People vs. The People
A brief commentary on personal narrative in modern Chinese films and institutional narratives under the ruling class.
Types of governance have always been a topic of continuous, and a lot of times violent debates since the dawn of humanity. The question of how to rule one another is an impossible dilemma and a steadfast blockade in the way of progression. The lofty ideal of a perfect ruling system still seems farfetched, while millions still suffer under twisted political ideologies, with countless personal narratives of pain and suffering lost to time. The promise of “power to the people” often results in power to the few, and the fragility of humanity and human lives are fully exposed under shifting politically driven narratives and misinformation.
A direct window of insight into the lost personal narratives is through the lens of films, especially pseudo-documentary films. The Blue Kite (1993) by Tian Zhuangzhuang and A Touch of Sin (2013) by Jia Zhangke are both narratively focused films telling stories of the working class through times of political turmoil in China. The two films are 20 years apart, and the events they portray are 50 years apart. In The Blue Kite, through the eyes of a third-person bystander, a family tragedy in three parts under three different Maoist political campaigns are told. The Hundred Flowers campaign in the early 1950s forced the child’s father into labor camps. The Great Leap Forward exhausted the child’s uncle to death, and the Cultural Revolution destroyed the stepfather’s health in a violent struggle. In A Touch of Sin, the four interlaced stories are based on true events experienced by working-class Chinese. The first event portrays a miner seeking justice against corrupt capitalists and bureaucrats. The second event follows one of the most notorious bank robbers born in extreme poverty. The third event watches closely a working woman trying to find her place in the world, only to be forced to kill under harassment. The last event is based on the Foxconn suicides and the rotten scene of sex trafficking in Southern China.
A close examination of the political narrative in these times will reveal a stern contrast between the institutional claim, and the actual experience of the working-class people. The Hundred Flowers campaign was framed as a campaign for people to open up and criticize the Communist government under Mao’s rule; the Great Leap Forward was advertised as a national effort to forge steel and the massive famine caused by related policies are attributed to natural phenomenon. The Cultural Revolution was a fictional war within the Communist Party, that ultimately resulted in the death of scholars, and the brutal civil war between factory workers. These policies, in comparison with the Communist Manifesto, are twisted and evil behind their intent.
50 years later, the narratives did not change much. Following the failed student protest in 1989, China was forced to Reform and Open Up to the international market. This resulted in a change from Maoist Communism into Chinese Socialism. In its essence, Chinese Socialism is a mixed economy under an authoritarian government. This means anyone with a good relationship with government officials in charge of resource distribution and lawmaking, would become a hugely successful capitalist. This is exactly what happened; a small portion of the population became ultra-rich, while the working class, especially people in vast rural China are still living in crippling poverty.
The narrative of my family has a lot of similarities to the two films. The fathers of my grandfather died in the Sino-Japanese War. My grandfather lived through the Great Leap Forward, witnessing people eating tree barks, kaolinite, and even each other in our province. My father was shot with tear gas during the student unrest in 1989 that ultimately led to the Tiananmen Square Massacre. This is where I would like to diverge and ask, is this truly the fault of Communism? It is quite established that Maoist Communism & the following Chinese Socialism have completely stemmed away from the Communist Manifesto. But under years of American propaganda, “Communism Bad” has become a mental brand in the minds of most Americans. Whenever an online discussion includes China, words like Tiananmen are often brought up without context as thinly veiled acts of xenophobia. This is where Ode to Geraniums and NO comes into the discussion. Similar events of dictators killing their own people have been happening all around the world, but only the ones perpetrated by a Communist government are well known in the Western world. The narrative is again hijacked by politicians to point fingers at Axis of Evil while fueling regional conflicts, xenophobic sentiments, and mass famine through acts of espionage, propaganda, sanction & warmongering. Communism kills, sure, but so does Capitalism and Imperialism. One could play a game of alternative history and imagine a China where Imperial Japan did NOT invade, then the CCP would have never gained power in the first place.
An easy answer to all of these problems is to shout “Power to the people”. But what does power to the people mean? Astra Taylor tried to answer this in her documentary What is Democracy? but although she argues for more direct democracy, she does not have an answer to the title of the film. Is giving power to the people after decades of propaganda, rigged education, and brainwashing really a good idea? When narratives get hijacked and used as misinformation, it does not simply take away the power of the people; it fundamentally undermines the root of democracy as a whole system. It is crucial, then, to develop and distribute our personal and community narratives in various forms of media, to remind each other that humanity is as fragile as The Blue Kite under the grasp of the few, and we must protect and fight for one another.
Michael Luo, March 2020
References:
Modern Times | Charlie Chaplin, 1936
What Is Democracy? | Astra Taylor, 2018
The Communist Manifesto, Marx/Engels Selected Works, Vol. One, Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1969, pp. 98–137;
Nostalgia de la Luz (Nostalgia for the Light) | Patricio Guzmán, 2010
Sever, Hande. “Ode to Geranium.” X-Tra, X-Tra, www.x-traonline.org/online/an-ode-to-geraniums.
NO | Pablo Larraín, 2012
The Axis of Evil speech | 2003
Minh-ha, Trinh T. “‘There Is No Such Thing as Documentary’: An Interview with Trinh T. Minh-Ha.” Frieze, frieze.com/article/there-no-such-thing-documentary-interview-trinh-t-minh-ha.