{"title":"Rewriting history, narrating nation: The great wall inSino-US co-productions in the new millennium","authors":"Su-ching Huang","doi":"10.1080/17508061.2020.1840234","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"Abstract This paper compares the representations of the Great Wall of China in three Sino-US co-produced films, Shadow Magic (西洋鏡, Ann Hu胡安, 2000), Dragon Blade (天降雄師, Daniel Lee李仁港, 2015), and The Great Wall (長城, Zhang Yimou張藝謀, 2016). Instead of seeing the Great Wall as a structure that demarcates clear boundaries, I read its film representations as symptoms of anxieties over the impossibilities of maintaining well-defined borderlines. All three films employ the image of the Great Wall to serve as a metonym for the Chinese nation. They tell the story of East-West encounters to construct their own versions of Chinese identity. As each film “narrates its nation,” it engages with recorded or imagined histories to construct an alternative historiography and reconstruct a new Chinese identity. Although all of the three films begin with references to historical facts, they all take liberties and embellish historical accounts with sensationalized fantasies of cross-cultural encounters. I read such rewriting of history as an expression of the People’s Republic of China’s official policy of advancing a nationalist agenda of global domination through soft power.","PeriodicalId":43535,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Chinese Cinemas","volume":"14 1","pages":"181 - 204"},"PeriodicalIF":0.4000,"publicationDate":"2020-11-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/17508061.2020.1840234","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Journal of Chinese Cinemas","FirstCategoryId":"1085","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1080/17508061.2020.1840234","RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"0","JCRName":"FILM, RADIO, TELEVISION","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
Abstract This paper compares the representations of the Great Wall of China in three Sino-US co-produced films, Shadow Magic (西洋鏡, Ann Hu胡安, 2000), Dragon Blade (天降雄師, Daniel Lee李仁港, 2015), and The Great Wall (長城, Zhang Yimou張藝謀, 2016). Instead of seeing the Great Wall as a structure that demarcates clear boundaries, I read its film representations as symptoms of anxieties over the impossibilities of maintaining well-defined borderlines. All three films employ the image of the Great Wall to serve as a metonym for the Chinese nation. They tell the story of East-West encounters to construct their own versions of Chinese identity. As each film “narrates its nation,” it engages with recorded or imagined histories to construct an alternative historiography and reconstruct a new Chinese identity. Although all of the three films begin with references to historical facts, they all take liberties and embellish historical accounts with sensationalized fantasies of cross-cultural encounters. I read such rewriting of history as an expression of the People’s Republic of China’s official policy of advancing a nationalist agenda of global domination through soft power.