The Mute in the Shadow in the Distance: Towards a New "Oriental Femininism"/la Muette Au Loin Dans L'ombre: Vers un Nouveau Femininisme "Oriental" (Report‪)‬

Where to go, she, upward, downward? Downstairs is the "Tea King" Tang, so-called a "devil playing with women", now enamored with her, whereas upstairs are a group of young film-making artists representing modernization, progress, resistance, spirit of fighting. She walks, one step down, hesitates, turns around, then walks up, three steps, she hesitates, halts, she turns to look at the giant window in the wall, she stops there. The luminous window light shines on her. She does not belong to anywhere, she belongs to the window, the light here: her own soul of a pilgrim. Quiet, soundless. Only her figure inlaid in the light, with the slender beauty, svelte, willowy, extremely gentle and peaceful. Inside the light of the "center stage", her figure is dim and faint. This is a picture predestinate of her tragic destiny, meanwhile demonstrating her independent moral beauty of style. The film starts with the shot of an old-styled bath house in 1929 in Shanghai: an absolutely manly world, overwhelmed with hot steam, men's noise, a singing voice lingering: "... butterfly, flying ..." a quite sad tone. A group of men, film producers, directors, nearly naked, are scheming the future of an actress, Ruan Lingyu, are commanding the male fantasy of film. (2) It seems as if a phallogocentric space, a new deformed patriarchic economy. A male actor even claims he will "take 'it' out to compare with others'". Men are easy with their own phallogocentric discourse. Nevertheless, there is one director in a western suit in sharp contrast with the showing bodies, articulating a quite modernized tune; also, the men are trying to "change" Ruan from her former roles of "bad women" to a "noble lady", to "make her big" by making her a chaste girl singer, and then a saint mother who bites her finger to feed her baby with her own blood. So far, Ruan is to be emancipated and nothing is to offend the Feminists.