FILM 279 (Aesthetics and Politics / Archive film and fabricated cinema)

Keru Chen

Professor Yuriko Furuhata, Alanna Thain

Film 279

17 April 2015

Aesthetics and Politics

Having lived through the turmoil of the Cultural Revolution, the Fifth Generation Chinese filmmakers brings along a skeptical view towards patriarchal authority (lecture, March 18). Zhang Yimou’s work, Raise the Red Lantern, represents filmmaking in this period which reflects on polygyny politics. In terms of aesthetics, many aspects of the mise-en-scene, especially the rigid framing of monumental architecture, amplifies the theme of patriarchal gender politics which permeates throughout the film. To clarify what I mean by mise-en-scene, I will focus mainly on the elements of actors, costumes, and most importantly, setting that can be interpreted in the concept of disciplinary society. However, these elements of the mise-en-scene also paradoxically undermine the ostensive gender politics by creating a sense of “exhibitionism.” This construction of the exhibition of gender politics becomes very powerful as it provokes the active role of the spectators.

Raise the Red Lantern is a stunning example of mise-en-scene techniques. Mise-en-scene literally means to “put into the scene”. It refers to all the detailed aspects that characterize the space being filmed. Raise the Red Lantern presents predominantly the wide spectacle of monumental architectures, with a special emphasis on mutually-inclusive frames. Such shots amplify the theme of patriarchal power, intertwined with themes of inevitability and solitary. As a closed space, this architectural layout strides beyond the notion of rebellion being a disciplinary system forced into women’s body. This production of a docile body resembles the prison model in the concepts of disciplinary society promoted by Foucault.

In addition, the scene in which Songlian enters his husband’s massive home as his forth wife resembles a prison model; the sheer size of her new home signifies discipline. We do not get to see the entirety of the husband’s house, yet we get to see the wives’ rooms, which can all qualify as an individual mansion on their own. Deleuze narrates Foucault’s idea of a disciplinary society in this way: “They (disciplinary societies) initiate the organization of vast spaces of enclosure. The individual never ceases passing from one closed environment to another, each having its own laws (Gilles Deleuze, 387).” These enclosed spaces, organized along the model of the analog, in a macro-level, characterize the collective confinement in a society of discipline. When we look at this model at the micro-level, it dictates how closed environment extracts forces from the body to produce specific ends. Assembly lines make workers more efficient, classrooms are designed to modify student behavior by making small talk uncomfortable; prisons build in its inmates a need for self-surveillance to make them docile (lecture, March 18 ). Together with the film’s fabricated traditions, the architecture resembles this subconscious build-up of self-surveillance, which is meant to foster “acceptable” behavior in women. This continuous interaction between the human body and the setting becomes quite important in this model.

Color also amplifies gender policy. The film’s grey undertone implies the weakness of the female sex in the presence of powerful men, while bright, discordant red lanterns symbolizes the defiance of the female characters against this form of oppression. This defiance is demonstrated with a frenetic model of “exhibitionism”. To correlate mise-en-scene with “exhibitionism”:

“(this film) can be described as constituting a new kind of ethnography. The first element… is that it presents the results of its research in form not of book or museum exhibits but of cinema… The second elements of the newness of Zhang’s ethnography: the use of things, characters and narratives not for themselves but for their collective, hallucinatory signification of ‘ethnicity’ ” (Rey Chow, 407).

In defiance towards this signification, the storyline is excessively melodramatized with absurd rituals and customs. The film’s grey tone also appeals to audience by its contrast to bright colors. In the exhibitionist model, bright colors such as red function as opponents against the bondage of architecture. For example, when the maid Yan’er was publicly shamed for lighting red lanterns exclusively meant for wives, instead of apologizing, she kneeled down to watch lanterns burn. This scene not only depicts an image being watched, but also contrasts white snow in the background with the lanterns’ red glow. This appeal and contrast share a co-function on destabilizing the gender policy.

In Raise the Red Lantern, the greyness of the architecture and brightness of lanterns both amplify and protest the oppression of women by its direct dialogue with the audience. Taken together, we can conclude that the cinematic techniques listed above mainly serves to amplify the topic of gender politics, at the same time, destabilize it. (Word count 752)

Works cited

Rey Chow, “The Force of Surfaces: Defiance in Zhang Yimou’s Films”, Primitive Passions: Visuality, Sexuality, Ethnography, and Contemporary Chinese Cinema, New York: Colombia UP, 142-172

Gilles Deleuze, "Postscript on the Societies of Control", OCTOBER 59, Winter 1992, MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, pp.3-7.

Raise the Red Lantern (Zhang Yimou, 1991, China, 125 min)

Lecture on March 18

Archive film and fabricated cinema

Photography is seen as a type of “proto-cinema—” for example, Etienne Jules-Marey’s Chronophotography of a running horse. It is originally used in the scientific study of movement (Lecture, January 7). Cinema has a long history as scientific tool. Due to its objectivity and authenticity, cinema is regarded as a reliable visual document of historical events. One example of this early documentary I choose is the Nanook of the north. However, with the advent of digital era, this truthiness and authenticity have been increasingly questioned. This skeptical rethinking of documentary gave birth to the genre of documentaries. Another film I chose is a Ciné-Essay film that synthesis documentary film and avant-garde practices - Sans Soleil. The focus is no longer on the surface physical reality, but on a third reality manifested through a detour of fictional techniques. In my essay, I will elaborate on these two documentary films: Nanook of the North by Robert Flaherty and Sans Soleil by Christ Marker. I will exam how these two films negotiate with three aspects of cinema in the prospective of taxidermy and indexicality, objectivity and subjectivity, romantic ethnography and resistant art. And how, in third approach, they both explore the unconsciousness and sharing the same reality.

To exam cinema in term of archiving of sounds and images, we will notice a disposition of emphasis from taxidermy to indexicality from Nanook of the North to Sans Soleil. In the age of colonial expansion and institutions knowledge establishment, the early colonial travelogues function as a tool to bring foreign land back home (lecture, January 14). Flaherty, the director of Nanook, as the “participant observer “, is also explorer with desire to collect, archive and exhibit the vanishing race. As an archival medium, this documentary preserved the primitive body and life of the Eskimo. As Rony put it: “Taxidermy seeks to make that which is dead look as if it were still living.”(Fatimah Tobing Rony,, 28) This impact of taxidermy is that it restored life to the dead and this is the room for the sense of truthiness. In addition, it is these colonial discourses of the “vanishing” race which justify the filmmaking. In contrast, Sans Soleil places more emphasis on indexicality. By this I mean, postmodern documentary is not much about preserving the dead, rather, it is all about the use of cliché to be self-reflexive about this taxidermy and the truth it reflects. The film uses documentary techniques such as montage, voice-over, and shaking footage to manipulate and construct a sense of archiving the reality.

Cinema as a historical archive is also used as testimony of historical events. This reflects its nature of objectivity in early documentary. Although early documentary claim to present the authentic objectivity and the pure observation, the production of certain knowledge after editing and performing of the natives is more or less fabricated. Due to the temporality of “the ethnographic present”, the culture of otherness is put outside the history. Later documentaries share this weakening of historicity, continue function as an account of the historical events. The truthiness of documentaries is continuously being questioned. In Sans Soleil, the film is arranged subjectively according the personal view of the director. This category of documentaries gives the audience access to the truth that is excluded from the grand narratives. In recording the events, narration is added. However, rather than interpret the subject and tell you what to think, this voice-over promotes a contingent truth as the person who didn’t write the narrative narrates the scripture. This fragment of truth provoke spectator to extract the truth without verifying.

The approach linking early documentaries with the later documentaries as a fabricated reality that reworks captured images of the world. Both Nanook and Sans Soleil explore this layer of sub-consciousness. In this layer of sub-consciousness, as James put it, “Below (psychologically) and beyond (geographically) ordinary reality there existed another reality. Surrealism shared this ironic situation with relativist ethnography” (James Clifford, 121) By definition, ethnography aims to render the unfamiliar comprehensible and knowable, while surrealism aims to make the familiar strange and surprising. Although Sans Soleil is categorized as a documentary, but its postmodernism feature of genre blending make it surrealism. Nanook and Sans Soleil both try to rely on this third reality. The former one is an example of romantic ethnography. The Eskimo were made into the mirror image of the explorers. They are depicted as superhuman while in reality the Eskimo was actually treated as “subhuman” (lecture). The later one mixes high culture with everyday, produce a hyper-reality to alienate this everydayness. To expand on the idea that early document addresses a struggle to use documentary technique to produce certain knowledge. The aim is to communicate and inform the audience. In contrast, Sans Soleil does not communicate—instead it produces “nonsense”. This is an act of resistance through the disjunction between sound and image.

To sum up, in terms of archiving cinema, two documentaries emphasize taxidermy and indexicality respectively; in terms of cinema as event testimony, the events are constructed with objectivity and subjectivity. Both exploring the unconsciousness to depict a third reality, this romantic ethnography and the resistant art making the connection.

Works cited

Fatimah Tobing Rony, “Taxidermy and Romantic Ethnography,” The Third Eye, 99-126.

James Clifford, “On Ethnographic Surrealism,” The Predicament of Culture: TwentiethCentury

Ethnography, Literature, and Art (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1988), 117-151.

Nanook of the North (Robert Flaherty, 1922, 79min)