Rewriting history, narrating nation: The great wall inSino-US co-productions in the new millennium

Abstract

This paper compares the representations of the Great Wall of China in three Sino-US co-produced films, Shadow Magic (西洋鏡, Ann Hu胡安, 2000), Dragon Blade (天降雄師, Daniel Lee李仁港, 2015), and The Great Wall (長城, Zhang Yimou張藝謀, 2016). Instead of seeing the Great Wall<i> </i>as a structure that demarcates clear boundaries, I read its film representations as symptoms of anxieties over the impossibilities of maintaining well-defined borderlines. All three films employ the image of the Great Wall to serve as a metonym for the Chinese nation. They tell the story of East-West encounters to construct their own versions of Chinese identity. As each film “narrates its nation,” it engages with recorded or imagined histories to construct an alternative historiography and reconstruct a new Chinese identity. Although all of the three films begin with references to historical facts, they all take liberties and embellish historical accounts with sensationalized fantasies of cross-cultural encounters. I read such rewriting of history as an expression of the People’s Republic of China’s official policy of advancing a nationalist agenda of global domination through soft power.