Reanimating the Socialist Child—Queerly: The Sideways of a Chinese Animation Nezha naohai

Abstract

IN THE BEGINNING—IS SUICIDE, with a sword, by a child, in an animation, in one of my earliest movie memories. I was shocked, captivated, obsessed. Four decades later, merely mentally picturing the scene still arrests my heart, undams my tears. This scene remains so overwhelming because it ambushed me. Growing up in socialist China, going to block-booked movies was a student’s obligation. With no trailer, no spoiler, not even offered a poster, I had no interest in a film called Nezha naohai (Prince Nezha’s Triumph Against Dragon King, Wang Shuchen, Xu Jingda, Yan Dingxian, 1979). Who is Nezha anyway—a difficult name, sounding odd, barely even sensible as a name. Why should I care about someone with a nonsensible name doing something nonsensical like churning up the sea (the literal meaning of the Chinese title)? Little did I know that this pivotal scene of the child’s suicide and subsequent rebirth would become a portal for my appreciation of the queering power within a patently individualistic child hero animated feature. In the theater, I remained unengaged despite all the spectacular scenes of Nezha fighting and defeating the dragons and other anthropomorphized aquatic animals—until the scene of suicide. The freeze-frame extreme close-up of Nezha’s large enraged eyes filling the screen drove into my heart the unbearable intensity of memories, despair, defiance, letting go, and grief, even as life is drifting away from Nezha’s body.