Post-modern Turn and Realist Transformation in Jia Zhang-ke’s Films

Abstract

Following his Hometown Trilogy, Jia Zhang-ke’s cinematic practice has entered a new phase of “oral history,” marking an aesthetic shift from traditional realism to postmodern narrative strategies. Works such as 24 City and I Wish I Knew exemplify this transition, employing meta-narrative techniques, including text-within-text, collage, and parody, to reconstruct historical imagery through postmodern stylistics. In 24 City, the juxtaposition of fictional characters with authentic interviews achieves a threefold interpenetration of “reality-fiction-refiction,” blurring the boundaries of narrative representation and challenging conventional distinctions between documentary and fictional modes. Conversely, I Wish I Knew activates viewers’ narrative awareness through the embedding of classic film clips, the strategic use of diegetic mobile phone ringtones, and the temporal-spatial interlacing of historical fragments, creating a self-reflexive engagement with cinematic memory. At the level of memory construction, I Wish I Knew stages a dialectical contrast between the oral histories of 18 celebrities and elite descendants (individual memory) and the montage of canonical film excerpts (collective memory). This dual structure deconstructs monolithic historical narratives, revealing the polyphonic nature of historical representation and offering a “side history” that supplements official historiography. Yet, while works like I Wish I Knew sustain an investment in historical memory, Jia’s refined cinematographic language and his adoption of an elite-centric narrative perspective in this period depart from the “grassroots ethos” of his earlier oeuvre. This shift weakens the realist impulse of his works and highlights the tension between postmodern formal experimentation and the realism that serves as the core of his creation. It can be seen from this that by reconstructing historical imagery through the prism of individual memory, Jia has not only expanded the narrative boundaries of Chinese cinema but also prompted critical reflection on the viability and adaptability of realism in the contemporary cultural context.