Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Illustrations
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- PART I ON THE CULTURAL AND IDEOLOGICAL MARGINS
- PART II IN SEARCH OF TRADITION IN THE MIDST OF MODERNIZATION
- PART III THE THIRD-WORLD INTELLECTUAL IN THE ERA OF GLOBALIZATION
- 5 The Zhang Yimou Model
- 6 Culture and Violence
- 7 A Postcolonial Reflection
- Epilogue
- Notes
- Glossary
- Bibliography
- Filmography
- Index
6 - Culture and Violence
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 12 January 2010
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Illustrations
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- PART I ON THE CULTURAL AND IDEOLOGICAL MARGINS
- PART II IN SEARCH OF TRADITION IN THE MIDST OF MODERNIZATION
- PART III THE THIRD-WORLD INTELLECTUAL IN THE ERA OF GLOBALIZATION
- 5 The Zhang Yimou Model
- 6 Culture and Violence
- 7 A Postcolonial Reflection
- Epilogue
- Notes
- Glossary
- Bibliography
- Filmography
- Index
Summary
Most well-known experimental films made by the Fifth Generation directors, especially in their early careers, focused on China's past, be it Confucian or communist. Although some directors, such as Huang Jianxin and Zhou Xiaowen, were from the very beginning more interested in contemporary topics, their films usually have urban settings. Bloody Dawni (Xuese qingchen, 1990) by Li Shaohong, a woman director of the Fifth Generation, broke away from the pattern of nostalgic portrayal of the countryside. Li's film focuses on problems existing in contemporary China in the process of moving toward a market economy. In most Fifth Generation films, both Confucian and communist traditions are portrayed as obstacles to individual freedom, whereas Li's film shows that the ideological vacuum in postsocialist China does not make individuals freer. What governs the village is no longer written law, traditional or modern, but a “community nightly law” – to borrow Slavoj Žižek's words. This nightly law implicitly binds villagers against an Other by encouraging its members to transgress the written law – as in the case of the teacher's murder in the film – in order to reinforce its group identity. This murder also shows how insignificant the role of culture or education (in Chinese, words so much more closely related than in English that they are interchangeable in most circumstances) is in post–Cultural Revolution China. For several decades, the Communist Party has invented a minority discourse, which allows it to speak from the position of a minor in order to justify its power position. In other words, since the party represents the oppressed, it needs more power to protect these “minors.”
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- Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2001