“Xiu Xiu is Political Exploitation”

letter to San Francisco Chronicle
published August 24, 1999 as “Exploitation in Xiu Xiu”

Editor -- I was surprised to find that two readers have responded to Edward Guthmann's flatly written praise of "Xiu Xiu: The Sent Down Girl" (July 9).  In his review, Guthmann reveals a profound lack of knowledge of Chinese movies when he falsely credits director Joan Chen for the film's "poetic imagery." Anyone who's seen movies from mainland China knows that Chinese cinematographers paint the screen with breathless beauty; Guthmann should have found out who was behind the camera to give them due credit.  The director is the one who puts meaning behind those images, and under Chen's direction, both the Chinese characters and their American audience are exploited in an eroticized cultural propaganda.  Chen subjects her young actress to nude scenes that serve no purpose but to entice viewers with Asian female flesh. 

Readers have debated the movie's rape scenes in previous letters; my problem is with Chen's lack of taste when she chooses to bathe Xiu Xiu in sensuous lighting as the girl is brutally violated.  Chen thus has it both ways: satisfying viewers' Orientalist fetish while inciting their hate towards a supposedly oppressive Chinese society.  She thus establishes herself as another expatriate taking advantage of America's stereotyped notions of China.  At this rate, a real controversy would be to bring over a movie that depicts China in an uneroticized, wholesome light.

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