Death of China’s Main Melody movie in the 21st centuy, notes

Notes

1. Also referred to as the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), founded in 1921, party of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) since 1949. [return to page 1]

2. Deng said of Hu that he “monitors party discipline impartially and incorruptibly, but simply does not understand the dangers of liberalization.” See Wei, 2013.

3. Yu, 2013, pp. 166-167.

4. This ideology is a doctrine that holds that the Party, i.e., the CCP, has supreme control over all aspects of the governance and politics of the state, i.e., China, holding sway even over Marxism, socialism, democratic principles, or any individual autocrat, and that absolute loyalty to the Party is accordingly expected of all citizens. See Xia.

5. Tian and Liu, 2014, pp. 4-5.

6. Huang, 2015, p. 130.

7. Lian, 2015, p. 105.

8. “Genre” here should be understood as an ideological category of film promoting a particular political perspective, rather than traditionally understood genre of film such as action film, comedy, etc.

9. Chang, 2010; Elena, 2013; Shen Y., 2010; and Wang, 2011.

10. Davis, 2010, p. 121.

11. Davis, 2014; and Yu, 2013.

12. Li, 2017.

13. Chan, 2017.

14. Ewalt, 2018.

15. The full text of the speech was released one year later on October 15, 2015 and is approximately 14,000 Chinese words in length. See Jiang and Qin, 2015.

16. Although Xi does not single out specific films for criticism, in the same speech he characterizes recent literature and art in China as being overly obsessed with a market-oriented philosophy, quantity rather than quality, imitation, sex and wealth, and a blind following of the West.

17. Zhang, 2014.

18. This film passed the script screening process in July 1988 and started shooting in November of the same year. The week before its completion the world was shocked by the Tiananmen Incident. As a result, Jiang Zemin, General Secretary of the CPC at the time, suggested that certain words in the film be deleted, such as the words “democracy” and “supervise the government” spoken by Mao Zedong in a scene depicting a conversation between him and his son, Anying, at Yinian Hall in Zhongnanhai. These words were replaced by a sentence ripe with interpretive potential: “What is uppermost in the mind of a great leader as victory comes within sight is that while accomplishing the great task [of gaining victory] is difficult, what is even more difficult is the task of maintaining what is gained [in the victory].” See Anonymous, 2016.

19. Main Melody movies that embody the spirit of revolution and the hardships encountered in founding the CCP or the PRC are also called xianli pian (commemorative film). The release dates of xianli pian are closely linked with the commemoration of a certain political event. See Chang, 2010, p. 14.

20. In 1966, during the Cultural Revolution, Tian Han was condemned as a “counter-revolutionary” and the singing of March of the Volunteers was forbidden. Instead, the masses would sing songs that glorified Mao Zedong, such as The East Is Red and Sailing the Seas Depends on the Helmsman. In 1979, Tian was posthumously restored to grace by the Chinese authorities, and March of the Volunteers was ultimately reinstated as the national anthem of the PRC in 1982.

21. The Kuomintang was the ruling party in mainland China until 1949 when it was forced to retreat to Taiwan following defeat by the CCP in the Chinese Civil War.

22. After China’s admission to the World Trade Organization (WTO) in 2001, the number of imported films allowed was increased to 20 per year. See Su, 2010, p. 39. Subsequently, as publicly announced in the 2012 Joint Statement Regarding U.S.-China Agreement on Film-Related Issues, the number of imported Hollywood movies, mostly those incorporating IMAX or 3D effects, was increased to 34 films per year, in addition to 30 to 40 other films imported annually from outside China, mainly from Europe and Japan. See Smith and Davis, 2012.

23. Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Japan, 1995.

24. Takamine, 2006, p. 123.

25. Even after the Tiananmen Incident Japan was the first country to lift international sanctions against China and announced the restoration of economic assistance to China in July 1990. In August 1991, former Japanese Prime Minister Kaifu Toshiki visited China, becoming the first world leader from a developed country to visit China since the Tiananmen Incident.

26. He, 2013.

27. The relationship between the Chinese film industry and Hollywood movies can be seen from different perspectives, including the economic dependency of China on the U.S. during the economic opening, the rivalry between the two countries driven by the threat of competition from foreign films and the cooperation for achieving commercial success. See Davis, 2010 and 2014; Rosen, 2002; Su, 2010; Wan and Richard, 2002; and Xiao, 2001.

28. Huang, 2015; Tian and Liu, 2014.

29. The male and female protagonists in this film—Paul Kersey, who played the American injured pilot and Ning Jing, who played the female fighter from the Eighth Route Army—were married after the filming. They were divorced in 2011 citing cultural differences.

30. An earlier film that achieved enormous artistic and commercial success and brought together talent from China, Hong Kong and Taiwan and that may be seen as a forerunner of this kind of film is Farewell My Concubine (Chen Kaige, 1993).

31. Famous as one of the “Fifth Generation” filmmakers (generally referring to members of the 1982 graduating class of the Beijing Film Academy in 1982, the year of its reopening following the end of the Cultural Revolution), Zhang Yimou debuted as a director in Red Sorghum (1987), a film based on the novel Red Sorghum Clan by Nobel Laureate Mo Yan that went on to win the Golden Bear Award at the 1988 Berlin International Film Festival. Subsequent works of his such as Ju Dou (1990), Raise the Red Lantern (1991), The Story of Qiu Ju (1992), To Live (1994), Not One Less (1999), and The Road Home (1999) also gained him considerable international acclaim. Like most of his counterparts in the “Fifth Generation,” one of Zhang’s early recurrent themes is the resilience of Chinese people in the face of political chaos and poverty, while his films are also well-known for their rich use of colors and ceremonies that are replete with “oriental” touches. Gao (2009) believes that some in the “Fifth Generation,” including Zhang, began to devote themselves to commercial production as early as from the late 1980s when China was in the midst of its market reforms. Hao Jian, professor at the Beijing Film Academy, furthermore argues, Zhang entered a “politically-correct” phase around the period when Jiang Zemin became the top leader in China after the death of Deng Xiaoping in February 1997 (see Anonymous, 2010); although Karima Fumitoshi, former professor at the University of Tokyo, believes that Zhang’s earlier film The Story of Qiu Ju is also an example of a politically-correct work promoting the virtues of the law system in China. Nevertheless Zhang’s involvement in Main Melody production is apparent from his directing of Hero, a martial arts fantasy film based on the story of an assassination attempt by Jing Ke on the King of Qin (later to become Qin Shi Huang, the First Emperor of China) in 227 BC. In the movie, however, Zhang rewrites history, portraying Qin as escaping assassination because he desires a unified and peaceful Tianxia (literally “under heaven,” an ancient Chinese cultural concept associated with political sovereignty), and the assassins all become convinced that Qin is the only individual capable of achieving that vision. Hero became the first Chinese-language movie to place No. 1 at the American box office. Zhang was also director of the opening and closing ceremonies of the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games. Contemporaries of his such as Chen Kaige, Huang Jianxin, and Hu Mei have been dedicated to Main Melody filmmaking since the turn of the millennium, works by them in this genre include Chen’s The Promise (2005) and Sacrifice (2010); Huang’s The Founding of a Republic (2009) and The Founding of a Party (2011); and Hu’s Confucius (2010).

32. CFGC, a giant government-owned enterprise, founded in 1992 and widely recognized as the most productive and influential film company in China, consists of eight production units whose works are largely Main Melody movies. It is also one of a limited number of government-authorized film importers in China (another one being Huaxia Film Distribution Company).

33. Han and Huang,2010, p. 6.

34. Ibid., p. 5.

35. Chang, 2010; Elena, 2013; Qiu, 2013; Shen Y., 2010; and Wang, 2011.

36. Lee, 2015.

37. John Woo’s two-part epic war film Red Cliff (2008-09), Johnnie To’s action thriller Drug war (2013) and musical comedy Office (2015), Stephen Chow’s comic science fiction CJ7 (2008), fantasy costume comedy Journey to the West: Conquering the Demons (2013), and fantasy romantic comedy The Mermaid (2016), are all blockbusters made with mainland Chinese capital. Drug war set a new box office record in the category of criminal film in mainland China, while Office took in 43 million RMB in box office within five days of its release. Journey to the West: Conquering the Demons broke the global box office in the category of Chinese film, and The Mermaid became the first film in Chinese history to gross more than 3 billion RMB.

38. Chen, Gao, Zheng, Hu and Zhang, 2009, p. 35.

39. Some have argued (e.g. Zhang 2017 and Liao 2018), that commercialized Main Melody movies have had success in exerting “soft power,” in the same way that Hollywood has had success in promoting American cultural values to the world through its “soft power.” See Zhang, 2017 and Liao, 2018. But I contend that Main Melody movies are in one critical respect quite different from Hollywood films: they are designed to promote hard-line political dogma not Chinese cultural values. This point of view is similar to that expressed by Voci and Hui (2018), who suggest that soft power in the Chinese context is inextricably linked to centralized policies, given the authoritarian nature of the Chinese state (p. 4). Furthermore, as I argue later in the paper, the examples of “Main Melody” films that might be cited as successful in exerting “soft power” in this way turn out upon analysis to in fact be promoting ideology quite different from the “party-state ideology” that Main Melody films were initially envisioned as promoting. Films that are genuinely Main Melody in character are the ones that have not gained success either commercially or in effectively exerting “soft power” on their target audience in the 21st century since the advent of the Internet.

40. Widely known as the “first privately held film company in China” and founded by Wang Zhongjun and his brother Zhonglei in 1994, Huayi Brothers began their business in the film industry by investing in Jiang Wen’s movies and Feng Xiaogang’s Chinese New Year films. In 2009, Huayi Brothers were offered a loan of 120 million RMB by the state-owned Industrial and Commercial Bank of China Ltd (ICBC) for producing The Message (Chen Kuo-fu and Gao Qunshu, 2009), Tracing Shadow (Francis Ng and Marco Mak, 2009), Detective Dee and the Mystery of the Phantom Flame (Tsui Hark, 2010) and Aftershock (Feng Xiaogan, 2010), two of which (The Message and Aftershock) are classified as Main Melody movies. [return to page 2]

41. Anonymous, 2014.

42. Wang, 2009.

43. Chen, 2009.

44. On August 28, 1945, Chiang and Mao held a historic meeting in Chongqing, leaving the one and only photograph of the two.

45. Shen S., 2010, p. 112.

46. This was later targeted for sarcasm by Han Han, a popular mainland writer, in his remark: “Given that so many people have left [the Republic], it follows that there are many great projects yet to be accomplished [that date back to] the founding of the Republic; if that were not so, it would mean that many foreigners of Chinese origin have come back to participate in the production of this film or to play the role of villains in the historical period portrayed.” He implies that if the Republic is indeed the success it is claimed to be, there would be no citizens in the Republic who could effectively play the negative role of villains, thus requiring reliance on foreigners. See Han, 2009.

47. For example, in a speech commemorating the fifth anniversary of the return of Macau to China in 2004, Hu Jintao declared that “In particular, we need to have a sense of being prepared for danger in times of peace, an innovative idea that keeps pace with the times and with a spirit of overcoming arduous difficulties as we initiate new undertakings.” See Anonymous, 2004. This sense of crisis was also touched on in another speech Hu delivered in the same year at the Fourth Plenary Meeting of the CCP Central Committee, where he said, “The enemy’s media in foreign countries sometimes launch malicious attacks on our country’s leaders and political system. Our local media, on the other hand, promote the western bourgeoisie in regard to parliamentary democracy, human rights and freedom of the press, spreading the idea of bourgeois liberalization in the name of political and structural reform. They negate the Four Cardinal Principles [introduced by Deng Xiaoping, namely (1) upholding the socialist path; (2) upholding the people’s democratic dictatorship; (3) upholding the leadership of the CPC; and (4) upholding Mao’s Thought and Marxism-Leninism] and negate the state and the political regime. In dealing with these mistakes, we must not be soft-hearted. We should reinforce censorship of the press and never provide channels for any incorrect ideology.” See Jiang, 2004. Some critics view the speeches of Hu as having greatly strengthened the influence of Main Melody movies under his presidency. See Anonymous, 2010.

48. The Sunflower Student Movement, also known as the “March 18 Student Movement” or the “Occupy Taiwan Legislature Movement,” was a protest driven by a coalition of students and civic groups that occurred during the period between March 18 and April 10, 2014 in the Legislative Yuan. The main demand of the protesters was cancelation of the Cross-Strait Service Trade Agreement (CSSTA), signed by the Straits Exchange Foundation and the Association for Relations across the Taiwan Straits (ARATS) during the ninth round of cross-Strait talks in Shanghai on June 21, 2013. Upon release of the list of sectors subject to the treaty, there was widespread concern that signing the treaty would result in Taiwan becoming economically and politically more subordinate to the control of China. The Taiwanese people had also become discontent with the policy of the KMT, seen as consistently leaning toward Beijing, suspecting the KMT of implementing a third stage of cooperation with the CCP. These suspicions eventually led to the “Controversy over checking procedures in the CSSTA” and other incidents such as the Sunflower Student Movement. In 2016, following a ruling by the DPP, the CSSTA was immediately suspended.

49. When Shu Qi, a Taiwanese actress who had become a top star in China in 2008 with release of the blockbuster film If You Are the One, attended the Cannes Film Festival for the film The Assassin (Hou Hsiao-hsien, 2015), organizers of the Festival presented her as “Chinese” in nationality. Shu allegedly requested the organizers to change this to “Taiwanese” and initially introduced herself to the foreign media as “I am from Taiwan.” Chinese Internet users irritated by this subsequently unleashed thousands of personal attacks and threats against her on social media.

50. Chou Tzu-yu is a Taiwanese singer based in South Korea and a member of the K-pop girl group TWICE. In 2015, she was shown holding the flag of the Republic of China in a South Korean variety show, subjecting her to accusations of being a “Taiwanese independence activist” by the Taiwanese-born, China-based singer Huang An. Huang’s comment on his Sina Weibo site gave rise to a major controversy in China, provoking strong antagonism toward Chou from Chinese netizens. As a result, her commercial endorsement by the Chinese communications company Huawei was revoked, and activities of TWICE in China were suspended or canceled. In the wake of strong criticism of Chou’s agent JYP Entertainment from Chinese netizens, JYP Entertainment released on January 15, 2016, a video of Chou reading a statement of apology in which she affirms her identity as a Chinese.

51. Anonymous, 2015.

52. Scholars have called the accelerated restructuring of the Hong Kong film industry made possible by the CEPA privileges since 2003 as a “mainlandization” process of Hong Kong cinema. See Szeto and Chen, 2011. For a detailed treatment of China-Hong Kong co-production films (Zhonggang hepai pian) between 2003 and 2013, see Yau, 2015.

53. Regarding how the Japanese designed and put the “Greater East Asian films” into practice, see Yau, 2010.

54. Some scholars classify Main Melody movies featuring the “Chinese Dream” into four categories, viz. the dream of “Science and Technology” (illustrated by Oriental Chinese Dream, directed by Yang Zhen in 2013), the dream of “Military” (illustrated by Target Locked, directed by Ning Haiqiang in 2013), the dream of “Wealth” (illustrated by The Traces of Zu, directed by Lu Jian in 2014), and the dream of “Entrepreneurship.” Among these four, American Dreams in China represents the dream of “Entrepreneurship,” portraying the ideal of “integrating the interests of individual, country and nation,” conveyed in Xi’s 2012 speech on the “Chinese Dream.” See Li, 2016. In such a political context, the release of American Dreams in China two months after the Xi regime came to power can hardly be seen as a coincidence.

55. BRI is a Chinese strategic plan first announced by Xi Jinping in Kazakhstan in 2013 that aims to boost economic connectivity between China and various regions of Europe, Asia and Africa.

56. Starting from March 4, 2005, anti-Japanese demonstrations took place in more than 60 cities in China, triggered by the controversy surrounding the Fusosha history textbook, Japan’s quest for a permanent seat on the UN Security Council and the disputes over the Diaoyu (Senkaku) Islands and oil and gas fields in the East China Sea (Donghai). In response to this anti-Japanese trend, Gao Qunshu directed The Tokyo Trial portraying the experience of Mei Ju-ao, one of the judges in the Tokyo Trials between 1946 and 1948. Following the visit to Yasukuni Shrine on August 15, 2006, by Koizumi Junichiro, former Japanese prime minister, 12-hour marathon screenings of this film were held at 13 theaters in Shanghai, promoted as a “must-watch film for every Chinese.” The film was released nationwide on September 1st in the same year. [return to page 3]

57. Chen, Gao, Zheng, Hu and Zhang, 2009, p. 35.

58. Businessman Yu Dong was authorized in 1992 to establish the Beijing Cultural Exchange Co., Ltd, specializing in film distribution. Subsequently, his company was restructured into the Bona Film Group (BFG), mainly sponsoring China-Hong Kong co-productions and Main Melody films made by Hong Kong directors. In 2003, BFG merged with the national enterprise Poly Group and formed Poly-Bona Film Distribution Co., Ltd. Poly-Bona was granted a loan of 55 million RMB by ICBC for the production and distribution of three China-Hong Kong co-productions, namely Overheard, Bodyguards and Assassins, and Little Big Soldier (Ding Sheng, 2010). Among these three, Bodyguards and Assassins is considered to be a Main Melody film. In 2008, together with Hong Kong Emperor Motion Pictures and actor Jackie Chan, BFG founded Bona Yinglong Talent Management Co., Ltd, joined by top stars such as mainland Chinese actress Fan Bingbing. In 2010, BFG became the first Chinese entertainment company to succeed in being listed on the U.S. stock exchange.

59. Choi, 2017. Andrew Lau was subsequently given approval to direct When Robbers Meet the Monster (aka Kung Fu Monster), which was released as a martial arts fantasy film in December 2018.

60. Ye, 2017.

61. Anonymous, Aboluowang, 2017.

62. Choi, 2017.

63. Planned and engineered during the Cultural Revolution by Jiang Qing, wife of Mao Zedong, “model play” (yangban xi) is a term originating in an article entitled “Excellent Models for Revolutionary Art” that appeared in the People’s Daily on May 31, 1967. The celebrated eight model plays produced during the first three years of the Cultural Revolution include Taking Tiger Mountain by Strategy (Peking opera), The Legend of the Red Lantern (Peking opera), Shajiabang (Peking opera), Raid on the White Tiger Regiment (Peking opera), On the Docks (Peking opera), The White-Haired Girl (ballet), Red Detachment of Women (ballet), and Shajiabang (symphony). Model plays are subject to requirements on shooting technique that cannot be violated, such as the use of the camera to create a clear distinction between friend and foe. Foes are usually pictured as far away, evil, small in size, and viewed from a higher position; while friends are pictured as close, righteous, large in size, and viewed from a lower position.

64. The “three prominences” refers to the literary expression proposed by Jiang Qing and other CCP members during the Cultural Revolution. When depicting proletarian heroes, one must (1) highlight the characters with positive traits among all characters; (2) among characters portrayed positively, highlight heroic characters; and (3) among heroic characters, highlight the main heroic characters. The techniques of highlighting characters include placing protagonists in the center of the stage or the screen, and project a spotlight on him or her. On the contrary, antagonists have to be put in the corner, highlighted by bottom light or backlight.

65. Hung, 2016.

66. Lei, 2017.

67. Mu and Chen, 2016.

68. So-called “post-Umbrella Movement films” are movies that explicitly mention or implicitly refer to the “Umbrella Movement” and Hong Kong movies produced subsequent to that, examples including Ten Years (Jevons Au, Wong Fei-pang, Ng Ka-leung, Chow Kwun-Wai and Kwok Zune, 2015), The Mobfathers (Herman Yau, 2016) and Trivisa (Jevons Au, Vicky Wong and Frank Hui, 2016). The Umbrella Movement was a series of protests that occurred in Hong Kong from September 26 to December 15, 2014, in pursuit of genuine universal suffrage. Protesters spontaneously occupied major public areas and thoroughfares including Admiralty, Tamar, Central, Wan Chai, Causeway Bay, Mong Kok, and Tsim Sha Tsui. They demanded retraction of the decision of the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress (NPCSC) regarding the 2016 Legislative Council Election and 2017 Chief Executive Election through sit-ins and protest marches. The protesters also advocated a civil nomination process for the election of the chief executive and the abolition of functional constituencies in the Legislative Council of Hong Kong. Yellow umbrellas became a symbol of the movement, originating from the way front-line protesters protected themselves from pepper spraying from the police by using umbrellas, resulting in references to the movement by the media as the “Umbrella Movement” or the “Umbrella Revolution.”

69. Choi, 2017.

70. Choi, 2017 and Ryan, 2017.

71. Kar, 2013.

72. Anonymous, 2005.

73. Choi, 2017.

74. Shek, 2018.

75. Liu and Rofel, 2018.

76. Feng, 2006.

77. Goldman, 2018.

78. “Red” songs generally refer to the political songs glorying the CCP in mainland China. Well-known examples include The East is Red; Without the Communist Party, There Would Be No New China; and The March of the Chinese PLA.

79. Anonymous, Shangc, 2017.

80. Jiang and Qin, 2015.

81. Anonymous, KKnews, 2017.

82. D’Alessandro, 2017.

83. Lan, 2017.

84. Constance Wu, an American Taiwanese actress who plays the female lead Rachel Chu in the blockbuster film Crazy Rich Asians (Jon M. Chu, 2018), openly criticized The Great Wall saying “We have to stop perpetuating the racist myth that [only a] white man can save the world.” See Jung, 2016. Zhang Yimou’s earlier work The Flowers of War also follows the pattern of an American hero, played in the film by Christian Bale, turning himself from a selfish, dishonest mortician into a righteous priest who saves virginal Chinese schoolgirls from the Japanese devils during the Nanjing Massacre.

85. Chung, 2018.

86. According to the Chinese government, 802 million people, about 57.7% of people in China, are now actively using the Internet. See McCarthy, 2018.

87. In the promotional video, a group of old soldiers from the Chinese People’s Volunteer Army who had participated in the Korean War tell a South Korean female tour guide that they had been in Seoul 60 years ago, which at the time was known as Hanseong. They needed no passport; only a red flag was enough to get in. Netizens have taken offense at the opinions of these veterans as being “anti-human,” suggesting that if old Japanese soldiers were to go to Nanking and do the same thing, they would be severely condemned. This video has since been blocked.

88. Lee, 2015.

89. Han and Huang, 2010.

90. Li, 2017.

91. The mainland Chinese actresses Li Bingbing and Zhou Xun, who performed in The Message, were nominated simultaneously for Best Actress Award at the 46th Golden Horse Awards in Taiwan. The Award eventually went to Li. This film was also nominated for Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Visual Effects, Best Art Direction, and Best Makeup and Costume Design. The Taiwanese actor Su You-peng appearing in this film won Best Supporting Actor Award at the 30th Hundred Flowers Awards held in China. See Anonymous, 2009.

92. Choi, 2017.

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