. When
Grapes are Ripe, The Wedding, and Zhao Xiaolan are not satirical but rather comic films aimed at
establishing a model of socialist new persona.
63
criticism of his comic treatment in Heroes of Lüliang Mountains in 1951, Lü had qualms
about going “too far” in making this film, as he confessed in a 1956 article:
…[I] have fear of not doing it right, fear of overreaching myself, fear of
making it “low” (diji) or vulgar, fear of my satire being inaccurate,
impropriate, out of proper limits, fear of distorting reality, fear of my
satire bordering on slander, fear of…It is not only me but many people had
these fears. Nevertheless, I finally mustered my courage and attempted a
satirical comedy, Before the New Director Arrives. Before and after the
making of this film, my fears were proven to be well-founded. At first I
wasn’t alarmed, but the atmosphere around me made me gradually start to
worry, so much so that I finished the film with great constraints in a
constant state of anxiety. Now it finally has passed the censors and will
meet the audience. The audience is our last censor. I know there are many
flaws in the film. I don’t fear…being criticized, but I am still not assured...
To tell the truth, what I am really afraid of are those “rules with reason”
(tingqilai manyou daoli de qinggui jielü) …I dared not use any gags
(xuetou), dared not exaggerate, dared not make the audience laugh too
much…but I am not satisfied: it was a triumphant satire on stage but was
much less penetrating on screen!”39
Even though the concentrated time-space of the film is clearly influenced by stage drama,
the film handles the conflicts between the corrupt bureaucrat and social morality in a
rather realistic—to the degree of sometimes being serious—manner. The comic effects
are mainly engendered by the delayed exposure of a mistaken identity and the
incongruent knowledge between characters and audience. The section chief Niu Dahai
and his lackey clerk are busy planning a welcome ceremony for the new director Zhang,
who turns out to arrive earlier than expected and is mistaken as a house repairman.40 In
many scenes, the camera assumes Zhang’s point of view as a spectator, observing Niu
unknowingly abusing power and lying in front of the person whom he intends to please
39
Lü Ban, “Tantan wo de xinlihua,” DZDY 17 (1956): 18.
40
Here Zhang’s mistaken identity as a house repairman may be read metaphorically in the sense that he is
repairing the corrupted bureaucratic system.
64
(see fig. 2.11). The film makes good use of editing to enhance the comic effect and
underscore Niu’s shameful behaviors. For example, when the workers, including the new
director, are voluntarily rescuing cement bags piled in the yard from pouring rain, Niu is
hiding in his newly upgraded office wolfing down roast chicken. The film uses a series of
parallel cutting between the two sites, accompanied by rhythmic stringed music, to show
a stark contrast between two different behaviors. The sequence ends with an iris shot of
Niu attentively holding onto his chicken bone; the shot seems to be taken through a
keyhole through which a messenger is peering, underscoring Niu’s wretched character
(see fig. 2.12).
As it turned out, Before the New Director Arrives received positive reviews41 but
also caused concerns. Fang Pu welcomed the filmmaker’s courageous entry into the
“taboo area” of satirical comedy.42 Liu Jin criticized some audiences’ excessive
allegorical reading (shanggang shangxian) of satire and defended the necessity of the
corrective social function of satire:
… Because of the medals on the section chief’s chest, [some audiences]
speculate that he was a former serviceman; from his identity as a former
serviceman, they conjecture whether the film is meant to satirize those
cadres who were transferred to civilian work from the army; from the
cadres who were transferred from the army, they surmise whether the film
misrepresents the PLA army where those cadres were trained…According
to this logic, satirists would have to stop writing and satire would
perish…Nobody would equate the section chief with all deactivated
armymen, just as we would not say all human beings are defective because
of one person’s defectiveness…We need satire because, unfortunately,
there are still too many derisible things in our life… 43
41
According to Jay Leyda (1972: 219), “before the trouble, the film was actually offered for sale abroad.”
42
Fang Pu, “Ping fengci xiju yingpian Xin juzhang daolai zhi qian” (On satirical comedy Before the new
director arrives). DZDY 17 (1957): 16.
43
Liu Jin, “Yao bu yao fengci” (Do we need satire). DZDY 23 (1956): 14.
65
Encouraged by the positive reviews, Lü Ban continued with his second short comedy,
The Man Who Doesn’t Bother about Trifles, which was released in January 1957. Lü Ban
is said to have been advised by renowned film critic and literary editor Zhong Dianfei44
to focus on everyday situation, on individual social morality, and to be sure to stay away
from any important subject matters that may touch on the social system (Qi 2006: 124).
The film follows the activities of a pretentious satirist Li Shaobai in a one-day trip to
another city. Li is invited by the local literary association to give a talk on satirical
literature and is going to meet a possible date, a young admirer whom he has never met
but has been corresponding with for a while. However, during the visit, his morally
defective mannerisms keep causing trouble for his hosts. And by coincidence, his date
turns out to be one of the victims of his bad manners. The character’s lack of selfknowledge and failure to understand people’s responses are meant to serve as the main
comic device, while coincidence carries the narrative. Because of its trivial subject matter
and mild satirical style, the film was generally welcomed by audiences and critics even if
there were some reviews criticizing the irrationality of the protagonist’s behavior and the
defacement of some minor characters for crude comic effect.
But as the few critiques of these short comedies indicate, the comic characters in
both films are negative characters to be laughed at while the realistic setting, social
positions, mannerism, and personalities might easily encourage one to relate them to real
44
Zhong was condemned as a Rightist for his significant “Dianying de luogu” (The gongs and drums of
film)—a critical article questioning the sacrosanct worker-peasant-soldier policy and calling for artistic
freedom, published in early December 1956. His criticism of dogmatism and formulism in Maoist cinema
was understood as a denial of the Party’s leadership in literature and arts.
66
life. The harsh “truthfulness” of their representation of contemporary social reality45
meant that, as Lü had feared, some saw these films as slanders. However, he carried out
his experiment in comedy with further audacity in his third comedy feature, the
aforementioned Unfinished Comedy, which immediately caused him big trouble.
Innocent Laughter or Ferocious Attack?
As mentioned at the beginning of this chapter, Unfinished Comedy has an interesting
film-within-film structure. With a strong sense of self-reflexitivity that is rarely seen in
Chinese cinema, Unfinished Comedy starts with a bitter back-stage story about the
reunion of a real-life comic duo, skinny Han Lan’gen (1909-1982) and fatty Yin Xiuceng
(1911-1979). Han and Yin started their long-time collaboration with the films Wang
Laowu and Lianhua jiaoxiangqu (Symphony of Lianhua Studio) in 1937, and established
their fame as the “Oriental Laurel and Hardy” in over twenty comedy films—mostly
slapstick. However, their collaboration ended after making A Difficult Couple in 1950.
During the nationalization and restructuring of the Shanghai film industry, Han Langen,
whose Huichang Studio was nationalized, joined Xinsu Drama Troupe in Suzhou, and
Yin Xiucen worked as stage actor and performance instructor in Hunan and Guangxi
before being re-assigned to Changchun Film Studio working at film dubbing in 1954. The
duo disappeared from the screen completely for almost six years, until 1956, when Lü
45
According to the official definition of “socialist realism” proposed at the first All-Union Congress of
Soviet Writers, held in Moscow in August 1934, the artist is required to provide “a truthful, historically
concrete representation of reality in its revolutionary development. At the same time, truthfulness and
historically concreteness of artistic representation of reality must (or should) be combined with the task of
ideologically remaking and training the labouring people in the spirit of socialism.” See Hilary Chung
1996: x.
67
Ban cast Yin Xiucen to play a small role in his comedy The Man Who Doesn’t Bother
with Trifles, and in 1957, when the duo reunited on and off screen in Unfinished Comedy.
The undoing of the pre-Liberation star system was part of China’s socialist
reformation of the film industry. However, old stars were still remembered by many
audiences. When Yin Xiucen reappeared in The Man Who Doesn’t Bother with Trifles, it
was headline news. The duo’s imminent reunion was reported in Popular Cinema,
Xinhua News and some other publications (Qi 2006: 118). Understood in this specific
context, the exaggerated performance of the duo’s reunion at Changchun Railway Station
at the beginning of Unfinished Comedy is both comic and sentimental, connoting a
subversive criticism of the state policies for artists. When the duo hugs each other (with
comic exaggeration and realistic sentiment), an intense chorus bursts out, “Having been
separated for all these years, brothers were at different corners of the world. Finally they
meet at Changchun Studio today.46 Wouldn’t this make one shed tears of happiness?”
The duo then has a tour of the Changchun Film Studio, where they meet with an old
friend, film director Li.47 Li introduces them to Comrade Yi Bangzi, the “authoritative
critic in literature and arts” (wenyijie quanwei de pipingjia), who is invited to preview the
comedy skits they are going to produce. Then the film proceeds to three film-with-film
comedy episodes performed by Han and Yin, punctuated by intermezzos of Yi’s
unfavorable critiques.
46
The opening shows that the locality where Han and Yin meet is Changchun Railway Station, but the
lyrics use Changchun Studio instead, which makes it ambiguous whether it is a real event or a fictional
scene.
47
According to Meng (2002: 237), the film script listed Lü Ban as the actor to perform the director in the
film, but the casting was changed to Luo Tai, one of the scenarists, during the production. However, the
film credits the actor as Chen Zhong.
68
In the film-within-film episodes, Lü Ban exerts a great effort to combine social
critique with comedian-centered performance, but the two are sometimes at odds with
each other. The first episode, “The Death of Manager Zhu,” is a dark comedy about a
manager who abuses his power in a state-run supply department. During a vacation,
Zhu’s wallet is stolen by a thief who then drops dead when escaping from a moving train.
When Zhu returns from the vacation, he finds his company is organizing a memorial
service for him, thinking that he had died. Instead of trying to clarify the situation, he
criticizes the service for not being luxurious enough. The second episode, “Melting Pot,”
is a light-hearted farce satirizing people who like to brag about their abilities. In a
ballroom, where people have congregated to socialize and watch performances, Han’s
character brags about his past “glories” in singing and dancing to impress some pretty
girls. The duo then is asked to perform. But all they can manage is a vaudeville-style
song and dance to a nursery tune, inciting harmless laughter. The third episode, “Story of
an Ancient Vase,” is a moral satire criticizing unfilial sons who live comfortable lives in
the city but try to exploit and then abandon their aging mother who comes from the
countryside. When they learn that the mother may have donated a valuable ancient vase
to the state museum and been rewarded with a big sum of cash, they come to visit
competing for her favor.
The episodes are supposed to be on-stage performances, but they are shot in
realistic settings. In the intermezzos, the performers are shown coming down from a stage
to join with director Li, the critic Yi Bangzi, some journalists, and other members of the
audience in the theater where they are supposed to watch the “performance.” This rupture
of narrative flow is interpreted by Meng Liye (2002: 237) and Rao Shuguang (2005a:
69
143) as a possible influence from Brechtian distantiation. They point out that the film has
a quality of transcending the boundary between the real and the fictional, which serves as
a wake-up call for the audience to regain consciousness from cinematic illusion and
ponder issues of satirical comedy.
Indeed, the blurring boundary between stage and real-life persona in Unfinished
Comedy contributes to its artistic innovation, textual complexity, and thematic
ambiguities. By breaking down the wall between stage and life, the film disturbs our
habit of believing the illusion of the cinematic world and challenges the prevailing
discourse of socialist realism, which aims to represent not “life as it is” but “life as it will
be” or “life as it ought to be” (Taylor 1998: 55). At the same time, the dialogical
metacommentary on comedy keeps calling our attention to the complicated history,
texture, function, and reception of the genre. For example, when introduced to Han
Langen and Yin Xiucen, Yi Bangzi, as fictional persona, immediately acknowledges their
real identities: “Han and Yin are famous comedians known all over China since the May
Fourth!” By this brief recalling of their long-established fame, the film calls for a reexamination of the genre history and performer’s personal experience. The link between
reality and the fictional screen personas enhanced the film’s political symbolism.
Mirroring the reality of what happened to comedy films in 1956-1957, the authoritative
critic first encourages the comedians to bring their greatest potential into play and grow
“flowers of comedy” (xiju zhi hua) for the Hundred Flowers Movement. To this, Han
Langen replies, “we are just afraid that we won’t grow a fresh flower but a pot of wild
grass (yecao).” The critic on screen admits that satirical comedy is a dangerous and
twisting road to pursue, but assures them that they have a supportive (rational)
70
environment and that he will be their “babysitter” (baomu). However, after seeing the
comedies, he dismisses them. The comments he makes are illustrative of the problematics
of satire and foretell what would soon take place in Chinese comedy. After the first
episode, Yi Bangzi lectures them about satire:
…to those morally defective, laggard things, satire is like a flame. With
fair use, it could cleanse and disinfect. If handled improperly, it could
cause a terrible fire.…What I just saw makes me feel that it is fire, a
ruthless raging fire that burns everything…treating the internal conflicts
among the people should be like treating our lover. We should say, ‘My
dear, you are wrong. You should correct your mistake. But I still love you
very much.’ However, this comedy is not like that. It is over
exaggerated…
This discrepancy between the anticipation and reception of satire reflects a deeply
embedded tension between the May Fourth intellectual tradition of using literature and
arts as critical tools of social intervention and the Maoist utilitarian ideology of
appropriating literature and arts as tools of mass persuasion. Ironically, the concerns
about the violence associated with satire had been articulated in the 1930s debates over
satire and humor, in which the radical satirists like Lu Xun—who was idolized as the
essence of the revolutionary spirit in the Mao era—defeated the eclectic humorists like
Lin Yutang—whose cosmopolitanism was rejected by Maoist ideology as essentially
capitalist. However, as seen in Mao’s 1942 “Yan’an Talks,” it was exactly because of the
subversive nature of satire that it ran afoul of the Party’s propaganda apparatus, whose
agenda was the establishing a new social order. As quoted in the epigraph at the
beginning of this chapter, with Mao’s differentiation among satires of different targets of
criticism, satire was subject to political classification. What to satirize (e.g., comrade or
enemy) and how to satirize (e.g., corrective or accusing, compassionate or unsympathetic)
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became an indicator of the satirist’s interpretation of social relations. In Unfinished
Comedy, as analyzed at the beginning of the chapter, the camera assumes an authoritative
position that puts the object of ridicule in a low, emotionally distant position. This is most
obvious at the ending, in which Yi Bangzi is visually distanced, isolated, and interrogated
by an aloof camera (again, see figs. 2.7-2.8).
Crossing over between the real and the fictional increases the vulnerability of
Unfinished Comedy to accusations of personal attack, exactly because of the possible
“inconvenient truth” behind it. As mentioned above, some sources blame the film’s illfate for the physical resemblance of its comic character to Chen Huangmei. Although it
has never been verified that Lü Ban did this intentionally, nor was the likeness mentioned
in the verdict of the film’s banning, the danger of satirical comedy is clearly registered in
the film’s visual and verbal aggressiveness. In an editorial in People’s Daily, Chen
Huangmei summarized that the major problem in new feature films made in 1957 was the
abuse of satire, which used the pretext of “reflecting reality” or “intervening in life” to
attack the Party and the new society. Labeling Unfinished Comedy as “thoroughly antiParty, anti-socialist, and tasteless,” he bluntly stated: “The standpoint and attitude of the
filmmaker of Unfinished Comedy are clearly-stated, namely, to openly attack the
leadership of the Party and to attack the new society. Therefore, its evil intention is clear
at a glance…” (Chen 1958). Satire, as Robert C. Elliot (1970: 1) points out, is normally
associated with “the actual, which (man and his institutions being what they are) usually
proves to be the sordid, the foolish, the vicious.” And precisely because of this, Lü Ban’s
satirical comedies were dreaded and singled out for criticism in the totalitarian state. The
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article on Lü Ban’s “crimes and evil ideas,” as Leyda (1972: 221-222) has noticed, was
called “Liu Pan’s [sic] Comedy”:
It analyzed only his last three films—no reference to his previous
noncomedies: it was his ‘mask of humor and his appeal to the superficial
laughter of the audience’ that concealed his true antiparty and antisocialist ideology. Evidence was thoroughly collected: At some point he
had said “Let them laugh—it’s good for their health” (and he “had dared
to say we have no comedies”), and even his start in the theater as a comic
actor was used against him. (Leyda 1972: 221-222)
This attention to his identification with comedy is clearly shown in a political cartoon
satirizing Lü Ban. In the cartoon, the filmstrip is transformed into an image of viperous
snake coiling on two Chinese coin-shaped reels which read “Lü Ban’s comedy” and
“masterful artist,” with Lü Ban himself posing as a tripod (see fig. 2.13).
The attack on Lü Ban also made reference to Zhong Dianfei, who had already
been condemned as a Rightist for his critical article “The Gongs and Drums of Film” in
December 1956. Zhong’s criticism of dogmatism and formulism in Maoist cinema was
understood as a denial of the Party’s leadership in literature and arts. Lü Ban’s satires of
social problems were seen in a similar light, as his attacker harangued:
We need satiric comedies, but…Liu Pan looks on our new society as if it
were exactly the same as the old society before Liberation…He has
rejected the idea of using typical characters of our society and uses instead
common behavior “that could be enjoyed by all.” [His characterization of
the head of the writer’s union and his comic scene of the regular morning
exercises of the union’s staff were examples of this love for “foolish
slapstick.”] (cited in Leyda 1972: 222)
It should be pointed out that the tendency to relate screen characters—satirized ones in
particular—to real life people was not limited to the PRC. For example, when the film
73
Xin nüxing48 (The new woman; Dir. Cai Chusheng, 1934) premiered at the spring festival
in 1935, it aroused the Journalists’ Union strong protest for the negative portrayal of their
trade, and the production company Lianhua Studio was forced to re-edit the film and
made an open apology. Similarly, Huang Zuolin’s 1947 comedy Jiafeng xuhuang (Faked
phoenix), which used the barber’s profession for comic effects, incited strong resentment
from the Shanghai barber guild. The Grand Theater (Daguangming) where the film was
to be shown was blocked by protesting barbers who considered the portrayal of their
profession in the film humiliating and demanded a re-cut of the film and compensation.
Through the intermediation of the Shanghai Municipal government, Wenhua Studio cut a
few scenes and added an explanation title at the beginning of the film to emphasize that
the film meant to praise the sanctity of labor. But still, the leading actor Shi Hui dared not
to go to a barbershop for two or three years (Sang 1992-1995: 117).
Nevertheless, the thoroughness of direct political/administrative intervention in
the PRC cinema was unprecedented. The socialist transformation of cinema not only
nationalized the film industry and subjected filmmakers to the control of central
administrative organs, but also attempted to politicize subject matter, themes, techniques,
styles, and even audience responses.49 Soon, under a heavy-handed political intervention,
open social criticism became impossible in Chinese cinema. Lü Ban’s tragic case alerted
the filmmakers of the dangers and traps but also forced them to search for alternative
ways of releasing their comic energy. Immediately following the 1957 Anti-Rightist
48
The film is not a generic comedy, but the journalist role is indeed portrayed in a comedic way that makes
him an object of satire.
49
For a study of how the CCP propaganda organs sought to shape the audience’s response to films in print
medium, see Tina Mai Chen 2003a.
74
campaign, China moved into the hype of the Great Leap Forward (1958-1960). In the
midst of the euphoria of socialist construction, Chinese comedy cinema took a new turn
toward what would be called “eulogistic comedy.” This genre shift, as I argue, was by
essence a strategic move from satire to utopia, two modes that are “linked in a complex
network of genetic, historical, and formal relationships” (Elliot 1970: 1).
75
Figures:
Figure 1. 1
Figure 1. 2
Figure 1. 3
Figure 1. 4
Figure 1. 5
Figure 1. 6
Figures 2.1-2.6: The authoritative critic Yi Bangzi (“Comrade Bludgeon”) being dis-empowered by
laughter in Unfinished Comedy.
76
Figures 2.7-2.8: "Comrade Bludgeon" makes his lonely exit through backstage and is literally struck
by a bludgeon.
Figure 2.9: Film ad for A Difficult Couple (Huannan fuqi, dir: Han Langen, 1950).
77
Figure 2.10: Film ad of Stories of Movie Fans (Yingmi zhuan, dir. Hong Mo, 1950) in DZDY 1950.
Figure 2.11: The new director assumes the position of spectator in Before the New Director Arrives.
78
Figure 2.12: Section Chief Niu under the interrogation of the intrusive camera in Before the New
Director Arrives.
Figure 2.13: A political cartoon by cartoonist Mi Gu condemning Lü Ban’s “poisonous films” in
DZDY 18 (1957). The characters on the left reel (in the shape of traditional Chinese coin) reads “Lü
Ban’s comedy,” and the one on the right reads “masterful artist.”
79
CHAPTER 3
EULOGISTIC COMEDY AND SOCIALIST UTOPIA
A map of the world that does not include Utopia is not even worth glancing at,
for it leaves out the one country at which Humanity is always landing. And
when Humanity lands there, it looks out, and seeing a better country, sets sail.
Progress is the realization of Utopias.
--Oscar Wilde, 1891
Introduction
The late 1950s saw not only the suspension of contemporary social satire in conjunction
with the banning of Unfinished Comedy, but also the diversification of comedy
filmmaking as evidenced in the emergence of two new genres: eulogistic comedies and
period comedies adapted from regional performing traditions.1 Focusing on the
production and discourse of eulogistic comedy, this chapter explores how comedy film as
a genre has been constantly redefined and reinterpreted through a process of negotiation
with political intervention, and how even seemingly conformist films may create
alternative cinematic space to harbor people’s anxieties and desires.
1
The latter, many of which are rendered in regional dialects, will be the focus of Chapter 4.
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First, I investigate the historical context in which the shift from contemporary
social satire to eulogistic comedy took place. Then, I examine individual films to identify
what distinguished these films from satirical comedy and how they worked in their
immediate social contexts. The key films I analyze are two that initiated fervent
discussions on the nature of eulogistic comedy—Wu duo jinhua (Five golden flowers; dir.
Wang Jiayi, Changchun Studio, 1959) and Jintian wo xiuxi (My day off; dir. Lu Ren,
Shanghai Studio, 1959)—and Xie Tian’s Jinshang tianhua (Better and better; Beijing
Studio, 1962). Departing from the cynical, critical, and accusatory “laughing at” mode of
satire, eulogistic comedy endeavors to engage the audience in “laughing with” cheerful
and positive characters in a collective celebration of the joie de vivre in the new society.
If the satirical comedies of the mid-1950s tried to inform the viewers of what socialist
society should not be, the eulogistic comedies emerging in the late 1950s and early 1960s
offered a vision of what an ideal society should be. Carefully avoiding biting satire and
exposure of social conflicts, eulogistic comedy promoted contemporary everyday
happiness and socialist visions of propriety, and thus undeniably conformed to and
supported the official doctrines; yet, the popular values in the films nevertheless spill out
beyond the bounds of a narrow and homogeneous propaganda. Their didactic propaganda
purpose is often diluted and cancelled by idealized, trivial, personal, apolitical, nonnarrative, and at times carnivalesque and spontaneous elements.
Moreover, the production of and discussions about eulogistic comedy are far from
monolithic, involving many different, conflicting, and shifting sets of values and styles
that implicate issues of ethnicity, gender, modernity, tradition, and politics. These lifeaffirming comedies constitute complex negotiations among official political lines, artistic
81
motivation, and popular cultural values. The two quintessential eulogistic comedies made
in the heyday of the Great Leap Forward (1958–1960), Five Golden Flowers and My Day
Off, while they both praise new social types and new social relations through similar
comic devices such as coincidence and misunderstanding, differ from each other greatly
in terms of production mode and film style. While Five Golden Flowers was initiated and
patronized by the top leaders in the process of production, My Day Off, an unexpectedly
successful small-budget production, reflects filmmakers’ self mobilization. Xie Tian’s
belated follow-up, Better and Better—made after the massive failure of the Great Leap
Forward—constructs a self-sufficient world at an unidentifiable remote railway station,
governed not by any explicit political doctrines but by people’s good will and communal
spirit.
What I value most in these eulogistic comedies is not that they were in any way
ethnographically truthful or artistically sophisticated, but that their utopian qualities show
us how ideal social relations were once imagined and how society’s deepest conflicts and
aspirations were articulated through the cinematic imagination. In a time when any
criticism of the real world in reality was suppressed, eulogistic comedies provided a
buffer and emotional satisfaction that might have lightened up everyday experience from
the unbearable heaviness of Chinese politics and economic failures. Looking at eulogistic
comedy in the light of utopianism allows us to better understand how human desires and
cultural activities are negotiated with particular historical conditions. Moreover, utopia
and satire—the genre that Chapter 1 deals with—are connected in many ways. Robert
Elliot argues in The Shape of Utopia:
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The conjunction may seem odd; we normally think of utopia as associated
with the ideal, satire with the actual, which (man and his institutions being
what they are) usually proves to be the sordid, the foolish, the vicious. In
fact, however, the two modes—utopia and satire—are linked in a complex
network of genetic, historical, and formal relationships. (Elliot 1970: 3)
As Elliot illustrates, there is an inevitable doubleness of effect in satire—longing as well
as laughter (5)—and the “very notion of utopia necessarily entails a negative appraisal of
present conditions. Satire and utopia are not really separable, the one a critique of the real
world in the name of something better, the other a hopeful construct of a world that might
be. The hope feeds the criticism, the criticism the hope” (24). After all, utopia, as Ruth
Levitas (1992: 8) persuasively states, “is the expression of the desire for a better way of
being… whatever we think of particular utopias, we learn a lot about the experience of
living under any set of conditions by reflecting upon the desires which those conditions
generate and yet leave unfulfilled. For that is the space which utopia occupies.” For a
culture that conventionally marginalizes the light, the playful, and the quotidian, I argue,
eulogistic comedy provides a still rather humane glimpse into what appealed to the
people (and the state) at the time (and beyond).2 Not an intellectual polemic as satirical
comedies tend to be, but a cinema of attraction3 for the general viewing public composed
mostly of workers, peasants, and solders, eulogistic comedy transforms propaganda into
2
For an anthropological account of how the film Five Golden Flowers is received in post-Socialist Dali,
see Notar 2006, Chapter 3. Notar suggests that “the current journey of millions of tourists to Dali is
motivated not only by exotic fantasies, but also by a utopian nostalgia for ‘return to something…never had’
(Harper [1955] 1966, 26), a reflection on a dream of socialist utopia during the current time of intensified
cynicism” (48). For a journalistic account of how these films are remembered by contemporary audiences,
see relevant episodes in the Story of Movies series (CCTV).
3
I borrow the term from Tom Gunning’s seminal study of early cinema “The Cinema of Attraction: Early
Film, Its Spectator and the Avant-Garde.” Although he uses the term in different context mainly to describe
the early cinema’s emphasis on spectacle rather than narrative until 1907, he points out that “the cinema of
attraction does not disappear with the dominance of narrative, but rather goes underground, both into
certain avant-garde practices and as a component of narrative films, more evident in some genres (e.g. the
musical) than in others”(64). As my analysis shows, the intention to create cinematic spectacle and the
emphasis on performativity are more evident in eulogistic comedy than in other genres.
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entertainment and turns didacticism to diversion, striving to be politically correct, on the
one hand, and communicating personal desires in pleasant, eclectic, and accessible
manners, on the other. Propaganda and entertainment, therefore, cannot be easily reduced
to a one-dimensional relationship in which the latter is seen as either serving or
subverting the former. The propaganda or dissent model ignores many other facets of
these films.
Calling for “New Comedy of A New Age”
In 1958, film director Yan Jizhou from the August First Studio wrote a short essay about
the making of the episode Chuchu Yuejin sheng (Sound of the Great Leap Forward
everywhere) in the tripartite film Yi ri qian li (A thousand miles a day). In the essay, he
commented on people’s reaction to the recent ban on a few comedy films:
A few comedy films made last year seriously distorted our real life today.
Some of them even became “poisonous weeds” (ducao). Because of this,
some comrades have since had doubts about making comedy. Talk like
“comedy is a dangerous art,” “comedy unavoidably offends certain
people” or “I would never make a comedy in this life” etc. started
circulating. I think this attitude of “giving up eating for fear of choking”
(yinye feishi) is not right. Comedy itself is innocent. If artists have
problems with their ideological and emotional standpoints, they may run
into trouble even without working in the comedy genre. Aren’t recently
released Qingchang yishen (Loyal partners), Wu hai ye hang (Sailing in a
foggy night), and Qingchun de jiaobu (Steps of youth) good examples in
this regard? The forms and styles of comedy itself are diverse. There are
satirical comedy, lyrical comedy (shuqing xiju), thriller comedy (jingxian
xiju), etc. But overall, the type of comedy that today’s people most need is
a comedy that is healthy, optimistic, and uplifting, a comedy that has highminded interest (qingqu gaoshang), a comedy that lets out heartfelt
laughter to the new life, and a comedy that casts aside the retrogressive
and conservative old thoughts and old things in derisive laughter.
Therefore, inspired by this understanding, I started an audacious
experiment in making a comedy about new characters and new deeds in
the Great Leap Forward… (Yan 1958: 16)
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Although Yan himself did not make another comedy until 1962,4 what he described here
turned out to be emblematic of a new direction in Chinese comedy film. The 1957 AntiRightist campaign was followed by a militant approach toward economic development in
the ambitious Second Five-Year plan (1957–62). Eager to demonstrate the superiority of
socialism through modernizing the country at a faster pace with greater results, the
Party—led by Mao Zedong and his fellow radicals—launched the Great Leap Forward
campaign to mobilize the entire nation in intensified industrialization and collectivization.
A new socio-economic and political system—the people’s communes—was introduced
in the countryside and in a few urban areas. Irrigation projects and hydroelectric dams
were built to modernize the countryside. Communal kitchens and even communal
dormitories were put in use in order to release manpower for production. Backyard steel
furnaces were set up in every commune and urban neighborhood. “More, Faster, Better,
and More Economical” (duo, kuai, hao, shen) was a popular slogan and doctrine at the
time. Every walk of life was engaged in the hyped-up socialist construction. Film,
recognized as “the most important of all the arts” (Lenin 1922), naturally participated in
and propagated the Great Leap Forward movement with due enthusiasm.
In February 1958, the Chinese Filmmakers Association released a public letter to
call for a “great leap forward” in the film industry. Every studio proposed their goals of
increasing production and decreasing cost. In May, the Ministry of Culture brought
4
Yan was purged from the Party and the army in 1959 for being sympathetic to the by-then Minster of
Defense Peng Dehuai, who was condemned by Mao Zedong at the Lushan Plenum for having “slandered”
the Great Leap Forward. Yan was sent down to northwest China to be on active military service for nine
month before rehabilitation. Drawing on his intimate experience with ordinary soldiers, he directed a
comedy film of military life—Ge liang hao (Good brothers)—in 1962. For more information about his life
and career, see Yan 2005.
85
forward the plan of establishing a film studio in every province, building movie theaters
in every county, forming a film projection team in every village, producing over 150
feature films in 1962 and 200-250 features in 1967, and surpassing America in film
production within ten years (Chen 1989: 1: 169). The exponential increase in audience
attendance—from 4,731 person-time in 1949 to 286,435 person-time in 1958—also
created a great demand on film production.5
By January 1958, the Soviet model of socialist realism in the Soviet model had
been replaced by the new discourse of “Combining Revolutionary Realism with
Revolutionary Romanticism,” whose exaggerated emphasis on romanticism and
idealization drove literary and artistic productions further away from social reality (what
life really is) to socialist utopia (what life should be).6 “For a brief period,” Xiaobing
Tang (2000: 164-65) observes, “the imminence of a socialist paradise enthralled the
popular imagination and excited many a utopian fantasy. It was apparently an age of
great passion and expectations, an age in which the boldest dreams about human
happiness were collectively dreamed, and the most ordinary moments in life gloriously
poeticized.” Just as Yan Jizhou had already realized and articulated, the infeasibility of
satirical comedies in this social atmosphere directed people’s passion to another point
5
Audience attendance increased 60.5 times from 1949 to 1958. For detailed statistic data of audience
attendance from 1949 to 1958, see chart in DZDY 18 (1959): 27.
6
See Zhou Yang, “Xin minge kaituo le shige de xin daolu” (New folksongs has broadened a new path for
poetry), Hongqi 1 (1958): 33-38. Bichler (1996: 37) interprets the move as an effort of “liberating the
Chinese from Soviet taxonomy in this field once again, something Mao had striven for in Yan’an.”
According to Bichler (1996: 31, 37), “[a]lthough the new slogan clearly borrowed its main contents from
Gorky’s theoretical writings on Socialist Realism in the 1930s, the discussion strictly avoided the use of the
term Socialist Realism with reference to Chinese literature[,]” presumably because the term was “very
much connected with well-known professional authors in the USSR.” For a detailed study of the history of
socialist realism in China, see Chung 1996, particularly Hilary Chung’s “Introduction” (x-xviii) and Lorenz
Bichler’s article (30-43) in the book.
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that Mao Zedong had made when he dismissed the “abuse” of satire in proletariat
literature and arts—to eulogize: “Why should we not eulogize the people, the creators of
the history of mankind? Why should we not eulogize the proletariat, the Communist
Party, New Democracy, and socialism?” (Denton 1996: 480)
It was in this socio-economic and artistic context that Five Golden Flowers and
My Day Off were produced in 1959 and immediately hailed as models of “new comedy of
a new age.”7 Set respectively in a pastoral ethnic minority area in southwest China and in
urban Shanghai, both films—framed as their protagonists’ journeys to love—are
panoramic showcases of a harmonious socialist community in which every member is
whole-heartedly devoted to the large social good and eventually wins their own personal
happiness. Audiences and critics were amazed by how the films managed to make people
laugh without relying on satire and mockery of any negative figure. The films received
enthusiastic response from general audiences and critics alike, and resonated among
viewers overseas. Critics applauded the “fruit of the Great Leap Forward and the
Hundred Flowers policies of the Party,” and soon labeled this “new breed” of comedy as
“eulogistic comedy.”8 Five Golden Flowers was screened in forty-six countries, setting a
7
See, for example, Tao Zhong’s review of Five Golden Flowers, “Xin shidai de xin xiju” (New comedy in
a new age) in Renmin ribao (March 10, 1960).
8
It should be pointed out that while it is commonly acknowledged that the primary feature of these new
comedies is to “gesong” (to eulogize, to extol, to praise) positive characters, new morality and new
spirituality, the nomenclature of the genre was not consistent or unanimously agreed on at the beginning of
the discussions in the early 1960s. According to Gu Zhongyi’s 1960 article “Mantan xiju de maodun
chongtu” (XJDYTLJ: 18), this type of comedy did not have a fixed name yet. Some critics termed it as
“youmo xiju” (humorous comedy); some others called it “gesongxing xiju” (eulogistic comedy). Yijun
(1961: 112) suggested using “odic comedy” (songshi ti) or “carol comedy” (songge ti) to name the films
like My Day Off and Five Golden Flowers. However, the use of “gesongxing xiju” was the most popular
term in actual references to these new films and it obtained the currency to retrospectively refer to classical
comedies like Xixiangji (Romance of the west chamber), Qiangtou mashang (Pei Shaojun and Li Qianjin),
and many of Guan Hanqing’s plays (see, for example, Hu Xitao [1960] 1963; Wang Jisi 1982).
87
record for oversea distribution of a Chinese film. It also won awards for Best Film
Direction and Best Actress at the Second Asian and African Film Festival. Based on
stories of a real model policeman in Shanghai, My Day Off created an endearing
protagonist whom many audiences took for real and was even used by Shanghai police
stations to train new recruits.9 Film historian Jay Leyda (1972: 284-85) praised My Day
Off as “Shanghai’s best film of the year”: “a traditional story idea was transformed by a
fresh filmmaking attitude into the best film comedy I had seen from Shanghai since
1959.”
The films’ popularity generated heated discussions and various attempts to
theorize “socialist comedy” in major literary and art periodicals. Critics first noted that
these new comedies departed from the traditional comedy mode of satire and succeeded
in producing laudatory, satisfying, and upbeat laughter generated by positive characters
and events. Attempts to re-categorize comedy and differentiate this new breed of comedy
from conventional satirical comedy ensued and were debated. Central to the discussions
were issues of whether there were conflicts in eulogistic comedy, what the nature of
comedic conflicts should be, and whether the new-style eulogistic comedy should reflect
social conflicts, etc. While some critics tended to establish eulogistic comedy as a
quintessentially new product of socialist China, some others traced its root back to
Expectations for being “eulogistic” also feature the xiangsheng performance. For discussions on
xiangsheng reform since the 1950s, see Kaikkonen 1990 and Link 2007.
9
See “Wanmei yitian” (A perfect day), the episode on My Day Off in documentary series Story of Movies,
and an interview of actor Zhong Xinghuo at http://www.ycwb.com/gb/content/200502/25/content_854670.htm.
88
traditional drama and questioned the binary opposition of eulogy and satire.10 The genre
became a contested site where different ideologies and traditions collide and negotiate.
Romancing the Great Leap Forward and the Domestic “Other”
Commenting from a different social and cultural context, Hong Kong director Chang
Cheh—who is known for his popular martial arts films in the 1970s—wrote the following
on Five Golden Flowers when it was released in Hong Kong in 1960,11
The story is tinctured with fairytale-like pastoralism. Love is depicted as
subliminal and beautiful. Although there are some slogans inserted in due
form, they do no disrupt the picture as a whole. Some misunderstanding is
obviously [artificial] created by the filmmakers, but since it is a comedy, it is
not too offbeat (lipu), at least can “fool” the audience on the spot. Its merit
mainly lies in its refreshing depiction of romance (xie qing busu), very
Oriental, definitely not Westernized flirtation (‘yangchang’ shang de
tiaoqing). This alone makes it much cleverer than the mandarin films made in
Hong Kong.12
Chang’s review captures two significant themes in Five Golden Flowers: pastoralism and
romance, which were indeed intended features designed for the film before it was even
conceived. With the approaching of the tenth anniversary of the founding of the People’s
Republic of China, film studios were tasked with making at least seven high-quality color
feature films to celebrate the occasion. At the studio heads meeting held in Beijing in
November 1958, Vice Minister of Propaganda Zhou Yang made “three-good” (san hao)
10
See, for example, Zhang Baoxing’s “Xiju yu xiao” in XJDYTLJ, 38-45. Citing both Chinese and foreign
traditional theatrical works, such as Shi yu zhuo (Picking up jade bracelet), Shakespeare’s A Midsummer
Night’s Dream.
11
Five Golden Flowers was distributed by Nanfang Film Company in Hong Kong. According to Cheng
(2005: 103), it provoked full-house laughter when it was screened in Hong Kong.
12
Chang Cheh’s (under the penname He Guan) review of Five Golden Flowers in Xinsheng wanbao (June
2, 1960), cited in Zhu Hong ed. Shanyao zai tong yi xingkong: Zhongguo neidi dianying zai Xianggang
(Kunming: Yunnan renmin, 2005), 55.
89
requests—good content, good style, and good audiovisual effects (neirong hao, fengge
hao, shengguang hao)—for film production. However, although the film production
greatly increased in quantity, the Party leadership was not satisfied with the narrow range
of subject matter and style. At the beginning of 1959, Premiere Zhou Enlai watched a few
“xianlipian” (films made to commemorate the founding of the People’s Republic) and
felt the subject matters were too serious. He expressed his wish of seeing a film “full of
joy” (xiqi yangyang) and suggested setting it in a Yunnan minority area to feature its
beautiful landscape and passionate ethnic minority people, who are friendly and talented
in singing and dancing. Following Zhou’s direction, Xia Yan, the Vice Minister of
Culture at the time, conceived a few more detailed guidelines: “It should be a comedy;
there should be the beautiful landscape of Dali; there should be singing and dancing; it
should be light-hearted and cheerful.”13 The writer couple Zhao Jikang and Wang
Gongpu were asked to write the script immediately in order to finish the production
before National Day on October 1st. Drawing on her experience in the traditional festival
“Sanyuejie” (Third month fair)14 in Dali and the inspirations from the French film ...Sans
laisser d'adresse (…Without leaving address; dir. Jean-Paul Le Chanois, 1951) and a
Soviet production of a Shakespearean comedy Dvenadtsataya noch (Twelfth night; dir. A.
Abramov and Yan Frid, 1955), Zhao Jikang decided to use confusion over a character’s
name as the film’s primary comic device. In the story, Apeng, an ethnic Bai from
13
Gu Tingting, “Wu duo jin hua huiyilu” (Memories of Five Golden Flowers), Zhongguo dianshi bao (June
26, 2006). According to Su Da, “Wu duo jin hua dansheng ji” (The birth of Five Golden Flowers), in
Yangcheng wanbao (August 12, 1997), Xia also required: the film should present love stories and singing
and dancing Bai ethnic minority; there should not be political slogan, no class struggle; the film should aim
at international market….[Cited in Meng 2002: 328]
14
It is a traditional festival of Bai nationality in Dali area in Yunnan Province, running from the fifteenth
day to the twenty-second day in the third lunar month. It is an occasion for People from the neighboring
areas to get together, trade, perform, play games, and pick up date.
90
Jianchuan, meets a beautiful girl named Jinhua (Golden Flower) at a Third Month Fair
festival in Dali by the side of the beautiful Cang Mountain and Erhai Lake. Falling in
love at first sight, they exchange love tokens and set up a date to meet again at the same
festival site the next year, but they do not exchange address. The next year, Apeng comes
to the area as expected to look for Golden Flower. However, he discovers that there are
many girls with the name Golden Flower in the area. Through misunderstanding and
coincidence generated by the namesakes in Apeng’s journey of looking for his love
interest, the film showcases minority people’s zealous participation in the Great Leap
Forward and colorful customs set against a beautiful landscape. Finally, confusions are
cleared up and Apeng reunites with his Golden Flower by the beautiful Butterfly Spring.
The other Golden Flowers and their lovers join the scene as a chorus to congratulate them.
Once the script was written and passed the censors, Xia Yan himself appointed
the director, director of photography, art designer, and even named the film. The film was
finished before the National Day and was sent to the Central Propaganda Ministry. The
premiere at Zhongnanhai—the compound where the Communist Party’s top leaders work
and live—received enthusiastic response from the political leaders who were said to have
given it an ovation lasting for over ten minutes (Gu 2006). When it was released
nationwide in December 1959, it became an instant hit. Rave reviews praised the “new
comedy in a new age” for its refreshing characterization of new types of heroines
(xinxing funü), new understanding of love (xin lian’ai guan), and new interpersonal
relationships (ren yu ren zhi jian de xin guanxi).15 At the Second Asian and African Film
15
Tao Zhong, “Xin shidai de xin xiju: yingpian Wu duo jinhua guan hou,” Renmin ribao (March 10, 1960),
cited in Rao 2005a: 155.
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Festival in 1960, director Wang Jiayi and the leading actress Yang Likun were awarded
best director and best actress, respectively. Since 1959, the film has been screened in
forty-six countries, setting a record of overseas distribution for a Chinese film.
As the above account shows, the interest in making Five Golden Flowers is
intimately linked to a political end initiated by the state apparatus for the celebration of
the tenth anniversary of the regime. The plot is closely tied to the campaign of the Great
Leap Forward and is intended to eulogize the ethnic minority people’s participation and
achievement in socialist construction. The energy and devotion of the working men and
women set the upbeat keynote and incorporate the story in a nationalistic agenda of
modernization as well as official feminism that tries to mobilize women’s productivity in
the cause. Apeng’s search for Golden Flower allows the film to display the
transformation that the socialist construction campaign brings to the minority areas. As
the title suggests, images of modern minority women—who are compared to golden
flowers—are presented in plural form in the film’s narrative. Apeng encounters four
other “Golden Flowers” before uniting with his love interest. In his journey, women are
shown participating in and being in charge of many traditionally male professions.
Among the five Golden Flowers, one is an “exemplary fertilizer and manure collector,”
one a stockyard worker, one a tractor driver, one an iron-making activist, and the leading
Golden Flower—Apeng’s love interest—is the deputy leader of the commune.
The display of minority women’s productivity serves as a manifestation of
modernity defined by the nationalistic agenda of official feminism and modernization. As
Yingjin Zhang (2002: 165) has argued, the film shows a kind of “ideological
identification of ethnic minorities with the Han” and thus “confirms both the necessity
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and the legitimacy of the state discourse in maintaining Han cultural hegemony.” What
leads him to this conclusion, Zhang explains, is that “[a]ll the display of solidarity and
ethnic harmony is actually staged as a spectacle mostly for Han viewers, and there is an
unmistakably Han-centered viewing position, visually as well as conceptually” (165;
italics in the original). To be sure, Five Golden Flowers arranges two Han outsiders—a
musician and a painter from the Changchun Studio who visit the area to collect folk
materials and happen to meet Apeng on his journey in search of Golden Flower—as
witnesses of Apeng’s search for love. From the perspective of the narrative, they indeed
“visually and conceptually” assume a Han-centered viewing position. Their comments
constantly remind the audience of how beautiful the landscape is and how happy and
productive the local people are. The fact that the film was shown in forty-six countries
further confirms that the production of a minority story was intended as cultural spectacle
for national and international consumption.16 However, as I argue in this section and a
later section about intellectuals as comic characters, the Han-centered viewing position,
as well as nationalistic collectivism, are problematized and complicated by the fact that
the film is about a particular romance and is a comedy.17 While romantic exoticism
reinforces the nationalistic discourse of ethnic solidarity, it also undercuts the political
intensity by distracting the audience.
16
However, it should be pointed out that the local consumption was also significant and moved beyond the
simple spectacular entertainment. After the release of Five Golden Flowers, Yunnan province initiated
“Ten Thousand Golden Flowers” campaign to encourage young girls to learn from the fictional models—
an example of life imitating art. See DZDY 6 (1960): 25.
17
Ma Ning uses “new romantic comedy” as a subcategory of the comedies during the period and cites My
Day off as the prototype; however, I avoid using the term “romantic comedy” to describe the film. Not only
because “romantic comedy,” or in its Chinese incarnation, “langman (aiqing) xiju,” is not used to refer to
these films in Chinese sources, but also because the term “romantic comedy” invokes a particular genre
tradition in the West.
93
The propagandistic tone of the film, as Chang Cheh noted, works through a
typical storyline of romantic love—boy meets girl, boy loses girl, and boy finally gets
girl—set against a beautiful landscape. Being set in the “exotic” minority area, the film
has space for explicit depiction of romantic courting through singing and dancing
sequences and incorporates many spectacular activities like horse racing, a festival
market, a wedding banquet, etc., as well as colorful costumes and flashy ornaments that
would not be seen in films set in Han regions. The film opens with a series of nonnarrative segments of the Third Month Fair. The first shot after the initial credits is of a
man in Bai costume blowing a long horn. With the punctuative sound of a gong, the man
starts moving right as the camera pans left. A chorus of young girls and boys surrounding
two old men holding a big willow bough appears. Their cheerful antiphonal singing and
dancing announce the beginning of the Third Month Fair. In a long pan shot, the film
shows crowds in various minority costumes moving along toward the market center. The
three white pagodas—the famous landmark of Dali—in the farther background serves as
location identifier. Various festival activities are shown in short takes of more detailed
medium shots—Tibetan men trading exotic goods like animal bones and deer antler, a
mother trying hats on her kid, girls shopping for cloth, and Bai people dancing and
singing cheerfully about the festival—before proceeding to the first narrative sequence on
the horse racing ground. These ethnographic festival scenes not only establish the
ethnically marked locality for the film narrative, but also, above all, immediately set the
festive tone and give the audience an emotional uplift. Therefore, they are more
performative than narrative.
94
Although not usually identified as a musical film, in many ways Five Golden
Flowers presents a similar contradiction resembling a “classic” Hollywood musical: “a
feeling of energy, freedom and optimism is accompanied by a sense of inhibition and
repression” (Sutton 1981: 191). Music plays a significant role in the film’s festival and
romantic quality, at the same time as it serves as a way of regulating the film narrative.
The choruses at the beginning and at the end frame the film in a suppositional perfect
order based on spectacle and exteriority, thus implying “that the world of the narrative is
also (already) utopian” (Dyer 1981: 185). Visually speaking, the market scenes in the
opening sequence have an almost documentary verve, presenting a dynamic space full of
life; however, acoustically, the location sounds are inaudible in the sequence. Natural
noises, voices, laughs, and background music virtually disappear from the screen. The
lively, naturalistic visual representation of the festival market, which can easily slip into
spontaneity and dissonance, is silenced and quickly cut back to the highly choreographed
chorus scene. The editing from inaudible location sounds to orderly chorus vividly
exemplifies what Jacques Attali elaborates in his theorization of music before it becomes
the commodity: “music is a channelization of noise, and therefore a simulacrum of the
sacrifice. It is thus a sublimation, an exacerbation of the imaginary, at the same time as
the creation of social order and political integration” (Attali 1985: 26; italics in the
original).
Music, however, also provides an emotive channel to articulate personal desires—
which would be otherwise unspeakable—through folksy metaphorism, even though the
romance has to be justified by socialist virtues and the verbiage sinicized. Under the
pretext that being “ethnic” means being less bounded by the puritanic ethical codes
95
associated with the Han, their songs are more expressive with regard to romantic love.
Romance is at the center of the songs’ lyricism. It is informed by the popular idea of a
“good match,” which emphasizes female beauty (e.g. “piaoliang de guniang” [pretty girl])
and male prowess (e.g. “yingxiong” [hero]). The opening chorus emphasizes that the
Third Month Fair can be the occasion for romantic encounters, where young men
demonstrate their physical skills in horse racing and girls pick up their ideal dates. As the
lyrics go: “Hey, chap! Show your skills in horse racing! Girls are here to pick up a date.
Grabbing inumerable red flags [in the race], the hero is beloved by everybody!” The
attempt to negotiate between romanticism and political correctness is best illustrated in
the first love-promise duet scene between Golden Flower and Apeng by the side of the
Butterfly Spring. Golden Flower sits beside the flowery pond, examining her own
reflection on the water surface and singing:
Dali has beautiful scenery in March.
The Butterfly Spring is a nice place to preen oneself.
Butterflies fly around to collect honey.
What is Sister combing her hair for?
Her longing for an absent object of desire is immediately reciprocated by Apeng, who has
been looking for her, answering from behind bushes:
Dropping a stone to check the water’s depth,
Singing a tune to test Sister’s heart,
I have a mind to pick the flower but am afraid of its thorns.
Hovering is my heart!
Seeing the embroidered purse she gave Apeng earlier on the horse racing ground, Golden
Flower recognizes Apeng, and replies with encouragement:
If you want to pick the flower, don’t mind the thorns.
If you want to sing, don’t ask too many questions.
If you want to cast a net, then don’t be daunted by water.
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Show yourself, so we can get acquainted with each other!
When Apeng walks toward her, his courting song becomes more explicit and direct,
“The purse that Sister gave me is so nice/Will you be my special one?” To this Golden
Flower answers,
Swallows fetch mud to build their nest.
It is hard to express one’s feelings in words.
In love one should be like an ever-flowing stream.
Brother, be sure not to be like morning dew!
At this point, Apeng immediately refers to his “pure” class origin as if it would be proof
of his faithfulness in love:
Three generations in my family have been ironsmiths.
We know how to make nice stainless steel.
Brother’s heart is like steel that is most firm and faithful.
Sister, you haven’t met the wrong person!
The musical register changes its tempo and pitch, indicating a conscious effort to
reconcile the traditional amorous metaphors with the new discourse of class purity. Being
an ironsmith serves as a reference both to faithfulness in love and firmness in class
stance, and conveniently fits in the context of the Great Leap Forward’s craze for
backyard steel furnaces. Personal interest and national agenda thus are integrated in the
folksy metaphor of steel. Like most self-claimed “folksongs” encouraged and popularized
in the period, these songs—composed by veteran musician Lei Zhenbang and performed
(dubbed) by professional singers in Mandarin Chinese18—function in the narrative as a
way to exoticize minority romance and maintain political properness for the national
audience.
18
Toward the end, the film does include an extra-diegetic stage performance of folksong sung in local
language and subject the performance to both onscreen and offscreen “anthropological gaze.” The
audiovisual quality of the song performance itself contrasts with the polished mandarin songs of the
characters and enhances the film’s cultural exoticism.
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As the plot develops, the exoticism of minority life is observed, appreciated, and
comically meddled in by the two above-mentioned Han cultural workers. Oftentimes, the
audience comes to observe the development of the plot through these two outsiders’ eyes
and is constantly reminded by their comments of how beautiful the land and the people
are (fig. 3.1). Rey Chow eloquently asks in her book Woman and Chinese Modernity
(1991: 3):
The most difficult questions surrounding the demarcation of boundaries
implied by ‘seeing’ have to do not with positivistic taxonomic juxtapositions
of self-contained identities and traditions in the manner of ‘this is you’ and
‘that is us,’ but rather, who is ‘seeing’ whom, and how? What are the power
relationships between the ‘subject’ and ‘object’ of the culturally
overdetermined ‘eye’?
The presence of the onscreen Han spectators and their self-acknowledged alienation from
the local culture verify a “subject” versus “object” power relationship that can be related
to the Han versus minority power relationship. However, designed as comic characters,
their anthropological gaze onto the exotic other is recognized as unreliable, trivial, and
limited. As far as the narrative is concerned, the Han cultural workers’ lack of local
cultural knowledge and misunderstanding of the actual situation make what they see
problematic and comical and thus challenges the validity of the Han-centered viewing
subjectivity. As comic figures, their viewing position is neither privileged nor specifically
gendered. Toward the end of the film, the cultural workers are seen among the audiences
attending a native singer’s performance. The musician is taking notes and the painter is
drawing. We see a native girl in colorful minority costume posing in the background as
the object of the painter’s anthropological gaze. Both her and her image in the watercolor
painting held in the painter’s hands appear in the same frame (fig. 3.2). This multi98
layered mise en scene is particularly interesting because it allows the audience to see
cultural representation in process. The juxtaposition of the “original” (the minority girl)
and the “copy” (the painting of her), with the presence of the unreliable agent (the
painter), reproduces the cultural process of representing the minority Other, and thus calls
attention to the constructed nature of ethnicity in the film itself. Moreover, the gaze, or
“seeing,” is neither unidirectional nor solely masculine.19 It is not always the Han visitors
seeing the minority locals; the local people also return the “gaze.” Just as the minority
folkways are exotic for the Han visitors, the Han visitors also invoke exotic curiosity
from the local people. While the Han visitors cast their anthropological gaze onto the
local objects, they also become the object of the gaze from the local people (fig. 3.3).
As many film scholars have already noted, unlike Hollywood visual culture, in
which the libidinal gaze upon the female body (with the viewing subject typically male)
occupies a central place, this libidinal gaze is not so important in Chinese cinema (Berry
and Farquhar 2006: 109). In Five Golden Flowers, however, the female gaze—with male
object present or absent—is privileged. The first encounter between Apeng and Golden
Flower presents Apeng—on horseback in a low-angle shot, which can be viewed as a
point-of-view shot from Golden Flower’s perspective—as the object of the gaze, while
Golden Flower, squatting among a group of lively girls, quietly measures him with only
her eyes exposed behind a straw hat (fig. 3.4-3.5). It is only after Apeng fixes the carriage
for them that she removes the hat from her face and speaks to him. The delay of exposure
of her physical beauty avoids making her a usual object of desire but puts her at a
subjective position of viewing. In the following horse racing sequence, she is also in a
19
For a sample discussion on how Western theory of “gaze” doesn’t work well with Chinese films, see
Chris Berry 1991.
99
position of “seeing.” Her gaze is dramatically intensified in a series of reaction shots of
her being deeply engaged with Apeng’s performance. The reversed viewing relation that
projects female desire is consistent with the hero-beauty romance expectation in which
female appraisal of male prowess is active. However, Golden Flower’s sexual agency is
compromised by both a comedic need for misunderstanding and coincidence and an
ideological expectation of subjecting personal desire to collective interests. Instead of
celebrating female sexuality, the satisfaction of Golden Flower’s romantic desire is
constantly delayed until the very end. But her active gaze with and without Apeng’s
presence adds to the film’s romantic representation of love as an emotional and erotic
experience.
Cultural exoticism allows the film to more explicitly portray love scenes through
traditional antiphonal singing and projecting female desire, while trying hard to maintain
a balance between the personal, emotional, and romantic feelings and the ideological
values of socialist virtues. It is also significant that the film treats the Bai minority, which
Susan Blum (2001: Chapter 7) says is the ethnic minority most like the Han. As Blum
puts it, the Bai is “almost us” for the Han people. This identification gives the romance in
the film a more universal appeal to a national audience. If making an ethnic minority film
by Han filmmakers is more or less exploitative at the expense of minority subjectivity,
the film nonetheless provides alternative channel for universal longing for beauty,
romance, and comic relief from misunderstanding and coincidence. Through
appropriating domestic ethnic “Other”—or in a process of what Louisa Schein (2000)
terms “internal orientalism”—the film is rewarded with relative freedom to address
personal desires in a more “colorful” manner.
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Repainting Cityscape: Shanghai as a Socialist Metropolis
While Five Golden Flowers was a well-funded color film intended to be exotic and
spectacular, My Day Off was a modest black-and-white film, originally labeled a “xiju
yangshi de jiluxing yishu pian” (comedic docudrama). The quasi-genre “jiluxing yishu
pian” is an awkward and short-lived product of the Great Leap Forward and the
“Removing White-Flag” campaigns. In April and May 1958, Premier Zhou Enlai met
with studio heads and suggested that rather than making poor-quality feature films that
failed to reflect the Great Leap Forward zeitgeist, filmmakers should try to make
“yishuxing de jilupian” (artistic documentary) to reflect the spirited social life and gain
firsthand experience to prepare for quality feature film production. In the feverish
pursuits of high production output, film studios scrambled to produce films based on real
persons and real events to propagate the Great Leap. On the one hand, studios had had a
hard time finding scripts “giving prominence to politics” (tuchu zhengzhi) in the intensity
of the Great Leap Forward and “Removing White Flag” campaigns; on the other hand,
they had to fulfill the high production goals set by the Great Leap. “Docudrama”
provided an efficient way to make simple propaganda films to meet the political demand
for “worker-peasant-soldier and victories in every film” (pianpian gongnongbing, bubu
mantanghong). In the year 1958 alone, there were 49—46.6% of the total feature film
production—such films produced (Chen 1989: 173). However, the fear of violating
political codes made it impractical to document real people. As Jay Leyda observed,
“[m]any documentary films are planned to look like plans [,]” and he reasoned that “[i]n
general the Chinese film does not want spontaneity, does not trust it, and struggles
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resolutely against even an appearance of spontaneity” (1972: 250-251; italics in the
original). Most films produced as part of this trend were superficial political propaganda
designed to fulfill the production “leap” quotas, and the term “yishuxing de jilupian”
(artistic documentary) was quietly replaced by the term “jiluxing yishupian”
(docudrama)—which justified the films’ fictionality and artificiality.
In August 1958, Haiyan Studio assigned the task of writing a script for a
“docudrama” to Li Tianji, a veteran film artist who wrote the script of the modernist
classic Xiao cheng zhi chun (Spring in a small town; dir. Fei Mu, 1948) and gave a
memorable performance as the villain Hou Yibo in Wuya yu maque (Crows and Sparrows;
dir. Zheng Junli, 1949). As someone from “the old society,” it was imperative for him to
express his “immense love” (wuxian re’ai) for the new society. As he put it, “[f]or
someone who once lived in the old Shanghai, he would definitely have deeper feeling for
today’s Shanghai, this socialist industrial metropolis, in the ongoing great leap forward. I
have always wanted to represent and praise the transformation of Shanghai, the
transformation of the cityscape, and the transformation of interpersonal relationships”
([1960] 1963: 1). Li visited various sites in Shanghai’s service circle, from markets to the
public security bureaus, and was entertained by the idea of writing about the people’s
police (renmin jingcha). This was a well-conceived idea, because the relationship
between the masses and police was usually understood as a reflection of the relationship
between the masses and the state. Praising the police’s devoted service to the people
meant praising the state. Moreover, the nature of the police’s job requires them to be in
constant contact with people from all walks of life, which could provide a panoramic
view of contemporary social life. Li’s proposal was accepted by the studio heads, and Li
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was instructed to represent social life as broadly as possible through the plotline of a
policeman’s life. Li wrote the script based on a collage of various real events but with
fictionalized characters and relationships. He intended to make it into a comedy to praise
new persona and new life, without invoking satirical laughter. “Not that satire is no
longer needed, but I feel that it is not needed in a film like this. Using comedy to praise
new character and new life,” Li ([1960] 1963: 3) explained, “is not out of the
consideration of technique, but because life itself is full of joy!”
An Unlikely Comic Hero
Set in 1959 Shanghai, My Day Off starts out as a slice-of-life film with meticulous
documentary attention to everyday details. It opens with a montage of a dynamic city in
the early morning: first a medium shot of street lamps, which are still on as dawn
approaches, then various vehicles running orderly on the neat streets—early trolleys
crossing the street, trucks transporting construction materials, postal workers leaving a
post office on bicycles, tricycles delivering groceries, factory workers going home from
night shift, and the protagonist Ma Tianmin20 riding a bicycle back to his police station,
where the characters on the doorplate are almost discernible—XXX Police Station of
Shanghai Municipal Public Security Bureau. The seemingly insignificant details and
repetitive patterns mark the everydayness of these routine activities that sustain urban life,
and quickly establish the rhythms of the daily life in a “socialist big industrial city”
20
Tianmin is a very allegorical name as it can easily expand to the expression “tiantian wei renmin fufu”
(to serve the people everyday). This association is mentioned in Cui Yongyuan’s television program
Wanmei de yitian (A perfect day) in the Story of Movies series.
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(shehuizhuyi da gongye chengshi)21 that is no longer the degenerate “sin city” seen in
Republican cinema. Then from general to particular, the film follows the one-day
activities of Ma Tianmin, a community policeman who has the day off after a night shift.
Ma is going to be on his first formal date with a model mailwoman Liu Ping, whom he
has met at a conference of district model workers, but he keeps missing his meetings with
her because he helps others in emergencies. In the end, the situation seems nearly
hopeless when Ma fails to show up on time for an arranged dinner with the Liu family
and his awkwardness to explain furthers misunderstanding, but Liu Ping’s father turns
out to be one of the people he helps earlier that day, and all ends well.
Ma Tianmin is distinctive from the usual comic hero in cinema. Neither a smarty
nor tragic-comic “little man” or self-mocking petite urbanite, Ma is an everyday man. It
was the first lead role for the actor Zhong Xinghuo and it immediately made him a major
star. According to Zhong, director Lu Ren cast him for his simple and honest
personality.22 Unlike typical proletarian heroes in revolutionary films, who are physically
strong and ideologically pure,23 in My Day Off, the comic hero Ma Tianmin is simple,
honest, good-tempered but awkward in speech and very shy. An orphan who once begged
in old Shanghai, he is now a residential policeman whose daily routine is coordinating
residential affairs such as registering newborn babies, checking neighborhood sanitation,
21
This is the term that the screen writer Li Tianji used in his essay “Yao xuexi, yao gesong—xiezuo Jintian
wo xiuxi de ganshou” (Must learn, must praise—my experience of writing My Day Off). Originally
published in Wenhui bao (January 15, 1960), reprinted in XJDYTLJ, 1-3.
22
The original descriptions that Lu Ren puts in Tianjin dialect were “sha, da, hei, ma, cu” (silly, big, darkskinned, rough, and coarse”—in other words, someone who had rural background and was not very
sophisticated. For more information, see Zhong Xinghuo’s interview in Story of Movies.
23
This tendency of glorifying proletarian heroes later is summed up in three characters: gao (tall), da
(great), quan (perfect).
104
and other aspects of ordinary people’s daily life. Despite the quotidian setting and the
ordinary hero, however, the film manages to generate laughter through extensive use of
accident, coincidence, and misunderstanding, usually caused by Ma’s altruistic devotion
to helping anyone who crosses his path and his shyness to explain himself. Most of the
comic effects are thus situational rather than comedian-led. The narrative structure of the
film is very similar to the Western comedic model that consists of a protasis (prologue, or
exposition), an epitasis (complication), a catastasis (a new and further element of
complication), and a catastrophe (resolution).24 First we learn from Ma Tianming’s
conversations with factory workers that he has a day off. The photo on his desk that he
affectionately gazes at shows Sister Yao and Liu Ping, two female postal workers. From
the following conversation between Yao and Liu, the romantic interest between Liu and
Ma becomes clear, and Yao is going to formally introduce them. After this segment of
protasis comes the epitasis. Yao brings Liu to visit Ma in his dorm; however, Ma is out
helping in the community dining hall. His supervisor, Yu, who is the husband of Yao,
finds him and tells him about Liu’s visit. But the happy Ma Tianming is delayed on his
way back home because he stops a traffic violator. When he gets home, Liu Ping has
returned to her own job but Yao leaves a message asking Ma to wait for Liu at Yao’s
place. However, on his way to Yao’s place, Ma sees an old man struggling in the river to
rescue a piglet. He helps the man save the piglet and discovers that the old man is a
peasant who has lost his way to a steel mill to which he is delivering the piglets as a
repayment for the factory workers’ help in fighting a drought. Ma not only manages to
help him feed the hungry piglets but also finds the steel mill and arranges the pickup. On
24
See Marvin T. Herrick 1964: 106-10; 119-22. Also cited in Steve Neale and Frank Krutnik, Popular Film
and Television Comedy (London and New York: Routledge, 1990), 26-27.
105
his way he also has another unpleasant exchange with the same traffic violator who has
now hurt himself. Again, he misses his meeting with Liu. Sister Yao gives him a movie
ticket and warns him to be there on time this time. But the situation is complicated again.
A child in the community faints and his parents are away. Without hesitation, Ma
Tianmin sends the child to hospital and stays until the child recovers. When he finally
arrives at the movie theater, the movie is just over. Ma is nevertheless given another
opportunity—to join Liu’s family dinner at 7 p.m.. This is when the catastasis comes. A
lost wallet with a big sum of cash, a reference letter, and a ticket for an early morning
train is returned to the police station. With no one else available to handle the case, Ma
sets out to look for the owner whose name is Luo Ailan (lit. love-Lan, usually a feminine
name, thus generating the comic suspense when it turns out to be a man). When he finally
finds Luo after contacting many hotels, he is surprised to see the impertinent traffic
violator. It turns out that Luo is originally from Shanghai but has relocated to the
northwestern city of Lanzhou to support frontier development and he changes his name to
Ailan because he loves the new industrial city. Despite Ma’s protest, overenthusiastic
Luo forces him to stay and have dinner with him. Of course, Ma is late for the dinner at
the Liu’s. But the catastrophe comes to his rescue: just as he is about to leave
embarrassed, Liu Ping’s father comes out of the inner room and recognizes him.
Re-allocating Urban Space
Despite their obvious socioeconomic, ideological, and aesthetic differences, Ma
Tianmin’s eventful journey through Shanghai streets, from the perspective of narrative
function, both invokes and contrasts that of a flaneur—a “gentleman stroller of city
106
streets,” first identified by Charles Baudelaire and prominently featured in Walter
Benjamin’s discussions of modernity. Not unlike Baudelaire and Benjamin’s flaneur, Ma
Tianming is someone who is able to move freely through a modern urban space. Because
of his job as a residential policeman and his having a day off, he has full access to the city
and interacts with people from all walks of life. But unlike the uninvolved but highly
perceptive bourgeois dilettante in Baudelaire and Benjamin’s descriptions, Ma Tianmin is
not just an urban observer; he is also a deeply involved participant in the city life. And
more predictably, contrast to the independence and anonymity that characterize the
flaneur’s urban experience, Ma’s city wandering is marked by communal cohesion and
acquaintanceship. Making the film into a situational comedy centering on this “free
stroller’s” one-day journey provides a most effective tool to display the changing
cityscape of Shanghai, evoking what Yingjin Zhang terms “temporalization of space” in
his analysis of the Republican film Yashui qian (A New Year’s Coin; dir. Zhang
Shichuan, 1937).25
Though the film industry in the early years of the PRC had been decentralized and
Shanghai was no longer the only place to make film, the city continued to be of cinematic
interest. Films such as Bu ye cheng (City without night; dir. Tang Xiaodan, 1957); Hushi
riji (The diary of a nurse; dir. Tao Jin, 1957), Nülan wu hao (Woman basketball player
No. 5; dir. Xie Jin, 1957), Qiuchang fengbo (Trouble on the playground; dir. Mao Yu,
1957), Xingfu (Happiness; dir. Tian Ran, Fu Chaowu, 1957), Shanghai guniang
(Shanghai girls; dir. Cheng Yin, 1958), Sanmao xue shengyi (Sanmao learns to do
business; dir. Huang Zuolin, 1958), etc., are all set (completely or partially) in Shanghai
25
See Zhang 1996, particularly 126-28.
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or concerned with Shanghai identity. In those films, the shiny modernity of Shanghai as
an international metropolis where glamour and sin converges with Westernization and
consumerism still serves as backdrop and as evidence of the city’s disgraceful past.
Consistent with Chinese cinema’s fascination about Shanghai cityscape, My Day
Off also presents the city with uninhibited appreciation in an almost documentary visual
style, allowing the audience to follow Ma Tianmin as he moves between various locales
of Shanghai. However, the cityscape of Shanghai in this film is radically different from
that in earlier films. The familiar urban motifs—the stylish architecture on the (in)famous
Bund, neon lights on Nanjing Road, luxury cars, dancehalls, the racetrack, filthy and
overcrowded shantytowns, along with its extremely diversified residents (Westerners,
compradors, businessmen, socialites, petite urbanities, prostitutes, unemployed
intellectuals, gangsters, factory workers, street vendors, waifs, etc.)—become entirely
invisible in the film. The traces of the city’s colonial past are wiped clean from the screen.
In place of the neon lights, skyscrapers, dance halls, shabby back alleys crowded with
prostitutes, gamblers, and the unemployed as we see in Republican films and New China
films that concern Shanghai’s past, a different mapping of Shanghai urban life is
displayed. Following the footsteps of highly mobile Ma Tianmin, the film showcases the
clean and orderly streets, a police station, a post office, a dorm, a public dining hall, a
residential compound for workers, factories, Suzhou River, a new movie theater (the new
Soviet-styled Hengshan Theater, rather than the older, Western-styled Grant Theater or
Majestic Theater), a barber shop, a children’s hospital, hostels, a workers’ residential
compound, etc. Through characters’ dialogues, the film praises the great transformation
of Shanghai in the ten years since Liberation. The city of glamour and sin is replaced by a
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clean, orderly, modest city of hardworking people. And the aloof and indifferent flaneur
is substituted by altruistic working class heroes who enthusiastically devote themselves to
socialist construction and mutual aid. Space and time are both ideologically loaded. The
camera carefully shuns Shanghai’s infamous past embodied in the Western-styled
buildings on the Bund but focuses on the new worker’s residential compound, new
hospital, factory, market, etc. The new Shanghai is represented by its industrialization,
spirits of serving the people, sites of everyday life (such as dining hall, market, barber
shop, etc.), working people, collaboration between urban and rural (workers go to
countryside to help peasants build irrigation projects, and peasants send pigs to the city in
gratitude), and, less visible but ubiquitous, the sunshine.26
More noteworthy, the composition of the urban dwellers changes. As Yingjin
Zhang (1996: 117) notes, Shanghai is often configured as a type of gudao (solitary
island), “isolated from Chinese tradition, cut off from China’s past, and precariously
plunged into a sea of modernity.” In My Day Off, however, Shanghai is configured as a
national city. Ma Tianmin is not originally from Shanghai, but he now lives in the city
and has full access to it. In contrast, Luo Ailan, the impertinent traffic violator, is
originally from Shanghai but relocated to Lanzhou, a newly-developed industrial city in
the northwest. Liu Ping’s father, the old peasant who is delivering piglets to a Shanghai
steel mill, lives in a rural area outside Shanghai, but his son and daughter are both
working in Shanghai. The sequence of rescuing the piglets jumping into the river out of
hungry emphasizes the intimate mutual aid between the city and the rural area and the
fluid boundaries between the two. Shanghai is no longer a hostile and alienating place
26
Shanghai in the bright daytime contrasts with the usual representations of Shanghai’s dissolute nightlife
in earlier films.
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that rejects or swallows outsiders but is reconfigured as an egalitarian space in which
everyone helps everyone.27 It is presented as both an open metropolis and a close-knit
local community in which everyone is connected. In the context of Shanghai film
culture,28 where the audience’s memories about Republican cinema was still fresh, the
change of film stars’ onscreen persona all adds to the film’s message of socialism’s
transformative power. For example, Shangguan Yunzhu, who is famous for her many
delicate and seductive petite bourgeois female roles, such as the collaborator’s wife He
Wenyan in Yijiang chunshui xiang dong liu (A River of Spring River Flows East; dir. Cai
Chusheng, Zheng Junli, 1947), the seductress Shi Mimi in Taitai wanshui (Long Live the
Mistress; dir. Sang Hu, 1947), and the cowish wife of teacher Hua in Crows and
Sparrows, however, plays a modest senior doctor in the film (fig. 3.5).
The “documentary interest” of My Day Off should be understood in the sense that,
as particular textual production of “jiluxing yishupian,” it was shaped by—and in turn
shaped—the formation of the superiority of socialist discourse. Spatiality and temporality
weave together a tapestry of socialist utopia out of Shanghai. While the idealized picture
of the socialist community is consistent with the state ideology, the quotidian, trivial,
personal, and emotional concerns in the film dilute the propaganda message and speak to
people’s every desires.
27
This is summarized by the scriptwriter Li Tianji ([1960] 1963: 3) as the new social ethics “wo wei
renren” (to serve everyone).
28
For an example of how the audience missed the Republican stars, see Li Xing, “Guanzhong xuyao kan
shenmeyang de yingpian,” originally published in Wenhuibao (December 17, 1956), reprinted in Wu 2006:
2: 74-75.
110
Intellectual as Comic Hero
Assigning comic attributes to intellectual characters gains some currency in post-1949
films because they belong to a problematic group—not an independent class—that needs
to reform in the new society. For example, in Women cunli de nianqingren (The Young
People in Our Village; dir. Su Li, 1959).29 Li Keming, a high school graduate, is
considered an intellectual by the village people. He is physically weak and mentally
feeble. Longing for urban life, he chooses to stay in the village only because he is
attracted to Kong Shuzhen—another high school graduate who chooses to devote herself
to transforming the village—and without hesitation breaks off the relationship with his
girlfriend of many years. These negative features often subject Li to practical jokes and
ridicule; he is someone to laugh at. The eulogistic comedy Better and Better, however,
distinguishes itself by making its positive comic hero—someone to laugh with—an
intellectual. Played by the renowned comedian Han Fei (1919-1985),30 Duan Zhigao, like
the Han cultural workers in Five Golden Flowers, is also an outsider. At the beginning of
the film, Duan arrives at a small remote railway station. Originally a teacher from a
railway technology institute, he is sent to the station to “be tempered” (duanlian). But
unlike the two Han cultural workers in Five Golden Flowers, who are minor characters
29
Although some contemporary scholars (e.g. Rao 2005a) include this film in the category of eulogistic
comedy, it was not usually considered as a comedy but a drama with some comic elements; therefore, it
was not included in the discussions of socialist comedy in the 1950s-60s.
30
Han Fei had established his stardom on Republican huaju stage and in popular films such as Long Live
the Wife and many Hong Kong productions, including Yiban zhi ge (The dividing wall; dir. Bai Chen and
Zhu Shilin, 1952), and Zhongqiu yue (Festival moon; dir. Zhu Shilin, 1953). In 1957, he was recognized for
personal achievements at the Cultural Bureau Awards for Films Between 1949 and 1955. However, he
didn’t have many opportunities to play comic roles (he starred only in one film Happiness) after returning
from Hong Kong in 1952 (cf. Chapter 2, p. 24). It was until the second wave of comedy filmmaking that he
became active, starring in Qiao laoye shangjiao (Master Qiao amounts sedan; dir. Liu Qiong, 1957), Nü
lifashi (Female barber; dir. Ding Ran, 1962), Moshushi de qiyu (Strange adventure of a magician; dir. Sang
Hu, 1962).
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visiting the area temporarily, Duan is the protagonist of the film, and completes the
transition from a displaced outsider to a productive community member. After some
comic disruptions of the established local order, he is both transformed by his experience
at the station and transforms the place by becoming an integral part of the local
community. Not only does he help modernize the place, as the film suggests, he also wins
a local girl Tieying’s affections and stays there to take over a retiree’s position. With the
collaboration among the workers, peasants, and the intellectual, the small railway station
and its surrounding rural area are becoming “better and better.”
Creating such a protagonist was made possible in the changing political and
economic circumstance for filmmaking in the early 1960s. The disastrous failure of the
Great Leap Forward forced Mao Zedong to temporarily hand over the state leadership to
pragmatist Liu Shaoqi, who pursued deradicalization in state policies and loosening up of
official control in artistic production under the new leadership. The “Two Hundreds”
policy was reiterated. In June and July 1961, two national meetings—the National
Symposium of the Tasks of Literature and Arts, and National Meeting of Feature Film
Production—were held concurrently in Beijing Xinqiao Hotel, which were later named
together as the “Xinqiao Conference.” On June 19, Zhou Enlai made an important speech
on artistic democracy and the relationships between art and politics and between art and
the people. “Without image (xingxiang), art wouldn’t even exist. As nonentity, how could
art serve politics? Slogans are not literature and art.” He further stressed the importance
of audience reception: “The masses want entertainment and relaxation when they go to
the theater and the movies. You need to contain your educational purposes in
entertainment through vivid and representative performance…The quality of an art work
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should be decided by the people, not the leaders.”31 At the National Drama, Opera, and
Children’s Play Production Symposium (known as “Guangzhou Forum”) in March 1962,
Zhou Enlai made a report on intellectual issues, thatstressed that the intellectual should
not be grouped with the capitalist class because most of them “are able to withstand trials
(jingdeqi kaoyan) just like workers and peasants.”32 Four days later, Vice Premier Chen
Yi further clarified the point, stating: “[Chinese intellectuals] are people’s workers. They
are the brainworkers serving the proletariat. Worker, peasant, and intellectual are three
components of our country’s laboring people. They are the master [of our country]…The
hat (maozi: figurative expression for political label) of capitalist intellectual should be
taken off.”33 In July, the ban on twenty films (including Happiness, Before the New
Director Arrives, and a few other comedy films) was lifted while forty-six Great Leap
Forward films were no longer distributed. This adjustment in the Party’s cultural policies
was reciprocated by filmmakers, who, even though still with worries, expected more
freedom in their artistic creation34 and became more productive. The shift from political
didacticism to popular entertainment was obvious. In 1962 alone there were six popular
comedy films made and distributed (including Li Shuangshuang, the winner of the Best
Feature Film, Best Screen Script, Best Actress, Best Supporting Actor of the Second
31
Zhou Enlai, “Zai Wenyi gongzuo zuotanhui he Quanguo gushipian chuangzuo huiyi shang de jianghua,”
in Dang he guojia lingdaoren lun wenyi (Beijing: Wenhua yishu chubanshe, 1982), 30-58. Cited in Chen
1989: 1: 223.
32
Cited in Chen 1989:1:223.
33
Chen Yi, “Zai Quanguo huaju, geju, ertongju chuangzuo zuotanhui shang de jianghua,” in Dang he
guojia lingdaoren lun wenyi (Beijing: Wenhua yishu chubanshe, 1982), 119-177. Cited in Chen 1989: 1:
224.
34
See, for example, film star Zhao Dan jokingly asked Premier Zhou to grant him an “exonerative tablet”
that could spare him from being struggled (miandou pai). This is recorded in multiple articles in Chen
Huangmei’s recollection of Zhou Enlai, Yongheng de jinian (Chongqing: Chongqing chubanshe, 1992).
113
Hundred Flowers Award), followed by seven more comedies in 1963. While some of
these films were labeled “light comedy” and some others carried on the tradition of satiric
art in period comedy, Better and Better stood out as an eulogistic comedy featuring all
positive characters—with an intellectual as the protagonist.
Many of the comic effects in the film are generated by Duan’s inexperience with
rural life and the discrepancy between his intellectual understanding and the down-toearth local practice. Despite his good intentions, his urban mannerism often makes him
look like a fool—but effectively entertains the audience. Early in the film, Duan
encounters a railway worker who warns him about bears in the area. Duan is scared and
genteelly asks for tips.35 Amused, the worker kids him by telling him to smile if he meets
one, because “bears like polite people.” Later in the film, Duan comes upon a bear for
real. In a panic, he remembers the words of the worker and forces himself to smile at the
bear (fig. 3.11-3.12). He is smart and courageous enough to escape out of the window,
locking the bear inside. Duan’s urban character—as embodied in his accordion, books,
and pictures—is scorned by the conservative and stubborn “Lao huaibiao” (Old Pocket
Watch), who is already upset by his upcoming retirement and being replaced by Duan.
The incongruity between Duan’s good will and his failure to grasp the real situation often
serves as the source (or excuse?) of laughter in the tradition of slapstick. For example,
Duan over-enthusiastically helps two passengers get on a moving train and stops the third
one, but it turns out that the third one is the passenger who really needs to catch the train
while the other two are just seeing him off. In another sequence, Duan tries to feed piglets
in a “scientific manner” but does not know how to control them when they are running
35
Duan uses very literary words: “If you encounter a bear by chance, what measure should you adopt?”
(Yaoshi yidan gen gouxiong zaoyu le, yinggai caiqu shenme cuoshi?)
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loose. These incidents confirm to Old Pocket Watch that Duan does not “fit” in the
remote railway station.
Yet as the film progresses, Duan’s intellectual knowledge gradually shows its
value. Far from being useless and indifferent, he enthusiastically helps the self-taught
“Xiao faming” (Little Inventor) and Tieying with designing a water-generated power
system, which is most needed to modernize the rural area. It is only through the
collaboration between the intellectuals and workers/peasants that modernity—as
symbolized by electricity—may be realized. The marriage of “Lao jiejue” (Master
Resolver), the old railway station director, and “Pang dashao” (Sister Fatty), the head of
the local production team, also serves as a symbolic union of modern industrial force and
agricultural productivity for a better life. The initially jarring relationship between
imported intellectual knowledge (based on theory) and local wisdom (based on practice)
and their gradual syncretion are best illustrated in the timber-hauling song scene, which
Jay Leyda (1972: 312) has highly praised.36 Duan, as a music lover and performer (Old
Pocket Watch sneers at his accordion when he first arrives at the station), is assigned a
task of writing a timber-hauling song for the station workers, who are going to help the
surrounding village to haul timber for transportation the next day. Duan works
enthusiastically on composition, drawing on his musicological knowledge. However, his
carefully chosen syncopation—to make the tune sound “powerful” (youli)—confuses the
timber carriers and they can not follow the rhythm. This provokes further resentment
36
Leyda comments: “The fine jazzy scene of the timber-hauling song could only have come from a group
of film inventors—writer, director, composer, cameramen, actors, all! The whole film used film ideas
instead of clinging to literature, and the effect was of a sparkling piece of music that you regret must end. I
was so delighted with the film that I had to be carefully solemn in my report: ‘…a great but modest
contribution to the development of a specifically Chinese comedy film’” (1972: 312; italic in the original).
115
from Old Pocket Watch. So Master Resolver takes over and effectively leads the team
with his folk-styled working song. Not only is the whole team of male workers mobilized
by his song and joins the chorus, but Sister Fatty also joins in and turns the singing
antiphonal. The improvisational lyrics, starting out seriously with a focus on the work
and praising the use of timber in construction, soon shift to the playful and the personal:
Master Resolver reminds “Qin guangbo” (Qin the Broadcaster) to pay attention to his
pace; Sister Fatty relates the timber to building a bridal chamber and alludes to the
folktale of the Herd Boy and Weaving Fairy (suggesting her longing for romance); Qin
the Broadcaster teasingly comments that Master Resolver and Sister Fatty make a perfect
match (zheng yidui); and the young girl Tieying makes a naughty gesture at Sister Fatty.
All the while Duan Zhigao gasps in admiration at the beauty and power of the “genuine
voices of laboring people” (laodong renmin de shengyin) and busies himself with taking
notes. The whole sequence highlights an idealized community that can coordinate well
the communal and personal, the industrial and rural, the endemic and ecdemic, man and
woman, and the worker, peasant, and the intellectual.
The small railway station forms a liminal space that bridges tradition and
modernity, a conjunctive node in China’s modernization project. Connecting the preindustrial rural area to the outside world, it is neither rural nor urban, and is both selfcontained and open. Duan, the visiting intellectual, occupies a similarly liminal state of
being betwixt and between. Showing him at a loss on the margin of the frame when his
song does not work, the film visualizes the fact that he is a fellow productive member of
the community yet not part of the culture (fig. 3.7). But the frustration quickly shifts to
the advantageous position of an observer and recorder (fig. 3.8). And when Duan’s
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education enables him to contribute in a way that local people cannot—to design a watergenerated power station—and his local knowledge develops, he completes his transition
from the liminal to a stable state by becoming an integral part of the community. This
transition is not only manifested in the form of Duan absorbing folk heritage (e.g., when
we see him carrying the generator with others later in the film, he is leading a working
song in Master Resolver’s style), but also in the community’s welcome of the changes
that he helps bring to the station. The completion of the transition is marked by Duan
Zhigao replacing Old Pocket Watch, who now happily retires, at the ticket counter. At the
end of the film, the station employees, who used to dress casually half the time, are all
dressed in crispy new uniforms, and spiritedly work in the station now powered by
electricity. Sister Fatty, now married to Master Resolver, also helps him with station
business. Along with Duan’s individual transformation, the railway station also makes its
collective transition from the ambiguous space of a semi-grassroots community to a
uniformed state organ.
Discourse of Love: Individual Desire and Communal Endorsement
From the description of the three films above, it should be clear that romance has a
prominent presence in the narrative of eulogistic comedy. Love is expected, experienced,
contemplated, and celebrated as a positive force that can contribute to socialist
construction. There are no significant individual and social obstacles (except for bad
timing) to overcome in the characters’ love lives. The films generally concern love and
duty, which, instead of being in constant conflicts, are reconciled by heroes and heroines’
socialist virtues, which unify the social, moral and sexual requirements for a happy union.
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Marriage based on “true love” is encouraged in Maoist China, but it has to be approached
“correctly,” that is, as Harriet Evans (1997: 90) summarizes, it should “consistently put
shared social and political commitment in pride of place in the hierarchy of criteria for
selecting a partner.” Evans (1997: 91) goes on to state: “[t]he overriding importance the
official discourse attached to love as a social, political and moral response dictated the
terms of its representation.” This official discourse of love is manifested in all three films
analyzed here and in fact constitutes the common comic plot, in which the final union of
the pairs in love is delayed again and again because the hero (note: it is usually a hero
embarking on a journey in pursuit of a heroine) puts social good before private pleasure.
In Five Golden Flowers, Apeng delays his meeting with Golden Flower not only because
of the misunderstanding caused by the namesake but also because he voluntarily helps
people in need. In My Day Off, Ma Tianmin misses his date again and again because he
helps people who cross his path. In Better and Better, the union of Master Resolver and
Sister Fatty is delayed because the former devotes himself to working for the communal
good without being concerned with personal happiness. Evans (1997: 91) continues in
her analysis of socialist love discourse:
The ideological values informing the discourse cancelled out possible
descriptions of love as an emotional, romantic and erotic experience.
Physical attraction, excitement and longing for loved one came too close to
the dangerous territory of bourgeoise attitudes to be permitted explicit
reference as aspects of love. However, they could be useful in negative
relief.
This may be true in pre-1957 satirical comedies, such as Ruci duoqing (So full of
passions; dir. Fang Ying, 1956), Xun ai ji (Seeking love; dir. Wang Yan, 1957), and
Happiness, which deride vanity, insincerity, and pleasure-oriented pursuit of love as
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unacceptable or even immoral modes of behavior. However, this is not the case in
eulogistic comedies. As I argue, the possible description of love as an emotional,
romantic, and erotic experience is not cancelled out in the films’ positive representation
of what is acceptable and desirable. The ambiguity of the film’s visual language provides
a cryptic site for personal desires, even though these personal desires have to acquire
communal endorsement and may have to be substituted and masquerade as a collective
action.
Love—which is supposed to lead to marriage—is a matter of individual as much
as collective interest. Understandably, no physical intimacy between the lovers in sexual
terms is allowed to be shown on New China’s screen; however, the intimate feeling and
companionship are legitimate and unambiguously manifested in sly smiles and
affectionate gazes, accompanied by the happy surveillance of the well-intentioned
community. While both men and women are given increasing personal and social
responsibilities in the project of socialist construction, it is still the personal and the
implied sexual desire that lead to romance. Personal desire for the opposite sex and for a
better life is acknowledged as legitimate and is visible in these eulogistic films. And
following the tradition of prominent female roles in romance in the vernacular and folk
literature traditions, female desire for their male object is visually pronounced in these
eulogistic comedies. This could serve the purpose as a reversal of power structure in
romance for comic effect and also constitute a reaction to Western cinematic conventions,
which prioritize male gaze at a female object of desire. For example, as mentioned above,
Apeng is first introduced as the center of female gaze when he stops by the girls’ broken
carriage. The film immediately identifies him as the object of Golden Flower’s romantic
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desire by showing her, among a group of girls, shyly covering her face but constantly
gazing upon him (fig. 3.4-3.5). Golden Flower’s affection for Apeng is projected
intensely through a series of reaction shots of her nervously watching Apeng in the horse
race. In another scene, after attending the tractor-driver Golden Flower’s wedding, the
heroine Golden Flower retreats to her room and gazes at herself in the mirror on the wall.
Her expressions reflected in the mirror—ranging from longing, fascination, passion, to
sudden shyness, at which point she covers her face with hands—show her desire and selfconsciousness of her own desire for an absent object Apeng (fig. 3.9).
However, while cultural exoticism allows Five Golden Flowers to address
personal desire in a more direct (and potentially erotic) way, in My Day Off, romantic
interest is objectified and mediated through still photographic images. There is no direct
interaction between the hero and heroine until the end of the film. The image of Liu Ping
first appears in a photograph of her and Sister Yao that Ma Tianmin affectionately gazes
at early in the film (fig. 3.7-3.8). Although it is not clearly identified which one is Ma’s
romantic interest and the two women are both shown in postal worker’s uniform, the age
difference between the two (Yao is clearly older than Liu and Ma) can easily lead the
audience to surmise that it is the younger of the two. Shortly after this scene, Sister Yao
addresses Liu Ping in a busy postal office and talks to her on their way out about formally
introducing Liu to Ma Tianmin. Yao gives Liu a photo of Ma. A close-up of Ma’s
photograph is followed by Liu Ping’s shy but satisfied smile. Her wanting to know
whether it is truly Ma Tianmin himself who proposes to meet her indicates an insistence
on reciprocal attraction rather than just a “good person” recommended by other people
(fig. 3.9-3.10). The indirectness of romantic interaction through still photos reminds the
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audience of the traditional Chinese romance where objects—such as a handkerchief—
were symbols of the loved one.37 Replacing the real object of desire with an image both
delays and enhances the comic suspense of the promised romance in the film.
Photograph gazing as a way of showing personal desire also appears in Better and
Better. The main subplot in the film is about the undeclared love between middle-aged
Master Resolver and Sister Fatty. Again, female desire is foregrounded while male desire
is suppressed by devotion to the communal good. While Master Resolver checks the sick
calf outside, Sister Fatty cleans his room for him. Her view is soon attracted to a photo of
him on the table. Taking a quick glance at Master Resolver through the window, she
turns around, affectionately takes up the photo, and wipes away the dust on the frame
(figs. 3.11-3.12). This gesture of turning away from the real object of desire but focusing
on a photographic replica of that object of desire is particularly interesting. Susan
Sontag’s comments on photography are instructive in this case:
A photograph is both a pseudo-presence and a token of absence. Like a
wood fire in a room, photographs—especially those of people, of distant
landscapes and faraway cities, of the vanished past—are incitements to
reverie. The sense of the unattainable that can be set off by photographs
feeds directly into the erotic feelings of those for whom desirability is
enhanced by distance. The lover’s photograph in a woman’s wallet, the
poster photograph of a rock star over an adolescent’s bed, the snapshots of
a cabdriver’s children above his dashboard—all such talismanic uses of
photographs express a feeling both sentimental and implicitly magical,
attempts to contact another reality. (Sontag 1993: 135; my italicization)
The juxtaposition of Master Resolver (framed in the window in the background) and the
photo of him (held in Sister Fatty’s hand) illustrates the paradoxical functions of the
photograph as both a “pseudo-presence” and a “token of absence.” As a “pseudopresence,” it allows Sister Fatty to address her personal desire for Master Resolver; as a
37
Thanks Kirk Denton for alerting me of this possible connection.
121
“token of absence” with the real object of desire in fact present in the background, it also
indicates the difficulty of directly expressing personal desire, which has to be transferred
to a still photo. The photo of Master Resolver thus both constructs and deconstructs Sister
Fatty’s personal desire.
In all three films analyzed here, it is the community that eventually brings the
lovers together. Romance has to be justified by the lovers’ socialist virtues and devotion
to the community and is made possible only by communal endorsement. The evocation of
virtue is as crucial as romance in eulogistic comedies. And the protagonists’ virtue will
be rewarded with romance with the help and blessing of the community. While Golden
Flower is in conflict between her desire to meet Apeng and her sense of duty as the vice
commune director, it is the people around her that help her look for Apeng, clarify the
misunderstandings, and try to bring them together. Ma Tianmin’s awkward situation is
saved by the deus ex machina—Liu Ping’s father—and further clarified by his supervisor
who arrives a little bit later. In Better and Better, the community knows about Master
Resolver and Sister Fatty’s undeclared feelings for each other and is eager to help. One
night Master Resolver is talking to himself about the need for getting the generator from
Sister Fatty’s production team. His words are overheard by his neighbor Qin the
Broadcaster who mistakes the object of his desire as Sister Fatty and who decides to set
them up. When the two lovers come to the date, the confusion of two different objects of
desire (the generator and the promise of a wedding) invokes much laughter. Once the
confusion is clarified and the personal desire is catalyzed by the accident, personal desire
and communal good are fused. The fusion is best illustrated in the wedding sequence, in
which the bridal sedan is transformed into the generator carrier accompanied by the
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young Duan Zhigao and Tieying (the potentially valid but undeveloped romantic thread)
while the newlyweds Master Resolver and Sister Fatty walk hand in hand in a separate
scene.
The convergence of nationalistic agenda and personal experience is also
highlighted in the happy endings of the eulogistic comedies. In all these films, although
delayed by misunderstanding, bad timing, coincidence, etc, the protagonists eventually
reunite, and their happiness is shared by everyone in the community. Personal happiness
and communal happiness converge in the couple’s union. The stress on commonality of
the new socialist persona and collectivism is best exemplified by the multiplication of the
namesake Golden Flower as five beautiful minority model workers and the “Ten
Thousand Golden Flowers” campaign in Yunnan after the release of the film Five Golden
Flowers. However, the collectivism still works subordinately to the theme of the
protagonists’ personal faithfulness and happiness. Love is presented as a positive
emotional experience built on physical attraction as well as socialist virtues—devotion to
communal construction, consideration for others, and above all, faithfulness. Although
there are four other beautiful Golden Flowers, Apeng’s love focuses on a single and
irreplaceable object of desire. Prioritizing the communal welfare over the pursuit of
personal happiness is not merely an ideological obligation. More important, it is a plot
device—like trials and tribulations that are necessary in melodrama and Western
romantic comedy—to create suspense and surprise for comedic effects.
Parents are absent from the narrative in the three eulogistic comedies analyzed
here. Golden Flower’s parents are said to have passed away. She lives with her grandpa,
whom Apeng happens to help. Apeng, from a neighboring county, only mentions in
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passing that he is from a family of ironsmiths. Ma Tianmin is an orphan. Liu Ping lives
with her brother and sister-in-law while her father still resides in the countryside. Duan
Zhigao comes to the railway station alone with no family background mentioned;
Tieying’s parents are present but never take on much narrative weight. Master Resolver
and Sister Fatty both are middle-aged singles with no familial ties shown in the film.
Neither is there an explanation for why they have remained single for so long. The
absence of parental figures—who often act as patriarchal interferers in earlier social
satires, such as Putao shu le de shihou (When Grapes are Ripe; dir. Wang Jiayi, 1952)
and Zhao Xiaolan (dir. Lin Yang, 1953)—naturalizes the protagonists’ autonomy and,
more important, signals the diminished influence of the domestic sphere, allowing the
communal—and comic—intervention that eventually brings the couple together. By
dissolving familial boundaries, the films enhance the sense of socialist utopia that aims at
abolishing any social classifications. Also, it suggests that there is more to people’s life
than domesticity, a theme that is developed in what I call “the comedy of working woman
and working man,” to be discussed in Chapter 5.
Transforming Reality for the Screen: Spectacle, Utopia, and Everyday Truth
As discussed briefly above, a cinema of attraction provides one perspective to approach
eulogistic comedies. Exhibitionism is evident in the films as seen in the musical numbers
in Five Golden Flowers and Better and Better, transitional shots of landscape or cityscape
in all three, and direct look and speech at the camera by the characters in Better and
Better, etc. These features and the overall realistic narrative mode often blur the
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boundaries between the real and the fictional and try to build a connection between the
audience and the film.
The pre-credit sequence of Better and Better is accompanied by an unidentified
narrator who introduces and makes comments on the small railway station, speaking to
the audience in a journalistic manner. When the voiceover introduces the individual
characters, it is as if they are interviewed, and the characters respond directly toward the
camera. The direct speech of the characters toward the camera breaks down the boundary
between onscreen space (presumably fictional) and offscreen space (presumably real). As
in the early cinema that Tom Gunning (1986: 64) analyzes, this technique displays the
cinema’s own visibility, “willing to rupture a self-enclosed fictional world for a chance to
solicit the attention of the spectator.” In doing so, the film establishes the rapport between
text and spectator. The lack of concern with creating a self-sufficient narrative world
upon the screen sets a utopian tone from the onset. Jim Collins (1981: 139) considers the
inclusion of the audience in the textual illusion in Hollywood musical as essential
because “the very nature of the text glorifies entertainment; if the viewer enjoys
participating, he shares the success of the performance.” In this sense, entertainment and
propaganda have a lot in common. Richard Dyer (1981: 177) argues that the central
thrust of entertainment is utopianism and that, while “Entertainment offers the image of
‘something better’ to escape into, or something we want deeply that our day-to-day lives
don’t provide,” it “does not, however, present models of utopian worlds…Rather the
utopianism is contained in the feelings it embodies.” Echoing Dyer, Richard Taylor (2000:
13) concludes his study of the Stalinist musicals:
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…the Stalinist musical did both: it presented models of utopian
worlds…while also embodying the utopian feelings that stimulated audience
identification. The task of Soviet cinema in the 1930s and 1940s was to
convince audiences that, whatever their current hardships, life could become
as it was depicted on the screen: life not as it is, but as it will be. In this reel
utopia, if not in everyday reality as then experienced by cinema audiences,
the Stalinist slogan ‘Life has become happier, comrades, life has become
more joyous’ was made real.”
Although the aesthetics and effect of Chinese eulogistic comedy are fundamentally
different from those of Hollywood and even Soviet musicals, they do share the intention
to glorify their individual purposes— to eulogize, to entertain, or both. The use of
choreographed chorus in Better and Better adds to the spirited verve and playfulness of
the comedy. While the aforementioned working song sequence in the film is still mostly
realistic, the musical number in the field during the harvest in that film, however,
immediately turns the representational farming land into a stage-like, nonrepresentational
space. The sequence is obviously influenced by Soviet musical comedies in which
working people burst out singing and dancing in their working place. In the field, the
peasants (most of them female), led by the animated young girl Tieying, burst into a
chorus. The highly choreographed musical number starts out seriously as a tribute to
working people in the model of Soviet musicals; the lyrics of the songs, however, quickly
switch to lighthearted banter over personal matters. The chorus teases and solicits a
response from a shy Sister Fatty about her undeclared love for Master Resolver (fig. 3.133.14). The harsh manual labor is interrupted by play; the quotidian is transformed into
spectacle. Characters are temporarily liberated from their environment, escaping into a
joyful, free, fantastical world. The subject of the number, Sister Fatty, is in love with
Master Resolver; however, she is shy to acknowledge her feelings for him. But the chorus,
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led by the younger generation, helps unleash her emotional energy. Singing becomes a
liberating force that helps the characters to articulate their restrained personal desires.
And stylized movement transforms physical labor into aesthetic performance for pleasure
and spectacle.
Deceptively realistic, the success of My Day Off also has a lot to do with the
film’s ability to travel between the real and the fictional worlds. Originally planned and
shot as a “comedic docudrama” with production cost of only approximately 70,000
yuan,38 the film was based on stories surrounding a model policeman, Ma Renjun. The
script writer Li Tianji (1963: 3) states,
As far as the events themselves are concerned, what happens in the script
almost nothing is fictional. But the organization of the events and the
characters’ relationships are artistic creation (yishu jiagong). For example,
the incidents related to Luo Ailan actually happened to quite a few persons
instead of just one. And the series of events related to the old peasants are
also real, but his relation to Liu Ping is re-arranged as father-daughter. The
purpose of the artificiality of the plot is to fulfill our wish for representing
the new interpersonal relationship in a broader context and including more
characters of our contemporaries, those who have radiant thoughts
(guanghui de sixiang)…
The plot of course is fictional, but the location shooting, substantial everyday details, and
naturalistic performance create a cinematic immediacy that resonates with the daily life
of the audience. The film was shot in over forty real Shanghai locations, which served
two purposes: to reduce the set cost and to enhance the sense of reality. Many extras in
the film were real people playing themselves: real police officers, nurses, longtang
residents, waiters, barbers, passengers, etc. In the scene of sending a sick child to hospital,
38
According to Story of Movies (CCTV), it cost only 50,000 yuan, but in the same program, the leading
actor of the film Zhong Xinghuo recalled that he heard that the film cost 70,000 yuan compared to Lin Zexu
and Nie Er, which were produced in the same year but cost over one million yuan. Meng Liye (2002: 330)
also reports the production cost of My Day Off as 70,000 yuan as a record of a small budget film in Chinese
cinema.
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the bus was driven by a real bus driver who also contributed the idea of adding the sound
of braking to simultaneously create realistic sound effect and enhance the sense of
emotional intensity. The fundamental emotions and concerns of the search for an ideal
date and providing communal help also give intimate feelings to the audience. Audiences
recognized their familiar urban environment, sympathized with the protagonist’s personal
desire, and were touched by the characters’ altruism. In one anecdote, the actor Zhong
Xinghuo received a letter from an audience member asking him whether he was finally
engaged to the girl.
However, the attraction of Five Golden Flowers largely lies on the exotic appeal
of the internal Other. The story and the location are mediated for idealized effect. The
film uses real place names such as Dali and the Butterfly Spring, though it wasn’t shot in
the real location of the Butterfly Spring. The real Butterfly Spring had become herding
ground for water buffalos and was too muddy. And the butterflies were all killed by
pesticides in the Great Leap Forward. The set had to be reproduced inside Changchun
Studio and the dancing butterflies were fake ones that art designers had made. The
Butterfly Spring on screen is created as a surrogate for the actual one which did not meet
the “aesthetic needs” for a beautiful landscape.
The same was true for casting. Even though Premier Zhou suggested using local
actors in Yunnan, the crew had a difficult time to find experienced actors in the newly
founded Yunnan Film Studio. Except for the lead actress Yang Likun, who is of minority
origin—though Yi instead of Bai—most of the actors are Han, including the male lead
Mo Xingjiang, who is a film student from Guangdong. Even the mountains in which one
of the Golden Flowers went to look for ironstone were in fact located in Tonghua in Jilin,
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near the Changchun Studio. As Yingjing Zhang has noted, the film is indeed “staged” for
cinematic spectacle. When the reality does not meet the “aesthetic needs,” the desired
displaces the real.
Conclusion: The Double Function of Eulogistic Comedy
While the eulogistic comedies analyzed in this chapter are part of popular memories and
are featured in some post-socialist reconstruction of the past,39 some Chinese critics (e.g.
Rao 2005a, Hu 2005) criticize them for shunning major social conflicts and focusing only
on trivial matters. In a 2005 article, Hu Decai dismisses eulogistic comedy for being a
“fake proposition” (wei mingti) produced by ultra-leftist thought and violating artistic
laws and comic spirit. Not only does Hu’s reading essentialize the so-called “artist laws
and comic spirit,” his critiques of the two representative eulogistic comedies—Five
Golden Flowers and My Day Off—for their distance from the social reality of post-GLP
famine fall in the line with ideological critique that glosses over all the complexities in
the process of cultural production. The problematics of ideological critique, as Linda
Schulte-Sasse (1996: 6) alerts us, “Like realist narrative itself, ideology critique falls prey
to the illusion that narration can be an accurate representation of ‘reality,’ of something
external to representation and desire.” It is important to recognize the constructed nature
of a particular genre and approach it textually and contextually. Eulogistic comedy
compels us to rethink the instability of genre and the relationships between reality and
cinema, ideology and entertainment, political restraints and artistic creativity. While
avoiding the representation of major social conflicts, eulogistic comedies also shun
39
For example, all three films analyzed here are featured in the Story of Movies series.
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overloading major political obligations. Exactly because of the seeming trivialization of
subject matters, eulogistic comedies—in addition to departing from social satire—also
depart from the grand narrative of socialist revolution and enter a more humanized sphere
of everyday desires. Eulogistic comedy is constituted by eclectic choices that allow it to
avoid accusations of it being blasphemous social satire or passive, escapist, or vulgar
entertainment.
Given a closer examination, even though all these films are set against the bigger
picture of the socialist modernization project, that background mainly serves as the
backdrop and the interest in romance is prominent in driving the narrative and in
developing suspense. Unlike some other films produced in the same period, such as The
Young People in Our Village, which put more emphasis on taming nature with bloated
human will, these eulogistic comedies focus on personal relationships and social
harmony—rather than grand struggles and conflicts. Personal happiness and social
progress are portrayed as integral and interdependent. Everyone is a productive member
of society. These idealized social relationships and lighthearted humor add a warm touch
to the silver screen.
Eulogistic comedy also has deeper roots in the traditional Chinese preference of
happy ending. Wang Guowei declares in his 1904 essay “Critique of The Dream of the
Red Chamber”:
The Chinese mentality enjoys worldly living and are always happy-golucky (letian de). So theater and fiction expressive of this mentality are
everywhere tinged with this merry-go-around: what begins in sadness ends
up in joy; what begins in separation will always wind up in reunion; what
begins in distress ends up in prosperity. Without following this pattern it is
hard to satisfy the audience’s heart! (Wang 1989: 112)40
40
Translation of Ban Wang (2004: 65), with modifications.
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Although we need to take Wang Guowei’s statement with a grain of salt because it is
conditioned by his critical agenda, it highlights the emotional underpinning of happy
ending in the popular mentality. As Ban Wang (2004: 66) rephrases Wang Guowei, “the
desire for the happy ending is not an isolated, individual preference but is present
everywhere in the established repertoire of narratives and in the appreciative habit of
Chinese writers and readers.” For this reason, the validity of eulogistic comedy cannot be
simply reduced to political enforcement of propagandist needs.
To be sure, eulogistic comedies could effectively serve the purpose of mass
persuasion that manipulates people’s belief in the superiority of the socialist system. The
utopia promised in the eulogistic comedies, however, contains a subversive challenge to
social reality. As Robert Elliot (1970: 22) points out, “the portrayal of an ideal
commonwealth has a double function: it establishes a standard, a goal; and by virtue of its
existence alone it casts a critical light on society as presently constituted.” Citing
Christian Metz (1982: 78), “Certain nightmares wake one up (more or less), just as do
certain excessively pleasurable dreams.” Ma Ning (1987: 41) also comments, “The comic
spectacles can be regarded as excessively pleasurable moments that waken the spectator
and allow his intellect to see parallels, ironies, and contradictions in both the events and
the characters represented in the film.” The ideal community in the films can provide a
referential frame to perceive reality without explicitly challenging it.
Eulogistic comedy is both a product and an agent of the tightened ideological
control, and is conservative and subversive at the same time. However, the duality makes
it extremely difficult to reproduce itself. And the light entertainment in the films is
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vulnerable to excessive political control. Produced only a year after the release of Better
and Better, Qiumi (Football fan; dir. Xu Changlin, 1963), another attempt at eulogistic
comedy, was attacked in 1964 first for being farcical and politically
counterrevolutionary—“to collaborate with Chiang Kai-Shek bandit gang to
counterattack the Mainland” (Shanghai dianyinjia xiehui 1991: 162). By the year 1964,
eulogistic comedy disappeared from Chinese public screen, along with all other forms of
comedy.
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Figures:
Figure 3.1-3.2: anthropological gaze.
Figure 3.3: anthropological gaze reversed.
Figure 3.4-3.5: Apeng as the object of female gaze while the exposure of the viewing subject Golden
Flower, who is quietly observing him while hiding her face behind a straw hat, is delayed.
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Figure 3. 6: Republican star Shangguan Yunzhu plays the doctor (front right); Wu Yin plays the
grandmother of the sick child (front left).
Figure 3.7-3.8: Duan Zhigao, on the left margin of the frame, is at a loss when his composition of
worksong does not work; but his unsuccessful participation quickly shifts to an advantageous
position as an observer.
Figure 3.9: autoerotic gaze—Golden Flower’s moment of acknowledging her own desire.
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Figure 3.7-3.8: Ma Tianming affectionately takes up a photo and the following POV shot reveals the
objects of his gaze but leaves the audience to guess which one is his romantic interest.
Figures 3.9-3.10: Liu Ping examines Ma’s photo with affection and the following POV shot of the
photo objectifies Ma as her love interest. Then she asks: “Did he himself propose this [to go on a
formal date]?”
Figure 3.11-3.12: Sister Fatty gazes upon Master Resolver on the photo.
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Figure 3.13-3.14: the highly choreographed chorus number teasing Sister Fatty in the harvest field.
Figure 3.11-3.12: The railway worker tells Duan: “Bear likes people treat it politely. If you smile at it,
it will definitely not hurt you.” Later in the film, when Duan encounters a bear for real, he
remembers the worker’s words and forces smile at the bear.
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CHAPTER 4
DIALECT COMEDY AND INTRANATIONAL CHINESE CINEMA
Introduction
Lü Ban’s failed attempt to revitalize comedian comedy in Unfinished Comedy, discussed
in Chapter 2, nonetheless anticipated more active exploration of comedic traditions in the
late 1950s. Satire with political polemics and social commentaries have been viewed as
the quintessential mode of comedy in elite discourse since the May Fourth, whereas
entertainment-oriented humor and farce were generally viewed and suppressed as inferior
modes of laughter and frivolous pastimes. However, political taboos made it impossible
to satirize contemporary society on screen and forced filmmakers to turn their comic
energy in other directions.
Folk traditions, at least nominally encouraged by CCP official discourse, became
a new and legitimate source for inspiration and adaptation. Inheriting and reforming the
dramatic tradition were the primary concerns in Chinese theatrical circles in the 1950s.
Since Mao Zedong’s epigraph “Baihua qifang, tui chen chu xin” (let a hundred flowers
bloom, weed through the old to bring out the new) for the newly established Chinese
Dramatic Arts Research Academy was publicized in 1951, it became the official policy of
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xiqu reform.1 While the first part of the epigraph, “let a hundred flowers bloom,” was
consistent with the Party’s general cultural policies, the second part was more specifically
concerned with traditions and had some different interpretations because “tui” could
mean “to overthrow” or “to push forward.”2 After some initial confusion and
contradictory practices that resulted in an extensive ban of “old plays” and
consequentially endangered many old theatrical forms in the early 1950s, the mid-1950s
saw a loosening of ideological control over xiqu reform. Artists were encouraged to
“excavate” (wajue) regional performance repertoire and adapt stage performances for
modern mass media. Not only were many traditional xiqu plays filmed as original stage
performance, some were also adapted into non-operatic narrative films.
This new trend of adapting regional performing traditions yielded some comedy
films that differ from both contemporary social satires and eulogistic comedies in terms
of subject matter, comic mechanism, and performing styles. Under the influence of drama,
these films starred established stage comedians, many of whom specialized in clown
roles. Oftentimes the narratives are driven by gag-based slapstick performance. Many of
them are period pieces adapted from the regional stage repertoire and rendered in various
local dialects. Like eulogistic comedies, these comedian- and clown-centered films avoid
any direct criticism of the contemporary social system. However, in contrast to eulogistic
1
For a brief survey of the xiqu reform, see Sun 2000. I retain the indigenous Chinese term xiqu instead of
using a literal translation “theater of song,” because xiqu covers broader and more diverse performing
traditions than theatrical drama or opera. Chinese xiqu may also include both modern spoken drama and
over 300 genres of traditional theatre performances. For a discussion on the terminological concerns in
translating indigenous Chinese theatrical forms, see Leiter 1998.
2
According to Zhu and Yi (2001, unpaginated), dramatist Ma Shaobo asked Mao to clarify the meaning
and Mao said that the cream (jinghua) of the tradition should be recommended (tuichong) and promoted
(tuidong) while the dross (zaopo) needed to be pushed away (tuikai) and overthrown (tuifan).
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comedies, which are devoid of social satire, these films make dynamic use of satire in
condemning the dark old society or showing how people’s foibles were transformed by
the new social(ist) ideals. The character types of the fool and trickster, who
characteristically disrupt existing social hierarchy and order, return to the screen, and
many comic devices are used to simply invoke a hearty laugh.
Many dialect comedies and comedies adapted from traditional stage performances
were produced in the late 1950s and early 1960s. An incomplete list will at least include
Sanmao xue shengyi (Sanmao learns to do business; dir. Huang Zuolin, 1958), Qiao laoye
shang jiao (Master Qiao mounts the sedan; dir. Liu Qiong, 1959), Nü lifashi (Female
barber; dir. Ding Ran, 1962), Qishier jia fangke (The house of seventy-two tenants; dir.
Wang Weiyi, 1963), Zhua zhuangding (Drafting able-bodied men; dir. Chen Ge, Shen
Yan, 1963), Manyi bu manyi (Sastified or not; dir. Yan Gong, 1963), and Ruci dieniang
(Such parents; dir. Zhang Tianci, 1963), plus many regional operatic comedies in dialect,
such as the Minju (Fujian opera) Lian ying (Burning seal; dir. Zhang Tianci, 1955), the
Dianju (Yunan opera) Jie qin pei (Borrowed wife; dir. Fang Ying, 1959), the Chuanju
(Sichuan opera) Qiao taishou luandian yuanyang pu (Mishandling marriages; dir. Zhang
Bo, 1962), and the Kunju opera Qiangtou mashang (Pei Shaojun and Li Qianjin; dir. Cai
Zhenya, 1963). These films present (and preserve) rich and original idioms of folk humor
and performing traditions that could not easily be assimilated in a standardized official
culture rendered in putonghua Mandarin. Dialect, the “language of the marketplace”
(Bakhtin 1968), is by nature unofficial, vernacular, quotidian, heterogeneous,
unassimilated, and carries with it various cultural associations, including stereotypes that
are specific to a particular region. At the same time, a nationalized film industry
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encourages active interregional communication and exchange, which allow dialectical
and regional traditions to be translated, transformed, and transplanted by and for the new
national cinema. Some regional plays (originally in dialect) are adapted into Mandarin or
other dialect films and distributed nationally or regionally (for example, the Cantonesespeaking 1963 film The House of Seventy-Two Tenants adapted from a Shanghai huaji
play and distributed only in Cantonese-speaking areas, including overseas).
The cinematic interest in dialect and regional comedic traditions in the late 1950s
and early 1960s prompts many critical questions. In regard to the relationship between
modern mass media and traditions of folk culture, we may ask: How were regional
traditions accommodated into a national cinema? Did the official and the popular, the
sublime and quotidian, the rational and the spontaneous, and the convention and
invention reconcile in dialect comedy? What does it tell us of the intranational
translatability of regional tradition for a national audience, particularly in the case of a
play being transplanted from its regionally defined birthplace to a different setting?
Where should we situate the local within a national cinema?
As a linguistic practice, moreover, it is important to know who is speaking to
whom in what language registers. Since dialect generally invokes more intimate
interrelations of the speaker and listener, did these dialect comedies function as an
exclusive linguistic practice reinforcing a shared local identity or magnifying the subtle
differences within the local? Did the nationwide distribution of the dialect films promote
or weaken nationalism? How different were these dialect comedies from Mandarin
comedies? What roles did locality play in dialect comedy and period comedy? What
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comedic devices did these films appropriate differently from other Mandarin comedies
(particularly the eulogistic comedy)?
With these questions in mind, this chapter focuses on dialect comedy and period
comedy adapted from regional performing traditions. The first section is a historical
study of linguistic practices in Chinese cinema, examining how state policies toward
dialect have influenced industrial practices. In the second section, I look into the role of
locality in dialect comedy and examine how dialect comedy embodies the paradoxical
relationship between the local and the national in cultural production. While
transnationality has gained increasing academic currency in examining the complexity of
Chinese cinema(s) in both the Republican and the contemporary periods, the film
adaptations from one local language to another calls attention to a complex web of
intranational industrial networking and cultural transplantation. On the one hand, dialect
is used to enhance comic effect and mark boundaries between different social groups; on
the other hand, the nationwide distribution and dubbing effort helped to create an
“imagined community,” from which new kinds of social relations and social formations
are constructed and learned. Third, I examine the revival of comedian traditions—
particularly the clown characters—on screen. Dialect and period comedies distinguish
themselves by their vivid fool and trickster roles with a freewheeling comic spirit. The
grotesque body and verbal gags, usually soliciting spontaneous laughter, depart from the
rational social satire and eulogistic comedy. These filmic adaptations of stage comedies
also exemplifies the reconciliation of theatrical and cinematic aesthetics.
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Dialect and Chinese Cinema: The Historical Background
Since the invention of sound film, spoken language has always been an integral part of
cinematic narrative and played an important role in cultural geopolitics. Power structure
is manifested in who is speaking to whom and in which linguistic register. In recent years,
more and more scholars have started paying critical attention to language and dialect in
relation to the issues of cultural identity and (trans)nation-state cinematic practices. For
example, some critics favor the term “Chinese-language cinema” (Huayu dianying or
Zhongwen dianying) in place of “Chinese cinema,” because the former provides a
counter-hegemonic perspective to study of the “three cinemas” in the PRC, Hong Kong,
and Taiwan, which have often been subsumed under the same umbrella term (Yeh 1998:
74).3 Some others challenge an exclusive linguistic definition of Chinese cinema by
pointing out the hybridized linguistic practice in many Hong Kong films and the new
trend of ethnic Chinese directors making English-language films, and prefer to use
“Chinese national cinema” informed by the theoretical and geopolitical problematics
surrounding “China” and “Chineseness” (Zhang 2004: 5). While the theoretical focus and
approaches of these two major trends in Chinese film study may differ, the issue of
diverse linguistic representations in (pan-)Chinese cinema(s) has commonly been
acknowledged and is gaining increasing attention.
3
Yeh’s major concern is the marginalization of Hong Kong and Taiwanese cinema in the term “Chinese
cinema.” As she puts it, “[w]hen we speak of a certain national cinema, the classifying adjective usually
comes from the name of the country. For example, ''French cinema'' means cinema of or made by French
people. But the term goes further than naming nationality. It also denotes the linguistic, cultural, social, and
formal codes that can be recognized as something called French. This concept of national cinema provides
at least two meanings to attribute to “Chinese cinema.” It indicates “cinema of China”' (Zhongguo
dianying) as well as “cinema with certain Chinese linguistic and cultural qualities.” The term so defined
certainly does cover mainland Chinese films since 1905 when the first Chinese film, DINGJUNSHAN
[sic], (a Peking opera documentary) was made by Chinese in Beijing. It does not, however, appropriately
cover Hong Kong and Taiwanese cinema” (1998: 74).
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In Chinese-Language Film: Historiography, Poetics, Politics (2005), the editors
Sheldon H. Lu and Emilie Yueh-yu Yeh (2005: 1) define Chinese-language films as
“films that use predominantly Chinese dialects and are made in mainland China, Taiwan,
Hong Kong, and the Chinese diaspora, as well as those produced through transnational
collaborations with other film industries.” And after mentioning the consistent and
pervasive employment of various northern Chinese dialects in contemporary Chinese art
cinema, they propose that “we may speak of ‘Chinese-dialect film’ as a subgenre of
Chinese-language film” (Lu and Yeh 2005: 7). Tempting as this argument may be,
however, given the (trans)national nature of the film industry, it is premature to argue for
the existence of a Chinese dialect, or local language, cinema without examining the
socio-historical contexts and implications of the dialect-filled filmmaking practices. In an
attempt to define “Chinese dialect literature,” Donald Snow states, “at least in the
Chinese context, it is more than a question of the use of dialect grammar or vocabulary,
that it is rather more a question of who is talking to whom” (Snow 1994: 144; my
italization). Echoing Donald Snow’s concern of “who is talking to whom” in films, I
present here a brief historical overview of dialect use from the beginning of Chinese
sound cinema to the present, to investigate the (im)possibility of a Chinese local language
cinema and the significance of the dialect comedies in the late 1950s and early 1960s.
Language Issue in the Transition from Silent Cinema to Sound Cinema (1930-37)
When film first arrived in China a few months after its world premiere by the Lumière
Brothers in the Grand Café in Paris on December 28, 1895, this new medium was
introduced as “Xiyang yingxi,” or “Western shadow play,” which related it to China's
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millenary-old indigenous tradition of shadow play and emphasized the spectacular visual
quality of motion pictures.4 Before the invention of the sound film, from the making of
the first Chinese film Dingjun shan (Dingjun Mountain, 1905) up to the arrival of sound
film in 1929, linguistic issues mainly centered on whether classical or modern vernacular
styles of writing were appropriate for subtitles.5 The diversity of spoken Chinese were not
at issue before the late 1920s, when the sweeping development of sound film in other
parts of the world reached China.
In 1926, Warner Brothers introduced the Vitaphone system, producing short films
with recorded sound effects and orchestral scores. The 1927 feature film The Jazz Singer,
which was mostly silent but contained the first synchronized dialogue (and singing) in a
feature film, was a huge success in the U.S. Four months later, a theater in Shanghai held
a trial screening of some De Forest Phonofilms and had a public exhibition of sound film
equipment (Du 1989: 156). By the end of the 1920s, with the invention of low-cost
sound-enabled projection equipment by Chinese indigenous technicians and increasing
importation of American sound film (50.2% of the total American exportation were
sound films by 1930), the number of sound film theaters in China had increased to 40,
compared to 193 silent film theaters (Du 1989: 157). And in 1931, the Star (Mingxing)
Film Company released the first Chinese sound film Genü Hongmudan (Singsong girl
Red Peony; dir. Zhang Shichuan, 1931), and “[t]he success of the novelty was all that its
makers could have wished” (Leyda 1972: 66).
4
It is recorded that a few Lumière films made their Chinese debut on August 11, 1896 in Xu Garden (Xu
yuan), a popular entertainment quarter in Shanghai. In the next year, American showman James Ricalton
showed several Edison films in Shanghai and other large cities in China (Zhang 1999: 5).
5
Baiyou Heliang, “Yulihun yingpian ping” (A review of Yulihun), Dianying zhoukan (Movie weekly), No.
25 (1924): 5-6. Cited in Xiao 1999: 184.
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Yet, unlike in Hollywood, which had fully switched to all-talkie by the end of
1929, the advent of sound technology did not bring about an immediate flourishing of
sound filmmaking in China. Although the technological advancement had made sound
filmmaking possible, most of the film studios were hesitatant to make the switch. Indeed,
silent film coexisted with sound film well into the mid-1930s even after the success of
Singsong Girl Red Peony. Classic silent films like Shenü (The goddess; dir. Wu
Yonggang) and Xin nüxing (New women; dir. Cai Chusheng) were made as late as 1934
and 1935. In addition to material, financial, technical, and aesthetic concerns, linguistic
practice in accordance to the Nationalist government’s language policy was one of the
major issues. According to Zhiwei Xiao’s study of the Nationalist cultural policy during
the Nanjing decade (1927-37), the imposition of a national language policy on film
started from the very beginning of Chinese sound cinema:
After the NFCC [National Film Censorship Committee] was founded in
1931, it insisted that all Chinese films use easy-to-understand vernacular
captions. After Chinese studios began producing sound films, the NFCC
further decided that Mandarin Chinese, or guoyu (the national language),
be used as the spoken language in films and prohibited the use of dialects.
To further the cause of guoyu, the NFCC requested that film studios in
China print the standard syllable chart at the beginning of each film, and
that the characters in subtitles be marked with standard pronunciation.
(Xiao 1999: 184)
Singsong Girl Red Peony and other early sound films thus impressed American film
historian Jay Leyda by its choice of speech:
…though made by Shanghai companies, the language spoken in all of
them was not the ordinary speech of Shanghai (a city thought of as
‘Southern’), but the language of the north, the Peking dialect known as
‘Mandarin,’ and politically known as pai-hua [baihua], the national
language….whenever the various companies of Shanghai decided to use
speech, Mandarin was the single, unifying dialect. In a period when the
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nation was in need of all unities, the film industry contributes its mite.
(Leyda 1972: 67)
This national language policy imposed a big challenge for many silent cinema actors and
actresses who couldn’t speak Mandarin and might not have attractive voices. The
difficult transition of silent actors from silent film to sound film has been spoofed in the
Hollywood classic Singing in the Rain (1952). In the Chinese case, most of the actors and
actresses working in the silent film industry were from the south, particularly from
Guangdong and Zhejiang. Only very few who were from the north or had been living in
the north could speak standard Mandarin (Du 1989: 160). According to Miss Butterfly
Wu (Hu Die), the leading actress in Singsong Girl, she made a smooth transition to sound
film because, although she was originally from Guangdong, she spent her childhood in
the north and grew up in a “bilingual” (Cantonese and Mandarin) environment and could
speak Mandarin very well. Some other Cantonese actresses such as Ruan Lingyu did not
have this linguistic advantage and experienced much greater anxiety with learning the
national language.6
While the Shanghai film studios carried out the national language policy without
much obvious resistance,7 there was a tension between the Nationalist government and
the political power in the Cantonese-speaking area centered on Canton and Hong Kong.
In the socio-historical turmoil of China in the 1930s, when regional warlords were still a
major threat to the Nationalist central government, local language was loaded with heavy
6
Although usually not considered as the primary reason that pushed Ruan Lingyu to commit suicide in
1935, struggling with new language requirement nevertheless added pressure to the actress’s tragic life.
This is touched upon in Stanley Kwan’s 1994 film Central Stage, partly a biopic of Ruan Lingyu. See also
Lu Hongshi’s interview of Ruan’s contemporary actress Li Lili in Lu (2005: 211-222).
7
This is because there was a long tradition of Mandarin as a national lingua franca for officials and for
writing.
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political connotation. As Zhiwei Xiao (1999: 184) points out, “[i]n the eyes of the central
government, local dialect was a factor supporting regional separatism, whereas the
regional governments saw in local dialect a legitimate claim of ‘regional uniqueness.”
While the capital of the Chinese film industry, Shanghai, had become a stronghold of
Nationalist control, the central government was deeply disturbed by the production and
distribution of Cantonese-language films by the branch studios of Shanghai film
companies in Hong Kong and Canton to cater to local audiences as well as overseas
Chinese communities. According to Zhiwei Xiao,
“[t]hroughout the Nanjing decade, the issue of Cantonese-language movies
was a battleground between Nanjing and Canton…[w]ith the political
protection of the Canton government, film studios in Canton ignored
Nanjing’s ban on making dialect movies. As a result, only the Shanghai
studios were prevented from making dialect films because they were under
tighter control from the NFCC/CFCC [the Central Film Censorship
Committee].” (Xiao 1999: 185)
It was not until the Canton regime collapsed after an aborted revolt against the Nanjing
government in 1936 that the CFCC began to extend its authority there. Under the control
of the central government, Canton’s filmmakers endeavored to legitimize Cantoneselanguage films as an effective means to enlighten the masses in the region and the
overseas Chinese community, and convinced the Nanjing government to postpone the
enforcement of the banning of Cantonese-language film until July 1, 1937. 8 After Japan
launched full-scale attack on China, many film studios in Shanghai moved to Hong
Kong, which consequently made the colony a site for political battles that were originated
in the mainland.
8
For a detailed account of the tensions and negotiation between the Nationalist government and the Canton
regime, see Xiao 1999.
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Nation-building and Regional Policies in the Early PRC Period (1949-66)
From the beginning of the PRC period, film was recognized as one of the most important
and effective mass media to educate and entertain the masses for the socialist nationbuilding project. The Communist government made great efforts to expand the state film
enterprises in order to reach out to the masses. The Central Film Bureau was founded as
early as December 1949 to supervise all film-related matters. The nationalization of the
entire film industry was accomplished by January 1952 (Zhang 2004: 190). As a result of
central planning, filmmaking resources were disseminated all over the country to
decentralize the Shanghai film industry and to consolidate national identity through widespread mass media. Several regional studios were established in 1958: Pearl River
(Zhujiang) in Guangzhou (in the south), Emei in Chengdu (in the southwest), Xi’an (in
Shaanxi), and Xinjiang (renamed “Tianshan” in 1979) in Urumqi (in the northwest)
(Zhang 2004: 200). Departing from the Nationalist’s elitist hostility to dialect films, the
CCP policy toward local languages were two-folded. On the one hand, it certainly
reflected the goal of standardizing the national language and propagating the communist
ideology through the use of putonghua Mandarin, which was officially sanctioned as the
standard national language at the beginning of 1956. On the other hand, the social reality
that the majority of people in remote and ethnic minority areas did not understand
Mandarin was also acknowledged and addressed. In 1958, Premier Zhou Enlai pointed
out in his report “Current Tasks of Script Reform” that:
The promotion of Putonghua has its goal the removal of the barrier of
dialects, not the prohibition or abolition of dialects. Does the promotion of
Putonghua mean to prohibit or abolish the dialects? Of course, not. Dialects
will exist for a long time. They cannot be prohibited by administrative order,
nor can they be abolished by artificial measures. In the promotion of
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Putonghua, distinctions should be made between old and young people;
between activities on a national scale and those of a locale nature; between
the present and the future. There should be no overgeneralization. On the
other hand, those who can speak only Putonghua should learn local dialects
so that they will be able to make close contact with the working people in
dialect communities. (Guo 2004: 46-47)
The emphasis on the communicative function of language in the official policy inspired
the practices of dubbing and interpreting Putonghua into local languages. The active
practices of dubbing and interpreting in the 1950s aimed at conveying new ideology to
the dialect-speaking people who did not understand Putonghua. The earliest effort made
in regard to local language was onsite oral interpretation during the film screening. In
1950, the People’s Theater in Yanji, Jilin, experimented with oral interpretation for the
Korean ethnic minority audience. The method helped the minority audience understand
the content of the films and allegedly boosted theater attendance by several times. By
1952, this method was practiced in ten theaters in the Korean ethnic minority autonomous
prefecture and was promoted by the rural projection teams throughout the prefecture
(Chen 1989: 2: 164). Director Yan Jizhou (2005: 60) recounted his experience of
screening films with film projection teams in ethnic minority areas in Yunnan, China’s
most ethnically diverse province. According to his recollection, when the projection team
first arrived in an area, he was asked to discuss current affairs before screening the film,
and his talk was simultaneously interpreted by multiple interpreters who translated into a
few local minority languages. The film screening was a mutli-dimensional modern
experience for the ethnic minority people. Not only was film a totally new experience for
minority audiences, who were surprised to see moving characters on a blank screen, but
also the film projection team’s life styles and consumer goods, such as watches,
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flashlights, and cameras also introduced them to the whole new idea of modernity (Yan
2005: 60-61). Film translation no doubt contributed greatly to nation building and
modernization in these ethnic minority language areas.
According to Paul Clark (1988: 40; 53), by early 1953 there were 200 employees
working full-time at the dubbing facilities at the Northeast and Shanghai studios, and
from 1949 to mid-1952 more than 200 million people reportedly watched over 180
dubbed foreign films. In June 1964, the Chinese Film Distribution Company promoted
the prefecture’s experience to other minority and dialect-speaking areas, which
effectively encouraged movie-going in remote areas. With the advancement of dubbing
and recording technology, more and more films were dubbed into minority languages and
recorded on tape. After the nation-wide restructuring of the film industry in 1962, the
Neimeng (Inner Mongolian) Film Studio and Tianshan Film Studio stopped producing
feature films but became specialized film studios for dubbing Mandarin films into
minority languages. According to 1984 statistics, there were fifty-three dubbing stations
in twelve provinces, and by 1984, Mandarin films could be translated into twenty-three
minority languages (minzu yuyan) and seven local languages (difang yuyan) (Chen 1989:
163-68).
And in Han nationality areas, films rendered in local languages were also
produced in the form of comedy, opera, and other performing traditions, targeting local
audiences. This was partially facilitated by the nationalization of traditional performing
troupes and the adjustments (tiaozheng) of the Party’s policies toward theatrical circles. It
was not accidental that a large amount of stage plays were filmed or adapted into feature
films in the mid-to-late 1950s. In the early 1950s, the political uncertainty and violent
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bureaucratic control of theatrical performance caused expansive banning of many
traditional plays, which seriously threatened the survival of many old theatrical forms and
private troupes. In March 1956, the top leadership adopted a more lenient attitude toward
xiqu and encouraged artists to “excavate” traditional plays. The successful adaptation of
the kunqu play Shiwu guan (Fifteen strings of coins) by a Zhejiang troupe in 19569 not
only revived a genre that was almost extinct, but also inspired vigorous adaptations of
other traditional plays. According Wenwei Du (2000), “From 1949 to 1979, 1109 films
(including features, cartoons, artistic documentaries, and artistic films of theatrical
performances) were made by various studios in China. Among them, 217 films are
artistic films of operas in traditional forms, representing 20% of the total. The most
productive years for this genre were 1956, 1957, 1959, 1960, 1962, 1965, and 1976.).”
National Cinema, Local Consumption, and the Intranational Adaptation
Guided by the xiqu reform official line, two important national events—one a conference
concerning traditional theatrical repertoire and the other a joint performance of quyi—
were held in 1956, followed by more regional performances of traditional genres all over
the country. Local offices were established to identify “worthy” traditional plays for
revision, adaptation, and performance. It was during this period that many local plays
were collected, adapted, performed, recorded, and filmed for a broader audience. Some
stage plays were adapted into film in original style and with original cast; some others
were adapted into Mandarin narrative films with different setting and cast.
9
The play was made into a color film in the same year.
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The adaptation of traditional-style plays show a very complicated interaction
among local tradition, the national film industry, and (trans-)national spectatorship. On
the one hand, it was encouraged to preserve traditional forms and techniques and to
satisfy the local audience’s needs for entertainment. Thus, many plays were rendered in
original dialect. For example, Sanmao Learns to Do Business was one of the Shanghai
huaji plays performed at the national joint performance of quyi in 1956. The performance
was well received and the troupe was encouraged by the leadership to further adapt it for
mass media. In 1958, the play was adapted into a narrative film, directed by the
celebrated Huang Zuolin and performed by the original cast from the Dazhong Comedy
Troupe. The film features a variety of dialects—Shanghai, Northern Jiangsu, Shandong,
Shaoxing, etc.—that have been stereotypically associated with distinct social groups in
the polyglossia of everyday life in Shanghai. This use of dialects was grounded in the
social life of Shanghai, a city of multiple immigrant groups. It also drew on the stylistic
tradition of using dialects for comic effect in huajixi performance. A result of its
immigration history, certain dialects in Shanghai are often traditionally (stereotypically)
associated with certain social group, denoting a person’s social origin and status. As one
Chinese scholar has summarized it,
…army officers and policemen spoke Shandong dialect, wealthy matrons
and socialites spoke Suzhou dialect, compradors and interpreters for foreign
firms spoke Cantonese, important bosses and merchants spoke Ningbo
dialect, scholars, scribes, and fortunetellers spoke Shaoxing dialect, barbers
and rickshaw pullers spoke Yangzhou dialect, and so forth. (cited in Gunn
2006: 194-95)
Dialect and accent thus become aural markers of social boundaries and provide a realistic
base for comic collisions between different dialect-speaking social groups in everyday
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situations. The stereotypical images and identity conflicts invoked by dialects created
immediacy, familiarity, and hilarious verbal jokes that greatly enhanced its comic effects.
In Sanmao Learns to Do Business, Sanmao is taken in as an apprentice to a barber who is
also from northern Jiangsu (Yangzhou area). The audience immediately recognizes the
conventional association of the profession with the people from the particular regions.
When the barber tries to teach Sanmao how to receive guests, he, as someone who has
lived in the city for years, uses Shanghai dialect in business. But when the newcomer
Sanmao imitates him, Sanmao’s speech is an awkward blend of northern Jiangsu dialect
and slight Shanghai accent. The subtlety of (shifting) local identity embodied in the
various dialects could only be fully appreciated by a local audience who was familiar
with the registers and the cultural meanings associated with them. Therefore it would be
impossible to translate the film into Mandarin for a national audience’s consumption
without losing its jokes.
Similarly, Drafting Able-Bodied Men, another filmic adaptation of a stage satire
(in the form of spoken drama instead of opera) that had been popular during the civil war,
is rendered entirely in Sichuan dialect.10 But because Sichuan dialect is a variety of
northern Mandarin, it is relatively easy to understand for spectators from other regions.
The lively local idioms match up with the caricaturized performance, and the film
generated lavish laughter nationwide (Chen 1989: 1: 262-263). The popularity of the film
can still be felt today as evidenced in its television remakes in 2003 and 2004, featuring a
national star Li Baotian, who was originally from Jiangsu.
10
According to Edward Gunn (2006: 194), it is in the “Sichuan local language of the Zigong region.”
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On the other hand, conscious efforts were made to adapt regional performance for
a national audience, oftentimes trading traditional slapstick (which could get outrageous
sometimes) for moderate comic effects. Adapted from the traditional Chuanju opera play
Qiao laoye qiyu (The adventures of Master Qiao), Master Qiao Mounts the Sedan,
however, was made into a Mandarin narrative film, performed by a cast completely from
the Shanghai Haiyan Studio. The original play, also known as Hudie mei (Butterfly
matchmaker) and Huangjie yi (Huangjie station), was collected by the Office of Sichuan
Traditional Repertoire Identification Committee and performed by Chongqing Chuanju
Troupe in Beijing in 1957. The play’s distinct comic style caught the attention of leading
dramatists, such as Tian Han, Lao She, and Guo Moruo, and became one of the most
popular Chuanju plays, one that is regularly performed even today. Although the
storyline of the play is similar to traditional caizi jiaren (scholar-beauty) romances, in the
Chuanju version, the main character is a clown who is physically ugly. The emphasis is
put on the physical skills of the clown character and his witty dialogue. The film
adaptation, however, tunes the comedy to narrative rather than individual performance
segments. The stars in the film included Han Fei, Sun Jinglu, Yang Hua, and Chen Shu,
who were all well known to the national audience, but who were not opera performers.
Han Fei was a handsome comedian who was far from the traditional image of a grotesque
clown. The film transformed a performance-based comedy to a narrative-based comedy
that put more weight on situation, and was easier to understand for a national audience.
There were also a few Shanghai huaji plays adapted into Mandarin films or
dubbed with a Mandarin soundtrack. For example, Female Barber, originally a huaji play
conceived by Hanyan huaji jutuan, was made into a narrative film. Instead of casting the
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comedians from the original troupe, the film starred popular actress Wang Danfeng, with
Han Fei in the supporting role of the husband. Starting her career in the late 1940s
performing many tragic female roles, Wang was never known as a comedian. But her
resilient performing style had already been proven in her first role as a New China
woman in the lighthearted Hushi riji (Diary of a nurse; dir. Tao Jin, 1957), which greatly
boosted her stardom. By casting her in the role of a housewife who wants to be a barber,
the film not only enhanced its public appeal because of the star power, but also
moderated the farcical effect of the huaji play through a relatively more realistic
performance style.
The production of dialect comedies was not limited to the same region where the
dialect was based. Satisfied or Not, also a huaji play, was created by Suzhou huaji jutuan.
The film was produced by the Changchun Studio rather than the nearby Shanghai studio.
But the cast was totally comedian-based and retained the original huaji style that, as Ning
Ma (1987: 41) points out, “is characterized by a combination of different art forms.” It
was performed by huaji comedians from Suzhou and neighboring Shanghai, Wuxi, and
Changzhou. As Ma (ibid) further notes, “The comic actors in huajixi not only imitate
different regional dialects and accents, some of which are considered uneducated and
therefore funny, but also other performers like singers, dancers, and storytellers. The
mode of representation it assumes is basically a combination of story and spectacle.” To
help non-local audiences understand the story, the film was distributed with two
soundtracks: one in original dialects (mainly in Suzhou dialect and a few others that were
also commonly heard in the area as a result of regional interaction) for a regional
audience; and a Mandarin soundtrack for a national audience. The Mandarin soundtrack,
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however, still retains a few segments in which some minor characters speak or sing in
dialects for comic effect and local flavor.
The House of Seventy-Two Tenants has an even more complex textual history.
The term “seventy-two tenants” was first coined in wartime Shanghai to refer to the
serious housing shortage that forced many families to share a single-family house. The
comedic everyday friction between the residents were picked up by dujiaoxi (the
predecessor of huaji xi, similar to stand-up comedy in the Western tradition) comedians
and gradually developed into a series of skits with a central character “Er fangdong”
(second-landlord)11 who is in constant conflict with the tenants. The skits became very
popular and were broadcast on radio. Loosely based on a few of the most popular skits, a
film under the same title, directed by Zheng Xiaoqiu, was produced by a Hong Kong film
company in 1950. According to the advertisement of the film in Popular Cinema in 1950
and the recollection of huaji comedians Yang Huasheng and others (1962), the film was
performed by Shanghai Hezuo Comedy Troupe—the predecessor of Dazhong Comedy
Troupe. It tried to incorporate the dujiaoxi skits into an anti-spy story, but failed to create
a coherent story. During the heyday of theater reform in 1958, the original dujiaoxi story
of seventy-two tenants was rewritten into a fully developed huaji play by Shanghai
comedians Yang Huansheng, Xiaoxixi and others. This version premiered in 1959 and
then underwent many revisions until a standard script was published in 1962. This
published script became the foundation of all the later stage and film renditions. The
illustrations of the characters appended to the script were prototypes for the characters
11
The “Second Landlord” was a popular business in wartime Shanghai. It referred to someone who rented a
house from the owner,” the “big landlord” (da fangdong), and made profit by subletting the house to the
“third tenants” (san fangke). For a historical study of the phenomenon, see Lu 1999, Chapter 4.
156
found in the film version (figs. 4.1-4.2). Influenced by the CCP theory of class struggle,
the comedic but non-antagonistic relationship between the landlady and the tenants in the
original dujiaoxi were transformed to intense and consistent class struggle between the
Second Landlord and the tenants in the film. But the comic effects were also enhanced by
the integration of many traditional dujiaoxi skits into a more focused dramatic structure.
As in Sanmao Learns to Do Business, the script of The House of Seventy-Two Tenants
also assigned different local identities to various characters, such as Policeman No. 369
from Shandong, Doctor Jin from Shaoxing, the street vendor from Pudong, the cobbler
from northern Jiangsu, etc. As Yang Huiyi (2005: 153) points out, the linguistic diversity
reflects the polyglot state of wartime Shanghai to which gold diggers and refugees
flooded; and it also embodies the paradox about the concept of “renmin,” or the people.
The “people” was at once diversified and unified.
In 1963, the huaji play of The House of Seventy-Two Tenants was transformed
into a Cantonese-speaking eponymous film produced by the Pearl River Studio and
funded by a Hong Kong company. According to an online source (Ameng), the
adaptation was motivated by the local propaganda bureau’s need to make a Cantoneseflavored film for Cantonese-speaking Chinese overseas. The comedic feature and the
urban setting of the huaji play made it a workable candidate. Co-written (with the
Cantonese writer Huang Guliu) and directed by Wang Weiyi, who was originally from
Suzhou but had resided in Guangzhou for years, the film changed the setting to an
unidentified Cantonese-speaking city before Liberation. The film localized the Shanghai
story by transforming the setting to a Cantonese-styled house and cityscape, casting
famous Cantonese opera performers, adopting distinct Cantonese music, and most
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important, extensively using colloquial Cantonese. The linguistic diversity associated
with immigrants in Shanghai thus gave way to the rather consistent lingua franca of
colloquial Cantonese. When the film was sent to Beijing for distribution approval, the
studio had to send an interpreter as well (He 2008). The film was praised by Xia Yan, the
Minister of Culture, for its sophisticated directing and performances. As agreed upon by
the Shanghai Dagong Comedy Troupe and the Pearl River Studio, to protect the Shanghai
troupe’s performing rights, the film was allowed to be screened only in Guangdong,
Guangxi, Hong Kong, Macao, and Southeast Asia (ibid), and was excluded from the nonCantonese-speaking area of the so-called “neidi” (hinterland).12 This regionalist
production and consumption mode contrasts with the Nationalist ban on Cantoneselanguage films in the Republican period, and complicates our perception of the early PRC
as a monolithic and homogeneous totalitarian society. But it should be pointed out that
this encouragement of regional practice is also motivated by a nationalistic agenda, that
is, to create an imagined national community through intranational transplantation. As
scholars of nationalism and minority cultures (see, for example, Blum 2001) have argued,
the nation is unified more powerfully by being portrayed as diverse and heterogeneous.
Moreover, the ambiguities of the “people” as embodied in the linguistic diversity of the
Shanghai huaji play give way to a consolidated collectivism of the oppressed class in a
single language.
Making a distinction between the local audience and the national audience shows
the paradoxical nature of the CCP’s nationalism. On the one hand, the regional flavor of
these dialect-speaking films shows that target audiences were more locally defined and
12
It was not until after the Cultural Revolution that the film was dubbed in Mandarin soundtrack and
released nationwide.
158
there were conscious efforts to make films for local consumption—as evidenced in the
bilingual soundtracks in some of the films. The everydayness of dialect challenged a
unified, standard, homogeneous linguistic perception and no doubt contributed to the
verbal humor of the comedies. On the other hand, as Susan D. Blum (2004: 125)
perceives, “The endurance of local speech varieties suggests very strong norms opposing
overt standardization. These norms are aesthetic as well as an index of social solidarity.”
To produce and distribute dialect comedies across regional boundaries might contribute
to the narration, imagination, and appreciation of a modern and diverse national
community. People living in one dialect region would therefore feel solidarity with
people living in another.
Send in the Clown: Carnivalizing Social Critique
Dialect comedies (and their Mandarin adaptations) are closely connected to the heritage
of regional performing traditions and folk culture, which emphasize performativity and
comic spectacle and in which clown characters are prominent. Kristine Karnick and
Henry Jenkins (1995: 150) distinguish between comedian comedies and clown comedies:
the first celebrates the social integration of the comedian (ultimately subduing
performance to demands of the narrative), the second is more anarchic, emphasizing
resistance to social integration. Satisfied or Not, identified by Ning Ma (1987: 44) as “a
social comedy whose aim is to reform individual transgression of acceptable social
behavior through laughter,” fits the description of the category of comedian comedy. But
most dialect comedies belong to the second category, the clown comedy. The dialect
comedies see the return of clown characters and their variants, the fool and the trickster.
159
In these character types the comedians demonstrate the best of their craft through
physical and verbal gags. Spectacular clown routines are most prominent in these
comedies. The narrative and performing styles of these films are distinct from those of
the contemporary social satires and the eulogistic comedies discussed in the previous
chapters. Like Rabelais’s work in the French Renaissance, they revive the “material
bodily principle” of comedy—that is, “images of the human body with its food, drink,
defecation, and sexual life”—and bring back the clown characters in a style that Bakhtin
calls “grotesque realism” (Bakhtin 1968: 18). Being allowed to satirize the “old dark
society,” they have the freedom of “degradation and debasement of the higher” (Bakhtin
1968: 21) and make extensive use of the grotesque body, physical gags, slapstick, and
verbal humor, which are almost invisible in eulogistic comedies and appear only
sporadically in the mid-1950s satires. The carnivalesque travesty imbues the films with
the potentials of provoking anarchistic laughter and smuggles in a certain degree of
ambiguity. More emphasis is put on the emotional and physiological response of
spontaneous laughter rather than rational social critique.
It is in these dialect films that Chinese folk humor and the best of comic traditions
are preserved. The archetypical figures that are almost universal in comedy but are absent
in serious social satire and eulogistic comedy are found here in dialect comedies: the fool,
the trickster, and the clown. Functioning as both a target and source of humor and
laughter, the clown figure contradicts, opposes, or distorts normative social order and
status through trickery or disguise. Both the protagonist Sanmao in Sanmao Learns to Do
Business and Qiao Xi in Master Qiao Mounts the Sedan are figures who have
characteristics of both the powerless fool and the witty trickster.
160
In many ways, Sanmao Learns to Do Business reconnected with the rich urban
expressions in such Republican era films as Malu tianshi (Street angel; dir. Yuan Muzhi,
1937) and Wuya yu maque (Crows and sparrows; dir. Zheng Junli, 1949). Set in 1948
Shanghai, the film opens with a dazzling montage of the pre-Liberation “sin city” in the
eyes of a dumbfounded Sanmao, a peasant boy13 from poverty-stricken northern Jiangsu.
Sanmao comes to seek refugee in Shanghai when his hometown economy collapses and
his parents have passed away. Superimposed over Sanmao’s horrified eyes, the sped-up
raw footage of Shanghai produces an extremely oppressive image of the city:
overwhelming modern architecture, crowds who line up to receive their food quota, and
the rampant presence of imperialist power (fig. 4.3). Sanmao arrives as the fool who does
not fit in the crime-filled sin city. Immediately upon his arrival at the dock, he witnesses
rampant theft and is robbed himself. And when he seeks help from his former neighbor,
he discovers that she is one of the gang who robbed him. Being forced to join the gang,
however, Sanmao stealthily helps their targeted victim and is eventually evicted from the
gang. Not an idealized “gao-da-quan” (lofty, great, and perfect) proletarian hero with
pure class consciousness, Sanmao is grotesque, vulnerable, innocent and at the same time
cunning, tricky, and defiant. He is an antihero, an everyman, and a survivor. Wen Binbin,
the comedian who plays Sanmao, uses his grotesque body to contest social ideals and
disrupt order. As Bakhtin puts it,
…the grotesque liberates man from all the forms of inhuman necessity that
direct the prevailing concept of the world. This concept is uncrowned by the
grotesque and reduced to the relative and the limited. Necessity, in every
concept which prevails at any time, is always one-piece, serious,
13
Sanmao, originally a cartoon character created by comic artist Zhang Leping, is supposed to be a waif in
Shanghai. But in the huaji play and the film he is recreated as a peasant boy and played by 39-year old
huaji comedian Wen Binbin.
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unconditional, and indisputable. But historically the idea of necessity is
relative and variable. The principle of laughter and the carnival spirit on
which grotesque is based destroys this limited seriousness and all pretense
of an extratemporal meaning and unconditional value of necessity. It frees
human consciousness, thought, and imagination for new potentialities. For
this reason great changes, even in the field of science, are always preceded
by a certain carnival consciousness that prepares the way. (Bakhtin 1968: 49)
Differing from melodramatic mode of the suffering hero who gets destroyed, Sanmao is
both a victim and a victor. His mishaps function both as an accusation of the social vices
in pre-Liberation Shanghai and a source of laughter because of his farcical mannerism
and playful spirit of a trickster. Even when he is abused by the gangsters and is forced to
steal, his super-flexible body movement and survival instinct provide comic relief. Being
the fool and the trickster at the same time, Sanmao magnifies social injustices and
validates the urgency of social reform, but without falling into the seriousness and
didacticism of revolutionary drama. Like the tramp in Chaplin’s films, despite his
suffering, Sanmao is resilient, hopeful, witty, and has a kind heart willing to help his
fellow sufferer. Sanmao’s resilience and wit are aurally represented in the transformation
of his language registers. He speaks only northern Jiangsu dialect at the beginning of the
film, but as his familiarity with the city grows, he starts using an increasing amount of
Shanghainese expressions. And later in the film, Sanmao can even imitate Shandong
dialect, which is usually associated with policemen, to thwart the evil blind fortuneteller’s
attempt at molesting a poor servant girl.
Like Sanmao, Qiao Xi in Master Qiao Mounts the Sedan also has a dual character,
at once the fool and the trickster. Set in imperial China, the film tells the story of Qiao Xi,
a scholar who, on his way to the imperial exam, risks his own life to save a girl from
being abducted by a bullying nobleman Lan Musi by cross-dressing as the girl and being
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carried in her place in the sedan to the Lan’s residence. And as luck would have it, Qiao
is not only saved but also matched to Lan’s beautiful and virtuous sister, whom he
happens to have met before. On the one hand, Qiao is the fool, a nerdish scholar who
sticks to his scholarly pride as well as dogmatism in a world dominated by corrupt and
bullying noblemen and their flunkies. At the same time, Qiao is shown as a chivalric and
witty gentleman who dares to risk his own life to save an innocent girl. As briefly
touched upon above, the clownishness of the original chouque (clown) character in
Chuanju opera is greatly reduced in the Mandarin film by casting handsome Han Fei in
the role and transforming the stunt-filled operatic performance into a linear narrative.
Qiao Xi in the Chuanju version is a white-faced clown. The grotesque in the original play,
however, is retained in the transvestite sequence in which Qiao cross-dresses as the
abducted bride (figs. 4.4-4.5). By wearing women’s clothes, Qiao is made to abandon his
Confucian propriety for both the plot necessity and the audience’s viewing pleasure. This
plot device invokes the long tradition of cross-dressing in Chinese opera, which is viewed
as a destabilizing force (Li 2003: 3). It also fits the description of what Chris Straayer
(1996: 42) calls “temporary transvestite film,” in which “a character uses cross-dressing
temporarily for purposes of necessary disguise.” As Straayer reminds us,
When contemplating the continuing popularity of films with temporary
transvestism, one must consider mass-audience pleasure, which I believe is
grounded in the appeasement of basic contradictions through a common
fantasy of overthrowing gender constructions without challenging sexual
difference. These films offer spectators a momentary, vicarious trespassing
of society’s accepted boundaries for gender and sexual behavior. Yet one
can relax confidently in the orderly demarcations reconstituted by the films
endings. The specific conventions of the temporary transvestite narrative
desires in viewers, safely providing forbidden pleasures that are
corroborated by familiar visual configurations. The representation and
containment of gender by clothing and other visual systems offer gender as
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a construction susceptible to manipulation by cross-dressing, drag, and
masquerade. In films of this kind, both the text and the viewer contest
gender fixity and unleash multiple identificatory processes that engage
desires which, within the dominant order, might seem to be in mutual
conflict. (Straayer 1996: 42-43)
This also explains why transvestism is very common in Chinese folk performing
traditions but drastically diminishes in the PRC cinema, in which new boundaries for
gender and sexual behavior are constructed.
Non-narrative performance segments are very prominent in these dialect and
period comedies. Greg Dancer (1998: 45) has noted that comedies often display “a
similar array of narrative and performance segments” as musicals do. Kristine Karnick
and Henry Jenkins (1995: 150) view that performance in film comedies are spectacles
that rupture the classical narrative structure.” They make a distinction between acting and
performance, which I think is useful to appreciate the films analyzed here: “Acting will
be used here to refer to the task of constructing characterization. The more expansive
term, performance, includes not only skills of acting but other aspects of showmanship,
such as acrobatics, dance, musical performance, magic, and slapstick, which reflect the
non-narrative traditions of variety entertainment.”
Dialect films best preserve and revive the comedian traditions of emphasizing
physical and verbal gags in non-narrative performance segments. The exaggerated
performance, oftentimes bordering on the grotesque, is less controlled by the normal
social, political, and ideological hierarchies of power than in eulogistic comedy or other
types of film. In dialect comedies, freewheeling expressions of the common folk are less
mediated than in Mandarin films. The performances of professional comedians revitalize
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the comic spectacles in variety entertainment on screen. A well known example is the
barbershop scene in Sanmao Learns to Do Business, which is drawn from a classic huaji
skit. After being driven out of the gangsters’ den, Sanmao is taken in by a sympathetic
barber. Nominally an apprentice, Sanmao actually works as a fulltime handyman who has
no opportunity to learn barbering. When he finally has a chance to practice on his master,
his clownish behavior exceeds the requirements of the plot and verges on slapstick that
shows his physical skills. The actor Wen Binbin’s grotesque body is used as a comic site
where the performance is liberated from narrative necessity and creates a particular comic
effect of absurdity and the disruption of normalcy (see, for example, figs. 4.6-4.7).
According to Xie Jin’s (1998: 395) recollection, the director of the film, Huang Zuolin,
gave up monitoring the actors’ performance on the site once the camera started shooting,
because he could not help laughing. The cinematographer, who had no option, had to
hold back his laughter so much that he even bit his tongue.
Dialect also provides verbal gags that would otherwise be impossible in Mandarin.
For example, in the sequence in which Sanmao tricks the blind fortuneteller Mr. Wu,
Sanmao switches between his original Subei dialect, a faked woman’s voice in the same
dialect for a Mrs. Wang (a fictional character he impersonates to distract Mr. Wu from
molesting Xiaoying), and a faked Shandong dialect for the Mrs. Wang’s fictional
boyfriend. Taking advantage of the blind fortuneteller’s disability, Sanmao’s codeswitching between dialects provides a witty, playful, and liberating comic relief from the
dark social reality. Language is manipulated deliberately both for the purpose of plot
development (to punish the villain) and for comic effect.
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Make ‘Em Laugh: From Stage to Screen
There has always been a close connection between Chinese cinema and theater, but this is
particularly true for the dialect comedies adapted from stage performance. Adapting stage
performance for film imposes many aesthetic problems because, as Paul Clark (1987: 6819) observes, it involves mixing two semiotic systems: the largely indexical and symbolic
system of Chinese theater and the iconic system of filmic mimesis. When realistic
settings and props are used along with indexical signs and symbolic props, the ultimate
effect can be confusing, especially to a traditional audience. While it was perfectly
acceptable for a character to ride a stick representing a horse on a conventional stage, it
would look ridiculous to use one for an on-location film shoot. Fortunately this was not a
significant problem for huaji adaptation because it was a relatively modern invention that
took shape in the commercial culture of 1920s Shanghai. Unlike many established opera
forms, such as Peking opera, Yueju, kunqu, or Chuanju, huajixi was not particularly
stylized and formulated. Its vitality lay in its flexibility, spontaneity, and
inprovisationality, which allowed it to promptly respond to its immediate social
environment. These features made huajixi very adaptable for non-operatic narrative film
and transplantable to other linguistic and cultural settings. The difference between
theatrical performativity and filmic mimesis also explains why Master Qiao Mounts the
Sedan was adapted into a scholar-beauty type of comic romance and why it de-clowned
the role of Master Qiao.
On the one hand, the films distinguish themselves from stage performance by
actively using filmic features, such as mise en scene, trick photography, sound effects,
and editing to enhance comic effect and aesthetic style. On the other hand, the films also
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show a tendency to reconcile the filmic language to the audience’s theatrical viewing
habits. The negotiation results in a distinctive film style.
Many of the comedy films run credits over animations or cartoons, coordinating
with playful music, to establish a light-hearted tone from the onset like a theatrical
prelude. The opening of Female Barber transitions from a cartoon rooster to a real
rooster whose body is weirdly shaved. The comic surprise immediately raises a laugh and
regulates the audience expectation. Drafting Able-Bodied Men even animates the title, in
which the characters for “zhuangding” (able-bodied men) run away but are recaptured by
the character representing “zhua” (to draft). In a manner resembling ‘liangxiang” (to
strike a pose on stage) in traditional opera performance, the film introduces its characters
one by one in posed close-ups, accompanied by different music cues according to the
character types. Most of the time the camera assumes a level or slightly high-angled
position that resembles a point of view perspective from an audience sitting in a
traditional theater. Except for zooming and shot-reverse-shot cutting, the scenes look
very stable and focused, with the actors generally performing toward the camera. The
camera seldom moves around but tends to stay on one fixed side of the scene where the
action takes place (in other words, never crossing over the 180 degree line), thus
maintaining a steady POV that reenacts theater experience.
The House of Seventy-Two Tenants is probably the most cinematically
sophisticated film among these dialect comedies. It opens with a lavish long take of a
very elaborate mise en scene. The camera pans across the set—the house of seventy-two
tenants—to follow the residents in their early morning routines. The near two-minute
single take achieves a few things: it provides a panoramic view of the shared space,
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introduces the individual residents in an everyday situation, and shows their relationships
and characters through their interactions with each other.14 The film pays a lot of
attention to enhancing the realistic feeling of the film by diversifying the scene locations.
The original huaji play is set in the compartmented interior of the house and does not
have exterior scenes. But the film creates a few scenes outside the house, including the
dance club where Bingen plots selling the house, the dock where Bagu, Bingen, and
Policeman No. 369 meet, the street where Jigongfu hawks his wares, and the police
chief’s office, etc. These added scenes enrich the narrative and enhance the film’s
realistic style and local flavor. The editing of the film frequently utilizes match on action
or sound to make the transition from one scene to another comical. For example, the
scene of the landlady stealing cloth ends with her scream, which is matched with the
shrieking trumpet performed in a dance club where the next scene takes place, thus
smoothly completing the scene transition and producing a very funny parallelism
(figs.4.8-4.9). It also shows that the filmmakers self-consciously explore the filmic
potentials of narrating and stylizing.
Conclusion
The dialect comedies produced in the late 1950s and early 1960s provided welcomed
entertainment with regional style. Their immediate and long-lasting popularity
demonstrated the vitality of tradition and the resilience of China’s national cinema.
However, the liveliness and creativity of dialect comedy would also soon be
overshadowed by intensified political struggles. The increasing concern with the political
14
This masterful opening is reproduced in Stephen Chow’s 2004 martial arts parody Kungfu Hustle.
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message could already be felt in the didacticism in an otherwise slapstick Satisfied or Not,
in which the contrast between the old society and the new China was heavily
dramaticized. Toward the end of Drafting Able-Bodied Men, the comedic caricature of
the corrupt Nationalist army soldiers and insensitive landlords is taken over by intensified
theme of class struggle, and soon turns violent and dark. Again, comic spirit, for all its
unruly quality, could not merge with a totalitarian official culture. After one last comedy
film, Xiao Erhei jiehun (Young Erhei gets married; dir. Gan Xuewei, Shi Yifu, 1964) was
made in 1964, the genre retreated from China’s screen before the industry was
completely disrupted by the Cultural Revolution in the 1966.
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Figures:
Figure 4.1-4.2: Illustrations of the characters designed by famous cartoonist Zhang Leping for the
1962 huajixi script of The House of Seventy-Two Tenants.
Figure 4.3: Sanmao is overwhelmed by Shanghai the sin city. The cityscape, which he could not
realistically see on location, is superimposed over his awe-struck face.
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Figure 4.4-4.5: Qiao Xi as the trickster and the demure “bride.”
Figure 4.6-4.7: Sanmao learns to steal hat; Sanmao cannot decide if the teacher’s head is “pumpkinshaped” or “winter melon-shaped” so he brings in the real things to compare.
Figure 4. 8-4.9: Bagu screaming is matched with the shrieking trumpet in the next scene in the dance
hall.
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CHAPTER 5
LIGHTHEARTED COMEDY OF FAMILY LIFE AND WORK LIFE
Introduction
Starting with an analysis of one of the most popular and critically acclaimed PRC films
Li Shuangshuang (dir. Lu Ren, 1962), this chapter examines how filmmakers managed to
fuse satire and eulogy in lighthearted comedy (qing xiju)—or social comedy as it is
sometimes called—of family life and work life in the early 1960s. Lighthearted comedy
is usually set in everyday contemporary society. It is generally cheerful and uplifting but
also corrective through mild satire of people’s follies. Ning Ma (1987: 33) considers its
functions “basically as social corrective with some mild satire.” “Like the romantic
comedy,” he continues, “it deals with types rather than individuals, and its aim is to
reform individual transgression of acceptable social behavior through laughter. The
comedy and the humor exhibited in these films are usually directed at potentially positive
characters with some minor flaws.” This type of comedy blends cheerfulness, mild satire,
and well-meaning humor to advocate new social, political, and moral values, particularly
women’s participation in public life, gender equality, free love, and an equalitarian view
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of labor division, etc. The reconciliation between ideological obligation and artistic
sophistication shows the filmmakers’ self-censorship and conscious manipulation of
genre conventions in order to adapt to a volatile political environment. Despite their
obvious links to the immediate political movements that the state promulgated at the time,
the films transcend mere propaganda with their creative strategies for integrating
propagandist messages into innovative and rich entertainment.
Experimentation in this eclectic style started around 1958 with a few lighthearted
dramas, such as Xiaokang renjia (A well-to-do family; dir. Xu Tao, 1958), Jin ling zhuan
(Story of golden bell; dir. Liu Peiran, 1958), and Wanzi qianhong zong shi chun (Spring
forever; dir. Shen Fu, 1959). The full blooming of the genre took place in the year 1962,
when popular Li Shuangshuang (dir. Lu Ren, 1962), Da Li, Xiao Li, he Lao Li (Big Li,
Little Li, and Old Li; dir. Xie Jin, 1962), Ge liang hao (Good Brothers; dir. Yan Jizhou,
1962), Nü lifashi (Female Barber; dir. Ding Ran, 1962), and the first Chinese threedimensional film Moshushi de qiyu (Strange Adventure of a Magician; dir. Sang Hu,
1962) were produced and the term “qing xiju” (lighthearted comedy) began circulating.
The lightness of this type of comedy is perceptively summarized by Ma Debo
([1981] 1992: 424) in four points: “There should be contradictions, but there is no need to
be poignant; there should be conflicts, but there is no need to be drastic; there should be
satire, but there is no need to be harsh; there should be eulogy, but there is no need to be
high-toned (diaozi bubi guogao).” The films generally presented a “bright positive
environment, but not without shadow; portrayed positive characters, but not without
backward characters; reflected all kinds of contradictions and dramatic conflicts, but
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strictly within the range of ‘contradictions among the people’ (renmin neibu maodun)”1
(423). In the following sections, I look into how this “third route” of comic filmmaking
(Ma 1992)—in addition to satire and eulogistic comedy—is conceived and exemplified in
Li Shuangshuang, Female Barber, Satisfied or Not, and Big Li, Little Li, and Old Li and
how it serves as a site for “imagining and realizing new kinds of social relations and
engaging social formations,” to borrow Robert Chi’s (2007: 227) words. If the eulogistic
comedies draw on romantic comedy tradition basically along the line of boy-meets-girland-live-happily-everafter narrative, the lighthearted comedies often focus on domestic
conflicts and identity crisis in familial and profession relationships transformed by the
new social system.
Li Shuangshuang: “A Lighthearted Comedy of Character”
At the audience-voted Second Hundred Flowers Awards ceremony2 in 1963, Li
Shuangshuang won the Best Picture, Best Film Script, Best Actress, and Best Supporting
Actor. The same year, a special volume on the film’s production and reception—
including the original script, shooting script, director’s notes, essays by crew members,
1
“The contradictions among the people” became central concerns in Chinese political life and cultural
representations since Mao Zedong gave his famous speech “On the Correct Handling of Contradictions
Among the People” (Guanyu zhengque chuli renmin neibu maodun) at the 11th Session of the Supreme
State Conference on February 27, 1957. A revised version of the speech was published in June 19, 1957.
Partially a response to the 1956 Hungarian Uprising and partially a summarization of the Party’s task after
the completion of socialist reformation in China, Mao stresses the importance of resolving “nonantagonistic contradictions among the people” through persuasion.
2
Sponsored by the Popular Cinema magazine, which has the greatest circulation among film periodicals in
China, the Hundred Flowers Awards are mass awards voted by moviegoers. The Popular Cinema magazine
issues votes to its readers and the awards are produced according to the number of votes that each film gets.
The awards were initiated in 1962, but was suspended after the second awarding ceremony held in 1963
and was not resumed until 1980. Then, it has been held annually. The Hundred Flowers Awards consist of
seven awards in five categories, namely Best Film, Best Actor and Actress, Best Supporting Actor and
Actress, of which Best Film has three awards.
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film reviews, and collected feedback from rural audiences—was published. The film, as
identified by director Lu Ren (1963: 228), is “a lighthearted comedy of character”
(xingge de qing xiju). In the director’s notes, Lu Ren provides a very detailed explanation
of the rationales behind this new generic term:
This is one type of new socialist comedy that requires us to create typical
characters and represent the reality strictly according to the demands of
subject matter and the logic of life. Although as a genre it still continues the
tradition of old comedies, it has a fundamental difference, that is, the
fundamentally different worldviews because the economic base of our
society has totally changed.
By “character” I mean that the film is structured around the oppositional
characters of Shuangshuang and Xiwang in order to reveal the different
attitudes and conflicting ideas in life. Even if the characters are very minor,
we still should develop interpersonal conflicts based on their characters. It is
not that we do not pay attention to the plot, but we need to create a sense of
humor through the contrast between the new and the old, the progressive
and the conservative, through the characters’ relationships and their
discrepant views of life.
As for “lighthearted comedy,” it is decided by the style of the script. If we
process the story as a drama (zhengju), slapstick (xiju), or farce (xiaoju), the
distinguishing features of the original script would be tampered or diluted…
as the director, the interpreter of the script, I should start off from the reality
and draw on the script and my own experience of rural life to conceive an
artistic form that could be more easily accepted by a broad audience of
peasants (guangda nongmin guanzhong). Maybe this artistic form more or
less breaches the traditional form that [the audience has gotten] used to, but
we think it is necessary to make daring attempts based on today’s reality. As
for the result, whether it is accessible to the audience, we can only leave it to
the audience, particularly the rural audience, to decide. ([LSS] 1963: 228229; my italicization)
From Lu Ren’s account, we can perceive that the filmmakers approached this kind of
comedy differently from the previously discussed contemporary social satire, eulogistic
comedy, or farcical dialect and period comedy. They felt obliged to carry on the tradition
of comedy—that is, to make people laugh—but had to accommodate and justify it with
the new ideological and aesthetic requirements. The bankruptcy of the Great Leap
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Forward resulting from the massive famine led to a temporary power shift from Mao
Zedong and the radicals to Liu Shaoqi and his fellow pragmatists. An all-out eulogy of
the movement was no longer in favor. The theoretical difficulty in defining the dramatic
conflicts in eulogistic comedy was also manifested in the discussions of socialist comedy
since 1959. Many articles ([XJDYTLJ] 1963) expressed doubts of the validity of purging
satire and contradiction in eulogistic comedy and called for reflection on contradictions
among the people. In this context, it was understandable that director Lu Ren did not seek
to reinvent his success of the urban eulogistic comedy My Day Off. While My Day Off
exploited comic situations in an urban setting, the filmmakers of Li Shuangshuang put
more emphasis on distinct individual characters and developed comic conflicts through
the clashes between these characters. As the above citation shows, Lu Ren made a
differentiation between the “traditional form” that film was potentially breaching and the
art form that could “easily be accepted by a broad audience of peasants.” This indicates a
discrepancy between the officially sanctioned art form and the recognition of
unofficial/folk aesthetics. Targeting a mainly rural audience, this new type of comedy
must be made accessible and enjoyable to audiences who might not fit the description of
an ideal revolutionary peasant. This audience orientation no doubt influenced the
narrative and style of Li Shuangshuang, which emphasizes visual clarity through
continuity editing, stable composition, dramatic lighting, and shots centering around the
protagonists.
More importantly, laughter itself is subject to ideological complications. The
director listed three types of laughter that the film intended to provoke: the cheerful,
joyful, and lyrical type; the acerbic, satirical, derisive type; and the “well-meaning and
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humorous laughter.” The first and the third types were considered positive because they
were confirmative and constructive to the current social system, seeking to resolve the
contradictions among the people. This differentiation between the positive and
destructive laughter clearly shows the delicate political implications of comedy that could
be supportive of or subversive to the dominant ideology. As the production process of the
film shows, the filmmakers responded to these restraints with great self-censorship and
self-adjustments:
Although the nature of the dramatic conflicts in the story is very serious, it
does not preclude it from being a lighthearted comedy. Besides, a real
lighthearted comedy with depth must be a work that lets its audience
appreciate its serious theme. Therefore, we treat the characters’ mind,
appearance, and action similar to a drama but the overall tone and
atmosphere are bright, lyrical, and comical. The characters’ spirits are
optimistic, joyful, cheerful, and full of comedic humor. This is the nature of
our time, a realistic reflection of our people’s life and spirit brightened by
the “Three Red Flags” (Sanmian hongqi).3
Even the fate of those so-called negative characters is not tragic. Although
they get behind or make mistakes, they feel lighthearted and relieved once
they bid farewell to the old ideas and habits. And they bid farewell to their
past with a laugh; in this sense, their experience is also comic. Their
backward side, which is in conflict with the progressing reality, causes their
embarrassment and invokes laughter; however, this laughter should not be
processed as acerbic satire or callous derision, but should be well-meaning
and humorous laughter. Despite the fact that they have some behaviors and
ideas in conflict with mass interests and should be criticized, in the end, they
can be educated and recognize their mistakes, and hereafter make progress
and catch up with the time. ([LSS] 1963: 229)
The story of Li Shuangshuang was originally based on Li Zhun’s short story “Li
Shuangshuang xiaozhuan” (The story of Li Shuangshuang), which appeared in the
3
The “Three Red Flags” refers to the three core tasks in the Second Five-Year Plan of the Party, including
the General Line (zong luxian), the Great Leap Forward, and People’s Commune. The three components
were initially called “three magic weapons” (san ge fabao) in 1958, but was changed to “Three Red Flags”
in 1960.
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national literary journal Renmin wenxue (People’s literature) in March 1960. Published
shortly after the height of the Great Leap Forward, Li Zhun’s original story depicts the
hyper-idealism of the time, more particularly, the collectivization of communal resources
and the construction of communal cafeterias for the purpose of liberating the labor force.
Li Shuangshuang, the title character, is a model cook who is actively—despite her
husband’s opposition—involved in the development of a communal cafeteria. The story
generated enthusiastic responses from readers and immediately caught the attention of the
Shanghai Haiyan Studio, which decided to make it into a film. However, during the
process of adapting the story into a screenplay in 1961, the communal cafeteria craze
went bankrupt and the nation experienced severe famine. The communal cafeteria plot no
longer appeared relevant and needed massive revision. But as a character synthesizing
traits of many rural women Li Zhun observed in real life, Li Shuangshuang has some
attributes that transcended the constantly changing political events. Working with the
production crew, particularly director Lu Ren, Li Zhun revised the script six to seven
times and finally set the central events around two more current issues on the Party’s
official agenda: the new system of work point (gongfen) accounting (a measure
developed in policy adjustments after the Great Leap Forward) and liberating women’s
productivity. The result was impressive. As actress-writer Huang Zongying (1963: 376;
translated and cited in Kuoshu 1999: 85) remarks, “The film script greatly revised the
story. The major events were all changed; however, the character traits were not damaged
but clarified. As for Li Zhun’s efficient and successful completion of the film script Li
Shuangshuang, some commented, ‘If someone else were given the job, he would topple
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over the cart [fail] for sure. Li Zhun just had so much in his pocket that he could be
resourceful with.’ I admire Li Zhun’s rich experience in life.”
The revised film script centered around the relationship between Li Shuangshuang
and her husband, Xiwang, and the domestic conflicts engendered by their different
attitudes toward involvement in public affairs. Li Shuangshuang is a lively, selfless,
outspoken, open-minded, and cheerful rural woman who cares for the collective good and
at times evokes a freewheeling screwball spirit; while Xiwang is an “old good person”
(lao haoren) who retains patriarchal habits and conservative attitudes toward public
responsibility, caring only not to offend anybody. In the power relationship between Li
Shuangshuang and Xiwang, as Xiaobing Tang (2003: 654) observes, “she is a much
stronger character and assumes an active role in public life, whereas her husband is weak,
malleable, or outright absent from the scene.” The reversal of traditional patriarchal
gender relationship is an integral part of public discourse of official feminism, on the one
hand, and a common comic device in Chinese theatrical tradition, on the other hand.
Scholar Chen Sihe (1999: 49) has noted that the hidden structure of the film resembles
that of traditional “er ren (zhuan)” performance, which is a folk style song-and-dance
duet popular in northeast China. Not unlike screwball comedy, er ren zhuan usually
features a strong leading female character, or dan, who is outspoken, daring, and
optimistic, and a subordinate male character, or chou, who is selfish, timid, but kind at
heart and funny. According to the scriptwriter Li Zhun’s own account (1963b), the
character of Li Shuangshuang was indeed influenced by strong and unruly women
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characters in folk performance, vernacular literature, and even foreign literature,4 in
addition to the peasant women whom he met in real life. These references not only link
the character Li Shuangshuang to a much broader literary tradition, but also explain the
sense of familiarity that the character invokes among the audience. Many peasants
commented that Li Shuangshuang was like their own sister and the comic tensions
between Shuangshuang and Xiwang felt very real. As one spectator remarked ([LSS]
411), “The film Li Shuangshuang particularly suits us. Although it is just about some
ordinary events in commune members’ everyday life, we feel particularly interested, and
that the story is very real and truthful.”5
Of course, Li Shuangshuang does more than provide a “truthful” representation of
everyday life. The primary concern of the film is to reflect social transformation through
the “new person” (xin ren) and new social relationships. While Shuangshuang’s character
continues a long and rich tradition of strong and unruly women, she is at the same time an
upright, rational, capable, independent, and maturing socialist new woman.
Shuangshuang’s shifting public role is important in transforming her own identity and
relationship with her husband. The film presents these changes with great subtlety and a
rhythm that alternates between establishing order and disrupting order. At the beginning
of the film, returning from work, Shuangshuang is shown washing a towel under the
bridge. When Xiwang passes by with a group of men and cattle, he tosses his dirty shirt
4
Li Zhun (1963b: 214) mentioned influence from vernacular stories Kuaizui Li Cuilian (Outspoken Li
Cuilian) and Yingning, Czech writer Bozena Nemcova’s short story “Wild Bara,” Carmen, and Lu Xun’s
short story Lihun (Divorce).
5
Given the mediated nature of the published peasants’ remarks at the state-organized symposia, their
comments need to be taken with a great grain of salt. Nevertheless, the consistent comments on the
familiarity of characters like Shuangshuang do illustrate the reality base of the character type and how the
appeal of the character can exceed a narrow propagandist event of collectivism.
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to her. Without a word, Shuangshuang naturally catches it and washes it. The intimate
relationship between the husband and wife makes its immediate presence in this wordless
communication. Shuangshuang is shown as a caring “Wife of Xiwang” (Xiwang shaozi)
and is referred to as such. In the next sequence, Xiwang is shown bragging about how
well Shuangshuang treats him and takes credit himself for “taming the wife.” But this
patriarchal self-congratulation is soon interrupted by a villager who comes to report that
Xiwang’s wife is quarrelling fiercely with the wife of Sun You. The patriarchal order
established in the first scene is disrupted when Shuangshuang’s voice is heard for the first
time stopping Sun You’s wife from stealing wood blocks from the production team.
Instead of as a submissive wife, she now is shown as a “member of the commune”
(gongshe sheyuan). In contrast to her domestic identity, this public identity centers
around a sense of social duty and a spirit of independence.
The liminal state of Shuangshuang’s transforming identity is symbolically
presented in the next scene, when she is seen again sitting at the doorsill of her house
fixing a pick-axe with her daughter playing alongside. She is both a caring mother and a
working woman. But when her challenge to the patriarchal prejudice against women is
echoed by other peasant women, her domestic association disappears, replaced by a
collective identification of female power. When Erchun, a peasant boy, refuses to accept
the women’s request to join in the dredging of irrigation ditches, he derides them, “Your
kind can only stay at home taking care of the kids and serving men!” His disdainful
remarks get him punished by the women, who hold up his body and use it to pound the
ground. The sequence, which serves a comic function, also represents women’s physical
power. Their bodies are strong and energetic and even potentially violent.
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Shuangshuang’s intrusion into the male public space disrupts the domestic order
and upsets Xiwang. The first major confrontation between the couple takes place after
Shuangshuang comes home from the ditch digging site. Shuangshuang has left a note for
Xiwang, expecting him to share housework when she is working. But Xiwang considers
doing domestic work a symbolic loss of his patriarchal power. He opposes
Shuangshuang’s active involvement in public affairs and expects her to continue
providing domestic care (e.g. cooking for him). The fight between them turns into
slapstick when Shuangshuang pushes him down to the ground and laughs through her
tears (figs. 5.1-5.2).
Shuangshuang’s violation of male authority in the daytime, however, is
counteracted in the following night scene. The cinematic space again restores the
traditionally demarcated gender boundaries (figs. 5.3-5.4). With a particularly lyrical
touch, the film shows Xiwang and other village men hanging out by the riverbank.
Xiwang is playing the erhu, a traditional two-stringed instrument, to accompany Er
Chun’s singing about the beautiful world created by the laboring people. In contrast,
Shuangshuang, no matter how sociable and unruly she is in daytime, remains in the house
taking care of domestic work and their sleeping daughter. This transitional sequence,
almost extra-diegetic, is particularly illustrative of the conventional circumscription of
gender configuration. Visually and aurally, men occupy the public sphere, conduct
aesthetic activities, and expound on the beauty of life; while female space is still
identified with the private sphere and practical matters. Shuangshuang is homebound,
quiet, and is the audience of the men’s aesthetic articulation.
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This power relationship changes only when Shuangshuang finds her own voice
and independent identity through written words: a big-character poster she pastes in the
public space of the village calling for reform of work point accounting. Writing is a mode
of articulation that contains more authoritative power than the aesthetic activity of
singing. She signs the poster “Li Shuangshuang.” It is the first time that she is identified
and recognized by her own name instead of a relational appellation, such as “the wife of
Xiwang.” The brief sequence involves a very complicated naming process and social
relationships that reflect Shuangshuang’s self-identity and her public identity perceived
by different parties. First, Shuangshuang identifies herself by her official and independent
name “Li Shuangshuang,” but the representative of village authority, the party secretary,
fails to recognize the name. Er Chun explains to him that it is “my Xiwang saozi” (my
elder brother Xiwang’s wife). When the party secretary asks Xiwang about it, he says, “Is
this written by your xifu [wife in northern colloquial speech]?” Unsure about the nature of
the poster, Xiwang responds with various derogative colloquial terms to refer to
Shuangshuang—such as “the cook in my house” (an nage zuofande), “old hag”
(laoniangmen), “the one in my house” (wo na wuli de)—trying to alleviate the
seriousness of the matter. But he is greatly pleased by the party secretary’s high
evaluation of Shuangshuang’s poster and sees her in a new light. The public recognition
hence gives Shuangshuang unprecedented power in the domestic relationship. Xiwang
even offers to help her with housework, although he still addresses her habitually as “the
mother of Xiaolan” (Xiaolan ta ma).
Individual expression and public recognition therefore intertwine in
Shuangshuang’s identity. Public affairs increasingly intrude into the private space of her
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house and eventually turn it into a battlefield of different ideologies. Shuangshuang’s
sense of collective good and justice identifies personal interest with ideologically
constructed ideals transmitted through literacy and media, while Xiwang observes
socially constructed norms of a traditional community passed down through kinship.
While the clashes between the couple exceed the domestic sphere and become a
personification of ideological struggles, the process is filled with compromise and
reconciliation between the two and eventually the family order is restored. No doubt, the
restoration of order is predetermined by the dominant ideology: Shuangshuang—
representing the progressive force of socialist virtues—will eventually mobilize
conservative Xiwang. As one reviewer ([LSS] 1963: 328) points out, in Li Shuangshuang,
the one who leaves home is not the woman (i.e. Nora in Henrik Ibsen’s classic play A
Doll’s House) but the man. And to paraphrase Lu Xun’s famous question of what
happens after Nora leaves home, the reviewer asks, “What happens after Xiwang leaves
home?” Xiwang returns, recognizing his faults and renewing his love for Shuangshuang.
If we go back to Lu Xun’s question and prediction of Nora’s fate, the significance of the
comic reversal of power relations in Xiwang’s leaving and returning home emerges. In
the May Fourth context of women’s emancipation and its limitations, Lu Xun points out,
Since Nora has awakened it is hard for her to return to the dream world;
hence all she can do is to leave. After leaving, though, she can hardly avoid
going to the bad or returning…To put it bluntly, what she needs is
money…The most important thing in society today seems to be economic
rights. First, there must be a fair sharing out between men and women in the
family; secondly, men and women must have equal rights in society. (Lu
1980: 87-88)
If Nora leaving home symbolizes the search for personal independence from the
patriarchal family, Xiwang leaving home suggests a paradoxical relationship
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between man and home in a comic reversal of power structure within the family.
First, the ideological premise is that home has supposedly been transformed by
socialist ideals and becomes a space shared equally by man and woman (although
my above analysis of the gendered space shows otherwise). It is Xiwang who
chooses to leave home, the above-mentioned reviewer ([LSS] 1963: 328) suggests,
but “because the conflict between the young couple is not irreconcilable, living in
such a socialist society of ours, anyone—as long as he realizes his faults and is
willing to change—the internal conflicts of the people are always solvable through
criticism and struggle.” Second, because Xiwang’s leaving home is more of a
pretentious performance of resentment, with the goal of renegotiating his position
within the family, than a voluntary escape from home, it identifies man with
domestic space. This affirmed connection between man and the home re-asserts the
importance of the nuclear family and thus could well mark a counterdiscourse
against collectivization.
The “reassuring promise of domestic harmony” at the end of the film, as Xiaobing
Tang (2003: 653) perceptively analyzes, is problematic:
At the final moment of happy reconciliation, therefore, the scenarist and the
director of the film arrange for the couple to affirm their mutual love against
a background of pastoral peace and contentment. After a long shot of a
young couple running off in laughter, the film cuts back to a medium shot of
Xiwang and Shuangshuang, who turn from looking into the distance to
regard each other. With a broad smile and some shyness, he compliments
Shuangshuang that she is becoming more and more beautiful, to which she
replies, approvingly, “But aren’t you also changing?” Upon hearing this,
Xiwang takes from her hands her tote bag, a loving gesture and a direct echo
of the opening scene where he tosses his shirt for her to wash on their way
home from the field. It also constitutes a symbolic comment on the positive
influence from Shuangshuang. For Xiwang’s change owes much to
Shuangshuang’s determination, and he is able to appreciate her beauty only
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when he identifies with the values she stands for. Yet this acknowledgment
of her predominance is subtly canceled out when, in the final frame, Xiwang
turns, walks out of the frame, and leaves Shuangshuang no other choice but
to follow behind him.
While I agree with Xiaobing Tang’s analysis of the ambiguities of woman’s place in the
film, I want to further point out that the restoration of traditional family order is
consistent with the generic expectations for happy ending comedy (see discussion of
Wang Guowei’s comments quoted in Chapter 1). And in this sense alone, the
propagandist message of collectivization is diluted and compromised by the affirmation
of the cohesion of core family. The embedded love story between the couple supercedes
the superiority of the socialist system. As a loving couple, Shuangshuang cares about
Xiwang’s well-being and his growth as a socialist commune member. And Xiwang is
willing to compromise out of his love and admiration for his more open-minded wife.
Her vitality, enjoyment of self-expression, and assertion of her independent membership
in society are part of her charm for him and are what sustain the cohesion of the family.
Class, Gender, and Comedy About Profession
As my analyses of Li Shuangshuang and of eulogistic comedies in Chapter 3 have shown,
the private realm of individual romance becomes a public site where communal consent
has to be obtained. The interaction between public and domestic life therefore engenders
many tensions and negotiations that would reconfigure gender relations. But gender is not
the only factor that defines a person’s place in society. Class adds an additional
dimension to a person’s identity, as we see in Female Barber and Satisfied or Not. Both
films are adapted from huaji plays and both are about people’s attitude toward the service
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industry. The former is about a housewife’s struggles to become a female barber, while
the latter is about a certain Xiao Yang, who thinks a young man’s ambition should be
becoming a factory worker rather than a mere restaurant server. Here gender and class
converge in the comedy of profession.
As with other professions in the service sector, barbering was traditionally
considered a low class job and was generally performed by itinerant men. It developed
into a modern form, with established barbershops, in Shanghai in the 1920s and 1930s,
and started providing service to women, though the profession was still dominated by
men.6 In the “egalitarian” society of the New China, the social status of the service
industry was generally elevated by the state and the service sector expanded drastically to
satisfy the growing needs of modernization. During the Great Leap Forward, women’s
participation in the labor force was greatly encouraged and expected. Their leaving the
house generated needs for professional providers of childcare, food service, tailoring,
barbering, etc. The need of liberating women’s productivity was reflected in comic films
like Shen Fu’s Spring Forever and Yu Yanfu’s Beam with Smiles, both dealing with the
issues of housewives’ joining in the work force. The former, set in a traditional
community in a Shanghai longtang alley, depicts the collective effort of liberating
housewives’ productivity in the Great Leap Forward. And the latter, set in a northeast
industrial city, focuses on a core family’s negotiation with the wife’s participation in
community work. Although generally cheerful with some comic moments, the domestic
conflicts in these film are presented in a serious manner, and they are not usually
6
For an anecdotal account of the old profession, see Zhong 2006.
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categorized as comedy. Female Barber, however, stands out as a lighthearted comedy
adapted from a huaji play and deserves critical attention.
Female Barber was initially a collective creation by the Shanghai Haiyan Huaji
Troupe and written out by huaji performers Tian Chi and Tian Lili. The comic conflicts
were built around a housewife concealing from her snobbish intellectual husband her
training and working as a barber. When she becomes a model worker for her outstanding
skills and service as Barber No. 3, her husband is referred to the barbershop and asks to
be served by her. Naturally he is ashamed when he found out who the No. 3 really is. As
a theatrical tradition, huajixi, or farce, is different from general comedy. The genre is
characterized by a manic style that provokes incessant laughter. A huaji play is expected
to create nonstop gags. If it fails to do so, the audience would not consider it “huaji” at
all and dismiss it. The original huaji play of Female Barber starred Tian Lili, who
specialized in various regional operas. The original play arranged over a dozen musical
numbers in various operatic styles and dialects for Tian to showcase her special skills and
was advertised as “grand musical huaji comedy” (gechang huaji da xiju). The
eponymous film, however, toned down the farcical aspects and removed almost all the
musical numbers. It turned the play into a lighthearted comedy in a realistic setting (with
many scenes shot on location) and less exaggerated performance, but with enhanced
filmic effects, such as the sound match between that of hair-clippers in Jiafang’s hands
and that of a marching train that her husband is riding (fig. 5.5), or using a wall mirror as
a special frame that nails down the comic confrontation between a hypocritical Director
Jia and his knowing friend Zhao in front of a clueless onlooker (fig. 5.6).
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The film begins with a rooster whose body has been shaved, thus initiating comic
suspense as the audience is curious to find out why it is like that. The rooster appears
again a few times in the film as a comic motif, together with a series of weirdly shaved
items: a feather duster, a brush, etc., all victims of the protagonist Jiafang who has
diligently used them to practice her barbering skills. While her husband—Director Jia of
a state-run company—is away on a business trip, she joins the newly-opened March
Eighth Barbershop7 (fig. 5.7) in their district and becomes Barber No. 3. She enjoys the
work and appreciates the sense of liberation as a result of her growing socialist
consciousness of serving the people. This is consistent with the dominant public
discourse of women’s participation in labor. As Barbara Einhorn (1993: 20) points out,
The traditional Marxist-Leninist idea of the emancipation of women was
exclusively the result of the emancipation of labour from capital and therefore
only possible in a socialist society. At the same time, the guarantee of equal rights
to women was perceived as an essential prerequisite for the construction of a
socialist order. The basis for a woman’s true emancipation was her economic
independence from man, which she could achieve through participation in the
process of industrial production.
However, the choice of becoming a barber in this film is different from the representation
of working women in earlier films like Nü siji (Woman driver; dir. Xian Qun, 1951) and
Malan hua kai (Tulip blooms; dir. Li Enjie, 1956), which depict women working in
industrial sectors in a serious light. Female Barber, more or less for the purpose of comic
effect, dwells on the urban service industry that is closely related to people’s everyday
life. The barber was a popular comic character type in Shanghai theatrical and cinematic
traditions. As briefly mentioned in Chapter 2 and Chapter 4, barbers and the barbershop
7
March Eighth is the International Women’s Day, first observed in 1909 to advocate for gender equality
and to celebrate the economic, political, and social achievements of women. The term “san ba” therefore is
associated with female identity. And in the film, the employees in the March Eighth Barbershop are all
women.
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appear in such classic comedies as Street Angel, Faked Phoenix, and Sanmao Learns to
Do Business. The intimacy of the barber to people’s lives provides an immediacy and
familiarity that feel both mundane and comic. And because of the bodily contact in
barbering, it provides space for interpersonal interaction and bodily performance, and has
gender implications.
In Female Barber, Jiafang’s conflicts with her husband are built on the particular
profession of barbering and provide many visual gags. Jiafang’s husband, who used to be
a manager in pre-Liberation Shanghai enjoying a good life, opposes her idea of becoming
a barber—he uses the derogative traditional term “titou” (to shave the head) in contrast to
her choice of the neutral and modern term “lifa” (to stylize hair)—and wants her to stay
at home. While he is away on a business trip, Jiafang joins the district barbershop. Her
devotion to the profession, however, is disturbed by the news of Jia coming home.
Worried about how to tell her husband, she botches a job on a customer’s hair. The
customer, Old Zhao, turns out to be her husband’s old friend who is on his way to pick up
Jia at the railway station. After Zhao meets Jia, Jia suggests they eat at a nearby
restaurant, which Zhao tries to avoid because his wife works there. Jia criticizes Zhao for
his discriminative attitude toward the service trade with an eloquent speech about labor
division and the importance of the service industry. Zhao is deeply convinced and makes
up with his wife. When he visits Jia the next day to thank him, however, he finds out that
Mrs. Jia, whom Jia claimed to be working in “jiaoyu hangye” (education sector), is none
other than Barber No. 3, who had mutilated his hair the day before. Upon Jiafang’s plea,
Zhao keeps the secret for her. Because of coincidence and misunderstanding, Jia thinks
Jiafang really is teaching at a nearby grade school, while Jiafang continues working in the
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barbershop and is awarded “Sanba hongqishou” (lit. March Eighth red-bannerwoman; an
honor for female model workers). Finally, Jia is referred by others to the barbershop and
asks the model worker for a haircut. Jiafang first hides herself behind a mask while Jia
lavishes on her his rhetoric of egalitarianism. A journalist happens to come to interview
Jiafang, whose identity is now revealed. Jia of course is embarrassed by the discrepancies
between his talk and action, but he smartly redirects criticism toward his distorted
reflection in a mirror (fig. 5.8).
Unlike Li Shuangshuang, who is a strong, outspoken, and daring working class
woman, Jiafang is a weak, submissive, and feminine bourgeois housewife, who dares not
challenge her husband’s authority at home. Even after she has been recognized for her
outstanding performance at work, she still does not have the courage to tell her husband
about her job. It is only when a public confrontation is unavoidable and she is supported
by her own colleagues, her husband’s friend, and the state media (newspaper journalist)
that she reveals her newly acquired identity. Jiafang’s husband, unlike Xiwang, who is a
weaker character than Shuangshuang, is a dominating patriarch at home and a voluble
cadre in public. In Li Shuangshuang, the boundary in rural life between private domestic
space and the public sphere is less fixed than in urban society. Not only can people
casually enter another’s household, but also the characters can easily leave their domestic
setting and seek refuge outside the family (for example, when Shuangshuang seeks help
from the party secretary, and when Xiwang leaves home). The demarcation line between
the domestic space and the public space in Female Barber, however, is harder to
transgress. Unlike peasant women receiving credits for daily farming activities, urban
housewives, without jobs, do not have economic independence. Lu Xun (1980: 87)
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predicts that after Nora leaves home in an old society “she can hardly avoid going to the
bad or returning.” In Chinese film, there are any number of examples of women being
crushed by a hostile society after leaving home (such as Shennü [The goddess; dir. Wu
Yonggang, 1934] and Xin nüxing [New woman; dir. Cai Chusheng, 1935], and Zhufu
[New year sacrifice; dir. Sang Hu, 1956]), examples of women finding their
independence in revolution after leaving their abusive feudal or bourgeois
family/relationship (such as Qingchun zhi ge [Song of youth; dir. Cui Wei, Chen Huaikai,
1959] and Hongse niangzi jun [Red detachment of women; dir. Xie Jin, 1959]), and
examples of women being abused by the old society and saved by the revolution (such as
Baimao nü [White-haired girl; dir. Wang Bing, Shui Hua, 1950]). What makes Female
Barber unique is that Jiafang does not actually leave her home behind after joining the
work force. She still accepts her husband’s expectations for her and fulfills her domestic
duties at home, although with a frown (fig.5.9). It is out of both a habitual reliance and an
effort of maintaining family integrity that she lives a double life as a housewife and a
working woman. Although not known for her comic talent, actress Wang Dafeng aptly
delivers the comic incongruities of Jiafang’s dual character, which is both compliant and
rebellious. And while the film satirizes Director Jia’s hyposcrisy and patriarchism, it still
confirms the importance of family integrity and leaves the hope of converting Jia to the
end.
Satisfied or Not, another huajixi adaptation, also deals with discrimination
against a particular profession, the restaurant server, but features a male protagonist
rather than a female. Made in the context of the “learning from Comrade Lei Feng”
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campaign (figs.5.10-5.11), the film is also more didactic than Female Barber.8 A young
man, Xiao Yang, is assigned the position of Waiter No. 5 at a famous Suzhou restaurant,
Deyuelou. However, his ambition is bigger than serving tables. Thinking that the
People’s Republic should be free of servitude, he has a very negative attitude toward his
job at the restaurant and longs to become a factory worker. Frustrated, Xiao Yang often
takes it out on his customers and colleagues. His colleagues—particularly his mentor,
Waiter No. 3—try to help him realize the equalitarianism of socialist labor division and
the importance of serving the people in whatever positions. They point out to him that to
regard serving the people as a kind of servitude is to subject himself to the mentality of
the old society, when waiters like his own father were bullied and abused. Xiao Yang
makes attempts to change his attitude, but is not very successful because he has yet to
establish a “correct attitude” of serving the people. A pantomime sequence shows that his
forced smile only confuses and scares customers away (figs. 5.12-5.13). It is only through
a series of accidents that he learns how other people—including the customers and
colleagues offended by him in the past—altruistically serve the people. When he is
mistaken as model worker Waiter No. 3 and asked to give a talk at a conference, he is
finally convinced that restaurant server can be a noble profession. Predictably, he is
transformed to an enthusiastic and helpful waiter.
Here, as in Female Barber, a working profession is associated with gender and
class, and further complicated by age and generations. Perceiving waiter as a low, old,
8
Lei Feng (1940-1964) was a model soldier of the People’s Liberation Army. He was characterized as a
selfless and modest person who was devoted to Chairman Mao and the Party. After he died accidentally at
age 22, he was posthumously recognized as a national role model and Mao wrote the inscription “Learning
from Comrade Lei Feng,” first published in People’s Daily on March 5, 1963 and quickly propagated all
over the nation.
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and dead-end profession for a young man, Xiao Yang believes that nobody would have
respect for a waiter and behaves accordingly in a self-demeaning manner. But the
egalitarian ideology requires people to accept any position they are assigned to and do
their best to serve the people without reservation. The choice of setting the story in a
restaurant no doubt has the purpose of encouraging a positive view of the service industry,
of which restaurant service is one important type that is closely associated with people’s
everyday life. But the choice also involves many cinematic considerations. As Ning Ma
(1987: 40) points out, Satisfied or Not contains a great deal of moralizing but still retains
the form of popular entertainment. Drawing on Christian Metz and Arthur Koestler, Ma
(1987: 41-42) argues that the comic spectacles in the film
not only offer themselves as entertainment that builds the desire and then
represents the satisfaction of what they have triggered (that is, they are
represented as the site of spectatorial pleasure) but also produce double
meanings in the context of the narrative. This doubling effect is an essential
element of humor in Chinese comedy as a whole…The comic techniques
employed in the film posit a series of contradictions in our perception of
human relationships in Chinese society: difference versus sameness,
individuality versus collectivity, and the like.
The doubling purpose of the film—as both an “educational discourse that tries to convert
people” and as “entertainment that tries to conform to people’s desire for pleasure”—
employs conflicting comic techniques and causes the tension between “serious narrative
and comic spectacles” (Ma 1987: 43). Set in a restaurant known by the real name of a
distinguished Suzhou establishment9 and distributed in both dialect and Mandarin
soundtracks, the film first and foremost creates a double cinematic spectacle for both the
local audience and the national audience. Because of the fame of the restaurant, it attracts
9
Deyuelou is the name of a real Suzhou restaurant.
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both local customers and tourists from other regions. As such, the film can accommodate
the diverse dialects that huaji comedians specialize in. The traditional styled architecture,
local cuisine, the landscape of the watery region, diegetic pingtan (chantefable)
performance, and traditional flavored music, all add to the cinematic spectacle and
lighten up the serious didacticism. The comic performance sequence, such as the
pantomimed forced smile of Xiao Yang and the huaji-styled musical numbers, also
enhance the viewing pleasure and allow the film to exceed its ideological intention. As
Ning Ma (1987: 48) aptly points out, “the pleasure the comic spectacles contain comes
from the audience’s recognition of the disguised return of the repressed and the
disruption of the institutionalized discursive processes.” With a recognition of the comic
spectacles and local color, we can see that a manipulative propagandist message is no
longer the sole function of the film.
Big Li, Little Li, and Old Li: A Lighthearted Comedy of Management
Similar use of comic spectacles can be found in Xie Jin’s Big Li, Little Li, and Old Li.
The narrative and the comic spectacles of the film are closely related to the idea of
management: management of body, space, time, relationships, family, factory, etc. The
obvious and central storyline is about promoting physical fitness. The theme of body
management generates much laughter with an all-comedian cast and many physical gags.
The film is cleverly set in the intimacy of a meat-processing factory where all workers
live in the same apartment building. The comedy is mainly invoked by the conflicts
between Little Li, an avid sports lover, and his father, Old Li, an equally avid opponent of
the idea of promoting physical activities within the work unit under his charge. The
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conflicts between the father and son are mainly mediated by Big Li, an open-minded
chairman of the workers’ union who does not know much about sports but is eager to
learn. After many back and forth struggles between the father and son, the whole
community is convinced that spending time on physical exercise will only improve
productivity and enhance communal connections.
The setting of the meat-processing factory is significant, because it offers both the
comic spectacle of frozen meat (which provides a well-known comic gag where two
characters are frozen with the butchered pigs because they hide there to avoid exercise)
and the reason for rural-urban connections (figs. 5.14-5.15). Like Li Shuangshuang, in
Big Li, Little Li, and Old Li private space and public space are mutually infiltrating
because the characters all live and work in the same community. And the boundary
between the rural and the urban is blurred because of the intimate working relationship
between the meat factory and their rural suppliers. This setting makes the relationship
between the state and the individual particularly complicated in both spatial and temporal
senses. The work unit and the communal apartment structure the people’s daily life (fig.
5.16); here they share, monitor, and interact in designated spaces. People’s leisure time
during the work break is also managed by the state through the form of physical exercise.
Physical fitness is a form of the management of people’s bodies (and minds) and their
leisure time. The mobilization of the physical fitness campaign, while comic, also entails
the elimination of private life.
While “quanmin jiansheng yundong” (the campaign for the physical fitness of the
entire people) targets every member of the nation, woman’s fitness is of particular
importance because a mother’s health is the key to the well being of children, the future
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of the nation. The film starts with Big Li playing with his five cute children. A motif of
good management is immediately displayed with a comic touch in the very orderly
arranged breakfast table (fig. 5.17) and the filmmakers do not forget to give a quick
moral lesson for the children: the little boy, with great courtesy, picks up a small bun,
leaving a bigger one for his elder brother, which invokes the classic story of “ Kong Rong
yielding (bigger) pear (to his elders)” (fig. 5.18). The father, Big Li, has back pain when
it is going to rain, thus earning him the nickname “weather observatory” (qixiangtai).
However, since he is elected to take charge of the work unit’s physical exercise, he starts
to not only learn gymnastics himself and teach the workers but also encourages his wife,
the mother of the five kids, to learn bicycling. Through persistent practice and some
comic twists, both manage to master their art. Big Li’s back no longer aches when the
weather changes. Those who habitually rely on Big Li’s back pain to decide whether to
bring an umbrella or not are caught in rain. Big Li’s wife, initially under the ridicule of
Old Li, excels in bicycling and wins the joint game between the factory and the
collaborating village. Her rejuvenated, youthful and smiling image is superimposed with
her old and weary housewife image (fig. 5.19-5.20). The idealized mother figure
successfully and happily manages to reconcile her family commitments, child-raising,
work duties, and her own body. And the film ends with the three Lis doing taichi together
in the common terrace of their apartment building.
Needless to say, Big Li, Little Li, and Old Li has its ideological agendas. In
addition to the obvious theme of promoting physical fitness of the entire people, it can
also easily be read as an allegory of state management. The tightly-knit world of the
meat-processing factory and the living compound in the film may well be seen as an
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epitome of the state. The three main characters represent different methods of
management: Old Li is the conservatist who initially rejects new ideas (e.g. gymnastics
during break, older people joining exercise, etc.); Little Li is the radical who jumps at
new ideas without thinking and imitates others without critical adjustment; and Big Li
represents the eclectic who is open to different models and can negotiate the old with the
new without intensify contradictions. As the film shows, it is the eclectic Big Li who will
not go to either extremes and works out the conflicts between the conservatist and the
radicals. The film itself also embodies the eclecticism that eulogizes the state-initiated
fitness campaign and subtly criticizes the undistinguished/forced promotion of the ideas
upon everybody. The cast of comedians, including huaji performers Liu Xiasheng, Fan
Haha, and Wen Binbin who have appeared in Sanmao Learns to Do Business, makes the
otherwise poignant criticism mild through relaxing comic spectacles.
Conclusion
Italo Calvino (1988: 3-31) avidly advocates lightness for it provides an intelligent escape
from the Ineluctable Weight of Living. Although Calvino’s lightness is different from the
lightness I have discussed above in my analysis of Chinese lighthearted comedy in the
early 1960s, I do think these comedies provided an escape from the weight of post-Great
Leap reality. The appearance of lighthearted comedies focusing on family life and work
life (in general, everyday life) in 1962-63 was no accident. The private spheres—even
though they were heavily mediated by the public sphere—of family and friendship
functioned not only as worlds in which state ideologies could be propagated and
emulated, but also as vital, intimate arenas where human emotions could be more freely
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harbored and invoked. Moreover, the comic spectacles convey a pleasure that would have
been repressed and disrupted in the institutionalized discursive processes.
Unlike the social satires made in 1956-57, which have a strong tendency toward a
didacticism that can be broadly associated with intellectual discourse, these comedy films
have closer ties to spontaneous enjoyment, aesthetic fulfillment, and satisfying happy
ending that are commonly featured in popular culture. Precisely because these new
comedies shun sensitive social issues and focus on trivialities in everyday life, they speak
more of the hidden desires and plebeian values that had been marginalized if not totally
effaced by the grand revolutionary narrative and elite discourse. In a similar spirit of
utopianism as that found in eulogistic comedy, these lighthearted films manage to create
an imperfect but desirable cinematic world. Judging from the favorable contemporary
reception of films like Li Shuangshuang, the comedies functioned as an element of
cultural cohesion and helped heal the wounds inflicted by recent political and economic
failures. As Preston Sturges tries to confirm in Sullivant’s Travel (1941), the starry-eyed
Hollywood comedy director Sullivant wants to make a serious social film but discovers
in his unexpected suffering at the bottom of the society that escapist comedy—instead of
serious social films—provides some comfort, relief, promise, hope, something emulable
or simply to dream about, a safety valve to the disillusioned. While in revolutionary
melodrama the discourse of class led to social disruption (Iovene 2007: 89), in a comedy
about “internal conflicts within the people,” the disruptive revolutionary discourse seems
to be replaced by an emphasis on solidarity and cohesion.
What would the idealized cinematic realization of a socialist promised land,
contrasted to the reality of post-Great Leap starvation, invoke among the film audience
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then and now? Would the seemingly non-political, free, private sphere of hearth and
home take on a political dimension and generate a criticism of the social reality? Or
would it provide comfort and a good dream to dream about in an oppressive reality? A
future study of audience reception may answer these questions.
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Figures:
Figure 5.1-5.2: The fight between the couple becomes slapstick when Xiwang is pushed down to the
ground and Shuangshuang laughs through her tears.
Figure 5.3-5.4: male space and female space are demarcated clearly.
Figure 5.5-5.6: the rhythmic sound of Jiafang’s hair clippers is cut to the sound of marching train;
Jiafang’s hypocritical husband is confronted by his friend Zhao, who knows his tricks, in front of a
clueless customer at the barbershop.
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Figure 5.7: “We are all female barbers. That’s why this is called March Eighth Barbershop!”
Figure 5.8: “It’s him (to be blamed)!” Director Jia points to his distorted image in the mirror.
Figure 5.9: “These are all for you!” Director Jia hands over washboard, scissors, rolling pole, and
apron to Jiafang, who accepts them with a frown.
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Figure 5.10-5.11: Mao Zedong’s inscription of “Learning from Lei Feng” provides the background of
Satisfied or Not and inspires Xiao Yang to change his work attitude.
Figure 5.12-5.13: Xiao Yang’s forced smile confuses and scares customers away.
Figure 5.14-5.15: Old Li and the Giant (Dalishi) are locked in the factory freezer, together with
butchered pigs; the Giant and his team are play tug-of-war with a rural team in the nearby village.
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Figure 5.16-5.17: the living space is shared by people who monitor, interact, and influence each other;
the leisure is organized and shared by people who do physical exercise together.
Figure 5.18-5.19: the well-managed breakfast table and the well-managed kids who courtly give
preference to others.
Figure 5.20-5.21: the rejuvenated, youthful, and smiling mother is in contrast to the old and weary
housewife image of her.
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Figure 5. 22: the three Lis are doing taichi together in the common terrace of their apartment
building.
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CHAPTER 6
EPILOGUE
There is a crack in everything
That’s how the light gets in
--Leonard Cohen, “Anthem”
There is a comic scene in Big Li, Little Li, and Old Li in whick Little Li tries to persuade
his stubborn father, Old Li, to participate in physical exercise. Following the model of
Big Li, who has, with the aid of a propaganda poster about a mother exercising,
successfully persuaded his wife to learn bicycling, Little Li goes to a bookstore and buys
every poster featuring sports he can find. When Old Li comes home, he is first greeted by
a cheerful female athlete on a poster pasted on the door. Once inside, he finds himself
surrounded by propaganda posters, all featuring youthful and energetic people
participating in various sports: from the female gymnast on the back of the door and a
mom ready to exercise poster (the same one Big Li uses) on the chair, to the posters of
track runners, ping pong players, and a basketball game dangling from the ceiling, and a
cutout girl gymnast pasted on the fan… However, this massive visual persuasion only
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annoys and frustrates Old Li. It is only at the moment when he lies down and sees a
poster of an old man doing taichi that he is touched and instinctively imitates the move.
This comic sequence is particularly illustrative of how propaganda works (or does
not work) for individuals. A theme may be ideologically and politically determined, but
the audiences do more than passively accept the message inscribed upon them. Old Li,
within his limited power, chooses some images to resist and some images to simulate.
Propaganda only works when it speaks to its audience, who are conditioned by their own
situations, desires, needs, and preferences. The same holds true for filmmakers discussed
in this study. No doubt, making politically correct films is the primary means by which
filmmakers survive in a totalitarian society. Yet art is not so easily reduced to propaganda.
Within certain limits, filmmakers still have agency to create their own versions of
ideology and to shape through individual artistic expressions that are not easily
assimilated into state politics. In the preceding chapters, I have attempted to demonstrate
the heterogeneity and ambiguity of comedy film in the Seventeen Years. The comic
filmmakers constantly reacted to, contested, and negotiated with the volatile filmmaking
environment through a whole range of laughter, which may or may not be well integrated
with the dominant ideology. Their complexities show that these comedy films transcend a
simple binary opposition between propaganda and entertainment, tradition and revolution,
or support and subversion of the political status quo.
Lü Ban’s case, discussed in Chapter 2, shows a complex relationship between
artist and state ideologies. As someone closely associated with both the Republican
Shanghai film industry and the revolutionary bases in the north (Yan’an and the
Northeast), Lü does not fit the dichotomy of Shanghai versus Yan’an proposed by Paul
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Clark (1988). His films are no less an attempt to criticize social problems and the Party’s
arts policies than to revive the entertainment function of comedy film. The shift from
contemporary satire to eulogistic comedy in the late 1950s, while strategically avoiding
any direct exposure of social problems, actively sought to enhance cinematic pleasure.
Their romantic stories, lack of negative characters, idealized interpersonal relationships,
and happy endings recall a traditional Chinese understanding of “xi” as meaning “being
happy and pleased.” While love is identified with collective interest and laughter is
regulated by state-sanctioned ideology, comedy also transformed social ideals into a kind
of “cinema of attraction” with visual spectacles that could not be contained by political
dogmas. At the same time, the films’ utopian images, which contrasted so starkly with
social reality, may well constitute an implicit criticism of the status quo. Dialect and
period comedies—which also generally shun the depiction of contemporary social
reality—inherited, revived, and transformed the theme, form, style, and techniques of
regional performing traditions. The use of dialect—the “speech of market”—complicated
the process of nationalization in the sense that it enhanced both regional differentiation
(marked by linguistic dialectical practices) and national consolidation of an imagined
community through intranational adaptation in mass media. This group of films also
preserved the traditional comedic devices of the grotesque body, verbal jokes, and
physical gags, which, in a departure from rational social satire and eulogistic comedy,
usually solicit spontaneous laughter. The playful and unruly characters of the fool and
trickster—who do not appear in other genres—embodied a freewheeling spirit that
implicitly defied authority and order. The lighthearted comedy, which also appeared in
the early 1960s, addressed “contradictions among the people” in everyday domestic
207
spheres and workplaces. These films took a “third route” in between satire and eulogy,
which were viewed as binary categories in some discussions of socialist comedy in the
late 1950s and early 1960s. Both cheerful and mildly satirical, the films focused on
transforming people’s mentality according to the shifting social roles that they were
assigned to in the socialist system. Neither overly didactic nor too slapstick, these films
were eclectic products of their filmmakers’ negotiation between ideology and
entertainment.
While focusing on the construction and transformation of the comedy genre in the
Seventeen Years, I hope in this study to have maintained a balanced analysis between the
multi-faceted contexts in which the films were produced and the textures of individual
films, highlighting both the unique qualities of these Chinese comedy film and their
commonalities. It is also my hope to initiate a dialogue with recent studies of European
cinema, particularly the national cinemas of (former) totalitarian states. Certainly there is
a degree of universality in the film medium in general and comedy in particular. The
industrial systems in totalitarian states also function in similar ways. For example,
scholars have noted that the cinematic mediation of the relations between state and public
in Eastern Europe “has not always been one of messages from the top—in several
countries films have been presented, with greater or less justification, as articulating the
citizen’s response to the state and publicizing criticism from the public” (Holmes and
Smith 2000: 3-4). This is also reflected in Chinese comedy film. To be effective, political
messages have to be presented by the filmmakers in a valid filmic language that will
appeal to spectators. Political slogans and messages do not make for good comedy
(unless, of course, they are being used ironically). The Communist state acknowledged a
208
need for comedy to cheer the masses and affirm the superiority of the socialist system,
but filmmakers struggled to make funny films that served these political needs. Within
these political strictures, I have suggested in the preceding chapters, they were
remarkably successful in making films that funny, entertaining, and appealed to
audiences. And in the comedy lie hidden meanings and emotions that may not neatly fit
into prescriptive norms for mass culture and that are, I think, at least potentially
subversive. As such, these works cannot be reduced to mere political propaganda. In
being entertaining and funny, in making people laugh, comedy film necessarily exceeds
political didacticism. Eulogistic comedy worked because it made people appreciate the
representations of a promising socialist future and desire for them.
The human need and urge to laugh have never disappeared in any social or
historical circumstance. Even after all comedies were banned in the Cultural Revolution,
a satirical creativity still manifested itself in nasty cartoons and caricatures attacking class
enemies. And as many Cultural Revolution memoirs indicate, people still secretly
appreciated a good laugh, sometimes in very distorted circumstances. For example,
Huang Zuolin, locked up in “ox pen” and starving, recalled the famous menus in some
huajixi skits to help him swallow his plain rice. According to one source (Ameng,
unpaginated), during a screening of The House of Seventy-Two Tenants before a struggle
meeting against the director Wang Weiyi, people laughed so hard that it became
impossible to proceed with the struggle meeting. The meeting was eventually cancelled.
After the Cultural Revolution, comedy was among the first film genres to recover.
In the late 1970s, the Shanghai Film Studio started producing a series of comedies,
including Erzi, sunzi, he zhongzi (Son, grandson, and seeds; dir. Liang Tingduo, 1978),
209
Taliang he taliang (Twins come in pairs; dir. Sang Hu, 1979), Xi ying men (The in-laws;
dir. Zhao Huanzhang, 1981), Yueliangwan de xiaosheng (Laughter in the Moon Bay; dir.
Xu Suling, 1981), and Xiaoxiao Deyuelou (A small Suzhou restaurant; dir. Lu Ping,
1983). These films maintained the distinct regional flavor of Shanghai and the nearby
Jiangnan area. Many rehabilitated stars from decades past, including Han Fei, Wang
Danfeng, Sun Jinglu, Chen Qiang, and Zhong Xinghuo, resumed their performing careers
to praise the transformation that the post-Mao reform and opening up had brought about.
All realistically set and performed, the films did not, however, use dialect, except for A
Small Suzhou Restaurant, which is the only dialect film based on huajixi in this cohort. It
was made into a sequel to Satisfied or Not, set in the same Suzhou restaurant Deyuelou.
Comedy was again used as a tool to moralize, to correct, to confirm a flawed but hopeful
socialist society, and of course, to entertain. This eagerness to pick up what Chinese films
left in the Seventeen Years displays a continuity in Chinese cinema and attests the
importance of comedy genre in this cinema.
I hope my study of comedy films in the Seventeen Years has successfully
deconstructed the myth of a totalitarian cinema in the Mao era. Only by looking beyond
the current canon can we see what history has left behind and will we be able to talk
about the continuity and discontinuity of Chinese cinema in the twentieth century. The
recent (multiple) remakes of Drafting Able-Bodied Men, The House of Seventy-Two
Tenants, and television programs (such as the Story of Movies series) about many films
discussed here also show the popular interest in re-evaluating Maoist cinema in the postsocialist context. And in everyday life the resonance of the films can be felt in many
different ways. Beth Notar’s (2006) anthropological study of contemporary Dali shows
210
the very complicated impact of the film Five Golden Flowers among the local people and
national tourists. She observes,
Whereas the national tourists viewed the film Five Golden Flowers with
nostalgia and fantasy, younger villagers saw it as providing employment
opportunities through tourism and a way out of the hard labor of farming
and fishing. Older villagers, in contrast, viewed the film with longing for a
lost landscape. For them the film served as a historical document of the
destruction wreaked on their environment during the revolutionary era…
Older villagers, in addition to viewing the film with longing for a place in
the past, however, also viewed the film with pride that their place had
been chosen for a celebratory national film. I never heard anyone express
strong criticisms of the film’s representations of Bai culture. (Notar 2006:
78-79)
This account provides a good example of how a film’s (contemporary) reception exceeds
the parameters of ideology and entertainment and is complicated by economic, ethnic,
and emotional, and temporal factors. It also shows the relevance of the past to the present.
Certainly not every film from the Mao era has had such a strong influence, but it would
be worthwhile to further our study of the contemporary resonance of comedy films and
films from the Mao era in contemporary China in general, and ask the questions that
Chris Berry (2004: 159) ponders, “whereby some elements of the past are chosen to be
adopted and adapted as part of Chinese socialist modernity and usually praised as
‘tradition,’ while being combined with introduced things that they are compatible with.”
How tradition is constructed (and lost)? What mechanism is at work in the process of
remembering, syncretion, and discarding? I hope future studies will generate knowledge
and further our understanding of these issues.
211
FILMOGRAPHY
1937
Malu tianshi 马路天使 (Street angel)
Mingxing, 1937
Dir: Yuan Muzhi
Cast: Zhao Dan, Zhou Xuan
Shizi jietou 十字街头 (Crossroads)
Dir: Shen Xilin
Cast: Zhao Dan, Bai Yang, Lü Ban
1949
Wuya yu maque 乌鸦与麻雀 (Crows and Sparrows)
Kunlun, 1949.
Scr: Chen Baichen et al.
Dir: Zheng Junli
Cast: Zhao Dan, Wei Heling, Huang Zongying, Sun Daolin, Shangguan Yunzhu.
1950
Qishier jia fangke 七十二家房客 (Seventy-two Tenants)
Zhongying, 1950
Scr: Shen Mo
Dir: Zheng Xiaoqiu
Cast: Xiao Liu Chunshan, Shen Yile, Yu Xiangming, Xiao Xixi, etc.
Yingmi zhuan 影迷传 (Biography of movie fans)
Datong, 1949 (1950?)
Scr: Zuo Lin, Hong Mo
Dir: Hong Mo
Cast: Qiao Qi, Yan Huizhu, Gao Bo, Shi Chen, etc.
212
Huannan fuqi 患难夫妻 (A difficult couple)
Huichang, 1950
Producer: Liao Yunshi
Dir: Han Langen
Cast: Zhang Fan, Han Langen, Yin Xiucen, Guan Hongda
Taitai wenti 太太问题 (Wife trouble)
Guotai, 1950
Scr: Dai Weiqi
Dir: Xu Changlin
Cast: Dong Zhiling, Zhou Boxun
1951
Women fufu zhijian 我们夫妇之间 (Between a couple)
Kunlun, 1951
Scr/Dir: Zheng Junli
Cast: Zhao Dan, Jiang Tianliu, Wu Yin
1952
Meiguo zhi chuang 美国之窗 (A Glimpse of America)
Wenhua, 1952
Scr/Dir: Zuo Lin, Shi Hui, Ye Ming
Cast: Yu Fei, Shi Hui, Lin Zhen, Chen Shu
Putao shu le de shihou 葡萄熟了的时候 (When Grapes are Ripe)
Dongbei, 1952
Scr: Sun Qian
Dir: Wang Jiayi
Cast: Ding Laogui, Ouyang Ruqiu
1953
Zhao Xiaolan 赵小兰 (Zhao Xiaolan)
Beijing, 1953
Scr: Jin Jian
Dir: Lin Yang
Cast: Lin Ruwei, Yan Zengxiang
Jie hun 结婚 (The Wedding)
Dongbei, 1953
Scr. Ma Feng, Chen Ge
Dir: Yan Gong
Cast: Zhang Xiqi, Yang Jing
213
1955
Lian yin 炼印 (Burning seal)
Shanghai, 1955
Scr: collective (Fujian Provincial Min Opera Troupe)
Dir: Zhang Tianchi
Cast: Lin Ganshan, Lin Wuxia
Pingyuan youji dui 平原游击队 (Guerrillas Sweep the Plain)
Changchun, 1955
Scr: Xing Ye, Yushan
Dir: Su Li, Wu Zhaodi
Cast: Guo Zhenqing, Liang Yin, Fang Hua
1956
Xin juzhang daolai zhiiqian 新局长到来之前 (Before the New Director Arrives)
Changchun, 1956.
Scr: Yu Yanfu
Dir. Lü Ban 吕班.
Cast: Ling Jingbo, Pu Ke
Buju xiaojie de ren 不拘小节的人 (The Man who Doesn’t Bother About Trifles)
Changchun, 1956.
Scr: He Chi
Dir: Lü Ban 吕班.
Cast: Bai Mu, Huang Wansu
Ruci duoqing 如此多情 (So Full of Passions)
Changchun, 1956
Scr: Luo Tai
Dir: Fang Ying
Cast: Ye Linlang, Liu Zengqing
1957
Xun ai ji 寻爱记 (Seeking Love)
Changchun, 1957
Scr/Dir: Wang Yan
Cast: Li Yunong, An Qi
214
Meiyou wancheng de xiju 没有完成的喜剧 (An Unfinished Comedy)1
Changchun, 1957.
Scr: Lü Ban, Luo Tai
Dir: Lü Ban 吕班
Cast: Han Langen, Yin Xiucen, Wen Hua, Su Manhua
Qiuchang fengbo 球场风波 (Trouble on the Playground)
Haiyan, 1957
Scr: Tang Zhenchang
Dir: Mao Yu
Cast: Wen Xiying, Zhou Boxun, Zhang Qian, Gong Shihe
Xingfu 幸福 (Happiness)
Tianma, 1957
Scr: Ai Mingzhi
Dir: Tian Ran, Fu Chaowu
Cast: Han Fei, Zhang Fa, Feng Xiao, Wang Bei
Jie nian 借年 (Hiring New Year)
Changchun, 1957
Scr: Li Shoushan et al
Dir: Liu Guoquan
Cast: Li Daijiang, Liu Yanfang, Zhang Ling
1958
Buguniao you jiao le 布谷鸟又叫了 (Cuckoo Cuckoo Again)
Tianma, 1958
Scr: Yang Lüfang
Dir: Huang Zuolin
Cast: Xie Dehui, Zhou Zhijun, Liu Tongbiao
Huahao yueyuan 花好月圆 (A Perfect Marriage)
Changchun, 1958
Scr./Dir: Guo Wei
Cast: Tian Hua, Yang Qitian, Guo Zhenqing,
Jin ling zhuan 金铃传 (Story of Golden Bell)
August First, 1958
Scr: Zuo Lin
Dir: Liu Peiran
1
Most books and articles cite this film title as Wei wancheng de xiju, however, the title used in the VCD
version of the film, released by Qiaojiaren Company, is Meiyou wancheng de xiju. Here I follow the
released title.
215
Cast: Xiao Chi, Yu Chunmian, Yang Wei
Sanmao xue shengyi 三毛学生意 (Sanmao Learns to Do Business)
Tianma, 1958.
Scr: collective
Dir: Huang Zuolin 黄佐临.
Cast: Wen Binbin, Fan Haha
Sannian zao zhidao 三年早知道 (No Mystery Three Years Ago)
Changchun, 1958
Scr/Dir: Wang Yan (adapted from Ma Feng’s short story)
Cast: Chen Qiang,
Xiaokang renjia (A well-to-do family)
Haiyan, 1958
Scr: Li Zhun
Dir: Xu Tao
Cast: Han Fei, Ma Ji, Hong Xia
Yi ri qian li 一日千里 (A thousand miles in a day)
August First, 1958
Dir: Yan Jizhou
“Yi zhang dazhi bao” 一张大字报 (A big-character poster)
Scr: Zheng Hong, Ma Jixing, Li Jun, Yan Jizhou
Cast: Gu Zhonglin, Wu Fan
“Zai huoche shang” 在火车上 (On the train)
Scr: Li Jun
Cast: Qian Shurong, Li Weixin, Xing Jitian
“Chuchu Yuejin sheng” 处处跃进声 (Sounds of the Great Leap Forward
everywhere)
Scr: Yan Jizhou
Cast: Liu Jiyun, Wang Xiaotang, Su Youlin
1959
Jintian wo xiuxi 今天我休息 (My Day Off)
Haiyan, 1959.
Scr: Li Tianji
Dir: Ru Ren 鲁韧.
Cast: Zhong Xinghuo, Zhao Shuyin
216
Wu duo jin hua 五朵金花 (Five Golden Flowers)
Changchun, 1959
Scr: Zhao Jikang, Wang Gongpu
Dir: Wang Jiayi
Cast: Mo Zhijiang, Yang Likun
Women cunli de nianqingren 我们村里的年轻人 (The Young People in Our Village)
Changchun, 1959
Scr: Ma Feng
Dir: Su Li
Cast: Li Yalin, Liang Yin, Jin Di
Qiao laoye shang jiao 乔老爷上轿 (Master Qiao Mounts the Sedan)
Haiyan, 1959
Scr: Tian Jinxuan, Liu Qiong
Dir: Liu Qiong
Cast: Han Fei, Sun Jinglu
Wanzi qianhong zong shi chun 万紫千红总是春 (Spring Forever)
Haiyan, 1959
Scr: Shen Fu, Qu Baiyin, Tian Nianxuan
Dir: Shen Fu
Cast: Zhang Ruifang, Sha Li
Xiaozhu yankai 笑逐颜开 (Beam With Smiles)
Changchun, 1959
Scr: Cong Shen
Dir: Yu Yanfu
Cast: Zhang Yuan, Ren Yi
Jie qin pei 借亲配 (Borrowed Wife)
Changchun, 1959
Scr: Yang Ming
Dir: Fang Ying
Cast: Peng Guozhen, Cai Xiangzhen, Qiu Yunsun
1960
1961
1962
Da Li, Xiao Li, he Lao Li 大李，小李，和老李 (Big Li, Little Li, and Old Li)
Tianma, 1962
217
Scr: Yu Ling, Xie Jin, Ye Ming
Dir: Xie Jin
Cast: Liu Xiasheng, Fan Haha
Ge liang hao 哥俩好 (Good Brothers)
August First, 1962
Scr: Suo Yunping, Bai Wen
Dir: Yan Jizhou
Cast: Zhang Liang, Zhang Yongshou
Jinshang tianhua 锦上添花 (Adding Flowers to the Brocade)
Beijing, 1962
Scr: Xie Tian, Chen Fangqian, et al
Dir: Xie Tian, Chen Fangqian
Cast: Han Fei, Zhao Ziyue
Nü lifashi 女理发师 (Female Barber)
Tianma, 1962
Scr: Qian Dingde, Ding Ran
Dir: Ding Ran
Cast: Wang Danfeng, Han Fei
Li Shuangshuang 李双双 (Li Shuangshuang)
Haiyan, 1962
Scr: Li Zhun
Dir: Lu Ren
Cast: Zhang Ruifang, Zhong Xinghuo
Moshushi de qiyu 魔术师的奇遇 (Strange Adventure of a Magician)
Tianma, 1962
Scr: Wang Lian, Sang Hu, Chen Gongmin
Dir: Sang Hu
Cast: Chen Qiang, Han Fei
1963
Zhua zhuangding 抓壮丁 (Drafting Able-Bodied Men)
August First, 1963
Scr: Chen Ge, Wu Xue
Dir: Chen Ge, Shen Yan
Cast: Wu Xue, Chen Ge
Manyi bu manyi 满意不满意 (Satisfied or Not)
218
Changchun, 1963
Scr: Fei Ke, Yan Gong
Dir: Yan Gong
Cast: Fang Xiaoxiao, Xiao Yang Tianxiao
Qishier jia fangke 七十二家房客 (House of Seventy-two Tenants)
Zhujiang, 1963
Scr: Huang Guliu, Wang Weiyi
Dir: Wang Weiyi
Cast: Xie Guohua, Pan Qian
Qiumi 球迷 (Football Fan)
Tianma, 1963
Scr/Dir: Xu Changlin
Cast: Tie Niu, Sun Jinglu, Chen Shu
Ruci dieniang 如此爹娘 (Such Parents)
Hanyan, 1963
Scr: Xiao Xixi, Lu Yang, Ye Yiqing
Dir: Zhang Tianci
Cast: Yang Huasheng, L Yang, Xiao Xixi, Zhang Qiaonong
Hua wei mei 花为媒 (Rose as a Go-Between)
Changchun, 1963
Scr: Wu Zuguang
Dir: Fang Ying
Cast: Xin Fengxia, Zhao Lirong
Qiangtou mashang 墙头马上 (Pei Shaojun and Li Qianjin)
Changchun, 1963
Dir: Cai Zhenya
Cast: Yu Zhenfei, Yan Huizhu
1964
Xiao Erhei jiehun 小二黑结婚 (Young Erhei Gets Married)
Beijing, 1964
Scr: Gan Xuewei, Shi Yifu
Dir: Gan Xuewei, Shi Yifu
Cast: Yang Jianye, Yu Ping
Xiao lingdang 小铃铛 (Little Bell)
Beijing, 1964
Scr/Dir: Xie Tie, Chen Fangqian
Cast: Shi Xiaolan, Ma Jia
219
BIBLIOGRAPHY
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Ameng 阿蒙. “Yueyu dianying Qishier jia fangke” 粤语电影《七十二家房客》
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Anderson, Benedict. 1983. Imagined Communities. London: Verso.
Anderson, Marston. 1990. The Limits of Realism: Chinese Fiction in the Revolutionary
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