Reimagining Scholars and Eunuchs: Nationalism, Masculinities, and Historicism in King Hu’s Martial Arts Films

ABSTRACT

The historicist and cultural-essentialist filmmaker King Hu set most of his martial arts films in the Ming dynasty, a turbulent but legendary period in Chinese history. This article examines two archetypes in Hu’s films, namely the righteous Confucian scholar-xia and the politically powerful eunuch, who engage in contestations of masculinity within ideal cinematic spaces (jianghu, milieu). These settings and character designs profoundly influenced the martial arts genre. Hu’s cinematography embodied a field for negotiating Chinese masculinities that deviate somewhat from Euro-American theorising about gender binarism and masculinity. By tracing the historical and cultural origins of the scholar and eunuch archetypes, and scrutinising their cultural identities, power structures, gender negotiations, and distinctive notions of nationhood, this article illustrates that Hu’s works parodied and critiqued the problematic authoritarianism of the James Bond film series, despite the prevalence of Bond-esque Western ‘heroes’ in Hong Kong popular culture during the Cold War. He idealised the politically marginalised scholars, critically appraised the hegemonic and transgender eunuchs, and constructed unconventional and resolute swordswomen, and thereby re-articulated the gender and power systems of wen and wu, yin and yang, to revive Chinese cultural traditions and allegorise the sociopolitical landscape.

作为一名具有文化本质主义倾向的电影制作者, 胡金铨大部分武侠电影都以明朝为历史背景。明朝是中国历史上一个动荡却充满传奇色彩的时代。本文围绕胡金铨电影中正义的“文弱儒侠”与强权的“阳刚太监”这两种银幕类型影像, 分析他们共存于影像江湖时进行的关乎男性气质的较量, 这些场景和人物设计也对后续武侠类型的创作产生了深远的影响。胡金铨的电影创作表征着一种区别于西方男女生理性别二分的性别协商场域。本文通过追溯“儒侠”与“太监”原型的历史和文化渊源, 分析其镜语表达之中蕴含的关乎文化身份, 权力秩序, 性别协商和国族性等议题的讨论。尽管冷战时期香港流行文化中充斥着詹姆斯·邦德式的西方英雄, 胡金铨的电影创作戏仿并批判了邦德系列电影中存在的集权与专制主义。他将处于政治边缘地位的儒侠/士大夫形象进行理想化处理, 并对变性的强权太监进行强烈批判, 同时塑造了坚毅而个性张扬的女侠形象。这些影像通过表现性别与权力方面的阴阳转化, 部分瓦解了冷战格局与政治内乱中的强权秩序逻辑, 内含着他以“儒侠”影像及其所联合的中国传统来呼唤文化认同的企盼与憧憬。

KEYWORDS:

• King Hu
• masculinity
• martial arts films
• culturalism
• nationalism
• Ming dynasty
• eunuchs
• scholars
• swordswomen
• Confucianism

Acknowledgements

I wish to thank Geng Song, Daoxin Li, Tao Su, Jinhua Dai, Guimei He, Huiyuan Bai, Jin Jin, Jing Yi, Vivien Wei, Peiyin Lin, Victor Fan, Kristof Van Den Troost, Samantha Ko, Tania Deitch, Jade Phua, and Wang Hong for their helpful input or warm support at various stages of this manuscript. I am also deeply grateful to the editors, including but not limited to Assoc. Prof. David Hundt and Anne Platt, as well as the two anonymous reviewers, for their constructive comments and meticulous proofreading. These all allowed me to improve the clarity and impact of my arguments. All errors are the responsibility of the author.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

^1. The loyalist consciousness perpetually hints at a vanished space in time, fixating on a political orthodoxy that may have never been orthodox, while ‘the post in post-loyalist therefore suggests liberation from existing confinements of loyalist discourse’ (Wang, 2013, 101). David Der-wei Wang’s use of the term ‘(post)loyalist’ connotes Hu’s initially well-established but increasingly bewildered loyalism towards an idealised and culturalised Chinese nation.

^2. For example, Guo Moruo’s Commemorating the 300^th Anniversary (Jiashen sanbainian ji, 1944), Wu Han’s The Jingyiwei and the East and West Factories of the Ming Dynasty (Mingdai de Jinyiwei he dongxi chang, 1934) and Zhu Yuanzhang’s Biography (Zhuyuanzhang zhuan, 1948), Ding Yi’s The Politics of Secret Service in the Ming Dynasty (Mingdai tewu zhengzhi, 1947), and Yao Xueyin’s History of Secret Service Politics in the Ming Dynasty (Wuchao tewu zhengzhishi, 1949).

^3. In an interview with Koichi Yamada (see Hu et al., 2015), Hu shared his insights about why he set his works in the Ming dynasty, the relationship between his films and realpolitik, and the portrayal of eunuchs and jinyiwei. Carlos Rojas (2015) has also devoted a chapter of his book to analysing how Dragon Gate Inn (Longmen kezhan, 1967) became an allegorical comment on the Cultural Revolution.

^4. Jianghu is a Chinese term that generally refers to the milieu in which many Chinese wuxia, outlaw fiction, and romantic fantasy stories are set. The term is used flexibly and can be used to describe a fictionalised version of rural historical China; a setting of feuding martial arts clans and the people of that community; a secret and possibly criminal underworld; a general sense of the ‘mythic world’ where fantastical stories happen; or some combination thereof (see Song, 2019).

^5. According to the copyright laws in both mainland China and Taiwan, the copyright protection period for works owned by legal entities is 50 years from the date of release. As the images in Figure 1 and elsewhere in this article are related to the films Dragon Inn (1967, dir. King Hu) and The Eunuch (1971, dir. Ye Rongzu), both of which were released more than 50 years ago, they are no longer subject to copyright protection under the current legislation. In any case, the selective reproduction of images from these films in this article falls within the scope of ‘fair use’, insofar as these screenshots are being used for the purpose of illustration or commentary. According to the copyright laws that apply in China, it is not necessary to obtain permission from the copyright holders for such usage. The platforms from which the film images have been reproduced have been noted in the captions of all images that appear in the article.

^6. The offices and occupations among these administrative eunuchs were institutionally settled. For example, it is indicated that the positions included Director, Vice-Director, senior and junior Assistant Director, Recorder, and Commissioner (Crawford, 1961, 122–123).

^7. For further discussion on Hong Kong’s Jane Bond series, see Ho (2009) and Wei (2016).