MCLC Resource Center is pleased to announce publication of “The Wandering Earth: Gender, Sexuality, and Geopolitics,” compiled and edited by Petrus Liu and Lisa Rofel, a discussion by eight scholars on the film The Wandering Earth. A teaser appears below; the entire text can be found here: https://u.osu.edu/mclc/online-series/the-wandering-earth/.
Kirk Denton, editor
Gender, Sexuality, and Geopolitics
Compiled and edited by Petrus Liu and Lisa Rofel
Petrus Liu | Laura Trajber Waisbich | Zeng Lu | Zairong Xiang |
Lisa Rofel | Maria Amelia Viteri-Burbano and Jesse Crane-Seeber | Cai Yiping
MCLC Resource Center Publication (Copyright September 2020)
Introduction: The Heteropatriarchal Geopolitics of The Wandering Earth
Petrus Liu (Boston University)
Since its highly anticipated theatrical release on Chinese New Year’s Day in 2019, The Wandering Earth (流浪地球), China’s first space blockbuster directed by Frant Gwo 郭帆, has become the country’s third highest-grossing film of all time. The Wandering Earth capitalizes on the success of action star Wu Jing 吴京, who plays a heroic Chinese astronaut in this film after directing, co-writing, and starring in Wolf Warrior II (战狼II), the 2017 action film that holds the record for the highest-grossing Chinese film in history. Like its predecessor, The Wandering Earth features a patriotic theme and a plotline centered on a rescue mission. Whereas Wolf Warrior II has Wu Jing traveling to Africa to rescue imperiled workers in a Chinese factory from deadly diseases, civil wars, and white mercenaries, The Wandering Earth raises the stakes: now Wu Jing’s character and his family must save Earth and the entire human race from an interstellar catastrophe. In year 2061, the earth has become a freezing planet with a dying Sun. Huddled in subterranean cities, what is left of humanity has formed a United Earth Government and devised a plan a propel Earth to a more habitable solar system. The story switches back and forth between Wu Jing’s character Liu Peiqiang 刘培强, a Chinese astronaut who left his four-year son Liu Qi 刘启 behind seventeen years previously to complete a mission in outer space to save Earth, and the now grown-up Liu Qi, who goes on his own adventures with his adopted sister Han Duoduo 韩朵朵 on Earth’s rapidly crumbling surface. Though Liu Peiqiang has completed the original mission and is now finally about to be reunited with his family on Earth after the Chinese New Year, new and unexpected interstellar and environmental catastrophes occur. After overcoming many seemingly insurmountable obstacles, including a rogue artificial intelligence system with its own secret agenda, Liu Peiqiang commandeers the space station and sacrifices himself on a suicide mission to allow Earth to escape the gravitational pull of Jupiter. Though the son never gets to see his father again, Earth is saved from destruction and continues on its journey to another galaxy. . . [read the rest of the text]