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as long as the effect as a whole seems coherent and harmonious, it does
14
Interview with Jia Zhangke by the
author (winter 2004). See also Jia’s
response to the similar online question
posed by viewers, as indicated in
footnote 16.
15
Translations are from McGrath (2006,
forthcoming).
16
In an online Q&A with Jia Zhangke,
some netizens from Shanxi and Henan
who could distinguish Fenyang from
Anyang Mandarin questioned the
authenticity of Jia’s films; see http://
ent.163.com/edit/001220/001220_
67534(2).html.
17
A limited audience within China does
have access to Jia’s films. Xiao Wu, for
example, was screened unofficially at
four noncinematic locations in Beijing
before 1999: a French elementary
school in Sanlitun (the screening was
organized by the Culture Office of the
French Embassy), an auditorium in the
Beijing Film Academy, a critics’ salon at
Beijing University, and a painting studio
in Zuo’anmen. The number of spectators
totaled around 200 and consisted of
directors, film critics, poets, professors,
college students, and/or film buffs. In
its “premier” screening in Sanlitun, Jia
was reported to have translated Shanxi
dialects into Putonghua Mandarin
through an audio amplifier to the
audience (Wu 2000: 205–206; Jian 1999:
102).
not matter whether actors speak Fengyang Mandarin. 14 This somewhat
explanation has to do with the subjective ambivalence intrinsic to his brand
of documentary realism. Jia sums up his realism in an interview with Sun
Jianmin (2002: 31) in this way: “All the realist methods are there to express
the real world of my inner experience. . . . I pursue the feeling of the real
in cinema more than I pursue reality, because I think the feeling of the
real is on the level of aesthetics whereas reality just stays in the realm of
sociology.” 15 Nevertheless, Jia’s version of a realist linguistic effect raises
questions about audience reception. For some local audiences, the effect
of linguistic coherence is not achieved; some viewers from the region have
indicated as much in an online Q&A with Jia. 16 For the national audience,
linguistic harmony might be possible but is still problematic. As Gunn
(2005: 9; emphasis added) explains, “the film audiences vary linguistically
throughout China so much” that “what is overwhelmingly used as a
standard of realist conventions providing a unity of sound and image
would otherwise be rejected by any audience outside that ‘specific reality’
of the cultural product.” Indeed, it doesn’t seem realistic when characters
supposedly from the same region speak in different Chinese dialects. For
example, although Shanxi Fenyang Mandarin and Henan Anyang Mandarin
are virtually indistinguishable to audiences outside these regions, most
Chinese can tell the difference between Cantonese-accented Mandarin and
Northeast Mandarin. In addition, without the approval of public screening
in domestic cinemas, Jia’s films are generally inaccessible to the Chinese
audience, including Fenyang viewers. 17 Chinese underground films have to
seek recognition through international channels to raise funds and obtain
distribution. Yet for the international audience unfamiliar with Chinese,
and particularly for the international film festival juries and art-house
distributors, the unifying linguistic effect seems pointless, because their
understanding of the dialogue depends on subtitles that do not convey
the different dialects.
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