Role of intelligentsia needs to be redefined

About 10 years ago, I was talking with a textile merchant about the Chinese movie industry. He asked how much the annual revenue was, and was astonished when I told him it was "about 500 million to 800 million yuan ($72-116 million)".

It was less than the turnover of his company alone.

There is probably no better illustration of the sorry state of the movie industry at that time.

However, things have been looking up since then: Last year, the turnover was 6 billion yuan ($879 million).

This industry always has its high points at the beginning of new years, for example, this year. The audience seems to care little about the quality of movies as the new year approaches: All kinds of movies are welcome, never mind the quality.

The Chinese audience requires little more than humour and fun from movies, merely escapist fare, and that's partly the reason why the movie industry is booming today.

The Chinese movie industry gives us the feeling that booming box-office receipts have become its sole pursuits. A movie should not be burdened by confessions or ideas; fun has become its only function.

However, should it be so? Take Avatar, for example. Even commercial successes of Hollywood have their own values and philosophy. Of course, Hollywood ideals are expressed with mass appeal.

From this point of view, our standards are too low. The problem is, there are always voices insisting Chinese movies should be seen on the world stage. Therefore, every year large amounts of money is spent to show Chinese movies abroad, with the aim of exporting Chinese values and Chinese culture. However, the question about the essence of our values is still not answered. Since there is still a need for a clear definition of our shared values, their export can only be an illusion.

The day after US President Barack Obama took office, I read his inauguration address in the newspaper. Tears welled in my eyes. It was not what he said that moved me - he was just stating universally shared values, namely liberty, equality, human rights, justice, environment, and help for those in need - it was the fact that he listed them in the inauguration address, and state the spirit and values of a society that aroused my tears.

However, in our culture, it is different. The official values that have dominated for long are vague, and at odds with those we accept. The result is a fear and lack of understanding of China, which is a rapidly developing economy.

Our shared values have never been clearly defined: Movies, writings, essays are all found wanting in describing the face of the rising China. Therefore, the image we project to the world is nothing but vagueness, preventing the outside world from having a clear view of us.

From this point of view, our urgent task is not the export of culture and art, but a clear definition of our shared values. Maybe not too much creativity is needed in this process: All we have to do is to find and accept it, for our shared values should be popular and in accordance with our daily life instead of being beyond our reach.

Another problem is, who can take up the mission of exporting our culture. Since the 1980s, cultural elitism has been losing popularity, and, of course, the elitism that existed in our culture also had many negative effects, like being out of touch with reality.

And today in the information age, with emerging media like the Internet bombarding us with information, we begin to feel the need for an intelligent class that can employ their knowledge in summarizing the complexities of our daily life. It is difficult to find substitutes for intelligentsia to exporting culture and values.

Elites should not be isolated from the ordinary people; just the opposite, they are also a part of the common people, essential and indispensable. If the voice needed by society cannot find a channel, then it would be lost in the noise created by chaos.

I grew up in a small town where cultural resources are in short supply. For a long time in my boyhood, almost nothing but TV series and Hong Kong kungfu movies were within reach. However I have been rewarded for the habit of reading.

In the mid-1980s, I read a novel Ren Sheng, or Life, by Lu Yao, in which the problem of the hukou system is addressed. The novel made me acknowledge the inequality created by the hukou system. It is reading that gave me ideas and deliberative thoughts.

Therefore, might I conclude that it is a grave error to say that people do not need ideas or culture. I firmly believe that if China hopes to rise again, the role of the intelligentsia should be redefined, and the necessity of their existence should be emphasized.

The author is a Chinese film director

(China Daily 02/05/2010 page9)