The Founding of a Republic with English subtitles

[Queercommie Girl]

The Founding of a Republic is a PRC-made film (2009) about the 1949 revolution in China. It's not entirely progressive even from a Maoist perspective, but nevertheless it's still a good and interesting film.

The entire film is free on YouTube, in Chinese with English subtitles: (in 14 parts)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AHsOLhRqeW8

China today is an oppressive state but it still officially glorifies communism. It's quite surreal sometimes, since socialists in China have remarked one can literally use these revolutionary films and TV dramas as actual tactical manuals to some extent for present-day activism. It's almost like we are all literally living inside an alternative and contemporary version of these films...

For more info, see:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Founding_of_a_Republic

This film is highly recommended, a must see!

[scarletghoul]

It is a good film overall and its well made, but there's a conspicuous absence of class struggle in the narrative, which is deliberate obviously. It seems like in general the establishment likes to promote the national liberation/unity side of the chinese revolution and not the socialist side of things.. This is a real shame because everything else about the film is great, and a bit of class war would have made it one of the all time commie classics.

[Queercommie Girl]

It is a good film overall and its well made, but there's a conspicuous absence of class struggle in the narrative, which is deliberate obviously. It seems like in general the establishment likes to promote the national liberation/unity side of the chinese revolution and not the socialist side of things.. This is a real shame because everything else about the film is great, and a bit of class war would have made it one of the all time commie classics.


Well, what do you expect when China is under a revisionist leadership. Given this fact, the film is actually relative progressive compared with most other Chinese films made these days.

[Sun at Eight]

It's also got that weird racist scene where, in a film where the only sexuality is the attractiveness of the various celebrity actors, Soong May-ling visits the White House and a Black marine (I don't think we see any other black people) exclaims, "Wow, she's hot!" or something like that (another question is whether a black man could be a member of the guard in 1949).

It is, as Zenga Zenga ! said, lacking in class struggle and emphasizes national unity. Mao also talks about how Communists don't know to run an economy and should talk to the national-bourgeoisie after they come into a town where all the little shopkeepers have run away or something like that.

I'm really curious to see what its "prequel" The Founding of the Party (or its less political international title Beginning of the Great Revival) will be like, since it's harder to avoid strife with that one. I suspect it will emphasize bringing China as a whole nation to a standing position of dignity among the community of nations or something like that. It's opened today at one local cinema, so I'm planning to see it soon (hopefully with some other local radicals). I'm not sure how different the international cut will be from the Chinese one.

[Kléber]

The movie is not about class struggle, but neither was CPC; in the late 1940's, the party was trying to win over "patriotic capitalists" with talk about New Democracy and a Bloc of Four Classes. Mao's party called for peace and a CPC-GMD coalition government to the end of the war, and insisted that 1949 was only a bourgeois-democratic revolution.

[Queercommie Girl]

It's also got that weird racist scene where, in a film where the only sexuality is the attractiveness of the various celebrity actors, Soong May-ling visits the White House and a Black marine (I don't think we see any other black people) exclaims, "Wow, she's hot!" or something like that (another question is whether a black man could be a member of the guard in 1949).


How exactly is that racist? I think that scene is more likely to be sexist than racist.

Also, this isn't a film you come to see "sexuality" for...

[Queercommie Girl]

where all the little shopkeepers have run away or something like that.


Well, to be frank, there is some justification for that, since historically the CCP had its share of ultra-leftists, some of them literally advocated liquidating every small business through force and violence if necessary. Obviously that is not the correct program - small businesses should not be destroyed by force in a revolution.

[Queercommie Girl]

The movie is not about class struggle, but neither was CPC; in the late 1940's, the party was trying to win over "patriotic capitalists" with talk about New Democracy and a Bloc of Four Classes. Mao's party called for peace and a CPC-GMD coalition government to the end of the war, and insisted that 1949 was only a bourgeois-democratic revolution.

Naturally I disagree, but I don't really want to argue about this in this thread.

At any rate, it's not like the national liberation of China wasn't an important and relatively progressive event anyway. China was under colonial and imperialist domination for 100 years from 1840 to 1949. Even third-campist Trots like the SWP still acknowledges the importance of the national liberation struggles of the Chinese people.

[Zealot]

I thought the film was quite good, especially considering its budget

[Sun at Eight]

How exactly is that racist? I think that scene is more likely to be sexist than racist.

Also, this isn't a film you come to see "sexuality" for...

I felt it was playing on notions of less controlled black male sexuality and perhaps also less self-control in general. My point about the film being lacking in sexuality is that it makes this scene especially stand out. There may also be a very quiet (given the film's conciliatory attitude to the GMD) comment on Soong May-ling's possible affairs and sex appeal to foreign men, but I doubt it. Obviously, we bring our own takes into films.

Just to be clear, I'm sure the overt intentions of including this tiny scene was comedic. Soong was famously beautiful and charismatic, but that's old news to all the characters in China. Thus, in a perhaps slightly demeaning way, it's brought up by a very foreign character in a foreign country who is not aware of all of this.

As for the shopkeeper scene, I was again probably bringing in the feeling that it was more about market reforms and Deng's historical continuity with and perfection of the "more sensible" pre-1957 or so CCP policies.

Also, for people reading this thread, the version that Iseul linked is the best subtitled version I've seen, since as far as I know, no other version subtitles (albeit in a garishly coloured font) the labels identifying every single historical character in the film along with their affiliations.

[scarletghoul]

I felt it was playing on notions of less controlled black male sexuality and perhaps also less self-control in general. My point about the film being lacking in sexuality is that it makes this scene especially stand out. There may also be a very quiet (given the film's conciliatory attitude to the GMD) comment on Soong May-ling's possible affairs and sex appeal to foreign men, but I doubt it. Obviously, we bring our own takes into films.

Just to be clear, I'm sure the overt intentions of including this tiny scene was comedic. Soong was famously beautiful and charismatic, but that's old news to all the characters in China. Thus, in a perhaps slightly demeaning way, it's brought up by a very foreign character in a foreign country who is not aware of all of this.
I think its a more general portrayal of the big clumsy americans. one distinctive thing about US military presence in other countries is that its a mix of black and white soldiers, unlike the european armies who are just white.

[x359594]

I think its a more general portrayal of the big clumsy americans. one distinctive thing about US military presence in other countries is that its a mix of black and white soldiers, unlike the european armies who are just white.

Truman integrated the US Armed Forces in 1948, so it may be possible that a black Marine was part of the honor guard at the White House as a token gesture. That the filmmakers chose to have him break discipline and comment on Madame Soong may indeed be part of the general portrayal of the big clumsy Americans.

[caramelpence]

t's also got that weird racist scene where, in a film where the only sexuality is the attractiveness of the various celebrity actors, Soong May-ling visits the White House and a Black marine (I don't think we see any other black people) exclaims, "Wow, she's hot!" or something like that (another question is whether a black man could be a member of the guard in 1949).

I think that was more to do with the fact that Soong Meiling was regarded as being very attractive in the US newspaper media and in current affairs periodicals such as Time, and consequently in popular consciousness as well. It wasn't racist or even sexist, it was a tacit nod to contemporary public perceptions of an individual female figure. For example (and this isn't even a specialist interest of mine, I just looked this up out of interest) a 1943 article on Soong began as follows:

"The Senators watched in curious silence as Madame Chiang walked down the aisle of the Senate Chamber. They saw a still face with big dark eyes. They saw a slim, straight figure in a black Chinese gown, with here a tiny splash of jade, there a black sequin's understated sparkle. Madame Chiang stepped to the rostrum, listened as Vice President Wallace introduced her, shot a smile at the Senators, and then, after apologizing for not having a set speech, knocked their silvery blocks off extemporaneously."

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,932936,00.html#ixzz1QJ5sO7f0

This contemporary characterization of Soong does perhaps rely on racist perceptions of Asian beauty and womanhood, but that's another issue - and a highly interesting one. The movie was accurate in suggesting that American men would have seen Soong as very attractive.

[Queercommie Girl]

This contemporary characterization of Soong does perhaps rely on racist perceptions of Asian beauty and womanhood


Well, to some extent perhaps, but it's still better than encouraging Asian women to follow white beauty standards by doing "double eyelid surgery". At least she was seen as attractive as an actual Asian.

[caramelpence]

Well, to some extent perhaps, but it's still better than encouraging Asian women to follow white beauty standards by doing "double eyelid surgery". At least she was seen as attractive as an actual Asian.

Hardly. Read the rest of the article, the author goes on to emphasize and describe and re-describe Soong's experience of education in the United States and her Christian religious background. For example, on page three of the online version, the article says "But she wrote a friend: "The only thing Oriental about me is my face." This is consistent with the whole set of colonial discourses surrounding sex and beauty in China before 1949 and throughout the treaty port period in that individual Chinese women were seen as beautiful only when their beauty or their personal backgrounds could be construed as somehow not fully or authentically Chinese, to the extent that individual and non-famous beautiful women were often said to have "white blood" in order to avoid acknowledging that Chinese women could be beautiful or sexually arousing from the viewpoint of White men without having any connection to the West whatsoever, which would, if admitted, entail the transgression of racial boundaries, whose constant reinforcement was central to politics and culture in the treaty ports. In some ways it can be seen as the reverse side of "yellow will out" in that the discourse of "white blood" was about denying the authenticity or "Chineseness" of Chinese women whereas "yellow will out" was about asserting the inability of Chinese individuals (and Chinese men in particular) to escape or defy their alleged inherent racial characteristics, e.g. their duplicity.

The marine does of course not make explicit why he finds Soong attractive in the movie, but in contemporary American consciousness it was to a large extent because Soong could be presented as "Westernized" if not simply non-Chinese. I feel a research project coming on....'Soong Meiling and American male desire - discourses of sex, beauty, and Chinese femininity'.

[Kléber]

At any rate, it's not like the national liberation of China wasn't an important and relatively progressive event anyway. China was under colonial and imperialist domination for 100 years from 1840 to 1949. Even third-campist Trots like the SWP still acknowledges the importance of the national liberation struggles of the Chinese people.
The CPC victory was no more progressive than that of the Angolan MPLA, Afghan PDPA or Nicaraguan FSLN, movements that Maoists regarded as "imperialist" and fought "people's war" against because they were - just like CPC in 1949 - supported by and loyal to the Soviet Union. Even Lin Biaoists acknowledge what a hypocritical and treacherous line that was.

Let me reiterate my point - this movie is nationalist, not Marxist, and its historical setting was carefully chosen to fit the present-day CPC historical narrative. But it doesn't represent a "Dengist" latter-day rewriting of history just because there are no Red Guards marching around yelling "death to modern revisionism!" It's actually a fairly accurate portrayal of the CPC's own line at the time. There were big contradictions between the politics of Mao's party during different periods, and this movie is not about the Chinese Soviet Republic period or the Cultural Revolution period. It is about the final stage of the civil war when the CPC openly advocated and established a coalition government with the bourgeoisie.

[Queercommie Girl]

The CPC victory was no more progressive than that of the Angolan MPLA, Afghan PDPA or Nicaraguan FSLN, movements that Maoists regarded as "imperialist" and fought "people's war" against because they were - just like CPC in 1949 - supported by and loyal to the Soviet Union. Even Lin Biaoists acknowledge what a hypocritical and treacherous line that was.


For the record, personally I don't agree with siding with Muslim fundamentalists against Soviet Afghanistan. Soviet Afghanistan was very flawed in many ways, but I'd side with a deformed Soviet state against religious fundamentalists on any day.

It's true some Maoists have a tendency to make this kind of mistake. Today some reformist Maoists in China still say things like "the alliance between the Chinese nation and the Islamic nation against the Anglo-Saxon nation"...

Some Maoists in China are too fond of Islamism and the Islamic left.

I'm a kind of "semi-Maoist", which means I don't agree with many Maoist lines on certain issues.