Finding Women in the State by Zheng Wang

Author:Zheng Wang
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780520292284
Publisher: University of California Press

FIGURE 24. Eternity in Flames (1965). Sister Jiang bids farewell to her comrade in prison.

Eternity in Flames was a huge success. As Xia Yan predicted, Sister Jiang’s story so entranced the audience that they projected their admiration for the heroine onto Yu Lan. The overwhelming expression of love from the audience even compelled Yu Lan to feel that she had to live her life in the spirit of Sister Jiang.76 In fact, many young viewers took Sister Jiang as their role model as schools routinely incorporated such revolutionary films in their pedagogy. Like Xianglin’s Wife, Sister Jiang became a household name in China.77

The films sponsored and marketed by the socialist state augmented the influence of revolutionary heroines and powerfully transformed gender norms in socialist China. Pervasive images of brave, selfless revolutionary heroines, much like the images of lone, individualistic masculine heroes produced by Hollywood, entered the mainstream in film production, permeating the psyche of at least two generations of Chinese women born and growing up in socialist China, especially those in metropolitan areas with easy access to cinemas.78 The cultural landscape of China was profoundly reshaped by the diverse and numerous heroines in socialist cultural production.

By the time the crew completed Eternity in Flames at the end of 1964, however, the deputy minister of culture was already under fire from radicals surrounding Mao for his allegedly revisionist line in the film industry. Xia Yan used a pen name in the film credits, just as he had done before liberation when he had to protect himself from reprisals from the Nationalist government. He could never have imagined that this would be the last time he would appear on a credit line, even under the cover of a pen name.

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