MADE IN CENSORSHIP: The Tiananmen Movement in Chinese Literature and Film | By Thomas Chen

In this monograph partly adapted from his PhD dissertation, Thomas Chen investigates Chinese censorship by revisiting writings and films about the Tiananmen movement. Thirty-five years on, June 4th remains one of China’s most censored historical events, seldom being discussed in public and avoided across the whole cultural field. While images of the Tiananmen movement are arguably some of China’s most iconic outside of the country, within its borders, an enforced collective amnesia now affects younger generations born after 1989 (Louisa Lim, The People’s Republic of Amnesia: Tiananmen revisited, Oxford University Press, 2014). This is not to say that the Tiananmen movement has completely vanished from the works of Chinese writers, artists, and netizens. It has instead provided a fertile ground for discussions, experimentations, and creative endeavours, and will probably continue to do so, despite, and perhaps because it is so heavily censored.

To untangle the complex and paradoxical mechanics of censorship, Chen’s introduction presents a concise theoretical and historical framework. Building upon existing scholarship, he sets out to investigate the “proscriptive and prescriptive dimensions of censorship” (5), exploring the various ways it denies as well as promotes discourses and by so doing, generates counter- and “alter-productions” (13). Censorship not only “makes public” approved discourses, it also creates publics, including communities engaged in reappropriating official Tiananmen narratives in their own, alternative way (6). The author verifies his hypotheses with a variety of media, ranging from state propaganda (chapter 1, with reportage literature and television documentaries produced right after June 4th), to semi- or unofficial novels, documentary and fiction films (chapters 2 through 4) that “create discursive spaces of remembrance and reappropriation” (7). By emphasizing the figure of the dead soldier as a sacrificial victim of the Tiananmen movement, the official productions discussed in chapter 1 seek to “restore the state’s legitimacy after the massacre of civilians” (10). This official line in the immediate aftermath of June 4this quickly reversed, and literary, journalistic, and educational propaganda about Tiananmen becomes extinct after 1991 (21). The official documentary Flutter (1989) exemplifies particularly well this sudden turnaround of Chinese authorities and the mixed and evolving nature of their productions. Constituted of footage partly shot by Western and Chinese camera crews, Flutter is a heavy-handed zhuantipian praising the military with typical voice-over commentary guiding a strong visual narrative. The film is now unavailable in China, but it appears on YouTube without the Tank man footage, as opposed to the original version aired on Chinese state television in 1989. This is what Chen calls “censorship as productiveness” (50), a process that does more than merely promoting or suppressing but combines the two via public reappropriation. In the next chapter, Chen focuses on unofficial works that are “forged by [censorship] through and through” (52): the independent documentary I Graduated!, a fiction book Conjugation, and a science-fiction novel Death Fugue. These three works hailing from the periphery of the Chinese cultural realm reflect the repressive context in which they were made in their very form and narratives, referring to June 4th indirectly. In this vein, chapter 3 presents an analysis of Lan Yu and Summer Palace, two fiction films transgressing the Chinese film industry’s sexual norms. Far from “glorifying materialism and hedonism” (131), or from using sex or censorship as a selling point as some have assumed, Chen demonstrates that they instead “reanimate the multiple yet collective voices of the movement” (131). Chapter 4 is unusual. Not only does it widen our focus by incorporating other sensitive topics such as the early 2000s SARS epidemic, it also invites us to look at how literary and academic texts evolve during the publication process and after. Chen reflects on and experiments with his own writing and the censorship process, as he unveils edits made when part of the chapter was published in a Chinese journal. This is fitting, as the section analyzes Jia Pingwa’s Ruined City and Hu Fayun’s Such is This World@sars.come, in which punctuation signs, omissions, and deleted sections play a central role as these texts circulate in different versions and territories. Blank squares, ellipses, and parentheses convey the sense of writing and reading as collective endeavours, shaped by censorship authorities, authors, publishers, translators, and readers. In conclusion, the author draws parallels with the COVID-19 epidemic and ensuing censorship campaigns in China.

In this monograph, Chen illustrates the many ways Chinese censorship operates across the literary and cinematographic fields. The book’s case studies show that censorship rules are never set in stone and what was once prescribed can quickly become prohibited, as seen in chapter 1. To some extent, this can also be true for prohibited items. The case studies in chapters 2 through 4 reveal how some unreleased films and novels may become tolerated after undergoing a neat editing process. By reconstructing the context of circulation of these texts and films, Chen foregrounds “the collaborative nature of working in censorship” (6). One could regret that, unlike in the author’s dissertation, the book does not include Hong Kong productions about the Tiananmen movement as they constitute an interesting counterpoint to works examined here. Nonetheless, his book is a timely reminder of the ever-evolving nature of Chinese censorship and its expanding reach as we witness freedom of speech declining in Hong Kong and its June 4th commemorations being cancelled since 2019.

Judith Pernin

Institute of Art, Design and Technology (IADT), Dublin