Term paper for moive commentary

Chinese Cinema in the Age of Advertisement: The Filmmaker as a Cultural Broker

Yomi Braester

ABSTRACT The article looks at a model of filmmaking that has emerged since the rise of “cultural economy” in the mid-1990s. Directors have collaborated with real estate developers and other entrepreneurs and become cultural brokers. They use the prestige, access and popular appeal of the cinema to establish a stronger connection between film and market forces. As filmmakers become trendsetters, their films aim not only at box office success but also at shaping economic agendas and visual experience, social networks and the aesthetic environment. Filmmaking as cultural brokering has been practised by directors as disparate as the market-oriented Feng Xiaogang, the neorealist Ning Ying and the documentary producer Wu Wenguang.

In a television commercial aired in the PRC in March 2002, a master of supernatural martial arts arrives at an inn and asks for Longjing tea. As he raises his head and reveals his face, one sees that the knight is played by the film director Feng Xiaogang. The commercial is one of a series made by the Hong Kong “comedy king” Stephen Chow Sing- chi (Zhou Xingchi) to endorse the Wahaha brand bottled tea, “the Longjing tea you don’t need to brew.” It was the first commercial directed by Feng (together with Li Geng)1 and his first collaboration with Chow. The commercial presents in a nutshell the characteristics of mainstream filmmaking in contemporary China. The fast-pace 15-second flick builds on a popular genre and star power. It features Feng Xiaogang as a recognizable figure on par with the Hong Kong megapopular actor, and his status is directly translated into selling power. Various media blend, blurring the lines between feature film and commercial advertisement.2

The junction between film – often associated in China with social and political agendas – and crass market forces may seem jarring, and many observers have come to regard commercial film as a distinct genre. Those who focus on the box office claim that in commercial film Chinese cinema has developed a strain that prioritizes revenue and pays little attention to narrative and ideology. These claims are buttressed by the increasing importance of fiscal factors affecting the film industry, such as China’s entrance into the World Trade Organization (WTO) in

1. On Li Geng, see Zheng Xin’an, Jingtou li de shangpin: Zhongguo youxiu guanggao daoyan quan jilu (Merchandize in the Lens: A Full Record of Masterful Chinese Advertisement Directors) (Beijing: Shijie zhishi chubanshe, 2003), pp. 70–90.

2. “Zhou Xingchi � Feng Xiaogang � daxia � dian xiaoer?!” (“Stephen Chow plus Feng Xiaogang equal martial arts master and inn attendant?!”), http://ent.enorth.com.cn/ system/2002/03/11/000286869.shtml (visited 17 October 2004).

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2001 and the concurrent collapse of the state-owned studio system. Feng Xiaogang’s films, which have targeted mass audiences, have been cited as a major instance of the commercial turn, together with Zhang Yimou’s interest in crowd-pleasing genre films, from the urban comedy Xingfu shiguang (Happy Times, 2000) to the martial arts films Yingxiong (Hero, 2000) and Shimian maifu (English title House of Flying Daggers, 2004). Even the enfant terrible of Chinese cinema, Zhang Yuan, has turned away from the hard-hitting social criticism of films such as Erzi (Sons, 1996) to slick flicks such as Lücha (Green Tea, 2003) and television commercials.

And yet I argue that critics have overstated the case for defining commercial films as a separate trend that breaks away from earlier models of literary sensibility and social engagement. Whether state- subsidized or not, filmmaking remains motivated largely by the desire to communicate with a large audience. Literary sensibilities have not disap- peared, though their sources of inspiration have shifted from Lu Xun and Zhang Xianliang to Wang Shuo and Gu Long. One should not put down too quickly the statements of successful directors such as Feng Xiaogang and Zhang Yimou, who claim to be making art films. So-called commer- cial movies show practical sense in appealing to a wide spectatorship, yet they retain a keen concern with current issues, including the illnesses of the rapid transformation to a consumerist society. I discuss elsewhere how Chinese films, across purported genres, have addressed unregulated urbanization and the concomitant demolition-and-relocation projects.3

This article touches on the related topic of filmmakers’ response to brand-name consumption and the rampant commercialization of emblems of cultural heritage.

Commercial filmmaking opens new possibilities not, as has been proposed, through distinct content or cinematic form, but rather because the director’s entrepreneurial engagement redefines the social forces with which the cinema interacts and determines anew how films ally them- selves with other media. In a system where filmmakers no longer identify with a sponsoring state apparatus, they may emulate the operation methods of commercial sponsors, to the point of becoming one with the entrepreneurial system at large. Whereas Maoist thought required artists to “unite with the masses,” directors now merge with the commercial production and distribution units. Filmmakers take over not only directing but also advertising and promotion, and their work expands far beyond the artifact screened in theatres. A new model of filmmaking is in the process of emerging, which is akin to other forms of entrepreneurial use of culture. A certain symbolism may be found in that both masterful artists and real estate moguls are referred to as dawan’r, a term reserved for large-scale market manipulators.

3. Yomi Braester, “Tracing the city’s scars: demolition and the documentary impulse in New Urban Cinema,” in Zhen Zhang (ed.), The Urban Generation (Durham: Duke University Press, 2006).

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The term dawan’r originated in the circles of vernacular performers and referred to skilled artists of great reputation.4 In contemporary parlance, it designates high-level managers who create and mould mar- kets. Jing Wang notes that the new dawan’r mediate between various strata of culture, contradicting the artificial distinction between high and low culture, or, for that matter, between Marxism and capitalism as opposed market forces. With the rise of “cultural economy” (wenhua jingji) in the mid-1990s, cultural capital and economic capital became exchangeable. Cultural references could be cashed in to enhance the monetary value of a commercial project, and the brokers of culture became a powerful elite.5 Under these circumstances, filmmakers – like their counterparts in music distribution, art exhibition and literary pro- motion – could benefit from their skills as producers of artifacts of wide appeal and their proximity to intellectual circles to become influential middlemen. In this article I examine the recent respositioning of filmmaking in the PRC’s cultural matrix and focus in particular on Feng Xiaogang’s Dawan’r, known in English as Big Shot’s Funeral (2001). I argue that the film both signals the turn to cultural brokering and provides a wry commentary on the limits of commercial enterprise.

The filmmaker’s role as a cultural broker erases the distinction between ideological and commercial cinema as well as between art film and market-driven media. Cultural brokering is practised by box office- oriented directors as well as more independent filmmakers. A more sober examination of cinema as cultural capital may also demystify indepen- dent film. The talent of “six-generation” directors notwithstanding, such directors have enjoyed an aura created by skilful brokers. Labelling films as alternative, avant-garde and dissident has become a profitable market- ing ploy that has sustained beyond its usefulness the distinction between commercial and independent cinema.

Acknowledging the commodity value of films entails, paradoxically, a disregard of their cost. Films cannot be judged by their box office success. Hollywood-trained media and scholarship has used revenue figures to claim “the blockbuster” as a genre. Yet Jonathan Rosenbaum points to the fact that bestseller lists evidence only the marketing skills of specific distributors.6 The box office standard works to the advantage of marketing experts – in Hollywood as well as in Beijing’s central business district and even in the official compound in Zhongnanhai – who can, and

4. “He wei ‘dawan,’ ‘dakuan’” (“What are ‘dawan’ and ‘dakuan’”), Zhongguo gonghui caihui (Trade Union Financial Affairs of China), No. 1 (1994), n.p.

5. Wang Jing, “ ‘Culture’ as leisure and ‘culture’ as capital: the state question and Chinese popular culture,” Positions: East Asia Cultures Critique, Vol. 9, No. 1 (Spring 2001), pp. 69–70. For the term “cultural broker,” referring to a person who mediates between groups of differing cultural backgrounds, see for example Clifford Geertz, “The Javanese Kijai: the changing role of a cultural broker,” Comparative Study of Society and History, Vol. 2 (1960), pp. 228–249.

6. Jonathan Rosenbaum, Movie Wars: How Hollywood and the Media Limit What Movies We Can See (Chicago: A Capella, 2000).

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often do, rig the numbers to promote specific films.7 The attention to so-called commercial cinema has privileged reception statistics and in- dustrial bottom lines, at the expense of inquiring into the form of cinema in the age of commercial advertisement. As filmmakers start regarding themselves as trendsetters, their films aim not only at box office success but also at shaping economic agendas and visual experience, social networks and aesthetic environment. The new playing field expands the definition of the cinema and necessitates a closer attention to the role of filmmakers as cultural brokers.

The Rise of the Cultural Broker

The current paragon of cultural brokering may be found in China’s booming real estate business. The most visible company is SOHO China, owned and managed by Pan Shiyi and Zhang Xin. The ascendance of the husband-and-wife team has become a rags-to-riches legend. Starting in 1998 with a profitable double-use project (Small Office, Home Office, hence SOHO), they launched in February 2001 a complex of eleven villas and a clubhouse, known as Commune by the Great Wall. The project was originally planned to comprise up to 50 villas to be sold at US$500,000 each, but it was not a commercial success and the villas are now rented out as a “boutique hotel.” Yet it was essential to establishing the company’s name recognition and prestige. The buildings were designed by 12 Asian architects of modest fame, and the result was a modernist, experimental complex. SOHO China submitted the Commune by the Great Wall to the Eighth International Architecture Exhibition of the Venice Biennale (2002), and Zhang Xin won an unprecedented special prize for an individual patron of architectural works. The shortcomings of the project and its commercial unviability were dwarfed and forgotten in light of this critical acclaim and international fame.

The case of Zhang Xin and Pan Shiyi illustrates how players in the financial field make use of culture. Even Pan, seemingly the more practical of the two, expatiates in a recent interview for Culture magazine on a cultural comparison between Russia, China and Japan.8 Pan’s name recognition has even made him a movie celebrity, as the male lead in Asipilin (Aspirin, 2005). SOHO China owes much of its success not only to marketing its individual products but also to promoting the company’s image as a leader in setting cultural trends. Its projects – including currently the SOHO Shang Du building by Lab Architecture Studio of Melbourne and a residential subdivision by Zaha Hadid – are wrapped in

7. Some filmmakers who have access to industry records doubt, off the record, the commercial success of some of Feng Xiaogang’s films; in other cases, such as Zhang Yimou’s House of Flying Daggers, the numbers tell little, since no other films were allowed to be screened during the first weeks of the film’s theatrical release.

8. Fang Zhenming, “Zhongguo haishi yao kaifang: Fang SOHO Zhongguo dongshizhang Pan Shiyi” (“China still has to open up: an interview with Pan Shiyi, general manager of SOHO China”), Wenhua, September 2004.

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the glory of foreign designers and recognition by the international art world.

Zhang Xin and Pan Shiyi are not only exemplary of the real estate dawan’r and an inspiration to the PRC’s business elite; their activities implicate also the new role of filmmakers. The Commune by the Great Wall was presented in Venice through a video made by the film director Ning Ying, who also shot other promotional pieces for SOHO China. The slick 12-minute video (available on DVD upon request and downloadable at SOHO China’s website) associated the company’s products with Ning’s reputation as an art film director and contributed to the project’s success in Venice, and hence also to the company’s market value. SOHO China’s slightly provocative yet ultimately non-contentious aesthetics – introducing, for example, Beijing’s first brightly-coloured buildings – has become one of its most important financial assets. In expanding real estate development to novel ways of visualizing the urban environment, Zhang Xin and Pan Shiyi have relied not only on architectural design but also on filmic presentation.

Ning Ying’s involvement with SOHO China is far from self-evident. The director is known for her Beijing trilogy (Zhao le /For Fun, 1992; Minjing gushi /On the Beat, 1995; Xiari nuanyangyang /I Love Beijing, 2001), which looks critically at urban change of the kind promoted by land speculators. Her works draw close to documentary cinema and preserve the course grain of everyday life. Ning’s video of the Commune by the Great Wall, on the other hand, comports well with the commercial expectations. Smooth camera movement and a sound track comprised mostly of electronic music accompany a cursory introduction to each villa, an on-site fashion show and a dramatic overview of the Commune during a stormy night. Ning Ying maintains a distinction between her commercial exploits and personally-motivated filmmaking. She does not use her image to promote sales – unlike, for example, Feng Xiaogang, who collapses his personal and filmic personae in the Longjing tea commercial. Nevertheless, Ning’s collaboration with SOHO points to ways of expanding filmmakers’ cultural playing field.

A wide spectrum of entrepreneuring filmmakers use their media knowledge and cultural status to add prestige and monetary value to commercial products. Perhaps the most unlikely example involves the pioneer documentary filmmaker Wu Wenguang. In June 2001, Sino- Ocean Real Estate Development Co. launched its Ocean Paradise (Yuanyang tiandi) project. This housing complex for Beijing’s “yuppies” was promoted through the added value of culture, in this case, the Eastern Modern Art Centre (Yuanyang yishu zhongxin), touted as a centre for alternative art. The project was chosen by Beijing wanbao (Beijing Evening News) as one of the ten “star developments” of 2001.9 Two months into the presales, the art centre sponsored a much-publicized avant-garde performance, Wen Hui’s “Dancing with migrant workers” (“Yu mingong yiqi wudao”). The entire rehearsal process and the single

9. http://www.cosred.com/cosred/index.php (visited 10 October 2004).

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public performance were recorded by Wen’s husband, Wu Wenguang, in a documentary bearing the same title.10 The symbiosis between Wu, a vocal proponent of using digital video to circumvent the film industry establishment on the one hand, and a commercial development on the other, shows how entrepreneurship is not alien even to independent filmmakers.

The more blatantly commercial directors are especially adept expo- nents of the new cultural economy. Zhang Yimou, for example, has closely interlinked cinema and image design. Zhang provided the filmic promotion for Beijing’s bid for the 2008 Olympics, in a short that boasts the capital as place where old and new meet, a business hub, a cultural centre and an architectural marvel. Zhang has applied the same zeal to advancing his films. He pioneered the extensive use of “making of” documentaries, released in advance of his feature films – the most recent of which, House of Flying Daggers, was launched in a televised cer- emony. It should come as no surprise that Zhang also collaborates with real estate moghuls. One of his main funders has been the developer Zhang Weiping, and recent reports indicate that Zhang has become a property speculator in his own right.11

In this environment, where filmmakers not only rely on cultural brokering but also promote their image as dawan’r, it would only be appropriate that Feng Xiaogang would make the self-referential film Big Shot’s Funeral, or as its Chinese title literally goes, The dawan’r.

The Cultural Broker: A Filmic History

Feng Xiaogang presents a loving if parodic portrait of the dawan’r. Big Shot’s Funeral starts as a famous Hollywood director, Donald Tyler (Donald Sutherland), arrives in Beijing to shoot an updated version of The Last Emperor and falls into a coma. The cinematographer Yoyo (Ge You) takes to heart Tyler’s request for a “comedy funeral” and plans an uplifting spectacle worthy of the director’s reputation, to take place in the Forbidden City. To cover the costs, the cinematographer takes every opportunity for direct advertising and product placement. The body of the deceased is to be placed on sponsored furniture, surrounded by large product mockups and dressed in sponsor brands. The event, attended by cultural luminaries and featuring various performances, ends up in the cinematographer’s imagination as the shell for an elaborate lucrative enterprise. With his friend Louis Wang (Ying Da) he envisages the funeral as replete with opera and rock performances, the appearance of cultural luminaries, and a specially-produced movie on Tyler. They launch their enterprise with an extravagant multimedia press conference, making full use of what is called in advertisement parlance “eventizing”

10. My thanks to Sasha Welland for drawing my attention to the connection between Wu’s film and the real estate project.

11. Tang Yuankai, “Movie makers at crossroad,” http://www.bjreview.com.cn/200435/ Nation-200435(B).htm (visited 7 January 2005); Geoffrey Macnab, “I’m not interested in politics,” http://www.guardian.co.uk/arts/fridayreview/story/0,,1374950,00.html [The Guardian, 17 December 2004] (visited 7 January 2005).

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a product release. In a delirium, the producers later calculate DVD sales from the event and plan to launch their enterprise on the American stock market. Yoyo makes use of Beijing’s cultural heritage both to lend elegance to Tyler’s funeral and to make it profitable.

Pulling off the implausible scheme distinguishes Yoyo as a cultural broker. At first, the eponymous dawan’r in Feng’s film appears to be Tyler. “What is a dawan’r?” Yoyo is asked, and he answers, in line with the older lexical definition, “a famous star.” Yet Tyler is no more than a celebrity, even though his reputation enables Yoyo’s scheme for the funeral. Yoyo, on the other hand, is little known but becomes a dawan’r in the 1990s sense of the term, and the storyline follows his rise to a cultural broker. Originally hired to shoot the “making-of” documentary (a mark of strategic DVD marketing) and explicitly given no decision- making power, Yoyo negotiates an increasingly complicated deal.

The protagonist in Big Shot’s Funeral is immediately recognizable as an updated version of the entrepreneurial fantasy providers in two earlier films, both played, like Yoyo, by Ge You. Wanzhu (The Troubleshooters, 1988, directed by Mi Jiashan) was among the most prominent new urban films made in the late 1980s. The first movie based on a text by Wang Shuo, it exhibits the street wisdom that has earned Wang’s works the description “hoodlum literature” (pizi wenxue). The plot revolves around three young men, under the leadership of Yang Zhong (Ge You) who, in the spirit of the economic reforms, start their own enterprise, 3T. The company name alludes to its Chinese slogan, centred on three services: removing worries, solving difficult situations and covering up for mistakes. In the most elaborate episode, 3T arranges for a pulp fiction writer to receive a literary prize. With the money paid by the author who craves for public recognition, they stage a free fashion show at the World Expo Centre, at the end of which they assume the roles of scholarly judges and give the writer his long-awaited award. As soon as the cultural economy appeared in the late 1980s, cinema was there to spoof it.

The smooth operators in The Troubleshooters signal the coming of the cultural broker. The literary prize episode mediates between high and low culture by acknowledging in mock-scholarly fashion the works of an author presumably rejected for his lowbrow writings. The author is unashamed of his popular publications yet yearns for recognition from the establishment, and the three entrepreneurs step in (the contrast between the author’s practice and aspirations is highlighted by his pen name, Zhiqing, which alludes to the sent-down youth whose “root-seeking literature” – xungen wenxue – dominated the literary scene at the time). The 3T hoodlums further blur the line between low- and high-brow by including in the literary award ceremony a fashion show – a novel consumerist spectacle at the time – and crowd the catwalk with Beijing opera and modern drama characters, alluding to the declining status of traditional and socialist theatrical forms. The make-believe exploits of 3T soon branch into cinema as well. Yu Guan (Zhang Guoli) takes on a stuntman’s job, willing to risk his life in the name of making a Chinese

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film as good as Hong Kong action movies. The cultural broker’s next stop, it is implied, would be commercial filmmaking.

Yet the three entrepreneurs fail to translate cultural capital to economic benefits; they are sued out of business and end up in the unemployment queue. In portraying the enterprise as a failure, the director Mi Jiashan sides with social norms. In an essay about the film, Mi describes the three as “abnormal human characters and disturbing social phenomena.”12 The resistance to changing lifestyles is also made evident in the title song, by rock’n’roll singer (and later music producer) Wang Di: “I used to dream of modern urban life/But I don’t know how to say what I feel now/There are more high rises by the day/It’s not easy to live here.” The song continues after the protagonists’ downfall: “TV commercial time is increasing/It’s as though you can’t hold on to that golden moment/You can’t do what you want/What you don’t want comes in droves.” The lyrics single out rapid urban development and television commercials as symptoms of unwanted change. Mi Jiashan takes from Wang Shuo the urban youngsters’ glib tongue, cynicism and sense of rebellion, but not the novelist’s sympathy for such characters.

The Troubleshooters laid the ground for later movies on entrepreneur cultural brokers and catapulted Ge You to star status. He appeared in Zhang Yimou’s and Chen Kaige’s epic films, but was more often typecast as a cool-mannered Beijinger, similar to the character developed in The Troubleshooters. When Feng Xiaogang ventured from TV into film, in Jiafang yifang (English title Dream Factory, 1997), he made Ge You the lead, and the actor has played in almost all of Feng’s films since. Dream Factory reworks, in many respects, Mi Jiashan’s plot. Four unemployed film workers (among them the actor Yao Yuan, played by Ge You, and the scriptwriter Qian Kang, played by Feng Xiaogang) form a business called “The day trip of your dreams” (Hao meng yiri you), designed “to let the consumers have their dreams come true for one day.” The Chinese title for the film, literally “Party A, Party B,” refers to the contract drawn between the company and its customers, emphasizing how free play is moulded into commercial transaction. The customers’ fantasies are more varied than those in The Troubleshooters, from a General Patton wannabe to a famous actress who craves for anonymity (or so she fancies at first). The entrepreneurs give the lie to high culture, as they conjure one film genre after the other as part of their schemes: a book seller stars in his own war movie modelled after Hollywood’s Patton, and a cook is made the protagonist of a Qing-period costume drama. The four clearly draw inspiration from their experience in the film industry, creating movie-like settings and quoting well-known quips (and in doing so blurring the line between the fictional characters and the celebrities who play the parts). Whereas the 3T trio fails to get into the movie business, the Dream Factory quartet are industry veterans who find even more lucrative venues for their filmmaking experience and talent.

12. Mi Jiashan, “Discussing the troubleshooters,” Chinese Education and Society, Vol. 31, No 1 (Fall 1998), pp. 8–14.

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Most significant for the developing filmic portrayal of the cultural broker, the entrepreneurs in Dream Factory are presented in a favourable light. They are considerate of their clients, to the point where the customers’ changing whims cause comic role reversals with the benevol- ent service providers. They volunteer to help the unfortunate, and even when they tell white lies they worry about the ethical consequences. They adhere to the Maoist maxim of “serving the people” and sacrifice their comfort (even giving up their apartment) to address social wrongs. They foreshadow the characters in Feng Xiaogang’s Tianxia wuzei (A World Without Thieves, 2004) as the post-socialist version of model workers.

Such positive characters were required for the setting in which Feng’s film was screened, namely as an upbeat production to celebrate the Chinese New Year.13 In fact, Feng’s unparalleled success and ascendance to cultural broker status may be attributed to adapting the model of the New Year’s film (hesuipian). The marketing ploy of releasing a comic film tagged for the Chinese New Year had become standard practice in Hong Kong since Xiyouji di yibailingyi hui zhi yueguang baohe (English title A Chinese Odyssey, 1994), starring Stephen Chow. The Film Bureau introduced the term in the PRC when distributing Jackie Chan’s Rumble in the Bronx under this rubric in 1995.14 Dream Factory was the first made-in-the-PRC New Year’s film, and following its success Feng has released increasingly popular movies every January, including the 2001 production Big Shot’s Funeral. The trajectory from The Troubleshooters to Big Shot’s Funeral may be symbolized in the differences between the 3T Company and Louis Wang’s 3W.com.

Considering its lineage of make-believe protagonists, comic star power and New Year’s films, Big Shot’s Funeral’s plot stands as a metaphorical celebration of Feng’s accomplishment in becoming not only a successful director but also a cultural celebrity. Yoyo starts as a streetwise guy akin to Ge You’s character in the earlier movies and ends in a Feng Xiaogang- like role, a committed filmmaker who explicitly seeks economic profit and creates his market niche. Like real estate dawan’r, Feng has risen to cultural broker status by reaching beyond selling specific products. He relies not only on direct revenue from his films but uses also the interest in his work to sell his image at a profit and promote his vision of culture at large.

The Culture of Capital

Feng Xiaogang, like his cinematic reflection in Yoyo, makes use of his position as a mediator between culture and capital. Yet the task becomes

13. For the same reason, the original Chinese title, Dawan’r de zangli (Big Shot’s Funeral), was shortened to Dawan’r, since it was deemed inauspicious to mention a funeral on New Year’s Eve. According to Feng, he omitted reference to death after being hospitalized in the middle of the shoot: Feng Xiaogang, Wo ba qingchun xiangei ni (I Gave You My Youth) (Wuhan: Changjiang wenyi chubanshe, 2003), p. 184.

14. My thanks Lihong Tang for clarifying Feng Xiaogang’s use of Stephen Chow’s New Year film formula.

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more complex when it involves not only the translation of culture into capital but also the translation of one culture into another. In the beginning of the 21st century, in a business environment that relies on foreign investment and transnational film production, the cultural broker faces new challenges. Big Shot’s Funeral addresses this situation and alludes to the limitations of the dawan’r.

Critics were quick to observe that Big Shot’s Funeral was an index for the state of Chinese cinema as the PRC joined WTO on 11 December 2001, ten days before the film’s release.15 The plot features an inter- national team-up, mirrored in the transnational collaboration, unpre- cedented under a PRC director. Produced jointly by the local Huayi Brothers & Taihe Film and by Columbia Pictures Film Production Asia, Big Shot’s Funeral features a mostly PRC-based cast alongside the Hong Kong and American actors. Shujen Wang notes that the point-of-view shots in the opening sequence serve as a metaphor for the inversion of power relations between PRC filmmakers and Hollywood. The initial American dominance gives way to collaboration with the Chinese indus- try, with the initiative placed firmly in the latter’s hand. Citing the movie’s unprecedented box office record of ten million RMB, Wang sees both the plot and the film itself as a response to anxieties about the predatory businesses granted access by WTO.16 Wang focuses on the film’s ambivalence towards invading commercial practices, especially in regards to copyright regulation. Both the pattern of production and the narrative reflect recent and anticipated changes in the way film business is conducted in China, and the movie lends itself to be read as an allegory on Feng Xiaogang’s role as a director in an increasingly commercialized market.

Yoyo’s skilful product placement (called in Chinese ruanxing guang- gao, or “soft advertisement”) reflects Feng Xiaogang’s mode of oper- ation, which would become explicit in bundling his Shouji (Cell Phone, 2003) with Motorola and China Mobile campaigns.17 When Feng hit upon the idea of the “comedy funeral,” he thought, “isn’t it the same as making a movie? Finding a theme, a sponsor … that’s thinking playfully about our life.”18 This insight into the director’s view of filmmaking notwith- standing, the film’s portrayal of advertisement also shows the difficulty in negotiating with commercial interests.

Although the storyline features large, well-known companies sponsor- ing Yoyo’s scheme, Feng was unable to use genuine brand names. Even the few exceptions, such as BMW and Outback, would not be associated with the funeral. The solution was a humorous parody on well-known names: instead of Coca Cola (Kekou kele), Crazy Cola (Kexiao kele); sohu.com (literally, “retrieving fox”) is substituted by sodog.com. Yoyo

15. “Galaxy of stars come out for film awards in China,” http://english.people.com.cn/ 200210/23/print20021023 105536.html (visited 20 December 2004).

16. Shujen Wang, “Big Shot’s Funeral: China, Sony, and the WTO,” Asian Cinema, Vol. 14, No. 2 (Fall/Winter 2003), pp. 145–154.

17. The combined campaign is described in detail in a forthcoming essay by Jing Wang. 18. Feng Xiaogang, personal interview with the author (Beijing, 19 July 2002).

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has his arm twisted by a mobster who wants to promote his brand of bottled water, Lehaha – spoofing on the brand name Wahaha and alluding to the shady business of rebottling. On the one hand, Feng’s playful use of names may be understood as mimicry, which Homi Bhabha regards as a form of resistance to cultural imperialism.19 On the other hand, Feng admits that he resorted to paraphrasis only after Columbia Pictures had vetoed his original ideas on legal grounds. Feng found that his latitude diminished radically once he collaborated with foreign investors.20

The transnational cinema mode of operation delimited Feng’s famous wit, allowing for insider jokes on Chinese cultural icons but showing only reverence towards Hollywood’s mode of operation. The funeral plans parody Chinese media celebrities, mentioning Zhang Yimou’s relation- ships with the actresses Gong Li and Zhang Ziyi and dropping names such as the comedians Feng Gong and Niu Qun and the rock star Zang Tianshuo. Yoyo is complimented, tongue in cheek, and told that he should run the Olympic Games – a jab at Zhang Yimou’s over-the-top promotion of the 2008 events. The “comedy funeral” is first mentioned after Yoyo’s friend, Louis, brags that he could stage the funeral of the sailors aboard the drowned Russian submarine Kursk. By implication, the commercialized funeral is regarded as an updated equivalent to cere- monies for national martyrs. The correspondence between the dead director, lying in state inside the Forbidden City, and the PRC’s former leader, lying embalmed just outside Tiananmen Gate, follows the conven- tions of post-socialist quips ridiculing Maoist pomp. The American director, on the other hand, is portrayed as an undisputable authority. Insofar as the plot relies on Yoyo’s abrogation of Tyler’s prerogatives, planning the funeral while the director lies in a coma, the Chinese photographer is vindicated by the fact that Tyler has woken up and consented to the young man’s entrepreneurial exploits. Even though Tyler hands over film direction to Yoyo, explaining that the young upstart possesses the inspiration that the Hollywood director has lost, Yoyo’s dexterity as a cultural broker must meet with Tyler’s stamp of approval.

The premise of an American “big shot” as the model of imitation for the local dawan’r seems especially out of place in view of the first draft for the plot. The idea for the film originated during Feng Xiaogang’s regular drinking and bantering get-togethers with his friend, the director Chen Kaige. Chen told Feng of Akira Kurosawa’s funeral in 1998, which he attended – the roads were blocked with people coming to pay a last tribute to the legendary director. Feng began fantasizing in jest about Chen’s funeral and told his friend, “leave it to me and I’ll give you an even more spectacular funeral!” During the next two months, whenever the two directors met, they would take up the joke and expand on it. Feng said that he could direct the funeral as either a tragedy or a comedy, and gradually came up with an entire scenario: the funeral would be treated as a commercial product and broadcast worldwide; Chen’s fame would be

19. Homi K. Bhabha, The Location of Culture (New York: Routledge, 1994), pp. 85–92. 20. Feng Xiaogang, personal interview.

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used to attract celebrities and advertisers and “make a pile of money.” At first Feng thought about the hearse and the flowers, but as the running joke became more elaborate, Feng parodied advertising practices by adding products unrelated to the funeral. The friendly exchange between the two directors produced details remarkably similar to the final storyline of the Big Shot’s Funeral: the dead Chen Kaige would lie on an Italian bed, bedecked with brand-name clothes; half his hair would be strewn with dandruff, the other half cleaned with an advertised shampoo.21 Just as Yoyo’s character reflects Feng’s cultural brokering, the “big shot” was created in the image of a Chinese filmmaker.

Negotiating with foreign investors ended up, however, in a casting that erased the references to the PRC cinema scene. Columbia Pictures expressed interest in Feng’s proposed storyline, but whereas the original draft featured a Chinese director for the title role, the American producers looked for international stars. They chose Donald Sutherland and contrac- ted the Hong Kong actress Rosalind Kwan, known mainly for acting alongside Jet Li in the Once Upon a Time in China series, to ensure exposure in the Hong Kong and Taiwan markets. Such modifications should not be regarded simply as impositions – Feng acknowledges that Chinese audiences would find a foreign “big shot” more plausible. Moreover, Columbia was following a pattern of reinvigorating Asian film markets and had just funded Tsui Hark’s Time and Tide, helping the Hong Kong director to rebound from an unprecedented two-year lull. Big Shot’s Funeral can also be seen as an acknowledgement of Feng’s talent. In addition to Sutherland, Feng also recruited Paul Mazursky, based on his impression of Mazursky’s extroverted Italianate character.22 And yet, even though Feng has claimed that the collaboration allows “the foxes to get the strength of the wolves, the wolves the cunning of the foxes; a win-win deal,”23 and although Big Shot’s Funeral paints a rosy picture of Chinese filmmakers’ ability to operate in a global market, the production process indicates that China’s cultural economy cannot be translated without compromising its vitality.24 Yoyo achieves the ultimate success for a Chinese director, namely receiving the blessing of Hollywood producers and heading an international production, yet the film leaves a doubt about the legitimacy of Yoyo’s advertisement gig and his unabashed use of cultural relics to promote global commerce.

Tyler’s assistant, Lucy, stands for the rewards and dangers awaiting the successful cultural broker. Lucy (Rosalind Kwan) is an overseas Chinese, adept at literal translation but unfamiliar with local customs and idioms. She falls in love with Yoyo, and the film ends with their off-screen kiss. Yoyo, on the other hand, manages to communicate with Tyler without

21. Ibid. 22. Ibid. 23. Feng Xiaogang, I Gave You My Youth, p. 186. 24. As Ying Zhu notes, PRC cinema in the 1990s has become not only more commercial

but also more local, relying on the domestic market: Ying Zhu, “From New Wave to Post New Wave: Chinese fifth generation cinematic transition, Asian Culture Quarterly, Vol. 27, No. 2 (summer 2000), pp. 13–47.

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Lucy and even against her will. Yoyo and Tyler bond and reaffirm their collaboration by sharing Lucy. Questionable gender politics aside, the character of a translator who acts as Tyler’s confidante and as Yoyo’s minder also conveys the limitations of Yoyo’s autonomy. The film’s last part, in which Yoyo is committed to an insane asylum and communicates with the outside world only through Lucy, turns out to be part of Yoyo’s new film. The quick reversal of alternative realities through the play- within-a-play not only alludes to the failure of narrative but also leaves a lingering impression that unless Yoyo chooses to remain confined within his solipsistic fantasies, he needs Lucy as his enabler. To turn his “troubleshooter savvy” and Beijing-style self-effacing wit into an international success, the cultural broker must in turn be brokered by Hollywood’s agents of so-called global film culture.

In China’s media environment, where filmgoers have followed Feng’s New Year’s productions and the director has made a spectacle out of his success, the analogy between Yoyo’s entrepreneurship and Feng’s ascen- dance to dawan’r status would not be lost on the audience – and neither would the ambiguity of his position vis-à-vis the Hollywood producers. Insofar as the film fits neatly into the mediascape of post-WTO China, it is also because it marks a perceived crisis in filmmaking and calls for resourceful manipulation of the new cultural economy, introducing changes not only into film viewing and production patterns but also into brand-name consumption and even spatial practices.

Space as Cultural Capital

The frequent association between entrepreneurial filmmakers and com- mercial uses of space raises the question of why directors and real estate developers share similar modes of operation as cultural brokers. What prompted Ning Ying and Wu Wenguang to team up with the builders of extravagant architecture and yuppie residences? To what effect does Big Shot’s Funeral link Yoyo’s ambition of going on the stock market with fantasies of designing a residential project? Why does Feng’s self- referential allegory on filmmaking revolve around the irreverent use of a space emblematic of Beijing’s culture? The concurrence may be ex- plained by the explosion of land value and the building boom of the past decade, which has had a major impact on many aspects of the PRC’s economy and culture. The idioms and practices of real estate have taken over other areas. Moreover, cinema is largely spatial, and the filmic allure of places such as the Commune by the Great Wall and the Forbidden City is self-evident. Yet I argue that beyond these general motives, the collaboration between real estate developers and filmmakers results from a growing understanding of space as cultural capital and from the increasing involvement of movies in shaping the cultural value of space in the past decade.

Since the early 1990s, a large number of films have focused on Beijing’s changing cityscape, depicting urban malaise and engaging in nostalgia. In a forthcoming study I show how the New Urban Cinema

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(xin chengshi dianying) has negotiated with the city’s perceptual ma- trices, as laid out by artists, political decision makers, professional planners and developers. In the context of Big Shot’s Funeral and the linkage between film and advertisement as forms that capitalize on cultural cachet, special attention should be given to the import of the Forbidden City.

The process of turning the Forbidden City into a film location is emblematic of the transformation of the ideological, economic and cine- matic significance of Beijing spaces. The palace complex was first used as a film location in 1987, for Bernardo Bertolucci’s The Last Emperor. Bertolucci realized the Forbidden City’s marketing value and convinced the authorities to grant him permission to shoot on location, which greatly enhanced the film’s appeal. A decade later, the Forbidden City opened for filmed cultural events, beginning with Yanni’s concert in May 1997 (following his performance at the Taj Mahal); Puccini’s Turandot, conducted by Zubin Mehta and staged by Zhang Yimou in September 1998; and a concert by Luciano Pavarotti, Placido Domingo and Jose Carreras on 23 June 2001. These events promoted Beijing’s inter- national image as a cultural centre, and in the case of the three tenors, the event aimed specifically to promote Beijing’s bid for the 2008 Olympics. These occasions, condoned by the Beijing Cultural Relics Bureau, gener- ated filmic images that would be exploited for economic and political purposes.

The imagined funeral inside the Forbidden City stretches the existing practices by almost-credible margins. Big Shot’s Funeral brings to the absurd the relations between power, urban space, commercial advertise- ment and filmmaking. The film exploits the comic effect of portraying improbable situations that nevertheless comport with reality. It offers the sum total of previous events: Tyler reshoots The Last Emperor, Zhang Yimou would stage Turandot and Louis Wang would produce entertain- ment shows in the vein of televised New Year extravaganzas. Nor is the commercial use of the space implausible: advertisers had already gained access to the palace in 1996, when Land Rover launched its campaign on the premises. In fact, the Forbidden City has since become such a popular location for advertisement and movie shooting that officials have recently expressed the need for stricter regulation.25 In addition, the 1999 ban on commercial billboards at Tiananmen Square was expanded on 1 October 2004 to various cultural relics in the capital and even to vehicles entering Tiananmen Square.26 The need for legislation indicates how far the advertising industry had been encroaching on cultural relics and state emblems. Evidently, promoters found it tempting to publicize their

25. “Beijing gets tough on relics protection,” http://www.china.org.cn/english/2004/ Jul/102624.htm (visited 7 January 2005).

26. “Outdoor ads banned in Beijing’s special areas,” http://www.beijingportal.com.cn/ 7838/2004/09/14/[email protected] [Beijing Portal, 14 September 2004] (visited 7 January 2005); Liu Li, “Beijing to continue ban on ads in Tian’anmen,” http:// www.chinadaily.com.cn/english/doc/2004–04/13/content 322739.htm (visited 7 January 2005).

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products in the vicinity of emblems of tradition and power. Yet leaders must have found it equally inconvenient that the association between cultural prestige, buying power and political authority was flaunted precisely in the locations where cultural symbols were reappropriated by the state. As befits a dawan’r, Feng Xiaogang not only comments on cultural phenomena but also predicts them and determines their significance in advance.

Feng Xiaogang’s film, like Yoyo’s enterprise, relies on the cultural prestige and cinematic renown of the Forbidden City. Tyler plans a remake of Bertolucci’s The Last Emperor, looking for inspiration after experiencing a crisis. Similarly, Feng Xiaogang revisits The Last Em- peror and returns to the Forbidden City as a way of introducing a fresh look to Chinese filmmaking. Like Yoyo, who does not settle for a “comedy funeral” in a film studio, Feng Xiaogang seeks out the palace compound as a mark of authenticity. In “using the plot to break away from Bertolucci’s images and present the Forbidden City in a novel way”27 and suggesting even more daring commercial uses of the familiar place, Feng raises the economic stakes in cultural productions and enhances his standing as a broker.

Big Shot’s Funeral sums up the various cinematic and advertisement practices that have made use of Beijing’s spaces, as well as the ways in which cultural brokering relies on manipulating space. The film diverges from many New Urban Cinema pieces that depict locations in the process of being built, sold and demolished, yet the focus on the touristy Forbidden City, seemingly disconnected from city life, makes the urban change even more poignant. As a recognized cultural relic, the palace is preserved in almost pristine form (with additions such as the Starbucks franchise); nevertheless, it is put up for rent as any real estate, for film locations and advertisement campaigns. Big Shot’s Funeral describes the Forbidden City as “the most expensive location in the world.” Its cultural cachet raises its price and turns it into a chip in high-stakes games that involve capital, social connections and political clout. Yoyo – and Feng Xiaogang himself – distinguish themselves from advertisers and film directors who use readily-available locations and flaunt their ability to subject even the most inaccessible spaces to market economy.

In his position as a cultural broker, Feng leverages the prestige of his ground-breaking venture and renders filmmaking itself into a metaphor for his vision of Beijing’s cultural heritage. The striking image of the last emperor – or rather, the child who plays the role in Tyler’s production – drinking Coke is, on its face, amusing. Yet it also evidences Feng’s skill in turning on its head the authenticity of The Last Emperor and, even more important, assert that his authority – like Zhang Yimou’s in staging Turandot – lies in publicizing the city’s hybrid image as representative of the new Beijing.

Feng Xiaogang’s case demonstrates the futility of pigeonholing, in early 21st-century China, cultural productions as either complacently

27. Feng Xiaogang, personal interview.

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commercial or hard-edged dissident. The celebration of consumerism does not simply play into the hands of the Dengist policy of “to get rich is glorious.” When the TV, MTV and commercials director Wu Ershan claims that “shooting commercials is serving the people,” he does not simply parody the Maoist adage but rather alludes to the new contract between filmmakers and their audience. Cinema, space and commerce in contemporary China have combined to form an innovative nexus between image making, market shaping and cultural identification.