Seminar4
I – On the notion of “Western narrator”
Let's go back to this difficult (but crucial for our subject) notion: the Western narrator.
It has been asked, last week, with some perplexity: who is this narrator, actually?
Does he really exist, as an identifiable subject? Can't we suspect that he might rather
be some kind of a rhetoric construction? And this for a demonstration's sake whose
real object is distinctly political – something related to the question of hegemony?
And, consequently, what is the relation between the question of hegemony and the
films (as narratives) we are busy with?
This notion, “the narrator” is borrowed, here, from Walter Benjamin. He deals with it
in two texts, one called “The Narrator”, the other “Experience and Poverty”. For him,
the narrator is a human subject who has the capacity to gather an audience who
listens to him; he tells stories which become the material of a common experience
and knowledge of the world. Experience and narration are, for him, narrowly related
to each other. For Benjamin, the basic and authentic form of narration is direct, that is
oral narration: a storyteller, a poet, a bard, is reciting or singing an epic, oral poetry,
telling abut the fate of the city of Troy, its inhabitants, its heroes, its enemies – and
this narrative becomes the substance of a common culture, sensibility, experience, as
it circulates “from mouth to mouth”, Benjamin writes.
This is for him the original model for the transmission of the narratives and the way
these narratives convey shared experience. The narrator is he/she who has the
capacity to tell stories which are the cement of community, since they constantly
enrich the shared experience on which this community relies.
For Benjamin, who is writing on the narrator in the aftermath of WWI, this original
model for narration/narratives/the narrator is going through a deep crisis. “The value
of experience has fallen”, he writes in “The Narrator”- a very often quoted sentence.
For him, the transmission of experience through narratives has deteriorated from the
moment on it has ceased to be direct and oral (the circle of the all ears listeners
gathered around the narrator). Writings, books does not have the same transmission
and “gathering” capacity and value as traditional narratives “from mouth to mouth”
have. The reader of the XIX° century, this modern reader of Balzac or Emily Bronte,
is isolated, he is cut from the community, he doesn't share the impressions of his
reading(s) with others – the link between narrative and community is broken.
For Benjamin, the final phase of this process of impoverishment and deterioration of
experience in its relation to narratives is the desperate and definitive silence of the
veterans of WWI, those who shared the extreme, apocalyptic experience of life in the
trenches, and who, Benjamin says, feel unable to transmit (convey) it to others: they
don't have at their disposal the words to describe what they have seen, to express
what they have felt, they are convinced that, if they would speak, these others would
not believe them – so, they just shut up. On this issue, Benjamin rejoins Jean Norton
Cru I mentioned earlier. It means that the thread of the transmission of experience ( a
very valuable experience in that case, for the experience of these survivors is a
concentrate of this apocalyptic epoch's spirit) through narratives has been cut, this
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link is broken.
So, this is, very briefly, Benjamin's position on this question –
narrator/experience/transmission/community.
Now, how and why does this proposition matters for our subject?
It is about the relation between narratives and community, this capacity (which also is
some kind of a “power”) the narrator is endowed with to shape a community thanks
to his ability just to “tell stories” that matter for all, which have the effect that
different meanings emerge in or from the present, that the present state of things can
be related to the past, that for the listeners the world (as their field of experience) is
not just a chaos. This capacity to “tell stories” which are not only widespread but also
become authoritative cannot be reduce to “storytelling” - I mean, what Benjamin
talks about is not mainly a matter of “communication”, of organized communication
spaces, of fluid circulation of information, etc. It has basically something in common
with the relation between narratives and domination (or hegemony), it is about
narration and its role in the context of setting up relations of strength or of power.
This is something we have learned from Antonio Gramsci, a lesson which has been
more recently redeployed and from another angle by Michel Foucault: power,
exerting power, this is not only a matter of force, the essence of power is not pure
violence, power is something moving, fluctuating and flexible, based on interactions for it is basically a matter of unequal and conflicting relations between various
subjects.
Direct constraint, terror, physical violence, this is not the essence of power. It (power)
is made of many other “materials” like knowledge, understanding, memory, strategic
and tactic abilities, techniques – and language, the capacity to use language for such
or such end. Language taken into consideration as the material for discourses
(Foucault), discourses being the element in which language, power and truth meet or,
maybe, run into each other. This means that the capacity to “tell stories” is an
important component of power relations in our societies, it is even a high road to
domination or what Gramsci called hegemony, that is the way a nucleus of power
manages to exert a dominant influence on a social or political group and on all the
distinct parts this group is made of. This dominant influence or, if you prefer, this
ascendent has to be built up carefully, it goes through all kinds of strategic and
tactical games and also through the surreptitious politicization of what Foucault calls
“the discourse”. Hegemony is not something that is granted once for all, it has to be
constantly supported and redeployed – and this goes, notably, through narratives – the
ability to “tell stories”.
The complicated thing we have to try to understand is how all this “works” in our
societies, being based on a complex and paradoxical combination of strategies (That
is actions and moves based on calculation) with automatic effects of “the system”, as
some kind of a machine or a computer whose embedded commands are, for a part,
humans – a machine which has taken the upper hand on his maker...
This means that the “players” in this game for power and hegemony are its “subjects”
in a double sense: they play their part, they are active, they interact as rational
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subjects by constantly associating reason with calculation; but on the other hand, they
are “subjects” as subjects of the system, that is as they are subdued, subjugated to it.
In other words, they both “know” what they are doing and what they are saying, and
they don't know it. They are constantly put off center, as subjects.
This is what makes it possible for us to understand what the status of the narrator is in
our societies and what a “Western narrator” can be. What I'm trying to depict is all
but a picture peopled by malicious manipulators. The Western narrator I'm talking
about is all but a “bad guy” greedy for domination, Hollywood or any other hidden
demiurge.
And this for a very good reason: this narrator is much less “a guy”, a human person
or a set of perverted brains than an impersonal voice. Impersonal, even if it has to go
through a multitude of “speakers” of very different kinds. So, what I'm talking about,
as I use the expression “The Western narrator” is diametrically opposed to any kind
of theory of manipulation (of the public opinion) or, even less, conspiracy (aiming at
the domination of the world).
This narrator being “a voice” is of course made of a multitude of “rational actors”,
that is subjects who utter sentences which make sense; but, on the other hand,
subjects who phrase things as they do as they are parts of “a program”. It is in that
sense that I talk about a Western narrator: his phrasing is brilliant, rich, convincing,
but there is something which remains out of his reach: the hegemonic construction he
is part of and the way this construction inflects, curves the way he speaks, separates
the true from the untrue and “tells stories”...
So, as you see, the paradigm I'm taking here into consideration is not communication,
exchange (of information, opinions, messages) – it is power, tensions between
antagonistic forces, “agonic” relations. Actually, this model, when all is said and done,
is war . What I mean is this: historical narratives which are indissociable from
hegemony conflicts are not only plural and multiple, they also are involved in power
conflicts, in relations of strength and power; very often, they are openly at war one
against each other. So, “the narrator” of the controversial past is caught up in a battle
he doesn't know all the ins and outs of.
This is blatant at a time as the legitimacy of Western hegemony is seriously
questioned and challenged by the rise of new powers, powers which are not part of
what Negri and Hardt call “The Empire” - The People's Republic of China in the first
place, so far as the region we are in now is concerned...
IIDifferences between Don't Cry Nanking and City of Life and Death
As City of Life and Death was released in France, the French press wrote that it is the
first fiction film on the Rape of Nanking which has been presented to the public in
Mainland China and that it achieved there a tremendous success. But this is not so
sure: Carole made a research on Internet and found that other films on Nanjing 1937
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have been shot before and distributed in Mainland China. At least one She will give
you some information on this issue.
In its main feature, City of Life and Death looks very much like Dont' cry Nanking –
themes, descriptions, messages. From the technical and aesthetic angle, it adds new
special effects and uses this black and white or greyish effect – the tone of disaster(s).
It aligns itself in the new aesthetics of the “cinema of disaster” promoted by
Hollywood, but as well by the South Korean film industry.
But still, we can notice some differences which I would like to mention:
–
City of... is more insistent than Dont' cry... on the issue of bare life. It intends
to highlight that the Chinese people, as a common living body is indestructible, in
spite of the distinct intentions and the constant efforts of the Japanese invader. This
body resists and survives all outrages and any kind of violence exerted on it. It is
animated by such an elementary and vital ability to go through any kind of hard time
that it cannot be destroyed. The conquerors pass, the Chinese people remains. On this
issue, this film reminds what Giorgio Agamben writes on survival in the
concentration camps and the stake of “bare life”, in his famous book on Auschwitz.
The incarnation of “bare life” as the substratum of elementary resistance (or of life as
a form of resistance) is the young orphan, intrepid, fearless and innocent, a symbol of
this people – the Chinese as a youthful people.
–
City of... stresses more heavily the failure of the nationalist/KMT command of
the Chinese Army than Don't cry... does: the officers desert and abandon their troops,
only rank and file soldiers resist and sacrifice their lives for Nanking, the symbol city
of China's lost grandeur.
–
City of... insists on the issue of comfort women, that is a military institution,
and not only on the rape of women by Japanese soldiers. Comfort women, that is
military brothels which are a part of the “normal” state of the Japanese occupation of
China, the ordinary violence of this occupation – this by contrast with the rape and
kidnapping of women at the climax of the capture of Nanking, that is under special
circumstances. We have to remember here that in the interval between the two films,
this issue, comfort women, has become very contentious in the relations between
Japan and South Korea, Mainland China, Taiwan...
–
The general tone/tune of the film is one of national pride, it is to be sure a
nationalist film, but it is not anti-Japanese or chauvinistic, it has no whiff of racism or
xenophobia: it presents, of course, in a very crude and sometimes grandiloquent or
hyperbolic way, all the horrors and monstrous crimes committed by the Japanese
troops in Nanking, but it never depicts the Japanese, as such, as a degenerate and
criminal species – as monsters. We see in it a Japanese soldier who, having fallen in
love with one of the enslaved women in the comfort houses, commits suicide. We see
another one who becomes mad after having gone through all he has seen in the City
of Death. He becomes hysterical and yells “I want to go home!”. So, in this film, the
Japanese soldiers have not been cast all in the same mold, some of them have become
real monsters who bayonet women and children or “do their job” automatically in the
collective executions, most of the officers are cold blooded murderers; but some of
the rank and file characters still have human feelings. This is an interesting difference
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with some of the war films we saw and whose narration is based on this image of the
detestable and homogeneous species – the Jap.
IIISome remarks on the film John Rabe (Florian Gallenberger, 2009, Germany, China,
France)
It is some kind of a Western reply, imaginary, of course, to the films on The Rape of
Naking we saw before. It says: OK, we heard what you said, we do understand the
feelings that inspired them – grief, anger, sorrow... We do understand that for you,
Chinese people, this terrible crime is a wound that is constantly reopened, notably by
the reawakening of Japanese nationalism... But we have to tell you that we see things
very differently. For us, Nanking 1937 always was and still is (the reason why we
shot this film...) an humanitarian issue. For, we, the West, are the siege, the seat and
the homeland of humanitarian consciousness: sensitivity to Human Rights, to other
people's misfortune, the spontaneous impulse which urges us to support victims, all
kinds of victims... - this is us! Humanitarian aid, humanitarianism, this is the first
article of the Western subject' (the White Man'?) “constitution” (Constitution) .
The film's demonstration in favor of this proposition is very convincing (but sophistic,
of course) : take a European who is all but prepared by his past life, his personal
opinions, his profession to be a Good Samaritan: he has been the boss of the firm
Siemens in China for decades, so he is a businessman, a man who lives in the close
circle of the “white” colony in Nanking, who has no Chinese friends, his closest
acquaintance among the local people being his driver, a political opportunist since he
was careful enough to take his card, as a member of the Nazi party, after Hitler seized
power and keeps a huge Nazi flag in his plant... So, take this vaguely shady anti-hero
and now plunge him into the tragedy of Nanking and see what happens to him, see
how he transfigures himself under the effect of these dramatic circumstances! See
how he takes all the risks to set up the International Protection Zone, how he manages
to secure the life of thousands and thousands of persons, how he challenges and
stands up to the brutes and killers from the Imperial Army, how he manages to feed
all these people with what he has, to look after the sick and the wounded, to protect
the women and children, to comfort everybody – and all this, being himself a sick
man (diabetic, having no more insulin), and not so young!
So, this is the message thrust at us by the film: we, Europeans, Westerners... are the
humanitarian part of mankind. And this, of course, by contrast with this other,
inhuman(itarian), part we see at “work” in Nanking – killing, burning, looting,
raping...- Japanese militarism, in this case. But, as we know, the inhuman(itarian) part
can very rapidly change face: it already has during the Korean War (many Hollywood
films show it, often shot by the same filmmakers who shot the Pacific War films), it
reincarnates at the time of the War in Vietnam, later of the Tien An Men massacre, etc.
An “Asiatic brute” can very easily be replaced by another in this kind of narrative, I
can give you examples when the opportunity presents itself.
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As it tries to show in a rather unsubtle way how the humanitarian of the Western
subject is so irresistible that even a Nazi can be absorbed or cured by the homo
humanitarius who was latent in him, this film derives from a tradition made of
movies which depict the adventures and the devotion to the Chinese people of all
kinds of Western figures or characters who came to China during the troubled times
of Civil War and WWII to “save lives”: a Canadian communist doctor, Norman
Bethune (Dr Norman Bethune, Philip Borsos, 1990), a British missionary (The Inn of
the Sixth Happiness, Mark Robson, 1958), a British journalist (Escape from Huang
Shi, Roger Spottiswoode, 2008), etc. “Saving life” is our passion, our mission, an
injunction we cannot ignore. See how Rabe departs from his course, as a Nazi: if he
would have been true to his political commitment, he should have welcomed and
greeted the Japanese troops in Nanking by waving a Nazi flag – at that time, Japan
and Germany are Allies. Instead of that, he uses that flag as a protection for the
refugees... This shows how deeply rooted in us, people from the West, is our
humanitarian consciousness – it's like some kind of a special and additional organ we
have (and the others don't).
This passion for life and its protection is so strong and imperious that even the most
anti-humanitarian decisions have to pay their tribute to it: this is why the main
argument of the American administration in favor of the use of the nuclear weapon
against Japan at the end of the Pacific War was: save the lives of the million
American soldiers who, to be sure, would be killed if we had to try to conquer Japan
island after island; and, by the same token,save the lives of the hundred and
thousands Japanese, soldiers and civilians who also would be killed during this
campaign. And this is the same kind of wording you find, decades later, in the mouth
of Condoleezza Rice as she has to retort to critics from Europe after the Patriot Act
has been set up, the torture of “suspects” is booming, the “black flights” and
underground prisons of the CIA prosper in Eastern Europe, etc. By returning blow for
blow to terrorists, she said, we save American lives; but, as well, we save European
lives!”, she added, hoping that this strong argument would shut her European critic's
trap...
John Rabe intends to show how a Nazi can become a Just, provided exceptional
circumstances make it possible that his White man's humanitarian consciousness
awakes. Under such circumstances, even a huge Nazi flag is liable to become some
kind of a providential shield that protects the refugees from a Japanese air attack. The
filmmaker gives complete satisfaction to the Chinese co-producer and to the Chinese
public which will (maybe) see the film, this by drawing up an inventory of all the
horrors perpetrated by the Imperial Army in Nanking: executing prisoners with
machine guns, collective rapes, decapitation contest between two Japanese officers,
etc. From this angle, this film is just a pale imitation of the two Chinese films we
have talked about. But it is not what matters. The important thing is the reshaping of
the narration of the Rape of Nanking – Rabe becoming the main character and being
set up at the center of the plot. This displacement from characters like the Chinese
schoolmaster, the doctor and his Japanese wife, the Chinese soldier who doesn't give
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up fighting (Don't cry Nanking) or the orphan who embodies the indestructible
people's endurance and stamina under these dramatic circumstances (City of Life and
Death) to that of this European businessman suddenly inspired by some kind of a
humanitarian faith (God's blessing?) changes everything in the narration. The Western
narrator takes the floor again and restores his position by asserting this: we also have
a say in the matter of what happened in Nanking in 1937 and not only in the matter
of the incomparable disasters which were inflicted upon us at the same period, we
also have a say because in Nanking, we did a lot, and this we did it because we are fit
out with a unique sensitivity to the Human Rights and a sharp humanitarian
consciousness.
This is the kind of lesson this film teaches the public from non-Western areas. In all
innocence, of course, the only explicit intention of the German filmmaker being to
shot a film about Rabe, for it is “a good story”...
Two more words about how “backstage” - “very matter of fact” issues, how this kind
of collective memory business is run, in practice.
-The film was shot in Mainland China, in co-production with a Chinese producer. It
means that Gallenberger and his team had to deal with the local censorship, which
was not so easy. At a certain moment, the censors were about to stop the shooting, for
it appeared that this film was a factor of disruption in the relations between Mainland
China and Japan, this at a time as a their governments were about to sign a very
important contract on natural gas research in China... But it was Gallenberger's good
luck that, at that moment, a schoolbook was published in Japan, which forgot to
mention the Nanjing massacre... All of a sudden, his film was welcome for the
Chinese censor...
–
It seems that John Rabe was not distributed in Japan. It has not been forbidden
by the authority, but a Japanese distributor who was interested in the film suggested
that all the scenes in which Prince Asaka, a close relative of the Emperor, who also is
closely related to the Rape of Nanking, as a commanding officer in China at that time,
should be removed from the film. Since Gallenberger refused, the film was not
released in Japan. This is the way it works. The Japanese actor Teruyuki Kagawa who
performed the role of Prince Asaka said later that he was criticized in his country for
having accepted to act in the film and played this part – a member of the Emperor's
family as a war criminal...
IVThe Flowers of War (Nanjing Heroes), Zhang Yimou, 2011
Are collective memory troubles soluble in business – in cinema as an international
trade that ignores borders and differences in cultures, in the era of globalization? This
is the question that came to my mind as I saw this film. In Gallenberger's film, the
effects of the fragmentation of collective memory are still visible: “see how clever
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and virtuous we are, we Europeans, for even on this issue, Nanking 1937, your “lieu
de mémoire” (“realms of memory”) par excellence, we have our say and we have our
heroes to highlight – Rabe and his international “team”, an French teacher, an
American doctor, a Jewish German diplomat – Western heroes... the implication
being: do you have something special to say about Auschwitz? Probably not – we put
here our finger on the stake of hegemony in the field of narratives: a Western fiction
film on Nanjing 1937 can exist, an “Eastern” film of the same kind on Auschwitz is
very improbable.
With Zhang Yimou's film, we leap to another side. Zhang Yimou, after having been a
protagonist of the artistic reemergence of China after the end of the Cultural
Revolution with films like Red Sorghum or Wives and Concubines, To live, very
“ornamental” and “orientalist” films, I would say today, but films which, at the time
they appeared on our screens, in Western Europe, amazed us, for they presented a
completely different image of China from what we were used to - militant films shot
by Western sympathizers of the maoist regime, glorifying its accomplishments - , so
this Zhang Yimou, one of the most gifted figures of the so-called Fifth Generation of
Chinese filmmakers, represents today in a very exemplary (if I may say so) form this
kind of academic and opportunist businessman/artist which tries hard to export to the
West (but not only) products which bear the mark of a Chinese touch: Hero, The
Legend of the Chinese Daggers – that kind of cultural globalized junk food.
For this reason, Flowers of War is interesting, because the obvious purpose of the
filmmaker is to go beyond the traditional fragmentation effects of the collective
memory conflicts, on such an issue (Nanjing 1937), this in order to address his film to
a global public. So, this is the very paradoxical ambition of Wang Ziniou: to shoot a
“post-historical” film about an event which is “historical” par excellence, as deeply
rooted in the history of war, of the Chinese people as it can be...
What I mean by “post-historical” is this: a filmic narrative which tries hard to be
“global” and not “local”, that is not to depend on such or such memorial local
position or not to be part of such or such “side” in terms of collective memory. And
here, you can see how the purpose to depoliticize Nanjing 1937, to erase its (still)
contentious political dimension, goes hand in hand with business strategies: to
manufacture a hit which can be sold to the Chinese public as well as to the Western
public. Flowers of War was, as it was shot, the most expensive film in the history of
the Chinese film 94 millions dollars. So, the return on investment has to be of tor at
he same scale. I quote what Zhang Yimou says about the “message of the film” - the
depoliticization effect of his perspective (and of the industrial dimension of his film)
is, I think very evident: “No matter what wars or disasters happen in history [sic],
what surrounds these times is life, love, salvation and humanity. The human side of
the story was more important to me than the background of the Nanjing massacre.
Human nature, love and sacrifice -these are the things that are truly eternal. For me,
the event is the historical background of the film. But the enduring question of the
story is how the human spirit is expressed in wartime”.
So, you see, this is the typical philosophy of History of the cultural industry, that is
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the lowest level (in French, we say “zero degree”) of human thought about History
and war, disasters, as political stakes. In narrative terms, this “lightening” of the
political dimension and of the collective memory stakes of the film has distinct
consequences:
–
The “hero” of the film has to be a Westerner
–
This character has to be played by a rising star – Christian Bale, an actor
famous for his abilities to transform his body (- 23kg for The Machinist), more than
for his special talents as an artist.
–
The local heroes have to be second rank heroes: the Chinese soldier (sniper),
the schoolgirl, the prostitute, the young servant. The White man is at the center of the
plot, the Chinese under-heroes make a circle around him
–
The film has to be made of worn out ( but, a well, hard-wearing!) stereotypes:
the average man, the man without quality and overwhelmed with all sorts of faults
and shortcomings (drinker, lecherous, sordid) and who, in the dramatic and
exceptional circumstances in which he is suddenly plunged, reveals himself as out of
the ordinary – an outstanding moral figure. In Wang's film, the use of this stereotype
is specially reactionary: as soon as the shady mortician wears the priest's robe, he is
transfigured... A very heavy wink in direction of the Western public...
–
Other stereotypes: the whore(s) with a heart of gold, lead to a life of vice by a
disastrous series of personal events; the well educated Japanese officer who is
horrified by the crimes and horrors perpetrated by the army rabble (and loves music!),
but who cannot interfere in the “orders from above”; the Chinese collaborator who, in
a burst of moral reawakening, sacrifices his life for the good cause... Everything
happens in this film as if his maker had gone shopping in other films and filled his
cart with all kinds of characters, situations, details available in this supermarket...
–
Another very unpleasant element, an implication rather than a stereotype, is the
substitution of the schoolgirls from good families by the prostitutes, at the end of the
film. It is of course a narrative trick, a dramatization device. But the implication it
relies on is more than dubious: it is that this substitution is moral and salutary, saving,
a relief for the spectator - for, of course, “saving the lives” of the children is
imperative, on one hand, and on the other hand, the prostitutes' life can be sacrificed,
being, anyway, spoiled and polluted life. Social prejudice, even surreptitious or
subliminal is here what the filmmaker is eager to share with his public, the same way
as it is in the passage of the film where the delicate feelings of the educated Japanese
officer are contrasted with the bestial behavior of the rank and file soldiers – the plebs
of the army...
–
There are many other aspects of the film we could dwell on: for example what
appears to be some kind of a half hidden pro-KMT message – the nationalist army,
fights to the bitter end, the soldier who protects the children is not presented, as in
the films we saw before, as opposed to the officers who take to their heels. One can
connect this “message” with what we know of the artist's biography: his father was a
major in the Nationalist army, his uncle left Mainland China for Taiwan with the
remnants of the Nationalist army and, in relation with this, one can imagine, he was
sent for his “reeducation” to a village in 1966, during the Cultural Revolution... But
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are these “details” so significant?
–
Last and more important, in this film deliberately shaped by his author in a
post-historical/commercial horizon, the logic of concurrence in collective memory,
or of the war raging in the field of discourses, asserts itself again, in spite of all, a
very visible backlash: John, the fake priest is a copy of Rabe, another fake (a Nazi
humanitarian) the logic of business meets the logic of collective memory. The
paradox being here that it is a Chinese filmmaker who, having the 74th anniversary of
the Rape of Nanjing (id est: the Chinese public) in his eyepiece, shoots the more
flatly “Western” film of this event that one can imagine...
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