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35
For a critical examination of the
connotation of being “banned” or
“underground,” see Jaffee 2004.
36
Some changes explicit in the new
regulations by the State Administration
of Radio, Film, and Television (SARFT)
include encouraging private and
overseas investment and submission of
a script outline instead of a full script to
get a shooting license. For details, see
Zhu 2004 and Jaffee 2004.
directors are often maligned for their strategic self-orientalism, with
China being “exoticized, eroticized, or politicized to create visual effects
for the international community” (Lu 2001: 20). The young generation of
Jia Zhangke and others face similar criticism. For the critics such as Zhang
Xiaobei, the use of local languages, together with marketable, attractive
phrases such as “banned” or “underground,” seems more a tactical decision
than an aesthetic choice or a political gesture. 35
In the context of relaxed censorship brought by reforms in China’s
film industry since 2004, 36 increasing numbers of young underground
filmmakers are able to work within the mainstream system. As Jason
McGrath observes, they are encountering a double predicament: “in
order to have any significant audience, they must successfully move either
towards the international art cinema market, in which case they may be
accused of pandering to foreigners, or towards the Chinese studio system,
in which case they risk accusations of caving in to the authorities or to
the mainstream audience” (McGrath 2006, forthcoming). Nevertheless,
local languages continue to be employed in some new aboveground films
despite the national language law promoting Putonghua in the media,
therefore symbolizing “an unsettled vision of China’s culture” (Gunn
2005: 203). Jia Zhangke’s first approved film, Shijie (The world, 2004),
on migrants’ failure to integrate into the seemingly easy-access global
culture, continues his hybrid linguistic style by blending Shanxi Mandarin,
Henan Mandarin, Wenzhou Wu, Putonghua Mandarin, and even Russian.
Gu Changwei’s debut feature Kongque (The peacock, 2004), in Henan
Anyang Mandarin, is a drama about the unfulfilled dreams of small-town
youth in the late 1970s and 1980s. Li Yu’s melodrama Hongyan (Dam street,
2005), in Sichuan Mandarin, deals with an Oedipal relationship between a
Sichuan opera performer and her son. These movies share an overlapping
trend with certain earlier studio productions in local languages, such as
Lu Chuan’s Xun qiang (Missing gun, 2002), in Guizhou Mandarin, Yang
Yazhou’s Meili de dajiao (Pretty big feet, 2001), in Shaanxi Mandarin, and
196 • The Rhetoric of Local Languages
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