DOI: 10.4324/b22838-1
The 1980s were a critical period of social transformation in China. In the previous decades, during the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976), the whole nation was in chaos. Nation-building efforts stagnated, and the economy was badly damaged. More generally, national values and society were seriously distorted and disordered. After the isolation and suffering of the Cultural Revolution, the Chinese people began to get in touch with the outside world as a result of the so-called “Reform and Opening Up” policies. They found that the world had undergone radical changes. Although the Cold War still shaped politics, the international environment had changed greatly, especially in China’s neighboring countries and regions. Japan had built its economy to a strong position in the world, and the Four Asian Tigers (South Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Singapore) had also increased their strength. In China, economic planning continued to define the political and economic structures. Economic policies were guided by the dictum of “large in size and collective in nature,” which, while stressing egalitarianism, resulted in people in both urban and rural areas facing shortages of food and clothing. China was one of the least developed of the major countries in the world. In this context, people were starting to wonder: What was China’s position in the world? How did the outside world see China? How could the Chinese people develop the country? What would China look like in the future? It was not only Chinese politicians who were considering these questions at the time, but also people more generally. Specific to this book, artists could also not avoid considering these questions at this critical historical moment.
In an era of rapid change, the Chinese people eagerly expected and yearned for a bright and well-planned future. On December 6, 1979. Deng Xiaoping met with Japanese Prime Minister Ohira Masayoshi, making it clear that China’s goal was to build a prosperous society during die twentieth century:
The task of the “Four Modernizations” [strengthening agriculture, industry, defense, and science and technology] was set by Chairman Mao and Premier Zhou when they were alive. The Four Modernizations aim to change the poverty and backwardness of China so that not only will the people’s living standards gradually improve, but also China will regain an according position in the international community and make great contributions to all of mankind. This is necessary because a backward country is doomed to be bullied by other powers. . . . The Four Modernizations are a task in line with China’s basic national conditions and. unlike the model of modernization in Japanese capitalist society, our goal is to build a prosperous society for all.1
With these political visions, speeding up the development of modernization, strengthening national power, and improving people’s livelihood became the party’s and the government’s top priorities. A series of policies were put in place to achieve these goals and promote Reform and Opening Up. On April 9, 1980. People’s Daily published an article titled “The Many Benefits of the Production Responsibility System Concerning Output.” which marked the beginning of reforms in rural areas. On August 26, 1980, the 15th meeting of the Standing Committee of the Fifth National People’s Congress decided to approve the State Council’s decision to establish special economic zones in Shenzhen, Zhuhai, and Shantou in Guangdong Province as well as Xiamen in Fujian Province. This would prove an important milestone in the history of Reform and Opening Up. On August 26, 1981, Deng Xiaoping also first proposed tire concept of "one country, two systems," which put forward a pragmatic idea for handling relations with Hong Kong, Macau, and Taiwan.
Around this time, a number of events occurred that both led to and symbolized growing national strength and revived confidence. On May 18, 1980, China successfully launched a carrier rocket into the Pacific Ocean. College students paraded through the streets, chanting the slogan “Rejuvenating China,” after the Chinese soccer team defeated the Kuwait team 3:0 on October 18, 1981. On November 16, 1981, the Chinese women’s volleyball team won the world championship for the first time in a series of five consecutive championships. The successes of the women’s volleyball team served as the spiritual fulcrum for the Chinese people in the 1980s. From July 28 to August 12, 1984, the Chinese sports delegation participated in the 23 rd Olympic Games in Los Angeles, U.S.A. The Chinese athletes performed well, ranking fourth in the gold medal count and achieving groundbreaking success. On October 1, 1984, a large-scale military parade was held in Beijing for the 35th anniversary of National Day. Marching college students displayed banners with the slogan “Nihao Xiaoping” to pay tribute to Deng Xiaoping and express heartfelt support for the policies of the Communist Party of China since the Third Plenary Session of the 11th Central Committee. On December 19, 1984, the Sino-British Joint Declaration was signed, giving a clear roadmap and timetable for handling the relationship with Hong Kong.
Along with these exciting events, new intellectual and artistic changes also took place. The excitement of the general public encouraged the energies of literary artists, who were also encouraged by more relaxed official policies. Deng Xiaoping explained,
after overthrowing the Gang of Four, literary and artistic circles began to implement new Party policies on intellectuals under the leadership of the Party Central Committee. A large number of literary and artistic works that were previously embraced by the people became accessible again. Literary and artistic workers are in a relaxed mood, and their enthusiasm for creation is high.2
In the 1980s, while cultural activities were exceptionally active, the campaign to fight against spiritual pollution and “bourgeois liberalization” was also prevalent. Cultural and art became an intense field of ideological debate. In the midst of these debates, innovative literature and art burst forth. Innovation in fields of literature, music, and art became widespread. Social science research was also extremely active. Of course, the film industry also gave birth to the “fifth generation,” which would define Chinese cinema for more than 20 years. Even before the emergence of the fifth generation in the early 1980s, the film industry had already made remarkable achievements following the Cultural Revolution.
Following the historical turning points of the 1980s and 1990s, China entered a new century. After often being forgotten, there seems to have arisen a flourishing cultural phenomenon of recalling the 1980s. Of course, every Chinese person has their own memories of that period. When looking back at the movies of the 1980s, some poetically call the 1980s "the golden age of cinema." “Those movie frames have formed an image of a city reflected in the deep sea. They possess the scenery of spring and autumn, the love of generations, and the vision of the future”3 Many also cannot forget the movie stars of the 1980s. After listing movie actresses such as Liu Xiaoqing, Gong Xue, Chen Chong, Jiang Lili, and Wang Fuli, the previously quoted article comments,
the beautiful women of the 1980s bubbled with joy, for they had the optimism born of believing that tomorrow will be better. They expected China to develop into a better nation for a new era ... their energy and will seemed inexhaustible and still remind people of that time period that “bred steel roses.”4
As a practitioner of film studies. I entered university and developed as a scholar in the 1980s. It was as the memory of the 1980s seemed to be leaving us day by day that I felt compelled to return to the period and its possibilities. Thinking of what the nation had gone through and the movies produced during this period, it seems we hardly understood the significance at the time. Returning to this period was not only a mission, but also a fervent desire of the heart.
Representing a flourishing of creativity, research on Chinese cinema in the 1980s has been conducted on many levels. Many experts and scholars, at home and abroad, have reached fruitful conclusions at different levels and from different perspectives. These studies have served as a precursor and foundation for later research.
In 1988, A Decade of Chinese Films in a New Era, edited by the China Film Art Research Center, was published by Chongqing Publishing House. It uses essays to thematically analyze many cinematic phenomena. The book is a collection of 27 essays that analyze Chinese cinematic creations between 1976 and 1986, focusing on changes in the concept of Chinese cinema during the Reform and Opening Up era as well as the pioneering of new aesthetic concepts.
In 1989, Contemporary Chinese Cinema, edited by Chen Huangmei, was published by Chinese Social Sciences Press. It provides a basic overview of Chinese cinema from 1977 to 1984, giving a standard narrative of Chinese cinema in that period in the context of historical development.
In 1989, The Road to Revival: Film Creation and Theory Criticism from 1977 to 1986, written by Li Xingye, was published by China Film Press. The book contains three parts: (1) the history of film creation in the first decade of the new period, (2) theory and criticism, and (3) the theory of directing. The theory of directing covers three issues: Xie Jin’s films, the exploration of young and middle-aged directors, and young directors in 1983 and 1984. The analysis focuses on the films themselves as well as him history.
In 1997, Henan University Press published Review of the New Wave of Literature and Art in the New Era, edited by Cheng Daixi. with the volume Film and Television in the New Era written by Cai Shiyong. This book contains five chapters: (1) “The First Wave of Film in the New Era—The Sun and Me (Taiyang He Ren, dir. Peng Ning, 1980)”; (2) “Chinese Cinema Goes Global”; (3) “‘Entertainment Film’—Another Face of Cinema in the New Era”; (4) “Theories of Cinema in the New Era”; and (5) “Death of the River (Heshang, 1988)—A Living Specimen of Liberal Thinking.” In this book, the author points out that the term “Cinema in the New Era” is used to argue that Films were influenced by, or were part of, the new era’s embrace of Westernization. This distinct ideological stance means the thesis of this volume lacks objectivity.
In 2002, echoing Review of the New Wave of Literature and Art in the New Era, the Culture and Arts Press published Review of the Mainstream Literature and Art in the New Era. It is a treatise on literature and art in the new era after 1989, edited by the China Academy of Arts. The volume Film and Television, by Zhang Baiqing, contains four chapters: (1) “The Return of the Spirit of Reality,” (2) “The Return of Historical Consciousness.” (3) “The Exploration of Human Themes,” and (4) “The Diversification of Artistic Exploration.” This volume discusses positive outcomes of films in the new era from the perspectives suggested in the above four chapters.
In 1997, China Radio and Television Publishing House published Cultural Trends on Cinema in the New Era by Rao Shuoguang and Pei Yali. It uses critical analysis to discuss many issues in the cinema of the new era, including trauma films, documentary films, reform films, cultural reflection and film production, entertainment films, films with major revolutionary and historical themes, melodramatic films, new-period film theory, the fourth generation, the fifth generation, images of women and femininity in new-era films, Western films, urban films in the new era, rural films in the new era, and postmodernism and contemporary Chinese films.
In 2000, Peking University Press published Landscape in the Mist: Chinese Film Culture 1978-1998 by Dai Jinhua. In the first section, titled “Looking out from the Leaning Tower,” the book analyzes the films of the 1980s in terms of ideology and gender. The chapter titles are: “Leaning Tower: Rethinking the Fourth Generation,” "Broken Bridges: The Art of the Sub-Generation." “Encountering the Others: Reading Notes on ‘Third World Critique,’” “Gender and Narrative: Women in Contemporary Chinese Film,” and “Silence and Hustle: Under the Surface of the City.”
In 2004, Peking University Press published A History of Contemporary Chinese Cinema: Since 1997, edited by Lu Shaoyang. It analyzes issues by identifying different time periods, which it classifies as: the wandering era, the remedial era, the improvement era, the romantic era, the entertainment era, the advancing era, and the realistic era.
In 2005, Peking University Press published A Cultural History of Chinese Cinema by Li Daoxin. In Chapter 14, “Mainland China: The Boom of Conceptual Renewal and the Reconstruction of Film Culture.” the author discusses six issues: (1) the process of opening up Chinese mainland cinema and choosing market-oriented films; (2) the discussions of Xie Jin and his model for film; (3) the fourth generation directors and their subjective consciousness in poeticizing history; (4) Chen Kaige: historical reconstruction and cultural reflection; (5) Zhang Yimou: national traits and innovative performance; and (6) the individual writings of the directors of the new generations as well as the difficulties in their lives.
Many overseas scholars have also published work about contemporary Chinese cinema. In China into Film: Frames of Reference in Contemporary Chinese Cinema, Jerome Silbergeld speaks highly of Chinese cinema. Silbergeld argues that since 1984, Chinese cinema has become the most vivid entrant onto the international him stage. A professor of art history, Silbergeld argues that Chinese him directors have made extensive use of allegorical writing in response to him censorship. He also studies female figures, directors, and melodramatic narratives in Chinese cinema. Silbergeld also focuses on the influence of “Maoism” and “post-Maoism” on Chinese cinema production. His main contribution is the idea that tradition survives in Chinese him culture, despite the backdrop of the Chinese revolution, which has generally weakened the influence of historical traditions. Silbergeld argues Chinese film directors have constructed modem Chinese cinema while still preserving tradition.
Celluloid China: Cinematic Encounters with Culture and Society, edited by Harry H. Kuoshu. contains the following chapters: (1) “Histories within and beyond the Melodrama: Honor, Crime, and Ecstasy”; (2) “Speaking up for Others: The Evolution of the Female Allegorical Character”; (3) “The Cinematic Spectacle: Ethnic Minorities as the ‘Inner Other' in the People’s Republic of China”; (4) “China Facing the West: Roots Beneath the Yellow Earth”; and (5) “New Urban Cinema: Post-Socialism beyond the Experience Developed from the Yellow Earth.”
In the 1991 volume Perspectives on Chinese Cinema, Chris Berry offers a broad perspective on the past and present of Chinese cinema, focusing on the fifth generation and the political and economic pressures they faced. In 2003, Berry edited another monograph titled Chinese Films in Focus: 25 New Takes, which provides a novel view of 25 Chinese films by using new methodologies to understand the works of mainland China, Taiwan, and Hong Kong, as well as films produced by overseas Chinese directors. The films examined in this work have a historical span from the 1930s to 2003.
Cambridge University Press published New Chinese Cinemas: Forms, Identities, Politics, edited by Nick Browne et al., in 1994. It contains four essays on mainland Chinese cinema, two on melodrama, and one on "Huang Jianxin and Post-Socialist China” written by Paul Pickowicz. In another article on Chinese cinema in the 1980s, Berry concludes that Chinese cinema and social change in the 1980s do not form a fixed target: the subject was too complex, contradictory, fluid, and disorderly to be generalizable as a subject for analysis and description. Still, Berry also believes that the impossibility of generalizing does not mean that Chinese cinema and social change in the 1980s are incomprehensible. On the contrary, he argues that an accurate understanding of the films of the 1980s requires the rejection of a black-or-white dichotomy.
Most of the current studies of Chinese cinema in the 1980s have either presented historical surveys or have discussed films from the viewpoints of ontology, authorship, work theory, or phenomenology. Most overseas studies have reduced the study of Chinese cinema in the 1980s to the study of “fifth generation cinema.” Studies on contemporary Chinese cinema have often used the 1990s as a starting point, ignoring the existence of the 1980s entirely. Therefore, there is still room to use new perspectives to analyze the films of the 1980s as texts that reveal issues in how Chinese society was being reconstituted during this period. It remains a worthwhile exploration to uncover the unique character and cultural value of Chinese films from the 1980s.
This study explores how Chinese films constructed an image of China in the 1980s through analysis of the characters, composition of space, and conflict patterns in these texts. It also explores why and how this image of China has been constructed through an analysis of the question: “what is/are the image(s) of Chinese people?”
This study will examine Chinese cinema in this period as a whole, exploring the relationship between representations in Chinese cinema and the realities of Chinese society. It analyzes the imagery, metaphors, and cultural values in these works in an effort to discover the common creative focus of Chinese film directors at tire time. It also examines the specific creative elements and cultural significance of Chinese cinema of the period. That being said, it is necessary to clarity that this study is neither a “dynastic history“ of Chinese cinema in the 1980s, nor a thematic study of the "fifth generation." Rather, it is an analysis of films of the period as narrative texts that reflected on history, represented the present, and imagined the future in what was a turbulent era. It uses the perspectives revealed by characters, narrative patterns, and conflicts in 1980s Chinese cinema to examine how the era was perceived at that time as well as how China’s national future and individuals’ personal futures were being conceptualized.
How did the films of the 1980s imagine and construct characters? How were these characters selected and transformed in material space to construct narrative spaces about China on the screen? What kinds of meanings are conveyed through the ways diameters move through assembled space? What forces are driving these meanings? These questions structure the research in this study.
Similar research methodologies have been applied to different objects of study, such as literature and culture, in countries including the United States, the United Kingdom, and Germany. In literature, valuable works include Ways of Imagining China: History, Fiction and Story (Xiangxiang Zhongguo de Fangfa—Lishi, Xiaoshuo, Gushi) by David Der-wei Wang. Chinese Image Poetics (Zhongguo Xingxiang Shixue) by Yichuan Wang, Novels of Hong Kong (Xiaoshuo Xianggang) by Zhao Xifang, and Ways of Imagining Hong Kong: An Anthology of Hong Kong Fiction (1945-2000) (Xiangxiang Xianggang de Fangfa: Xianggang Xiaoshuo (1945-2000) Lunji) by Wai Yik Choi. Siegfried Kraca tiers From Caligari to Hitler: A Psychological History of the German Film is an early example of this research in the West. In recent years, many works have been published in the United Kingdom that systematically examine British society and the construction of British national identity through British cinema. These include British Cinema in the 1980s: Issues and themes, by John Hill, and Films and British National Identity: From Dickens to Dad’s Army, by Jeffrey Richard. Such works from both China and around the world have provided research ideas and theoretical approaches for the development of this type of study.
Most researchers in this vein argue for the relationship between artistic activities—such as film—and society. David Der-wei Wang argues:
As social symbolic activities, literature and cinema not only reflect the so-called reality, but also participate in and motivate various changes in reality; as mass cultural media, literature and cinema not only inscribe the aesthetic interests of Chinese people in a certain historical environment, but also allude to the political subconscious. The image of China that literature and film workers and their audiences bring to light through their imaginations, words, and images is far more complex than the traditional vision of the purely intellectual researcher.5
Siegfried Kracauer, a renowned film historian, argued for the relationship between German cinema and the reproduction of the mental world of Germans, which is an idea worth the attention of film studies scholars. Italian film historian Leonardo Quarrelsoma, an expert on Kracauer, argues that the relationship between cinema and society is unquestionable, and that Siegfried Kracauer’s view of cinema as a product of a specific historical period allows for a systematic study of its social function. Kracauer was particularly concerned with the interaction between the unique structural form of cinema and complex and changing social realities. Kracauer also made another important point: no other art form captures the fleeting character of social life as well as film. “As an important social representation. film provides clues to hidden spiritual trajectories and is an external projection of inner desires. Briefly, the film is a social witness that captures the imperceptible social nerve. Its vision is the cultural unconscious.”6
The explorations of pioneers such as Siegfried Kracauer show that films are texts that satisfy and reflect popular desires. This idea opens up directions for research on Chinese film. The 1980s were a time of high passion, a time when desires emerged and mutated after extreme repression, and a time of many possibilities. How were traces of these changing circumstances reproduced in films? What meanings did these films convey? How did the public at the time receive these meanings? How can we evaluate these meanings theoretically today? These are all valuable research questions.
The previous discussion has already presented an idea of the approaches that will be used in this study. However, in order to more clearly articulate the scholarly resources employed, it is necessary to present a brief analysis of relevant research methodologies.
In terms of theoretical ideas, the conceptual statements of a number of relevant scholars reveal the methodological foundations of this study.
French researcher Daniel-Henri Pageaux asks scholars in their studies to
pay attention to the literary work, to the conditions of its production, dissemination, reception, and likewise to all the cultural material with which we write, live, think, and perhaps fantasize. The image leads us to the intersection of many contingent questions, where it acts as a revelator, revealing in particular certain operations of a society in its ideologies (e.g., racism, exoticism, etc.) and certainly in its literary system, as well as in its social imaginary in general.7
Pageaux proposes this path of study from a literary perspective, but film scholars have proposed similar lines of research. In Iris book Film, Form, and Culture, Robert Kolker asks a series of questions about the relationship between film and cultural studies: how do we combine a theory of cultural studies with an understanding of the formal structure of film? How do we read film texts? How can film texts be read in the context of larger cultural practices and cultural entities? He elaborates,
this task involves diving into a film and discovering how it is put together, as well as looking at its form, the structure of the story being told, the roles of the protagonists and other actors, and so on. We need to capture the main structure of a film, that is, what it is telling. We need to put the film into the context of similar films and explore the interactions between them. Then, we need to synthesize all of this and analyze the film in terms of the era in which it was produced and the era in which it was analyzed. In other words, we will seek to see the film as it would have been seen in the era in which it was produced, and then see it from our present perspective.8
This approach emphasizes the relationship between media spaces and material spaces. As Anthony Giddens argues in his study on modernity, “Under the conditions of modernity, media does not reflect reality, but rather shapes it in various ways.”9 This statement may be somewhat extreme, but it reminds us to pay attention to the mirror-image relations between media space and material space. Here, the ideas of Pageaux remain instructive for prudently conducting this type of research.
What imagology studies is by no means the extent to which the image is true or false, and this level of study can certainly be continued (for the image describes certain “facts” and is expressed in terms of the latter, for which all images are necessarily false); nor is imagology by any means limited to the study of literary displacements of what is simply called reality. It should study the ways in which images of all shapes and sizes constitute a particular depiction of the foreign countries in a given historical period; the study of those dynamic threads that govern a society and its literary system, and its overall social imaginary.10
Pageaux’s focus is on issues of the image in comparative literary studies, but his research ideas and methods are still inspiring and relevant to our work in film studies.