Chapter Four: The Representations of Christianity (2): The (Un)holy Mothers ...... One can understand that losing the parents implies losing the financial pillars of ...
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The postsocialist cross in rural China : a case study of Gan Xiao'er's religious features
Lai, Yung-hang; 賴勇衡 Lai, Y. [賴勇衡]. (2013). The postsocialist cross in rural China : a case study of Gan Xiao'er's religious features. (Thesis). University of Hong Kong, Pokfulam, Hong Kong SAR. Retrieved from http://dx.doi.org/10.5353/th_b5099034 2013
http://hdl.handle.net/10722/193566
The author retains all proprietary rights, (such as patent rights) and the right to use in future works.
Abstract of Dissertation
The Postsocialist Cross in Rural China: A Case Study of Gan Xiao’er (甘小二)’s Religious Features Submitted by
Lai Yung Hang for the degree of Master of Arts at The University of Hong Kong in August 2013
This dissertation is a case study of three feature films directed by Gan Xiao’er, a Chinese independent filmmaker. I argue that these films are set apart from other independent films in China because they center on the representations of Chinese Christianity in rural areas in the postsocialist era of China, which is a subject matter under-represented in mainstream media as well as independent cinema in China. Gan’s feature films have also illustrated the social and cultural problems during the Reform period, themes which have been avoided by mainstream media but featured in independent cinema. Gan’s films are also characterized by responses to social and cultural issues from a Christian perspective. I also argue that the representations of Christianity in Gan’s films are ambiguous as both the positive and negative sides of the religion are portrayed. Such portrayals have generated a critique from within Christianity, concerning the religion’s entanglement with the social, cultural and political forces in the postsocialist context. Moreover, the three feature films of Gan’s have not only illustrated the exterior of Chinese Christianity, including the religious institution and activities of Christians, but also formulated an in-depth investigation of the inner spiritual quest of Chinese villagers and Christians. Words Count: 199
The Postsocialist Cross in Rural China: A Case Study of Gan Xiao’er (甘小二)’s Religious Features
by
Lai Yung Hang M.A.
A Dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Degree of Master of Arts at The University of Hong Kong August 2013
Declaration I declare that the dissertation and the research work thereof represents my own work, except where due acknowledgement is made, and that it has not been previously included in a thesis, dissertation, portfolio, individual project or report submitted to this University or to any other institution for a degree, diploma or other qualifications. Signed:
_________________________________ Lai Yung Hang
Acknowledgements
Without the instruction of my teachers and support from my classmates, friends and family, I would never have finished this dissertation. I would like to express my deepest gratitude to my advisor, Dr. Esther C. M. Yau, for her patient and conscientious guidance. I would also like to thank Dr. Winnie L. M. Yee, for her persistence and care in our consultations throughout this M.A. program. I am also very grateful for the practical help from Mr. Gan Xiao’er, Miss Carmen Luk, Christie Wong and Dorcas Yung. Finally, I would like to thank my friends and family members for their support to my studies.
Table of Contents Chapter One: Introduction I.1 General Purpose and Basic Terms of the Research .................................................. 1
I.2 The Filmmaker Gan Xiao’er ................................................................................ 3 I.3 Synopsis: Gan Xiao’er’s three fictional features .................................................... 6 I.4 Literature Review on Gan Xiao’er ....................................................................... 8 I.5 Research Definition .......................................................................................... 16 I.6 Chapter Summary ............................................................................................ 38 Chapter Two: (In)human Condition in Postsocialist China II.1 Introduction...................................................................................................... 41 II.2 “Bare Life” and “Biocapital”: the Postsocialist Afflictions ...................................... 43 II.3 Christian Response: God’s Love and the Adopted Son .......................................... 49 II.4 Conclusion ........................................................................................................ 60
Chapter Three: The Representations of Christianity (1): The Under-represented Community III.1 Introduction..................................................................................................... 62 III.2 Historical background of Christianity in China .................................................. 63 III.3 Chinese Christianity in the Reform Period ........................................................ 66 III.4 Representations of Christian Activities in the Rural China .................................. 69 III.5 Conclusion ....................................................................................................... 81 Chapter Four: The Representations of Christianity (2): The (Un)holy Mothers IV.1 Introduction .................................................................................................. 83 IV.2 Blurring the Good and the Bad ................................................................... 84 IV.3 Obscuring the “Holy” and the “Unholy” ..................................................... 88 IV.4 Maternal Passion as an Internal Critique of Christianity ............................. 93 IV.5 Conclusion ................................................................................................. 105 Chapter Five: Conclusion V.1 Dissertation Conclusion ............................................................................... 107 V.2 Further Discussion ...................................................................................... 112 Works Cited ......................................................................................................................... 116 Bibliography ........................................................................................................................ 127
Chapter One Introduction
I.1 General Purpose and Basic Terms of the Research This dissertation studies the feature films produced and directed by Chinese independent director Gan Xiao’er. Gan Xiao’er (甘小二), who directed three low-budget independent features, contributed to the cultural realm in the first decade of the 21st century through his films with religious themes. There are three aspects in which Gan’s films contribute to Christianity in particular, namely, subject matter, perspective and critique of the Christian religion from within; these set his films apart from other independent films. First, regarding subject matter, Gan covers in his films various social and cultural issues in the postsocialist period of the People’s Republic of China (PRC); though this appears to be common practice among many Chinese independent films, Gan has made himself and his films unique by employing a Christian framework to review and respond to the issues. Second, as for perspective, Gan’s films represent Chinese Christianity in the rural areas, which is almost entirely absent in both Chinese mainstream media and independent documentaries or feature films. His works are therefore of ethnographic significance that addresses a notable gap in independent cinema. Third, concerning critique of the Christian religion from within, Gan does not simply reveal Christianity in a positive manner that might make his films didactic or promotional; rather, Gan depicts how the religion entangles itself with the social, cultural and political forces, from which he generates a critique of the religion as well as the dominant ideology in the postsocialist context. Such a critical perspective is of vital importance to the understanding of the forces at work that influenced 1
religious practices in postsocialist China. In addition, Gan’s films not only focus on the external, such as social level, but also investigate the inner world of the characters and examined spiritual issues such as the meaning of life, matters of life and death, love, and liberation. Establishing his foundation on the three aspects discussed above, I argue that Gan’s films can be characterized as both empathetic and implicit. The three feature films form a trilogy of religious quest that the image of the protagonists evolves from a catechumen, then a churchgoer, and finally a lay leader. Concerning the representations of Christianity in China in the current time, I argue that the films of Gan show a shift of focus: while both the exterior of the religion (e.g. Christian activities) and the inner spirituality of the main characters (before and after conversion) are illustrated in the first two feature films, the depiction of the inner world in the second film is more implicit and complicated than that in the first feature; in the third feature film, the emphasis on the spiritual quest over the religious institution is even more obvious. In this study, I undertake to discuss the empathetic, implicit and progressive spiritual emphasis of the independent films by Gan.
The terms “postsocialist period” and “postsocialism” used in this dissertation refer to the historical period since Deng Xiaoping, the leader of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and the PRC after Mao Zedong, left socialism behind and launched the “Reform and Open” (Gaige Kaifang 改革開放) policy in 1978, starting from the agricultural sector (McGrath 2). After the crackdown of the democratic protest in 1989, there was a short period of stagnancy until Deng relaunched the marketization of Chinese economy in 1992, more 2
comprehensively, with further incorporation with the global economy (McGrath 3). In other words, the “postsocialist period” refers to the Reform era during which China has undergone rigorous transition from a socialist society to becoming a key player of global capitalism. I will further discuss in the later part of this introductory chapter about how Chinese independent cinema has emerged in the postsocialist context, and the positioning of Gan Xiao’er’s films in relation to Chinese independent cinema and the social context of the PRC in the postsocialist period.
I.2 The Filmmaker Gan Xiao’er Gan Xiao’er was born in 1970, in Henan Province. He obtained his first degree majoring in business in 1992, and graduated with a master degree from the Department of Literature in Beijing Film Academy in 1998. He has been teaching in South China Normal University in Guangzhou since then (Zhong & Zhou). Gan became a Protestant in 1997. His conversion came as a result of his parents who were believers of Christianity. Gan recalled that when his father was dying of cancer, his mother prayed for his father and they sang hymns together, which had demonstrated a sense of peace and tenderness toward suffering. He found this experience both powerful and foreign to traditional Chinese culture (Zhang Yaoyao) that his cinematic practice has been inspired since then. He set up “The Seventh Seal Film Workshop” with friends in 2000, an ambitious project aimed to make seven feature films to illustrate Chinese Christianity of today and the inner spirituality of ordinary people in the current time from a Chinese Christian perspective (Li Ming 99). Gan clarifies that the title of his studio does not refer to the film The Seventh 3
Seal directed by Ingmar Bergman but the Book of Revelation from the Bible, in which “the Seventh Seal” indicates the beginning of the judgment of God. This name reflects Gan’s perception of his filmmaking as a process of spiritual judgment on his personal life and as an experience full of expectation (Qi 63). The notion of judgment also serves as a thematic pursuit of Gan’s films; while the characters are often puzzled with various moral issues, Gan usually chooses to suspend his judgment on those ethically ambiguous acts because, as he once remarked, “Judgment is God’s business!” (He, "Dedicate Raised from Dust to God”).
Gan has directed six films in total, including three full-length fictional features, a full-length documentary, and two short experimental films. The first fictional feature Shang Qing Xhui Xiu 山清水秀 (The Only Sons) was made in 2003, the second Ju Zi Chentu 舉自塵土 (Raised from Dust) in 2007, and the third Zai Qidai Zhi Zhong 在期待之中 (Waiting for God) in 2012. After he has finished Raised from Dust, Gan showed his film in the church in which he had set some scenes of the film, then he made a full-length documentary Jiaotang Dianyingyuan 教堂電影院 (Church Cinema) of the process, in 2009. One of the two short experimental films Ruo Ji, Ruo Li 若即，若離 (Not Too Close, Not Too Detached) was made in 2005. Unlike the others, this film is unrelated to Christianity. Gan says he is inspired by Michel Foucault’s The Order of Thing, and that is why he tries to suture the gap between words and things by picking up various “objects” (such as a mug) in Western paintings and putting them into the film (Li Ming 102). Film critic Wang Bang observes the relation between alienation and love, as expressed by the replacement of dialogue with 4
body language, in this film of Gan (22). The other short experimental film Kongju Yu Zhanli 恐懼與顫慄 (Fear and Trembling) was made in 2009. It depicts a group of young people, who are dressed in costumes of animation characters or mythic figures, set off from different locations, pick up different carpenter tools and made a big wooden cross after gathering in a mill. The short film has neither dialogue nor monologue, but a girl singing a hymn at the end. The aesthetics of these two short films are very different from the realistic approach of the three feature films. This dissertation will mainly focus on the three fictional feature films since they have all included both the representations of activities of Chinese Christianity today and the quest of spirituality of individual Christian believers, which are highly relevant to the central argument of this dissertation. The documentary will only be used as reference as it does not depict the inner world of individual Christians. The two short experimental films will be excluded because they examine neither the current conditions of Chinese Christianity nor the issue of spirituality.
Gan’s feature films have been shown in various film festivals both inside and outside China, and have won some international and regional recognition. His first feature film, The Only Sons, won the Dragons and Tigers Award (Jury Special Mention) in the 22nd Vancouver International Film Festival in 2003. It was also shown in the 8th Pusan International film Festival (2003) 1, the 33rd Rotterdam International Film Festival (2004)2, the 6th Taipei Film Festival (2004)3, the 4th Asia Film Symposium (2004) as the Opening Film, and the 2nd
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Nominated in the “New Currents” competition (Wu). Shown as one of the “Main Program Features” (Wu). Shown in the “Chinese Film” section (Wu).
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Moving Images of Pearl River Delta 1898-2005 (2005) in China (“Gan Xiao’er”, dGeneratefilms.com). His second feature film, Raised from Dust, won the Special Award in the 4th China Independent Film Festival (2007) and the “Most Humane Care Award” in 2008 Chinese New Film Forum. It was also shown in the 36th Rotterdam International Film Festival (2007)4, the 31st Hong Kong International Film Festival (2007), the 12th Pusan International Film Festival (2007)5, and Osaka Asian Film Festival 2007 (“Gan Xiao’er”, dGeratefilms.com). His third feature film, Waiting for God, participated in the 7th Chinese Young Generation Film Forum (2012), the 9th Chinese Independent Film Festival (2012) and the “New Echo” exhibition (Season 1) in 2013 (“Waiting for God”, MASK9.com). Gan’s works have also been shown in universities, churches and other venues. Gan has organized some screenings by himself, for example, those in small towns and villages in Henan, welcoming audience of all kinds, such as foreigners and Chinese folks, churchgoers and non-believers, and those from the city and those from the countryside (Bing ; Zhang Yaoyao).
I.3 Synopsis: Gan Xiao’er’s three fictional features This dissertation will focus on the three features directed by Gan Xiao’er. In the following, a synopsis for each of them is included to facilitate a better understanding of the detailed discussion of the films in the following chapters. 1. The Only Sons
Ah Shui is a farmer living in a serene village in the Guangdong Province. A 4 5
World premiere, in the “Sturm und Drang” section (Wu). Selected in the section “a Window on Asian Cinema” (“Gan Xiao’er”, dGeneratefilms.com).
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Christian preacher is visiting the village, and Ah Shui has come across him several times. Ah Shui is troubled by the heavy financial burden of the family. His wife Qiuyue is expecting a baby, his little sister lacks the tuition fee to get promoted to secondary school, and his little brother Ah Chung is a criminal waiting for execution. Ah Shui tries every possible means to make money because he was told by a friend that he might save Ah Chung by bribing the judge, but every attempt leads to a worse result: Ah Shui sells his blood but then gets infected by HIV; his sister quits school and works in town, but then loses contact with the family; Ah Shui sells his son to an allegedly wealthy family, but then it is found that they are actually human traffickers; and Qiuyue is rented out as a surrogate mother to another household, but the family is also dubious. Finally Ah Chung is executed, Qiuyue kills herself, and Ah Shui is dying alone at home. But his son, who is saved by the police, will become an orphan. The preacher comes to bring the final peace to Ah Shui, and adopts Ah Shui’s son.
2. Raised from Dust
Xiao Li is a Christian in a village in the Henan Province. Her husband, Xiao Lin, is a miner dying of silicosis in the hospital. She cannot afford both his hospital fee and her daughter’s school fee, so the daughter is suspended from class. For subsistence, Xiao Li works as a deliverer for a neighbour Chen Shunjun to build a pig pen, which will be in proximity to a new railway line, so Chen can request compensation from the government by then. Xiao Li participates in the church activities as usual. Some old friends of Xiao Lin once told Xiao Li that 7
they would support her financially but the promises are in vain, whereas the fellows in the church have raised some money to help. Still, Xiao Li eventually chooses to terminate the medical treatment of her husband and lets him die but spends the money for the school fee of her daughter.
3. Waiting for God
Xiaoyang is the leader of a Protestant “gathering point” in a village, which is affiliated to a government sanctioned church in town. She is puzzled by the church’s tendency to separate the “spiritual” and the “non-spiritual”, as well as the “holy” and the “sinful”, while she finds the religion has been entangled with other sectors of the world. These upset her. Xiaoyang calls on the church pastor in town to discuss the financial and personnel matters of the “gathering point”. Then she visits a non-Christian friend, who volunteers to be the instructor of the church choir, and they have an intimate talk. Afterwards Xiaoyang comes to a welding shop to order a baton with a cross for the church choir. Even though the welder is not a Christian, they talk about religion. Xiaoyang decides to embrace what are deemed “unholy”. Finally three traveling preachers pass by and bless her.
I.4 Literature Review on Gan Xiao’er Most literatures about Gan Xiao’er and his works are written in Chinese, including film reviews and interviews on magazines and websites. There is a book chapter on Gan from China’s Independent Film Director Interviews written by Li Ming and published in China. In general, people have 8
characterized Gan’s fictional films by his Christian faith; they discuss the subject matter of Christianity in his films, the investment of the director’s personal experience in his works, and the still and serene aesthetic style of his productions.
Some interviews have mentioned that the personal experience of Gan Xiao’er has inspired his cinematic practice. For example, when Gan returned to his home village in Henan for his wedding in 1999, his mother invited the church choir for a volunteer performance. Their uniforms and messages of the songs impressed Gan, who found those elements suitable subjects for filmmaking (Zhang Yaoyao). Some of the scenes in Raised from Dust are apparently inspired by this experience.
Gan ambitiously makes films that have never appeared in China before. Besides putting Christianity at the centre of narrative, he also shows Chinese villagers with a different cinematic representation. He is said to have wanted to make films to record the “spiritual history” of the Christian in rural China that would be new in Chinese cinema (Zhang Yaoyao). The notion of “spirituality” refers to both interpersonal relations and human-God relation. These transcendent relations are never straightforward; Gan’s films demonstrate the ambiguity and complexity of faith, such as the tension between sin and grace and the indefinite relationship between Christians and non-Christians in everyday encounters (Shi, “Film is My Authentic Experience of God [1]”). These elements stem partly from Gan’s personal experience (Qi 64; Chen & Yu). Gan’s personal stories exposed in exclusive interviews with him help us 9
understand his selection of source materials and his intention behind the films. The information serves as a background for further analyses and evaluation of the messages delivered in his films. They raise such questions such as: “Are the films’ exploration of the “spirituality” of the Chinese peasants effective?” and “What effect have his personal experiences brought to the representations of Christians in rural China?”
Exclusive interviews with Gan indeed offer useful resources for understanding what he wants to deliver and explore in his films. Most of them, however, cover only Gan’s first two films that readers may not be able to obtain sufficient information to evaluate whether Gan’s cinematic pursuit is effective or not, or whether there is something else inspiring in the films that Gan himself is not aware of. Such is the limitation of the interview records as a form of information and assessment.
Some interviews reveal the practical aspects or “material conditions” of Gan’s directorial work. For example, Gan’s work as a lecturer in South China Normal University in Guangzhou has facilitated his venture in independent cinema, including the supply of equipment and human power. For example, the South China Normal University bought a digital video camera in 2000, with which Gan initiated “The Seventh Seal Film Workshop” in the same year (Li Ming 100); Gan also recruited about 20 students in his class to join the production crew of The Only Sons, and a student as the associate director of Waiting for God (Qi 63).
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Some critics discuss Gan concerning his participation in international film festivals. Bérénice Reynaud’s online report on the 22nd Vancouver International Film Festival “The Curator and the Critic at Vancouver 2003” puts Gan Xiao’er’s directorial debut The Only Sons among the discussion of other films selected in the “Dragons and Tigers” section aiming to introduce directors from East Asia to the West. The Only Sons has impressed Reynaud, who concluds that the film is “one of the most exciting discoveries in Chinese cinema of the last few years”. She finds it difficult to classify the film for Western viewers and thinks it has offered a chance for them to rethink Chinese Christianity (Reynaud). The positive feedbacks from the West help Gan to seek further financial support. In “A Film Festival: Several Chinese Independent Films”, Zhang Yaxuan talks about the financial support from the Rotterdam International Film Festival to Chinese independent cinema (62). The Festival has set up a Hubert Bals Fund (HBF) to facilitate independent filmmaking in developing countries, and Gan’s Raised from Dust was one of the beneficiaries (Zhang Yaxuan 63).
Gan Xiao’er not only targets foreign viewers in the festival circuits. Film critic Bing Yan notes that Gan has shown his films in some villages in Henan, because the director wants to allow the grassroots people to see how they have been represented in independent films, instead of showing the images of the poor villagers to the urban elites only. Ironically, the rural audiences did not really enjoy Gan’s films. Instead, the screening in metropolitan Hong Kong received positive feedbacks (Bing).
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Gan’s tactical adaptation to the lack of resources, his participation in film festivals, and the reception of his films by local and foreign audiences are related to his practice as an independent filmmaker in China. He has worked outside of the state-studio system and the mainstream market, and his tactics will be further discussed in the later part of this chapter.
Some reviews are written specifically for the two features The Only Sons and Raised from Dust. Some are brief and appeared as part of the discussion among various independent filmmakers in China, but they all address the investment of Gan Xiao’er’s personal experience and emotions into his films6, and his fine-controlled aesthetic style 7. Although the short reviews that spend only two to three paragraphs on Gan cannot help readers analyze Gan’s films in detail, Gan’s experimental short film Not Too Close, Not Too Detached are only reviewed in such brief reviews. Cao Kai notes that Gan keeps the style of calmness and stillness, while the elements of the exploration of language and uncertainty are added in a fragmented plot (14). Critic Wang Bang describes the short film as a story stressing alienation within communication, and he also comments that the film displays the rational control of the director of the cinematography in a very delicate manner (22). Still, as this short film does not contain a religious theme, further discussion of it will be limited in this research.
With regard to the review articles on the two features of Gan Xiao’er, more positive than negative comments are given. Three long pieces analyzing The
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Such as “A Beat of Youth: New Power of Independent Features” written by Cao Kai and Wei Xidi. 7 Such as Wang Bang’s “Independent Images in Guangdong 2006-2007”.
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Only Sons and Raised from Dust can be found in mainland web forums, written by Chuanjiang-haoji (two articles) and Jing-jing. Both writers note the artistic integrity of Gan Xiao’er who has seriously pondered over the subject matters of his films. They also note the tension between the serene cinematography and the intense emotions of the narratives. Jing-jing finds that during those emotionally up-and-down moments, the director favors a more simplistic and distant depiction, while Chuanjiang-haoji notes with approval that the director has created a film language of his own, as Gan often cuts into a very long shot from a medium shot when a dramatic moment arrived, as if someone has to draw back since the situation is too heavy or cruel for one to face closely (Chuanjiang-haoji, “Brief Discussion on Gan Xiao’er”; Jing-jing). These articles are useful references for the detailed analyses of Gan’s films in the coming chapters, in terms of visual elements, narratives and the “drawn-back” editing style.
Some articles from Christian media approve Gan’s films from a religious point of view. In the article “Amazing Grace in Chinese Countryside—Gan Xiao’er: The Only Sons” on the website Christiantimes.org, Ai Ge notes that The Only Sons is tragic but not hopeless. He acknowledges that Gan introduces the Christian discourse into the map of Chinese independent cinema as a pioneer (Ai Ge). Wu Jialei highlights how Christian faith brings inner peace and hope to the heroine Xiao Li who is in a difficult condition. Wu compares the two protagonists in The Only Sons and Raised from Dust according to their attitudes to faith and notes that, if Ah Shui in The Only Sons had received the Christian faith like Xiao Li in Raised from Dust, he could have let his brother be 13
executed as he would believe that they would unite in Heaven one day, and then Ah Shui would avoid selling his own son and the following tragedy (Wu). The problem of these interpretations lies in the sheer religious assumption, which makes the films’ obscure and ambiguous illustrations of Christianity become a straightforward didactic narrative and creates a combinatory reading of two separate stories. The complexity of internal struggles of the two protagonists are over-simplified and ignored in such an approach. Gan may want to target both Christian viewers and other independent film viewers who are not Christian, but he does not make his films to serve certain religious functions for the Church. Gan is an “independent” filmmaker not only in the sense that he does not work in the state-studio system, but also that he does not work for the Church 8. To address the problem, this dissertation will delve in the internal tension and ambiguity within the films’ religious contents, mainly in Chapter Four.
Two reviews published in Christiantimes.org underline the religious inquiries instead of solutions in Raised from Dust. He Gu’s “Raised from Dust: Earthly Misery! God’s Grace?” posts a question to Christian viewers: if they were in the situation of Xiao Li, would they rely on the grace of God like Xiao Li, as everyone would be subject to the judgment of God? Chu Yaoguang asks in "Raised from Dust--Christian Film without 'Gospel'” about the significance of the “Christian” identity of Xiao Li. Chu refutes the convenient explanation that faith gives joy and comfort to Xiao Li, so that she can overcome the harshness
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Gan’s independent gesture is found offensive by some Christians. Since He has depicted the negative side of Christians in his films, some church leaders find that irritating, and rejects Gan’s request for help in further filmmaking and screening (Qi 64; Chen & Yu).
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in life, as such an enduring image is bleak and could be a self-deceptive excuse for the audiences to be indifferent to the suffering of the others (e.g. poor villagers in China). Chu suggests that the director keeps a skeptical distance from the realness of Xiao Li, who often looks emotionless; only in her memory when she could have fun with her healthy husband does she seem “realistic” (Chu). Actually Gan explains that he intends to reveal the inner peace of Chinese Christians in the countryside, who can be joyful even though the material condition was tough (Gao), and he has designed Xiao Li as a character with strong faith in God’s grace (Li Ming, 108). Therefore, if Chu feels that Gan has made the heroine not “realistic” enough, as a detaching device to stimulate the audiences to think about the significance of faith to Xiao Li, then it may expose that Gan’s characterization of Xiao Li is not convincing to some viewers like Chu.
Yam Chi-keung also questions the representation of the Christians in the countryside. His essay “Contemporary Christianity and the Religiosity of Popular Chinese Cinema” is a rare case of academic work which discusses Gan Xiao’er’s work in detail. Yam compares the attitude to death demonstrated by Raised from Dust to those cases in the mainstream cinema in China that Xiao Li’s calmness and perseverance in response to death and other afflictions are in contrast to the emotional outbreak shown in the Chinese blockbusters Assembly and Aftershock (99). But Yam challenges that such representation of Chinese believers in the countryside may be far from typical because studies shows that Christians in the rural areas display various characteristics of popular folk beliefs. Rather, Yam argues that Xiao Li’s characterization in fact 15
stems from the Gan’s projection of his own religious outlook as an urban intellectual who has been away from his home village for more than twenty years (99). Regarding Gan’s depiction of the church with traits of folk religions such as healing by prayer in Raised from Dust, Yam also points out that Gan’s films has gone beyond the level of personal lives to implicitly interrogating the systematic forces behind the troubles of the characters, who are forced to become evildoers (100). This point is not covered by other authors and critics and deserves further elaboration. I will elaborate on the significance of Gan’s works against the oppressive and alienating social background in the postsocialist China.
I.5 Research Definition I.5.1 Delimitation of Research This dissertation focuses on the three feature films discussed in the previous sections, made by Gan Xiao’er. It examines their coverage of the outer aspects of Chinese Christianity and the inner spirituality of Christians, as well as the interrelation between these aspects. In the three feature films, Gan focuses on the activities of the Protestant Church in the PRC in the rural areas, and these include both the state-sanctioned “Protestant Three-Self Patriotic Movement” churches and the unsanctioned activities such as proselytizing outside the officially approved premises (Yang, 108).
Gan Xiao’er’s illustration of the Church as an institution and a community of believers includes various features of their ordinary life, such as the appearance of the church building, the religious terms used in daily 16
communication, and religious practices such as praying and hymn singing. Whereas the quest of the inner world of the characters concerns how they face the matter of life and death and the question of a meaningful life with regard to dignity, liberty, love and hope, especially when these characters are the underprivileged group in the postsocialist society that symbolized affliction, repression and dehumanization. The dissertation focuses on how these outer and inner aspects of Christianity have constructed a particular set of cultural critiques of the issues in the postsocialist China, including the commodificaton of humans, a general loss of integrity and interpersonal trust, and the persistence of patriarchal culture. It does not include a general comparison among various cinematic representations of other religions in China as these are not addressed in Gan’s films.
There exist some examples of Chinese independent documentaries and fictional films which touch on Christianity, namely, Ai Yeye, Qu Boru 哎吔吔， 去哺乳 (Feeding Boys, Ayaya) (2003) directed by Cui Zi’en 崔子恩 (Reynaud), Er Dong 二冬 (2008) by Yang Jin 楊瑾, Ciqing 刺青 (Tattoo) (2009) by Wang Liren 王笠人 (Li Ming 14; 56), Xian Cun Mu Shi Bu Dao Ji 鄉村牧師佈道記 (The Preaching of a Rural Pastor) (2012) by Dong Weijun 佟衛軍 and Yi Ge Zhong Quo Mu Xhi De Chuan Dao Zhi Lu 一個中國牧師的傳道之路 (The Missionary Path of a Chinese Pastor) (2012) by Gao Tingting 高婷婷. A brief introduction to some films made by Cui Zi’en will be found in the later part of this chapter, because Cui is a Chinese independent filmmaker who started making films with Christian elements before Gan did. However, my research does not undertake a comprehensive comparison between Gan’s films and 17
Cui’s films, nor does it consider the representation of Christian believers and the Christian religion among all the cinematic works in postsocialist China that contain Christian elements. Such an approach would require a substantial number of films concerning Christianity’s various aspects of institution and practice in different regions in China that have been made and available for viewing.
Since the number of Chinese independent films having Christianity as the subject matter is very limited, and representation is not the central issue for investigation, this study has its major focus on Gan’s films which not only places Christianity at the centre of narratives but also investigate the spiritual need of the characters without using didacticism. I argue that a particular religious approach of cultural critique has been generated in Gan’s films; in particular, the nature and implication of the cultural critique will be examined.
1.5.2 Use of the term “Christianity” Several terms require further clarification in this dissertation. The term “Christianity” used in the discussion of Gan’s films usually denotes Protestantism rather than Catholicism, since the director and the main characters in his films are Protestants. As the differentiation between Catholicism and Protestantism has never been highlighted in Gan’s films, in the reviews on those films, nor by Gan himself, the difference in the religious tenets will not be an emphasis in this dissertation. Still, Gan’s films have focused on Christian values such as love, grace and hope, which are commonly embraced by the denominations of both Protestantism and 18
Catholicism, the terms “Christianity”, “Christian” and “the Church” used throughout this dissertation apply to both Catholicism and Protestantism that are currently practiced in the PRC. Because Gan’s films depict rural Chinese Christians, the term “Christianity” in his films referred to contemporary Christianity as practiced in the PRC rather than historical Christianity in other locations. This term is used to refer to the faith practices held by the believers and occasionally to the government-sanctioned churches and meeting points. As mentioned above, the spiritual and inner aspects in Gan’s films will receive more attention than the institutional side of Chinese Christianity in the PRC.
I.5.3 Guiding Research Questions, Approach and Context In approaching the films, I have selected a set of questions to address in the dissertation chapters. They include:
1) What are the similarities and differences between Gan and other Chinese independent filmmakers with regard to the illustration of various social and cultural issues in the Reform era? What specificity have the Christian elements in Gan’s films brought to those social and cultural issues?
2) What approaches does Gan employ to represent Christianity in China, in terms of both its outer and inner aspects? What aspects does he cover? What are the relations of such illustration of Christianity and the postsocialist condition of China?
3) What kind of aesthetic style and cinematic devices does Gan adopt to 19
depict Christianity and other social aspects in the postsocialist China? In what way can such narratives and cinematography with Christian features throw a new light upon the representation and understanding of the living and spiritual conditions ordinary people in postsocialist China?
This dissertation responds to the above questions through an in-depth textual analysis of Gan Xiao’er’s films and a thorough discussion on their meaning in the social and cultural context in postsocialist China. The examination of the films is situated in these two contexts: 1) Chinese independent cinema, and 2) Christianity in China. Both aspects pertain to the postsocialist condition of China. The representations of Chinese Christianity in the Reform era are derived from the reports and studies by religious scholars such as Leung Kar-lun and Yang Fenggang. In particular, the representations of females in the countryside and Christianity in Gan’s films are discussed in Chapter Four, and the works of Chinese women studies by Chinese scholars including Li Xiaojiang and Dai Jinhua are included in the discussion.
Some western cultural concepts are employed to analyze the filmic texts. Jean Comarofi’s notion of “biocapital” is used to examine how Gan represents the living condition of the underprivileged in postsocialist China. Julia Kristeva’s discussion about “God’s love” is used to understand Gan’s response to the afflictions of the underprivileged from a Christian perspective (Kristeva, “God is Love”). Kristeva’s idea of “maternal passion” is also used in the analysis of Gan’s third film Waiting for God, as a reference point to understand Gan’s proposal of a Christian perspective that emphasizes liberation and tolerance. A 20
feminist perspective is included to respond to Gan’s critique from within the Church and on the relation between Christians and other parties in society (Kristeva, “Motherhood Today”). Kristeva’s ideas of “God’s love” and the “maternal passion” support the conceptual framework to analyze Gan’s responses to the spiritual need of people with the hope of a symbolic redemption.
Visual analysis of Gan’s cinematography is included in the film analysis. Thus the form and the content of Gan’s features are examined together to show how Gan conveys his views on Chinese Christianity and how the quest of the inner spirituality of the characters is developed in the postsocialist context. These help illustrate the Chinese Christian and critical perspectives that have distinguished Gan’s films from the previous features depicting Christianity mentioned above.
Gan Xiao’er’s investment of his personal experience about and passion for Chinese Christianity in his feature films makes him different from other independent filmmakers in China. The analysis of the films in this dissertation includes both the contexts of Chinese independent cinema and Christianity in PRC, which are, nevertheless, situated in the larger setting of postsocialist China. In the remaining discussion in this chapter, I will give the context of this research by locating Gan’s cinematic practice as an instance of the movement of independent filmmaking in postsocialist China. Gan’s intention to represent what has been under-represented and the cinematic style of those films are explained against such background. 21
According to McGrath’s monograph Postsocialist Modernity: Chinese Cinema, Literature, and Criticism in the Market Age, some essays by Paul G. Pickowicz, Zhang Yingjin and Zhang Zhen from the anthologies From Underground to Independent: Alternative Film Culture in Contemporary China and The Urban Generation: Chinese Cinema and Society at the Turn of the Twenty-first Century, and the article “Opening Public Spaces” written by Sebastian Veg, the concept of “postsocialist condition” refers to the social and historical backgrounds of the emergence of Chinese independent cinema. They also examine the cultural significance and aesthetic characteristics of the independent films, and the issues of labelling of this alternative cinematic practice. These discussions help us understand the historical background, thematic concerns and aesthetic characteristics of Gan’s films.
Studies of Christianity in China by religious scholars and social scientists have been used for a comparative analysis between the situations of Christianity in postsocialist China and the representations of the religion in Gan Xiao’er’s films. Yang Fenggang’s Religion in China: Survival & Revival under Communist Rule introduces the change of state policy on religion under the rule of the atheist CCP. A chapter from Leung Ka-lun’s Rural Chruches of Mainland China Since 1978 provides a sociological account of the growth of Protestantism in the countryside of China in the Reform period. Other papers about the status quo of Christianity, especially Protestantism, also shed light on my examination on the religion and its believers in Gan’s films, especially since the religious practices covered in his films took place in the rural areas. 22
I.5.3.1
Chinese Independent Cinema
Gan’s works are independent films in China. There are many discussions about the labelling of particular filmmaking approaches among critics, scholars and filmmakers themselves, such as Paul G. Pickowicz, Zhang Yingjin, Jason McGrath, Zhang Zhen and Sebastian Veg. Besides “independent”, this particular set of cinematic practices is also called “underground”, “the Sixth Generation” and “the Urban Generation”. Without the need to analyze the details behind the labelling issue nor judging different labels, the category “independent” is used because it is specific enough to point out the position of Gan’s films, which are produced outside the state-studio system in the cinema of the People’s Republic of China (PRC), and are distributed and exhibited outside the mainstream commercial network (Pickowicz & Zhang, “Preface” ix). Moreover, this research aims not to investigate the alternative cinematic movement at large, but to examine the significance of the works of a particular director within that cultural practice that has emerged after the crackdown of the democratic movement in 1989 (Veg 5). However, it is necessary to establish some degree of clarity for the purpose of citing different scholarly works. A number of labels have been used by different scholars of Chinese cinema to refer to the different filmmaking approaches (of different filmmakers) and the denotations of their filmic practices, some films that are excluded by one label (such as “underground”) can be included by another label (such as “the Urban Generation”) (Zhang Zhen 8-9). To discuss the development of the independent cinema in China, it is necessary to clarify 23
the use of various labels. Scholars have debated about labelling the film practices but have not yet agreed on any single term. Among all the labels, the category “independent” is more general and inclusive than “underground” (which excludes films that are not banned), the “Sixth Generation” (which excludes films by the directors debut later) and the “Urban Generation” (which excludes films about the countryside). Most PRC filmmakers who make films outside the official system adopt the “independent” term because it is more popularly used (Pickowicz & Zhang, “Preface” ix). In the following, I will briefly lay out the independent film movement in China as the background of Gan’s film practice. In “Introduction: Opening Public Spaces”, Sebastian Veg distinguishes two phases of the Chinese independent film movement (5). The first group is said to have emerged after the Tiananmen massacre in 1989, as a reflective substitution in the cultural arena for the failed democratic movement in direct political resistance. The most famous filmmakers in this period include Zhang Yuan and Wang Xiaoshuai. The second group of independent filmmakers is said to have emerged at the turn of the new century, when the advance of digital technology has made the production and distribution of moving images more popular and affordable. Filmmakers of this wave have taken their digital cameras to the remote towns or villages to make films. Jia Zhangke, Wang Chao and Wang Bing are some representatives of this phase of Chinese independent cinema. The directors of both phases concern themselves with the marginal groups in society (Veg 5-6). Given that Gan Xiao’er made his directorial debut in 2003 with The Only Sons, and since his films are set in rural areas, it is appropriate for Gan to be categorized under the second wave 24
of independent filmmakers. Despite popular usage and its notion of inclusiveness, the term “independent film” is ambiguous. Paul G. Pickowicz notes that some filmmakers prefer calling themselves “underground” to “independent” because the latter term is borrowed from the United States to differentiate the films from Hollywood productions; that is, the commercial dominance force (326). On the contrary, the alternative cinematic practice in China is highlighted according to its relation to the official institution, known as the state-studio system, because the media sector has always been in the grip of the state. The “underground” category thus underscores the political status of the unofficial practice (326). Therefore, if one still uses the “independent” label for Chinese cinema, it emphasizes the film’s unofficial status as the filmmaker works outside the state-studio system and is able to avoid standard procedure such as submitting the script to the government for permission (Pickowicz, 328). With a different critical agenda, Veg defines “independent film” in China in terms of the concept of “public space” by Jürgen Habermas who defines public spaces as the spheres opening up for general discussion by citizens (7). Public space could refer to both a physical actual space and a discursive space of “shared humanity”, which allows ordinary people to talk about public issues. Veg stresses the latter meaning in analyzing the function of independent cinema, as independent cinema construct a discursive space among filmmakers, audiences and the objects in the films. This notion of “independence” implies a sphere of the engendering of discourses alternative to the official ideological narratives in the Reform era, such as economic 25
development and nationalism, which are apparent in the mainstream and leitmotif movies (Veg 8). Moreover, such a public space is an ambiguous space that allows various individual voices to be heard while they engage each other in dialogue. There is a tension or dialectic between the individuals’ private aspect and the public sphere’s collective aspect. Thus “independent cinema” according to Veg is defined “by its recurrent exploration of public spaces, and of the individuals within them” (9). In this sense, Gan Xiao’er is an independent filmmaker as his cinematic practice has been part of such exploration of public spaces in China. Firstly, Gan has showed the activities of Chinese Christians to the audiences who are non-Christians, and he has introduced a Christian discourse in the background of contemporary Chinese society (Ai Ge). Moreover, Gan has not only shown his films in film festivals and universities that target at intellectual viewers, but also organized screenings in the rural churches where villagers (including non-Christians) in the countryside could participate, for example, seeing their own representations in films and giving feedback to the filmmaker (Bing Yan; Zhang Yaoyao). Thus Gan has expanded the niche of audience of independent films to the rural folks and Chinese Christians, and has explored the potential of a church, a place designed for a particular religion, on becoming a public space and a venue for cultural activities that can engage non-Christians. In Veg’s discussion of “public space” as a defining factor of Chinese independent cinema, there is a reference to the category “the Urban Generation”, concerning the character of xianchang (on location) (7). Veg 26
refers the features of “the Urban Generation” to Zhang Zhen, who has edited the anthology The Urban Generation: Chinese Cinema and Society at the Turn of the Twenty-first Century, in which she defines “the Urban Generation” as the filmic practices “centered on the experience of urbanization by young filmmakers who emerged in the shadow both of the international fame of the Fifth Generation directors and of the suppressed democracy movement in 1989” (1). After the national leader Deng Xiaoping’s “southern trip” in 1992, the PRC government has relaunched the economic reform program, marked by rapid urbanization, rigorous marketization and the embrace of globalization, while the CCP has still gripped the political power (Zhang Zhen 5). Filmmakers of “the Urban Generation” are also the product of the systematic transformation 9. In terms of subject matter, “the Urban Generation” denotes the films that have captured the rapid and rigorous transformation of China in the postsocialist period, by underlining the current cityscape of massive destruction and reconstruction, and the ordinary people who struggle on the margin of society and culture (Zhang Zhen 3). If the geographical feature is the defining factor of “the Urban Generation”, Veg precisely observes that many independent films do not match the features of city ruins and reconstruction, because many independent directors situate their films in the rural areas. This observation clearly applies to Gan whose three feature films are located in the countryside, and there is no trademark of the
9
These filmmakers, such as Zhang Yuan and Wang Xiaoshuai, worked outside the state-studio systems and had no distributive outlet in the country, so they sent their works to foreign film festivals without official permission. Consequently their films and cinematic practices were banned by the state, making the filmmakers “underground” (Zhang Zhen 10-11). Actually such heavy-handed policy has run parallel with the restructuring of the film system, heading to the development of the commercial and leitmotif cinema, so the state tries to minimize any disturbance by suppressive means (Zhang Zhen 11).
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Urban Generation like bulldozer and building crane underlined by Zhang Zhen (3). Veg also takes the aesthetics of xianchang from the discussion of “the Urban Generation” to bring about an investigation of the aesthetic style of Chinese independent cinema and this raises the question of realism as a term of analysis (7-10). Characterizing Chinese independent film as “realistic” raises potential debates since the term is ambiguous and there has always been more than one kind of realism in cinema. First of all, the aesthetic style of the independent film has to be distinguished from “socialist realism” as the cultural standard in Mao Zedong’s era. Jason McGrath points out that “socialist realism” is the combination of “revolutionary realism” and “revolutionary romanticism”, in which the “reality” to be disclosed is the “underlying ideological truth composed of class struggle and the inexorable historical movement toward a communist utopia” (132). On the contrary, the “realism” of independent cinema in the postsocialist era attempts to reveal the plain, original dimension of ordinary life experience by wiping off the ideological “leitmotif” colouring. Using Jia Zhangke’s films as examples, McGrath labels the aesthetic style of the Chinese independent cinema “postsocialist critical realism” (132), which refers to the illustration of the life experience of ordianry people, especially those impoverished and marginal folks. The various illustrations of the struggling experiences of these social groups could cast an indirect critique to the present postsocialist condition, as it discloses the contradictions and negative effects of the rapid marketization and economic reform. Therefore, many independent filmmakers would shoot in the public places, capturing the 28
activities and landscapes of the present China on the spot. It is believed that shooting on the spot (xianchang), and editing the film in a rather raw style, would lay bare the inconvenient social reality as the flip side of the official discourse is shown in the leitmotif and mainstream commercial cinema (McGrath 132, 136). Both Veg and McGrath identify xianchang as a key feature of the realistic aesthetics of Chinese independent cinema 10. McGrath demonstrates the use of on location shooting in public area, with Jia Zhangke’s Xiao Shan Huijia (Xiao Shan Going Home; 1995) and Xiao Wu (The Pickpocket; 1997), to construct a sense of xianchang, without hiding the camera in the public areas, thus it could capture the immediate and natural reactions of ordinary people to the appearance to the lens, effecting the tone of cinéma-vérité (139). Likewise, Veg points up xianchang as the physical-and-discursive public space, where individual voices of ordinary people encounter (9). The realism of xianchang has a radical potential because it reveals the randomness and differences among the lives of common folks, against the tendency from the top to take control of the multiple discourses in order to sustain the dominance of a grand narrative, such as economic growth, during the postsocialist period of China (Veg 10). In order to analyze the aesthetic style of Gan Xiao’er’s films, the xianchang feature as on-the-site contingency is not sufficient, and is difficult to apply. It is because Gan shows little interest in capturing the spontaneous activities of ordinary people in a documentary manner, although
10
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non-professional actors are used in his films. He also shoots on location, that is, in the public places but not in studios, but he does not intend to produce an effect of crudeness. Rather, the scenes in his films are finely set, in terms of lighting and mise-en-scène; editing and soundtrack were also put carefully. Therefore, such style has to be understood by another aspect of “postsocialist critical realism”. According to McGrath, there are two types of realism in Chinese independent cinema: firstly, the rather raw, improvised cinéma-vérité realism, which is prevalent among many Chinese independent filmmakers; secondly, there is a “comparatively aestheticized” realism, characterized by its plenty use of immobile camera, long take and long shot that are popular in the international art film circuit (148, 160). If the xianchang character of critical realism indicates the temporal-spatiality of Chinese independent film in the postsocialist condition as urgent and immediate, the “aestheticized” critical realistic style specifies temporal-spatiality in a different manner. For the latter, two operations of time can be observed, rather paradoxically: the use of long takes lets the audience see things happen in front of the camera; on the contrary, there are many ellipses within the narrative, so the audience cannot see what have happened (or not happened), rather they are left with confusion as well as room for imagination. The art of long take is, according to Jia Zhangke, a “democratic form” as it leaves room for the characters to act and for the viewers to observe and interpret what is in the frame, in contrast to the narrative usually seen in mainstream commercial films, which try to impose their narratives to the characters and viewers with devices like montage and close-up (Veg 9-10). In other words, the long take and long shot give enough time and room for the 30
audiences to choose what to attend within the frame (and they can shift focus) (McGrath 148). Gan Xiao’er adopts the “aestheticized” realistic techniques such as long take, long shot and deep focus shot, over the use of fast editing and close-up in his films. He usually shoots from a distance, for a comparatively long duration, allowing the viewers to observe the activities of the characters within the frame, from one side to another, between the foreground and the background. In Waiting for God, there are repetitive scenes of the heroine who moves along the road. Sometimes Gan uses a tracking shot, following the heroine while keeping her at the centre of the frame; sometimes the camera is held from a distance, waiting for the character to leave a trace across the frame. She usually walks alone, without any interaction with the others11. These images of temporality are employed to manifest the inner experience of the protagonist. Although the audiences do not know what exactly happened in her mind, the director does not use technique like voice-over to disclose her thinking. Rather, an inward journey is suggested, and the viewers are invited to imagine what is beneath the image, according to the hints given by other parts of the story. The voiceless moments may intensify the protagonist’s internal struggle, and the tracking shots in which she walks alone may express her loneliness that no one understands her personal trouble. This is like the ordinary experience for one who tries to understand the others, while one’s thoughts and feelings are often difficult to articulate due to various reasons; or the subject her/himself cannot figure out what has troubled her/him indeed. 11
Except in on scene that when the heroine was walking along the road, her husband came close to her, but she asked him to leave her alone and walked away.
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While the sequence shot keeps the temporal continuity that somehow imitates certain quotidian experience of life; the realistic operation of time is also full of ellipses. Therefore both viewers and the characters involved are not clear about the causes and effects of all incidents that appear on screen (McGrath 151). In other words, the dramatic plot in mainstream cinema gives way to: 1) the temporal structure of “postsocialist critical realism”, which is composed of time interval and duration; and 2) the ellipses of knowledge to some events and the redundancy of knowledge of other matters, which create a cinematic experience as paradoxical as the time-experience and perception of everyday life. This kind of experience is apparent in Chinese independent films that target at the lower class, especially when the characters have received little education, and does not have the power to know the causality behind their troubles. In The Only Sons, the protagonist Ah Shui is so ignorant that he has to rely on a friend to manage the intrigue of selling his own son. When the story unfolds, both Ah Shui and the audience know little about the identities of the buyers. Gan also elides the whereabouts of Ah Shui’s sister, leaving the audience as ignorant as the protagonist, in this way, Gan allows viewers to get closer to the main character’s experience full of ellipses; this is an instance of the “postsocialist critical realism”. I.5.3.2 Cui Zi’en and Christian Elements in Chinese Independent Cinema A brief introduction to some films of Cui Zi’en, an independent filmmaker, is meaningful when studying cinematic representations of Christianity in Chinese independent cinema, since his films containing elements of Christianity were 32
on show before Gan’s films came about. Concepts, icons, symbols and practices of Christianity are observed in some of Cui’s films, beginning with the short film Mi Sa 彌撒 (Mass) made in 2001 (Berry 197). Known as a significant figure of the “New queer Chinese Cinema”, Cui focuses on the subject matter of sexuality, exploring beyond gayness and touches on transgender, polyamory, prostitution and incestuous behaviours (Leung 518). Having grown up in a Catholic family, Cui admits the influence of Christianity on his artistic practice (Wang Qi 185). Catholicism does not frequently appear as the motif, as queer sexuality does, in Cui’s films, but the religion has been a source of inspirations to his cinematic practice. Cui Zi’en persistently makes films about homosexuality in China, among which three feature films have shown elements of Christianity evidently: Jiu Yue 舊約 (The Old Testament) in 2001, Chou Jue Deng Chan 丑角登場 (Enter the Clowns) in 2002, and Aiyaya, Qu Buru 哎呀呀，去哺乳 (Feeding Boys, Ayaya) in 2003. The religious features are “evident” in the sense that the films have direct references to Christianity and depictions of Christian believers’ activities 12. Death and love are the two themes that are especially relevant to Christianity in the three films made by Cui. Besides preaching in the street, Da Bing in Feeding Boys, Aiyaya tries to “rescue” male prostitutes and exhausts his
12
For example, the film title The Old Testament refers to the first section of the Christian Bible, and the titles of the three chapters of the film: “Song of Solomon 2001”, “Proverb 1991” and “Psalm 1981” all refer to three books of the Bible. Some main characters in those films are Christians: the protagonist of Enter the Clowns, Xiao Bo, and his father are Catholics; Da Bing and Xiao Jian, the protagonists of Feeding Boys, Ayaya, are also Christian believers. In Feeding Boys, Ayaya, Da Bing and Xiao Jian discuss about the God’s view on sex and homosexuality during some Bible study sections. Da Bing and his girlfriend “preach” in the street, asking the gay prostitutes to quit the business as the doomsday will come soon.
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wealth and health, and finally, his life. In other words he sacrifices himself for the others as a Christian. Sometimes Christian symbols and icons appear in his films and these do not only suggest the faith of the characters, but also imply the religious perspective that death is not a desperate end of life 13. In The Old Testament, when the hero of the third part “Song of Solomon 2001” dies, he is said to “have gone to Heaven”. His death also shows a kind of sacrificial love, as he has done whatever he could, including prostitution, to look after his homosexual companion who is infected with HIV. The interpretation of Christian love in Cui Zi’en’s films maybe found subversive with regard to the “common sense” that Christianity defines homosexuality as a sin. On the contrary, Cui shows an unconditional embracement of homosexuality, sex change and prostitution in the three films discussed 14. Therefore one may find Cui’s queer cinema scandalous or radical exactly because he has employed the religious themes of love and redemption to affirm prostitution, homosexuality and other sexual relations that Christianity generally does not accept (Leung 530). The embracing gesture towards some “sinful” behaviours is also observed in Gan Xiao’er’s films, in which Gan’s illustration of the main characters, who does something forbidden according to the religious dogma, are fraught with sympathy. Upon this point, the difference between Cui and Gan is that Cui’s films are full of playfulness while Gan’s films 13
For instance, when Da Bing is about to die, lying in bed, Cui has shown a cross hung on the wall. A similar scene is found in Enter the Clowns, at the beginning, when Xiao Bo’s transgendered father is dying, the camera tilts up to a cross and an icon of Jesus on the wall for a moment. Xiao Bo later takes his father’s cremation box to the columbarium in a Catholic church, in which a pair of banners say that death does not mean the end of life, as God’s redemption would fall on the departed. 14 Cui alleges in an interview that everyone might have one’s own sexuality and one should have the freedom to choose any particular way to love, as long as there is interpersonal mutual respect. (Wang Qi 183-84). He also claims that his understanding of faith is more tolerant than the dogma of the church institution as he believed Jesus Christ does not discriminate against prostitution and homosexuality (Li Yinhe).
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are immersed with heaviness. Another difference between Cui and Gan in terms of the use of Christian elements in films is that Christianity is not the central subject in Cui’s films but functions as a cultural reference for his queer discourses; however, Christianity is the centre of Gan’s films. Still, Cui captures the interior of a Catholic church in Enter the Clowns with people participating in a Mass in a documentary way. Although those shots are brief, the audience of Chinese independent cinema has a chance to glance at the Catholic activities within the contemporary Chinese cityscape. In Raised from Dust, similarly, Gan shows some Christian activities within a church, except that is a Protestant church in the rural area and the scenes are staged.
I.5.3.3 The Postsocialist Condition of China It is important to specify the socio-historical nature of “postsocialist critical realism” that the word “postsocialist” denotes a particular historical period in contemporary China (Zhang Yingjin “Rebel without a Cause” 52). The postsocialist period is a period of rapid transformation, in which ordinary people have to witness and endure the consequences of rapid changes in both urban and rural areas without understanding the causes and the process in detail (Zhang Zhen 5-6). This could have generated the experience of “ellipses” in daily life. McGrath argues for a rather monolithic understanding of the “postsocialist condition” as the “postsocialist modernity” (8). He holds that the postsocialist condition not only refers to the transformation of those regions that had been socialist regimes, but also indicates the triumph of global 35
capitalism. It is still a kind of “modernity”, because global communism had been an “alternative modernity” challenging the capitalistic modernity but had eventually failed when the Cold War ended, thus the world has fallen into the domination of the only modernity as global capitalism (14). The artistic arena, like the social and cultural, have become subject to the economic drive as marketization and consumerism, as well as the state which still holds tight its monopolized political power (McGrath 9). The transformation from a socialist regime to a market economy, without substantial change of the authoritarian reign by the CCP, has yielded many social and cultural problems, such as income inequality, corruption and other contradictions (McGrath 12; Zhang Zhen 6). Although the process of the large-scale marketization has brought enormous economic growth to the nation, it is also a process of exploitation of many people from the lower class, whose labour, property and well-being are bereaved in return for the “success” of those in the upper class, inside and outside China (McGrath 207, 209). The surge of market economy in postsocialist China has also impacted on social norms and moral values, which tend to be absorbed or dislocated by the logic of capital—aspects like interpersonal relations, social identities, and even the values of human life become alienated and commodified. A “spiritual void” or “crisis of value” is thus observed, since in the Maoist era, the socialist ideology ruled over all aspects of social life while the traditional value system was swept away; however, in the age of Reform and all-round marketization, both Marixist ideology and the traditional norm have receded, the ideological gap which refers to the spiritual need of the people is unattended or partially 36
fulfilled by consumerism (McGrath 8; 20-21). Nonetheless, one can still argues there is a new ideology, which is the enormous economic growth, and the national pride derived from it, strategically employed as a source of persistent legitimacy of the CCP (McGrath 205). The phenomenon of “spiritual void” can explain the surge of Christianity in the Reform era, which has formed the background of Gan Xiao’er’s cinematic practice of representing the activities of Chinese Christians in the Reform era, and illustrating the living conditions of the folks in the countryside with a Christian perspective. The Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life estimated in 2011 that there are about 67 million Christians in China (“Global Christianity”), although the official number is about 28 million (“An Overview of Religions in China”). It is difficult to obtain the exact statistics because there are so many unregistered believers according to Chinese law (“Global Christianity”). Fenggang Yang remarks that, although the CCP has adopted an open policy of religion since the release of “the Document No.19” in 1982, in comparison to the complete banning of religion during the Cultural Revolution (75), along the three decades in the Reform eras, the state has been tightening its control of religions in China, especially Christianity (Yang 149). Contradictorily, under the same period, Christianity, including both sanctioned and unsanctioned churches, has grown rapidly (Davison; Orso). Leung Ka-lun explains the growth of Protestantism in the countryside with a sociological approach that, since the traditional popular beliefs has been swept off in Mao Zedong’s era, there has been a spiritual void to be substituted by Christianity in the postsocialist time (223-24).
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As the feature films of Gan Xiao’er touches on the sensitive area of Christianity, he has given up the idea of applying for the official permission for his films in the very early stage because he believes that it would be a waste of time (Zhang Yaoyao). Since his works as independent films would not be watched by the mass audience in the cinema, he has not got any intervention from the state (Qi 64). A more detailed discussion about the status of Christianity in postsocialist China and its relation to Gan’s films will be found in Chapter Three.
Gan Xiao’er has not only filmed local Christianity as the subject matter, but also tried to employ the cultural resources and worldviews from the religion to dialogue with the spiritual need of his compatriots. Gan not only cares about the material and social poverty of the protagonists, but also tries to explore the spiritual dimension of the characters, including those who shared the troubles with the protagonists, those who took advantages from them, and those who kept a distance from them (further discussion will be found in Chapter Two). Although Christianity in Gan’s first two films seems to be a possible solution, in his third one Waiting for God, the religion is also questioned as a source of trouble, if not suppression, to people’s quest for spiritual fulfillment. Therefore in the analysis of Gan’s films in Chapter Four, the representation of Christianity as an institution is distinguished from that of Christians as human subjects with a faithful pursuit, while the director is more sympathetic with the latter.
I.6 Chapter Summary Chapters Two to Four constitute the main body of this dissertation. In Chapter Two, the issue of devaluation of human in the postsocialist period, such as the 38
commodification of the human body, which has been shown in Gan Xiao’er’s films, will be discussed. This chapter mainly focuses on Gan’s first film The Only Sons and discusses the dire condition of the underprivileged groups in the Refrom period. Jean Comarofi’s essay “Beyond Bare Life: AIDS, (Bio) Politics, and the Neoliberal Order” which develops the idea of “biocapital” in response to Giorgio Agamben’s notion of “bare life” is useful for the analysis of the issue of capitalization of life instances in the age of economic globalization (213), which can explain the depictions of the suffering people in Gan’s films as well as in other Chinese independent films. On the other hand, Julia Kristeva’s “God is Love” offers a reference for Gan’s response to the condition of human devaluation from a Christian perspective, with a discourse of love.
Chapter Three mainly focuses on Gan’s second film Raised from Dust. This part examines to what extent Gan has matched his intention to represent the under-represented Christian in China (Qi 83). Besides the works of religious studies and social sciences mentioned above, some interviews of Gan are used as key references because Gan also adopts his personal experience and observation of the Christian activities in China into his films.
Chapter Four continues some discussion of Raised from Dust before concentrating on Gan’s third film Waiting for God. Although it is still about the representation of Chinese Christianity, in this new chapter I argue that Gan reveals the ambiguity of the thoughts and actions of Chinese Christians in his films, thus has generated a reflexive critique of the religion—as part of the postsocialist Chinese society. This concerns the internal conflicts of Christian 39
values and practices, especially concerning the interaction between the religion and the non-believers in particular. The images of mother from Gan’s films will be highlighted to illustrate this critical attempt. Views from Chinese feminist scholars Dai Jinhua and Li Xiaojiang, as well as their interviews and books, are used to refer to the background of various gender issues in contemporary China. Kristeva’s article “Motherhood Today” will be another key reference in the analysis of the images of mother in Gan’s film because the article suggests the notion of motherhood as a prototype of other interpersonal relations. Thus it also provides an analytical framework for discussing the dynamics between the Church and the world, as well as the dynamics among different values within Christianity.
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Chapter Two
(In)human Condition in Postsocialist China
II.1 Chapter Introduction This chapter mainly analyzes how Gan Xiao’er’s first feature film The Only Sons has illustrated the postsocialist condition of China, in which the underprivileged people are dehumanized and commodified. Gan’s second film Raised from Dust is also mentioned within the discussion as an instance of the representation of such dehumanizing condition in the postsocialist China. Gan’s response to such dehumanizing condition from a Christian point of view is examined with a close reading of the filmic text. As to the spirituality of the underprivileged people, this chapter illustrates how Gan has responded with a Christian perspective, which is more symbolic than pragmatic. Visual analysis of some scenes, especially about the cinematic devices that Gan employs, is complementary to the textual analysis about the motif and message that Gan wants to convey in the film.
This first film of Gan Xiao’er, an independent production, made in 2003, relied solely on the own savings of Gan and the financial support from his friends (Li Ming 104). From his debut, Gan has shown the propensity of realistic style, such as the massive use of long take, long shot (or very long shot) and delicate mise-en-scène. Gan is interested in the underprivileged group in the Reform Era, like many other independent filmmakers in China, except that he has chosen Christianity (to be specific, Protestantism) in particular as the subject matter of his three features. The first film The Only Sons focuses more on the marginal folks in the countryside than the religion, serving as reclamation of 41
the field in which the two subject matters could meet and develop in the next two films. Moreover, it touches on the issue of HIV/AIDS in China, which was still a “secret” that the government wanted to hide from the public view when the film was made (Li Ming 100).
In this chapter, Giorgio Agamben’s concept of “bare life” (homo sacer) is used to account for the impoverished condition of Chinese villagers. The direct reference is Jean Comarofi’s article “Beyond Bare Life: AIDS, (Bio)Politics, and the Neoliberal Order”. This article is selected because it focuses on the condition of AIDS patients, like the depiction of a person suffering from AIDS in The Only Sons, with the employment of the concept of “bare life” (207). The concept of homo sacer, a term of Agamben, marks the production of the biopolitical body by the sovereign power (6). Using this concept in the analysis of the condition of AIDS patients, Comarofi highlights the exclusion of any meaningful social existence of those who are deemed as “bare lives” (207).
Comarofi also extends his discussion beyond “bare life” to introduce the concept of “biocapital” which means the knowledge and institutions that are determinant of the matter of life and death, and that subject human life and death to the net of market forces (213). This concept is helpful in the discussion of The Only Sons, which is set in the postsocialist era in which the capitalization of human beings is depicted in the film in forms of the consecutive instances of life and death happening in the protagonist’s family that are continuously objectified by the state and other parties to make economic profit. 42
In the later part of this discussion, a chapter “God is Love” from Julia Kristeva’s book Tales of Love is used as a reference. The book explores various traditions of the Western culture, with a psychoanalytical approach, around the themes of love, self, and desire, though the discussion of The Only Sons with reference to “God is Love” is more analogical than psychoanalytical. “God is Love” is useful because it interprets Christian love through the death of Jesus, thus it offers a framework to explain how the protagonist in The Only Sons could be redeemed from his dire condition.
II.2 “Bare Life” and “Biocapital”: the Postsocialist Afflictions Similar to many independent filmmakers in China, Gan begins with the hard life of the lower class. Thus his films share the aesthetics of the “postsocialist critical realism” that concerns the shadow side of the society, which is always obscured by the dominant ideology in the mainstream media (McGrath 139). The problem of blood selling which has caused the spread of AIDS in China shown in The Only Sons is one example. Life of Ah Shui, the protagonist who is a peasant in a Guangdong village, is constantly hard. His wife Qiuyue is pregnant, his little sister is about to finish primary school, and his littler bother Ah Chong is sentenced to death. Ah Shui decides to sell his to-be-born baby for the tuition fee of his sister at first, but later he changes the purpose of the sale to the bribery of a judge so as to save his brother. Regardless of all the effort he made, tragically, he loses everything at the end.
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A brief visual analysis of The Only Sons shows that shots of a pig are used to make an analogy of the protagonist, and the analogy epitomizes the condition of the impoverished group in rural China: after Ah Shui has made the decision to sell his child, he discovers that his pig has disappeared along with his little sister, which makes him anxious. The director reveals the destination of the pig by jumping to a close-up shot in which Ah Shui and the pig face each other to construct a symmetric composition. A moment later the audience would realize that the pig’s head has been chopped off and laid on the chopping table of the butcher, through a more distant shot showing its other body parts hanging above. This is a direct analogy between the life of Ah Shui and that of the pig, as the dismantled pig suggests the fate of the protagonist that his life would be disassembled, losing the value as a human but turning into a commodity. The butcher is actually a "blood dealer", his shop is an underground blood station where Ah Shui sells his blood and subsequently gets infected by HIV.
The image of the dismantled pig symbolizes not only Ah Shui but also other roles disassembled in all the three films. Yet The Only Sons most vividly illustrates the devaluation of human as a freshly butchered pig. It shows how the underprivileged people in China, who cannot share the fruits of economic growth, have been treated not as holistic human beings but carriers of flesh that are to be sold and bought. Indeed Ah Shui’s family can be regarded as an inventory of body parts: Ah Shui sells his blood; his wife rents out her womb to a family in which the wife was sterile; he sells his baby son to a wealthy family which wants an heir. More starkly, after his condemned brother Ah Chong is
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executed, a representative from a public hospital tries to persuade Ah Shui to sell the organs of Ah Chong and offers a price for each part of flesh.
Some may say people like Ah Shui are the sacrifices for the economic growth and the rise of national power of China in the Reform Era. A famous Chinese idiom says “sacrifice the small interest of me, for the big interest of WE” (犧牲 小我，完成大我). The people’s sufferings, as the cost of practicing the new ideology, can be summarized by two of the quotes from Deng Xiaoping: “to be rich is glorious” and “let some people get rich first” (Chi; Ramzy; Rauhala), which put money-making as the primary concern over people’s lives. But some others may say people like Ah Shui are in fact exploited and disvalued as “bare lives” instead of sacrifices, as life “may be killed but not sacrificed” (Agamben 83), or even worse, as “mere flesh” in the age of economic globalization is highly commodified and capitalized.
Comarofi refers to Agamben’s notion of “bare life” or homo sacer in his article about AIDS to discuss about bio-politics on the global level. AIDS patients, especially those in poor countries, are discriminated against by their community and thus are the “bare lives” tacitly allowed to die in despair; Ah Shui is an emblem: “a scarcely human being condemned […] to callous exclusion, to death without meaning or sacrificial value; a being left untreated in an era of pharmacological salvation” (Comarofi 207). After Ah Shui has lost his son, brother and sister, he is informed that he is infected with HIV and later his wife commits suicide. In this series of suffering, the protagonist’s social network disintegrates gradually. The two neighbours who often visit him desert 45
him, including Principal Zhang, the seemingly helpful friend, the “intellectual” whom illiterates like Ah Shui can trust. Zhang flees from Ah Shui’s house frightenedly and contemptuously right after he realizes that Ah Shui has HIV. He rushes to a stream, cleans himself hysterically and throws his shirt away 15.
Ah Shui’s family was not just sacrificed; they were even exploited to every single drop of blood and piece of flesh. When the protagonist was moribund, he was just a residue of the process of capital growth. He was a “bare life” that had been stripped of a “meaningful social existence” (Comarofi 207). Comarofi noted that the notion of homo sacer “is used to show how modern government stages itself by dealing directly in the power over life”, including the power “to strip human existence of civic rights and social value” (208). For Ah Shui, the state did not protect his civil rights; even when he suffered from destitution and terminal illness, there were no financial aid and public health care for him. Rather, the state only showed up as affectless bureaucrats; firstly two officials from the Family Planning Commission charged him for the expected son, then a police officer reimbursed three dollars from him as the “bullet fee” after reporting to him that his brother Ah Chong had been executed. Inferring from these instances, the state not only holds the power over the matter of life and death of the subjects, but also makes money out of them in a systematic way. These instances can be explained by Camarofi’s idea of “biocapital” (213).
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This is an ironic depiction that such a “well educated” man who often boasts about his knowledge behaves so incongruously. “An educated man” should know that HIV is not transmitted by casual contact, and if he is exposed to the risk of HIV infection, washing himself could not help.
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Comarofi challenges the notion of Agamben’s homo sacer as a defining factor of the sovereign power (207-8), noting that in the age of globalization, the force of international capital has become another key factor that could also influence the meaning of “human life”, weakening the monopolistic power of the state (210). The concept of “biocapital” is construed here as “the knowledge, patents, and systems of exchange and command that make the difference between life and death” (Comarofi 213). The concept can apply to the underprivileged in China in the Reform period, who have been made “less human” not only by being objectified as commodities with their bodies, but also by taking part in the mechanism of “biocapital” in other ways, as exemplified in the case of Ah Shui, in which the state exploited the instances of life and death of its subjects to make money. Moreover, besides those regulations and official practices, the underground economy such as blood selling and human trafficking has also constructed part of the “biocapital” system inside and/or outside China.
In the postsocialist condition of the PRC, the government has opened the economy without changing its authoritarian reign; the state is a key player in the market. Thus the discussion of “biocapital” in the PRC should be explained by the participation of the state (including various public entities). The scene in which an officer from a public hospital gives Ah Shui a price for each part of the dead body of his brother is an example, and it has a reference to reality. There have been reports disclosing that the Chinese government has been taking away different organs from condemned prisoners (Carney 82); kidney, skin, liver, cornea or other body parts are removed, before or after execution, for research, experiment and sale (Carney 83-84). It is also reported that a 47
government-sponsored organization lists the prices of different organs on its website for organ transplantation in the national and international markets (Carney 87-88).
For the case of selling blood, it is said that since the 1990s the leader of Henan Provincial Department of Health has set up a biotech company specified in blood collection and sale. In the postsocialist period in which profit-making has a higher priority than public health, the technicians use the same needle repeatedly among numerous patients or blood donors, causing the spread of HIV in the province (Carney 192). Gan Xiao’er, who comes from this province, has known about the problem for some time and has included it in The Only Sons when the problem was still banned in the mainstream media (Li Ming 100). Obviously, the postsocialist state has been an active part of the biocapital mechanism with a global network of capitalism.
The depiction of dehumanization of bare human lives, subject to the sovereign power and the “biocapital” complex, is also seen not only in other Chinese independent films, such as Li Yang’s Blind Shaft (2003) and Peng Tao’s Little Moth (2007)16, but also in the other two feature films of Gan Xiao’er. In Raised from Dust (2006), the protagonist’s husband Xiao Lin is a mine worker 17 until he catches pneumoconiosis and loses the ability to work. The mine company does not give him compensation other than two packs of food (probably rice cakes), so his family descends into impoverishment. Xiao Lin cannot afford a 16
Blind Shaft talks about two men intrigued to kill innocent mine workers and extorted compensation fees from mine companies. Little Moth is a story of a sick girl who was sold to human traffickers and forced to beg in street (Li Ming 111). 17 Probably coal mine, but the film has not clearly indicated whether Xiao Lin worked in a coal mine or a mine of other materials.
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bed in a proper ward, so he has to lie on a bed in the corridor, waiting to die. The neighbors including those who grew up with him once said that they would support his family, but they renegue on their promise and rather spend their money on gambling. In other words, when he is healthy, he is “useful”: as a miner he contributes to the economic growth which requires immense consumption of energy and raw materials, but the poor working condition deprives him of his health. Once his value is depleted, he is discarded and then left alone.
In Gan’s third film Waiting for God (2012), the unwanted life is the aborted fetus of the heroine, who has not yet come to the world. The fetus is seen as a source of trouble by the protagonist Xiao Yang, who once considered having an abortion. The fetus as a form of “pre-life” is thus treated not as a blessing but a burden, showing another form of devaluation of human. Although the illustrations of the human conditions in the following two films of Gan are not as bad as the “bare life” condition in The Only Sons, the depreciating value of human life is still a part of the social context in the postsocialist period of the PRC in which Gan generates his cultural critique with a Christian response.
II.3 Christian Response: God’s Love and the Adopted Son What differs Gan Xiao’er from other Chinese independent filmmakers is that he not only puts Chinese Christians at the center of his lens, but also interprets the general social and cultural conditions with a specific religious perspective, that is, to understand the people who suffer in China by employing a Christian
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framework and to respond to the suffering by suggesting the possibility of redemption.
The characterization of Ah Shui shows that the underprivileged people in the countryside have both pragmatic and spiritual needs. The travelling preacher turns up to bring the final hope to Ah Shui, responding to his spiritual void, which Ah Shui himself and his friend Principal Zhang cannot handle. The spiritual needs of the members in Ah Shui’s family include love and human dignity, as they are exploited as commodified “bare lives”; also Ah Shui has a sense of guilt from which he needs to be redeemed. The preacher prays for Ah Shui and lets him rest in peace. The preacher can be compared to Zhang, as both of them have served as the resource persons of Ah Shui, who is too poor and ignorant that he has to rely on someone from the outside to deal with his troubles. Although the preacher is a stranger to the village, Ah Shui chooses to share with him something even deeper than the secret intrigue he has with Zhang to sell his son and rent out his wife, which makes Ah Shui feel guilty. He confesses to the preacher that he finds himself sinful and he still hopes for deliverance, which is the reason why he is attracted by the preacher’s speech. Ah Shui asks about the trial of God and compares it with the trial of his condemned brother. The preacher said God will judge everyone, but He would have mercy on those who believe in Him. Ah Shui responds by saying he believes, then the preacher prays for him and his dead brother Ah Chong. Whether Ah Shui really believes in the Gospel, or to what extent he can understand the religious content, was ambiguous. But at that moment he is so
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desperate for a way out, so he tries to grasp anything even if it is really foreign to him.
Another reason that drives Ah Shui to Christianity is that his brother Ah Chong returns home once after a prison break, claiming that he has converted to Christianity in the prison, and asks his sister to follow God. That probably impresses Ah Shui’s family, although they may not understand what the religion is really about, except that it is a sign of hope especially for “sinner”. For Ah Shui, as the eldest son of the family shouldering the responsibility of parenting after his parents’ early death, saving his brother is the most important task because he feels guilty for not being able to look after Ah Chong properly, who becomes a gangster. Both of them rest their hope on their little sister, who is a good student, and thus the only hope for the family to escape poverty. Regrettably, they cannot afford her tuition fee; that is why Ah Chong escapes from the prison and robs again and Ah Shui plans to sell his baby. After Ah Chong is condemned and his sister quits school, Ah Shui still needs money to save his brother, so he not only plans to sell his son, but also decides to rent out his wife. The brothers are entangled in a net of sin.
The nature of this “net of sin” is structural, and such problem is a feature of the postsocialist Chinese society, which is often revealed in Chinese independent films. If the characters in those independent films have done something immoral, one has to attribute those evil behaviours to some external factors. Those factors refer to the social condition that moral norms have been retreated and traditional cultures have been wiped off after the Cultural 51
Revolution, and that the socialist norm has also been given up in the Reform era, the ideology of economic development without sufficient balance of moral norms has led to the devaluation of human for profit making, which is concerned in the earlier discussion of “bare life” and “biocapital”. Therefore, the malicious acts of people not only result from individual decision, but also stem from the influence brought by the inhuman social conditions and lack of moral norms.
The tough conditions have made some people exploit the others for survival. In some cases, the underprivileged people may exploit other people who are even weaker than themselves. For example, Ah Shui eventually exploits his dependents – his wife and son. Thus The Only Sons exemplifies the structural “net of sin” as the shadow side of the postsocialist society. The lack of moral norms and the malicious acts which are “necessary for survival” have generated guilt and other spiritual lacks. The Christian faith which brings a discourse of love in The Only Sons is a response to these spiritual lacks. Therefore when Ah Shui meets the preacher, his spiritual burden draws him to seek help from the religious man.
In what way does The Only Sons respond to the afflictions and the “net of sin” of the underprivileged group in the postsocialist condition? If the significance of Christianity is only taken pragmatically, the outcome is negative. The film does not give enough bases to show that grave social and cultural problems can be effectively solved by religious means. The religious narrative in the film is unfolded with ambiguities: for example, Ah Chung claims that he has become 52
a Christian; yet, if God really loves him, how come he is still executed? Likewise, Ah Shui may or may not have received help from God when he is looking for his missing sister. When Ah Shui approaches the preacher for the first time, his sister is missing; but after the preacher prays for him, he receives a letter from the sister saying that she has got a job in Shenzhen. Thus Ah Shui tells everyone that Jesus is “efficacious”. Zhang, however, refutes Ah Shui’s testimony and says that Ah Shui is just superstitious because the letter he receives is actually sent out a few days before he meets the preacher. This instance shows that Ah Shui regards Christianity as a folk belief: since he is so helpless, he would believe in whatever that may work. Also, till the end of the film, things turned out even worse than Ah Shui could have expected.
From a practical point of view, the film shows that the Christian faith cannot help. As an independent film with a realistic approach, the above plot details reflect that many Christian believers in the countryside regard the Christian faith as one of the traditional folk beliefs (Bays 496). As fragile beings, they simply rely on a supernatural power to pursue the good and to avoid the bad. The pragmatic approach to Christianity demonstrated by Ah Shui depicted above shows an ethnographical feature of Gan’s cinematic practice.
Referring to the inhuman objectification of human beings in Gan Xiao’er’s films, a binary of sin-versus-redemption is observed. In contrast to Zhang’s practical approach, the preacher responds to Ah Shui’s inner needs through his message. What the preacher speaks and does demonstrates Christian love as a source of hope, the possibility of salvation. The title of The Only Sons 53
suggests that the notion of sacrifice is key to redemption, referring to the story in the Old Testament where Abraham is to sacrifice his only son Isaac to God, and the centre of the Christian faith that God has sacrificed his only son Jesus to redeem the sin of the world—these messages were highlighted by the preacher. Nonetheless the title also signifies that Ah Shui cruel-heartedly sacrificed his baby to save his brother.
A book chapter from Tales of Love, written by Julia Kristeva, is useful as a reference to elaborate on the possible spiritual redemption suggested in The Only Sons. Corresponding to the above discussion of “bare life”, the “redeemed life” is compared to the idea of sacrifice in the elucidation of Kristeva (“God is Love” 142-3). The lives of Ah Shui, and Xiao Lin in Raised from Dust, are not “sacrificial” if the term implies certain degree of meaningfulness; they are abandoned as residue of the flow of national or global capital and left to die after they had nothing more to sell. Their loss of vitality marks the loss of meaning, whereas Kristeva defines sacrifice as a metaphorical offering which is the “obliteration of a concrete substance so that an abstract meaning might come to the sacrificers”, and that meaning is significant for both sides: the social group which offer the sacrifice and the primal Other as the recipient (“God is Love” 142-3). Nevertheless, the Christian narrative as one of “love” offers hope (or a possible way out) to the meaningless lives of Ah Shui and the like. In the final scene of The Only Sons, when Ah Shui’s social existence is dismantled, as every friend and family member of him has left, he lay in bed waiting for the final breath. Exactly at this
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point there is a twist as the hope of redemption arrived when the preacher came to Ah Shui’s house.
According to Kristeva, the notion of “God’s love” is revealed by the death of Jesus, which functions more than a sacrifice but an analogy that allows human beings to be symbolically identified with God as the beloved child (“God is Love”, 143-44). Such identity offers hope to people like Ah Shui who is exploited as “bare life” in the postsocialist period. In The Only Sons, the preacher delivers the message of God’s love through his speech and prayers. He prays with Ah Shui twice, firstly for his condemned brother Ah Chong and secondly for Ah Shui himself on his last legs and his baby boy. To Ah Shui, this outsider’s message stands out from the surroundings he is used to—this man tells him his is loved, he can be forgiven even though he has sinned, and his imprisoned brother can be liberated—all these are possible through the faith in the loving God, who has sacrificed His son Jesus for the sin of humans. Thus their lives are not meaningless “bare lives” that are socially denounced but are loved by such God, the “Heavenly Father” in the prayers, if and only if they are willing to believe.
Kristeva explains the Pauline interpretation of the Christian love (agape) as a matter of faith (pistis) as God is the source of love (“God is Love” 140). God’s love is disinterested, coming from above as a gift, and passionate, as revealed by the suffering death of Jesus, who was sacrificed to reconnect God and the sinful human: “The gift love through sacrifice is the reversal of sin” (“God is Love” 141). As a gift, the Christian love can be received by Ah Shui without 55
requesting anything for exchange, not even a sacrifice, as God has prepared His own sacrifice: Jesus. This suggests an opposite logic to the social condition that Ah Shui faces, in which human lives are objectified according to the mechanism of “biocapital”, which allures Ah Shui to sell out his family or even himself. But God’s love as the disinterested grace posts a critique to the exchange logic. Ah Shui, as he believes in that love, can be rehumanized as the beloved one.
After pointing out the nature of God’s love as a gift, Kristeva interprets the meaning of agape to a point beyond the classical concept of sacrifice: “The Christly passion [...] is thus only evidence of love and not a sacrifice stemming out of the law of social contract” (“God is Love” 142; my emphasis). Sacrifice is metaphorical; it is the destruction of a substance through which an abstract Meaning is produced, for the sake of the community who offers that sacrifice, and for the receiver God. On the contrary, Christ’s passionate love is an analogy instead of a metaphorical sacrifice, as the death of Jesus allows the Meaning already exists to reveal itself from above (143). Through faith, believers share the experience analogous to Christ’s death and resurrection, which is also a nominal identification with God that they are adopted by the Heavenly Father (Kristeva 143-144).
To be specific to the story of The Only Sons, Kristeva’s emphasis of the adoption to sonship can comfort Ah Shui as he has lost his parents when he was really young, and he might have attributed the sufferings of his family to
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the early death of the parents18. Also, as Ah Shui betrays his own son, the baby also needs such adoption of love. Such love of God is not only delivered through speech by the preacher, but is also embodied by his action. He comes to Ah Shui and touches him gently when he prays for the dying man—which is a big contrast to the hysteric and contemptuous avoidance by Principal Zhang—like a caring father who caressed his ill son, for that Ah Shui is not just a “mere flesh”. The concept of adoption is significant here: Ah Shui is accepted as a beloved son of the Heavenly Father, when his family members are gone and all other villagers stay away from him. Such symbolic adoption responds to Ah Shui’s spiritual need for love and meaning before he dies. This adoption is an act of recognition of the protagonist as a valuable human being, in contrast to the meaningless bare life whose social significance is obliterated.
How does the representation of Christianity respond to the problems that the underprivileged group has suffered? The idea on the “adopted son” in The Only Sons also appears as a response from the Christian perspective to the troubles like what Ah Shui faced, which involve two dimensions: the material and the spiritual. After Ah Shui dies, his son will become an orphan. The preacher adopts his son. Therefore the preacher eases Ah Shui’s final worries in both spiritual and material aspects. This characterizes Gan’s approach in dealing with the afflictions of the marginal group in the postsocialist China in his films. While other independent filmmakers also reveal cinematically the material and spiritual needs of the underprivileged in the Reform era, Gan 18
One can understand that losing the parents implies losing the financial pillars of the family.
Ah Shui also feels himself indebted to Ah Chung as he cannot not look after his little brother properly and let the latter degenerate. Bur that burden is too heavy for him.
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symbolically incorporates the material lack in the spiritual need, and by resolving the spiritual issue, the material trouble could also be cleared up.
In terms of cinematography, Gan Xiao’er employs a surrealistic device to express the incorporation of the material and the spiritual needs, although the film is shot in a realistic style in general. A brief visual analysis helps to explain this. The preacher also has a son, an infant boy bore by his wife, before Ah Shui’s baby is born. The strange thing is that Ah Shui’s son and the preacher’s son look the same. At the end when Ah Shui lies in bed with his baby by his side, the preacher enters the house with his wife who is not holding any baby. When the preacher starts praying, his wife grabs the baby, which the audience may be able to perceive it as Ah Shui’s baby son, though mysteriously the baby is dressed in a the same way as the preacher’s son: the same red coat with white dot pattern. Are there two babies or one? Is the preacher’s son real? The preacher’s wife and the baby in her arms has no interaction with other characters throughout the film, while Ah Shui’s son did. The director cuts from a longer shot to a closer shot twice to suggest that Ah Shui pays attention to the preacher’s baby, and it is possible that only Ah Shui (and the audience) could have such surreal “vision”.
Such doubling effect is probably a symbolic device used by Gan Xiao’er. The early appearance of the preacher’s son can be a symbolic prefiguration of the final adoption of the baby in both material and spiritual dimensions: while Ah Shui is the biological father of the baby, the preacher is the adoptive father, the “spiritual father”, whose adoption symbolizes the spiritual adoption of human 58
by the Heavenly Father. For the first time when Ah Shui seeks advice from the preacher, a long shot is used. The two men stand on the right hand side of the frame, while the preacher’s wife, holding a baby, is captured at the bottom left corner. This composition implies that the baby can be related to the message of the preacher. When the preacher says that God has sent his son to the world in order to redeem all the sinners, the director uses a cutaway medium shot to capture the woman and the baby. Therefore, the baby can be a symbol of hope and redemption.
The doubling of the son can be a metaphor of the overlapping of the material and the spiritual needs. While the father-and-son relation between Ah Shui and his son is an exploitation as the father commodifies his son for survival (material need), it is finally incorporated and transformed to a symbolic relation, by the adoption with love (spiritual response), as the son has a new father who is a Christian. In the last scene when Ah Shui is lying in bed with his son, which is the only scene in which the protagonist and his son are in the frame together, the room is dark and the baby’s face is in shadow. On the contrary, when the baby is with the preacher’s wife, his is always under daylight. Thus the lighting has suggested whether the baby is loved 19. In short, in The Only Sons, both the material and spiritual needs of the underprivileged people are recognized, while the Christian perspective revolving around the notion of the adoption of the loving Father responds to those needs not pragmatically but symbolically.
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Actually in a scene when Qiuyue was with her son in the bedroom, the electric bulb has shed light on the baby’s face. The next day the baby would be sold. This scene shows how Qiu Yue loved her baby and how much she was reluctant to forsake him.
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II.4 Conclusion In this chapter I have focused on Gan Xiao’er’s first feature film The Only Sons, with a brief complementary discussion of the other two features by Gan, to illustrate how Gan’s cinematic practice has addressed the social and cultural problems in the postsocialist China. Some Western cultural concepts have been employed in the textual analysis of the films, with some occasional visual analyses. The investigation has referred to Comarofi’s discussion of “bare life” and “biocapital” to analyze the issue of dehumanization of the underprivileged group, such as commodification of their body parts and the instances of their life and death, which as exemplified by the series of tragedies in the family of the protagonist Ah Shui.
I have examined the way the painful conditions are responded by a Christian narrative of love in the film. Such an approach has made Gan’s films different from other Chinese independent films which have addressed the similar social issues. I have briefly discussed the pragmatic response of Christianity to the problems faced by the underprivileged group, which has been portrayed in the film negatively. Such depiction of the pragmatic approach to the religion has somewhat represented the practice of the Chinese Christians in the countryside. I have also examined the symbolic way the film responds to the afflictions of the characters from a Christian perspective. This hinges on the idea of “the adopted son” as the beloved subject by God, which is suggested by Kristeva in her discussion about God’s love and the passionate death of Christ. I have argued that Gan uses a surrealistic device of the “doubling of the sons” to demonstrate the notion of “adopted son” as a symbolic approach to 60
respond to the spiritual need (which has incorporated the material lack) of those people who suffer in the postsocialist condition. Gan has shown that even humans like Ah Shui are discarded like dreg of the bio-capital machinery, he is indeed treasured as a child of God.
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Chapter Three
The Representations of Christianity (1):
The Under-represented Community
III.1 Introduction Why does Gan Xiao’er choose Chinese Christianity as the central subjects of his films? How does its answer affect the representations of Chinese Christianity in his films? This chapter discusses the representations of Chinese Christianity in the rural areas during the Reform era in Gan’s films, which has been underrepresented in mainstream media as well as independent cinema. The examination in this chapter has an ethnographic significance that patches a gap in the Chinese independent cinema. A detailed textual analysis on Raised from Dust (2007) is done with supplementary support of a brief investigation on The Only Sons (2003). Religious studies of the development of Christianity in the Reform period and literature on Gan’s personal experience are employed to undertake a comparative reading with Gan’s films concerning the cinematic representations of Christianity.
I argue that the illustrations of Chinese Christians in the countryside in Gan’s films concern more the exterior of the religion than the inner spirituality in The Only Sons and Raised from Dust, while the spiritual quest gains more weight in Waiting for God. His three feature films display a gradual progress on the emphasis of Christian’s spiritual quest that contains ethical implications, such as the relation between human and Christianity, as well as that between Christians and non-Christians. A trilogy is thus formed in the sense that the image of the “spiritual quester” has evolved from first a catechumen, then a 62
routine churchgoer, and finally a deliberative lay leader in the three films. I also discuss how Gan’s films, as instances of Chinese independent cinema, have adopted the aesthetics of “postsocialist critical realism”, which tends to reveal the flip side of the postsocialist society that have been covered up in the mainstream media (McGrath 132), including both the impoverished villagers and Christianity, the sensitive issues in China.
III.2 Historical background of Christianity in China Gan Xiao’er’s feature films that focus on the countryside often set Chinese Christianity in between binaries, such as the local and the foreign, and the heavenly and the earthly. A brief historical introduction to Chinese Christianity shows that Christianity is a foreign religion with a long history of indigenization, and has always been entangled with politics from the ruling class to the impoverished villagers. The earliest record of Christianity in China is marked by the arrival of Alopen, a Nestorian missionary, who came to Chang’an, the capital of China in the Tang Dynasty, in 635 (Tiedemann 369-70). Christianity once acquired imperial support in the Tang and Yuan dynasties respectively, but perished when the dynasties collapsed (Hill 116; Tiedemann 370-71). As Christianity relied so much on the authority’s support, its influence stayed distant to the ordinary Chinese (Hill 116). The revival of Christian mission in China is marked by the arrival of Matteo Ricci, an Italian Jesuit missionary, in the Ming Dynasty. With the government approval, Catholic missionaries preached in the country, during which many indigenous Chinese converted, especially the intellectuals (Hill 302-3).
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In the Ming and Qing dynasties, European colonizers who further the civilizing mission also included the Christian religion. Before the Ming emperor welcomed Matteo Ricci to the court, the Portuguese settlement in Macau had functioned as the base of missionaries (Hill 302-3). In the late Qing Dynasty, Britain and France forced China to trade with them with military power. The unequal treaties signed at that time practically helped Christianity to boom in China as a legal religion (Hill 404), as the official ban against Christianity since 1724 was removed in 1844 (Hill 406; Tiedemann 391). Missionaries had a broader reach to the masses in the countryside. They provided various social services to the masses, such as establishing schools, orphanages and hospitals (Tiedemann 406). However, most Chinese people regarded the missionaries as dubious partners of the imperialist invaders, and therefore treated them as a threat (Hill 404, 407). Some local elites found Christianity repugnant because some converts took advantages with their religious status in local affairs and law suits (Sweeten 396), while some poor people were attracted to Christianity because the missionaries undertook charity work in villages and towns (Sweeten 400). In general, Christianity was deemed as creating trouble, and anti-Christian movements emerged after the 1840s (Hill 407).
The Taiping Rebellion (1851-64) against the Qing authority can be seen as the most devastating “trouble” related to Christianity (Tiedemann 392). The uprising was an indigenous movement and is described as a “Chinese heterodox millenarian sect” with little relation to the Western missionaries (Tiedemann 392). The Taiping Rebellion was initiated in the rural area by a 64
local literate Hong Xiuquan, who claimed that he was the younger brother of Jesus Christ and was called by God to revolt against the Qing emperor and to establish a pre-imperial kingship worshipping God (Reilly 405). Hong and his followers proclaimed the establishment of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom in 1851, captured Nanjing in 1853 and had made it their “Heavenly Capital” since then until the Qing military fought back and reclaimed the land in 1864 (Reilly 405).
The Boxer Rebellion in the late Qing dynasty in 1900 marked the peak of anti-Christian resentment. A populist militant group practicing indigenous cult, the “Boxers” were extremely xenophobic and they outrageously attacked Christians (Hill 477; Tiedemann 394). There were two hundred and thirty one foreigners and tens of thousands of Chinese Christians in the recorded Boxer killings (Hill 477).
After the Boxer Rebellion, Christianity indeed spread further in China, especially in the rural areas (Tiedemann 394). In the early twentieth century, there were still anti-imperialistic sentiment and nationalistic consciousness arising among the Chinese masses. Simultaneously, there was a growth of indigenous Christianity (Tiedemann 395). Independent churches led by Chinese church leaders with little connection with the Western missionaries spread through China while western influence faded (Hill 478; Tiedemann 395).
Indigenization of Chinese Christianity has reached its peak after the 65
establishment of People’s Republic of China, marked by the foundation of the Chinese Catholic Patriotic Association (CCPA) and the Three-Self Patriotic Movement (TSPM) as the only state-sanctioned Catholic and Protestant organizations respectively (Hill 481, 484). CCPA and TSPM were required to become localized and stay away from foreign influence; those who refused to submit to the new policy would be persecuted (484). Although Christianity was completely banned and many Christian preachers were imprisoned during the Cultural Revolution, churches turned underground and have spread rapidly, with reports remarking that Christian believers have formed the majority in some villages (Hill 485).
III.3 Chinese Christianity in the Reform Period Gan Xiao’er thinks Chinese Christianity is a significant part of Chinese society that should have been well represented in the cinema. Therefore he undertakes the project to show the religion in film. Gan questions, “There are 80 million Christians in China, where are they in Chinese cinema?” (Qi 63). He provides no source for the number he quotes, yet he intends to argue the non-negligible proportion of Christian populace who is disproportionately under-represented in Chinese cinema. It is important to have an overview of the religious studies about Chinese Christianity in the postsocialist period before discussing the cinematic representations of the religion, in order to provide a contextual reference for the examination of Gan’s artistic representations of Christianity.
According to a report by The Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life in 2011, 66
there are approximately 67 million Christians in mainland China, which is about 5% of the population (“Global Christianity”). Similarly, the CIA World Factbook suggests that about 3-4% of the Chinese population is Christian 20. Comparatively, the official statistics are apparently lower: according to the State Administration for Religious Affairs (SARA) website, there are over 28 million Christians in China 21 (“An Overview of Religions in China”). This is probably because the government census does not ask question about religious affiliation, and the official statistics include only the members of the state-sanctioned churches of CCPA and TSPM, leaving many unregistered believers unreported (“Global Christianity”). Although the proportion of Christians still seems small in the state, even with the highest estimation given above, the significance of this minority group lies in its continuous expansion, probably the fastest growing religion, during the Reform years (Forney, “How Christianity Thrives in China”).
In the Mao’s era, the Party-state practiced its atheist ideology by suppressing all religions, totally banning them during the Cultural Revolution period (Yang 45). When Deng Xiaoping became the ruler, a toleration policy of religion was adopted: temples, mosques and churches have been reopened since 1979, and the CCP announced the “The Basic Viewpoint and Policy on the Religious Affairs during the Socialist Period of Our Country”, also known as the Document No.19, which has served as the foundation of religion policy of the state since then (Yang 75). The official Religion Affairs Bureau was re-established, which became the State Administration for Religious Affairs 20 21
Webpage updated on 10 July 2013. About 5.5 million Catholics and about 23 million Protestant believers.
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(SARA) in 1998, to take charge of the religious business (Yang 79). Although the Document No.19 claims to protect religious freedom, it confines religion at the same time, allowing only the five major religions, namely, Buddhism, Daoism, Islam, Catholicism and Protestantism, to sustain under the officially permitted “patriotic” associations (Yang 75). Moreover, it is observed that the rise of Christianity has gone in parallel with tightening government restriction since 1982, including the control over religious venue, clergy and publication (Yang 75-76, 149). Along with the growth of the major religions after the Cultural Revolution, the atheist Communist government has tried to promote traditional Chinese beliefs in recent years, in order to offset the development of Christianity 22 (Yang 156). Nevertheless, the unregistered, thus illegal, churches have grown rapidly, even under the heavy-handed measures of the state. For example, the unsanctioned Shouwang Church (Protestant) in Beijing had grown big enough to catch the government’s attention and thus was dismissed by the government in 2011, with some congregants detained (Davison; Orso).
In view of the above, the travelling preacher in The Only Sons who talks about the Gospel openly in a village breaches the law, for the government prohibits any religion from proselytizing outside the official religious premises (Yang 108). Likewise, any public screening of The Only Sons may be regarded as a case of virtual preaching because the film would explicitly deliver religious messages to the general public outside the official religious premises.
22
For example, the two World Buddhist Forums held in 2006, and the International Daodejing Forum
in 2007 (Daoism), which were state-sponsored activities.
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Interestingly, Gan has not reported any official suppression from the government upon his filmmaking; whether the preacher’s act was illegal seems unimportant in the film, as there was no policeman chasing after him. These reveal that Gan’s films could be considered as “underground” with respect to their religious contents, on one hand, and could be compared to the “underground” churches whose existence on the margin implies the toleration from the authority, on the other hand.
It may be an anticlimax when one realizes that Gan Xiao’er, who claims himself eager to reveal the real situation of the religion, has hitherto kept a distance from any conflict between the state and the unsanctioned churches in his depiction of Christianity. Especially when he is playing a role of an independent filmmaker, people may expect his films to cover something rather “underground”. Going through Gan’s feature films chronologically, I argue that the major characteristics of Gan’s films is not about how they have touched on some “underground” issues, but about the implicit and empathetic approaches when representing Christianity. The representations of Christianity unfold as a journey to the inner world of the characters, instead of a religious movement that may be regarded as a threat by the authority; they are not just “about religion”, more importantly, they are also spiritual.
III.4 Representations of Christian Activities in the Rural China There is a transition of Gan Xiao’er’s approaches of representing Chinese Christianity. His debut The Only Sons is about a man who has a preliminary contact with the Christian faith that he has a “leap of faith” at his last breath. In 69
the second film Raised from Dust, the heroine is already a Christian, her own faith and the church are inseparable parts of her everyday life. A change of tone is seen in the third film Waiting for God (2012), in which the heroine, who plays a leading role in the local Christian community, struggles between the institutional doctrine and the spiritual faith, between the holy and the secular, and between the suppressive and the liberative—all revolved around her Christian identity. The three films may be comparable with regard to the process of spiritual pursuit, from first an early contact of Christian faith, then an undoubting acceptance of the religious practices, to finally a stage of critical reflection from within the religion.
In The Only Sons, the representation of Chinese Christianity has an appearance of an early touch. The trace of the religion is rather limited. Merely Ah Shui’s brother, the preacher and his wife appear as believers, and Ah Shui only implicitly accepts the faith until the last scene. There are altogether three scenes that capture the encounters between Ah Shui and the preacher. The preacher’s wife show up first at the beginning of the film, on the boat-as-home, when Ah Shui is returning home from the town after a medical check-up, he see her but not the preacher. The scene functions as a prelusion.
The first encounter happened on Ah Shui’s way back from the field to home, during which he comes across the preacher who is talking about the story of Abraham who is going to sacrifice his only son to God. Coincidentally, at that time, Ah Shui decides to sell his to-be-born baby. This is the first time Ah Shui sees the preacher, but he is just passing by. This cinematographic 70
presentation shows a gradual decrease in distance between the protagonist and Christianity. Gan uses a deep-focused, extreme-long shot to capture the scene, and the figure of the preacher is so tiny that the audience can hardly distinguish him from the surrounding villagers.
When the preacher appears again, in a very long shot, he talks about the Gospel in front of the ancestral hall of the village. This time Ah Shui stands for a while and listens carefully, and then chases after the clergy when the latter is returning to his boat. At this moment Ah Shui has some idea about Christianity because his brother once escapes from the prison, comes home and tells the family that he has converted to Christianity. His brother also talks about redemption and leaves a cross to his sister. Therefore when the helpless protagonist sees the preacher again, he grasps the chance to seek help. This was their third encounter.
Lastly, in a long shot, Ah Shui confesses his worry and guilt, and then the preacher prays for him. At the end of the film, when Ah Shui is dying of AIDS, the Christian couple comes to his house for the palliative care, which is captured by a medium shot. In sum, in the three scenes capturing the preacher and the protagonist, the camera and the protagonist are getting closer and closer to the preacher, who is a representation of Christianity.
In terms of duration, the presence of the preacher is limited in The Only Sons, but each presence is critical to the narrative. Indeed Gan Xiao’er proposes that the preacher is another protagonist of the film, as his significance in the 71
narrative is no less than that of Ah Shui (Wu). Through the speech of the preacher, Christianity is represented in the form of message. In response to Ah Shui’s sin and pain, the preacher seems to be the opposite, the epitome of grace and relief.
The core message of the Christian faith is clearly and neatly expressed through the limited appearance of the preacher and the standing-out soundtrack of his speech. In the first appearance, he tells the villagers that “Jesus is the gift from God” prepared for them as God has prepared a scapegoat for the sacrifice of Abraham. Then comes the central message quoting the Gospel of John chapter three verse sixteen that “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life” (New International Version). When Ah Shui catches him afterwards, he repeats that Jesus was sent from God to save the world, and Jesus would return to judge everyone. He also tells Ah Shui that one does not need to worry about his own sin, because Jesus has died for the sin of all that anyone can be redeemed simply with faith. While Ah Shui still looks confused, the preacher says one should not depend on himself but God. They then pray together for the redemption and liberation of Ah Shui and his brother. In the final prayer when the protagonist is dying, the preacher mentions that God’s love has never left the man, and He understands the suffering of him. The preacher also prays that God will look after the soon-to-be-orphan son of Ah Shui, and that God will “cure” Ah Shui and give him a new life.
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Gan Xiao’er delivers the Gospel message plainly through the preacher’s lines, thus the preaching happens not only in those scenes, but also in the theatre where the audiences are watching the film. Due to the atheistical policy of the party-state, even though Christianity has been officially tolerated since 1982, the majority of Chinese folks are ignorant of or indifferent to religion (Yang 137). Therefore, one may also question if Gan has used cinema as a tool for didactic or “missionary” purpose, which may violate the regulation that prohibits proselytism outside the sanctioned location (Yang 108). However, Gan says that the government has never come to him (Qi 64).
As it has been discussed in the previous chapter that Christianity is represented in The Only Sons as a response to the afflictions of the underprivileged people like Ah Shui, such representation may not be very effective, and this concerns the aesthetics of the “postsocialist critical realism” according to Jason McGrath that concerns various social and cultural problems as the flip side of the national agenda of economic development (132). The possible didactic factor of the film is counterbalanced by the more substantial and complex afflictions on Ah Shui. Also, if one regards religion as a source of supernatural power that helps people to increase quality of life and fortune, Christianity in The Only Sons definitely fails to be pragmatically true.
Gan Xiao’er explains that originally he aims to explore the inner lives of the impoverished peasants, ending the film with total despair; only later he adds more religious elements to make it less desperate (Li Ming 105). But he is criticized that the film could not get rid of a tone of elitism. On one hand, the 73
concentration of sufferings on Ah Shui is so much that it undermines the realistic aesthetic value, especially since the details are put together by Gan in order to tell a religious story. On the other hand, such approach betrays Gan’s elitist positioning, as an intellectual, to “care about” the impoverished people in society (Li Ming 106-07).
Gan tries to represent the grim life of the poor by acting as Ah Shui, while we can also see the preacher as a vicarious image of Gan; nonetheless, the hypocritical Principal Zhang may also embody the implicit superiority of the director. If the representation of Chinese Christianity steps on the intensive afflictions of the main character, that would affect the authenticity of such representation. In fact, other independent filmmakers also struggle with the same dilemma, about their self-positioning and their relation to the “underprivileged people” as the film subjects, especially for those who gain artistic success by representing the suffering of the others (McGrath 225; Zhang Yingjin “My Camera Doesn’t Lie” 33).
In Gan’s second film, the representation of Christianity includes the daily practices of Christians in the countryside, and it tends to be more implicitly and ambiguously expressed through the behaviours and characterization of the heroine. Learning from the experience of The Only Sons, Gan tries to dilute the dramatic juxtapositions of “sin and grace” and “despair and hope” in Raised from Dust. Rather, these concepts are intermingled. Raised from Dust is no longer a narrative of a suffering person who encountered God and sought redemption, but a story about a Christian who experiences various kinds of 74
pain and trouble without eliminating the religious peace and grace, making the human condition as ambiguous as ordinary life.
Raised from Dust is situated in a village in the Henan Province, which is a major area of Christianity growth in China, a poor region compared with other provinces (Cheng 11-12, 33). The location of shooting is also the hometown of Gan: Qi Li Ying Zhen 七里營鎮 in the Xinxiang County 新鄉縣 (Li Ming 98). Therefore, to Gan the film is not only an ethnographic representation of Protestantism in rural China, but also an autobiographical reflection on his religious pursuit, very much contextualized in the poor county. That explains why Gan makes it a feature film with documentary style, through which he can illustrate the life-as-Christian in the rural area, approaching the verisimilitude on the surface; while simultaneously investigating the spiritual interior of the believers.
The main-body of the narrative of Raised from Dust is the illustration of the ordinary lives of some Henan villagers who are Christians. The heroine Xiao Li is a member of the village Protestant church. Although some crises occur (her husband is so sick and her daughter is suspended from class), she maintains her church life as usual – until her husband finally dies and her daughter returns to school.
Through the depiction of this snippet from Xiao Li’s life, the audience gets a glance of the condition of Christianity in rural China. On the surface, Gan Xiao’er shows the church building as a gathering point of the Protestant 75
villagers. He uses a long shot to show the facade of the church as well as its interior, allowing viewers to look across the pews and see the platform with a deep focus lens. The church appears as an open space to villagers, who are not all believers, and its gate is always open. After Xiao Li finishes transporting goods for subsistence, she can simply park her tricycle in the dooryard of the church, wash her face in the tattered kitchen, and behave as if she is at home. On the other hand, Gan chooses to demonstrate the important life-events of the Christian community: wedding and burial. He acts in the film as Du Xiao’er, a Christian villager who once moves to town but then returns with a fiancée waiting to get married in the church. The church in which Gan sets the wedding is the church where he got married and is also the church his mother usually attends (Zhang Yaoyao). Besides, he recruits actors from the neighbourhood, invites a doctor to act as a doctor and a teacher as a teacher using their real (first or last) names, all speaking in dialects. Only the actors who play Xiao Li and her husband Xiao Lin are from the outside 23. Gan also captures the unploughed fields and dusty lanes with long shots or extreme long shots, again compiling a realistic imagery of the milieu of those rural Christians.
Gan Xiao’er gives much space to the part of the brass band, recording its playing in the wedding with a detailed illustration. The band and the wedding serve more as a record of the local Christian activities than a functional part of the narrative about Xiao Li’s struggle to sustain her family. The service in the band is a significant part of Xiao Li’s everyday life, which she often prioritizes 23
The identities of the actors are shown in the documentary Church Cinema (2009) made by Gan
Xiao’er, in which the director organized a screening of Raise from Dust in the church of his home town, where he made the film, and
invited the villagers to watch the film there.
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when there is time clash with her delivery work, even though the newlyweds are neither her close friends nor family relatives; it is important simply because it is a church activity that she commits to. It would not affect the other parts of the story even if the church activity is different. However, the brass band and the wedding are still significant, or even inevitable, to the film because they are the sources of inspiration of the film.
Gan recalls that during the funeral of his father and his own wedding, his mother invited the church choir and band, whose singing and uniforms impressed him. In the funeral of his father, the choir came, sang and left, calmly and peacefully, wearing “military uniforms” 24. When Gan returned home for his wedding, the brass band carried all the instruments, welcomed the bride and her relatives, paraded through the village. Gan regrets that he did not have a digital camera to record those scenes as a documentary. Therefore he remade the scenes of wedding and the band, hoping to leave a record of the Christian activities with strong local features (Zhang Yaoyao; Kuo).
When Gan recreates the scenes in Raised from Dust, he adds other elements which are rather distracting with regard to Xiao Li’s family. For example, when the brass band is practicing a hymn, an old man appears and says he could play the drum for them. While all other members are amateurs, he performs professionally by playing several additional bars, and suggests that the band can be called “God’s Propaganda Team”, hinting that he might have served in
24
The uniforms had different designs from those of the state army, only symbolically represented
that they were the “good soldier of Christ Jesus” (New International Version, 2 Tim. 2.3).
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the propaganda team in the Mao era. These trivialities, loosening the narrative structure though, have given an indigenous texture to the depiction of the rural Protestant community with social and historical traces, as an alternative to the mainstream ideology that requires a grand narrative (such as economic growth). Such “ordinariness” is also a feature of the “postsocialist critical realism” (McGrath 136).
Raised from Dust also reveals the relation between local residents and the government in the postsocialist era, which is also worth remarking. Chen Shunjun who plays a supporting role as a “bad guy” is rude and selfish, always speaks dirty words, and tries to cheat the government for hundreds of thousands of yuan. Chen realizes that the government plans to build a railway across the fields, so he watches and waits until the surveyors confirms the route, then he would build a pig pen at exactly where the railway would pass through so that he can claim a large amount of compensation. This is a fraud. For this Gan Xiao’er also has an actual reference in his father’s hometown, with the same intrigue (Gao). Since the postsocialist time is also the transformation time, the wheel of development not only tears down the old buildings in urban areas, but also rolls through the natural landscapes in the countryside. As the logic of money rules, people in the marginal areas do not wait passively; rather they try to share with the ruling class the pursuit of profit.
At first glance, the film compares the ethical conduct of Christians to that of non-Christians in the village. The bonding between neighbors in the same village seems more intimate than that could be experienced in the city. Xiao Lin, 78
Chen Shunjun, Xiao’er, Mr. Du (teacher of Xiao Li’s daughter Shengyue), and Zhang Yongliang are old friends. However, human relation can change under the atmosphere of transformation in the Reform period. The old friends who have not visited Xiao Lin for a while merely ask about his situation through his wife Xiao Li. Yongliang once come to Xiao Li’s home, saying on behalf of the old friends that they would support her family, but they never keep their promise. Mr. Du understands that Xiao Li’s daughter Shengyue is a good student and is aware of the difficulties in the family, but he does not offer a helping hand either. At the night when Mr. Du visits Xiao Li and explains to her about suspending her daughter from school, the group of old friends have a gathering when Mr. Du just receives his salary and plans to go gambling. It is obvious that financially they can help, but they choose not to. There is an ironic line: Shunjun derides Mr. Du that he is going to “tithe” in the game, joking with the Christian custom.
In contrast, the church is a source of concrete support to Xiao Li as a caring community. There is a group of fellow believers, who visits Xiao Li’s ill husband in the hospital and collects money to subsidize their household, attributing their charity to God’s love. Actually, they do not only care about the churchgoers. The hospital accountant, who often urges Xiao Li to clear the medical bill, asks for help from Xiao Li when her little nephew catches a high fever but the physician cannot help, for she hears that Christians could cure illness with a “bath” and she would like to try. Therefore, after visiting Xiao Li’s ill husband, the group of Christians heads to the home of the accountant’s nephew, pray for
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him, and clarify that healing is to be done by prayer but not “bath”25.
Through these circumstances, the filmmaker tries to convey that Christian believers pursue their faith not only by participation in rituals, but also by their daily practices, with a set of ethical conduct specific to their faith as well as communicable to the non-believers, in this case, “Love your neighbour as yourself” (Matt. 22.39) even their neighbours may not love them. Moreover, these depictions of believers can be compared with the sociological explanation of the rapid growth of Christianity in the rural areas that due to the lack of medical care and social services, corruption, and incapacity of local governments, the grassroots crowds are driven to seek aid from religion (Fielder 53; Kahn). In the film the charismatic healing and scientific medicine complement each other. In addition, Leung Ka-lun, in his book Rural Churches of Mainland China Since 1978, argues that since Mao Zedong has weakened the traditional culture under his reign, the Christian faith is then received in the postsocialist years in the countryside, as a form of substitution; whereas the emphasis of moral conducts by Christianity, such as tolerance, piety, and compassion, coincides with the traditional Confucian values. Thus the “good behaviours” of believers encourage their neighbours to convert (Leung 223-24, 233-34).
Up to this point, the representations of Christianity in Raised from Dust appear to be “good”, embodied by the believers as a caring community, in contrast to what are “bad” in the surroundings in the postsocialist period, an age of
25
Probably the accountant confuses that with baptism.
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indifference and selfishness. However, Gan is not satisfied with such contrast on the surface. To analyze his representation of Christianity in rural China, one has to move beyond the comparison with the sociological explanations of the growth of Christianity as mentioned above. It is because sociological explanations tend to be pragmatic, that is, about the functions of the religion which attract people to join. However, Gan intends to explore the inner world of Christians and the country-people thoroughly that the differentiation between good and bad is blurred, and that the “holy” religion has been embedded in the “secular” world. In the next chapter, I will discuss these complications, starting with the transgression of Xiao Li, and then elaborate through the analysis of Gan’s latest work Waiting for God.
III.5 Conclusion In this chapter I have analyzed the representations of Chinese Christianity in the countryside, in Gan Xiao’er’s first two fictional features: The Only Sons (in brief), and Raised from Dust (in detail). Literature of religious studies has been used to compare the representations in the two films. Gan Xiao’er’s personal experience, according to some interviews, has also provided solid references for the illustrations of religious practices of Christians in the rural areas. I have shown that in the two films, both the exterior of the religion such as ordinary Christian activities and the inner spirituality have been covered, especially in the depiction of the heroine Xiao Li. McGrath’s idea of “postsocialist critical realism” has been employed to denote Gan’s approach to represent the impoverished people in the Reform era, in terms of both his concern for the under-represented and marginal groups in society and the “ordinariness” 81
showed in his depiction. The practices of Christians and non-Christians are compared to show how Christians often demonstrate a higher moral standard than the non-believers. Nonetheless, in the next chapter, I will show how such ethical contrast has been intentionally blurred in both Raised from Dust and Waiting for God, such that the representations of Chinese Christianity shift to a more internal aspect of spirituality from the exterior aspects of the religion.
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Chapter Four
The Representations of Christianity (2): The (Un)holy Mothers
IV.1 Introduction This chapter continues the discussion of Raised from Dust, which is followed by an in-depth textual analysis of Waiting for God, the third fictional feature by Gan Xiao’er. I will point out that the ethical aspects of Christianity, as represented by the two films, are made ambiguous that makes the illustration of Chinese Christians’ spirituality appear more implicit and complicated. I shall use visual analysis occasionally for complementary explanation of the equivocal depiction of ethical issues in those films. Gan’s films do not depict Chinese Christianity simply with a positive image; rather, they illustrate how the religion has been enmeshed with various social, cultural and political forces. From this starting point I would investigate how the films of Gan have generated an internal critique of Christianity in postsocialist China and the dominant ideology in the Reform period. Concerning the relation between the Church and (the rest of) the world, discussion about the characterization of the female characters in Gan’s films suggests an approach of reciprocal understanding.
Further analysis of the maternal images in Gan’s feature films shall show that a feminine critique is proposed from within the religion. Some ideas from Chinese feminist scholars Li Xiaojiang and Dai Jinhua are employed as contextual references, while Julia Kristeva’s article on the “maternal passion” is a key reference as it has provided a conceptual framework that facilitates the 83
interpretation Gan’s films to suggest a liberative and tolerant approach of Christian practices. The feminine approach suggests a spiritual quest vis-à-vis the religious institution.
IV.2 Blurring the Good and the Bad Identifying Raised from Dust as a project of representing the underrepresented Christian community, Gan Xiao’er’s ambition does not rest in making an ethnographic feature with a melodramatic opposition between “bad” non-believers and “good” Christians. He matches the “good” with the “bad”, as the heroine Xiao Li is indeed an accomplice of Chen Shunjun, the “fraud” who plans to take advantage from government’s railway project. As Chen needs plenty bricks to build a pig pen, he hires Xiao Li to deliver bricks to the construction site. She gets those bricks from the ruin behind a village school without hesitation, though the bricks are supposed to belong to the school, as long as that can relieve her financial burden. In a way, the “bad guy” Chen supports Xiao Li financially during her hardship, while other “old friends” of Xiao Li’s ill husband do nothing to help. For that Gan still keeps a distance, not only through the long shots, but also by avoiding any moral judgment on both characters.
Long shots are used when Xiao Li collected bricks from school, riding the tricycle, and especially when she rides across the road behind the construction site of Chen’s pig pen. Sometimes the director uses an extremely long shot that viewers have to pay extra attention to the slight movement in the background and barely recognize that could be Xiao Li riding across the frame, 84
while other characters are speaking or moving in the foreground. The director’s intention is ambiguous: he seems to care about the heroine, by always capturing her activities even though the focus at that time is someone else, but he also seems distant to the heroine as he often puts the camera far away from her.
Gan Xiao’er also “keeps a distance” in terms of characterization that Xiao Li is usually silent and calm, leaving her underlying thoughts and emotions unsaid. She just says “Okay” whenever the others ask about her ill husband, while in fact her husband’s illness is worsening. Therefore, both the use of long shot and Xiao Li’s temperament show a manner of self-restraint and avoid sentimentality. It is not easy for viewers to perceive Xiao Li’s internal struggles through her facial expression or speech, so they have to first understand the heroine’s inner world through her personal experience and living condition. The massive use of long takes and long shots require viewers to stay patient to observe the piecemeal and seemingly trivial scenarios in her daily life, only from which they could construct the whole picture of Xiao Li’s paradoxical experiences of sin and grace.
One possible effect of the strategic operation of the cinematographic and psychological distance in Raised from Dust is that there is a room for the generation of empathy when the audiences witness the wrongdoings of the heroine. The most serious sin that Xiao Li commits is that after she has received the church fellows’ donation for the tuition fee of her daughter and the hospital fee of her ill husband, she asks the hospital to terminate the treatment 85
for her husband and discharges him. Xiao Li takes him home by tricycle, during which he is probably dying. Gan inserts a segment of Xiao Li’s memory— finally viewers are able to have a glance of the silent woman’s mind. This sudden change of visual style is a device to reveal the psychological movement of the heroine. In Xiao Li’s remembrance it was the healthy husband Xiao Lin giving her a ride, and she was so joyful. The director adopts a warmer and softer tone, in slow motion, and uses a close-up shot of the heroine which is rarely seen in the film, to enhance the contrast between then and now. This part is also muted, absorbing the viewers into the frame. The aesthetic style of this part derails from the realistic style throughout the film, as it conveys the “inner reality” of the ordinary countrywoman. The sweetest memory is discharged in the grimmest moment, just like “good and bad” and “grace and sin” are inseparable in human life.
There is a tension between the disturbance of what happened to Xiao Li and her intention to keep her daily life as usual. Such internal struggles are complicated yet made implicit by the characterization of the heroine as calm and reserved. Although Gan notes that Xiao Li’s act is a de facto murder (Li Ming 108), he also keeps an ambiguous stance from it, by rendering that as a relief to the protagonist’s family. The extermination of medical treatment of the ill husband can also be regarded as passive euthanasia, if viewers are able to observe a tacit agreement between the couple 26. 26
The interpretation of passive euthanasia is informed by Gan’s personal experience that when his father was dying of liver cancer, his mother sang Christian hymns with him. His father was weak but still tried hard to raise his head from the pillow as a sign of awe. Later in the day Gan’s mother prayed that God would bring her husband away as He wills. Gan was impacted by the love, tenderness and peace from his parents in the process, so he became a Christian (Qi 65). A similar scene is found in Raised from Dust that in the final days of Xiao Lin, he opens his eyes and tries to raise his head, and
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The heroine tries hard to keep her life as usual, which is epitomized in the dinner scenes. At the beginning, after returning from hospital, Xiao Li’s daughter is studying at home. Xiao Li takes out a dinner of simple congee and steamed buns and her daughter tidies up the table swiftly. The girl says grace with a song “Thank you Jesus...for the food”. The second time is when Mr. Du visits Xiao Li to explain the suspending of her daughter from school, the girl is saying grace for a dinner. They are not in the mood to eat even when Mr. Du tells them to do so. This is an interrupted meal. The third dinner is the very last scene after Xiao Li’s husband is buried and her daughter returns to school, the mother and daughter have dinner again. Almost the same composition is used for the first and the last scenes, with the routine that the mother does not say a word and the daughter habitually prepares for dinner and says grace. Only that at the end, when everything was set on the table, Xiao Li and her daughter look at each other, the girl shows a blissful smile while the mother finally expresses a moment of ease. The routine is restored, and that is the grace, peace and blessing that they have been praying for.
The stress on “dinner as usual” reveals Gan’s empathy with Xiao Li in spite of her wrongdoings. Thus his toleration include Chen Shunjun, who is also trying to sustain an ordinary life to make money to send his son to university. The idea of “net of sin” mentioned in Chapter Two is also applicable in this case, as the underprivileged people cannot avoid doing something “sinful” to strive for survival. The fortune of Chen and Xiao Li’s family are subject to the larger external force of evil that appeared enigmatic to them. Under the name of
connection between the couple is made, although he cannot speak.
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“economic development”, the health of Xiao Li’s husband is exploited under the mine and the idyllic scenery of a small village is to be intruded by a railway track. Also, the ordinary folks become selfish and disingenuous without being aware of the historical and cultural contexts of such “spiritual void” and moral corruption, after the Cultural Revolution has damaged the traditional value system, followed by the Reform era in which the logic of money reigns. People like Xiao Li and Chen cannot help but adapt to or collaborate with the external forces that drag them to surrender their integrity, even though they are not malicious themselves but the victims. In other words, Raised from Dust mingles instead of separates “good and bad” and “holy and secular” as Christianity is situated in everyday life in an impoverished country family. Viewers are invited to put themselves into the shoes of the characters, so as to understand rather than to judge while watching.
IV.3 Obscuring the “Holy” and the “Unholy” Real life is complex and chaotic. In Gan Xiao’er’s illustration of the Christian community, which is composed of ordinary people and as part of social reality, religion does not transcend that complexity and chaos, but permeates within. The allegedly universal religious concepts such as love and justice are contextualized and reexamined in the process. In his third film Waiting for God (2012), the question of tolerance and the tension between the “holy” and the “secular” casts a further critique to the Church as an institution, from the point of view of Christian as human subjects, who should be loved and liberated.
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The heroine Xiaoyang, who is also named “Maria”, is the leader of the “gathering point” in her village, under the management of the sanctioned Protestant Church in town. She is upset because she has just married a non-Christian carpenter, Guo Ling; since the Church does not recognize their marriage, they cannot host their wedding ceremony in a church. Moreover, one of the churchgoers, who has a Christian name “Miriam”, and Xiaoyang’s boss Pastor Wang implies that Xiaoyang better leave her husband because of their religious divide. Miriam even accuses Xiaoyang of “adultery” because Xiaoyang was carrying a baby of a non-believer. Indeed Xiaoyang is considering whether she should really leave her husband, the man she wants to love but cannot love, and whether she should really have an abortion.
Another trouble comes from the recruitment of an instructor for the church choir: while Xiaoyang is worrying about the expenses for her “gathering point”, her friend Xu Feng volunteers for the post of instructor for the church choir. Xu has majored in music in university so she appears to be the best person for the position. However, Pastor Wang rejects Xiaoyang’s suggestion simply because Xu Feng is not a Christian, for he believes that any service for the Church is “spiritual” and can only be taken up by believers.
In contrast to the previous films in which the Church appears as the source of hope and liberation, Christianity is illustrated as a source of perplexity and pressure in Waiting for God. The trouble comes from the church-goers’ emphasis on distinguishing their identity as “holy” and “spiritual” while excluding and devaluating the non-believers as the others who may seem 89
“unholy” and “secular”. It is an example of Julia Kristeva’s concept of “abjection”, that is, the subject or community tries to constitute or stabilize one’s identity by excluding what may threaten one’s border. (Kristeva, “Approaching Abjection” 2-4; Oliver, “Kristeva and Feminism”). Thus, for Pastor Wang and Miriam, the “unholy” and the “non-spiritual” elements should be excluded from the Church, this is the reason why Xiaoyang’s marriage with a non-Christian and inviting a non-believer to serve in the Church are problematic in their eyes. Xiaoyang’s act threatens the communal identity by counteracting the Church’s effort to differentiate itself from the non-believers. Xiaoyang even consider aborting her pregnancy, which is regarded as the product of “adultery”. However, Gan questions both the significance and the practicality of such religious approach—the distinction of the holy from the sinful/secular on the level of everyday life.
Waiting for God poses an inquiry from a position within the Church. That is, as Christians live in this world, how they can practically separate themselves from the non-believers? It is also a question for the Christian community to reconsider its role from within the world, as part of the world. The dilemma is: if the Church is to expand, as what Miriam and Pastor Wang desire, it has to preach to the non-believers. In response to the opinions of Miriam and Pastor Wang on non-believers, Gan highlights how non-believers view Christianity in return. Non-believers know to some extent that Christians are “different”. Xiaoyang visits a welding workshop to make a baton with a cross at the top for the church choir. The shopkeeper complains about the Christian notion holding that believers would go to Heaven after death while others would fall into Hell. 90
He does not believe it but feels wronged. He is cursed to Hell without doing anything particularly wrong, but rather for what he has not done: believing in God. His wife is also surprised when she suggests writing a higher price on the invoice for Xiaoyang to apply for reimbursement, Xiaoyang refuses as she does not want to take advantage from, or lie to, the Church. The response of the shopkeeper’s wife implies that forging a false expense to take advantage is a usual practice among those customers who come on behalf of their companies/institutions at the present time in China.
Then Xiaoyang returns to the village by an unlicensed taxi, and the driver asked what Christians would do in Heaven. Xiaoyang says they would have joy and peace in the communion with God. The driver comments that it would be boring but Xiaoyang does not argue with him. Through these instances Gan tries to represent Christianity indirectly and reflectively, by the misunderstanding, questioning and criticizing of the religion from the perspective of non-believers. If non-believers are the Christians’ other, such indirect and reflective approach would render Christianity as “the other of the other”. In other words, the emphasis on the difference between Christian believers and non-believers would construct an ever-growing alienation.
In response to the crisis of alienation, the film shows that it is impossible for the religion to exclude the “secular” from itself; rather, it is in the world that the “spiritual” and the “non-spiritual” intertwine with each other. A remark of the cinematography makes the entanglement for the “holy” and the “secular” evident: while long shots are always used to frame human interactions in 91
Gan’s films, close-up shots are used to capture the process of crafting. For example, in the welding workshop, Xiaoyang watches the welder making the baton, while the cross, the holy sign of Christianity, is made by the hands of a non-believer. The close-up emphasizes this inevitable tension. On the other hand, although Pastor Wang and Miriam spurn Xiaoyang’s unreligious husband, especially because he is a carpenter who makes “idols” for other religions, the director employs medium and long shots to depict his working process, without showing any detail, creating a kind of indifference to his non-believer status. By this contrasting operation, Gan challenges the assertion of Pastor Wang that the spiritual and the non-spiritual, the holy and the sinful, the believer and the non-believer, cannot coexist in the Christian community. Thus, if a cross that is made by a non-believer can be used without diminishing its spiritual value, why would a carpenter who makes statues for other religions be attached to, thus devalued by, the statues of other religions?
The inevitable entanglement between the “spiritual” and the “non-spiritual” is revealed not only in the instances of daily interaction between Christians and non-Christians, which have made a critique of the religious institution with regard to the social, cultural and political forces in the larger context. Pastor Wang is somehow inconsistent since he sometimes appreciated what is non-Christian. He recognizes Buddhism’s effort of promoting itself to the public via popular music. He does not exclude what is “non-spiritual” for pragmatic reasons as long as that could help promote the Christian faith. Moreover, when a Buddhist nun passes by the church, the pastor greets her, and explains to Xiaoyang that he knows the nun because both of them are advisors of the 92
Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference. In other words, while he opposes the possibility that non-believers and believers could co-work in the Church, he co-works with non-believers on the political platform.
Pastor Wang also shows his admiration for a church leader from Wenzhou who can earn a higher income than the civil servants that he can afford a laptop and flight tickets. Wang then exclaims “How he glorifies God!” In other words, in the postsocialist context, the political dominance of the Chinese Communist Party, the consumer culture that lures the religions to advertise themselves, and the logic of money which is influential to what would “glorify God”, are indeed accepted in a neutralized manner. The separation between what is “holy” and what is not thus totters as it is not applicable to all aspects of the religion; rather, those who have power in the institution continue to construct the differentiating border. In terms of one’s value system, even a religious leader cannot be exempted from the temptation of money and power, which demonstrates another example of the “net of sin” in the postsocialist China.
IV.4 Maternal Passion as an Internal Critique of Christianity Up to this point, the question is not whether the Christian religion is to be separated from the non-religious, but in what way it is with the world and in the world. In her interaction with the non-believers, Xiaoyang demonstrates a manner which is different from Pastor Wang’s and Miriam’s. Furthermore, in Gan’s films, the images of mother suggest an alternative elaboration of religion as faith-in-the-world, which is loving, understanding, tolerant and liberative, for 93
which we need a brief discussion of maternity in contemporary China. In general, the mothers in Gan’s films tend to be silent, yet there is a transition of the maternal image from the first to the third film. In The Only Sons, Qiuyue is submissive to her husband. Therefore Ah Shui is not the poorest character, as in a traditional household in a Chinese village he is the “host”; he slaps his sister and scolds his wife as he likes. Although he is exploited outside, he is the exploiter inside his household. Qiuyue is not respected as an autonomous person. When Principal Zhang and Ah Shui talk about renting Qiuyue’s body to a wealthy family, the woman has to stay away from the decision-making process. The men make decision for the woman’s body and she has to submit to their decision. She can only express her objection by killing herself as a form of passive resistance to the absurd situation.
In Raised from Dust, Xiao Li is also taciturn. She occupies a more active role in the household as her husband is very ill. Still, she is subjected to the men in the surroundings, including the patron Chen Shunjun and the school teacher Mr. Du. Unlike the lonely and helpless Qiuyue, Xiao Li receives support from the church, in which the majority are women. Xiao Li exhibits her subjectivity, though controversially, by terminating her husband’s treatment and letting him die. Qiuyue and Xiao Li bear the image of women in traditional family, especially in the village, that they are subject to the patriarchal system, which confines their roles as mothers and housewives (Li Xiaojiang 142-43). Women are reduced to the role of reproduction (VanderBerg 137).
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An overview of the development of the status of women in the PRC offers a contextual understanding of the situation of the female figures in Gan Xiao’er’s films. In China, there was a period of “socialized liberation” of women in the Maoist period, especially in the 1950s, that the state policy and ideology once released women from the traditional role as mothers and housewives, as a stage of “legislative outpacing” (Lifa Chaoqian 立法超前), according to Li Xiaojiang. Women acquired the same social role as men did legally and economically, joining the production force for the New China.
There was a backlash since many women had to go back to where they came from in the 1960s (Li & John 1595). Moreover, the state-driven sexual equality outpaced any movement or practice of the awakening of female subjectivity; women were equalized with men according to men’s standard, from dress code to job nature. They did not actively acquire their liberation but were passively mobilized by the state, for the need of socialist ideology and national building. In other words, the “socialist liberation” of women has partially released them from the confinement of traditional culture but has then put them under the control of the state (Li Xiaojiang 73). Therefore, the patriarchal dominance has not receded but transformed and disguised. However, while the women have been mobilized to work in society, many of them have not shed their role at home as mothers and housewives, which have become their “double burden” (Tuft 3).
Due to the lack of awakening of female subjectivity, the patriarchal culture was kept intact and brought to the Reform period (Li Xiaojiang 149). Dai Jinghua 95
indicates that in the post-Mao period, repudiation of the socialist ideology has allowed the once latent patriarchal culture to re-emerge, while the socialist discourse of “liberation of women” can no longer be employed because of ideological change (18-20). In many cases, Chinese women have to sacrifice first and sacrifice more than men, for example, female workers were usually laid off during the restructuring of state-owned enterprises, and many young girls have been drawn from villages to cities to work as low-paid workers, without receiving sufficient security of welfare and civil rights from the state. Being entangled with the class issue, women from the countryside has been one of the most exploited groups for the economic growth in the postsocialist period (Dai 22,129).
Female figures in The Only Sons and Raised from Dust exemplify the persistent patriarchal suppression in the countryside. Even though Ah Shui’s sister and Xiao Li’s daughter are intelligently capable of further schooling, the surrounding men still hold the traditional idea that girls do not need education but a husband. Eventually, Ah Shui’s sister quits school to work in the city, and probably becomes a prostitute then, and Qiuyue is to rent out her womb. In the age of modernization, indeed marketization, these females are still reduced to their reproductive bodies.
In Waiting for God, Xiaoyang has a more empowered image. She is well educated and lives a decent life, but her marriage with a non-believer and her conception of his child are deemed scandalous by other Christians, causing her vexation and to consider an abortion. Therefore, similar to Qiuyue, 96
Xiaoyang is under the pressure that she cannot own her body, but has to subject that to the patriarchal system. Exactly at this point, Gan counteracts by making Xiaoyang an analogy of the mother of the Christ, by giving her the name “Maria”. By which he explores the possibility of liberation vis-a-vis suppression upon the maternal function of women within the context of the Church in the Reform era. Such exploration of liberation, in relation to the faith of love, can be elucidated with Kristeva’s notion of “maternal passion”.
In her reading of Kristeva in the article “Discourses of Maternity from Julia Kristeva”, Liu Ming notes that the relation of the mother to her child is essential to the formation of a speaking subject, for one to enter into the symbolic order (74). Kristeva borrows from Plato the term “chora” as an articulation which “precedes and underlies figuration and thus specularization, and is analogous only to vocal or kinetic rhythm” (“Revolution in Poetic Language” 94). Chora refers to the maternal space in which the subject of language is to be constructed, as the subject has to go through first the stage of the “semiotic”, which is not yet “cognitive in the sense of being assumed by a knowing, already constituted subject” (Kristeva, “Revolution in Poetic Language" 95), and which denotes the drives and movements that appear before one could manage the logic of signification and enter the symbolic order (Liu 74). Instead of fading away when the subject moves to the stage of the “symbolic”, the “semiotic” would form a dialectic relation with the “symbolic” that they “are inseparable within the signifying process that constitutes language” (“Revolution in Poetic Language” 92; emphasis in original). Kristeva also refers the loving mother to the “imaginary father” (Liu 75). Before a baby learns to 97
use language, he or she goes through the process of “primary identification”, as a “subject of enunciation”, receiving and copying the loving mother’s words (“Freud and Love” 244). Such “primary identification” with the “imaginary father”, Kristeva points out, is received “as a gift” (256), and is later “correlative to the establishment of the mother as ‘ab-jected’”, a stage after which the speaking subject will emerge (“Freud and Love” 256).
A mother as an “imaginary father” is also the “passionate mother”. Kristeva explains the idea of “maternal passion” as a process in which “The mother is at the crossroads of biology and meaning” and her emotions towards her child turn into the sublimated passion (“Motherhood Today”). Kelly Oliver discusses in her essay “Julia Kristeva’s Maternal Passions” that the significance of the “maternal passion” denotes a form of working-through of conflicting emotions (as the consequence of the animal drives) with one’s reflexive consciousness and linguistic expression, which are human (5), and it “allows the affect to turn into tenderness, caretaking and benevolence”, and helps the child to become an autonomous being (Kristeva, “Motherhood Today”). I argue that in Gan’s films, the transition of the images of mother projects a critical inquiry to Christianity, and such a feminine critique suggests an alternative religious discourse about subjectivation, in the broader social context of the postsocialist China. Kristeva’s ideas on maternity provide a framework for interpretation of the internal disturbance within Gan’s religious stories. It is possible that the religious space functions as a “maternal space”, and that the interaction between Christians and the others works as a “passionate process”, in which the autonomous and loving subjects can be formed. 98
Kristeva asserts that the maternal passion is the prototype of other relations of love (“Motherhood Today”). The pregnant mother firstly loves herself and her beloved man, who helps her conceive the third person: the infant. The second stage is that after the infant is born, the passionate mother undergoes a process of “depassioning”, that is, she has to detach herself from the child who is to be an autonomous person. Sublimation is observed when the passionate mother lets go the child, so that a transitional space can be created, in which her child can learn how to think in one’s own way (Kristeva, “Motherhood Today”). In Gan Xiao’er’s films, the notion that Christianity is a religion of love is reexamined: what is the nature of such “love”? How does the religion become a place from which people learn how to love and to be a “loving subject”? Is it possible that the religion can be a suppressive instead of a liberative force in spite of its love-discourse?
In Waiting for God, the liberative love is not generated through Pastor Wang’s exegesis of the teaching “Do not be yoked together with unbelievers” (2 Cor. 6.14), which has left no room for other possibilities. For him, the meaning of the Biblical verses is solidified, with which he could judge the non-believers as “sinful”. For the non-Christian welder, whom Xiaoyang meets in town, the impression of the Christian faith is also solidified, since in his mind, the Church concluds that all non-believers would fall into Hell after death. Xiaoyang’s gestation is ambiguous in the sense that, on one hand her religious fellows disdain her infant as a sinful other and a threat to their collective identity, on the other hand, it is exactly the infant as an other with whom Xiaoyang could create a passionate bond, even though that could also create a crisis of 99
identity: “the pregnant woman is losing her identity, for, in the wake of the lover-father’s intervention, she splits in two, harboring an unknown third person, a shapeless pre-object”, which would equivocally generate “violent emotions of love and hate” (Kristeva, “Motherhood Today”). Thus Xiaoyang considers the possibility of abandoning her husband and child.
What then inspires Xiaoyang is her talk with Xu Feng. This scene is set by Gan Xiao’er as a challenge to the Church which claims itself as a community of love: while the Christian fellows do not allow Xiaoyang to embrace non-believers, it is ironically a genuine reciprocal relation between Christians and non-Christians can be achieved. When Xiaoyang exposes her perplexity and consideration of abortion, Xu Feng confesses that she has an abortion already when she decides not to commit to the relationship with her current boyfriend. Her guilt is elicited by the song “Away in a Manger” which she practices for the role of choir instructor. The Christmas song about the infant Jesus makes her grieve for her abandoned child, as Jesus rests in a manger while her own child has nowhere to rest. Therefore she does not simply regard the fetus as a piece of flesh; rather, she has a spiritual imagination about the lost possible-life, when being prompted by the “holy song”. The Christmas song is originally a joyous piece, but its signification can be rendered in various possible ways, even sadness.
Xiaoyang comforts Xu Feng that God would take care for her child. Moreover, Xiaoyang decides to keep her own baby and lets Xu serve as the choir instructor, in spite of the pastor’s opposition. If Xiaoyang’s conception of a child 100
of a non-believer is “adultery”, both pregnancy and abortion would be sinful. Why would Xiaoyang say that the aborted fetus would be in the care of God? Xiaoyang’s delivery of the Christian messages, as framed by Gan Xiao’er, can be elucidated by Kristeva example of “witticism” between mother and her infant child. When the passionate mother teaches her infant child to use language by witticism, the “enigmatic signifiers” are communicated. The child may or may not grasp what the mother intends to signify. Although the mother tries to deliver certain meaning to the child, greater jouissance would be generated when she puts her primary attention to the child’s response, even though what she originally means is not matched (Kristeva “Motherhood Today”). Thus the process of depassioning is required for such pleasure to appear that the mother leaves room for her child to explore the enigma of signification, that is, to leave room for various possibilities of meaning for the child to create. Then the child learns to be a free, autonomous, and thinking subject (Kristeva “Motherhood Today”).
Between believers and non-believers, the content of the Christian faith is similar to the “enigmatic signifiers”. The approach adopted by Pastor Wang to talk about faith, and talk about the world from the perspective of faith, is so suffocating that no room is left for the creativity of new meaning. On the contrary, Xiaoyang’s approach is responsive to the others’ need and contextualized, through which she is exploring various possibilities of what the faith could mean. Besides her comforting message to Xu Feng, her response to the challenge from other non-believers also carries a mark of “witticism”. When the welder complains that he finds the Christian faith wrongful as it 101
curses him to Hell, Xiaoyang does not debate with him but proclaims that “God loves you”, which makes the shopkeeper feel pleased. Therefore, to Pastor Wang, being a non-believer could only mean “sinful”, but Xiaoyang suggests another possible meaning: non-believers are blessed and loved. Reconciliation thus replaces separation. In this reading, she becomes a symbolic mother by generating an inclusive and creative “womb of love” in which faith could be born.
Kristeva says “Being free means having the courage to begin anew” (Kristeva, “Motherhood Today”). Faith is liberating when it is leaving room for people to explore and think, instead of casting a conclusion for them. If practicing the Christian faith is a kind of subjectivation, as shown in The Only Sons, that the possibility of a new life is created, the feminine approach of preaching demonstrated by “Maria” may counteract the traditional, institutional and patriarchal aspects of the Church, as demonstrated in Waiting for God, that are restrictive and suppressive. The loving “holy mother”, the communicator of faith, values the respondent more than her message, while the respondent is welcomed to create possible new meanings for that religious content, so that the spiritual while autonomous “new life” can grow.
Throughout the film, Xiaoyang is always pondering. Viewers may not know what was in her mind when she is silent. Her underlying spiritual activities are implicit, while the film invites viewers to understand her. A visual analysis is important at this point, as the quest for the inner world of the protagonist is expressed through special cinematic devices, which may challenge the usual 102
realistic aesthetics of Gan’s feature films. Near the end of Waiting for God, Xiaoyang meets three preachers travelling from “the eastern side”. From these visitors Xiaoyang finally acquires blessing instead of refusal from Christian fellows. The scandalous family in the film is depicted as the analogy of the holy family in Christianity: Xiaoyang is named “Maria” (the same name as the mother of Jesus on earth), her husband Guo Ling is a carpenter (the same occupation as the father of Jesus on earth), and Xiaoyang is suggested by one of the travelling preachers to name her husband “Joseph” (the same name as the father of Jesus on earth) after his conversion to Christianity. Moreover, the three preachers who came from “the eastern side” are the embodiments of the three Magi who come from the East to see baby Jesus (Matthew 2.1-12).
Such analogy is emphasized with the management of colour: basically the film is in black and white, except for a few seconds, when Xiaoyang sees an artist working on a mural, which depicts the scene when the Holy Mother (holding the baby Jesus) meets the three Magi. The composition and content of the mural are almost the same as the scene in which Xiaoyang meets the three preachers. The issue of realistic aesthetics is also considered here: would the absence of colour make the film less real? Through the play of (the absence of) colour, Gan stimulates viewers to reconsider what kind of “reality” cinema can reveal. The absence of colour may be a device to avoid the distraction of a colourful visuality that may grasp the attention of the viewers on the surface. On the contrary, the black-and-white picture may encourage the audiences to step into the inner reality of the protagonist, while the monochrome picture can also suggest the morose mood of the heroine. Then, the exceptional moment 103
with the infusion of colours would be a sign of vitality and hope, which is also the revelation of the inner world of the protagonist.
Another device working on the inner reality of Xiaoyang may have gone beyond the realistic style that the general audience would expect, which is rather surrealistic: the time span of what happened in Waiting for God is about one day, in which Xiaoyang leaves the village, visits the town, and returns. However, her belly is swollen from the stage of early gestation (Miriam cannot recognize Xiaoyang’s pregnancy until she throws up) to the ninth month of gestation (as what Xiaoyang tells the three preachers) within one day. Watching carefully, Xiaoyang’s belly is obviously bigger than before after talking with Xu Feng, during which the heroine gives up completely the idea of abortion. Therefore the appearance of her baby-in-the-womb is subject to her acceptance of the foetus. Two kinds of temporalities overlap in one narrative, which may show a “reality of possibility” that if Xiaoyang decides to carry out abortion after her meeting with Xu Feng, her pregnancy may be kept invisible, as the foetus would have no chance to grow.
In Gan Xiao’er’s films the Christian faith can contribute to the construction of a subject of love, liberty and hope, which is a faith of possibility, without necessarily diminishing its value as “real”. On the contrary, a dogmatic view of faith is demonstrated through Pastor Wang, who thinks he has taken hold of the only truth, yet he cannot avoid the dominance of the state and the mindset of capitalism in his life practice. The religious institution and the contextual forces in the postsocialist society are critiqued as a whole. Gan’s depiction of 104
Xiaoyang as the “holy mother” constructs a feminine critique of his own religion that he treasures human subjects more than the Christian institution. Also, the Christian faith as a liberative force is one of possibility instead of a set of solidified doctrines or dogmatic views. This could also be a model of critique of any dominant ideology, be it religious dogma or national goal as “development”. Gan’s valorization of human subjects over institution and dogma in the religious narratives could be analogous to the valorization of humanistic liberation over the postsocialist hegemony of economic growth and national pride which are suppressive.
IV.5 Conclusion This chapter has examined the theme of spiritual quest of the characters in the second and the third feature films directed by Gan Xiao’er: Raised from Dust and Waiting for God. It has been showed that the living conditions, the spiritual needs, the relation to the others (Christian or non-Christian) and various contextual forces in the postsocialist society have made the inner world of the Christian protagonists of the two films full of ambiguity and complexity. Textual analysis with occasional complementary visual analysis has showed that the underlying spiritual activities of the heroines are implicit, and the dynamics between the Christian institution, the non-Christian world and the heroines forms a critique from within Christianity, calling for a more understanding than conclusive/solidified response to those spiritual complexities and ambiguities. Julia Kristeva’s notion of “maternal passion” has be employed to analyze the filmic text of Waiting for God, from which a feminine approach of Christianity, alternative to and critical of the religious institution, patriarchy and other 105
hegemonic forces, is suggested for the possible formation of liberative and beloved human subjects.
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Chapter Five
Conclusion
V.1 Summary of Arguments I have argued in this dissertation that Gan Xiao’er as a member of Chinese independent filmmakers in the postsocialist period, and the three fictional feature films he has directed: The Only Sons (2003), Raised from Dust (2007), and Waiting for God (2012), are set apart from other Chinese independent films, concerning the subject matter, perspective and critique from within of Chinese Christianity in the Reform era. It has been shown that Gan’s feature films have covered various social and cultural issues in Chinese society in the Reform period, and a Christian perspective is used to review and respond to those problems. Also, those films have represented Chinese Christianity in the countryside in the postsocialist context, in terms of the “outer side” of the religion, including the message of Gospel that a preacher delivers in a missionary, the ordinary activities of churchgoers, and their interactions with the non-believers. Such representation has an ethnographic significance as the religion has been under-represented in the mainstream media as well as Chinese independent cinema.
The three features of Gan Xiao’er have not only revealed the positive side of the Church, but also formulated internal critique concerning its attitude towards the non-Christians and its entanglement with the social, cultural and political forces in the larger postsocialist context. An investigation of people’s spiritual needs has been taken into account, which includes the issues of dignity, despair and guilt faced by the protagonist in The Only Sons; the tension 107
between grace and sin in Raised from Dust; and the relation between the Church and (other part of) the world. It has been shown in the films that since the spiritual conditions of the Christian characters are still subject to the worldly context (of postsocialist China in particular); they are ambiguous, complicated and implicit. An attitude of understanding instead of judging is suggested to address those issues of spirituality, so as to create a space of the construction of a liberated and beloved subject.
In the introductory chapter, it is shown that Gan Xiao’er shares the aesthetic style that is prevalent in Chinese independent cinema, according to Jason McGrath, as the “postsocialist critical realism”. Such a label denotes the tendency of films to reveal the reality in the postsocialist era, especially the social problems and lives of underprivileged people that have been hidden or obscured by the dominant ideology promoted by the mainstream media (132). McGrath also suggests that there are two aesthetic approaches of such “realism”, the first type is discerned by the raw style of cinematography, such as use of hand-held camera and on-location shooting (McGrath 139, 147); the second type is more refined, such as the use of long takes, long shots and lack of camera movement (McGrath 148), which is prevalent not in the commercial market but in the art film festival circuit (McGrath 160-61). Evidently Gan has chosen the second approach of “critical realism”, which may have helped him to obtain award and sponsorship through the participation of foreign film festivals.
Examining Gan’s films according to time sequence, a progressive shift of focus 108
from the outer world to the inner side of human can be observed, which has exposed how Gan has tried to “express and reveal people’s spiritual and emotional world that is difficult to express and reveal” (Qi 65). Such “progressive shift of focus” means that Gan begins with the illustration of the postsocialist society and culture, then depicts Christianity as part of the social reality, and finally delves into the mentality and psyche of the main characters, who are Christians (the two heroines in Raised from Dust and Waiting for God), or in the quest toward Christianity (the protagonist in The Only Sons).
In Chapter Two, I have discussed how Gan Xiao’er’s debut The Only Sons has illustrated the inhuman condition of the lower class villagers who have been dispossessed of everything. In the age of Reform when China has become a key player of the global economy, people like the family members of Ah Shui are objectified as commodities, dedicating their “bare lives” and are deprived of health, human rights, social recognition and human dignity, with reference to Jean Comarofi. In this film Gan simply shows the encounter between Christianity and the people who suffer in the postsocialist era. The Christian discourse functions as a cultural counteraction to the mainstream ideology which facilitates the commodification of human beings, by reassuring the protagonist who is ignored as “residue” that he is the beloved “adopted” child of God, referring to the discussion of God’s love by Julia Kristeva. A process of incorporating the material needs into the spiritual/symbolic needs that can be fulfilled by the Christian faith has been suggested.
I have argued that Gan’s films have an ethnographic significance that they 109
depict the Chinese Christianity which has been under-represented in Chinese cinema. Chapter Three is the discussion of the representations of Chinese Christianity (Protestantism in particular) in the countryside in Gan’s first film The Only Sons (in brief) and the second film Raised from Dust (in detail), in comparison with studies and reports about Chinese Christianity in the postsocialist period. In his second film Christianity has become part of the surroundings of the main characters, as the preexisting condition of the specific troubles that the protagonists had to face. Gan portrays the ordinary activities of churchgoers in general, and the struggles of the heroine Xiao Li in particular. The two aspects constitute the main drama of the story. The position of the director from a distance is significant that Gan intentionally suspends the moral judgment of the sinful acts of the characters. Such suspension leaves room for the audiences to ponder about the religious values of faithfulness, perseverance and grace.
In Chapter Four, the examination of the illustration of Christianity has gone deeper. The discussion of Raised from Dust has showed the complexity and ambiguity concerning moral issues when the Christian faith is taken into practice by the ordinary people, as highlighted by the controversial act of the heroine indirectly killing her husband. In the analysis of Gan’s third film Waiting for God, the spirituality of Chinese Christians as depicted is fraught with internal conflicts between different Christian believers within the Church, between believers and non-believers and inside the mind of the protagonist Xiaoyang. The “progressive shift of focus” is seen in Gan’s characterization of the protagonists that in his first film, Ah Shui in The Only Sons converts to 110
Christianity just before his death; in the second film Xiao Li is an ordinary churchgoer; while Xiaoyang in the third film is already the leader of the “gathering point” in the village. The quest of complexity and ambiguity within the religion is rendered more explicitly in Gan’s third film, but Gan has not made it a drama within a close community. Instead, the problems come from the interaction between the religion and the secular world, and the entanglement of the two that the Church is also part of the world. I have shown that the film poses a critique to the Church and have suggested a more tolerant and liberative approach of religious faith.
A transition of the image of woman is observed across the three films of Gan Xiao’er, from the passive and taciturn posture to the more empowered and autonomous role. I have demonstrated that Gan’s attempt can be understood as a feminine critique, borrowing the concept of “maternal passion” from Julia Kristeva. On one hand, the church institution has been incorporated by the state and the hegemonic forces as the patriarchal and consumerist culture, which are the features of postsocialist China. On the other hand, the Church has claimed itself to be “holy” and has separated itself from the “sinful” non-believers. Therefore the issue is not whether the Church should be separated from the secular others but how it could be with the world and in the world. The “passionate mother” according to Kristeva actually has to go through the stage of “depassioning”, in which the mother leaves room for the child to explore the possibilities of language use by him/herself, thus the child could learn to be a creative and autonomous subject (“Motherhood Today”). I have argued that such notion has offered a framework to elucidate what Gan’s 111
preference of the ways that Christians interact with the others: to show that the Christian faith is one of liberation and hope, in other words, a faith of possibility. People are not judged as “sinful”, rather it is emphasized that they are loved. Therefore the process of “preaching” or witnessing is not the instillation of the religious content, but a process of subjectivation like what a (de)passionate mother would do to her beloved child.
While Gan adopts the style of “postsocialist critical realism” that is prevalent among Chinese independent cinema, as mentioned above, he also employs devices that have invited the audiences to reconsider the aesthetics of “realism”. Surrealistic devices are observed in The Only Sons, as the doubling of the sons of Ah Shui and the preacher, casting a metaphoric effect. Also, in Waiting for God, the switch between the monochrome and colourful images emphasizes the inner reality of Xiaoyang in place of the representation of reality on the surface. Moreover, the foetus of Xiaoyang grows rapidly within one day, which shows an alternative temporality in accordance to the mentality of the protagonist, suggesting a “reality of possibility”.
V.2
Further Discussion
This dissertation has not examined the aesthetic style of Gan Xiao’er’s films in detail, which deserves further discussion. Although the cinematic style of Gan’s feature films can be identified as the “aestheticized” style characterized by long shot, long take and fixed camera, which is prevalent in the international film circuit (McGrath 148), there are also experimental surrealistic devices that are observed in Gan’s works, showing that he is a genuine film artist who can 112
fit the cinematic devices with the texts as he intends, instead of simply imitating the style that is popular in the film festival circuit or the niche of independent cinema. Further studies may require an auteurist approach that this dissertation has not undertaken.
This dissertation has not investigated extensively any Western films or other cultural texts that have inspired the films of Gan Xiao’er. Since it is not easy to justify and argue for the evident correlation between Gan’s films and the other films, I have left this task for scholars interested in making the connections. Suffice it to say that existing film reviews and interviews have not suggested any apparent influence of other filmmakers upon Gan’s cinematic style, though a bunch of names including writers, directors and artists have been mentioned in a general manner without specifying how they have affected Gan’s films (Qi 64). The similarities between Gan’s films and other filmmakers’ films are rather general in terms of cinematic style.
Further investigation may include a comparison of Gan Xiao’er’s religious features with other films about Christianity made by filmmakers from other cultural contexts. Countless films have been made with Christian elements. Some Hollywood productions of this sort are both instructive and entertaining, in contrast to the style of Gan’s films, while a number of European art-house movies featuring Christian elements share a similarly contemplative and serious tone with Gan’s features. One may see in some of Ingmar Bergman’s works the tension between desperation and hope, which is commonly seen in Gan’s films and Bergman seems more pessimistic than Gan. A big difference 113
lies in the historical and cultural contexts that when the Western filmmakers work on the subject matter of Christianity, they work on a constitutive part of their own culture. On the contrary, Gan as a Chinese director has to deal with a foreign religion that has been undergoing a tortuous process of indigenization. Further comparison may cover those Korean films with elements of Christianity, given Korea’s postcolonial background that Christianity as a foreign religion has gone through a long course of localization in this Asian society.
The studio of Gan Xiao’er is entitled as “The Seventh Seal Film Workshop”, referring to his ambition to make seven fictional feature films to represent the current conditions of Christianity in China (Qi 63). Up to this moment he has made three, what will be the similarities and differences between the upcoming four and the existing three? As the three feature films have shown a “progressive shift of focus” as discussed before, will the rest continue such progress; for example, will the protagonist of the next feature a Church pastor? Will the next film address more ethically ambiguous and controversial issues? Gan’s representation of Christianity is heavily inspired by his personal experience, would that be a weakness of his project of representing Christianity in China, as there are other aspects about the religion that can be suitable subject matters of “representation of Chinese Christianity”? For example, will he make films about the conflicts between the government and the unsanctioned “home churches”? Will he make films to denote the differences and similarities between Catholicism and Protestantism? Will he makes films about the urban churches?
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As an independent filmmaker, Gan Xiao’er has limited resources. His pace is not fast; taking almost ten years to make three feature films. How long will he take to finish all seven films? When Gan finishes the whole “Seventh Seals” project, an examination of the seven films as a whole set would be worth undertaking.
Christianity is still a sensitive subject in the PRC, but in the long term, especially in the area of independent cinema, will Gan Xiao’er initiate a genre or sub-genre of “religious film” or “Christian film”? Since Gan has been an independent director for ten years, and his films have obtained some recognition in overseas and regional film festivals, it is possible that his pioneering project of making films with the theme of Christianity have or would inspire(d) other filmmakers to make films with the same subject matters.
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