Voicing the Silent: Bodies, Montage, and Social Formation in The Goddess
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Over the past two decades, the prostitute figure in The Goddess (1934, dir. Wu Yongang) has been interpreted in terms of male desire and fetish power. This article takes a different approach by examining how women’s agency was expressed through image politics in this silent film and by revealing how it addresses gender configurations and social formation. Focusing on cinematic tropes of the body and montage, this article examines the critical linkage between these tropes and their image politics, since it encompasses their transformative power for the change of family and gender structure, embodying the potentiality of the political. By addressing the ways in which “docile bodies” and “geo-bodies” are represented, the article shows how The Goddess performs its pedagogical role in social formation and nation formation at large, going beyond the patriarchal order and male desire. The article suggests that the image itself, foregrounding the film’s thematic concern, does not promote male desire and fantasy so much as it presents an interlocking threshold of visual contestation in which different modes of social agency interact with female agency. Furthermore, special attention is given to Wu’s cinematography, especially his use of visual elements to communicate auditory information and deep-focus shots to thematize the narrative, which marked a breakthrough in Chinese silent cinema. Wu’s deep-focus shots communicate varying degrees of emotional intensity, and their affective impact is akin to that of montage or intellectual montage within continuity editing.
Abstract
Over the past two decades, the prostitute figure in The Goddess (1934, dir. Wu Yongang) has been interpreted in terms of male desire and fetish power. This article takes a different approach by examining how women’s agency was expressed through image politics in this silent film and by revealing how it addresses gender configurations and social formation. Focusing on cinematic tropes of the body and montage, this article examines the critical linkage between these tropes and their image politics, since it encompasses their transformative power for the change of family and gender structure, embodying the potentiality of the political. By addressing the ways in which “docile bodies” and “geo-bodies” are represented, the article shows how The Goddess performs its pedagogical role in social formation and nation formation at large, going beyond the patriarchal order and male desire. The article suggests that the image itself, foregrounding the film’s thematic concern, does not promote male desire and fantasy so much as it presents an interlocking threshold of visual contestation in which different modes of social agency interact with female agency. Furthermore, special attention is given to Wu’s cinematography, especially his use of visual elements to communicate auditory information and deep-focus shots to thematize the narrative, which marked a breakthrough in Chinese silent cinema. Wu’s deep-focus shots communicate varying degrees of emotional intensity, and their affective impact is akin to that of montage or intellectual montage within continuity editing.
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