Arnhilt Johanna Hoefle
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- May 2018
- ISBN:
- 9780824872083
- eISBN:
- 9780824876852
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Hawai'i Press
- DOI:
- 10.21313/hawaii/9780824872083.003.0005
- Subject:
- Literature, World Literature
Zweig’s female protagonists have become famous in China as the “Zweig-style female figures” (Ciweige shi de nüxing xingxiang). Chapter Five asks what role the portrayal of femininity has played in ...
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Zweig’s female protagonists have become famous in China as the “Zweig-style female figures” (Ciweige shi de nüxing xingxiang). Chapter Five asks what role the portrayal of femininity has played in Zweig’s poetics and their reception in post-Mao China. Employing a longstanding rhetoric that correlates the status of society and the status of women, Chinese critics argued that the depiction of suffering, emotional, and self-sacrificing female figures was the most powerful tool in Zweig’s critique of bourgeois society. Similar to female Chinese writers of the 1980s, such as Zhang Jie, feminist intellectuals thus started to return to a seemingly anachronistic concept of femininity. In this way, however, they were able to express their rejection of the Maoist gender policy and its promotion of gender sameness, thus also supporting a new regime that was eager to distance itself from its Maoist past. A discussion of how Zweig’s “women novellas” also crossed the Taiwan Strait and served the leadership under Deng Xiaoping in its new “peaceful” strategy to promote reunification concludes the chapter.Less
Zweig’s female protagonists have become famous in China as the “Zweig-style female figures” (Ciweige shi de nüxing xingxiang). Chapter Five asks what role the portrayal of femininity has played in Zweig’s poetics and their reception in post-Mao China. Employing a longstanding rhetoric that correlates the status of society and the status of women, Chinese critics argued that the depiction of suffering, emotional, and self-sacrificing female figures was the most powerful tool in Zweig’s critique of bourgeois society. Similar to female Chinese writers of the 1980s, such as Zhang Jie, feminist intellectuals thus started to return to a seemingly anachronistic concept of femininity. In this way, however, they were able to express their rejection of the Maoist gender policy and its promotion of gender sameness, thus also supporting a new regime that was eager to distance itself from its Maoist past. A discussion of how Zweig’s “women novellas” also crossed the Taiwan Strait and served the leadership under Deng Xiaoping in its new “peaceful” strategy to promote reunification concludes the chapter.
Xiaoping Lin
- Published in print:
- 2009
- Published Online:
- November 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780824833367
- eISBN:
- 9780824870607
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Hawai'i Press
- DOI:
- 10.21313/hawaii/9780824833367.003.0007
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Asian Studies
This chapter examines Jia Zhangke’s “home” trilogy: Xiao Shan Going Home (1995), Xiao Wu (1997), and Platform (2000), which take a symbolic man’s journey across a ruined post-Mao China. The first ...
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This chapter examines Jia Zhangke’s “home” trilogy: Xiao Shan Going Home (1995), Xiao Wu (1997), and Platform (2000), which take a symbolic man’s journey across a ruined post-Mao China. The first shot of Xiao Shan Going Home is a wood block print that depicts a young man facing Mao’s portrait on Tiananmen, and in this print, the late chairman appears like a ghostly father figure to the bewildered youth. In an introductory sequence of Xiao Wu, however, the wandering protagonist’s theft on a bus is intercut with Mao’s portrait hanging at the driver’s seat. Here the irony is quite clear: without Mao’s guidance, the country has turned pathetically “lawless,” especially for the lost young generation that concerns the Sixth Generation directors. In a similar fashion, Platform begins with a stage performance titled A Train Traveling toward Shaoshan, meaning a pilgrimage to Mao’s birthplace.Less
This chapter examines Jia Zhangke’s “home” trilogy: Xiao Shan Going Home (1995), Xiao Wu (1997), and Platform (2000), which take a symbolic man’s journey across a ruined post-Mao China. The first shot of Xiao Shan Going Home is a wood block print that depicts a young man facing Mao’s portrait on Tiananmen, and in this print, the late chairman appears like a ghostly father figure to the bewildered youth. In an introductory sequence of Xiao Wu, however, the wandering protagonist’s theft on a bus is intercut with Mao’s portrait hanging at the driver’s seat. Here the irony is quite clear: without Mao’s guidance, the country has turned pathetically “lawless,” especially for the lost young generation that concerns the Sixth Generation directors. In a similar fashion, Platform begins with a stage performance titled A Train Traveling toward Shaoshan, meaning a pilgrimage to Mao’s birthplace.
