Analysis Of Raise The Red Lantern

The film Raise the Red Lantern (Da hong denglong gaogao gua) is a film directed by Zhang Yimou in 1991. The film starring actress Gong Li, is an adaption by Ni Zhen of the novel, ‘Wives and Concubines’ by author Su Tong. The film set in the 1920s China during the Warlord Era. This film accounts the tale of a young, teenage woman named Songlian, who becomes one of the concubine of a wealthy man during this era. This narrative is based on a society years before the Chinese Civil War, it is shot in the Qiao Family Compound near the ancient city of Pingyao, in the Shanxi Province.
Nineteen-year-old Songlian (played by Gong Li), is an educated woman whose father has recently died, in result of his passing he left his family bankrupt. Songlian had …show more content…
In the film, the director is extremely experimental with the colour of the lanterns, as the recurring symbolic prop that operates in many different ways producing diverse meanings throughout the film. Historically, the red lantern in Chinese tradition associates with joy, energy, good fortune, and vitality. Furthermore, red lanterns feature in marriage and birth ceremonies, it hangs outside the doorway of houses celebrating. In the film, the red conventionally used when Songlian and her husband got married, as well as the wedding day of the fifth wife and the master towards the end of the film. Conversely, the director also uses the red lantern to connote other moods such as desire and danger – which demonstrates the weighty role the lanterns play in the movie according to the context and mood of the scene. In this essay, I will highlight on the importance of the brightly lit red lanterns and what they imply in film by drawing on specific …show more content…
The film showcased how women competed with each other for the attention of a men and is this fighting for the little power they were allowed in this social space, however, in this the man is still the dominant figure because he is in the position to choose who he wants. Therefore, this constant urge to be to be the desirable woman openly identifies women as “…disposable red lanterns, which can be managed, lit up, or extinguished at the Master’s pleasure.” Moreover, it could be argued that these women were not considered as real people in this space or in traditional Chinese society as “…they are neither servant nor real wives, and their ambivalent social standing forces them to negotiate a space for survival in the feudal household.” Additionally, the use of the lighting and colour red contributed immensely to the outcomes the scenes mentioned in setting the mood and promoting multiply ideas such a desire and danger. As mentioned in the introduction, these lanterns play a weighty role in the film, as the red and orange shades as a prop has the ability to contribute to feel of the ambiance in one scene. Yet when the lantern was placed outside the chosen wife, the object itself promotes the idea of being favoured. Thus, this proves its vital symbolic reference in the film as well as demonstrates the harsh reality in China’s Warlord