1. After watching the film, Yellow Earth, I felt how the film stands in an ambiguous position regarding the contemporary political situation in 1984, China, as this film was published after the Cultural Revolution ended in 1977.
In my impression, this film includes significant thematics, such as anti-Japan sentiment, centralization of the Communist party, foregrounding of local peasants’ culture, and revelation of women, but, on the other hand, these are all represented in pessimistic ways. All the characters are bounded by certain rules each other.
For example, Gu Qing, a soldier coming to a local community to collect folksongs, cannot save Cui Qiao, a local girl who wants to make her released from the feudalistic local culture, because of a military rule; Cui Qiao cannot get away from the feudalistic community because the Yellow River functions as a natural barrier; Han Han, a younger brother, and the father cannot be assimilated to a new Communist culture implied as Yan’an because of the rule of the peasant’s community.
This kind of impossibility relates to the ways of representation. The song Cui Qiao sings in the latter part of the film gives us an ironic impression. For in the song, she hopes that the Communist party liberates her from the feudalistic local community, but, unfortunately, her disappearance, in the end, implies her death in the Yellow River, i.e., the impossibility of her liberation. Also, the scene in which Han Han cannot go against the flow of enthralled local peasants illustrates that there still remains a divide between a new Communist and feudalistic local cultures. As a result, we realize that the figure of Gu Qing approaching the community is just an illusion through the (quasi) POV shot of Han Han.
In addition, Gu Qing’s purpose for visiting rural communities to collect folksongs also sounds ironic. For he intends to use collected folksongs to encourage younger generations by replacing their lyrics with advocating the Community party, but the song by Cui Qiao, which keeps its melody but replaces the lyrics, results in commemorating her death, not enervating younger generations.
These pessimistic moments in the film may illustrate an ambiguous nationalism of the Fifth Generation. As Paul Clark indicates, the Fifth Generation “filmmakers seem to suggest that China may find change induced from anywhere difficult to deal with and even impossible to sustain” (122). In other words, China faced a kind of dilemma because of the variety of surges into Chinese society, which became visualized at that time: the Cultural Revolution, the Community Party, local communities, and Western culture. However, this kind of dilemma as a crosspoint of different cultures may explain their ambiguous nationalism, which is distinguished from nationalism that encourages a certain community’s superiority over the others. Esther C. M. Yau, in her article, acutely indicates that there are four narrative stands and their incommensurability into Western critical discourses to answer her own question: “how does this non-Western text elude the logocentric character of Western textual analysis as well as the sweeping historicism of cultural criticism?” (203). The incommensurability of the film, Yellow Earth, is very interesting because it clarifies the difference between China and the West. Chen Kaige’s ambiguous nationalism may lie in such a dilemma illustrated in the pessimistic moments of the film.
2. In regards to propaganda, I thought it was interesting how Communist leaders are always shown surrounded by children(Lenin, Zedong). My interpretation of this is that the leaders of this efficient propaganda were trying to appropriate Communism for children, if that makes sense. By showing Lenin being handed an apple by a child, and Mao being surrounded by children holding his red book, the message is that children should embrace Communism. Children are the most vulnerable members of any society, next to the elderly, and are generally ignorant of world affairs. By showing that Mao should be beloved by children, I interpreted the picture as being almost predatory in nature. Children are the easiest group to manipulate, and by showing that devotion to a ruler through children is acceptable, I interpreted this as children being used as political vessels. Get to the children first, and then, once the children become supporters, get to the parents.
From the 1950s to the 1970s, all of China’s revolutionary stories were similar. For example, The Song of Youth is a growth story of an educated young woman, while the Red Detachment of Women is a growth story of a feudal female slave. One only talks about private love and the other only talks about personal hatred. The heroines were educated by male party members and entered the big family of the revolution which the whole world as one community.
At the center of the plot conflict in The Red Detachment of Women, Wu Qionghua breaks the revolutionary discipline in order to avenge Nan Batian. Hong Changqing teaches her: In the ranks of the Red Army, everyone has a deep hatred of blood. We should transform private interests into public interests, and transform blood repay blood of feudal ethics and Jianghu morals into a revolutionary ethic for the freedom and liberation of all mankind. It is more scientific, more intensive, and represents the future of mankind.
Hong Changqing is not only the “strict father” of the Red Detachment of women but also the “loving mother”. For these “children” who only have feelings and no reason, he always appeals to emotion and reason, and even makes Wu Qionghua say “you really know how to enlighten people!” From master’s servants to the backbone of the women, Wu Qionghua’s direct, instinctive anger was packaged into revolutionary vocabularies under Hong’s great political mobilization, forged in the furnace of proletarian self-identity and organizational discipline, until Wu Qionghua replaced Hong Changqing, become a new generation of party representatives, teach young women do not impulsive, to obey the discipline. The lone individual disappeared in the collective sea of people as if with history, that was 1930, “that was the time of the Chinese people’s suffering, but also the time when the Chinese Red Army was founded.”
Coconut Village in Hainan Island, Nan Batian and the Red Army, good prevails over evil, which is the sharp contrast between black and white. When Wu Qionghua escaped from her landlord’s home and defected to the Red Army with Hong Changqing’s help, she through a “boundary ridge”, the time from the night transitioned to dawn. The night was dark in the territory of Nan Batian, and the day was bright in the liberated areas.
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