Events
Zhang Yimou: Globalization and the Subject of Culture
6 Dec 2016
4:00pm – 5:30pm
Lecture Theatre 5, Cheng Yu Tung Building, CUHK
Prof. Wendy Larson (University of Oregon)
Wendy Larson is professor emerita at the University of Oregon. She holds a PhD and MA from the University of California at Berkeley, and a BA from the University of Oregon. Dr. Larson’s previous publications include From Ah Q to Lei Feng: Freud and Revolutionary Spirit in 20th Century China, Women and Writing in Modern China, and Literary Authority and the Chinese Writer: Ambivalence and Autobiography, as well as many journal articles. Dr. Larson is currently working on a study of comparative optimism under socialism and capitalism in 1950s China and the United States.
cuccs@cuhk.edu.hk / 3943 1255
Beginning with Red Sorghum in 1987, films directed by the well-known filmmaker Zhang Yimou have been both admired and reviled. Shying away from a focus on the specificities of Chinese culture per se, the films instead assess the workings of culture within themes of performance under coercion, the duplicity of display, and action under constraint. These filmic topos are interwoven with attention to the formation of subjectivity: how gazing and being gazed upon alters ethics and affect, and how the mind and behavior are formed under duress. Concerns about power and sovereignty, as well as “modernizing” forces in post-socialist China, also figure prominently. The films contribute not only to an in-depth understanding of transformation in a rapidly changing China, but also to a broader creative field that examines the relationship between the nation-state and culture under the developing conditions of globalization.
