Two Stage Sisters (1964) is a film made by Xie Jin, a prominent “Third Generation” Chinese director. While the film had been denounced as “a ‘poisonous weed’ that spread ideas of class compromise and bourgeois humanism” during the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution (1966-1976), it is widely considered today as “one of the best films of the era as well as Xie Jin’s masterpiece” (Zhang, 2008, p. 216; Marchetti, 1989). This response will examine Two Stage Sisters to highlight how it embodies the complexities of its time – sandwiched and negotiating between ‘tradition’ and ‘modernity’/’progressiveness’, and in pursuit of its own aesthetic in the context of enormous political pressure.
Xie Jin’s use of Shaoxing opera as a backdrop for Two Stage Sisters frames the tension between ‘tradition’ and ‘modernity’/’progressiveness’ within the film. Shaoxing opera, also known as Yue opera, is “the
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In her writing, Marchetti (1989) posits that “the theatre, which stands as a microcosm of Chinese society at large”, serves as “a metaphor for political and social change” within the film. Paralleling the turbulent Chinese society from 1935-1950, the theater comes under the conflicting pressures exerted by the politically-radicalized Chunhua and the “KMT-backed Tang” - reflecting “the bitter political struggles which ensued between the Communists and the KMT during that era (Marchetti, 1989). The tension and negotiation between ‘tradition’ and ‘modernity’/progressiveness’ is thus also seen within the theatrical world – not only does the ‘traditional’ theater become a site of political competition between capitalistic ‘modernity’ and Communist-inspired ‘progressiveness’, Shaoxing opera itself also adapts to its new socio-political context and evolves into a propaganda vehicle by the end of the