Talking about the war

Chinese version of Guizi laile (Devils on the doorstep Jiang Wen) now available - does that mean that there is a time limit on ban or do opinions change on what can and can't be said about the war?

Discussing Guizi laile and comparing with Purple Butterfly (Lou Ye) suggests that boundaries of the sayable aren't entirely clear-cut. Guizi attracted criticism (they tell us) for whole range of reasons: showing Japanese soldiers giving sweets to Chinese children (Japanese forces published huge number of photos aiming to suggest peaceful co-existence during war and these have been reproduced in numerous Chinese discussions of wartime propaganda, so (a) it's not exactly a new image and (b) these actions/images already have an established place in Chinese narratives of the war as examples of duplicity); failure to show practical resistance/moral lead from Chinese Communist Party (see how that resonates with recent research on local politics in wartime...; though the fim doesn't read as a warming commentary on anyone involved in active resistance ["who?"]); showing Ma Dasan and Chinese villagers as 'buffoons' (and I think the sensitivities here are quite well known... but on the other hand the 'buffoon' thesis is based, I think, both on a profound mis-reading of the film, and on a fairly startling mis-reading of the historical context).

Obviously the film is not a historical document. But if we turn things around and read the history into the film (and equally possible that Jiang Wen would have his own objections to that), I think it gives us a more subtle reading of the history of the war as personal experience. First, let's look at where Jiang (as opposed to author of original short story on which film was based) set the film, in rural east Hebei. This area suffered endemic disorder in 1920s and was managed by a puppet (Japanese-controlled) regime in 1935 - so by end of war, locals would have been exposed to Japanese presence and a fair amount of pro-Japanese public discourse for several years longer than many occupied areas further south. So the clear message of resistance that we are told to expect all in occupied areas to have absorbed by later years of war would have been subject to fair amount of interference from other sources. And it is possible therefore that Ma Dasan cannot act with reference to a clear and widely accepted moral framework, because - there and then - there wasn't one. It's obvious that some of the common themes in wartime debate were familiar to characters in film - see references to 'traitors' - but it seems to me that Ma Dasan's basic problem is that he wants to do the right thing, but cannot work out what that is. And this is not buffoonery, but a source of communal/personal tension and anxiety. We see buffoonery in some places - the swordsman, for example - but overall I think the film says more about the unprecedented and intolerable moral pressures that the war placed on individuals.

Whereas Purple Butterfly is a different beast altogether - of which more next time.