THE EPIC AS NATIONAL SOVEREIGNTY, NATIONAL CONQUEST: How Hero redefines the rules of the Chinese film industry
In a 2002 interview, Chinese director Zhang Yimou claimed that he “knew little” about the West’s interests in movies; he stated that his mastery of English was limited compared to Ang Lee’s (Taiwanese director of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon). Continuing, he mentions that he attempts to access the broad Chinese market, as opposed to a global market.
It is perhaps no coincidence that 2002 marked the domestic release of the second film in a lineage of popular films characterizing the advent of international popular Chinese cinema. Epic films characterize these popular films: utilizing massive budgets, they utilize Western techniques to make beautiful movies combining complex editing, thoughtful computer generated effects, and depicting rich worlds of martial arts as a result. While Ang Lee’s Crouching Tiger marks the beginning of the genre’s popularity, Zhang Yimou’s Hero takes the genre to a new level. The movie can be said to represent the puzzling state of the Chinese film industry: encapsulating the cultural norms and political ideology of the People’s Republic of China (PRC), but also showing signs of cultural influence and even domination by the international market. Roughly corresponding to the national influences and cultural hegemony implied within Hero is the state involvement with the movie’s production, and the world market’s attempts to distribute the work respectively. Synthesized from these two forces is an interpretation of the politics of China’s film industry and state interaction.
What is popular art in China, and is it classified by the same “high and low” binary pair that characterizes Western art under traditional artistic critique? Channeling Cowen, as well as Grant & Wood, high and low classifications are distinctly shaped by the external environment of the works, and how they perceive the work. That is to say, what could be popular to the point of kitschy “low” ubiquity in 2007 could be a cult classic imbued with a large avant garde “high” art base in a few decades1. For the sake of simplicity, the political economy of the popular film market will be interpreted solely through Cowen’s praise of the capitalist status quo. It is not without a sense of irony that one finds such a system applicable to the ambiguously Socialist PRC. Popular art, in Cowen’s scope, is powered by financing.
Financing for Hero is unprecedented, both in amount and source. The film cost $31 million US dollars, principally funded through two state-run enterprises based in China (Beijing New Picture Film Company) and Hong Kong (Elite Group Enterprises)2. Everything from the actors (notably Maggie Cheung, and Jet Li—both internationally acclaimed stars) to the production (provided by the Hong Kong Society of Cinemotographers) to the extras (members of the People’s Liberation Army) and locales (Tian’anmen Square most notably) were Chinese in nationality. The cultural significance of the story is preserved in the movie (which is in itself an adaptation of an ancient story told by Sima Qian, the grand historian of the Han Dynasty). Furthermore, when the cultural myth is altered, it is for the sake of arriving at a PRC-controlled political message. The ominous tyranny of Emperor Qin is deflected for the sake of advocating unity behind an absolutist regime; ostensibly a message compelling Taiwan to peacefully return to China’s rule. In this sense, the reigns of finance, production, direction, and quality control for the movie were in the hands of Chinese people.
On the subject of quality control, particularly censorship, the Chinese state and Chinese Communist Party (CCP) have rigid control. It is informative, if not essential, to reflect upon Zhang Yimou’s previous films to realize how influential the CCP/PRC institution is upon the trends in popular film in China. Ten years previous to Hero, Zhang Yimou was a filmmaker in exile, rebelling against the tyrannical rule of the Deng Xiaoping-led gerantocracy, the politicians responsible for the 1989 Tian’anmen Square crackdown. In the early 90’s, with the help of Taiwanese capital, he produced “high” artistic masterpieces such as Ju Dou and To Live, ambitious films depicting the seamy side of modern China. The films were banned in the PRC, an event which Taniguchi calls a “Catch-22.” Whereas Zhang was allowed to procure foreign capital to produce movies, as well as exhibit them at international festivals, yet “any approval by Euroamerican critics and audiences is seen as evidence that he [had] sold out to an Orientalist/masculine gaze.”3 Hero is the reconciliation of these problems for Zhang, at the cost of losing his unique message. While the state may have control of the changes of film at this level, to compare Hero with To Live one notices a loss of dynamism of the subtextual message in the film. What was an ambigious message, forcing audience members to evaluate for themselves the hardships of the PRC during the Great Leap Forward, has become a very blatant message, bordering on what could be defined as propaganda. With Hero, it is obvious where the controls lie.
Yet, there are signs that the state does not control most of the trends in art. Comparing the simple, operatic Red Detachment of Women (1960) with the expensive, elaborate Hero reveals that even filmmaking for the purpose of propaganda has taken a market-influenced turn. Economically, this makes complete sense: between 1960 and 2002 the PRC gave up the planned market for the free market.
As a result, capital-intensive films in China are becoming far more numerous than in the past. Crouching Tiger redefined the rules of financing for East Asian film making, singlehandedly popularizing the epic movie in China. Following in this tradition have been Zhang’s work: Hero, House of Flying Daggers and Curse of the Golden Flower. Chinese epics operate in the same manner that other capital-intensive works (e.g. the Western epic The Lord of the Rings), by generating huge profits not only domestically (via Hong Kong), but abroad as well. Capital intensity is important for the production of these works because of their epic scale: they demand comparatively larger budgets for special effects. By virtue of the high production values these works gain popularity: common to the human experience is the need for aesthetics—rich costumes, landscapes, and correography transcend borders fluidly, whereas morality requires translation for other cultures to grasp the concepts conveyed.
In this sense imperialism occurs in the contemporary Chinese film industry not only through who consumes the product, but also through the influences foreign movie industries have had upon the Chinese industry. China is a country where cultural development occurs beyond what the state sanctions, through the “sixth generation” DVR camcorder guerrilla filmmakers, as well as the black market for infringed high-budget US and EU films. Through the flooding of Chinese markets with pirated movies from the US during the middle of economic reforms, a new standard for film excellence has been established. National filmmakers have found the artistic technology that the West has employed to be ideal for reinterpreting the mythical stories of martial arts derring-do. Reliance upon computer generated effects has led to beautiful films attractive to the distinguishing eye of the international consumer, giving rise to a thriving demand for distribution rights among multinational media corporations. Public interpretation varies from region to region on this model, however, because translation of goods (particularly due to the ambiguities of Chinese culture and language) can obscure the true message of the film. To this end, Westernization of Eastern products can occur through financing to accommodate to the global citizen, and it is conceivable that the creation of markets abroad give incentives for Chinese filmmakers to make a more universalistic product to make regionalization far easier. Popular movie’s reliance upon new special effects may also be a hallmark of cultural imperialism. With this in mind, perhaps it is conceivable that Hero is not a unique work, but borrows from Western film in constructing an efficient, marketable aesthetic.
Cultural domination does not truly occur in Chinese film. It certainly shapes the demands of the consumer base in China via the on-going infringement crisis, and it defines how high-quality effects are effective in giving an international appeal to movies, but it does not serve to compromise the core values behind Hero, or any of the epic movies. Cowen seems to be right in this instance: a free market has allowed China to undergo an artistic revolution of sorts. While the cost for Zhang Yimou might come in the form of less flexibility in his message, his hard work has allowed for the popular film industry to gain a foothold in the world market. Meanwhile, a new generation of rebellious artists are already blossoming. It is advisable that the Chinese state continues to fund popular art in order to continue to espouse values important for the Chinese people, as well as messages essential to communicate internationally to help people understand the concept of China, as an expression of “soft power”. Meanwhile, the market must remain free: a crackdown akin to the Tian’anmen Square Crisis could lead to the popular art to be squelched. Such is the inherent danger with state-controlled media: it requires a soft touch to avoid innovative anemia, yet micromanagement to avoid the spread of dangerous ideas.
Hero is an important work to identify the state of film in Hu Jintao’s China. The PRC/CCP construct controls the message propogated by these new epic films, as well as funds them. Cultural imperialism occurs in influencing the style of the movie, and competition of foreign big budget movies in the domestic underground market has led to the rise of the big budget Chinese epic. In the midst of this development, the advisable position for China
[0] You may notice a large majority of my works are not available at the Knight Library. These are generally history and political science books from various classes I have taken in the past. In particular, there seemed to be few books in the library directly about China’s film industry; the pair that explicitly covered this subject (e.g. Wan Jihong’s M.A. thesis) were checked out a considerable amount of time before the assignment appeared on blackboard. Hence, I have decided to simply base my conclusions on values on the messages found within the movies I have viewed, and comment upon the changes on the film industry as an intersection between (A) the econ/social/political environment they were produced in and (B) the history of the actual film industry in terms of artistic movements (e.g. first generation vs. fourth generation movies in message). To this degree, my analysis is a bit of an socio/anthro look (ala Weber) than straightforward than cut-and-dried political economy.
It’s also notable that my focus upon Hero is to really show the bizarre functions of state moralizing/”soft power” in the world.
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