Free Essay About Spring In Small Town Clip Analysis

Spring in a Small Town is a Chinese film directed by Fei Mu in 1948, right after the Second World War. The marriage life of the main film characters, Liyan Dai and Yuwen Zhou, has been affected by the disastrous war. This movie represents how their marriage life is further turbulent during the visit of Liyan’s friend Zhichen Zhang, who was once Yuwen’s past lover. Although spring was criticized during the Communist revolution for its petit-bourgeois decadence, researchers find that many Confucian principles are embedded in this film. For instance, in the drinking scene at the birthday party of Liyan’s sister Xiu Dai, we can witness how the characters interact with each other according to Confucian family manners. However, as characters get drunk they gradually lose their manner restraints, and Yuwen unconsciously exposes her love affair with Zhichen. Yuwen's expression of Qing (sentiment) is a behavior encouraged by The Cult of Qing as written by Haiyan Lee. This article suggests that people would better adhere to Confucian principle based on emotional reciprocity rather than superficial obedience to the symbolic orders (Lee 34). This film clip publicizes sentimental expressions as a new way to follow traditional Confucian principles, which contributed to the gender and hierarchy equalization trend starting from the nineteenth century of China.
Throughout history, Chinese ruling class used orthodox Confucian principles to govern individuals. These rules penetrate into individual’s life and quench their emotional attachment inside and outside their family. Monarch-subjects relationship, husband-wife relationship and parent-children relationship are three essential components of Confucian principles (26). These relationship bonds the stratified individuals thereby acquiring the latter’s constant devotion to the former. Since Confucian principles blend into every aspect of individual’s life, these principles transform to part of Chinese culture as social ethics (li). Individuals regulate each other not by rules but by moral judgment (27). These judgments made Confucian’s repression of emotion more reliable and blocked the way of Chinese ideology modernization.
Nevertheless, during the self-modernization of China, people realize the hollow objective order should be sustained by personal subjective feelings underneath it. Literature starts to portray how sentimental characters (youqingren) collide with traditional hierarchy Confucian principles and shift people's attention to considering emotional expression as a way to solve the inherent problem of the old model of Confucian relationship (35). In the film, after Zhichen’s arrive, Yuwen becomes a sentimental woman who struggles between her love and her duty. Her sentiment fleshes her identity and generates audience’s reflection on orthodox Confucius principle. Pioneers of neo-Confucianism also suggest the beginning step is reinterpreting husband-wife relationship. According to Li Zhi, husband and wife bond is the beginning of a family, which is the basic unit of the society (34). Therefore, only by valuing emotional reciprocity inside husband-wife ties can we construct a society linked by deep emotional attachment. Unfortunately, the prevalence of moral judgment suppresses and silence Chinese women. Women are encouraged to express their sentimental feelings; her husband can hear and reflect, thereby building a mutual respect healthy husband-wife relationship.