Twenty Two (2015): A sentimental, fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) of the comfort women?

Abstract

This is an excerpt of the roundtable discussion on Twenty Two (Er shi er, 2015) organized by Deep Focus and was originally published on August 31, 2017. Following the delayed release of the documentary in 2017, as it deals with the sensitive subject matter of China’s surviving WWII comfort women, the roundtable addressed the aesthetic and ethical debates that this commercially successful documentary sparked: Whether the use of pillow shots is poetic or pointless? Is Twenty Two best understood as a sentimental, superficial “fast-moving consumer-goods documentary” of the comfort women? Is Twenty Two a good (technically accomplished) or bad (aesthetically and morally problematic) film? The panelists pointed out that the documentary fails to attend to gendered issues, historical reflections, and the violence of revictimization.

Keywords:

• Twenty Two
• Thirty Two
• The Act of Killing
• comfort women
• fast-moving consumer-goods documentary
• revictimization

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Shuoyuzhou Li

Li Shuoyuzhou: Hong Kong-based Chinese video artist, master of experimental film from Kingston University and MFA in creative media from the City University of Hong Kong.

Mecca Jing Li

Mecca Jing Li: Cinephile.

Zeyuan Wu

Wu Zeyuan: Film journalist & editor.

Ruofeng Xu

Invited participants

Xu Ruofeng: Film critic, curator. One of the managers of Channel A of China Academy of Art Museum and the creator of the cinephilic self-media account FENG MOVIE (fengying dianyingji).

Yue Huang

Notes on contributors

Host: Huang Yue, a film critic who graduated from Yale Divinity School with a Master of Arts in Religion in 2017. Since 2018, he has been serving as the director of programming at CineCina Film Festival in New York. He is currently based in Shanghai.

Translators:

Xiaoyu Xia, translator, PhD Candidate at University of California, Berkeley.

Yvonne Lin, translator, PhD student at University of California, Berkeley.