“Bridge of Spies”: Genre, Gender and Woman Secret Agent 001
Xuelin Zhou (University of Auckland)
Spy film is a popular but under-researched genre in Chinese-language film. Under different social and ideological contexts, the genre has been known as espionage film (谍战片、间谍片), counter-espionage film (反特片), scouting film (侦察片), secret agent film (特工片) or undercover conflict film (地下斗争片). While the multiple names can be seen as the reflections of situational changes, they also suggest the genre’s enduring appeal and its flexibility to blend popular generic elements to excite, entertain and/or educate people.
This presentation examines one of the earliest Chinese espionage films produced in Peking in the 1940s and its two remakes produced in Taiwan and Hong Kong in the 1960s. The presentation discusses the narrative and stylistic commonalities and disparities that characterize the three films and how these similar/different characteristics are associated to the wider contexts. The presentation concludes by arguing that the roles of the female protagonists remain conceptualized and dictated by the Confucian-oriented patriarchal ideology.
The Politics of Desire: Kim Soo-yong’s Burning Mountain and Women’s Representation
Ariel Schudson (Independent)
Kim Soo-yong is one of South Korea’s most globally underappreciated filmmakers. Touting a filmography of over 100 films, his work has been highly decorated while he, himself, was presented with accolades for best director six times. The Blue Dragon Awards, an organization designated to recognize films of the highest popularity or films widely considered to be “blockbusters,” endowed director Kim with the best film award no less than 4 times between 1963 and 1971. While trophies are no guarantee of caliber, they can definitely be read as symbols of public esteem, entertainment and consequence.
Considered to be one of the founders of the “literary genre,” Kim adapted both Korean and Western written works to the screen. While the authoritarian history of South Korea played havoc with his later career, the bulk of his oeuvre was made with relative autonomy, allowing him to create a cinema occupying the historical, physical and social spaces of South Korea. Within this turbulent space Kim highlighted women characters and showcased their voices, allowing their narratives to come alive in a truly unique fashion.
For this conference, I will be discussing Kim Soo-yong’s Burning Mountain 산불 (1967), a film that examines the fictionalized experiences of a small group of women living through a specific non-fictional event of the Korean War. By investigating shifts in gender roles and historically-established positionalities, crucial conversations about women’s fortitude and their need for sexual freedom and pleasure are highlighted. Using Korean cultural studies, historical documentation and writings about the complex relationship between women and war, I will look at the film’s unique place in Korean cinema. Focusing on relevant information, I will analyze this film’s place in the world of popular entertainment and position it as the radical work for women that it is.
Rethinking Female Spies in Chinese Cold War Cinema: Femme Fatale, Anti-espionage Film, and Socialist Myth
Yushi Hou (University of Southampton)
This paper aims to analyse the representation of female spy figures in PRC anti-espionage films, or spy detection movies, to examine the connection between the female spy and the prototypal femme fatale in the Cold War cultural context from 1949 to 1966 (The Seventeen Years), as well as explore how the evil women represent the superficially degenerate consumerist lifestyle and potentially meet audiences’ desire for gazing a bourgeois’ life. Since the government need to warn audiences about international conflict by the spy narration, the hero should often deal with a hostile female spy for detecting intelligence and resisting her temptation. Interestingly, some film noir elements are presented in anti-espionage films, forming interesting intertextuality with classic Hollywood noir and spy films represented by James Bond 007 movies. Thus, these anti-espionage films with noiresque visual style and femme fatale figures had become a specific genre crossing the boundary of the Cold War, becoming the only Chinese film genre in that era. The female spy figure also resembles the typical femme fatale figure in film noir, enticing the hero by their sexuality, and being punished in the ending sequence. At the same time, these beautiful, dangerous, evil female spies, as an imagination towards a decadent bourgeois lifestyle, also allude to the class struggle and nationalistic revolution. In the Cold War era, female sexual features had been deliberately blurred by the mainstream propaganda in the film, visual images, publication, and urban life. Therefore, the female spy figure onscreen potentially becomes an object of sexual desire in socialism by exemplifying her femininity and seductiveness, opposing those de-feminine proletariat female characters on screen. Consequently, I argue that the Cold War anti-espionage Film not only reflects the anxiety of class struggle and potential enemy for a socialist country but also sharpens people’s vigilance for imperialist powers and publicize the importance of national industrialization in the post-war era.
Forgotten Melodrama: Girlhood and Relatability in Ayako Wakao’s Early Star Image
Lydia Brammer (University of Warwick)
As one of Japan’s most distinguished classic film stars, it is surprising that little is written on the career and star image of Ayako Wakao (1933-). She appeared in 160 films between 1952 and 2005 but was most active in the late 1950s to mid-1960s. Wakao has worked with some of Japan’s greatest directors, including Kenji Mizoguchi, Kon Ichikawa, and Yasujirō Ozu. She featured in 85 films during the 1950s. I refer to this career phase as her ‘early period’ since this is when Wakao established herself as a talented young actress. She did so by starring in numerous melodramas produced by Daiei, one of Japan’s major film studios. Films such as Jūdai no Seiten/Sex Education of a Teenager (1953), Maiko Monogatari/Maiko Story (1954), and Hitotsubu no Mugi/A Grain of Wheat (1958) comprise dramatic events that appear mundane and are set mainly within familial and domestic settings. Consequently, film historians have overlooked many of the melodramas in which Wakao starred, favouring her later period’s more provocative and challenging roles (1960-).
This paper introduces Wakao’s early performances in Daiei’s 1950s melodramas, where she represented the post-war young woman. Many of these performances pertain to the shōjo motif that was especially prevalent in post-war culture, especially in cinema. Young stars, including Wakao, popularised the motif and presented it as an idealised example of post-war youth behaviour. Therefore, I argue that these forgotten melodrama films are important historical artefacts. They are integral to understanding and charting popular culture concerning female identities in Japan’s post-war era.