Gender and revolution in the 1935 Chinese film New Women

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Depiction of Gender in a Chinese Film New Women is a Chinese film released in early 1935, in Shanghai, China and was directed by Cai Chu Sheng. The film demonstrates weak women characters in a cruel society and male entailment through abandonment, despair and suicide. Cai Chu Sheng’s perspective is that new women follow the proletariat revolution not only by being ambitious but also taking real action to fight against men’s power under the May Fourth Movement in the early 1900s. May Fourth Movement is not only a cultural revolution but also a social movement. From a cultural point, young people had been inspired by Western thought, developed the revolutionary spirit of the May Fourth Movement and became civilized workers with socialist awareness. Socialist awareness is demonstrated through awareness of self-determination in marriage, financial independence, and the right to have education. The director, Sheng, explored the several social issues among the women through his movie. Wei Ming is a new woman of the May Fourth Movement from the time she fell in love with a man while she was a college student by ignoring her father who strongly opposed their marriage. The close shot of the scissor and rope the father threw to Wei Ming after she was pregnant was an indication that he wanted her to die and the fast-moving shot from pointing ancestors name to the moment that Wei Ming’s father blame her in front of all family members. This show how shameful it was for a woman to be pregnant before their marriage at that time. The restriction women had is much more than men did. Wei Ming’s husband abandoned Wei Ming after they got married, which shows that women were hardly in charge of their marriages. The snowing day as a background of the crying scene is a metaphor of Wei Ming’s coldness and hopeless mind. Wei Ming is definitely a leading character of new women by flirting with a journalist named Yu, chasing her dream to be a writer, and rejecting to be mattress. The role she is playing makes her very different to other women since the director utilizes this character to tell the audience how the new woman looks like in reality. However, given her social status and limitations, Wei Ming does not have strong ability and adequate capacity to overcome troubles she was facing. She is as an ambitious woman but could not take responsibility for herself and even her daughter while she was dying from sickness. This eventually leads her to a tragic fate i.e. death and was a reflection that the women were struggling with in marriage, job and personal responsibility. As Wei Ming and Dr. Wang enter the dancehall, the film contrasts scenes of their dancing with images of Wei Ming\\\'s neighbor, Li Aying, a factory worker who leads her fellow workers in learning patriotic songs. In broad narrative terms, the two parts stand in sharp contrast. Li Aying is depicted as a role model of new women who seeks to make progress by leading fellow women. Wei Ming watches a dance performance and imagines herself in the role of the chained woman. She sees herself as a helpless and hopeless woman who is desperate for work yet living with self-determination. Based on the frame of the film, Wei Ming’s character is the most important, and the lighting concentrates on her. The back and forth scene vividly compared two controversial characters. When she came back from the dancehall, she met Li Aying who finished her class as the lightning shapes objects by creating highlights and shadows. The shadow of Li Aying as she walked away from Wei Ming became bigger to an extent that she was a giant. Therefore, the shadow was a sign of the new form of women. The director praises the new women ideology by showing the giant shadow of Li Aying. New Women employed diffusion filters as well as soft and high-key lighting to create soft and weak image of Mrs. Wang. She was dependent on her husband and yearning for a materialistic life during that time. Mrs. Wang is a dependent traditional woman who is criticized by May Fourth movement for asking money from her husband Dr. Wang. Wei Ming and Li Aying are the advocates, and they work as music teachers yet living with self-determination. The tumbler is a property which appears in the film multiple times, it’s as a symbol of a new woman who is not ready to fall down. Wei Ming got huge attention from different men including Dr. Wang, the journalist, and the procurer. All these men only treated her as a commodity because of her beauty. Even the madam told Wei Ming multiple times, “she can make money easily as a young woman.” We can see how the majority of people treat the new woman, Wei Ming, who is independent, chill and ambitious. In other words, Wei Ming is the character of the pretty-bourgeois intellectuals who show estrangement from others. When Wei Ming’s daughter was sick, she needed money but she rejected Dr. Wang’s diamond ring, which was worth a lot of money. When her daughter’s condition worsened, she turned to prostitution in which her first customer is the seedy Dr. Wang. However, the idea of selling herself to him is the one thing that Wei Ming cannot bear. In this case, she can bear selling her body but not her spirit to the seedy man. Despite her efforts to survive, she collapsed and attempted to commit suicide. When Wei Ming was in hospital and surrounded by her friends in medium shot, Yu appears in the left foreground to encourage her to live. Wei Ming notices and smiles to him, and the camera retreats slightly to frame her with the man who talked to her. It’s an attention-getting way to introduce, for the first time in the movie, that a man is on Wei Ming’s side. At the end of film, when Wei Ming woke up from attempted suicide, Li Aying’s persuasion expressed the ideology of new women, “No matter how painful life is suicide is for the weak.” A woman cannot topple over. Life is a struggle, if you fall down you must get up again and you are certainly going to be victorious in the end. The director again uses the montage technique in the end to express the Proletarian revolutionary consciousness. From the scene, Li Aying fought with Dr. Wang as she appears to be more masculine that any other woman in the film because of her outfit and hairstyle. She was the only woman who won the men by herself. As a result, we can see Li Aying’s powerful energy which Wei Ming did not have. Towards the end of New Women, the train whistle is superimposed over a millions of workers as the director uses long shot emphasize this. When the car drives close to us, we can see the millions of workers following afterwards. Additionally, the director uses close shot in different areas including when Dr. Wang throws out the newspaper with Wei Ming’s suicide news and when one of the female workers stepped on the newspaper. Already a target of the Chinese gossip press and under a great deal of strain in her personal life, Wei Ming’s death continues to be commercially marketable until the last minute. The director made an interesting movie in which Wei Ming is a metaphor of the time when women in the society strive for the future, but are unable to overcome the present, which is men’s entitlement. Wei Ming’s last words are, “I want to live!” These words represent the desires of millions of Chinese women in that society.