MCLC: The Great Wall in the Empire of Signs

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The Great Wall in the Empire of Signs
The Great Wall in the Empire of Signs
The Great Wall proves once and again that Zhang Yimou is a great mythmaker, who is able to create a wonderful story using the materials of fear, fantasy, and intellectual preoccupations to achieve the magnitude of a national allegory as the viewer finds in this epic film. On the surface, the action-packed film is nothing more than a silly and a childish tale of good and evil that, as a genre, has long lost its appeal to people in post-Mao and post-socialist China. What is the material for a modern-day myth in the midst of a quotidian existence? What is Zhang Yimou’s film magic? 
The first thing that is meaningful to the viewer is perhaps the idea of East meets the West. An emblem of Chinese civilization, the Great Wall signifies ancient China’s effort to keep out foreigners and barbarians. The site and location of the story rekindles the old dream of the “middle kingdom” as a world power while the faces of Matt Damon, William Defoe and Petro Pascal represent the presence of the Other, aliens who seek the magic of gun-power in order to become rich when and if they return to the West. The story helps the viewer reimagine a time in which China (Jing Tian and Andy Lau) is technologically and morally more advanced to teach the West a lesson on “xin ren” (trust) and the importance of fighting for something greater than one’s self.
How to reassert China’s moral supremacy in today’s global world? Zhang Yimou seems to understand global capitalism as a pernicious force, represented by the horde of mythological monsters known as Taotie, driven by greed to threaten the survival of the human race. The black power (explosives), one of Chinese scientific inventions, is believed to be dangerous if fallen into the wrong hands. Initially, William Garin (Damon), Pero Tavor (Pascal) and Ballard (Defoe) are selfish individuals motivated only by self-interests; but once caught in the fight with the Taotie, they become transformed, especially William Garin, while witnessing the selfless acts and heroic qualities of Commander Lin (Jing Tian) and the Strategist Wang (Andy Lau). Though they are all outstanding fighters, they fight for different things, petty or noble.
The traditional values of loyalty, trust-worthiness, and self-sacrifice become reaffirmed through the heroic acts of these fighters. Perhaps this is how Zhang Yimou sees modern China and the average Chinese can contribute to the world culture which once rendered Chinese traditions almost totally irrelevant. It is in this sense that the film is therapeutic to the Chinese viewer unable to relate to global capitalism from the conditions of a moral crisis. Commander Lin clearly occupies the position of moral authority to William who fights with uncommon valor simply because he, as an orphan, has nothing to eat. Taught by Ballard how to speak English, she in turn teaches William the values of courage and self-sacrifice.  
To his credit as an international filmmaker and brilliant mythmaker, Zhang Yimou has made a film the native viewers have to rely on Chinese subtitles to understand its meaning. With the exception of a few words spoken in Mandarin, the entire story is in English. However, there are enough “Chinese elements” to interest the domestic audiences hoping to reinvent and (re)cast themselves, on and off stage, as important players in international affairs, playing a role in saving the world. The Great Wall is an allegory of the timeless China that is as distant and real as the empire of signs that Japan once was to Roland Barthes as a foreign tourist. 
Rujie Wang <RWANG at wooster.edu>
by denton.2 at osu.edu on December 20, 2016
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