Between Self Expression and Commercialization - Essay Example

? Between Self expression and Commercialization: the Sixth Generation Between Self expression and Commercialization: the SixthGeneration Introduction The decline in Mao’s ideological influence on film industries, the domination of consumer-oriented cheap genre, the rise of a bureaucratic and urban middle class with the introduction of modern technology-based economy, the demand for elegant taste in films and movies among the modernized Chinese and the failure as well as stagnancy in the early 1980s Chinese Fifth Generation Film industry to fulfil these demands- all together prepared the plot for the rise of the Sixth Generation Chinese Film makers in the early 1990s. Indeed both the decline in Mao’s communist ideological influence and the growing insolence against the drawbacks of communism were concurrent in the 1980s. Consequently the era was seeing a new orientation in the contemporary film making. Indeed the commercialization of Chinese cinema first started with the rise of a new wealthy middle class, as Peisa says, “During the 1980’s the economic reforms gradually advanced and also changed the nature of the film industry. Many of the Fifth Generation filmmakers also felt this….self-sufficiency and commercialization, and had to reconsider their positions” (13). From an ideology-centered position, the directors were moving toward to a more individual centered stance. Individuals’ well and woe, as the subject, began to occupy the central place more and more in a movie. Referring to this new orientation, Peterson says, “The so called 5th generation – included Chen Kaige and Zhang Yimou, the filmmakers we now associate with China’s cinematic revival” (Peterson 3). Though they felt the impulse to explore their ‘self’ as a nation, they, unlike the Sixth Generation Film directors, carefully avoid any direct collision with the dominant political culture. Struggle between Self-expression and Commercialization Choosing to follow their own ways posed a number of risks for these film makers in the 1990s. First, they had to depend on private finance, since depending on the governmental budget necessarily would bind them to follow the political guidance that often appeared to be contradictory to their free self-expressive zeal, as Peisa says, “For the cinema, the beginning of the 1990’s was, on the one hand a time of ever intensifying commercialism and on the other hand a politically sensitive time.” (13) Also depending on private financing was not that easy since it often was not as sufficient as the governmental allowances were. Second, commercializing posed to be a potential challenge for them. Shifting from the government fund to private sponsorship necessarily demanded a significant return from the making cost. There were challenges too for the self-expressionist film makers of the 1990s. The most common challenge was to win a market that had already been overly saturated with the supply of ideological but cheaply popular movies in that decade. Movies enriched with elegant theme and taste needed to be fully self-expressionist and self exploring in order to be popular among the majority of the moviegoers: a strategy that was bound to go against the political interests and culture of the era. Therefore avoiding the political wrath, these directors “began, for the first time in China, to realize their movies with private capital and without submitting the work for the censorship approval; hence they had to find alternative ways to show those works” (Gagliardi). In the beginning of the 1990s, one of crucial alternatives for the moviemakers was to enter into international market, as Gagliardi says, “One of these ways was the international film festival circuit where the movies found positive criticism and foreign producers” (Gagliardi). In spite of the government’s ban and censorship, the Sixth Generation movies that were critically appraised by the West made a massive infiltration into the country through mostly piracy. With the modernization of the communication system piracy became widespread making the government censorship almost meaningless. New Challenges to the Sixth Generation: New Independent Movie Though self-expressionism is self evident in the Sixth Generation films, a close analysis can easily trace a commercializing effort in these movies. In order to reduce the risk in the popular film market, the Sixth Generation Directors put significant effort on reducing the film budget, while focusing on increasing the quality in the mid 1990s. But in the late 1990s and the early 2000s, Chinese film industry began to take a new course, known as Chinese Independent Cinema, greatly privileged by the widespread digital technology at the beginning of the 21st Century. In this regard Gagliardi notes that the DV allowed theoretically everyone “to engage in film production, without needing a specific or professional training and a consistent production capital,” while these films are now “shot on site (xianchang) and use non-professional actors, very often the production crew is narrowed to few members if not to the only director” (Gagliardi). This new dimension was essentially fully self-expressive like their predecessors. But it was totally different in its commercial nature. Produced at incredibly low cost without any formally trained actors, these films are generally shown to non-paying visitors at a public gathering such as coffee shops, bars, marketplaces, etc. With short and simple dramatic construction with an episodic narrative from a stylistic point of view, an independent movie often takes the “form of documentary-realism, with some influences from neo-realism” (Gagliardi). Though with a realist genre within a short span and structure, an independent movie was not meant for huge commercial success in the early 2000s, they posed a significant challenge from the traditional Sixth Generation Film industry, as Gagliardi says in this regard, In fact, a film culture mainly devoted to art-house movies and the works of world-great directors emerges in some Chinese cities, but it will focus soon on the Chinese cinema and in particular the independent one, also as form of resistance against the commercial movies, including the Hollywood imports, promoted by the Film Bureau. (Gagliardi) Comparative Evaluation of the Sixth Generation Directors: Jia Zhangke and Ning Hao In 2006, Jia Zhangke’s Still Life wins the Golden Lion prize at Venice Film Festival, which is the highest international achievement every made among the sixth generation directors. Since then he hasn’t made any narrative films but several documentaries. In the same year, a low budget film Crazy Stone becomes a sleeper hit in china’s domestic market. With a budget of 3.5 million Yuan, the film grossed 23 million in box office. The director, Ning Hao, made another film Crazy Racer three years later, which grossed a hundred million Yuan with a budget of twenty million Yuan. Both Jia and Ning can be categorized into the sixth generation; however, they respectively represent two different mode of filmmaking. Through these two figures, an astute moviegoer can sense the sixth generation directors’ struggle between self expression and commercialization of Chinese films. Synopsis of Mongolian Ping pong The film possesses a simple plot line. In a nomadic village, the hero, a boy who is about the age to go to elementary school, pick up a used Ping-Pong ball by riverside. He and his friends become curious in this never before seen object, and seek to find out what it is. First, he is told by his grandmother that the ball is a night pearl – mythical treasure belong to the dragon god. Later through a movie projector they learn that it is a ping pong ball. The hero is upset by the information. But he is quickly cheered up because he learns from a blurred TV program that Ping-Pong is china’s national sport and Ping-Pong ball is china’s ‘national ball’. Believing that the national ball should be return to the nation, the hero and his friends set up a journey to Beijing for they think the nation is in Beijing. When the night falls, they give up the journey because of hungry thirsty and the fear of their parents’ beaten. When a local police rescued them, they try to give him the Ping-Pong ball since police represents the nation. Upon returning home, the hero’s furious mother stomp the ball. The sad hero becomes angry when he finds out his friend trade the ball for some other toy. Both the boys’ father blames them for the fight, and cuts the pingpong ball in half to settle the boys’ argument. The other day, the hero left hometown for the school in city. In the school stadium, he finds out that the ‘national ball’ is not unique at all. Synopsis of is Ning Hao’s “Crazy Stone” The film contains a very complicate plot line. The state own jewellery factory is on the edge of broke and it is often harassed by a property developer who wishes to buy the site cheaply. Accidentally, a precious jade is found on the site. Considered as the last hope for make some profit, the factory head Xie, decides to hold an exhibition of the jade. He asks a factory’s employee, Bao, to handle the security. Meanwhile, three different parties: Mike, a professional thief hired by the property developer from Hong Kong; three local crooks, Dao, Jun, Heipi; and the factory manager’s sneaky spoiled son Charles has their own plans on the jade. On the first night of the exhibition, Mike is sabotaged unintentionally by the local crooks and the later one’s plan also failed due to Bao’s ghetto antitheft device. The next morning, Charles switches the jade with a fake one when he takes promotion photos for the exhibition. He then gives the jade as a gift to a girl he likes. Unfortunately the girl is in relationship with the Dao- the leader of the gang. The gang imprisons Charles and beats him severely. Upon believing the jade Charles has is a fake, the gang plan to do another switch. Although their first try is sabotaged by Mike, they are successful on the second try. During the switch, they manage to take revenge on Mike by trap him in the exhibition hall’s ceiling. The gang wishes to sell the jade to the property developer, only to find out that they’ve switched the real one back. Enraged, they made a deal with Bao who had just noticed that Charles is the one who switched the jade. Believing the Jade they find is real, Bao switches the fake one back into the showcase, and take the real jade with him as a ‘souvenir’. Meanwhile, the property developer lost his patience. He makes a secret deal with the factory manager: he will buy off the jade, and offer the manager six floor of the new apartment in exchange of the agreement on selling the factory site. Mike, finally gets out of the ceiling. He followed the jade to the developer’s office. Not knowing his customer, he kills the developer for the jade. In the end, Bao give the real jade (which he thought is the fake one) to his girlfriend as a gift. Comparison between Jia Zhangke and Ning Hao’s Arts of Film But Ning Hao is a mixture of both Jia and Feng. It is not because he had made films in these two different practices, but because he was able to pursue both of their zeal. Both Jia and Ning are the talented directors who have been able to follow the nature of the era. In his work Unknown Pleasure (2002), Jia Zhangke makes fun of china’s piracy DVD market: the protagonist of Xiao Wu is a customer for pirated DVD and chide the street hawk for not having ‘a copy of highly popular film Xiao Wu’.(Xu, P48) The scene not only shows us the marginalized and underground position of the sixth generation filmmaker in the nineties, but also shows us that pirated DVD has become a significant choice of everyday entertainment. People can get watch Hollywood blockbuster almost simultaneously with their U.S or European counterpart. From the author’s experiences, acquainted customers can even make order for particular films they want. In shorter then ten years, the robust pirated DVD market had nurture a generation of film audiences who are familiar with contemporary world cinema. On the other hand, Ning’s Mongolian Ping Pong deserves to be marked as an art film, for it posses many art-house aesthetic values. His next project Crazy Stone occupies a completely different narrative and stylistic approach compare to his previous works and made him a rising star in china’s mainstream film market. Ning Hao’s Mongolia Ping-Pong and crazy stone shows the two entirely different approaches towards a profit making independent film in contemporary china. While Jia chose to focus on his contemporary Chinese society, Ning has drawn an unbreakable link between his contemporary society and China’s past. But both of them are self-exploratory and self-chiding. Ning’s Mongolian Ping-pong shows the life of a Chinese Mongolian nomad. The people are poor and marginalized – no one in the village recognizes that the night pearl is actually a Ping Pong ball. The film possesses a realistic aesthetic for it was shot on location and all the characters are played by non-professional actors. Meanwhile both Ning’s “Mongolian Ping-Pong” and “Crazy Stones” are fraught with Sixth generation realism and political metaphors. For example, the realism in “Mongolian Ping-pong” is related to a nomad’s life: The hero is testing the Ping-Pong ball with a light torch. Suddenly he sensed something, more like alerted, he quickly pinch a grass leaf and held it to the sky. The leaf quivers. The boy wakes his friend and tells them ‘it’s getting windy’. In the same manner, the “Crazy Stones” realism reminds a moviegoer of the urban reality in a new light. The film touches almost every contemporary Chinese social problem such as the rapid urbanization, the migrant workers, the laid-off workers of state factories, the life of urban teenagers, the distrust between people etc that the Six Generation directors have poked. Political metaphor: the Tiananmen, the shot of Genghis Han’s portrait, grandma’s singing of worshiping Chairman Mao as the sun. The TV delivers the message Ping-Pong ball as national sport. The Sixth Generation: Ning Hao and Jia’s Expression of the Nation’s Self A close analysis of the relationship between the sixth generation directors and domestic mainstream audience will reveal that Ning Hao and Jia is one of the talent directors who have been able to perceive the nature and challenges of the Sixth Generation Chinese Films. It has been 30 years since the beginning of china’s economic reform. Within this period, the Chinese society experienced dramatic change. The change includes two fundamental essences: the conversion from a socialist social/economic system to a capitalist social/economic system and the advancing from a tradition agriculture society to a modern industrialized society. Chinese cinema also endures major transformation. Such transformation can be roughly divided into three chronological stages. The first one is the Fifth generation’s 80’s. With such figure as Zhang Yimou, Chen Kaige and Tian Zhuangzhuang, the fifth generation marks the beginning of the liberation of the repressed and china’s grand march to the world. The second one is the Sixth generation’s 90’s. After the traumatic event in the 1989, many young and talented filmmaker, such as Lou Ye, Wang Xiaoshuai, Zhang Yuan and Jia Zhangke, turn their works underground. Mainly financed by foreign capital, these directors seemingly abandoned (in many cases forced) the domestic public. Meanwhile, with the collapsing of the planed economic, other directors are trying to figure a way to create a popular cinema in china. The third one is the commercialization of cinema in the first decade of the new millennium. With Zhang Yimou’s major box office success Hero, the domestic film market is proved to be profitable for the recently emerged Chinese investors. During this era, china’s booming economic has produced a sufficient domestic market for filmmakers. Dai Jinhua lists three basic groups of the sixth generation. First, independent filmmakers of the 1990s who are either self financed or have European cultural fund underwriting, and who make low budget features that are separate from the official film production and censorship system; second, popular younge directors graduating from 1989 to 1991, who work within the filmmaking system; a third refers to turn of the 90s documentary – makers closely connected with the group of nomadic Beijing artists widely known for their painters village at the yuanmingyuan summer palace. Independent filmmakers and new documentary –makers coalesced because their common mode of production fell outside the usual operations of the system. Or perhaps more importantly, their bonding responded to certain post – cold war projects regarding western culture needs. The booming popular culture’s commercialization towed in its wake both besieged elitism and art. Quasi-film phenomena (TV and video) that are irrelevant to film per se intensified the crisis of cinema in the planed economy (Dai, P80). Under such circumstances, Feng Xiaogang becomes a very unique figure of the nineties Chinese cinema. Unlike most sixth generation directors, Feng didn’t attend the Beijing Film Academy. As a Beijing native, Feng started his career as a sit-com writer in the late 80s. By the mid 90s, he single handily created mainland china’s ‘New Year films’(hesui pian’), following a cinema tradition that Hong Kong filmmaker pioneered for taking advantage of the celebratory mood for the winter holidays. His series of light comedies has been able to compete with Hong Kong and Hollywood productions. He claims that his aim is the box office success. Feng xiaogang may represent the trend of Chinese mainstream cinema’s graduate transformation to an international Hollywood classical cinema. Comparison between Jia Zhangke and Ning Hao’s Arts of Film But Ning Hao is a mixture of both Jia and Feng. It is not because he had made films in these two different practices, but because he was able to pursue both of their zeal. Both Jia and Ning are the talented directors who have been able to follow the nature of the era. In his work Unknown Pleasure (2002), Jia Zhangke makes fun of china’s piracy DVD market: the protagonist of Xiao Wu is a customer for pirated DVD and chide the street hawk for not having ‘a copy of highly popular film Xiao Wu’.(Xu, P48) The scene not only shows us the marginalized and underground position of the sixth generation filmmaker in the nineties, but also shows us that pirated DVD has become a significant choice of everyday entertainment. People can get watch Hollywood blockbuster almost simultaneously with their U.S or European counterpart. From the author’s experiences, acquainted customers can even make order for particular films they want. In shorter then ten years, the robust pirated DVD market had nurture a generation of film audiences who are familiar with contemporary world cinema. On the other hand, Ning’s Mongolian Ping Pong deserves to be marked as an art film, for it posses many art-house aesthetic values. His next project Crazy Stone occupies a completely different narrative and stylistic approach compare to his previous works and made him a rising star in china’s mainstream film market. Ning Hao’s Mongolia Ping-Pong and crazy stone shows the two entirely different approaches towards a profit making independent film in contemporary china. While Jia chose to focus on his contemporary Chinese society, Ning has drawn an unbreakable link between his contemporary society and China’s past. But both of them are self-exploratory and self-chiding. Ning’s Mongolian Ping-pong shows the life of a Chinese Mongolian nomad. The people are poor and marginalized – no one in the village recognizes that the night pearl is actually a Ping Pong ball. The film possesses a realistic aesthetic for it was shot on location and all the characters are played by non-professional actors. Meanwhile both Ning’s “Mongolian Ping-Pong” and “Crazy Stones” are fraught with Sixth generation realism and political metaphors. For example, the realism in “Mongolian Ping-pong” is related to a nomad’s life: The hero is testing the Ping-Pong ball with a light torch. Suddenly he sensed something, more like alerted, he quickly pinch a grass leaf and held it to the sky. The leaf quivers. The boy wakes his friend and tells them ‘it’s getting windy’. In the same manner, the “Crazy Stones” realism reminds a moviegoer of the urban reality in a new light. The film touches almost every contemporary Chinese social problem such as the rapid urbanization, the migrant workers, the laid-off workers of state factories, the life of urban teenagers, the distrust between people etc that the Six Generation directors have poked. Political metaphor: the Tiananmen, the shot of Genghis Han’s portrait, grandma’s singing of worshiping Chairman Mao as the sun. The TV delivers the message Ping-Pong ball as national sport. Conclusion The Sixth Generation Film makers sought to bypass the official production system, choosing several alternatives. In this regard, from a comparative viewpoint Peterson comments, “Where Chen and his colleagues responded to their country with Taoist and Buddhist meditations, the Sixth Generation expressed their frustrations more directly” (Peterson). In fact, the growing anti-socialist and pro-democratic sentiments, and particularly the socialist government’s crackdown on the students in the Tiananmen Square infuriated the Sixth Generation Movie-makers to go in direct conflict with the government. Bypassing the government’s censorship the “Sixth generation directors, like Zhang Yuan, Wang Xiaoshuai and He Jianjun” (Gagliardi) went underground productions of movies and smuggling them abroad. Indeed the West’s increasing interests in the nascent democratic movement in China inspired these directors to be westward. In this paper, Jia Zhangke and Ning Hao will be comparatively evaluated to find the evidence for the struggle between self-expression and commercialization in the Sixth Generation Chinese Films. Works Cited Berry, Michael. Xiao Wu, Platform, Unknown Pleasures: Jia Zhangke’s ‘Hometown Trilogy’. London: BFI, 2009 Gagliardi, Edoardo. “New cinema - new practice”, April 13, 2011, available at Jinhua, Dai. Cinema and Desire. London: Verso,2002 Peisa, Jenni. The Unable Individual: The Actantial Analyses of Three Chinese Films. Helsinki: Helsinki University, 2008 Peterson, Miguel. “A Brief History of Chinese Film”, April 13, 2011, available at Xu, Gary G. Sinascape: Contemporary Chinese cinema. Maryland: Rowan &Littlefield publisher, INC. 2007 Zhu, Ying. Chinese Cinema during the Era of Reform. London: Praeger, 2003 Read More