욕망의 시각적 논리 ― 영화『얼모(二嫫)』에 그려진 중국 농촌의 자본주의화

Abstract

This paper discusses what the film Ermo (1994) conveys pertaining to the socio-economic changes in contemporary rural China, as well as how it addresses viewers with “Orientalist” perspectives. Ermo, as one of the last variations in the tradition of the Chinese Fifth Generation cinema, presents rural China in front of urban or foreign viewers, but it depicts the changing rural society in contemporary China rather than the old and unchanging China as portrayed in classic Fifth Generation films. I concur with existing views on the film that it exposes the problems of the capitalization of rural China and that capitalism has not been able to provide the rural populace the kind of happiness they desire. I articulate this view by focusing on how the logic of ‘vision’ works in the film, as Ermo, the main character, appears as the subject of both her desire and her vision. The overlap of desire and vision in the film takes place at the moment when Ermo projects her desire onto a television set—the biggest one in the county. This overlap suggests that, in contemporary China, the object of a rural woman’s desire is as unattainable and unsustainable as televisual images. Thus, when Ermo’s desire is frustrated, she concurrently experiences visual failure. Towards the end of the film, viewers are invited to share Ermo’s vision and realize that they can see nothing on television. Thus, they cannot conveniently objectify the socio-economic changes in rural China but are urged to face it as their own as well.