Summer Palace, directed by Lou Ye, tells of a passionate love story between two college students, Yu Hong and Zhou Wei, during the late 1980s, right before the political turmoil of Tiananmen Square to the end of the century. The first half of the movie deals with the chaos of their relationship and how it is influenced by the events going on around them while the second, set in a more peaceful time, demonstrates the apathy and motions that each go through to fill the void within them. How the article, "Generation Ku: Individualism and China's Millennial Youth," takes a look at the significance of the rapid changes the newest generation of Chinese youth has gone through demonstrates the power struggle between traditional beliefs and gender roles against individualism and freedom that the characters in Summer Palace experience.
“Ku” is a new slang term developed by Chinese adolescents used as a “verbal icon of a youth rebellion that promises to transform some of the older generation's most enduring cultural values” (Moore 357). It is “derived from the English slang term “cool” (Moore 357) and is often used to describe the individualistic, Western-influenced, millennial generation, children of the era who lived through the Cultural Revolution. The usage of a slang term to define a generation is not something only seen however in China. In the 20th century, the USA has also gone through two cultural transformations led by the adolescents and young adults that were both also defined by a new slang term (Moore 358). China has always been more focused on kinship and collectivism, but recent economic reforms after Mao and influences from the West are creating individualistic tendencies where people work more towards their own goals instead of for the state (Moore 362). With the rise of capitalism and consumerism culture, both of which innately promote individualism, the seeds for rebellion are planted. Globalization has also given the youth new perspectives that their parents never had (Moore 357), leading to the inevitable clash with young people and authority, Tiananmen Square. In the Barker book, Hebdige says that “youth is only present when its presence is regarded a problem... This allows them to 'play with the only power at their disposal – the power to discomfort, the pose... a threat” (Barker 434). Students are only noticed when they stir up trouble, when they go deviant. Throughout the movie, it seems as if the students are barely monitored and the teachers pay little attention to them. It is only when fights or riots break out that they rise from their stupor to interfere. Thus, in order to create change, the students must do something as drastic as Tiananmen Square because it is the only action they can do to capture the attention of the world. They work together, focusing on their wants, the economic and democratic reforms that they desire, not simply the individual, but what the individual stands for.
However, it is not just individualism, but power, that helps to play a part in the events that unfold in the movie. A choice of whether or not to remain as a couple or be separate people is a question often raised in the first half of the film. There is a key point where Yu Hong wants to break up with Zhou Wei because she can't leave him. She realizes the danger of needing someone as badly as she needs Zhou Wei to be with her because it decides whether or not she will be happy. As Barker states, “power is regarded as pervading every level of social relationships” (Barker 10), including romantic relationships, and what Yu Hong and Zhou Wei have is no exception. There is constantly a power struggle between the two of them, once even escalating to an argument between the two where Yu Hong refuses to leave the room unless he hits her, which he then proceeds to do three times, with each time her continuing to provoke him until he finally gives in and hugs her, the two of them reconciling. Zhou Wei's wish to exercise his dominance over her conflicts with Yu Hong's defiance against his desires. According to Li Ti, her best friend, Zhou Wei prefers gentle girls, but Yu Hong is “hard,” which scares him and makes him uncertain of himself. Yu Hong is nothing like the submissive, servile woman of Confucian society, being much more individualistic and aggressive, perhaps because of her rural background. The article gives the example of how in one rural community, “the groundwork for individualistic tendencies” was laid out by how the state in the 1950s “ruthlessly undermined family and local authority systems” (Moore 363). Yu Hong is in no way timid and weak, which is a “prominent feature of Chinese ku in light of the evidence indicating that the most salient way of being ku is to be individualistic” (Moore 372). To her father, she tells him not to worry about her, a sign of her readiness to be independent. Because Zhou Wei is unable to establish himself as master of the relationship, the two of them are constantly breaking up and getting back together, with Yu Hong even saying that she is bound to him through destiny for better or worse. For her, true love can only appear in the midst of angst and suffering, and her relationship with Zhou Wei is so full of ups and downs that for the two of them, at least during their college years, they do find true love.
Sex and love is a dominant theme in the film and is just as important in there as it is for China's millennial youth. With the rise of individualism, there is the “tendency for young Chinese to establish boyfriend-girlfriend relations” (Moore 363). During the Cultural Revolution, good female comrades were not even supposed to think about marriage until their late twenties. Even before that, “dating and forming romantic relationships have long been prohibited in China, by Confucian-influenced families and, more recently, by dictate of the state” (Moore 363). While professors do not seem to interfere with relationships in the movie, the school authorities do, as seen in the scene when Li Ti and Zhou Wei are caught naked in bed together and punished. Thus, “the pursuit of romantic relationships is a profoundly individualistic undertaking” (Moore 363) because it marks personal interest instead of acting on behalf of the family. It may also be seen as detracting from studying, causing students to perform sub-par, thus failing the family. In the second half of the movie, Yu Hong has two affairs with men, the first one mostly for sex, the second one more for emotional support. Her wayward relationships with Zhou Wei and the married man in the second half of the film, show that they “function as mechanisms with a double impetus: pleasure and power” (Foucault 688). She is “the individual driven, in spite of [herself], by the somber madness of sex” (Foucault 685), for sex is forbidden in college and seen as highly individualistic while the first affair challenges the traditional structure of marriage. Yu Hong wonders why she is so eager to have sex with the men in her life. She is later quoted to say that it is only when she makes love do people see that she has a gentle side, that she isn't as “hard” as she appears on the surface. Power comes into play once again, for when she is in bed, she is the submissive one, the cultural role played by Chinese women, which then allows the men she sleeps with to be the one on top, the one in charge, therefore making them secure in their manhood.
Summer Palace is heavily influenced by the individualistic culture and beliefs of Generation Ku. It demonstrates the power struggle depicted in Yu Hong's relationships with men and also her own cultural history, which draws from a more collective background. While the word “ku” itself is not used anywhere in Summer Palace, the cultural meaning of the word in Chinese youth society and how it has come to be permeates the film, demonstrating how it often conflicts with traditional structure and personal relationships.
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Works Cited
1.Barker, Chris. Cultural Studies, 3rd Edition. SAGE Publications: Los Angeles, 2008. Print.
2. Foucault, Michel. “The History of Sexuality.” Gender Studies, Gay/Lesbian Studies, Queer Theory. p. 682-691. Print.
3. Moore, Robert L. “Generation Ku: Individualism and China's Millennial Youth.” Ethnology, Vol. 44, No. 4 (Autumn, 2005): p. 357-376. 10 October 2009. Web.
4. Summer Palace. Lou Ye. Perf. Hao Lei, Zhang Xianmin, Hu Lingling. Palm Pictures. 2006. DVD.
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