리샹란 영화가 투사한 제국의 환영* − ‘대륙 3부작’에 대한 반향을 중심으로

Abstract

The Manchukuo Film Association(hereafter, MFA) was a government-controlled film studio affiliated to the South Manchurian Railway. It was founded in 1937 as a part of the Japanese colonial strategy on culture. MFA conjured a fantasy about the occupied territory of Manchuria and actively disseminated this fantasy to the colonized people. The most representative star of MFA was the actress and singer, Li Xianglan. Through a series of films, phonograph records and performances, she exerted an enormous influence on the extensive network that linked together Japan, Japan’s East Asian colonies and China. Her image, shaped by her roles in melodramas as an exotic girl, impressed the colonial audience and made them possess the fantasy on the colonized space. As an idol for the ‘Japan-Manchuria Goodwill,’ she became a symbolic icon of the Japanese cultural encroachment upon other East Asian countries. It was Japanese militarism that plotted to establish and control an East Asian transnational cultural network that sought to transcend the cultural boundary of each locality. Li Xianglan’s image as a legendary figure emerged alongside Japanese encroachment upon China and was shaped through the business strategies of Japanese film studios and entertainment companies during the wartime. In her films, colonial Manchuria under the Japanese occupation was falsely projected as if it were a fantasy. In particular, Chosŏn(Korea, before 1945) audiences watching her films saw Manchuria and confused it with China or the ‘continent.’ By representing the relationship between Japan and colonial Manchuria as a relationship between a wise and strong man and a docile woman, her films induced the colonial audiences to re-recognize Manchuria as a region that corresponded with Japan, thus facilitating the audiences’ cooperation with a colonial policy. From among the many melodramas produced by MFA, my paper, by focusing on three films starring Li Xianglan with Chinese backdrop, traces the path taken by the Chinese imagination in Japan and its colonies. These are the so-called the Continental Trilogy: Song of the White Orchid (1939), China Nights (1940) and Vow in the Desert (1940). First, I look at the ‘Li Xianglan myth’ that is still being reproduced in Japan. Next, I deal with the modifying process of the imagination of China through Manchuria in the other colonial audiences, which took place in Japan during the time when the ‘continental films’ were popular. Finally, I argue how the melodramatic style and exotic sentiment of her films could be welcomed by the colonial audiences, although they were a means of colonial propaganda.