Chinese Cinema

Chinese Cinema

as

Translation of Cultures

39-223-00, Kauke 227, TTh 2:30-3:50

Instructor: Rujie Wang Office: 205B Kauke Phone: 263-2438 E-Mail: rwang@acs,wooster.edu

COURSE DESCRIPTION:
Chinese cinemas (PRC, Taiwan, HK) do not offer China but only proof that it exists through fabulous spectacles. As such proof becomes readily available through film production, realities of China are more than ever mediated through cinematic discourses and cultural theories. The course questions the notion of unmediated perception and exposes the ways the following narrative films reinvent China and translate cultures. We will study the roles of the cinema as history and ethnography.

Old Well (Xie Jin, 1987)

Red Sorghum (Zhang Yimou, 1987)

Ju Dou (Zhang Yimou, 1989)

Raise the Red Lantern (Zhang Yimou, 1991)

To Live (Zhang Yimou, 1992)

The Blue Kite (Tian Zhuang-zhuang, 1992)

Farewell My Concubine (Chen Kaige, 1992)

Joy Luck Club (Wayne Wang, 1993)

The Wedding Banquet (Ang Lee, 1993)

Vive L'amour (Ming-liang Tsai, 1994)

Ermo (Zhou Xiaowen, 1994)

Eat Drink Man Woman (Ang Lee, 1994)

The Wooden Man's Bride (Jianxin Huang, 1994)

Comrades, Almost A Love Story (Peter Chan, 1996)

Chinese Box (Wayne Wang, 1998)

For criticism and reviews of these films, click here. You may want to check such web sites as Sun Shao-yi's Chinese Cinema Page and Shelly Kraicer's Chinese Cinema Page

COURSE REQUIREMENTS AND GRADING:

Attendance, Participation and Review (10): 30%. The review should be within one page. It should be a critique rather than a summary of the film, preferably in relation to the critical readings assigned. It is an exercise of your analytical and interpretive skills.
Three 4-page Essays, 30%
Multiple Choice Tests of Viewing Material, 15%
Final Exam, 25%.

REQUIRED TEXTS:

Chow, Rey. Primitive Passions: Visuality, Sexuality and Ethnography in Contemporary Chinese Cinema. Columbia UP, 1995
Barthes, Roland. Image-Music-Text. trans. Heath; Hill and Wang,1977
Lu, Sheldon. Transnational Chinese Cinemas. University of Hawaii Press, 1998
Berry, Chris. ed. Perspectives on Chinese Cinema. London: BFI (British Film Institute), 1991

TENTATIVE SCHEDULE

DATE	CLASS ACTIVITY	READING & VIEWING HOMEWORK
1/12	Introduction: Defining "Chinese" and Decentering the Middle Kingdom	Sheldon Lu, pp.1-26; Rey Chow, pp.4-18, 173-202
1/14	Discuss the readings;	View "Red Sorghum" and read Chow pp. 142-172;
1/19	Student reviews of "Red Sorghum"	Read Xudong Zhang, pp.306-28; and Yuejin Wang, pp.80-101;
1/21	Student reviews of "Red Sorghum"	Read Lu, pp.105-133 and view "To Live"
1/26	Student reviews of "To Live"	Read "Chinese Narrative" ed. by Andrew Plaks, pp. 309-352 and Roland Barthes Image-Music-Text, pp. 15-51
1/28	Discuss "To Live" and readings of Plaks and Barhtes	View "Farewell My Concubine" and read Lu, pp. 265-73, 331-43,
2/2	Student reviews of "Farewell My Concubine"	Read Zhang, pp.35-70
2/4	Student reviews of "Farewell My Concubine"	View "Blue Kite" and read Barthes, pp.79-124
2/9	Student reviews of "Blue Kite"	View "Old Well" and read Chow, pp. 55-78
2/11	Student reviews of "Old Well"; first paper due	View "Judou" and read Lu, pp. 303-28 and "Judou, A Hermeneutical Reading of Cross-cultural Cinema" by Jenny Lau, pp. 2-10
2/16	Student reviews of "Judou"	View "Raise the Red Lantern" and read Chow, pp. 35-52
2/18	Student reviews of "Raise the Red Lantern"	Read "When the Woman Looks" by Linda Williams, pp. 561-77, and "Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema" by Laura Mulvey, pp. 746-757
2/23	Student reviews of "Raise the Red Lantern"	View "Wooden Man's Bride" and read "The New Woman Incident, Cinema, Scandal and Spectacle in 1935 Shanghai" in Lu, pp. 277-98
2/25	Student revviews of "Wooden Man's Bride"	View "Ermo" and read "Ermo, Televisuality, capital and the global village" by Ciecko and Lu, pp. 77-82
3/2	Student reviews of "Ermo"	Read "Third World Literature in the Era of Multinational Capitalism" by Fredric Jameson, pp. 65-88 and "Literary Innovation and Modes of Production" by F. Jameson. pp.67-77
3/4	Student reviews of "Ermo" in relation to the reading assignment	Spring break begins
3/23	View "Eat Drink Man Woman"; second paper due	Read "Breaking the Soy Sauce Jar: Diaspora and Displacement in the Films of Ang Lee" in Lu, pp. 187-218
3/25	Student reviews of "Eat Drink Man Woman"	View "Wedding Banquet"
3/30	Student reviews of "Wedding Banquet"; second paper due	Read "Cultural China, The Periphery as the Center" by Tu Weiming, pp. 1-34
4/1	Student reviews of "Wedding Banquet"	View "Comrades, Almost A Love Story" and read "Cultural Identity and Diaspora" by Stuart Hall, pp.392-403
4/6	Student reviews of "Comrades"	Read "No Solace from Lethe: History, Memory, and Culture Identity in Twentieth-Century China" by Vera Schwarcz, pp. 64-87
4/8	Student reviews of "Comrades"	View "Joy Luck Club"
4/13	Student reviews of "Joy Luck Club"	Read "Migrancy, Culture, Identity" by Iain Chambers, pp.1-7, 22-9
4/15	Student reviews of "Joy Luck Club"	View "Chiese Box"
4/20	Student reviews of "Chinese Box"	Read "The Theory of the Novel" by Georg Lukacs, pp. 29-39, 56-69
4/22	Student reviews of "Chinese Box"	View "Vive L'amour"
4/27	Student reviews of "Vive L'amour"	Read "Introduction to the Probelms of a Sociology of the Novel" by Lucien Goldmann, pp.1-15
4/29	Student reviews of "Vive L'amour"; third paper due	General review

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