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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 MCLC 18.2.indd 196 12/20/06 2:01:40 PM
Wang Guangli’s Heng shu heng (Go for broke, 2001), in Shanghai Wu: local languages, spoken by protagonists scattered in the obscure corners of the country, continue the aesthetic of the marginal and the unassimilated. Through the lens of local languages, China as represented in film consists of fragmented subcultures, no longer reducible to a unified and coherent national culture. Modern Chinese Literature and Culture • 197 MCLC 18.2.indd 197 12/20/06 2:01:40 PM
Page 1 and 2: The Rhetoric of Local Languages as
Page 3 and 4: languages provide unexpected, unpre
Page 5 and 6: living in small towns. Integral to
Page 7 and 8: unintelligible even to a Shanxi aud
Page 9 and 10: According to Wang, “the microphon
Page 11 and 12: Figure 5: Xiao Wu (played by Wang H
Page 13 and 14: with the diegetic silence of the pr
Page 15 and 16: Figure 7: The pair Zhang Jun (playe
Page 17 and 18: If linguistic unity can be achieved
Page 19 and 20: that the protagonists’ hybridized
Page 21 and 22: native Taiyuan Mandarin even though
Page 23 and 24: Figure 11: Xiao Ji watches news cov
Page 25 and 26: Figure 13: Qiao Qiao demonstrates t
Page 27 and 28: Figure 14: The closing scene in Pla
Page 29 and 30: Here, subaltern theory may be helpf
Page 31 and 32: to professional formulas. Zhu Wen,
Page 33: script suggest that the story is se
Page 37 and 38: Haixian 海鲜 (Seafood). Dir. Zhu
Page 39 and 40: Dai, Jinhua. 2002. “A Scene in th
Page 41 and 42: Lee, Kevin. 2003. “Jia Zhangke.
Page 43 and 44: 指南 (Filmmaking guide for under
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