포스트사회주의 중국의 도시화와 도시영화의 정체성

Abstract

Chinese cinema from Reform and Opening has been closely intertwined with the Chinese society. Recently accelerating urbanization and the new urban identity resulting from it are all magnificent materials for urban cinema and are deeply related to the identity of the directors. ‘The urbanization’, ‘the urban generation’ who was formed over the course of urbanization, ‘the urban cinema’ which urban generation features, directs, appreciates and consumes. The urban cinema then once again inspires the urban generation and urges to look back upon the urbanization. This study reflects upon the urban cinema discourse in the context ‘articulation of urbanization and urban cinema in post-socialism China’. Articulation of urbanization and urban cinema mediated by the urban generation leaps beyond a self-sufficient analysis of the text but pursues an intertextual relationship. The subject is related to independent cinema, urban realism, neo-documentary, etc. and at the same time intends to connect them to the vast and complex process of reformation occurring across the whole of Chinese society and its culture. The study defines urbanization as an acute tangent point of globalization and China’s modernization process. Then after comparing the urban cinema text that documents and reenacts them with the actual scene of urbanization, urbanization of post-socialism China and the mind and emotional structure of the Chinese about the subject are contemplated. After the mid-1990s, Chinese urban cinema has been composed of art films, leitmotif films, entertaining commercial films and underground (independent) films while the four elements of art, politics, capital and marginality negotiate and compromise centering around both domestic and international markets. Among them, independent films that this study focuses on feature sincerity and marginality. This sincerity is what led the independent filmmakers take notice of urban realism and documentary methods. Marginality pursues the truth and privilege, and efforts were made to find some civil and overseas financial sources to support the insufficient indie films production costs. It should be noted the capital and political powers that have never been friendly towards indie films began to selectively support them from the latter half of 1990s. To interpret this point it will be helpful to refer to Gramsci’s argument stating popular culture is a realm of struggle between the repulsive power of social subordinates and integrative power of the ruling, and that the text and action of popular culture functions within in the compromise equilibrium. After the Tian’anmen Square incident, unlike those before them the new urban cinema and the indie film producers in particular have formed an ambivalent and cohabitant relationship with the power structure and commercial tides, as well as with the international art film market. They no longer take a unilaterally hostile stance towards the government system and the capital but at the same time are lenient enough to stay away from being helplessly assimilated. They utilize urban realism, documentary skills, digital video, amateur actors and professional non-actors to capture the new reality and the people of the lowest level standing on the ruins of Tian’anmen incident, a scene where utopia was once pursued. The city where most of the human kind will eventually reside in reveals its brutal side in the course of urbanization. The drifting urban subjects, in particular the former farmers working as laborers in the cities, are easily exposed to such brutal exploitation to form the city’s new group of poor. While urbanization rapidly progresses after reformation these subjects float around to create a new division of class, social inequality and trouble. Where these floating subjects collide and make their living is where urbanization radically proceeds and the part that urban cinema intends to reveal ‘as it is’. Chaiqian(拆遷) meaning to tore down and relocate is an important index of recent urbanization in China. As Wang Xiaming compares the vanishing and the new spaces when he sees the urban spaces of Shanghai, contemporary Chinese cities are currently being dismantled and built anew. Producers of urban cinema claim to be the witness to this very scene of change and are documenting them.