Raise The Red Lantern (1991) and the Patriarchy

Songlian's mother: Rich man? If you marry a rich man, you will only be his concubine.

Songlian: Let me be a concubine. Isn't that the fate of a woman?

Raise the Red Lantern opens with bitter harsh reality, setting the tone and showing the lens through which this movie must be seen through.

Zhang Yimou paints women in this movie as both willing and unwilling subjects in an overwhelming system of patriarchy, a system that objectifies and reduces women to trophies and playthings, as collectibles yet also as replaceable. women are defined purely by what their occupation was (as if they are just assorted flavours of women) and are only referred to by the role they take on upon the start of their existence in this male-created system. women are to eat a certain way, are to act a certain way, are not to partake in certain things. everything is gendered and women are to behave in a way that doesn't toe the line for fear of disrupting said system.

the women stay rooted in this grand stone prison, like birds in a cage; yet the men in this movie are free, allowed to go and leave as they please. the misogyny set up by this patriarchal system runs so deep that the house itself is an allegory for it. 

and yet, almost all the men in this movie are never shown closely, instead being shot from just far enough away that their faces aren't immediately discernible. they are like phantoms, whose oppressive influence is almost invisible at first glance; they are constantly the subject of the frame yet obscured. 

Raise the Red Lantern tackles themes of class divide and misogyny through its bitter realism and its use of colour and serves as a reminder of the effects of patriarchal systems. 

The shot we're left with is one of lingering sadness, and will stick with me for a long time.

念书有什么用？还不是老爷身上的一件衣裳，想穿就穿 想脱就脱！

What is the use of studying? I'm just one of the Master's robes. He can wear it or he can take it off. 

百转千声随意移

山花红案树高低

始知锁向金笼听

不及林间自在啼

"How happily they dance and sing in the sky!

Lush are the mountain flowers and the trees high and low!

Locked in a golden cage I pine away.

Let me return to the forest to sing my carefree songs!"

Originally posted on Letterboxd on 18th November, 2023