Imagining Taking Tiger Mountain (by strategy): two landscapes of the Anthropocene, 1970 and 2014

Abstract

ABSTRACT The International Geological Congress has yet formally to adopt the Anthropocene. It is still, to that extent, an imagined epoch. The term ‘Anthropocene’ refers us to the deep time of geological epochs, but alternate terms for what we can expect to experience have a more specifically anthropological focus: the Capitalocene, Chthulucene and Misanthropocene. Only Entropocene breaks with the humanistic tradition. Comparing Tsui Hark’s 2014 The Taking of Tiger Mountain (Zhiqu weihu shan), the second adaptation of Qu Bo’s adventure novel of the People’s Liberation Army, with the 1970 film of the Peking Opera version directed by Xie Tieli, demonstrates the stakes in imaginations of mountains separated by 45 years. This paper argues that the later film evolves from the failure of the Cultural Revolution’s imagination to encompass the landscape of its setting. The increased incoherence of the later film derives from its increased engagement in technical mediations, which in turn enable a complex interaction between utopian Revolution and dystopian Anthropocene imaginaries.