Docility or strategy: gazing as the Other

Comparing the narrative of Xu’s Letter from an Unknown Woman with that of Ophuls’s film, I conclude that they vary in their identification with the female protagonist. Ophuls tells a woman’s story from the male standpoint, while Xu tells a my-story through her self-identification with Jiang. However, does this mean that Jiang/Xu occupies the position of the visual subject? In other words, has Xu generated a visual apparatus to deliver the look of the self? Through further comparison of the

36

visual language used by Ophuls and Xu, I classify their mode of looking, in terms of subjectivity, into “to look” and “to be looked at” respectively. Although Xu narrates as “I” who is writing the letter whilst Ophuls narrates as “you” who is reading it, the object of looking in their films is the same, that is, the woman.

Through the statement that “I love you, what business is that of yours?”, Xu canonises women’s sacrifice in love. In Xu’s universe, women love with no need, no demand, no desire, and this represents their independence as subjects in love. However, De Beauvoir has already rejected this stance in The Second Sex while describing the love for women as a religion37. In De Beauvoir’s words:

It would be quite wrong to suppose that she escapes dependence in choosing herself as supreme end in view; on the contrary, she dooms herself to the most complete slavery. She does not stand on her independence but makes of herself an object that is imperiled by the world and by other conscious being.38

Though Jiang/Xu is the narrator, she objectivises herself in what she narrates. What she loves is how her religion-like love saves her from the lack in immanence. She needs to follow him, because he is the one who had access to the infinite reality which she could never transcend by herself. Just like Jiang’s monolog in the film, “Pride? Who cares? … Whenever I hear your summons, I will follow you even if I have already been in the tomb”39. “But the paradox of idolatrous love is that in trying to save herself she denies herself utterly in the end.”40Therefore, as a woman who needs to fulfil her integrity by religion-like love, Jiang has no alternative but to renounce her

37

Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 653. In English: “Love becomes for her a religion”. 38 Ibid., 651. 39 Chinese Original: 自尊算什么？……只要你叫我，我就是在坟墓里，也会涌出一股力量，站起来，跟着你走。 40

self in the love, that is, to become an object. Furthermore, as soon as Xu turns Jiang into her surrogate, Xu herself assumes the position of the Other.

Thus, it is a story of “I”, yet the “I” is the Other. The camera manoeuvred by Xu has demonstrated how desirous she is to be looked at by men. Just as Yu Qunfang argues that “the images of the woman occupy most shots in the film so that the screen works as a mirror of her”41

, Xu creates a narcissistic visual world for herself. What does she want to see in this mirror? Without doubt, the woman’s images inside the mirror, but she also expects to observe how men gaze at these images, gaze at her. To Xu, her performance in this film is a trio – as Jiang the character, her real self and the Other simultaneously. It is neither necessary for the camera to depict the man’s desiring look, nor for the director to form an agent for the male gaze, because the woman, Jiang/Xu, has already been sublimated to become a perfect Other. As Tang Jialin argues, “what Xu expects is still a myth about how a woman is discerned by a man.”42 At the end of the film, a portrayal of man’s look emerges eventually. What does he see? He sees the woman finally.

As with Li Yu’s Dam Street, a tragedy of women as the Other is directed by a female director, though the subjectivities implied are different. Then there emerges another interesting issue: between Li and Xu, who is more powerful from a discursive approach? Seemingly, the former gets access to the discursive privilege. While speaking for the silent other-as-oppressed-victim, Li identifies herself with the intellectual, the wise and the advanced. However, with respect to the influence on the mass audience, the winner is undoubtedly the latter. Xu’s Letter from an Unknown

41

Yu Qunfang, “From Electra to Narcissus”, 144. 整部影片犹如女人的大镜子，女人的画面成为影

片最频繁出现的镜头。

42

Tang Jialin, “Female Discourse in Chinese Film”, 138. 徐静蕾期待的还是一个女子为男子所发现

Woman achieved 4 million RMB box-office during the first three days after its premiere and was top one of the box-office in that week.43 It then attracted much attention from various mass media, such as the internet, TV, and newspapers. By contrast, Li’s Dam Street is not well-known to the Chinese audience, except to some theorists and critics whose work is related to contemporary Chinese cinema. That is to say, Xu’s my-story is much more popular in China than Li’s her-story. According to Foucault’s theories that power is analysed as coming from the bottom up, Xu is more accessible to the power of discourse.

Then the question is how Xu can be empowered when she abandons the self as subject? I need to find out why she locates herself in the position of the Other. In De Beauvoir’s opinion, woman feels herself as the Other from childhood. She is forced to find her reality in the immanence of her person because she is not able to fulfil herself through projects and objectives. In De Beauvoir’s words, “[a]s subject she feels frustrated. … She is occupied, but she does nothing; she does not get recognition as an individual…”44 In Foucauldian terms, she is in a state of docility to the “subjugated knowledges”45:

Representation is in the process of losing its power to define the mode of being common to things and to knowledge. The very being of that which is represented is now going to fall outside representation itself.46

Power installs itself and produces real material effects; one such effect might be a particular kind of subject who will in turn act as a channel for the flow of power itself.

43

Web article, “A Letter from An Unknown Woman Sold Four Million Box-Office (《一个陌生女人的

来信》“卖”了400万元)”, accessed Aug. 6, 2009, http://ent.sina.com.cn/m/c/2005-03-08/1317671749.html. 44

Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 641. 45

Foucault explains the meaning of subjugated knowledges in Foucault, Power/knowledge, 81-82. 46

Rey Chow’s argument about sentimentalism is also relevant here. In her words: …what used to be considered trivial and weak is accordingly reread as dazzle and strength: the seeming passivity or minoritization of those who are inmates of their environ.47

Accordingly, it is probably a strategy for one to consider/perform herself/himself as the weak and the subaltern. In my opinion, it is docility and strategy for Xu Jinlei at the same time. On the one hand, she accepts her being as the Other unconditionally, because that is what and how she can think and speak. Whether or not she admits or realises it, she identifies herself, a woman, with the Other. That is why she constructs her filmic representation from the perspective of the Other. On the other hand, she is more than happy to be the Other. That is how she empowers herself, and the only way she can. Therefore, she displays and even performs her identity as the Other. Unlike Li empowering herself by gazing at the Other, Xu chooses to play, to perform, and to gaze as the Other.

Thus, Xu does not abandon her position in the power game while being docile to the power itself. As she says in Jiang’s voice, “man, you know, always thinks that ‘it is amazing for you that a man like me would fall in love with a woman like you.’ Just leave him alone”, what is unspoken in her lines is the power of “being the object”. Via the camera shots, Xu demonstrates the gaze from the Other (Figure 5-3-4 & 5-3-5). Instead of gazing directly at the lens, Jiang/Xu is looking obliquely. It is a haughty pose which implies the fact that not only the subject possesses the gaze. The Other, as the object, the weak, the victim, the non-privileged, also has the potential to obtain the power of the gaze while being gazed at, with the power of seduction.

47

Rey Chow, Sentimental Fabulations, Contemporary Chinese Films: Attachment in the Age of Global Visibility (New York: Columbia University Press, 2007), 16-17.

Figure 5-3-4

Figure 5-3-5