Abstract
This chapter examines how two contemporary Chinese films, The Sun Also Rises and Hello Mr. Tree! represent history, trauma and marginality. While adopting the Chinese magical realist tradition inspired by Latin American magical realist writings and pioneered by Mo Yan, these films innovate by translating the magical realist aesthetic into cinematic language. Informed by theories of magical realism, the essay focuses on the complicated representational issues embedded in magical realist cinematic code. It argues that, despite the limited number of Chinese films foregrounding magical realism, these efforts contribute to an understanding of China’s post-socialist/post-revolutionary conditions in the global modernity. In addition, these films provide a fresh global perspective on magical realism itself.
The author wishes to thank Bob Benedetti for his valuable suggestions and careful reading of this article.
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Notes
- 1.
The four short stories included in this issue: “Los funerales de la Mamá Grande” [“Big Mama’s Funeral”], “En este pueblo no hay ladrones” [“No Thieves in This Town)”], “La siesta del martes” [“Tuesday’s Siesta”], and “Rosas artificiales” [“Artificial Roses”], translated by Zhou Ziqin, Liu Ying, and Liu Xiliang. Foreign Literature and Art, No. 3, 1980.
- 2.
The introduction/translation of Latin American literature between 1949–1965 (before the Cultural Revolution) focused on anti-American and anticolonial writers like Pablo Neruda, Miguel Angel Asturias, Jorge Amado, José Mancisidor, Agustin Cuzzani, Mariano Azuela, and others. The onset of the Cultural Revolution stopped the introduction of Latin American literature until the early 1980s. For details, see “The Translation and Publication of Latin American Literature in China for the Past Hundred Years” by Xiaomei Zhao in Studies on Publication and Distribution, Vol. 5, 2016, pp. 102–105.
- 3.
Other typical Chinese magical realist works include those by Han Shaogong, Jia Pingwa, Chen Zhongshi, Zhang Wei, and Zhaxidawa (Tashi Dawa, a Tibetan writer).
Tang Xi and Wu Shuni’s article, “On Dissemination and Influences of Latin American Postmodernist Literature in China,” (Journal of Lanzhou Institute of Education, Vol. 31, No. 8, August 2015) discusses how magical realist techniques have profoundly influenced Chinese writers such as Mo Yan, Su Tong, Chen Zhongshi and Zhou Daxin. Interestingly, the opening sentence in One Hundred Years of Solitude (“Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendia was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice.”) is often imitated in their family sagas. The quotation is from One Hundred Years of Solitude, translated by Gregory Rabassa, New York: HarperCollins Publishers Inc., 2003, p. 1.
Other studies in English on Chinese writers influenced by magical realism include: Mo Yan in Context: Nobel Laureate and Global Storyteller, “Memory or Fantasy? ‘Honggaoliang’s Narrator by G. Andrew Stuckey (Modern Chinese Literature and Culture, Vol. 18, No. 2, fall, 2006, pp. 131–162); “Gendered narrative of suffering in Mo Yan’s Big Breasts and Wide Hips” by Lanlan Du (Neohelicon, 43, 2016, pp. 26–44); Anne Wedell-Wedellsborg’s “Haunted Fiction: Modern Chinese Literature and the Supernatural,” in The International Fiction Review, 32, 2005, pp. 21–31; Vivian Lee’s “Cultural Lexicology: ‘Maqiao Dictionary’ by Han Shaogong,” in Modern Chinese Literature and Culture, Vol. 14, No. 1, spring 2002, pp. 145–177; Jie Lu’s Dismantling Time: Chinese Literature in the Age of Globalization, Marshall Cavendish, 2005 (for Zhang Wei’s magical realist writings); Franz Xaver Erhard’s “Magical Realism and Tibetan Literature,” in Contemporary Tibetan Literary Studies: PIATS 2003: Tibetan Studies: Proceedings of the Tenth Seminar of the International Association for Tibetan Studies, pp. 133–146; Yiyan Wang’s “The Politics of Representing Tibet: Alai’s Tibetan Native-Place Stories” in Modern Chinese Literature and Culture, Vol. 25, No. 1, spring, 2013, pp. 96–130.
- 4.
Jiang Wen (1963-) is the Chinese film director of In the Heat of the Sun (1994), Devils on the Doorstep (2000), New York, I Love You (2007), Let the Bullets Fly (2010), Gone with the Bullets (2014), and Hidden Man (2018). He started his film career as an actor and has starred and acted in numerous films and television dramas.
Han Jie (1977-), the Chinese film director of Walking on the Wild Side (2006), Namiya (2017), and Unserious Hero (2018).
- 5.
Jameson’s discussion of magic[al] realism does not provide a systematic theorization but is based on his analysis of three films: Agnieszka Holland’s Goraczka [Fever, Poland, 1981], Francisco Norden’s Cóndores no entierran todos los días [A Man of Principle, Colombia, 1984], and Jacobo Penzo’s La casa de agua [The House of Water, Venezuela, 1982].
- 6.
This is a Deleuz’ term discussed in Aldea (33).
- 7.
During the Cultural Revolution, no dramas, operas, or ballets could take place in theaters, except for so-called eight-model dramas approved by Jiang Qing, Mao’s wife, who controlled literary/art circles. The Legend of the Red Lantern, a Beijing opera, was one of them. Li Tiemei simultaneously represented the popular images of the iron woman and of the “super girl” idol.
- 8.
Although this film shares some features from Cinema Novo, there has been no critical discussion on the influence of Brazil’s Cinema Novo on Chinese films. Brazilian films were introduced to Chinese audiences via film festivals recently. For instance, eight Brazilian films were shown in the Beijing Film Festival in April 2015; the Brazilian Film Exhibition was held in six Chinese cities and featured sixteen films in November 2019.
- 9.
The crime of hooliganism, based on Baidu Encyclopedia, first established in 1979, refers to a wide range of acts: fighting, trouble making, harassing women, molesting children, and destroying public property. It was revoked as a crime in 1997 (https://baike.baidu.com/item/流氓罪/8436043?fr=aladdin). Accessed 20 March 2020.
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Lu, J. (2020). Representing History, Trauma and Marginality in Chinese Magical Realist Films. In: Lu, J., Camps, M. (eds) Transpacific Literary and Cultural Connections. Historical and Cultural Interconnections between Latin America and Asia. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-55773-7_9
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