In the classroom there is inherent tension. This tension exists within the spheres of human knowledge and human relationship. With knowledge there is the tension between the known and the unknown. With relationship there is the tension between the teacher and the student. These two spheres are interrelated and influence each other. Traditionally it has been believed that these dialectics have been about one having power over the other, being more akin to binaries. The teacher has power over the student. He or she has the knowledge and disseminates that to willing (or unwilling) receptacles. The teacher owns the known and the students live in the unknown. This relationship is viewed as inherently oppressive. However, the reality is that the known and the unknown have a dialectical tension instead of a binarily oppressive relationship. If one equalizes the value of known and unknown then that tension creates a space for mutual creation. Sartre speaks of a dialectical relationship between the reader and the writer. This is essentially the same as that which exists between the student and the teacher. He argues that since writings only exist insofar as one engages with them (via projecting, conjecture, or foresight) and that engagement is inherently creative, then both the reader and the writer have mutually important roles.
What results is that a work of art becomes a classroom, but not the oppressive traditional class with its known/unknown binary, rather the class that exists in that free space of tension between the two. In The Legend of Qiu Ju we see an exemplary use of that space. Sartre declares that that space is created and maintained through generous silence. The great works of Dostoyevsky and his ilk are great, Sartre maintains, precisely because they remain silent in their intent. The author abandons ownership of the creation and generously remains mum, allowing that space of creation to be filled by the participator in the work (for they are not viewers nor consumers but co-creators). The particular use of this principle in The Legend of Qiu Ju is what makes it remarkable. There are two significant uses of cinematic reticence in the Film that posit this space as a place of readerly creation.
The first is the simple realism of the mise en scéne. The majority of the actors were non-professional. Many shots were taken without the “extras” knowing that they were being filmed which lent a sense of non-imposition in the creation and opens the space between reader and writer. The imperative is weakened and the audience is freed. In addition the camera is set at eye level, often in a voyeuristic position to allow the audience to feel that the action is free from imperative. A voyeur does not impose upon his or her subject rather they watch and create a story about the individual upon whom they are casting they eye. Therefore, using this technique the participators in the film are invited to create their own version of the story as the voyeur does about their subject. In addition, the editing of the film contributes to this generous silence. We do not see all that happens to Qiu Ju. We are often placed in a scene in the middle of a moment. We see Qiu Ju and her sister in the back of the motor-cart with their bicycle somewhere in the middle of their journey, but we do not see them get on and off. While this moment is highly constructed, it makes the audience think that it is not because there is no tidy beginning and ending to the scene, a hallmark of “well-crafted” film. That once again gives us freedom; it is a silence space to create along with the author.
The second way silence is used is in the final shot of the film. After a long, laborious journey through the bureaucracy of Chinese Jurisprudence Qiu Ju is ready to forgive the chief of her village (due to his saving of her baby and her own life). On the cusp of celebration, she is informed that because her husband has a broken rib due to the altercation that started this whole kerfuffle the Chief is sentenced to jail-time. Qiu Ju runs to, what we assume, intervene. She reaches a road hears the sirens. The camera settles on her anxious expression and freezes. It is never explained what that means. The imperative is enough to tell us that it means something, but leaves space to us to fill. This simple act leads to a multiplicity of creative efforts on the part of the participators in reading the film. That moment leaves us free to create the significance and purpose of it much in the same way that Kubrick uses the silence of the last 15 minutes of 2001:a Space Odyssey or the Coens use that shot of Anton Chigur checking his boots after his confrontation with Llewllyn’s widow in No Country for Old Men. We are given freedom in that space of tension between the known and the unknown.
Be it Qiu Ju or Space Odyssey or No Country, these films utilize this model of the writer/reader dialectic to inform the other dialectic of known/unknown. Both of these dialectics can come into play in the classroom. Sartre said that aesthetic imperative leads to the moral imperative, and these dialectics of art and film in particular demonstrate that dialectic of the classroom. That space of tension between the balanced reader/ writer and known/unknown can be a place of democratic learning in the classroom. By allowing for there to be a tension between what the teacher knows and what the student can create (the unknown) the oppressive nature of the classroom will be dissolved and freedom will take its place. Teachers (writers) abdicate their position as the owners of knowledge and then allow their students (readers) to create what they will within the imperative structure of the class. If the text is 2001: a Space Odyssey the purpose is not to read what Kubrick or Arthur C. Clarke or the teacher intended (the imperative), it is, rather, to use the silence that Kubrick and Clarke allowed for in the film to create a space of tension between the known and the unknown and allow the student the freedom to create. If it is The Legend of Qiu Ju, one is not to declare that the film is about satiating our despair with the pursuit of justice in a bureaucracy, but rather explore the silence in the film with the other participators and create together. The great films are those that provide that opportunity, that in their aesthetic dialectical microcosm are generous enough to open that space of tension for a free mutual, and morally imperative, creative experience in the classroom.
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