Research Essay: Portrayal of China in Western Media

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From Novel to Film: The Good Earth and Pavilion of Women

Abstract

Pearl S. Buck’s novels about China earn acclaim for revealing real Chinese society and

people to Americans and disapproving of orientalism, whereas the Hollywood films based on

two of her most representative writings – namely, The Good Earth (1937) and Pavilion of

Women (2001) – distort her original intentions to some extent and perhaps instead show

American orientalism and ethnocentrism. In both films, Chinese characters are still depicted

as somewhat inferior and thus needed to be saved by the Western world, or to be more

specific, by America. This project aims to specifically explore how American orientalism and

ethnocentrism become manifest in these two films, and also analyze why such changes are

made. For these purposes, relevant literature was reviewed and the differences between both

films and their original scripts were analyzed. It is thus demonstrated that by making several

important changes in the narratives in adapting the novels to the screen, these two Hollywood

films implicitly show American orientalist and ethnocentric ideas. Moreover, the historical

background and America’s attitude towards China are found to be most influential factors

that could result in those changes made by the filmmakers.

Word Count: 2736

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Introduction

Portraying China and Chinese in an objective and authentic way, Pearl S. Buck’s writing

about China reveals her “distaste for orientalism” (Leong, 2005, p25). Chinese in her novels

thus are no more stereotypically inferior “faceless mass”, but rather people with various

virtues who are able to progress by themselves (Yao, 2008, p79). Regardless of such distaste

for orientalism, however, The Good Earth (1937) and Pavilion of Women (2001), which are

two Hollywood adaptations of Buck’s representative novels, may still depict Chinese as

somewhat inferior and passive. In this case, the Western world in these films becomes a

“necessary and sufficient factor” in the transformation of China and the improvement of

Chinese people (Martinez-Robles, 2008, p10). That is to say, while the original literature of

Buck’s earns acclaim for “introducing Americans to real China and the Chinese”, these two

Hollywood adaptations instead inaccurately portray Chinese culture and people, engaging

“American orientalism and ethnocentrism in unexpected ways” (Leong, 2005, p26). This

article, therefore, aims to mainly analyze how American orientalism and ethnocentrism have

become manifest in the films The Good Earth and Pavilion of Women. It will also

respectively explore the reasons of why these two Hollywood adaptations make such

changes.

Literature Review

To answer the major research question, firstly, it is necessary to explore what is

American orientalism and ethnocentrism. According to Said, orientalism could be defined as

“a Western style for dominating, restructuring, and having authority over the Orient” (1978,

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p3). For Americans, the Orient here is much more likely to “be associated with the Far East”,

including Asian countries such as China and Japan (Said, 1978, p1). In this sense, American

orientalism draws on orientalism more generally to “affirm the political, social, and cultural

superiority of the United States and European Americans relative to Asia and Asia

Americans”, taking a form specific to and supportive of “the United States’ emerging role as

a worldwide moral and political force” (Leong, 2005, p2, 7). Orientalist perceptions as such

were widespread in America especially from the late nineteenth century to twentieth century,

embedded in “many levels of cultural expression and carried through a variety of media

channels” (Leong, 2005, p7). As a result, the American ethnocentric idea was also shown in

many cultural productions at that time. That is, while American society was regarded as

“developed, rational, flexible, and superior” (Mahmood, 2004, p32), the Oriental societies

such as China embodied the opposite values and displayed “a lack of religious and economic

development and the need for conversion to Christianity and capitalism as well as for

salvation by America” (Leong, 2005, p7). Americans’ views on China, therefore, were

largely influenced and shaped by such widespread American orientalism and ethnocentrism.

Those American orientalist and ethnocentric perceptions on China and Chinese, however,

have been shifted by Pearl S. Buck and her works to some extent. Buck, as a witness of

“dramatic changes in China over thirty years” and an authority on China, facilitated

“American’s embrace of the China mystique” via reorienting Americans toward “a more

positive assessment of China” (Leong, 2005, p12). In other words, Buck portrays Chinese as

“flesh-and-blood people” rather than exotic freak or swine in her novels, attempting to

introduce real China and Chinese and thus destroy “the stereotypes bearing on Genghis Khan

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and his faceless hordes of heathens” (Greene, 2014, p78-79). For example, in one of her most

famous best sellers The Good Earth, Buck creates a “stoic, resourceful, hardworking Chinese

peasant farmer” named Wang Lung, who marries a faithful and patient young woman, O-lan

(Greene, 2014, p76). Similarly, in Buck’s another fiction The Pavilion of Women, the heroine

Madame Wu is depicted as an admirably independent, courageous and intelligent Chinese

woman. Some scholars may argue that these novels erase “not only the concrete realities of

Chinese life but also the essential otherness of Chinese protagonists”, embedding American

cultural values in Chinese characters and thus still “helping sustain an unfortunate

ethnocentrism” (Greene, 2014, p80). Nevertheless, such critique could be too biased and

unfair. Although Buck provides mostly positive portraits of China and Chinese in her works,

the vices of Chinese social realities, such as polygamy and high economic inequality at the

time, are objectively revealed. Chinese in her novels are also not completely attractive people,

but instead those with both virtues and negative qualities. Therefore, rather than ignoring

“what makes China complex and the Chinese different from Americans”, Buck’s novels do

reveal the real China and Chinese to American audience and contribute to reject American

orientalism or ethnocentrism.

Analysis

The Good Earth

Although the filmmakers of The Good Earth (1937) insist on their fidelity to the original

novel, the two are actually very different. Brownlow (1989, p80) states that “respect,

affection and a lack of condescension towards people of another race” are actually all brought

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to The Good Earth by its director. Indeed, rather than misrepresenting Chinese as

stereotypically inferior and ignorant mass, the film portrays Chinese characters as positive as

Buck’s work does. For example, the protagonist Wang Lung is “courageous and indomitable”

both in the film and the book, devoting himself to the land and thus finally makes a

prosperous life for his family (Greene, 2014, p86). Nevertheless, it could be argued that the

film still engages American ethnocentrism and orientalism in two main aspects. To be

specific, firstly, wiping away “any trace of Buck’s Chinese self”, the film instead shows “the

constellation of American beliefs and values” (Greene, 2014, p83). That is to say, for instance,

this film centers on a Chinese farmer and his family’s life but completely casts Western

performers on-screen, which possibly makes it difficult for American viewers to imagine

individual Chinese characters with their own features and mannerisms (Greene, 2014, p86).

This kind of “ethnographic bias” actually pervades the film (Greene, 2014, p86). For example,

unlike Buck’s novel, the film repeatedly underscores the special place of the land in

characters’ minds and hearts. In the film, Wang Lung and his wife treasure their lands very

much, even refusing to sell the lands when they are suffering from serious famine and are

implored by their family members and friends. While Chinese people may regard the land

more as only “a source of livelihood”, those plots are actually infused with the American

belief and value – that is, the land is “part of a long-lived American mythology that pits the

virtues of a simple life, which lived close to the land, against the perceived dangers and

decadence of the city” (Greene, 2014, p87). In addition to the above respect, The Good Earth

also subtly shows American orientalism through adding a sequence about the locust plague at

the end of the film. In this sequence, the locust plague, which has troubled Chinese people for

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a long time, is finally solved by Wang Lung’s son. By virtue of the modern Western

agricultural knowledge learned from a Western-style university, this young Chinese man

succeeds to lead the villagers to cope with the severe locust plague. Through designing such a

plot that is absent in the original book, therefore, the film is able to transfer an idea that the

Western culture and power are necessarily essential for the transformation and development

of China.

These two aspects of changes, according to Yao (2008, p81), might be made by the

filmmakers of The Good Earth for two main reasons. On the one hand, firstly, this

Hollywood film fully characterizes Chinese farmers as tough and hard-working people who

love their lands to show sympathy for the Chinese and arouse “America’s fondness” for

China (Leong, 2005, p10). To be specific, in 1937, when this film was produced and first

released, Chinese people were suffering from Japan’s war of aggression against China.

Japan’s invasion and atrocities in China largely heightened “American sympathies for Buck’s

beleaguered and stoic peasants”, therefore, the positive qualities of these fictional characters

are especially magnified in the film to embody such sympathies for “millions of suffering

Chinese” (Greene, 2014, p77). Moreover, by creating a tale of “suffering, endurance, and

eventual triumph” and stressing the centrality of the land in characters’ life, this 1937 film

also attempted to resonate with those Americans who were still influenced by “the harsh

realities of the Depression” and thus further arouse their admiration and fondness for Chinese

people (Greene, 2014, p77). On the other hand, however, this Hollywood adaptation makes

these changes meanwhile to derive ethnocentrism. That is to say, through depicting Chinese

people as stoic and hard-working but still impoverished and needed to be saved by Western

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power from the locust plague, the film provided a sense of national superiority for the

Americans who had just been through the Depression but lived a relatively comfortable and

progressive life (Yao, 2008, p81).

Pavilion of Women

Similarly adapted from Buck’s bestseller of the same title, Pavilion of Women (2001)

also distorts the original novel, showing the white savior myth under the surface of

anti-orientalism. Although the film is directed by a Hong Kong director and casts a “Los

Angeles-based Chinese actress” as well as several other Chinese performers, it reinvents

“Hollywood’s classic white savior tale” and thus manifests the American orientalism to some

extent (Yang, 2014, p247, 249). The white savior tale here is originated from Hollywood’s

classic “white savior film”, which, according to Ash, creates a model White lead character

“who is portrayed as powerful, brave, cordial, kind, firm, and generous, and who takes on a

mission to save people of color from their plight” (Ash, 2015, p89). Such a white savior

actually is also portrayed in the film Pavilion of Women, that is, the male protagonist Father

Andre. He is actually a missionary from Italy in Buck’s original novel but is transformed into

a missionary-doctor from America by the filmmakers. In this case, Andre in the film

functions similarly as many other Western heroes in Hollywood cinema, commanding the

narrative by “converting the Chinese population, saving lives and combating evils” (Yang,

2014, p252). In contrast to the feudal Chinese lords “who indulge in wine, opium and sex”,

this film’s white hero is instead bestowed with “uncontested authority to influence events in a

changing Chinese society” (Yang, 2014, p252). That is to say, for example, the heroine

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Madame Wu is depicted by both the novel and the film as a beautiful, intelligent and

independent aristocratic woman, who pursues emancipation from the traditional sexual role

of female and from the oppression of the feudal and patriarchy Chinese society. However,

different from the novel, as “a transnational figure caught between feudalism and modernity”

in the film, Madame Wu is finally led to “the so-called correct track of freedom and

empowerment” entirely by virtue of the guidance and help of Andre (Yang, 2014, p251).

Apart from this, moreover, while Buck mainly focuses on depicting Madame Wu’s individual

pursuits and Chinese women’s positive transformation, the film concentrates more on the

romantic relationship between Madame Wu and Andre, which is even not mentioned by the

novel. In the film, Madame Wu not only draws “intellectual nourishment from Andre’s

tutorial sessions”, but foremost comes to terms with her sexuality via a sequence of having an

affair with Andre, which shows their “interracial romance” (Yang, 2014, p251). In other

words, despite of her spiritual and sexual awakening, Madame Wu is still put in a position

awaiting “the white hero’s enlightenment and redemption” (Yang, 2012, p92) and

functioning as an exotic femme fatale for the white hero in the film. Apart from enlightening

Madame Wu, Andre’s life-saving missions as a white savior also contain such as saving

orphans and “supervising secondary Chinese characters’ growth into Communist soldiers”

(Yao, 2001, p29).

As aforementioned, since Pavilion of Women portrays an almost perfect white savior and

such white savior narrative is embedded in American Orientalism framework, it could be

argued that American orientalism and ethnocentrism still do not disappear in this 2001 film.

Although similarly showing these biased views as the 1937 film The Good Earth, the

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filmmakers of this Hollywood adaptation makes changes in the narrative in adapting the

novel to the screen for different reasons. Firstly, the film shifts the focus of the narrative from

Chinese women’s transformation and empowerment into the interracial romance between

main characters to attract more possible audiences. Such shift, however, is not only resulted

from commercial interests. In other words, this film was produced in 2001, when China had

registered remarkable economic progress and prepared to enter into World Trade

Organization in the context of the Asian financial crisis. The idea of China Threat, which

argues that “China’s rise poses serious threats to the United States”, thus reappeared (Yang &

Liu, 2012, p696). In this case, rather than facilitating cultural exchanges between America

and China as Buck’s original novel intended to, the film Pavilion of Women may rather

attempt to maintain the supremacy of American culture and power through narrating a story

with the motif of white redemption of Chinese characters. Produced against “China’s rise as a

global power”, the filmmakers of this film transformed the novel in the ways mentioned

above to implicitly condemn “China’s feudal past” and acknowledge the positive Western

influences on building a modern China (Yang, 2014, p253).

Conclusion

To sum up, this essay mainly analyzed two Hollywood films adapted from Buck’s books,

including The Good Earth (1937) and Pavilion of Women (2001). Although the original

novels show Buck’s distaste for orientalism, both films make some changes and instead

manifest American orientalism as well as Americans’ national superiority complex towards

Chinese people. While The Good Earth show such orientalism and ethnocentrism by adding

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elements that are roughly mentioned or even absent in Buck’s novel, Pavilion of Women

manages to do so mainly through creating a Hollywood classic white savior myth. In addition,

this project also further explores the reasons of why these two adaptation films transform the

original novels and reflect the American orientalism and ethnocentrism. It is demonstrated

that these reasons are closely related to the certain historical background and America’s

attitude towards China at the time when the two films were produced. Further research could

focus more specifically on both these films, or might explore other Hollywood adaptation

films based on Buck’s novels.

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