Relationship Between Early Asian Cinema And The Public Sphere

September 26th, 2007

by Prof. Wimal Dissanayake

Cinema has become one of the most popular and important forms of mass entertainment throughout Asia. It has also, over the years, become a valuable site in which negotiation of meaning related to a complex web of issues such as modernity, nationhood, Westernization, feminism, colonialism, urbanisation, civil society, cultural citizenship get purposefully articulated. No cinema emerges from a cultural vacuum; indeed, all cinemas display the stamp of the culture, social formations, political structure, historical moment that produced them. Asian cinemas are, of course, no exception to this general rule. They have sought to explore issues such as modernity, nationhood, urbanisation, in terms of their specific experiential backgrounds.

Most film-goers would agree that cinema is a significant social practice inflecting communities in complex and interesting ways. What this means is that we need to recognise that there are manifold dimensions to cinema - social, cultural, political, ideological, technological, aesthetic and so on which deserve our close and sustained attention. They are closely and vitally interconnected and constitute an important cultural discourse with vast ramifications. It is often remarked that cinema mirrors social reality; however, it is equally important to appreciate the fact that cinema shapes and informs reality in fascinating ways. Cinemas of India, Japan, China, Korea, Hong Kong etc. exemplify this fact very forcefully.

Commentators on Asian cinema, usually, make two statements with unfailing regularity. The first is that cinema as a form of mass entertainment is an importation from the West. The second is that cinema was, in the early stages, marked as an inferior and derivative form of entertainment given over to sentimentality and inane melodrama. These statements are true, so far as they go. However, they need to be immediately qualified in order to attain a deeper and more nuanced understanding of Asian cinema. For example, it is important to bear in mind the fact that in many Asian countries, early cinema was implicated in the public sphere in interesting ways.

When we discuss the concept of Asian cinema, it is important to bear in mind its close relationship to the writing of film history. Film history is an open-ended enterprise that admits of pluralities if interpretation. In writing film histories, we produce the historical objects we seek to study. This has great implications for the exploration of the idea of Asian cinema. Today, when we write film histories of diverse Asian cinemas - Indian, Korean, Japanese, Sri Lankan etc - we need to simultaneously occupy different spaces created by the past and history, by transnationalization, by the ever changing shapes of cultural modernities. Writing film history is also a way of charting the course, the preferred trajectory for growth for the future. Hence, in our efforts to understand and map the meaning of the concept of Asian cinema, we need to pay particular attention to the complex ways in which film histories have been produced, and are been produced today. Film histories widen the discursive domain of Asian national cinema; this is clearly evidenced in the work of say, Nick Deocampo with regard to the Spanish influences on early Filipino cinema.

Let us consider the experience of early Indian cinema. D.G. Phalke is generally regarded as the father of Indian cinema. His films as well as his writings illuminate in interesting ways some of the important issues that we have focused on. The early Indian films were vitally connected with the ongoing activities of the Indian public sphere. The idea of India as an independent and modern nation was at the heart of these activities in the public sphere. Phalke was closely identified with the national liberation movement and played a crucial role in it. Until, 1947, India was under British domination, and filmmakers such as Phalke sought to instill a sense of confidence in Indians about their skills, their capabilities, their visions, and their films were seen as a means of achieving this goal.

Later filmmakers sought to focus on the fissures and fault lines of society such as those represented by religious fanaticism, caste distinctions, class conflicts as a way of unifying the nation under the banner of social justice. These films, and the discourses surrounding them, served to propagate these ideas and raise the consciousness of the people. It is evident, as we examine the early phase of Indian cinema that entertainment was mixed with social edification. Films were a useful site for the articulation of new cultural meanings and critiques of social injustices.

The work of Phalke is crucial to an understanding of how questions of tradition, modernity, narrative discourse, regimes of visuality, commodification of culture, spectatorial pleasure got discussed in relation to popular cinema. Discussing the Phalke era, the Indian film commentator Ashish Rajadhyaksha focuses on the nature of neo-traditionalism as a way of understanding the complex modes by which traditional forms of cultural articulation and performativities engage modernity. Phalke was operating during the high point of British colonialism and was keen to fashion cinema into a vital instrument of shaping public opinion. He was actively involved in the independence movement, and saw the value of cinema as an ally in the anti-colonial struggle.

For him, cinema was clearly more than a means of public entertainment; his writings bear testimony to the fact that he was deeply conscious of the need to indigenize the newly acquired art of cinematography and infuse it with local modes of aesthetic understanding and evaluation. This desire, at a deeper level, was connected to his interest in fashioning cinema into a productive instrument of conscious-raising and social critique. When we examine the films produced in the early phase in India, both in the North and South, we see a critical and resolute engagement with the vital social issues of the day. For example, during the period 1934-1939, several important films that were made like Chandali, Dharmatma, Bala Yogini, Lakshmi, Thyagabhoomi, explored important social distinctions.

Let us consider next the early cinema of Japan and how it played a pivotal role in the public sphere. Historical records indicate that the Japanese film industry was founded in 1898, three decades after the Meiji restoration which witnessed the country opening its doors to modernization and Western influence. In most Asian countries, initially, film was perceived as a purely novel and intriguing medium of mass entertainment.

However, before long, it became a significant adjunct of the public sphere. From its inception, in Japanese cinema, the intersecting discourses of tradition and modernity, change and continuity, local and the foreign, dominated the discussions in the public sphere. While the art of cinematography was indeed new, and imported from the West, it was quite evident that the early Japanese filmmakers sought to draw significantly upon the appeal of traditional literature and drama to achieve a measure of cultural legitimacy and approbation. While the rising generation displayed a great interest in the possibilities of cinema, and some of them resolving to be a part of the emerging film industry in the capacity of directors, cinematographers, technicians and so on, the older generation was somewhat skeptical about the potential social impact of cinema, and entertained fears about its potentiality to subvert the cultural identity and cultural values of the Japanese.

Of all the Asian countries, Japan was the most Westernized and technologically advanced, and hence it is not surprising that Japan progressed steadily in establishing a firm industrial structure for cinema, and a film culture. However, contrary to conventional wisdom, the Westernization of culture was neither smooth nor without resistance. The Meiji restoration encouraged the influx of Western influence in the world of arts and letters, and this led to the vitality of cinema as well. However, these influences were absorbed and transformed in keeping with the felt needs and imperatives of Japanese culture as popularly understood.

The path of growth of cinema from the 1920s to 1940s bears this out. The 1930s are a period of special importance to the evolution of Japanese cinema. It was during this period that a characteristically Japanese cinema in terms of styles, techniques, representational strategies and regimes of visuality, took root. Japanese filmmakers were now beginning to turn away from the codes and conventions and semiotic discourses of Hollywood and carve out a representational terrain that bore the imprint of local desire. This trend, as was to be expected, had political and social corollaries. This was a time when society as a whole was looking back to tradition, Japanese cultural values, to guide it in its arduous march towards modernity. In addition, the bourgeois class, which had been the mainstay of cinema since the increasing of sound, increasingly identified itself as a Japanese bourgeois class that espoused Japanese values and life ways.

Japanese cinema, from its inception, was connected closely to the public sphere; indeed it served as a significant component of the public sphere. The idea of nationhood and national cinema was the dominant theme in the Japanese discourse on cinema and the public sphere, as indeed it was in many other Asian countries. However, in the case of Japan, it carried a special inflection shaped by the distinctly Japanese cultural experience. What should a modern Japan look like was the predominant question that engaged the interests of the intellectuals of the time, and it was amply mirrored in the discourse of cinema as well. Some argued for a wholesale imitation of the West; others for a more measured approach; yet some others valorized the past and tradition as sacred entities. There were debates among the bourgeois class, the working class, and the remnants of the feudal class. These had profound consequences for the growth of cinema as well.

In the 1920s and 1930s, the concept of modernity was in the forefront of cultural and intellectual debates as is evidenced in the writings of eminent philosophers such as Mike Kiyoshi. This was a time when the social order of an agricultural society was been transformed into one that suited the demands of an industrializing society. This was a period of panic, as pointed out by then influential writers like Aono Suekichi, as a consequence of the inexorability of social change and the disappearance of stable reference points. Some turned to tradition as a n eternal consoling category. These anxieties were reflected in the public sphere. To many the experience of the new and its concomitant sensory disorientation was the experience of panic. Modernity and its concomitant developments induced a sense of unevenness into social life. Hence, some looked to cultural memory as a possible stabilizing force. These tendencies of thought were reflected in Japanese cinema as well as the public sphere of which it was a part.

The idea of the Japanese self in the modern world was another issue that was of importance in the expressive cultural forms of the time. It was particularly important in view of the fact that the American and European films that were shown in Japan during this period presented the image of a self that was fragmented and subject to contradictory demands. This was most evident in the case of the understandings of female selves. There was much discussion and debate during this period about the concept of the ‘modern girl’ and its relationship to cinema. These issues were explored at length in journals such as Fujin Koron and Shufu No Tomo.

Let us consider next the case of Chinese cinema. Although China was exposed to the art of cinematography from the year 1896 onwards, for many years later film was perceived as an alien and imported form of entertainment. The fact that in the early years cinema was referred to as ‘Western peep shows’ indexes this foreignness. One could observe this felt foreignness at a number of different levels. Until the Communist revolution in 1949, many of the films that were exhibited in China were of foreign origin. And most of the films shot in China were made by non-Chinese. Moreover, a fairly significant number of films produced in China were based on stories by such diverse authors as Shakespeare and Hardy and well-known Japanese and Russian writers. These factors in combination, no doubt, led to the widespread impression that cinema and foreignness were closely connected. This, of course, had its reverberations in the public sphere where cultural commentators who were dissatisfied with the current cinematic fare underlined the need to pursue alternate pathways.

From the very early days, filmmakers in China as well as the audiences were convinced of the fact that there was a close relationship between cinema and didacticism. This conviction later led to the emphasis on the political significance of films. Sensing the great potential that cinema had for generating a political consciousness in the generality of movie-goers, in 1932, the Communist party founded the first film company. It was evident, on the evidence of the best available historical records that the Communist party and left-leaning intellectuals shaped in very significant ways the art of filmmaking in China and the film culture. This statement, of course, is not intended to minimize the fact that foreign films emanating from capitalist countries and commercial and marketing ambitions were also present at the time.

In the 1930s and 1940s, one witnessed a close and valuable relationship between the art of cinema and art of written literature and drama. Most filmmakers were deeply conversant with, and at times engaged in, literary creation and theatre production. The intimate linkage between cinema and literature had two important consequences in relation to the progress of cinema in China. First, literature was held in the highest regard by intellectuals and cultural critics who were associated with the public sphere and, hence, this relationship served to legitimize the art of cinema and invest it with a greater degree of respectability.

Second, until fairly recent times, a distinct feature of Chinese cinema was that the script writer was regarded more highly than even the director, and therefore the interconnection between literature and cinema was an important one. As the war with Japan began to absorb the energies of the country more and more, many writers were resolved to work in the theatre which was seen as an effective site for the generation of patriotism. The war conditions were not propitious for the film production and people associated with cinema turned in increasing numbers towards theatre thereby fostering the relationship between cinema and theatre that I alluded to earlier. Many of the most important dramatists linked to this period such as Xia Yan, Cao Yu, Chen Bauchen, Shi Hui came back to cinema after the war.

When we discuss the growth of Chinese cinema during the early phase of its development, we need to focus on a number of important binarisms - commercialism and didacticism, political indoctrination and entertainment, mass culture and elite culture, Western-oriented audiences and local-oriented audiences.

These dualities need to be understood in their proper historical and cultural contexts. From the 1920s onwards, intellectuals linked to the public sphere were proclaiming the need for cinema to be serious and weighty and raise the consciousness of the people. At the same time, cinema being a capital-intensive mass art, one could not easily escape the imperatives of commerce. Many felt the impulse to make cinema into a useful site where political issues could be productively vented. How this could be accomplished without forfeiting this mass appeal engaged the interest of public intellectuals.

In discussing the way that cinema figured in the Chinese public sphere in the early phase, I wish to focus on the film The Goddess (Shennu ) made in1934 by Wu Yonggang starring Ruan Lingyu, the most popular actress of the day who unfortunately took her life. This film deals with the trope of prostitution, a signifier of urbanisation. This film deals with her struggles to give her illegitimate son an education, in the face of severe in the odds. In the film, her character stands as symbol of women who are fettered by social conventions, shackled to patriarchal norms, and are fighting for emancipation.

The early phase of cinema in Asia, then, raises a number of important issues related to modernization, nationhood, femininity, patriarchal social order. These invite very close and sustained attention. The relationship between early cinema and the public sphere in Asia is one that should be of great interest to cultural historians seeking to open newer windows on to the past.

(Excerpted from a talk given at the University of Hawaii)

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