Qiu Ju and the disenchantment of the author/reader dialectic

In 1992, after having directed two striking films (Ju Dou and Raise the Red Lantern) that set him at odds with the Chinese Government, Zhang Yimou released TheStory of Qiu Ju, an unexpectedly repentant specimen.  The film may have compromised Yimou’s relationship with his viewers, but it also seems to have subversively addressed the compromises that Yimou had to make in order to remain a filmmaker.

The nature of the relationship between an author and the reader or consumer of his work is explored by Jean Paul Sartre in his essay, What is Literature?.  In it, Sartre contends that “literary objects exist only in the concrete act of reading,” and that any meaning tied to any text is actually contained within the individual who is creating or consuming the text, and that the texts on their own are merely black squiggles on a page.  Through shared language, the author entreats the reader to “create meaning” out of the text, thus the author uses their freedom to create a text to entreat to the reader’s freedom to engage with the text and create meaning.

Sartre explains, “The writer appeals to the reader’s freedom to collaborate in the production of his work…. The work of art is a value because it is an appeal.”   The reader, freely choosing to open the text and engage with it is “asserting that the object has its source in human freedom.”  Thus the effective relationship or dialectic between an author and a reader is one of mutual respect and freedom.  Sartre felt that authors who failed to respect the freedom of the reader (citing and criticizing Pierre Drieu la Rochelle) decimated the potential for reader engagement or reader meaning-making.

So how was Zhang Yimou, who was reportedly under pressure to paint authority and government in a more positive light if he wanted to remain in his profession, to avoid becoming an irrelevant sycophant like Drieu la Rochelle?  If he felt, like Sartre, that the meaning in his films was actually constructed by the audience, then perhaps The Story of Qiu Ju is his way of entreating the audience to understand the necessary pitfalls of working within an imperfect system, and even to forgive them in him and his work.  It was, perhaps an extension of the act of faith that Sarte described: “The bad novel aims to please by flattering, whereas the good one is exigence and an act of faith.”

The film centers around the determined Qiu Ju, played by Yimou’s perennially favorite actress Gong Li.  Loosely based on the novella, The Wan Family Lawsuit, by Chen Yuan Bin, the film follows Qiu Ju, a determined country wife, as she doggedly follows every channel legally available to her in order to satisfy her need for justice, which is (to her) an apology from her village chief.  Only, Qiu Ju’s version of justice is impossible to enforce and is not even comprehended by most of the well-meaning government bureaucrats depicted in the film.  Repeatedly the courts rule that the chief must provide pecuniary retribution, which he offers with demeaning vitriol, and which Qiu Ju feels morally compelled to decline.  Ultimately she has pursued vindication to such a length that the chief is imprisoned for his crime even after Qiu Ju has forgiven him and is earnestly seeking his good favor again.  The film regularly depicts the incongruence of Qiu Ju’s enceinte rube amidst the bustle of the modern city.  Her character is clearly as much comedic as tragic, especially for a Chinese audience.  She is in many ways more of a child than an adult.

In view of the Confucian thinking that would underpin a Chinese encounter with the film, the fact that neither Qiu Ju nor the Chief seem interested in restoring harmony renders both of their approaches to the conflict as silly.  When Qiu Ju insists to her husband that she doesn’t care what others in the village think of her, rather than the admiration for integrity that an American Audience might incur, a Chinese audience would have been more likely to see her behavior as needlessly reckless, contributing to her tragicomic end as the siren wails, symbolically asking Qiu Ju, “What have you done?”

What meaning might Yimou have been hoping that his audience might make of this work?  Especially of his ambiguous ending as the film freezes, unresolved, on Qiu Ju’s face as she pursues the vehicle with the arrested chief?  It seems that perhaps Yimou was asking questions with this film about impossible situations and hoping that his audience would recognize that they were unanswerable, as Yimou found himself in an impossible situation, and felt that his work would be compromised or destroyed no matter how he chose to proceed.  Yimou continued to make films in China within the parameters of government pressure, and complied well enough to be given government commissions (including the 2008 Olympic opening ceremony). Though in interviews has consistently tried to distance himself from government influence.

The film itself seems to be a disclosure of the necessity for recognition of limits and for compromise – for working within the constraints of an imperfect system in order to work at all.  The film very mindfully portrayed every individual except Qiu Ju, the chief, and the city taxi driver as gracious and amenable.  The only conflicts that were allowed to surface in the film were between Qiu Ju and the chief (technically this involved Qiu Ju’s husband, but he was prepared to let it rest long before Qiu Ju was), and between Qiu Ju, her sister-in-law Meizi, and the city taxi driver.  The conflict with the taxi driver plays out like the other, larger conflict in miniature.  For his petty misconduct, Meizi chases him into the unknown, subjecting her family (Qiu Ju) to angst, and her efforts prove fruitless – more harm than good is done. 

By representing Qiu Ju’s futile, sometimes bull-headed attempts, Yimou is clearly crafting some meaning.  Whether Qiu Ju’s zeal is intended to be symbolic of Yimou’s own in his past is essentially an opportunity for guided or “directed creation.”  The viewer can finish what Yimou has begun – but whether they draw a line connecting Qiu Ju with Yimou’s earlier films depends on what information the viewer brings with them to their viewing. 

Existing government systems did not allow Qiu Ju to pursue or achieve her definition of justice, and when she worked within those systems, the result was a disappointment, but she was still willing to persist.  Is Yimou asking whether it will prove a similar disappointment if he seeks after artistic freedom in a similarly non-ideal system?  He interestingly asks the question without answering it, allowing the audience their own creation of answer and meaning. 

Sartre claimed that a “literary object has no other substance than the reader’s subjectivity.”  Citing Raskolnikov’s hatred of the police magistrate who questions him in Tolstoy’s Crime and Punishment he claims, “Raskolnikov’s [hatred of the magistrate] is my hatred which has been solicited and wheedled out of my by signs, and the police magistrate himself would not exist without the hatred I have for him via Raskolnikov.  That is what animates him, it is his very flesh.”  We see this authorized existence and fleshing out of the chief morph before our eyes as Qiu Ju experiences a vulnerable crisis and is rescued by the Chief’s efforts.  Prior to that point, the chief is only ever represented (by presence in a scene or by description of other characters) as being stubborn and prideful.  Suddenly his character becomes infinitely more complex by doing something out of character.  Viewers are invited to forgive the chief along with Qiu Ju.  At this point harmony is restored, except for the avalanche Qiu Ju’s previous, rather naïve legal actions set in motion.  The chief is arrested and harmony is obliterated, and Qiu Ju’s “what have I done?” face becomes the film’s signature moment. 

It is possible that this film is an entreaty (to the freedom of the viewer) to consider the complexity and imperfections of the systems under which they and Yimou alike strive to function and create.  The film carefully points no antagonistic fingers.  Everyone is likeable and agreeable (to Qiu Ju) by the end of the film, and what remain are mistakes, not sins.  It may be that Yimou was hoping to invite his viewers to apply a similar compassionate judgment to both his past and future work as he endeavored to change gears and comply with government pressure.

Big Fish: defending the liar-poet

At one point in the 2003 film Big Fish, Will Bloom says to his larger-than-life storyteller father, Ed,“You’re like Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny combined – just as charming, and just as fake.”  Will seems to have been taking notes from the critics of poetry and fiction through the ages, and his hangup with verisimilitude would likely have earned him a verbose ink-wasting toy from Sir Phillip Sidney[1], who said “these… be they which most properly do imitage… to teach and delight, and to imitate borrow nothing of what is, hath been, or shall be, but range, only reined with learned discretion, into the divine consideration of what may be and should be.”

This film, as it centers on Ed Bloom and his self-fashioned Homeric epic of a life story, addresses head-on the perceived binary of "true versus interesting."  Certainly Ed’s son Will sees it as a binary, and because his father dwells so much in the realm of interesting, Will perceives a lack of truth.  To what extent this binary itself is true or useful then comes into question.  As viewers we are allowed to experience a large portion of Ed’s poetic, inflated narrative, and determine for ourselves its value.

The argument of Renaissance theorists, in defense of poetry that was both written in common vernaculars and about non-religious subject matter, was that narratives don’t have to be true, or explicitly religious to have moral value for the reader.  Giacopo Mazzoni[2] (defending Dante) said that “Perfect poetry is a game…it puts delight first in order to provide a later benefit.” Mazzoni proposed that there is value simply in being transported by “delight” and transcending actual sensory or historical experience.  Perhaps Ed’s stories were providing something valuable regardless of verisimilitude. 

But Will, understandably, has trouble finding his footing in this entire story, with no way of contextualizing what portions are based in lived experience.  He appears to have dismissed the stories as a whole, and because those stories are so much of whom his father is, he is left without a relationship with his father.  This plays out into an actual estrangement after Will’s indictment, “I’m a footnote in that story Dad – the context for your great adventure.  Which never happened, incidentally.  You were selling novelty products in Wichita the day I was born.”

Because Will can neither reconcile his father’s fishing story with historical facts, nor find metaphoric value in it, he reduces it to a covert lie.  He appears to have systematically broken down all of his father’s stories in the same way, and to have bitterly concluded that all of it is a lie that is “covering up” the person that his father really is, rendering him unknowable.  He seems unable to fathom Sidney's 3rd category of poets: those who tell stories as they "should" be.  Ed certainly has mastered how a story "should" go in order to maximize delight. 

As the film proceeds to conclude, this series of assumptions by Will (summed up by the line, “Dad, I have no idea who you are because you have never told me a single fact.”) is both erroneous and ironic.  Not only is there a fair amount of historic fact in Ed’s stories, but the stories themselves actually are an embodiment of the spirit and essence of the man telling them.  They are also a gift and a heritage that can outlast his mortality.

           
Similar to Renaissance theorists, the film is left wrestling with issues of the nature of imitation, the problem of defining reality or nature, and contending (against Will’s assumptions) that embellished, engaging stories [poetry] can serve moral ends. John Dryden[3] adamantly defended the role of imagination in creating story (poetry.)  He defended the value of the ability of art to express vividly and creatively, rather than to necessarily represent reality mimetically.

Ed’s stories are consistent with the format of mythical hero-epics that have been defended against critics claiming that poetry is guilty of lying.  William Doty, PhD[4] noted, “There are any number of happenings or circumstances or actions here that typically appear in mythological hero stories: the frequent absence of the father; Edward … exhibits unusually fast physical growth; he is a careful student of wisdom he follows a call to leave home –an odyssey-like wandering… He saves others from danger, [he] domesticates a giant man, [and] like Herakles, Edward performs assigned labors. [He] fights for the hand of his beloved Sandra.  He breathes underwater, and is finally transformed into a large fish in the river.  [The novel’s author, Daniel Wallace] states in an interview that “Edward bloom is mythologized while he is still alive.””

But is the value in Ed’s self-mythologizing storytelling didactic?  Especially from Will’s perspective, when it is impossible to know how much of each story is fabricated it is easy to see how he would conclude that the stories held no didactic or moral value.  However Renaissance theorists also purported that there is an imaginative function that poetry can serve: that producing delight and engaging the audience’s appetite for elements of story is a virtue in itself, and that it can make story more effective in teaching further principles of morality.  Ed’s stories clearly do this very well.  If knowledge can be factual or also be about luminescence and character, then there is a type of knowledge to be attained through Ed’s stories.  You get to know Ed, even if you don’t necessarily get to know what actually happened to Ed, or how it actually looked.  This is what Ed seems to mean with his response to Will’s accusations when he says, “I’ve been nothin’ but myself since the day I was born, and if you can’t see that it’s your failin’, not mine.”

Doty described this “other” type of knowledge, with it’s root in delight, in describing the novel from which the film was created, “The last sentence of the book is “No one believes a word (p. 180), and yet we have believed the story, in that manner that fiction can be truer than reality, fantasy more important than arithmetic, and a myth as big as a universe.”

Ed’s stories were “truer than reality” because they revealed his personality better than any unembellished account ever could.  His stories were not intended to be informative, but rather enlightening.  His gift for storytelling was consistently inviting his audience to fully invest in his tale, and ultimately to get involved in the creation of the text.  This was definitively illustrated by a change in the screenplay[5].  Originally Will’s constructed version of his father’s death was to be told at the funeral, but the script was changed to have Will telling that story to Ed himself, as he was dying, and among the other ways it resolved their relationship, it allowed Will to “gain a new insight into the man who raised him, as well as the importance of storytelling in all our lives.”

There is an interesting deviation from Sir Philip Sidney’s original argument that poets make no truth claims and that because, “the poet nothing affirms, [he] therefore never lieth.”  Ed Bloom is, in fact, making truth claims.  He even says, “I’ve told you a thousand facts, Will.  That’s what I do.  I tell stories.”  To which Will replies, “You tell lies, Dad.”   Yet the film never portrays Ed as a liar.  Film Journalist John Kenneth Muir[6] said “Instead, as his funeral reveals, he is just a serial exaggerator: one with a foot in fact, and another in colorful fiction.  By Ed’s reckoning, Will tells stories with “all the facts, none of the flavor,” and that’s just not his way.”   In the end we love Ed Bloom the way Dryden loves Shakespeare.

This seems like something of a loose interpretation of Sidney’s meaning.  While Sidney enthusiastically defended that value of a well-told story, he also based that defense on the story never claiming to be a historic fact.  But, despite that incongruence, Muir goes on to say, “Big Fish is filled with incredible whimsy and magic.  And yet, at the same time, the film seems to truly capture something essential about our mortality, and the mortality of those we love.  We can view tall tales as merely, “amusing lies” from someone we love, or as the seeds of immortality itself, a renewable source of energy that we can share with our children and our grandchildren.  [Because] as it turns out, Ed’s strange stories become important to Will… Ed wanted Will to listen to his stories for a reason, and not merely to entertain him.  Someday, the boy would need to know the details so he could take ownership of Ed’s story and continue it for the next generation.”

The story become immortal, and tremendously valuable to Will. He appears to have become converted, and not in need of Sir Sidney's ink after all. 

---

[1] Sir Philip Sidney, The Defence of Poesy

[2] Giacopo Mazzoni, Introduction and Summary – On the Defense of the Comedy of Dante

[3] John Dryden, An Essay of Dramatic Poesy

[4] Myths and Tales in Big Fish by William Doty, Ph. D., http://www.mythicjourneys.org/newsletter_dec06_doty.html

[5] Breaking Down Big Fish, by John August (screenwriter)

http://johnaugust.com/2012/breaking-down-big-fish

[6] http://reflectionsonfilmandtelevision.blogspot.com/2011/12/cult-movie-review-big-fish-2003.html

Medieval Symbolism and Beasts of the Southern Wild

Medieval Theorists endeavored to justify the use of allegorical language in the Bible and sacred texts.  They drew a number of conclusions about the value of metaphor in communicating unknowable Truths via written texts.  These theories and methods of analyzing metaphor are fascinating to apply to Behn Zeitlin’s 2012 film, Beasts of the Southern Wild.

The film follows a 6 year old protagonist, Hushpuppy, through her experience living with her Dad in a community called “The Bathtub.” They are located outside of a protective levy, and are isolated from much of what might be termed “civilization.” Hushpuppy’s relationship with her terminally ill father, Wink, is complicated, but sincere.  She never knew her mother, and whether her mother died or left them is never concretely set forth.  The pair survive a hurricane-scale storm and the subsequent flooding, and work to protect their community and its culture from outside threats, including dehumanizing rescue efforts and mythical beasts.  Ultimately Wink passes away, and Hushpuppy earns her place as the leader of her community

Augustine[1] referred to literal and figurative conventional signs.  All conventional signs must be literal first, in order to allow for the creation and connection of figurative meaning.   Any word, image, or constructed representational art is first a literal sign, and can secondarily be a figurative sign if additional meaning is assigned to it by the creator or viewer.  There were a number of literal signs in Beasts of the Southern Wild that grew to take on figurative meanings.  The choice of the filmmakers to present the auroch as being a porcine animal, rather than the historically accurate bovine classification, was originally one made of necessity.[2] They needed an animal smart enough to train. The aurochs were played by baby potbellied pigs, with a costume made of nutria skins (a rodent native to the Deep South, fittingly enough.)  And by including an adult potbellied pig in the earlier sequences of the film, the permeating presence of the pigs, and the contrast between adult and juvenile physiology created a galaxy of signifiers.[3]

Augustine’s explanation that words themselves are signs, and simultaneously things is exemplified beautifully when Hushpuppy says “I wanna be cohesive.” to the boatman. It is clear that the word itself is only a sign in relation to the defined meaning of cohesive, because Hushpuppy is clearly not familiar with the word or its meaning.  But the word has some meaning to her all the same, despite it probably not being the assigned meaning.  She and the boatman assign different, possibly congruent meaning to the same sign.

Boccaccio[4] praised poets who take truths and hide them behind a veil of fiction.  The presence of this ambiguity of symbolic meaning surfaces largely through the use of tropes, or recurring themes or elements within the narrative.  There was clearly some meaning behind the way Wink, Hushpuppy’s dad, proved so sensitive to Hushpuppy’s touch.  On at least 3 separate occasions she hit or pushed him and he collapsed. That there is meaning in this is easily deduced, but the possibilities for that meaning are polysemous.  

Aristotle was insistent on the binary between signs or things that are useful versus those that are pleasurable.  Based on his religious and cultural background he put forth that God intended some things to be enjoyed (things that bring one closer to God,) and other things to be used in the navigation and cultivation of a life seeking after those things intended to be pleasurable.  According to this religious binary, when things intended to be used are instead enjoyed, it is an abuse of the intended purpose.   This is an interesting concept to bring to the scene where the girls from the Bathtub voyage out to the brothel.  The contrast of women simultaneously filling the roles of whore and affectionate mother figure is stark, and consistent with the convolution of roles throughout the film.  In helping to fill the girls’ need for physical affection, these women are using their physicality for a pleasurable end, rather than abusing it toward enjoyment in what ought to have been a useful end.

A similar binary is presented with Wink’s vigorous insistence that neither he nor Hushpuppy are allowed to cry.  To indulge in crying, in his worldview, appears an Augustinian abuse.  It is to wallow in a vein that one ought to pass through as quickly as possible.  That there is mutual allowance for appropriate crying by both of them just before his death is somehow indicative that the appropriate time has finally arrived and crying is finally pleasurable, or transcendent.

Dante[5] might have celebrated how this film utilizes a common vernacular.  The meaning of some dialogue has to be interpreted by viewing the signifiers that appear to be represented.   In the scene where the Bathtubbers chant for Hushpuppy to “Beast it!” It is only possible to deduce what this term means by seeing her proceed to do it – to break into a crab with her bare hands.  Once we establish this literal interpretation of the term, we are able to begin to grapple with the figurative implications of the action, it’s place in her society, and the implications of the syntax.

Thomas Aquinas[6], and subsequently Dante purported that symbolic texts were to read in several ways, and could carry meaning in each of these ways simultaneously:

Historical/literal meaning, allegorical/tropological meaning, moral meaning, and anagogical meaning.  It would be easy to find an allegorical or anagogical meaning for the presence of water in this film, but that meaning has to be established first via the historical/literal meaning of the water.  The presence of the flood water is a key plot point before it is representative of cleansing, rebirth[7], punishment, or mortal life, or any other polysemous Noah-based signifier[8].

Augustine said that knowledge of tropes is necessary for resolution of ambiguities.  There is tremendous ambiguity surrounding the presence of the Aurochs in this story, but by noticing that the film consistently cuts from shots of the group of Aurochs to shots of Hushpuppy and the other girls in the Bathtub, creates a correlation that (along with the physical traits of the pigs used to represent Aurochs) makes them each seem like a group of infants, and makes their understanding of one another seem plausible, if not possible. (Which Aristotle[9] would like.)

Examples of moral interpretation of this film are easy to identify in some of the more didactic recurring themes and motifs. Hushpuppy repeatedly talks about “strong animals” while footage of the Aurochs is shown, but by using the term “strong animal” instead of “Auroch” she leaves the interpretation of her observations in ambiguity.  Based on the sequences that follow her observations it is easy to conclude that her words hold meaning in relation to interhuman behaviors as much as to the behavior of the Aurochs. 

Some of the moral meanings that can be found within this text were described by Silpa Kovvali: “A protagonist's origins, when humble, are almost exclusively presented as something to escape, an obstacle on her or his road to self-fulfillment. Zeitlin [the director] strongly resists this portrayal. The suggestion is that the city is motivated by self-interest—a desire to quell a threat rather than to care for the smaller or sweeter among them. It's no wonder that the residents of the Bathtub are distrustful of everyone and everything they associate with it, even the institutions that could improve their material condition. And so Hushpuppy struggles to escape from the hospital and return to, not run from, her humble origins, which she views as a crucial part of her identity. No sane person would react to Beasts by deciding that healthcare is unnecessary or evil. But an open-minded viewer should leave the film with a greater understanding of the way that complicated political histories can make people distrustful of institutions widely perceived as universal goods.[10]”

The numerous anagogical meanings behind the metaphors in this film can be represented by the example of Hushpuppy’s repeated references to breaking and fixing things.  The power and emphasis that is placed on individuals actions and decisions – in relation to their entire environment and community, creates a lasting impression.  There is also much to suggest a theme of the inevitability of mortality and the ideal of a legacy.    

The film managed to validate the subculture of the Bathtub without glamorizing it.  The importance of a sense of heritage and community, as something worth preserving, was a consistent transcendental theme. It did tend toward painting a negative view of the more “civilized” world – it was too sterile and not alive enough. The literal presence of varied forms of life and awareness of heartbeats in Hushpuppy’s Bathtub existence seemed far more alive in contrast to the shelter/hospital in civilization. 

All of the Medieval theorists we’ve discussed proposed that metaphor allows the sensuous to provide access to the spiritual.  Hushpuppies most sensuously presented experiences are all hugely metaphoric - her motif of listening for heartbeats, for example.   But remarkably Hushpuppy herself uses her father’s metaphors as a way to know the unknowable, which in her case is her mother.  She uses the jersey as a physical metaphor for her mother when she talks to it, and she visualizes all of her father’s metaphors about her mother literally.  Her mother is faceless, unknowable, like God. And she develops a relationship with her entirely through metaphor.

Augustine proposed that if something in a text doesn’t make sense literally, it must be a metaphor.  There are ample opportunities to exercise this logic in Beasts of the Southern Wild.  I struggled to make sense of Hushpuppy’s proclivity for hiding – bother herself and other objects – throughout the film.  As a behavior it didn’t make sense.  But when her illogical need to hide things is viewed symbolically, it becomes a representation of her interior emotions, vulnerability, and childlike rationale.  Hiding under a cardboard box in a house fire makes no sense literally, but it forms a lovely metaphor, especially as she talks about her charcoal drawings on the cardboard box lasting forever.

Boccaccio insisted that obscurity helps meaning be more valuable because it takes more work to obtain. Throughout the film, the reason these characters should stay in The Bathtub is obscure, yet even a 6 year old can understand it.  The film metaphorically constructs a sense of place and identity and culture, strong and “cohesive” enough that it’s value becomes understandable far more effectively than if it had been promoted via rhetoric.

---

[1] Augustine, On Christian Teaching[2] http://newswatch.nationalgeographic.com/2012/07/17/exclusive-the-secret-of-the-aurochs-those-beasts-of-the-southern-wild/[3] Felluga, Dino. "Modules on Barthes: On Plotting." Introductory Guide to Critical Theory. Jan. 31, 2011. Purdue U. Sept. 21, 2013. <http://www.purdue.edu/guidetotheory/narratology/modules/barthesplot.html>.[4] Boccacio, Giovanni, Geneaology of the Gentile Gods, Book 14
[5] Alighieri, Dante. Il Convivo  Book Two, and Letter to Can Grande
[6] Aquinas, Thomas. Summa Theologica, Question 1.
[7] “In A Dictionary of Symbols by Jean Chevalier and Alain Gheerbrant, the meaning of water “may be reduced to three main areas. It is a source of life, a vehicle of cleansing and a centre of regeneration.” [ii] [ii] Chevalier, Jean, and Alain Gheerbrant. Trans. John. Buchanan-Brown. A Dictionary of Symbols.Cambridge, MA: Blackwell, 1994. Page 1081.
[8] Jung identifies Noah’s Ark as “an analogy of the womb, like the sea into which the sun sinks for rebirth.” - [i] Jung,C.G. Symbols of Transformation. Collected Works, Volume V. Edited and Translated by Gerhard Adler and R.F.C. Hull. Princeton University Press, 1977. Page 211, Paragraph 311.[9] Aristotle, Poetics.
[10] http://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2012/08/what-beasts-of-the-southern-wild-really-says/261228/