Space and Status in Beijing Bicycle
The film Beijing Bicycle explores the effects and influences of capitalism on Chinese culture. The characters Guei and Jian are contrasted in order to convey themes of social mobility and economic pressure. The environments in which the two characters are rooted, Guei in rural China and Jian in urban Beijing, reveals both the progress and indifference of urbanization. The exploitive nature of the capitalist market is also prominent in the film and can be seen in the disciplining of the laborer that is frequently depicted throughout the movie. Ultimately the film is an intricate depiction and criticism of the deep-rooted influence of capitalism on culture and social interactions.
In the movie Beijing Bicycle, the bike that the young boys Guei and Jian fight over becomes a symbol of economic status that has significant but different meanings to the two characters. For Guei, the bicycle represents social mobility, as the bike is both a literal and figurative device that relieves economic pressure. With the bike, Guei travels between the vastly different environments of rural China and the city of Beijing experiencing the exploitive nature of the industrialized environment first hand. For the character Jian, the bike is a symbol which represents status or wealth. In the film, Jian’s friends all have bikes of their own, suggesting to the audience that his family is poorer than the peers he seeks to impress. The economic pressure that Jian faces is psychological in nature as he is shamed by his families poverty and does everything he can to deny or deflect that image. When confronted by Guei, Jian is never willing to accept that this item he purchased with stolen money is not rightfully his, and instead deflects the blame by getting his friends to beat up his accuser. This insistence on conveying a false image of ones self and the theme of pseudo-ownership reveals the negative aspects of a capitalistic culture; a culture comprised of individuals with items and products purchased with money they do not actually have. This is contrasted with Guei who not only pays off his debt in order to own the bike, but had intended to use the bike to move up the social and economic spectrum as a laborer. This stark contrast between the two characters reveals two ways “risk management” can be assessed in a capitalist market (Randy Martin). For Guei, the risk of moving up the economic ladder is one of physical wear and sacrifice, as he must commute on a bike into a hostile environment in order secure a better life for him and his father back in the rural country. Jian’s risk is one of reputation, predicated on punishment or penalty in the future, not in the present where reputation and status supersedes financial means or ethics.
Space as “a construct and material manifestation of social relations” is explored in the film and reveals “different cultural assumptions and practices” between rural and urban life in China (Cultural Space and Urban Place). While Durkheim viewed urbanization as “ a space for creativity, progress, and a new moral order,” the space of urbanization as depicted in the film is one closer to Karl Marx’s view in that the city is “ both progress, productivity, poverty, indifference, and squalor”. The film features beautiful shots of the commuters and skyscrapers of Beijing, focusing on the poverty, indifference, and squalor that exists in the city. It is in this environment that his bike is stolen and Guei is confronted with the greed and exploitation of the city kids. Repeatedly he finds his bike but is unable to secure it due to the tenacity of the kids that have grown up in an environment where indifference and squalor is rampant, making them much more aggressive and hostile in maintaining Jian’s possession of the bike. What is interesting is the cultural assumptions taken by Guei who is the rightful owner of the bike but is the least aggressive of the two boys in his demands for the bike. He is consistently depicted as humble, timid, and shy while Jian is overt, active, and subversive. These qualities could be included in order to convey the cultural expectations or norms of rural and urban life. These qualities suggests that the rural life of China is still that closer to a pre-capitalist transition whereas the urban culture of Beijing has already been influenced by the aggressive and exploitive nature of capitalism.
Themes such as scarcity of work and disciplining of labor can also be found in Beijing Bicycle. In the film, Guei is not accustomed to the city life and mistakenly receives an expensive massage that he is unable to pay for. The scene portrays a vast disparity in wealth between laborer and the capitalist that holds all the power (China: A Century of Revolution). In the scene, the big business man tells his secretary that that Guei would never be able to afford such a luxury on a messengers salary. Another scene which reveals that “ labor has no power in the market” is where Guei attempts to make his final payment on his bike, making it his own. After he pays, the cashier informs him that he still has another payment, despite his accurate calculations. In the scene Guei is forced to submit to those who have control over the capital, revealing his lack of agency and just how expendable he is to the company he works for. In many ways Guei is an immigrant worker brought in from the rural China to solve the problem of paying high wages to urban workers. This is contrasted with Jian’s Father who struggles to find consistent work each month, possibly because of imported labor from the country side. The disciplining and exploitation of labor is a theme that runs throughout Beijing Bicycle and displays the disparity between laborer and capitalist in a free-market economy.
Beijing Bicycle is an excellent portrayal of cultural assumptions and practices which are predicated on capitalist influences. The film explores numerous views of social mobility in a free-market economy and critiques its effects on an ancient and humble culture. Through the characters Guei and Jian and the portrayal of the rural and urban environments in the film, the audience is given an intricate depiction of the human condition in a capitalist setting.
Works Cited
Beijing Bicycle. Dir. Wang Xiaoshuai. Perf. Cui Lin, Li Bin, Zhou Xun, Gao Yuanyan,and Li shuang. Sony
Pictures Classics, 2001 film.
Capitalism: A love Story. Dir. Michael Moore. The Weinstein Company, 2009. Film.
China: A Century of Revolution. Dir. Sue Williams. Zeitgeist , 2002. Film.
Jameson, Fredric. “ The Politics of Utopia.” New Left Review 25 (2004) 35-54.
Martin,Randy. “Where Did the Future Go?”LogosOnline.com. 2006. Web.
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