How To Raise The Red Lantern

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Recommended: The influence of Confucian culture

Ilari Pass

ENGL 272: World Cinema

Jeske

June 9, 2014

Red: Good and Bad Luck?of a Different Sort

Based on the novel Wives and Concubines by Su Tong, Raise the Red Lantern is a 1991 movie that challenges how the Chinese society views oppression and treatment of women in old tradition of Confucian. The movie To Live demonstrates a frank examination of mid-twentieth century China covering four decades, moving from the 1940s when the old class system flourished through the fierce hardships of the Cultural Revolution of the 1960s to the transition period of the 1970s. Zhang Yimou, a ?Fifth Generation? filmmaker, directed both of these films. To my astonishment, actress Gong Li, Zhang?s wife, starred in both films as well. By contrasting the use of color and camera angles in the two films, we can see differences in how these lives are portrayed: Raise the Red Lantern represents a sense of dominance and betrayal, whereas To Live demonstrates passion for life and redemption.

In Raise the Red Lantern, Zhang is …show more content…

Fugui is a puppeteer of a different sort than the master. The rich color of red in his puppets during his shadow puppet troupe for family and friends in the community suggests good luck and fortune. Over the years they suffered extreme hardships?losing both of their children: one by an accident and the other after giving birth to their grandson, Mantou. Not only that Jiazhen mattered, but also the colors in the film gave her a true glowing and radiant beauty effect, even when she suffered loss and despair as she aged throughout the film. In other words, in Raise the Red Lantern, the color red is used for dominance and sexual desire, whereas in To Live, red is used to bring in good luck despite the politics of Communism. As Jiazhen?s radiance grew more with time at old age, the color red in the Communist world began to fade?almost

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