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Abstract
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This paper argues that in the new generation of films about the Sino-Japanese War (Nanjing Nanjing, Devils on my Doorstep, Assembly), Lu Chuan’s Nanjing Nanjing is the least successful in clearing a new space for cultural memory as a stage of healing and reconciliation, despite its ambition to do just that. In particular, the narrational role of children in the film is counterproductive. Despite Lu’s apparent intent is to lessen the antipathy between two peoples, the naïve emphasis on the vulnerability of the child in a warzone re-ignites the protective anger of the adult audience. Childhood is of course often deployed as a highly charged symbol of national unity, and the deployment of the affect of the child in war is not a preserve of Chinese nationalism. Nonetheless, given the current success of popular nationalist discourse in China, and its legitimating function for the ruling Communist Party, the role of childhood becomes a flashpoint and a lightning rod of legitimacy for extreme political views and violent language. The paper posits the concept of the child as a mediating agent of memorialisation, drawing chiefly on the recent work by Vicki Lebeau and Tani Barlow on the relationship between adult trauma, childhood innocence and historical catachresis.
Film: Nanjing Nanjing (City of Life and Death), Lu Chuan
Stephanie Hemelryk Donald is incoming Dean of Media and Communication at RMIT in Melbourne (2010). She is Professor of Chinese Media at the University of Sydney 2008-2009, and worked at UTS as Professor of Culture and Communication and latterly Director of International Studies from 2004-2008. Her books include Tourism and the Branded City: Film and Identity on the Pacific Rim (2007); Branding Cities: Cosmopolitanism, Parochialism and Social Change (2009); and Little Friends: Children’s Film and Media Culture in China (2005).
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