A friend asked me to give her a list of my writings on documentary. So I made the following list:
1. Survey article on Chinese independent documentary on the New Left Review: http://newleftreview.org/II/74/ying-qian-power-in-the-frame
2. Essay on Documentary Ethics: http://www.chinaheritagequarterly.org/scholarship.php?searchterm=029_qian.inc&issue=029
3. Surviving in Shadows: on the survival of indie film in Songzhuang: http://www.thechinastory.org/2012/09/surviving-in-the-shadows/
4. Twelve articles in Chinese on Open Times (it was a monthly column written in 2010): I have posted them on my Chinese website, together with other notes (in Chinese) I wrote on film: http://yinikanotebook.blogbus.com/c2882407/
5. Interview with dGenerate: http://dgeneratefilms.com/academia/cinematalk-interview-with-ying-qian-of-harvard
Thursday, September 13, 2012
Aestheticizing life?
I was reading a book review by Gao Ertai on Xu Xiao's new book "Half a Life" (半生为人). In the review, I read:
“有朋友曾说，”作者写道，“我的写作美化了生活。为此，我曾想给这本书命名为‘美化，直至死’。与其说是想回应这善意的批评，不如说是无可奈何的孤绝。作为人，作为女人，作为母亲，当你在任何角色中都面临困境的时候，你怎样论证活着的正当性？作为历史的参与者，作为悲剧的见证者，你怎样能够保持内心的高傲和宁静？然而我们终于还是活着。所以我写作——正如史铁生所说，写作是为活着寻找理由。”
"A friend commented that my writing has aestheticized life." Writes the author, "For this, I thought of naming my book, 'Aestheticize, Until Death.' Rather than responding to this kind criticism, I rejected it, because I had no choice. As a human, as a woman, a mother, when you face crisis in every role you play, how can you argue for the legitimacy of life? As a participant in history, as a witness to tragedies, how can you maintain pride and peace in your heart? But we have to live on. So I write -- just like Shi Tiesheng said, 'writing is to find reasons to live.'"
I understand the wish to "aestheticize life," to make things more sensible and meaningful, especially when the world around us does not care about beauty and meaning. The ability of humans to create a better world with their artistic expressions is a very precious ability. It gives us a glimpse of what the world can be, instead of what it is.
Yet aestheticizing life also has costs. By valuing only the beautiful, one loses some ability in confronting real life, investigating its rules and powers, and then fighting with them. The beautiful is only one facet in life. Life has many other "adjectives" -- the absurd, the funny, the sarcastic, the fake, the cruel... Seeking beauty might lead us to overlook all the other facets of life that are equally true, and that can lead us to different engagements with the world.
I remember the biggest lesson I had to learn in my college years was to write less "beautifully." In elementary and high school, my teachers told us to copy "beautiful sentences" from the literature we read. I used to have a pretty notebook where I kept all the "beautiful" words and sentences I collected from reading novels and poems. When I had to write an essay for a class, I would open up this notebook, and find beautiful expressions to speak about the banal. Only after entering college, I began to understand that writing doesn't mean to unleash fully the power of words. In fact, in many cases, the power of words has to be restrained. I began to see what beauty could silence.
For some, writing may be a struggle for survival; but I believe it is foremost an ethical act -- one is not only writing for oneself. One is also writing to leave something true to others. Hence aestheticizing life may not be wrong, but this cannot be the only thing one does with one's writing.
“有朋友曾说，”作者写道，“我的写作美化了生活。为此，我曾想给这本书命名为‘美化，直至死’。与其说是想回应这善意的批评，不如说是无可奈何的孤绝。作为人，作为女人，作为母亲，当你在任何角色中都面临困境的时候，你怎样论证活着的正当性？作为历史的参与者，作为悲剧的见证者，你怎样能够保持内心的高傲和宁静？然而我们终于还是活着。所以我写作——正如史铁生所说，写作是为活着寻找理由。”
"A friend commented that my writing has aestheticized life." Writes the author, "For this, I thought of naming my book, 'Aestheticize, Until Death.' Rather than responding to this kind criticism, I rejected it, because I had no choice. As a human, as a woman, a mother, when you face crisis in every role you play, how can you argue for the legitimacy of life? As a participant in history, as a witness to tragedies, how can you maintain pride and peace in your heart? But we have to live on. So I write -- just like Shi Tiesheng said, 'writing is to find reasons to live.'"
I understand the wish to "aestheticize life," to make things more sensible and meaningful, especially when the world around us does not care about beauty and meaning. The ability of humans to create a better world with their artistic expressions is a very precious ability. It gives us a glimpse of what the world can be, instead of what it is.
Yet aestheticizing life also has costs. By valuing only the beautiful, one loses some ability in confronting real life, investigating its rules and powers, and then fighting with them. The beautiful is only one facet in life. Life has many other "adjectives" -- the absurd, the funny, the sarcastic, the fake, the cruel... Seeking beauty might lead us to overlook all the other facets of life that are equally true, and that can lead us to different engagements with the world.
I remember the biggest lesson I had to learn in my college years was to write less "beautifully." In elementary and high school, my teachers told us to copy "beautiful sentences" from the literature we read. I used to have a pretty notebook where I kept all the "beautiful" words and sentences I collected from reading novels and poems. When I had to write an essay for a class, I would open up this notebook, and find beautiful expressions to speak about the banal. Only after entering college, I began to understand that writing doesn't mean to unleash fully the power of words. In fact, in many cases, the power of words has to be restrained. I began to see what beauty could silence.
For some, writing may be a struggle for survival; but I believe it is foremost an ethical act -- one is not only writing for oneself. One is also writing to leave something true to others. Hence aestheticizing life may not be wrong, but this cannot be the only thing one does with one's writing.
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