Monday, July 26, 2010

Hero: An example of preserving culture or homogenizing it?

In his epic martial arts film Hero (2002), Zhang Yimou utilizes a broad variety of lush colors to paint a portrait of Chinese culture and history. Set at the tail end of the Warring States Period (c. 475 BCE – 221 BCE), Hero begins with intimidating scenes of the palace and of the various cleansing rites the protagonist Nameless must undergo before being received at the court of the Qin king, who becomes the future emperor of united China, otherwise known as the Qin Shihuangdi (the First August Emperor). Such extravagance calls to attention the large-scale nature of the film, with hundreds upon hundreds of officials lining the courtyard of the palace. The very scale of production gives the film a glossy, almost Hollywood-ized feel, but it is contrasted with flashes of an ancient Chinese culture that is likely quite foreign for the Western viewer.

The film is told in the provocative style of a frame-story, with Nameless and the King trading vastly different renditions of the same basic events. This calls attention to China’s long history of oral tradition, an interesting paradox of using such a visual media as film to portray an oratory custom. The style of narrative also emphasizes the theme of reality versus representation. In its very essence, the basic situation is that Nameless has somehow acquired the weapons of three famed assassins, which thus enables him to come within ten paces of the king. What makes all the difference however, is the “how” this comes about. Nameless and the Qin king’s exchange shows the dubious nature of “reality,” that it can be constructed and reconstructed in any number of ways without changing the core nature of the situation.

The film makes several interesting commentaries on the nature of Chinese culture. During the scene in which the Qin’s artillery rains down arrows on the calligraphy school, the old servant rebukes the students for their anxious flurry. Rather, he calls them to stand their ground, saying: “You must remember! Strong as the arrows Of Qin may be; though they will shatter our cities and destroy our nation, they shall never extinguish Zhao's written word. Today, I shall teach you the true spirit of our culture! ” In light of history, this statement is heavily ironic. Historically, Qin goes on to dominate all the other states to create a unified China. One of the reforms that the Qin emperor employs to ensure the unity of an as-of-then fractured China is that of a unified writing system. There is something rather ironic about the notion that cultural synthesis in a necessary facet to creating a new unified China.

The very process of making this film proves to be another instance of homogenization of culture, only this time it is through the instrument of commercialization rather than totalitarianism. Just as the Qin emperor implemented a unified language system, so too have the demands of popular culture and entertainment demanded the display of a synthesized Chinese culture. Similar to Ang Lee’s Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, many of the actors and actresses of Hero are not native Mandarin speakers (e.g. Jet Li, Tony Leung, Maggie Cheung, Donnie Yen) but for the sake of entertainment, it is necessary to create a false sense of unification of culture. This holds especially true for movies such as Hero which are directed partly—if not mostly—toward a Western audience. It would be easier for non-Chinese audiences to accept and internalize, over the course of a two or three hour film, a simplified and synthesized Chinese culture than to have to face the vast multitude of cultural variety that is actually present in China.

This is where Hero both finds itself catering to Western audiences while also revealing aspects of Chinese culture that are not the conventional “Chinese” that people may think of. Zhang satisfies the Western desire for sensationalism with its extended martial arts scenes, which style, while not quite as art-like as those found in Hidden Dragon, nonetheless are not at all like conventional martial arts dramas. Indeed, perhaps after the sensation that was The Matrix, no movie using martial arts can escape the shadow of imitating it some way, especially the extravagantly dramatic flares and sudden slow-motion scenes. At the same time, the music that sometimes plays in the background—especially that during the fighting scenes in which a man is heard dramatically yelling in operatic form—is perhaps a little too Chinese to appeal to Western sensibilities.

Of course, any review of Hero would be complete without a mention of the proliferate use of color in the film. Each section of the narrative is marked using a different color, which on one hand makes it easier to follow the story, but also transforms Hero from a normal martial arts epic to something rather fantastical. It gives the narrative a storybook quality that makes the film more fairy-tale than realistic. Indeed, were it not for the setting in the Qin court, it could have easily been an epic fantasy rather than an adaptation of a historical story.

In short, Hero provides an interesting contrast in utilizing Western techniques and scales of production while touching on issues of cultural homogenization by nation-state unification. Ultimately, the question that must be kept in mind is this: to what degree is it necessary to sacrifice aspects of cultural diversification for the sake of national unity? Undoubtedly, as growth rate of the minority population continues to exceed that of the dominating Han population, this question will grow increasingly important and difficult to answer.

2 comments:

  1. Jesslyn,

    Your final question about degrees of sacrifice for the sake of unity is very interesting and was definitely something i picked up from the film.

    Dealing with minorities within China will undoubtedly be a huge problem in the near future. However, if China continues to grow economically, I believe the government will care very little. The Chinese government's number one priority is just to become a huge economic power house. It will ignore/silence anything that remotely deters this agenda. The only way i see minority issues surfacing is through international pressure - human rights activists.

    Sucks. :(

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  2. Yeah, sad, but true. Despite comprising approximately 10% of the total population in China, the minority presence lacks any sense of (ironically) unity across the other 55 ethnic groups to make any real noise (save Tibet, which as you pointed out, benefits from the notice international powers). I just wonder how big of a difference it will make in terms of policy-making (if any) since members of minority groups are not subject to the one-child policy and therefore the rate of population growth is higher amongst them than the dominant Han group. Furthermore, I think that there is a growing sense of pride in being a part of a minority group (e.g. reclaiming Manchu identity in recent years) that was absent before. I think that this will be interesting to track, not so much politically, but in terms of China's cultural make-up in years to come.

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