Abstract
This essay explores performance-based relationships between historical events taking place in the PRC’s most-southernly island of Hainan and the Mao-era propaganda film, The Red Detachment of Women. It begins by examining historical orientalizing constructions of Hainan as an exotic and feminine Other by dominant discourses within mainland China. The Red Detachment of Women can be viewed in that light as a dissembling of historical facts that projects masculinist party control over the island ideologically and in terms of patriarchal inequality that remains relevant to political circumstances in contemporary China.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Similar content being viewed by others
Notes
- 1.
Chou notes multiple scenes in which the ballet is used as a reason for betrayal within a family, and then reunion and reconciliation. In its use as a mode of reconciliation, a scene in the ballet is adjusted so that a once-unfilial daughter bows to her parents, whereas in the ballet, the dancer was bowing to her political commissar.
- 2.
For a recent and excellent exploration of the ballet within the context of dance, aesthetics, and Chinese socialism, see Wilcox (2018).
- 3.
The other framing mechanisms of Harrell’s analysis portray marginal peoples as relics of the ancient past, or alternatively as children to be disciplined and educated. These modes are all relevant to American frontier studies and popular perceptions throughout history as well, not to mention Australia and other regions.
- 4.
In some versions, Wu Qinghua is Wu Qionghua, which is significant because “Qiong 琼” is another word for Hainan.
- 5.
This scene is in most versions of Red Detachment in some form, with more explicit messages of course in the Beijing opera and written versions. This text is taken from the 1972 Beijing opera version, directed by Feng Zhixiao. It is also featured in a slightly different version in the script of the ballet: China Ballet Troupe, eds. Red Detachment of Women: A Modern Revolutionary Ballet. Peking (Beijing): Foreign Language Press, 1972 [1970].
- 6.
I thank Paul Pickowicz for his careful study of hundreds of Cultural Revolution posters and sharing his conclusions such as this one about depictions of Mao as a fair-skinned intellectual among the deeply-tanned peasants.
References
China Ballet Troupe. (eds.).1972 [1970]. Red Detachment of Women: A Modern Revolutionary Ballet. Peking, Beijing: Foreign Language Press.
Chou, Eva Shan. 2015–16. China Is Near. Ballet Review 43 (4): 56–59.
———. 2008. Performing Gender in Maoist Ballet: Mutual Subversions of Genre and Ideology. In The Red Detachment of Women.’ Intersections: Gender and Sexuality in Asia and the Pacific, March 16.
———. 2015. Reconfiguring Red: Class Discourse in the New Millennium TV Adaptation of “The Red Detachment of Women.” China Perspectives 2 (102): 25–31.
———. 2015. In Zhang Yimou’s “Coming Home” History is Muted But Not Silent. China File, October 2.
Csete, Anne. 2006. Ethnicity, Conflict, and the State in the Early to Mid-Qing: The Hainan Highlands, 1644–1800. In Empire at the Margins: Culture, Ethnicity, and Frontier in Early Modern China, ed. Pamela Kyle Crossley, Helen F. Siu, and Donald S. Sutton, 229–254. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Finnane, A. 2017. The Red Detachment of Women Marches Forward—But to Where? The Conversation, February 16. http://theconversation.com/the-red-detachment-of-women-marches-forward-but-to-where-73124. Accessed 20 Oct 2019.
Gittings, John. 1967. The Role of the Chinese Army. London: Oxford University Press.
Hainan baikequanshu bianzuan weiyuanhui 海南百科全书编纂委员会 [Committee of compilers of the Hainan encyclopedia] (eds.). 1999. Hainan baikequanshu 海南百科全书[Hainan encyclopedia]. Beijing: Zhongguo da baikequanshu chubanshe.
Harrell, Stevan. 1995. Cultural Encounters on China’s Ethnic Frontiers. Seattle: University of Washington Press.
Ho, Chi-yu. 1977. The Red Detachment of Women: Volume Two, Supplementary Reading Series for Intermediate Chinese Reader. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
Hongse niangzi jun 红色娘子军京剧 [Red Detachment of Women]. 1972. Directed by Feng Zhixiao 冯志孝 [Beijing opera film]. Beijing: Chinese People’s Liberation Army August 1 Productions.
Liu, W. 1957. Hongse niangzi jun 红色娘子军 [The Red Detachment of Women]. Jiefangjun wenyi 解放军文艺[People’s Liberation Army Literature and Art] 8: 13–23.
McDougall, Bonnie S., and Kam Louie. 1997. The Literature of China in the Twentieth Century. New York, NY: Columbia University Press.
Murray, Jeremy A. 2017. China’s Lonely Revolution: The Local Communist Movement of Hainan Island, 1926–1956. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press.
Peng, Chengwan 彭程萬. 1920. Diaocha Qiongya shiye baogao shu 调查琼崖实业报告书[A Report on the Investigation of the Industry and Commerce of Hainan]. Haikou: Hainan shuju.
Roberts, Rosemary A. 2010. Maoist Model Theater: The Semiotics of Gender and Sexuality in the Chinese Cultural Revolution (1966–1976). Leiden: Brill.
Said, Edward. 1979. Orientalism. New York: Vintage.
Schafer, Edward H. 1970. Shore of Pearls: Hainan Island in Early Times. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Snow, Edgar. 1968. [1938]. Red Star Over China: The Classic Account of the Birth of Chinese Communism. New York: Grove Press [Random House].
Shirk, Susan L. 2008. China: Fragile Superpower. New York: Oxford University Press.
The Story of the Modern Ballet. 1973. The Red Detachment of Women. Peking (Beijing): Foreign Language Press.
Tan, X. 2017. Castration for the People: The Politics of Revision and the Structure of Violence in Hao Ran’s Short Stories. In The Making and Remaking of China’s “Red Classics”: Politics, Aesthetics, and Mass Culture, ed. Rosemary Roberts and Li Li, 93–111. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press.
Wilcox, Emily. 2018. Revolutionary Bodies: Chinese Dance and the Socialist Legacy. Berkeley: University of California Press. https://www.ucpress.edu/book/9780520300576/revolutionary-bodies
Zhou, S., Q. Feng, Y. Ou, J. Wei [ 周仕科, 冯启和, 欧英钦, 韦经照]. 1981. “Zhongguo gongnong hongjun Qiongya duli ershi nüzi jun tewu lian” 中国工农红军琼崖独立二师女子军特务连 [Women’s Special Agent (Spy) Company of the Second Independent Division of the Chinese Worker-Peasant Red Army]. In Qiongdao Xinghuo, vol. 4, ed. Qiongdao xinghuo bianjibu 琼岛星火编辑部 Qiongdao xinghuo editorial board, 48–84. 琼岛星火 [Hainan Spark].
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2021 The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd.
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Murray, J.A. (2021). Taming China’s Southern Frontiers Through Song and Dance: Chauvinisms (Han and Male) in The Red Detachment of Women. In: Gladston, P., Kennedy-Schtyk, B., Turner, M. (eds) Visual Culture Wars at the Borders of Contemporary China. Contemporary East Asian Visual Cultures, Societies and Politics. Palgrave Macmillan, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-5293-6_8
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-5293-6_8
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Singapore
Print ISBN: 978-981-16-5292-9
Online ISBN: 978-981-16-5293-6
eBook Packages: Literature, Cultural and Media StudiesLiterature, Cultural and Media Studies (R0)