The Door is a Mirror

by: Shu Wan , February 6, 2024

In the male-dominated Chinese film production industry, the director Li Shaohong stands out as an exception. According to Lingzheng Wang, Li began her filmmaking career in the 1980s, making ‘a name for herself by first directing two psychological thrillers’, Ying She Mou Sha An/The Case of Silver Snake (1988) and Xue Se Qing Chen/Bloody Morning (1990) (2012: 331). Li is also a pioneer in integrating a feminist perspective into film production although she is not the first female director of horror movies. For example, Bao Zhifang and Hu Huiying’s horror film Wu Ye Liang Dian/Two in the Morning (1987) was released in advance of Li’s debut work, The Case of the Silver Snake. Two in the Morning features a divorce case and a subsequent murder in postsocialist Chinese society, demonstrating how two female filmmakers contributed to China’s fever for horror films in the 1980s. In comparison to this focus on social problems in postsocialist contexts, Li’s horror film The Door focusses on intimate homicide as an extreme incident of violence in heterosexual relationships. As with her other films, The Door has drawn significant scholarly attention. Li Zeng (2009) underlines the influence of Western horror films on Li, while Erin Y. Huang suggests that in the film, ‘violence associated with postsocialist masculinity—exemplified by the male interior decorator—is accentuated as a post-socialist symptom causing murderous desires’ (2020: 89).

This video essay takes inspiration from Andrea Dworkin’s antipornography feminism theory. It does not claim any resemblance between Li’s feminist film and pornography but rather stems from Dworkin’s words: ‘pornography happens. It is not outside the world of material reality because it happens to women, and it is not outside the world of material reality because it makes men come’ (1989: xxxviii). Likewise, it is not Li’s film itself but the social context of the murder therein that is ‘not outside the world of material reality’. In other words, The Door is not an amplifier of our fear of misogyny but an exemplar of the violence of heterosexual intimacy in the real world. The trigger for Jiang’s paranoia is situations in which Wen is not ‘submissive’ and becomes out of his control or, more precisely, his dominance. Jiang’s careful preservation of Wen’s corpse also represents the condition of male dominance over women’s bodies even after life. Arguably, the horrific relations between Wen and himself reflect the routine nature of heterosexual intimacy in a male-dominated society.

This video essay also takes inspiration from arguments around toxic masculinity, the ‘constellation of socially regressive male traits that serve to foster domination, the devaluation of women, homophobia, and wanton violence’ (Kupers 2005: 715). This notion almost perfectly fits this film. Jiang claims to protect Wen while preying on her; at the same time he is coded as a ‘loser’, a person bereft of masculinity in a male-dominated society. Compared to a taxi driver in the film, Jiang is physically weaker. In terms of wealth, he is poorer than a successful businessman. Jiang feels jealous about the stronger masculinity of these two other characters, which jeopardizes his dominance in intimate relationships. Revealed to be powerless when juxtaposed with his stronger and wealthier male peers, Jiang attempts to find his masculinity in abusive violence against more vulnerable groups in patriarchal society. While some commenters may attribute the homicide in the film to Jiang’s ‘control freak’ personality, this personal model of explanation is not sufficient for understanding the tragedy depicted. The proposed cautionary tale about the dangers of deprived dominance drives Jiang to act as he does. This is not a personal tragedy. It is a socially constructed one.

Jiang is a pitiful victim of toxic masculinity, a representation which arguably reflects a common anxiety about masculinity among Chinese men, especially in postsocialist society. As a historian, I was unfamiliar with the so-called ‘unessay’ option, a common view of videographic criticism in my field, until I began my research for this project. The experience of composing my first video essay has encouraged me to reckon with its importance for historians, particularly those with research interests in filmmaking in the 20th century.