Gender, human relationship, and money in ERMO and Suzhou River
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Keyword: Gender, money, human relationship
Gender, human relationship, and money in ERMO and Suzhou River
Introduction
The two movies, Ermo and Suzhou River, presents a genre interlock of art-house and international and drama sequencing. In Ermo, for instance, Zhou Xiawen shows dramatic tales of the main character Ailiya as a positive influence on society as he portrays the role of a determined individual to family needs provision. Similarly, in Suzhou River, the director Lou Ye presents the love and affection tales of Mardar (Jia Hongsheng), who is determined to show Moudan (Zhou Xun) the love and affection an individual may wish to express. From the brief analysis of the two movies, it is evident that females play a role in the development of a human relationship in society and showcase the transition from tradition to modernity. Although traditionally, the female gender was not part of societal recognition; their use as change agents depicts the changing symbolism vividly. Therefore, this paper concentrates on comparing Ermo and Suzhou River based on money, gender, and human relation critics.
Ermo
From the psychoanalytical perspective, Ermo’s movie portrays both the director and the main actor as full of Jungian psychology elements. Ailiya, despite her protagonist nature, is determined to achieve materialist wealth, not for herself but the family. The Jungian symbols concept protrudes through Ermo’s obsessive quest for money related to intense sexual frustration (Zhang, 2002). Fu (2005) complements the Jungian psychology element in Ermo by revealing a love and affection theme prevailing between Xiazi and Ermo with the full determination of each divorcing their partners, in a similar way Ermo quits the job to embark on noodle twisting to gather enough to buy the television set.
The female gender concept has been used to reflect of capitalism change disconnection factor from culture. Capitalism growth in China has shattered the old societal, cultural thinking perspective (Zhang, 2010). The criticism takes the standpoint of Ermo doubling up as a mother and work finding male role amidst the capitalist fever of earning wealth reputation. Zhang (2004) explains that most films in China’s economic development period centralized on enlightening the audiences on the essence of embracing capitalism to the expense of old society culture. The director’s choice of inverse gender relation roles on Ermo and Zhou Xiawen fully depicts the capitalism and modernization change drive in China, which seeks to encourage every individual to have the desire to live a different life through modernization and money desires (Fu, 2005).
The directional setting of Ermo, contrary to the usual director settings, also reveals the transformation theme. The director’s pieces of art were generally a representation of the urban context, however, in Ermo, the setting shifted to rural place (Fu, 2005). Therefore, revealing the transformation theme that the female gender conveyed of the shift from traditional to modernity capitalism. The director of the film is criticized as a mastery made director with a good understanding of the western audience, thus assuming national allegory strategic part, which reflects his prowess in international film market ethnographic approach and self-orientation (Zhang, 2002). The movie’s directorate also reveals the transformation through the director’s ability to contrast between Eastern and Western cultural values and tradition (Zhang, 2002). The contrasting idea is evident through Ermo and Xiazi, who represents the Western culture and Ermo’s husband and Xiazi’s wife, who depicts the traditional Chinese Eastern culture (Fu, 2005).
Suzhou River
Suzhou River utilizes mermaid symbolism to express the director’s character choices in regards to the female gender as a self-identity within the socio-economic environment. Lou Ye connects the film characters to a river to demonstrate a dramatic and multi-layered globalization effect (Zhen, 2010). The examination of women’s relationship with the mermaid symbol gives a deeper understanding of how the gender power structure is portraying western capitalist influence. Zhen (2010) elaborates that Lou Ye applies instructive production history that anchors a combination of transnational and guerilla tactics to commercialize the female gender for consumer culture demand. The director utilizes a noir lens to perpetuate the transformation theme through single character vacillation in regards to the mermaid icon relationship to symbolize a post cultural mutation (Zhang, 2002).
Although transformation is the central theme of the movie, love, and affection to another, that shows the human relationship is also evident. The film director presents two counts of different love theme scenarios portraying the film’s plot as slippery (Zhang, 2004). The transformation theme is also evident in the director’s choice of character tactic. The director utilizes the docu-drama style to deviate from the main character to videographers while maintaining the love and affection theme (Zhen, 2010). The director’s choice of plot and setting also shows the transformation theme from post-traditional culture to modernity while embracing the western culture of capitalism. The director portrays an array of tumultuous social disparities that involves the tainted globalization reality in economic, environmental, and violent realities, therefore exploring the developing relationship between capitalist and female identity. The director alludes to the urban shanghai background through his metafictional narrative setting and camera point-of-view (Zhang, 2002).
Conclusion
In conclusion, the two films, Ermo and Suzhou River, show contrast and relation in comparison. The two films show similarities in terms of the relevant theme they portray. Both the movie elaborate the gender, human relationship, and money criticism that the paper show concentration. The gender relation of the two films depicts female gender as agents of change of transformation theme from the traditional culture to western capitalism modernity. In terms of human relationship, love and affection are evident in both movies, although in Ermo, love is expressed in terms of a family; in Suzhou River, it is personal desires. The female gender in the films is depicted as materialistic averse. In contrast, the two movies, plotting, is different. The director to Ermo directs the film’s plot in a rural place while Suzhou River plotting is done in the urban setup. Unlike Ermo’s director’s usual plotting of movies, the theme of transformation is evident in the plot. A critical comparison of the two movies reveals that change was the main idea and concept that every movie director would wish to portray. The two films show evidence-based transformation themes through traditional culture and western capitalism comparison on its plot, setting, gender differentiation, and commitment to human relations. China was on the transformation wheel, and every director was pushing to drive the change initiative to sink in the individuals; therefore, the two movies incorporate the concept in a conceptual, logical way.
References
Fu, P. (2005). Ermo:(Tele) Visualizing Urban/Rural Transformation. Chinese Films in Focus, 25, 73-80.
Zhang, Y. (2002). Screening China: Critical interventions, cinematic reconfigurations, and the transnational imaginary in contemporary Chinese cinema (Vol. 92). Center for Chinese Studies, The University of Michigan.
Zhang, Y. (2004). Chinese national cinema. Routledge.
Zhang, Y. (2010). Cinema, space, and polylocality in a globalizing China. University of Hawaii Press.
Zhen, Z. (2010). Urban Dreamscape, Phantom Sisters, and the Identity of an Emergent Art Cinema. Journal of Hangzhou Normal University (Humanities and Social Sciences), (4), 7.