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10
With a pickpocket (pashou) as the
protagonist in Xiao Wu, Jia Zhangke said
that his intent was to depict a shouyiren
(a craftsman, such as a blacksmith, a
tailor, or a cook, who earns his living
by his hands) as someone with a
tenuous connection to industrialized
society. What the director intends to
highlight, then, is that the victim of
dramatic societal changes maintains the
traditional moral values that modern
society is losing, such as codes of sworn
brotherhood and fidelity (Zhang Y. 2000:
126–127; Barden 1999).
incisively points out, “the key dramatic conflicts in Xiao Wu, with social
change as its central theme, unfold not in a diachronic dimension but
rather in a synchronic space, where aural effects are more prominent than
visuality.” Jia also believes that the soundtrack should have a structure
that is integrated within the film narrative. Indeed, the film successfully
sets up an opposition, defined by the soundtrack, between a relatively
quiet, private, intimate space—where the protagonist, a pickpocket,
and his “crew” pursue their traditional occupation, following the ethical
code of an agrarian society 10 —and a heteroglossic, public space occupied
by broadcasting propaganda as well as entertainment programs of the
modern media. The conflict between the two spaces is highlighted when
a TV reporter stops Xiao Wu’s wandering fellow, San Tu, in the street to
ask him—in Fenyang-accented Putonghua—questions about the ongoing
countywide “strike hard” (yanda) campaign against petty crime (fig. 3).
Figure 3: The TV reporter stops San Tu in the street in Xiao Wu (1997)
170 • The Rhetoric of Local Languages
MCLC 18.2.indd 170
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