The Oppression of Women in Feudal Society- Analysis of Raise the Red Lantern

【Abstract】Raise the Red Lantern is both successful in the box office and in the international film festival. The film focuses on revealing the psychological details from different characters. The movie’s physical settings are helpful in reflecting the theme of the film and manipulating the audience’s emotions. There are some symbols vital in the film, including food, lanterns, colors and seasons. This film shows the audience the society under the Chinese feudal system, the deep oppression and unbearable survival of the majority of women in China, and even the brutal destruction of humanity.

【Key words】Raise the Red Lantern; feminism; feudal society; symbols

【作者簡介】周天舒(1994-)，女，漢族，江蘇蘇州人，圣瑪麗大學(xué)，本科，研究方向：心理學(xué)和亞洲研究。

Raise the Red Lantern was directed by the fifth-generation director Zhang Yimou. The movie is both successful in the box office and in the international film festival. The film won several awards at the Venice International Film Festival and grossed 11million USD in oversea’s box markets, not including Asia (Nickerson & Lappin, 1993). This essay will discuss the theme of the movie, focusing on the federal societal oppression of women, the summary of the plot, the film’s aesthetic and symbolism the director chose in the film.

The film describes a story happening in an old feudal village. Songlian, who was a college student, could not go to school anymore because her father has passed away and there was nobody to support her financially. She obeyed her stepmother’s arrangement and married a man named Chen, who was much older than her. Chen had one wife, Yuru, a conservative woman who believed Confucian culture is paramount and was an arranged marriage with Chen and he also had three concubines. The second concubine, Zhuoyun thought that Songlian was her competitor, so she supervised her for a long time. The third concubine Meishan cheated Chen and Chen killed her. A series of incidents caused Songlian to suffer from various forms of mental health problems and she displayed maniac behaviors. In the spring of the second year, Chen’s courtyard received a new concubine.

The husband, Chen, had great power over the entire family. He represents an invisible pressure on the women of the household as the highest ruler in the feudal family. He is the epitome of power in a patriarchal society who provides the living resources to the women and they must obey him. The women would fight each other for his attention despite Chen could still punish them as he sees fit, even going as far as to kill the third concubine for adultery.

Most of the men surrounding women in such an environment are either culprit or assistants in the oppression. These people formed strict and feudal patriarchal society. In this patriarchal society, men have the right to choose their path in life, while women do not. Women are only meant to be accessories to men. These women as wives and concubines lost their self-esteem in the process of the gradual disappearance of their personality, and finally begin to give up resistance and passively adapt to their environment.

The movie’s physical settings are helpful in reflecting the theme of the film and manipulating the audience’s emotions. The Chen’s courtyard is large, strict, has a symmetrical composition, appears solemn, and reflects the cold atmosphere of the household. Those residing there have to follow various rules and practices that include a series of complicated procedures such as lighting the lanterns and ordering dishes of food. The film highlights the neatness and ideological closure of the households in Chinese feudal families. The building complex has a long history and looks noble, but also claustrophobic (Georgakas, 1992). People who live in the elegant environment are full of intrigue (Georgakas, 1992).

The film shows the audience the society under the Chinese feudal system, the deep oppression and unbearable survival of the majority of women in China, and even the brutal destruction of humanity. The film criticizes the feudal society oppression of women. Family plays the most important role in Chinese traditional society (Tei, 2007). If the family is functional, the society, which is composed of many families, will be functional and operate orderly (Tei, 2007). Besides, instead of talking about the topic of love, which should be common in a family, the film is focusing on women’s envy for the other women who get special treatment or attention from the husband, who is paramount in the family (Tei, 2007).

Food is a strong tool used to reflect women’s oppressed daily life within the film. Females in China suffered from a long-term oppression in history. They had no economic status because they were not allowed to work and therefore should stay home nursing the children and obeying their husband (Bower, 2004). Dinner is a strong reflection of the competition between concubines. According to the East Asia scholar Frederick, eating and sex were dominate activities in Chinese Life in the past (Bower, 2004). Food is the symbol of power in the family and has a direct connection with sex because those who has sex with the husband have the right to order the dish she wants (Bower, 2004). According to operant conditioning theory, the reward for having sex will strengthen the desire to sleep with their husband (Stangor, & Walinga, 2014).

In addition to food, there are some symbols vital in the film. The director, Zhang Yimou, used lanterns as the main clue throughout the film, which made the lanterns have extraordinary significance in the Chen Family Courtyard. The recurring lighting of the lanterns in the film is emphasized as a theme, a ritual that changes with the plot. Lighting the courtyard with the lantern means the husband would like to sleep with the concubine. This ritual gives the hostess of this yard more power and status at home, as well as the favor of the husband. The closure of the lanterns represents the departure of the husband. This behavior of leaving has more meaning - the hostess of the yard needs to regain the favor of the husband. If she can’t regain favor, then the hostess of the yard will lose her established status and power.

Zhang Yimou’s film is visually attractive. The use of color to convey information in the film is an effective way to show Chinese aesthetic to the audience from different countries. Red represents auspiciousness in Chinese traditional culture, but in Raise the Red Lantern, it also represents power, blood and desire. Concubines fight to have the red lanterns in order to satisfied their desires. At the end of the film, bright red lanterns in Meishan’s room looks bloody, this instills a feeling of fear in the audience since it represents Meishan’s death. Zhang Yimou switch red, a positive color, with an expression of negative emotions.

Gray, the main color of the courtyard, reflects the breadth and depth of the Chen Family Courtyard. Throughout the film, people begin to feel mentally drained - a somber gray mindset. They become obedient, strictly disciplined, and heavily abide by the ethical norms of the Chinese Family feudal tradition. Under such an environment, the dull atmosphere created by the courtyard has made the women’s life lose the colorful colors that they had and deserved, now they have become the gray of the courtyard. The unfortunate sad fate of the women is represented by the symbolic color gray. Zhang Yimou use symbols to represent visual emotion – like the use of seasons. Spring represents new life, happy in the comedy and winter represent death, irony and sad in tragedy (Wolf, 1986). When the husband marries the fifth concubine, it is spring. When the husband kills Meishan, who betrayed him, it is winter. Season also shows the cycle of the women’s life and the tragedy for the women never ends, just like the seasons always change.

Raise the Red Lantern shows the audience the society under the Chinese feudal system, and the deep oppression and unbearable survival of the majority of women in China. The wife and concubines in Chen’s family have no other choice in life. No matter what way they chose to live in the feudal society, their fate is the same. They cannot get rid of the environment and institutions and cannot be independent. The most tragic thing about the movie is the ending. Wenzhu became his fifth concubine, starting a new cycle of red lanterns. As long as the feudal society continued, it would never stop oppressing women.

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