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Figure 1: Wang Hongwei playing a migrant worker Xiao Shan in Xiao Shan Going Home
(1995)
the one hand, this is at odds with the director’s desire for cinematic
verisimilitude. (The implications of this are considered further in my
discussion of Platform.) On the other hand, the disregard to the appropriate
and realistic use of dialects may indicate, to some degree, that the use
of local languages is aimed more at creating an atmosphere than at
conveying a particular message or speech. Following production of the
documentary Gonggong changsuo (In public, 2001), set and shot in Datong,
Jia Zhangke (2003a: 4) made a deliberate decision not to use subtitles: “The
audiences do not have to know what the character is exactly saying. His
voice is part of the environment. What matters is not his words, but his
7
Except as noted, all translations from
primary sources are mine.
behavior and mannerisms.” 7 In Xiao Shan Going Home, Jia himself plays
one of Xiao Shan’s Henan townsmen, and in a gathering he unleashes a
torrent of filthy language in his own Shanxi Fenyang Mandarin, which is
168 • The Rhetoric of Local Languages
MCLC 18.2.indd 168
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