Queen of Sports

In the early 1930s, China was in danger from Japanese militarism as well as economic depression.[9] During this time, Sun Yu was a producer, director, screenwriter and actor for the Lianhua Film Production and Printing Company, a studio established by the producers Luo Mingyou (1901–1967) and Li Minwei (1893–1953).[10] The studio was made under the auspices of the top-tiered politicians, ideologues and financiers of the Kuomintang (KMT; Nationalist Party) for the purpose of making educational films that would promulgate the Party's socio-political values, which are understood as being 'right-wing.' The KMT invested a lot of money into the making of educational films (both documentary and fiction) for political purposes, which gave birth to the film Sports Queen.[11] Sun Yu began shooting the film on November 26, 1933.[12]

Due to the dangers of Japanese militarism and the economic depression that hit China in the early 1930s, many people involved in the film industry called for the revolution and revitalization of national films, including director Sun Yu. Inspired by the country's call for revitalizing national films, Sun Yu produced the film with the idea of a 'fit woman's body' to match the popular propaganda of "Fitness helps to save the Nation."[13]

Throughout the 1930s, Chinese film making was also strongly influenced by the perceived Hollywood's melodramatic cinematic style, which was characterized by scandal, sexual promiscuity, drug addictions and more. Despite filmmakers' claims of attempts to warn the audience about an alien spiritual pollution, foreign cultural modes were still often displayed in an alluring way and attracted more audiences than repelled. Sun Yu was one of the first leftist filmmakers who attempted to explore the idea of spiritual pollution with Sports Queen in 1934, which was also produced under the political influence of Xia Yan’s small Communist film group in Shanghai.[14]

The Kuomintang (Nationalist Party of China) started the “New Life Movement” in February 1934. This movie also agreed to some extent with the New Life Movement. For example, the film took two minutes focusing on personal hygiene issues: Lin Ying and her teammates get up in the morning and do gymnastics on their canvas beds before brushing their teeth; the close up shot here features Lin Ying’s action, followed by two school maintenance workers washing their faces and brushing their teeth.[15] This sequence be understood as the film's standpoint to the New Life Sports Hygiene Regulations: "Go to bed early and get up early, keep your face and hands clean. Be sure to brush your teeth and keep your hair clean."

The film's narrative consists of a strong sense of community and societal expectations over a single individual. To further advance China's image to the rest of the world's perception with a more positive one, and contributing to national development, Sun Yu believed that emphasizing the importance of maintaining a healthy lifestyle in the individual would build the nation as a whole.[16]

One of the goals of Sports Queen was to display Li’s athletic ability.[17] This film also embedded her presence as “an athletic movie star,"[18] especially as it highlighted her proficiency in running, a part of the male-dominated sport of track and field.

Fan magazines confirmed Li’s athletic skills outside of the film screen with photos of her in sports attire, posing with her school basketball team or alone on a running track. While there were other “actresses visiting sports games,” Li was respected and admired as an “athlete” herself.[19]

Li Daoxin, the professor of Peking University, had a speech on CCTV and uses Sports Queen to talk about true sportsmanship (lit. the spirit of sports).[20]

Sports Queen obviously entrusts Sun Yu's reflection on the concept of "sports to save the country". This reflection is first manifested in the film's inscription: "Dedicated to the Soldiers Who Work for the True Spirit of Sports". Under the inspiration of "True Sportsmanship", the heroine Lin Ying gave up her victory and the title of "Queen of Sports". Sun Yu interpreted "True Sportsmanship" as the collective progress of the nation and the necessary personal sacrifice for the overall benefit of the society.[21]

When he teaches his female students, Yun Peng claims, "True sportsmanship is the need for balanced improvements of every single person’s physique, the need to spread [this value] among society...it is definitely not to create individual heros!", expressing that the replacement of individual competitive success with the widespread popularization of sports is the definition of the so-called “true sportsmanship.”[22]

In her last moments, Xiao Qiuhua said to Lin Ying, "Though I am an athlete, I do not possess true sportsmanship, because physical exercise should be for strengthening the body, for us to be more healthy and lead happier lives, but instead I placed too much importance in reputation and thus it has lead to consequences today." Thus according to scholar Zhao Zijian, Director Sun Yu intended to impart the message that the most important part of sports should not be victory or defeat, but the participation and the process of doing so.[23]

This didactic message about the need to harness the individual body – in particular, the female body – for nation building is not to be missed. It focuses on the collective, that feature of subsequent Chinese sports films.[24]

Li Lili’s persona as a patriotic modern youth in Sports Queen is profoundly different from that of a fallen woman which Ruan Lingyu represents in her popular films such as Goddess and New Women. In Sports Queen, Li’s distinctively female physicality shown in the camera’s focus on her body greatly departs from the clichéd image of the fallen woman that Ruan typically exhibits in her masterpieces, who usually uses cosmetics and even self-commodification to enhance her sexual appeal. This shift indicates an identification of “modern culture of fashion and consumption” as well as the conflict of traditional Chinese values and contemporary fashionable femininity.[25]

Victor Fan, drawing from the work of Hansen and Laura Mulvey, claims that the film centres on the playfulness (a resistance against being viewed seriously) of Lin Ying and emphasizes her athletic curiosity, making the athletic female body a "scopophilic fetish". Fan argues that the sexual attraction between Yun and Lin was captured through the shot-reverse-shot sequences.[26]

Upon arrival in Shanghai, the female protagonist is enrolled in a school focused on physical education, as she runs around actively outdoors while also taking classes and practicing music indoors, exploring the values of sportsmanship. This image on screen stands in stark contrast to the traditional Chinese view of a woman who should have bound feet (three-inch golden lotus) and stay indoors at all times.[27]

China at the time still maintained many conservative values, such as that women should stay within the bedroom instead of being out and about, yet this film was unconventional in that it subverted these traditions and presented to viewers women of a new era. Thus the understanding and definition of women experienced enormous change under the guidance of film culture.[28]

Despite the portrayal of active women, out of approximately thirty title cards throughout the film, communication between Lin Ying and Yun Peng take up about 20 of them, through which a clear logic is conveyed: women require the teaching and leadership from a man—the sports queen has a gift for sports but is psychologically like a baby who needs protection and guidance.[29]