Analysis of The World Chinese Film - Essay Example

The World of Jia “The World” is a Chinese film written and directed by Jia Zhangke and produced in the year 2004. “In thisarticle, I consider the film “The World” by the critically acclaimed young Mainland Chinese director Jia Zangke, to be useful for critical thinking about the challenges of globalization and modernity for China’s internal migrants, especially young women from the countryside, and the politics of their filmic representation,” (Gaetano, pp.1). The filming of the movie was in Theme Park in Beijing popularly known as the Beijing World Park that refabricates the world landmarks at cut-rate scales for tourists. The migrant worker has an alignment to the theme park employee in a since they both happen to be working in the park. The migrant worker does a construction job in the park where he builds structures while the theme employee works in a park where he is able to create and recreate landmarks. Their jobs have an alignment to each other since they work within the same vicinity even though their worlds are different. Therefore, the movie best explains a tantalizing situation in which people find themselves engraved in. “Whether in their jobs at World Park or as ladies of the evening, these women are ostensibly empowered through employment but actually are marginalized and victimized by a sexually commercialized society,” (Szeto, 2009, pp.102). The presentation of the life in an urbanized setting explains various atrocities that may occur to people. The critical and cultural appraisal of the movie brings out the shows how the presentation of the issues. Both the migrant worker and the theme employee experience exploitation according to the film as it tries to show how difficult it is working in a big city where one is a stranger without city life experience. The film portrays the modernization of China from its ancient cultural society to modern China through the migrants moving from the province to the city in search of jobs. “China’s modernization and economic growth have been rapid and far reaching even to the remote areas such as provincial city of Datong in northeast China,” (Szeto, 2009, pp.108). From the film, the province symbolizes the ancient cultural society while the city symbolizes the new or modern society of China. Even though at this point China has not attained maximum modernization, it is has an average attitude with a desire to modernize in the near future. The film has fundamental foundations of the reality of how people’s cultural beliefs and thoughts can affect modernization and urbanization. The characters try to negotiate on difficult it can be to embrace change and let go the traditional culture as the film portrays how its characters migrate into the city to look for jobs. This is what makes Tao herself a figure of great pathos. She does not have an understanding of the other woman’s tragedy but because locked inside this false world, Tao does not and suggests Mr. Jia, cannot see her. Therefore, the characters of the film are aware of the divide between the real world and the virtual world. In this case, Tao is able to understand that in the virtual world she is performing for the audience. This leads to the act of feigning an understanding towards Anna’s feelings despite the fact that they cannot speak the same language. Tao cannot speak Russian while Anna has no fluency for Chinese. Thus, in the imaginary world, Tao suggest that Mr. Jia cannot see her. In another incidence, Tao is upset from the fact she cannot be able to do more with her life in the artificial world. This happens after Tao finds a text from Qun to her boyfriend Taisheng saying that she finally got a visa to join her husband in France and that their relationship was destined. Social mobility is the movement of individuals or groups in a social position. The dictionary definition of social mobility is the ability of individuals or groups to move upward or downward in status based on wealth, occupation, education or some other social variable. On the other hand, Global mobility is the process through which a company or an organization prepares its employees to work in places outside their own countries. This applies to multinational or international corporations. Creating a more integrated global mobility program can seem as an overwhelming task. This is because of the implementation difficulties of many organizational changes for global mobility. The shift often relies on influencing other parts of the organization to buy into a change that potentiality increases global mobility’s visibility and role. The documentary, “The World,” shows that social and global mobility are ridiculous possibilities. “The consumption for mobility for mobility and female sexuality through popular music can interconnect with other critical themes in this and other films by Jia,” (Szeto, 2009, pp.103). This is because the characters are not able to move upwards in their social status as social mobility suggests. For instance, Tao, who is a performer at the world park, wants to do n interconnect with other more than perform but there is nothing that she can do to improve her social status. The movie displays how social mobility is ridiculous through Anna, the Russian performer, who thinks that the other job that can get her enough money is prostitution. Anna actually turns to prostitution in a bid to earn sufficient money to enable her see her sister and this serves a further validation that upwards social mobility is not easily achievable. In this case, the characters in this movie have low social mobility since they have low self-esteem. Global mobility is also a ridiculous possibility in the world since as we gather that since as China is heading into postmodernity that according to Fredric Jameson’s definition refers to what one has after the completion of the modernization process and nature disappears forever. From the film, the characters try hard to embrace change but they instead display the ills of globalization instead of being agents of promoting globalization. The film promotes global mobility but on the other hand, it is not easy to get it since it manifests itself through the replicas of certain international icons. The globalization level is also poor since the Russian performer Anna, does not know Chinese language hence she cannot communicate with her friend. Although there are facts that global mobility is ridiculous, china is a globalized country hence there are different types of people in Beijing. One of the characters displayed is Anna as she is a Russian who is living in China. Similarly, Qun’s husband migrated to France was later joined by Qun after a long time. “In ‘The World’ Qun’s husband migrates to France, but the trip is dangerous, and the details of his life in Paris though a mystery, clearly no longer promote the kind of France found in Conjugation. After years of separation, by the end of the film Liao Qun receives a visa to travel to France, but the France she will go to is far removed from the romantic France of the World Park,” (Bloom, 2009, pp.218-219). Qun was dressed like a Las Vegas version of the Hindu princess and insistently in a hilariously manner bellowing for a bandage, makes for a gaudy and shows a curiously poignant spectacle. The statement thus communicates that China experiences globalization since it represents the world and its different cultures within the film. “This is as the theme park itself represents global circulation through the display of iconic places such as the Eiffel tower, the Egyptian pyramids, and the Manhattan Twin towers. Globalization and its discontents form the molten core of the world as it is set in a sprawling Disney-like entertainment park in a Beijing suburb. Despite Beijing, being a city on its way to the achievement of full globalization, from the film it is apparent that it has not reached full global mobility. Although full globalization has not gained ground now, one cannot avoid it even though life in a globalized world seems to be full of fantasies. Indicators of full global mobility are still insufficient at this time though one can conclude that the city and the worker therein have a destiny to achieve this fete in the near future. The fantasy of global mobility is embodied and articulated in the films narrative and its production process,” (Chung, pp.93). Globalization has affected the Chinese tradition in numerous ways in the sense that it has encouraged modernization with China hence affecting the Chinese traditional culture. According to Hayot (2012, pp.85), “its analytic usefulness for the model of reading developed so far rests not only in the fortuitous, strongly allegorical title but also its thematic focus on the effects of globalization on the lives on migrant workers living in Beijing.” The film depicts that China is a society that is trying to reach outward beyond its national borders. The desire to breach national borders has brought modernization to China and hence its physiognomies such greed, money and sex in which different people have picked up in the name of modernization. In the film, Tao dresses in the western attire in order to be paid. The film also portrays the fact that modernization considers money as equal to human life- this is shown through the fact when the park worker (Chen Zhijun) dies and his parents come to the city, they are offered money to compensate the loss of their son. In the modern world, money is equal to anything hence the main reason as to why Qun is driven by Taisheng to a place known as Taiyuan to deal with her gambling brother. The current world does not see Tao for who she really is but they see her beauty and her performance. Matt kirk suggests that modernity has brought false aspects in the characters’ lives such as the false communication that happens through cell phones. In the film, Wei tries to teach her boyfriend the aspect of communication in a relation through the fact that she does not pick calls or even reply to messages. Compared to the modern world, we can say that people have embarked more on false communication since they only communicate through cell phones. The animated sequences in the film help to bring out the emotions of the characters since there is a problem of communication between them. In the film every time the main character (Tao) and her colleagues are in an emotional state, the director introduces the animated sequence to express their feelings. The animations helps in portraying the doleful sense of people separated from their families in a lonely environment of tenuous connections. According to Emma Powell, the purpose of the animated clips is to pull the viewer from the “false” reality of the film and to remind them that even the story and the characters are not real. The animated clips lead to the fatalistic finale where the viewer assumes that Tao and Taisheng are dead since the lights go off. The false communication through texts is the reason why Tao was hurt since she found a text from Qun to Taisheng and hence realizing that she has been cheated.in the beginning, she had not developed confidence in sacrificing her virginity. “From Taisheng’s perspective, on the other hand, Tao’s reluctance to sacrifice her virginity signifies her lack of confidence in Taisheng’s ability to be a good husband and provider, and thus fulfill key masculine responsibilities,” (Gaetano, pp.31). This led to her making her own conclusive decision without finding out what was really going on and decided to cut off their relationship. Being angry with Taisheng, is the reason why he came looking for her at Wei and Niu’s place where she was babysitting for them and where they presumably died. False communication is also evident in the film through Wei and Niu’s neighbor. They cannot realize that the young couples poisoned by a gas leak are in fact their friends and not the couple themselves. Thus, is a general assumption that through modernity, people have lost their real communication hence they cannot recognize one each other? In conclusion, Erin Palombi is right in his suggestion that the world is a false place as portrayed in the film. The characters of the film seem to be friendly and must work together but they do have constant misunderstandings and illusive relationships. This is symbolic through the two park dancers Niu and Wei in the documentary movie “The World.” The movie is a critique of the falseness of modern society in the Chinese urban culture. This world is where people are proud and amazed to be in as it is foreign to them. However, they soon realize it is not real since they are pretending to people they are not in reality. The fantasy world is not so different from our world today since people are leaving their rural areas and traditional cultures to move to the cities and modern society. Here, everyone pretends to be whom they are not just to be paid for it or for personal gain and recognition. From the film, the director, Jia Zhangke ‘s reason of writing the movie is to either appeal to a despairing humanism by showing individual lives crushed under the heel of globalization or to appease a more sentimental humanism by showing how in spite of everything, people adapt, muddle through and make the globalized world their home. “The film reflects the cultural ideal of the family as the heart of the nation and primary anchor of identity,” (Gaetano, pp.30). Works Cited Bloom, Michelle. “Modern Chinese Literature and Culture.” Foreign Language Publications Vol. 21, No 2 (2009): 198-245. Print. Chung, Hye Jean. “Media Heterotopia and Transitional Filmmaking: Mapping Real and Virtual Worlds.” 87-108: Print. Gaetano, Arianne. “Rural Woman and Modernity in Globalizing China: Seeing Jia Zhangke’s The World.” 25-36. Print. Hayot, Erick. “Cosmologies, Globalization and their Humans.” No 4 (2012): 87-108. Print. Szeto, Kin-Yan. “A Moist Heart: Love, Politics and China’s Neoliberal Transition in the films of Jia Zangke.” London: Routledge, 22 (2009): 95-107. Print. The World. Dir. Jia Zhangke. Per. Tao Zhao, Taisheng Chen, Jue Jing, Zhong-wei Jiang. Zeitgeist Films, 2006. DVD Read More