Abstract:

Drawing on the prevailing theoretical paradigm of post-Holocaustresearch, which defines primarily the post-traumatic subject positionsof victim and perpetrator, this paper focuses on the Chinese cinema’srepresentation of collaboration during the Cultural Revolution (CR). Itdiscusses the issue of betrayal inside the real or symbolic family, whichis still unexplored and even overlooked by Chinese cinema research.Furthermore, it analyzes the prolonged and profound identity crisisgenerated by the CR as presented by twenty-first century blockbuster(e.g. Zhang Yimou’s Coming Home) and independent films (e.g. WuWenguang’s 1966: My Time in the Red Guards and Investigating MyFather) especially through the figure of the collaborator and thedestructive dynamics of betrayal. In these films, the process I termthe ‘doubling paradigm,’ and its ‘doubling effect’ enable the spectatorto come to terms with the dimensions of pain and loss caused bycollaboration, and the ethical repercussions of revolutionary morality.Following an analysis of the four forms of collaboration which emergefrom this corpus, this discussion points to the potential contribution ofChinese ‘cinema of betrayal’ to the undertheorized subject position ofthe collaborator, beyond the Chinese case.