Reviews

‘Gagaland’: A twist and a shout deep from China’s heartland

In one of Gagaland’s visual effect abundant sequences the characters face the audience, walking ahead in a rainbow-coloured limbo filled with flashing emojis and glittering texts floating through the screen. Quick editing allows to jump from one dreamscape to another as smoothly as with a swipe of a finger between different reels posted on social media apps. However, this 85-minute-long music video is not as cutting-edge as it appears at a first glance.

Immediately after the premiere of Gagaland, many film critics at the International Film Festival Rotterdam asked: “Is this film still cinematic?” The question implies the concern about the future of cinema that is considered endangered by short video content on social media and the way it modifies audiences’ visual literacy. The debut full-length fiction feature by 23-year-old Téng Yǔhán 腾语涵 is inspired by this dreaded form of visual culture – specifically short videos posted on social media platform Kuaishou. She sees it as having potential to give voice to the ones underrepresented in Chinese official media since many short videos posted there are made by Chinese living in the countryside. Immersed deeply in the reality of third-, fourth-tier cities in Central and Northeast China, Gagaland is a tribute to the golden age of the social and online phenomenon it portrays — ga-dance (gàwǔ 尬舞) — freestyle street dance that started trending on Kuaishou in the 2010s. It does not have any specific choreography or form, but is based on pure improvisation that gives unlimited space for self-expression and exerting individual agency in the dance. Gagaland’s ostensibly simple and cliche storyline allows for chaotic stream of images and movement to take over the viewing experience.

Gagaland follows a zero-to-hero boy-meets-girl storyline. K.Dì (K弟), a 16-year-old from Inner Mongolia, leaves his job at the duck feather factory and, while escaping from bullies, he accidentally joins a group of livestreamers dancing on the corner of the street. He soon becomes part of this crew, led by charismatic 50-something Pink Hair (红毛 hóng máo), who earns a living online through virtual gifts in the form of emojis bought by followers. K.Dì joins the group and begins livestreaming alongside three other dancers — B Girl (霹雳女 Pīlì nǚ), Shuǐ xiān (水仙) and Kennedy (肯尼迪) — also fellow vagrant young migrant workers or left-behind children turned teenagers. K.Dì’s dance and personal style quickly attracts attention, amassing more and more fans. He falls in love with B Girl and starts dreaming of getting rich to give her a better life. Gradually convinced that Pink Hair takes all the income from livestreaming to himself, K.Dì considers joining a rival dance crew whose leader offers him a large share of their revenue.

Teng Yuhan had been fascinated by ga-dance since its boom in 2014 until its decline by the end of the decade, following a series of protests labeling the dance as vulgar and a sign of bad taste. It was targeted even more viciously than the beloved pastime of China’s elderly — square dancing (guǎngchǎng wǔ 广场舞) — because ga-dance was accused of immorality and overtly sexual dance moves to gain followers and virtual gifts. Teng Yuhan describes ga-dance as “different from all other dances in China. In square dance we must be consistent and united, while ga-dance celebrates individualism and difference. The more original the better. It is a dance that is an expression of happiness. I think it is very courageous and brave. There is a saying ‘happy is also revolution’, which is an idea I very much agree with.” However, Gagaland pays tribute to a specific dance scene in Zhengzhou rather than ga-dance in general. In her work as a filmmaker and visual artist, Teng Yuhan is very influenced by subcultures that started to consolidate online via forums, blogging and livestreaming since she herself got to know it from the perspective of a fan and a follower. Pink Hair (real name Gù Dōnglín (顾东林) is in fact a real-life online celebrity that became the protagonist of 2018 documentary film Dancing in the Wind (dir. Yuè Tíng 岳廷) before he died due to chronic illness in 2021. Teng spent many months living with Pink Hair and his dance crew. In the meantime, the project organically developed, and her position shifted from an observer to a participant.

A Beijing Film Academy drop-out, Teng Yuhan learned filmmaking at the Li Xianting Film School established in 2006 and privately funded by art critic and curator Li Xianting who continues to run artist commune in Songzhuang in a low profile after the police raid in 2013. Teng recalls the foundational experience that helped her to shape Gagaland: “One day when I was filming, Pink Hair suddenly extended his hand to me. This became a very magical moment in my life, because I suddenly stopped caring about anything else. It’s incredible, because I only got to know him through screen-mediated live streaming. When he stood in front of me inviting me to dance, that vivid gesture moved me.” Teng stresses that for her, Pink Hair’s moves embody the local spirit of Zhengzhou, the bodily strength and genuineness that can be found only in physicality that becomes a shared language of all humanity. His ga-dance style is very grassroot and local, but simultaneously it has a potential to be universally understood and inclusive.

The need for self-expression through freestyle dance is irresistible to many living on the margins of Chinese society. Teng Yuhan recalls that when she went to film Pink Hair’s crew dancing at the West Square nearby Zhengzhou Railway Station, a homeless man wearing an army hat suddenly appeared and started dancing and laughing. Since Pink Hair is his friend, the homeless man invited the dancers and film crew to the place where he lives — an open basement underneath the train station. This real-life encounter led Teng to add in the script an episodic character of a homeless man. She likens him to the god of dance living underground, going outside only when called by the sound of Pink Hair’s music blasting from loudspeakers. Teng romanticised her experiences and observations during pre-production and shooting, perceiving Zhengzhou’s three rival ga-dance crews competing for territory and fans as factions from classic Chinese novels The Water Margin and The Romance of Three Kingdoms. Gagaland is also marked with references to films directed by masters of art cinema. The scene featuring a giant iPhone resembles the monolith known from Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey. The intentional low quality of special effects and the romanticism embedded in Gagaland’s storyline feel akin to Nobuhiko Obayashi’s Hausu. Although Teng Yuhan is inspired by Kuaishou and videos made by live streamers but she turns it into a cinematic material. Instead of assuming the position of a live streamer she is still a filmmaker, referencing texts recognised and celebrated in the history of literature and cinema. Kinetic energy bursts from every frame of the film, trying to exceed the limitation of the screen but Gagaland is still shot horizontally. Camera is directed at the dancers instead of being taken over by them as it would have been if Teng followed the live streaming format and allowed more space for experimentation and improvisation. All the characters in Gagaland are modeled after real-life persons but the cast was searched out online through an advertisement posted on Douban. Pink Hair is the one hailing from Zhengzhou’s ga-dance scene and his appearance does stand out from the rest of the performers who were selected to fit the archetypes: the main character is slim and handsome, his love interest is blond and etheric, the sidekick is slightly overweight and the second girl in the gang is black-haired and projected as “the big sister”. The cliche storylines are often reproduced in videos posted on Kuaishou but Teng does not reflect on them critically, but retains a positive bias towards the content posted on the platform that is the result of her experience as a fan.

The DiY spirit that springs from fandom makes Gagaland patchwork project made out of passion. Teng started working on Gagaland when she was 18 years old, she wrote lyrics and performed some of the hǎnmài songs featured in the film. She also made a cameo as a nurse in one of the scenes. However, while talking with the audience after the film’s world premiere at the International Film Festival Rotterdam, Teng Yuhan was very cautious of ga-dance’s reputation as being lowbrow and in bad taste. Gagaland tells as much about Zhengzhou’s ga-dance scene as about the troubled relationship between local grassroot culture and intellectual elites that remain simultaneously fascinated by it but reluctant to allow the latter to take reign in the creative process.