From Tian’anmen to Times Square
There has been a great deal of recent discussion of location
within film and cultural studies circles. (see
Kaplan) Issues of where a scholar is located geographically,
politically, and otherwise come up as concerns for evaluation of
research. However, the positioning of any intellectual brings to
bear many problems. As Rey Chow
points out in her work on Chinese intellectuals, looking for an
"authentic" voice or a "native" position
presupposes an Orientalist belief in a pure and distinct other
and represents a desire on the part of the critic rather than
anything or anyone that actually exists.
TO LIV(E) and CROSSINGS are both positioned in a similarly
mercurial way. While characters move around Hong Kong and New
York City and talk about places as diverse as Australia, Canada,
Scandinavia, Italy, and South Africa, the films inevitably come
back to Beijing, specifically, to Tian’anmen, as a starting
point. While footage and still photos of the May-June 1989
demonstrations appear, no plot action occurs in Beijing. Indeed,
very little is said about the demonstrations at all.(2) (see
Hinton) Rather, Tian’anmen anchors the slippery
identities of the films’ characters as well as the slippery
identities those characters represent as citizens of Hong Kong or
as immigrants elsewhere.
One scene in TO LIV(E) brings this question of identity in
relation to Tian’anmen to the fore. Rubie and her activist
friend Trini have a snack in a Hong Kong noodle house after
seeing an anti-nuclear performance. The scene begins as Trini
talks about her family resettled in England and her Caucasian
British husband. She is not keen to immigrate to England,
however, because of the treatment she received from the British
embassy while in Beijing during the demonstrations. She goes on
at length about her experiences. At one point , she contacted the
embassy to help some Hong Kong students escape from arrest as
"counter-revolutionaries." The reply from the embassy
was: "This should teach them a lesson. They should have
thought twice before interfering with other people’s
business." On another occasion, Trini contacted the embassy
for an escort to the airport. Her request is denied by the same
staff member because her party was travelling on documents issued
by the PRC government, implying that the bearers were considered
Chinese citizens. Trini sums up the situation as follows:
The first time he denied us help was because we’re non-Chinese and he advised us to ‘think twice before interfering with other people’s business.’ The second time he refused to help was because we are Chinese. We’re Chinese subjects travelling with our re-entry permit. Either way we lose! What does he want us to be? My conclusion is we’re not British subjects. We’re probably British objects—to be freely disposed of. (p. 35)
In TO LIV(E), Tian’anmen is filtered through the experiences
of a number of characters. All of these experiences of
Tian’anmen have one thing in common: the positioning of the
characters as spectators. Rubie watches in the audience as
dancers perform "Exhausted Silkworms" about the events
in Tianan'men. The newsreel footage of Hong Kong demonstrations
in support of the Tian’anmen demonstrators illustrate one of
Rubie’s letters. She listens as her friend, Trini, acting as
an activist/journalist during the demonstrations finally
concludes that she was an outsider in Tian’anmen, a
spectator rather than a participant. Trini notes,
"We’re only onlookers. There’s no question about
that." Rubie also listens as Elsie Tu, a Caucasian resident
of Hong Kong, a former missionary and social activist, playing
herself, describes her reaction:
The Tian’anmen Massacre has thrown everything into a dilemma for me. On the one hand, I can’t be disloyal to China. On the other hand, I can’t accept what happened. I wonder, am I going to see the people I’ve been living with all my life be massacred if they speak up? In any case, I do plan to stay in Hong Kong till the end…I’ve devoted all my life trying to make Hong Kong a better place and I, too, would like to know what happens here after 1997. (p. 49)
Rubie, Elsie Tu, and Trini are all caught up in the problem of
identity—neither Chinese nor British, they are both
activists and onlookers uncertain of what they can or should be
doing to help themselves and, by extension, Hong Kong.
In CROSSINGS, the use of Tian’anmen as a point from which
identity may or may not be determined continues. Here, the shift
is from Hong Kong to New York’s Chinatown community. During
the credit sequence, Rubie appears on a television news segment
devoted to apathy in the Chinese community on the anniversary of
June 4th. Introduced by an image of the "Goddess of
Democracy," a woman newscaster poses the question,
"Almost five years after the Tian’anmen Square
Massacre, amnesia seems to have set in New York’s Chinatown.
Is the United States foreign policy toward China still
obsessively based on a tragedy that has no bearing on
today’s reality?" Rubie appears as an expert to answer
this question. However, her reply is non-responsive, "I feel
that China and America are intimately connected." She
continues as an off-screen voice, "Did you know the boots
Chinese soldiers wore to put down the demonstrators were made in
America and the gloves American medics wear to protect themselves
from AIDS are made in China?"
Here, America is brought into the equation and implicated in the
Tian’anmen events. However, the connection, like the
connection of Rubie to the students and other demonstrators with
whom she empathizes, remains vague. As Rubie comments on the
anniversary of Tian’anmen off-screen, another character, the
psychotic American Joey (Ted Brunetti), laughs hysterically on
screen, enjoying a joke with some imaginary cronies. Rubie’s
observations on the political dimensions of the global economy
are juxtaposed with Joey’s lunatic obsessions with Asia and
Asian women.
At this point, Tian’anmen comes closer to another square,
Times Square, as the center for New York’s sex trade. Times
Square takes up as a spatial reference where Tian’anmen
leaves off. The painter John (Fung Kin Chung), Rubie’s
boyfriend in TO LIVE(E), laughingly mentions that he can always
work as a street artist in Times Square, like his mainland
counterparts. Indeed, struggling Chinese painters can be found on
the streets of New York, Paris, and other cities, trying to eke
out a living painting portraits and caricatures of tourists. John
fears, though, that he is not as tough as these other artists.
Later, a shot of Times Square appears in CROSSINGS, but no
artists are present. In this scene, Rubie compares New York to
Chang An (Xi’an) during the Tang Dynasty as a
"crossroads" of civilizations. From the Goddess of
Democracy to the Statute of Liberty, from Tian’anmen to
Times Square, the "crossroads" of China and America,
specifically New York, point to an unsettling dislocation.
Continue to Part V: From Organic
to Diasporic Intellectual