Abstract
Shanghai Triad (Yao a yao, yaodao waipo qiao, 1995) is Zhang Yimou’s only gangster film. The gangster genre is a vital Hollywood staple, which foregrounds violence. In its noir form—gangster noir—the violence holds a “dark mirror” to modern society (Cook 1990, 471). In Shanghai Triad, Zhang manipulates the conventions of the Western gangster film and film noir to tell a story of Chinese triads, where gang law governs society from generation to generation. He juxtaposes the city as a dark, criminal space against images of the countryside as a place of past innocence, now invaded by gang wars. The film therefore talks about modernity but turns on a premodern sense of Chinese law, which pits punitive rules against a remembered but vanishing space of virtue.
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© 2007 Corey K. Creekmur and Mark Sidel
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Farquhar, M. (2007). Blood in the Bathroom: Shanghai Triad as Gangster Noir . In: Creekmur, C.K., Sidel, M. (eds) Cinema, Law, and the State in Asia. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230604919_11
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230604919_11
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