History 471

nmadison — Fri, 06 Apr 2007 00:34:12 +0000

I figured I’d weigh in on the film we’re watching, The World. I don’t see much of a concrete plot yet, but, thats not surprsing to me. During the opening credits, Office Kitano was mentioned as a co-producer of the film. Office Kitano is the production company of “Beat” Takeshi Kitano, a Japanese comedian-turned actor/director, and one of the most popular media figures in Japan. I’m also biased, since he’s been my favorite actor/writer/director since high school. He’s known for directing, writing, and acting in such award-winning films as Sonatine, Kikujiro and Hana-Bi. His films can be said to be a sort of “Slice of life” viewpoint, with no real discernible plot, but rather just taking a sort of snapshot of a particular time in a character, or characters’, lives. So, this doesn’t surprise me as being an Office Kitano film. Also the fact that companies such as Office Kitano and TV Asashi are mentioned as co-producers, as I said in class, speaks to the “World”-liness of The World. The only thing I’m dissapointed about, so far, is that Beat doesn’t actually appear in the film.

nmadison — Sat, 31 Mar 2007 16:58:37 +0000

Well, it’s been a good while since my last post. That is not to say however, that I have not been progressing on my topic, which has now become a study of the cultural differences between Pu-Yi’ 1964 autobiography “From Emperor to Citizen” and Bernardo Bertolucci’ 1987 Academy Award winning film, “The Last Emperor”. The main thing I’m finding about these two ources is that Pu-Yi’s book seems to reflect the Communist Chinese’s party-line, that it is through Socialist re-education that one can find a purpose and value for oneself, where Bertolucci’s film touts the traditional Western philosophical notion that it is through introspect and studying oneself that purpose can be found. In the book, Pu-Yi owes his life to the Communist Party, whereas in the film, it is said, quite literally, that he is simply telling the jailers and other party officials what they want to hear.

nmadison — Fri, 16 Mar 2007 15:20:26 +0000

For the Music as Culture assingment due today, I’m focusing on the 1984 Sam Hui song “A Pair of Aces” from the Karl Maka-Sam Hui Hong Kong film “Aces Go Places III: Our Man From Bond Street”. The song, and film, reveal a rising tide of something that can only be called Hong Kong nationalism during this time, when the negotiations concerning Hong Kong’s impending handover to China were going on.

nmadison — Sat, 24 Feb 2007 23:00:27 +0000

It’s been quite a while since i posted last. I didn’t realize tht it had been so long, actually. I’ve been reading a few articles off LexisNexis, as well as a book, concerning Chinese re-education camps. Along with those, and work I recently did for a paper in Prof. Harris’ history class, I’m finding a great deal of interesting information concerning the differences between Soviet Marxism-Leninism and its Chinese counterpart. PuYi’s survival is such an example, really. The Soviets saw their revolution as a new world’s brith, totally detached from the old world, and therefore it was a logical conclusion, on their part, that Tsar Nicholas II had to die, as the final death throes of the previous historical epoch. The Chinese, on the other hand, did not see history as such, and would rather educate those of the old world, especialy those like PuYi, in the ways of the new PRC, as opposed to simply murdering them. This is becoming more and more interesting to me, and i’m kind of wondering (worried?) if this is nothing but an unneeded sideroad to what my original focus was.

nmadison — Fri, 16 Feb 2007 15:07:55 +0000

In response to the previous comment, there are alot of interesting things I’ve found in PuYu’s narrative. First, and most apparent, is his ability to demean himself, throughout the book, for his many excesses, as both Emperor of China, as well as Manchuko. From the text, you get an image of a man who took his abilities, such as order people around and having them beat for no good reason, as something that was granted to him as Emperor, and something he had a hard time letting go of. Throughout his time in prison, he is constantly being berated and belittle by those around him. People who had waited on him hand and foot, and worshipped him as a diety on Earth, now, instead, hurl slurs at his inability to do even the most simple tasks for himself, or his habit of trying to single himself out in someway, apart from the (lowly) others. I was expecting a book where, all of this is turned around in a simple “I found the light that is Marxism” sort of way; however, every step that PuYi makes to becoming a “good Chinese worker: is brought about by his own initiative to first better himself in his own eyes, and second, in the eyes of those around him. Every change he makes is achieved via these two goals, and it makes for an interesting look into a world most people would consider “oh, he was just brainwashed by the dirty Reds”. This really doesn’t seem to be the case with PuYi.

nmadison — Fri, 09 Feb 2007 14:38:50 +0000

Today is our day for our project introductions. I’m in the process of writing up exactly what I want to say right now. I fell asleep reading Pu Yi’s autobiography last night actually, and had a dream that i woke up and it was like 3 in the afternoon, and missed class. And then I woke up for real; I was pretty relieved, to be quite honest. It was one of those that feel really, really real, though. Man, it was weird. Anyway, the autobiography is an interesting work. I’m reading it and thinking to myself “wow, Red China wasn’t too bad”, but i have to remember that, it was something of a totalitarian state, so not alot of bad things would come out in his autobiography. However, I believe I can take hat i find in Pu Yi’s work, with a few primary and secondary sources I’ve accumulated thus far, to find some correlations. I wanted this to be about what exactly the Chinese did to “reform” Pu Yi, but, I’m not 100% sure I can do that with the material available to me. I’ll ask Prof. Fernsebner about it in class, I suppose.

nmadison — Mon, 05 Feb 2007 15:59:49 +0000

I found this picture online, from the website thatimagesite.com. I just thought it was kind of funny. One, just for the caption itself, but also, well, for the caption itself. Perhaps its just me, but, I would think Confucius would be labeled one of the “Four Olds”, and would not appear on a Cultural Revolution poster.

Image comes from thatimagesite.com.

nmadison — Thu, 01 Feb 2007 23:12:33 +0000

The picture I found interesting from the Landsberger site is posted below.

(image courtesy of http://www.iisg.nl/~landsberger/fe.html)

“Imperialism and all reactionaries are all paper tigers” -1965 (title and year from above-mentioned website)

nmadison — Thu, 01 Feb 2007 23:07:49 +0000

I’m still not quite used to this sort of regular posting, hence my lack of posts the last few days. My topic for my research has changed somewhat. Researcing something as concentrated as a particular film studio, namely in this case Shaw, would take more time and patience than i think can be granted in a single semester. Or at least in any way to give it any credit.

My topic as of right now, concerns Puyi, the Last Emperor of China, dethroned in 1911 by Republican forces. What exactly I’m looking into is the “re-education” of Puyi by Communist forces, for nearly 10 years, between 1950 and 1959, after being handed over to China, by the Soviet Union, following the fall of Manchuko. In reading some works, I’ve learned a good amount about what happened to him. For instance, he was forced to kill insects and small rodents, in attempts to further himself from his Buddhist past. At the heart, I’m just interested in how the Chinese made a common gardener out of a man, at one time, worshipped as a living god on Earth.

nmadison — Wed, 24 Jan 2007 19:37:20 +0000

As I stated in class a few days ago, I would like to research further the films of the Shaw Bros. studios in Hong Kong, specifically the Shaw films inspired by, or at times, even blatantly imitating, films or genres from other countries and regions. The 1975 Shaw masterpeice “The Super Inframan” was Run-Run Shaw’s answer to the Kaiju craze sweeping Asia, brought about in large part by Japan’s television and film franchise, “Ultraman”. Shaw Bros. also created an imitation of Britian’s James Bond, with the 1974 film “Shatter”. Several Shaw films are based primarilly on North American Western films, with the same plots simply transplanted into classical China.

Another interesting, not-so-related notion I’ve realized is the idea of “taboos” or “political correctness” in Shaw’s films. For instance, “The Crippled Avengers” (1978) involves a quartet of handicapped individuals (no legs, no hearing, no sight, and no sanity) all learn kung-fu in order to extract revenge on those responsible for making them that way. This seems to go against the norms of Western thought, what with the obvious exploitation of, and at times, laughter at, this group of handicapped individuals. Just a side note.

I’ll talk to Prof. Fernsebner further, to see if my interest in Shaw and its “translations” of Western or other Asian ideas can be used effectively as a research topic, especially after further research into the websites provided in class the other day.