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Director Sun Yu created a series of "bonny girl" images in his 1930's films. The young women in his films displayed their 'fit' bodies, which stimulated the audience's visual pleasure. However, under the special context of 1930s Chinese films, the display of female bodies had to indicate that "fitness helps to save the Nation". Thus the female body displayed in these films transcends straightforward notions of voyeurism under pressure from a discourse struggling between patriotism and visual pleasure. Depictions of woman's desire also subverted the heterosexual binary relationship.
Keywords: Sun Yu, Girls' Fitness, Body display, Woman's desire.
INTRODUCTION
Sun Yu (1900-1990) was the first Chinese film director to receive a formal cinema education in America. His films of the 1930s display an apparent personal style change. These films diverged from the romantic love story (cai zi iia ren chuan shuo), which was Sun's favorite genre in the late 1920s, to stories more concerned with 'real' society. From 1931's Wide Rose(ye meigui) to 1935's The Big Road(dalu), he made six films which have been termed "girls and boys in fantasy" (huan si de er nv) by Sun himself. In these films, Sun romantically represented the conflicts in society of that time and tried to confront social problems with an optimistic attitude. 1 He created a set of "bonny girl" images in his films. The fit body and youthful spirit of those female characters catered for the ideology of rebuilding the modern nation, and especially gained the approval of left-wing film reviewers who controlled the most important mainstream newspapers in the early 1930s. On the other hand, these girls' sexual body performance greatly appealed to the visual pleasure of the audience, helping the films to succeed at the box office. Thanks to these films, Sun reached the summit of his career as well as configuring his own film style.
Sun's film style received many conflicting comments at that time. Some critics really admired his 'poet' soul, praising his films for showing real sufferings and conflicts in society, with sensitive poetic language. Others, in contrast, criticized his films for over emotionalism, arguing that they were too romanticized and lacking in critical power. 2 It's worth paying attention to Sun Yu's various identities assigned by different Chinese film...