The Reconstructed History of the Foundation of the Chinese School of Animation: A Textual Criticism on the ‘Crow Incident’

Abstract

The screening of colour cel animation Why Is the Crow Black at the 1956 Venice Film Festival was seen as a pivotal moment in Chinese animation history. It is recorded that Why Is the Crow Black was misidentified as a Soviet animation by international judges, which made this film an epic failure. Frustrated Chinese animators, led by Te Wei, reflected on the imitation of the Soviet styles and commenced the exploration of a Chinese style. This ultimately led to the foundation of the Chinese School of Animation, marked by the release of Te Wei’s film The Conceited General in 1956. However, many of the widely believed ‘facts’ in this narrative are false. There is no evidence of an actual award, nor of the mis-identification of Why Is the Crow Black. A series of false assumptions have converged to form an entirely mistaken narrative of causality that the Crow’s reception transformed the production of the General. This narrative has become ingrained in Chinese animation historiography, and the doubters remain marginal. This article argues that the ‘Crow Incident’ was a 1980s fabrication, arising from transcultural misunderstandings, translation errors, and perhaps even deliberately misleading assertions. The alleged Crow Incident has been used to explain and justify the urgency and necessity of exploring the Chinese minzu style in the 1950s, yet it devalues the subjectivity, initiative and self-awareness of Chinese animators.

Keywords

Chinese animation Chinese School of Animation Chineseness nationality Shanghai Animation Film Studio the 17-year period

‘If The Conceited General represents the beginning of the national style, Why Is the Crow Black marks the end of the international style (the Soviet-style in particular) in conventional histories of Chinese animation’ (Du, 2019: 125).¹ The beginning of the promotion of the minzu² style of Chinese animation, as well as the founding of the Chinese School of Animation, is usually directed toward an assumed event that happened in 1956. It is said that Why Is the Crow Black (directed by Qian Jiajun),³ the first Chinese coloured animation, won an award at the 1956 Venice Film Festival, yet this film was mistakenly regarded as a Soviet Union film by international judges. This article uses the term ‘the Crow Incident’ to refer to this assumed event at the 1956 Venice Film Festival. The Crow Incident pushed Chinese animators (represented by Te Wei, then President of the Shanghai Animation Film Studio [SAFS]) to reflect on the imitation of Soviet Union’s animation, which resulted in the exploration of the minzu style (marked by The Conceited General, 1956). Consequently, the Crow Incident is considered to be ‘crucial to the origin of national style animation and of the establishment of the SAFS’ (Macdonald, 2016: 127).

The Crow Incident establishes a causal connection between the misidentification of Why Is the Crow Black and the commencement of exploring the minzu style. Namely, the misidentification of Why Is the Crow Black at the Venice Film Festival is what caused Chinese animators to reflect on the over-imitation of the Soviet style and decide to further explore the Chinese minzu style. This casual connection highlights the urgency, necessity and correctness of the exploration of the minzu style. In this article, the coining of the term ‘Crow narrative’ is based on this assumed causality that the Crow Incident caused the commence of the exploration of the minzu style (marked by The Conceited General). The Crow narrative indicates the idea that the would-be-perfect imitation was misidentified as a Soviet animated film; therefore, the path of imitation led to a dead end and the Chinese style had to be established. In fact, this issue existed in the overall Chinese cinema in the early 1950s. For example, Zhang Junxiang submitted a report, Foreign Opinions on Chinese Films [guowai dui woguo dianying de yijian], in the mid-1950s, which mentioned that some filmmakers from the Soviet Union and Poland suggested that Chinese films should stop imitating the Soviet style and turn to nationalization (see Li, 2009). For Li, the Crow Incident is also a piece of evidence of this issue (p. 14).

The Crow Incident forms the core of the narrative about the origination of minzu style animation, as well as that of the Chinese School of Animation. It has been accepted by most animation researchers in China, and a large number of documents cite the Crow Incident to support the ‘minzu-ization’ (nationalization) of Chinese animation. Therefore, the Crow Incident has been closely bound to the minzu style of Chinese animation. As Du (2019: 124) writes:

Many mainstream narratives say that shortly after the black crow incident, animators turned to traditional art forms and legends and produced cel animation, papercutting animation, paperfolding animation, puppet animation, ink-painting animation, and other kinds of national style films.

The publications that involve the Crow Incident usually use this story as an introduction to the formation of the Chinese minzu style and the Chinese School of Animation, and they apply the Crow narrative to support the correctness of the way of the minzu style. Consequently, as Li (2011: 105) writes, ‘we usually completely attribute the reasons of “exploring the way of forming the minzu style” to the incident that Why Is the Crow Black was misidentified as a Soviet animation.’

However, the details of the Crow Incident remain anecdotal and lack written documentation, and some records are fragmental, ambiguous and contradictory. Most Chinese publications see the Crow Incident as common sense and a clear historical event, and briefly mention it without examining its veracity. As Jonathan Clements (2013) warns, if enough authorities claim a false historical event is true, ‘such an idea is liable to become locked into the discourses of subsequent scholars. Those later writers [who attempt to correct this idea] . . . risk being drowned out beneath the sheer volume of prevailing assumptions’ (p. 4). As this article would indicate, the Crow Incident has been widely accepted by Chinese scholars. Though some researchers, such as Li (see Wang, 2012, and Li et al., 2012), have questioned this assumed historical event after 2010, the doubters are marginal. According to China National Knowledge Infrastructure (CNKI),⁴ only less than 10 journal articles question this story.

Chinese-speaking doubters are primarily based on oral interviews with SAFS animators, which potentially contain memory errors. Furthermore, while the doubters question the causal connection between Why Is the Crow Black and The Conceited General, the fact that Why Is the Crow Black won an award at Venice Film Festival is usually pre-assumed. Besides, many of their works lack screening and discriminating historical records. We believe that more comprehensive and cross-validated textual research should be conducted, rather than merely based on oral interviews with a limited scope of SAFS animators. English language scholars, on the other hand, mainly question the evidence of the Crow Incident. Scholars, including Sean Macdonald and Daisy Yan Du, have investigated the Crow Incident in considerable depth. As they argued, ‘the evidence around the actual international reception of this film is unclear and primarily anecdotal’ (Macdonald, 2016: 127), and ‘the background story behind the allegation about the Soviet connection in the reception of Why Is the Crow Black was probably fabricated’ (Du, 2019: 121). They checked Historical Archives of Contemporary Arts (HACA)’s database Archivio Storico delle Arti Contemporanee (ASACdati) and pointed out a number of mistakes in records and descriptions of the Crow Incident. However, some of these mistakes have been caused by misinformation and mistranslations in the transcultural, transcontextual and translingual communication process in the socialist era, which may not decisively deny the whole Crow Incident and the Crow narrative. Other sources, as this article suggests, are worthy of being investigated in further depth, based on a wider range of historical resources, to illuminate the process that the Crow Incident was constructed in a specific social context.

This article starts by tracing the origins of the written records of the Crow Incident, and then focuses on examining the key aspects of the assumed story of the Crow Incident: (1) the evidence of the Crow Incident; (2) the evaluation of Why Is the Crow Black led by the Crow Incident in the 1950s; and (3) the existence of the Crow narrative causality. It aims to provide a comprehensive clarification of the Crow Incident, which constructs the narrative of the origin of the Chinese School of Animation.

The origins of the story of the Crow Incident

The Crow Incident was initially documented as an anecdote [趣闻/quwen] in Zhang’s (1985) article ‘The more national, the more international: The formation and development of the national style’. In this article, Zhang wrote ‘the first colored animation Why Is the Crow Black won a Certificate of Merit at the 8th Venice International Film Festival for Children, yet some judges mistakenly regard this animated film as a work from the Soviet Union’ (p. 100). Zhang’s article also initially proposed the concept of the Chinese School of Animation, which ties the Crow Incident to the Chinese School. As a veteran SAFS animator and the founder of the China Animation Association, Zhang has prestige in the Chinese animation industry and academia. As the first documented record of the term ‘Chinese School of Animation’, his article significantly influenced Chinese animation academia; it provided a framework for later studies of the Chinese School of Animation.

Jin (2004), an influential Chinese film scholar, recorded an interview with Te Wei in ‘The formation and maturity of the Chinese school of animation’. In this interview, Te Wei said:

This incident [the Crow Incident] shows that our animation had reached a considerable level, shows that we had mastered imitating others’ animation. However, you imitated and reached such an extent of similarity, they just regarded [your] works as another country. From this point, the creating of our national animation should be taken into consideration. (Jin, 2004: 57)

Jin’s article marked the revitalization of the Chinese School of Animation in Chinese academia in the new century (see Huang, 2022: 325), which endows this interview with significant status in studies of the Chinese School of Animation. The connection between the Crow Incident and the foundation of the Chinese School of Animation was further strengthened.

In 2004, in order to celebrate Te Wei’s 90th birthday, SAFS produced a documentary entitled Chinese Classic Animation (The Chapter of Tewei) (Zhongguo jingdian donghua [Te Wei Pian]), which told the story of the Crow Incident. Since this documentary was produced by SAFS, the story of the Crow Incident is now deemed to be an officially recognized historical event.

A more systematic, comprehensive and detailed record of the Crow Incident appeared in Zhang and Gong (2010) (also a SAFS animator)’s book Who Created Little Tadpoles Look for Mama: Te Wei and Chinese Animation. This book is a biography of Te Wei and potentially sets out to highlight Te Wei’s contribution to Chinese animation. As Zhang and Gong write, Why Is the Crow Black

was the first internationally awarded Chinese film . . . yet such a highly prized artwork made Te Wei and other Chinese animators suffer mixed fortunes, and the discussion about the ‘minzu style’ triggered by this film is still fresh in our memories . . . This film was selected and sent to the 8th Venice International Film Festival for Children. The international peers gave good comments; however, since the style of this film has obvious traces of imitation, the judges misidentified it as a Soviet Union’s animation. (p. 101)

Subsequently, Te Wei

clearly realized that . . . simple imitation in scopes of production technologies and styles could never lead Chinese animation to the international arena . . . Therefore, Te Wei formally and informally proposed the slogan of ‘Knocking the gate of the comedy style, exploring the way of the national form’. (Zhang and Gong, 2010: 101–102)⁵

The above-mentioned documents have established the Crow narrative, which defines Why Is the Crow Black as a failure. This narrative holds such a core logic: the would-be-perfect imitation (Why Is the Crow Black) will only be regarded as a Soviet Union animation; therefore, imitating the foreign style will eventually lead to a dead end, and the Chinese style has to be established. Nevertheless, the publications about the film do not provide accurate details (such as the names of the international judges) but overuse vague general references (such as ‘some judges’). They contain several mistakes and self-contradictions (see below), which undermine the credibility of the Crow Incident and throw later academic publications into confusion. Furthermore, these publications maintain a tendency to honour Te Wei’s contribution to the Chinese School of Animation, and their historical error of commemoration may influence later studies.

The evidence of the Crow Incident

Did Why Is the Crow Black win an award at the Venice Film Festival?

At the Venice Film Festival in 1956, two Chinese animated films were shown: Why Is the Crow Black (cel animation) and The Magic Brush (puppet animation). The Magic Brush (under the Italian title Il Pennello Magico) won an award for Best Entertainment Film for Children 8–12, which has been clearly documented (see Du, 2019; Giesen, 2015; Zhang and Gong, 2010; also ASACdati). However, there is still confusion about the award that Why Is the Crow Black won (if it did win any award) in Chinese documents. Some state that Why Is the Crow Black was granted a ‘jiangzhuang/奖状’ (Certificate of Merit) (see Zhang, 1985; also Ge, 2006: 47; Li, 1991: 30; Shi et al., 2012: 606). Others, including Zhang and Gong (2010), Jin (2004) and Wang (1984), claim that this film won first prize (yi deng jiang/一等奖) at the Venice Film Festival.⁶ Most publications vaguely record this film as winning an award (jiang/奖) at the Venice Film Festival.

According to ASACdati, Why Is the Crow Black (under the Italian title Perché il corvo é nero) was screened at the 17th Venice Film Festival (17. Mostra Internazionale d’Arte Cinematografica 1956) and 8th Venice International Film Festival for children (8. Mostra Internazionale del Film per Ragazzi – Film ricreativi).⁷ The Children’s Film Exhibition is a section of the festival that preceded the main section; in the 1956 festival, 197 films were shown in this section and 14 prizes were awarded (see Macdonald, 2016: 127–128), including The Magic Brush. Macdonald (p. 142) checked HACA’s database (ASACdati) and Du (2019: 121) emailed HACA to inquire about related information; both concluded that Why Is the Crow Black did not win any award at the Venice Film Festival/Venice International Children’s Film Festival.

This article is concerned with why Chinese animators and researchers mistakenly believe that Why Is the Crow Black won an award at the Venice Film Festival. We notice that in Giesen’s (2015) book Chinese Animation: A History and Filmography, 1922–2012, the award of Why Is the Crow Black is noted as ‘Certificate of Merit, Eighth Venice International Children’s Film Festival’ (p. 51). The term ‘Certificate of Merit’ could be translated as 奖状 (jiangzhuang), 优秀证书 (youxiu zhengshu), or 优秀奖 (youxiu jiang) in Chinese, and some of the translations contain the Chinese character ‘奖/jiang’ (lit. award/prize).⁸ We realized that mistranslations and misunderstandings might have been generated in the process by which the information about Why Is the Crow Black at the Venice Film Festival was transculturally, translinguistically and transcontextually transmitted to China. According to Modern Chinese Dictionary [xiandai hanyu cidian], a 奖状 (jiangzhuang) in Chinese is ‘A certificate issued as a reward’. It refers to a formal award/prize, which could also be issued for lesser achievements that are not significant enough for formal awards/prizes. For example, at Hong Kong Awards for Industry, three tiers of awards are set for each category: Grand Awards (大奖/dajiang), Awards (奖/jiang), and Certificates of Merit (优异证书/youyi zhengshu).⁹ In order to further understand the use of the Certificate of Merit in socialist China, the authors interviewed four Chinese elders (all born in the 1930s and 1940s). They confirmed that in the socialist period as well as in the 1980s, a 奖状 (jiangzhuang), on most occasions, equalled an award/prize for Chinese. One interviewee said that, in the 1950s and 1960s, a Provincial Model Worker [省劳动模范/sheng laodong mofan] would be granted a Certificate of Merit (奖状/jiangzhuang), which was undoubtedly a high honour. Therefore, it is reasonable for some Chinese to understand the Certificate of Merit as an award/prize and mistranslation/misinformation potentially exists, which confuses the Certificate of Merit with award/prize.

In order to further clarify this term, the authors sent an email to HACA about the ‘Certificate of Merit’ in June 2021. Marica Gallina, HACA’s senior staff member, replied:

Regarding the Certificate of Merit, we know very little. We know that for some years (including the 50s) the Venice Biennale granted a ‘certificate of participation’ to every film which was officially screened . . . Perhaps ‘Perché il corvo è nero’ was granted this specific certificate of participation.

In this article, we propose a possible answer to the question of why Chinese publications tend to record Why Is the Crow Black as winning an award/prize at the Venice Film Festival. The film was screened at the Venice Film Festival. It did not win an award but was granted a ‘certificate of participation’, which was recorded as the ‘Certificate of Merit’ (奖状/jiangzhuang) in some early Chinese documents (see Zhang, 1985, cited earlier). However, for the Chinese, the use of the category of Certificate of Merit is partly overlapped with that of an award. Consequently, it was reasonable for SAFS animators at that time to generally believe that Why Is the Crow Black won an award. In an interview, Yan Dingxian (President of SAFS, 1984–1993) said that Why Is the Crow Black ‘won many awards, including the Certificate of Merit at the 8th Venice International Children’s Film Festival, and later the Ministry of Culture of PRC’s Third Prize at the Award Ceremony for outstanding films and filmmakers 1949–1955’ (Shi et al., 2012: 606). For Yan, the Certificate of Merit was as a rank of awards. In later publications, the term ‘Certificate of Merit’ was misconstrued as an award/prize, which led to further confusion about this information in documents. Typically, in Historical Archives of Shanghai Film (Vol. 6), Bao and Liang (1995: 23) note that Why Is the Crow Black won the ‘Award of Certificate of Merit’ (jangzhuang jiang/奖状奖). This term is weirdly coined, based on the collage of ‘Certificate of Merit’ (jiangzhuang/奖状) and ‘award’ (jiang/奖), and it implies that the Certificate of Merit (奖状/jiangzhuang) is a rank of award (奖/jiang). This word is not suitable for Chinese grammar conventions and also reflects the confusing status in documents about Why Is the Crow Black.

A considerable number of publications show a tendency to inflate the honour of Why Is the Crow Black, which is probably aimed to endow the Crow Incident with a greater salience. Some documents record Why Is the Crow Black as the winning film of the first prize at the Venice Film Festival. This is a conclusive mistake, which is very likely confused with The Magic Brush. Some underline Why Is the Crow Black as the first internationally awarded film that was also the first Chinese colour animation (Bao and Liang, 1995; Zhang, 1985; Zheng and Qian, 2004), yet both distinctions remain doubtful.¹⁰ The more legendary and significant that Why Is the Crow Black is, the more legendary, impactful and painful the Crow Incident is, which further gives prominence to the necessity, correctness and urgency of the exploration of the minzu style.

Did international judges misidentify Why Is the Crow Black as a Soviet animation?

The story of the Crow Incident suddenly appeared in the 1980s, without solid evidence. Until now, the people who misidentified Why Is the Crow Black as a Soviet film have remained anonymous and ambiguous. As Li Zhen stated, ‘concerning the story that Why Is the Crow Black was misidentified as a Soviet animation, the source [of this story] is not able to be traced, and no one knows who said that’ (cited in Wang Jingxue, Xinhua Daily, 24 August 2012). Related publications use terms such as ‘foreign judges’, ‘someone’ and ‘participants of the festival’, to refer to the people who presented the comment about Why Is the Crow Black. According to Du (2019: 121–122), the judges of the 1956 Venice International Film Festival of Children were M Jean Bonoit-Lévy (France), Professor Antonin M Brousil (Czechoslavkia), Dr Luciano Emmer (Italy) and Mrs Mary Field (Great Britain). Since these judges have passed away, it is impossible to verify the Crow Incident through interviews. However, as Du (2019: 121) writes, ‘It is unprofessional and unlikely that a juror for such a prominent international film festival would comment publicly like this.’ This article follows Du’s opinion. It is unlikely that the Venice Film Festival would hide the filmmakers’ information about screened films. Furthermore, if the Crow Incident did happen, international researchers could find clues in media reports, rather than knowing barely anything about this event and mostly relying on Chinese language documents.

A number of scholars and SAFS members questioned the assumed fact of the Crow Incident. Pu (2014: 33–34), the animator and character designer of Why Is the Crow Black, noted: ‘Did the international judges say this? . . . Was the message from the embassy true or false? In order to verify this, I had asked some veteran CCP (Chinese Communist Party) members [at SAFS], yet none of them heard about this.’ Yan also said in an interview, ‘the statement about the foreign judges was not necessarily accurate, and we did not know what exactly they said; all this information was brought by other people’ (see Zhou and He, 2012: 42). Li asserted at the Boya Forum of Beijing University:

It seems as if this story [the Crow Incident] is real and that there might be something to learn from the story; yet it is fabricated. I interviewed many people who were involved, and I then knew this event did not happen . . . none attended this film festival, nor heard the foreign judges refer to Why Is the Crow Black as an Eastern European artwork.¹¹

Another question can be raised in terms of communication channels. Zhang and Gong (2010: 101) wrote that the Crow Incident was reported to Shanghai Film Studio¹² through the Chinese Embassy. Regarding this, Du (2019: 121) questioned, ‘Even if they [the jurors] spoke privately about the film, it is questionable that what they said would be overheard, transmitted to the Chinese Embassy in an official manner, and then communicated to the Shanghai Animation Film Studio with so much fanfare.’ Yan had also stated in different interviews that Shanghai Film Studio was not authorized to send films to international festivals; instead, China Film Group Corporation selected and sent the films, and the feedback was brought back through China Film Group Corporation (see Li et al., 2012: 66; Yang, 2016: 52). Sun (2020: 20) recorded:

Although China’s animations began winning international awards since the 1950s, China Film Group Corporation (CFGC) alone participated in all the activities such as film exhibitions and award ceremonies . . . when Why Is Crow Black-Coated won international awards, it was CFGC that informed the SAFS of the news.

The channel of the Chinese embassy was seemingly a false record. Yet, as Tang et al. (2011: 74) recorded, ‘after Why Is the Crow Black won the award, the trophy was sent to the Chinese embassy by the committee, and later was brought back to China by China Film Group Corporation’s staff.’¹³ If this record is correct, both Zhang and Gong, and Yan told the truth but only fragments of the whole story. The staff of the Chinese embassy may have told China Film Group Corporation’s staff something about the film festival and the latter brought the story to SAFS. This communication process was unlikely in a public and official manner, but it was oral, informal and private, which makes the miscommunication of related information possible.

While it is clear that the story of the Crow Incident lacks evidence, this article is more concerned with where this assumed fact originated. In August 2011, Li Baochuan interviewed Yan, and Yan recalled, ‘At that time, the studio received a phone call saying, “An animated film of your studio, Why Is the Crow Black, won an international award; this work caught up with the Soviet Union’s films”.’ Yan further explained:

This remark, actually, was not saying that our work was like the Soviet Union’s works [in the aspect of art style] . . . it meant praise . . . The information of this event passed around, and it finally became that the judges granted the award [to Why Is the Crow Black] because they mistakenly regarded it as a Soviet Union animation. (Li, 2012: 2).

Li’s interview gives another version of the Crow Incident, in which Why Is the Crow Black was not misidentified as a Soviet Union animation, and no-one felt they were being humiliated.

Notably, in Li’s interview, Yan mentioned that there were other versions of the Crow Incident, and one of them claims that Why Is the Crow Black won the award due to its similarity to the Soviet Union’s animation. This view is echoed by Tang et al. (2011: 74):

after the film festival in 1956, in the process of transmitting congratulations and foreign media’s comments, many people remembered Why Is the Crow Black because it ‘looked like a Soviet Union’s animation’, and furthermore expansively interpreted this as ‘Chinese animation does not have its own style.’

In short, Why Is the Crow Black being misidentified as a Soviet animation may not be fabricated on false grounds; as Macdonald (2016: 128) suggests, ‘very possibly something did happen at Venice, but there is no textual evidence for this.’

If this story is true, how the Crow Incident has been (re)constructed could be illuminated. One possibility is that some judges may have connected Why Is the Crow Black to the Soviet style (most likely, in an informal conversation), and this was brought back to SAFS after multiple transmissions. In the process, the meaning of this comment had essentially changed due to misinformation. Additionally, Zhang’s record of the Crow Incident was published in 1985, three decades after the 1956 Venice Film Festival. Some scholars believe that individuals use a particular collective context that they are rooted in to remember or represent the past (Halbwachs, 2002: 40); therefore, individuals’ memories are framed by the society that they live in and ‘depend on the “frame” to organize this memory’ (Assmann, 2011: 22). In the 1980s, SAFS experienced a short prosperous period and the title of the ‘Chinese School of Animation’ was proposed. SAFS members continued Te Wei’s idea of the ‘Road to the Minzu Style’ and maintained strong confidence that Chinese meishu films¹⁴ should have their own distinctive style (see Sun, 2020). The belief in the ‘Road to the Minzu Style’ may have framed Zhang’s memory about the Crow Incident.¹⁵

The evaluation of Why Is the Crow Black in the 1950s

Was Why Is the Crow Black criticized as un-national (un-Chinese)?

In the story of the Crow Incident, Why Is the Crow Black is a symbol that represents the imitation of the Soviet style, and the Crow Incident articulates this film’s non-national identity. This view is not groundless, and Why Is the Crow Black does show strong aesthetic features of Soviet Union animation. In early socialist China, the dominant political atmosphere was ‘Learn from the big brother of the Soviet Union [xuexi sulian laodage].’ Therefore, for Chinese animators in the early 1950s, imitating Soviet animation was a reasonable and politically correct choice. As Zhang (2002: 16) writes, ‘early PRC animated films fully reflected Soviet features . . . This imitation peaked at Why Is the Crow Black’. Leyda (1972: 291) also comments, ‘Without being told, one could not know that Why the Crow Is Black (1955) or The Red Flower (1956) was a Chinese film.’ There were criticisms about Why Is the Crow Black’s lack of national style in the internal discussion of SAFS in the 1950s. Jin Xi (1959: 66), the director of The Magic Brush, in his article titled The Development of Chinese Meishu Films, wrote:

Why Is the Crow Black has reached an unprecedented standard in aspects of character design, background, color, and the movements of birds . . . (however) this film ignores the national form . . . all birds, including their gestures, manners of speaking, and singing, are far from Chinese. Anthropomorphization in our films, undoubtedly, should be based on Chinese rather than foreign people. Yet in this film [the anthropomorphic animal characters] basically refer to foreign people . . . its artistic style still lacks independent characteristics and Chinese national styles.

Jin then commented on The Conceited General as ‘a significant event that has important meanings in Chinese animation history’ (p. 66) and ‘has new achievements in the application of national form and artistic style’ (p. 67). Nevertheless, Jin’s article was a chronological review of Chinese animated films in the early 1950s, and Why Is the Crow Black was one of the multiple cases in the learning stage of Chinese animation. Jin Xi never mentioned the Crow Incident nor attempted to establish causality between Why Is the Crow Black and The Conceited General. Some recent researchers argue that Jin was the first person who made a proposal ‘to establish the minzu style of meishu films’ (Liang, 2017: 16); this view actually challenges the Crow narrative that defines Te Wei as the first person who started exploring the minzu style.

Some animators of Why Is the Crow Black, including Pu and Yan, insist that this film is not merely an imitation of the Soviet artworks but it also contains an exploration of the Chinese minzu style. As Yan argues, ‘In fact, this film was pursuing the national style at that time. The dance of the Dai people¹⁶ and the dance of the peacock were national and inherited national traditions; how could we see them as foreign?’ (Zhou and He, 2012: 42). Pu Jiaxiang, on many occasions, strongly argues that a national style was employed in Why Is the Crow Black. For Du (2019: 123–124), Pu’s argument

reflects a preoccupation in Chinese animation with a pure national style that marginalizes and even demonizes the international dimension, a view that continues to prevail. This view makes it shameful for Chinese animators to produce an inauthentic Chinese film ‘contaminated’ by foreign influences.

However, although Pu (2014) has used some sharp words in his fierce contention against the Crow narrative, this article suggests that Pu himself is not as radical as Du describes in terms of rejecting foreign influence. In his book, Pu acknowledges that the SAFS animators learned from Soviet animation due to the major political tendency in the early 1950s. He positively comments that the imitation of the Soviet style was a necessary method for Chinese animators to improve the quality of their works in that particular background of the early 1950s. Pu further points out that this method was also applied in the creation of The Conceited General (p. 34). This is echoed by what Du (2019: 122) writes, ‘In fact, both films were indebted to the Soviet Union for their animation techniques.’ In other words, when producing Why Is the Crow Black, Chinese animation was in the process of transition from the ‘international style’ to the ‘national style’ (Du terminology), so the Chinese–foreign confliction may not be as binary as Du describes. Instead, in this short period, Chinese animators were simultaneously learning from the Soviet style and exploring the national style, which led to some films, including The Conceited General and Why Is the Crow Black, containing features of both styles.

Pu Jiaxiang’s fierce response to Zhang and Gong’s book was, probably, mainly a reaction against the Crow narrative’s repudiation of the animators’ exploration of national style. As Yan describes, ‘to say it [Why Is the Crow Black] is foreign, the creators of this film were very angry, since this repudiated their efforts’ (see Zhou and He, 2012: 42). According to the story of the Crow Incident, Chinese animators had no awareness of exploring their own artistic style. Instead, they blindly imitated the Soviet style until the Crow Incident inspired Te Wei’s self-examination of the total imitation. The Crow narrative highlights Te Wei’s pioneering position in Chinese animation history, yet it unfairly ignores Why Is the Crow Black’s animators’ self-awareness of exploring the minzu style.

Was Why Is the Crow Black seen as a failure of Chinese animation?

The Crow narrative defines and describes Why Is the Crow Black as a ‘negative case due to its alleged Soviet connection’ (Du, 2019: 121). In a number of documents, the Crow Incident makes Chinese animators feel frustrated and humiliated. A negative evaluation to Why Is the Crow Black matches the Crow narrative, as the frustration and humiliation caused by Why Is the Crow Black forced Chinese animators to stop imitating the Soviet style and explore their own artistic style.

However, other records show that at least in the 1950s, Why Is the Crow Black was not seen as a negative case. After the 1956 Venice Film Festival, Why Is the Crow Black won a number of domestic awards. In particular, on 11 April 1957, this film was granted the Third Prize at the Award Ceremony for outstanding films and filmmakers 1949–1955 (organized by the Ministry of Culture of PRC); Qian Jiajun, the director, was granted the Individual Award of Outstanding Films. Later, Qian was received by the leaders of China and the CCP, including Mao Zedong, Zhou Enlai, Zhu De and Deng Xiaoping, on 14 April 1957 (Liu and Bao, 1995: 331; Pu, 2014: 34); this was seen as the ultimate honour for individuals at that time. Besides, after the Venice Film Festival, Why Is the Crow Black was also selected and sent to other international festivals after 1956 (Zhang and Gong, 2010: 101). These honours of Why Is the Crow Black and Qian Jiajun show that this film was seen as an outstanding artwork in the 1950s rather than a negative case. Some SAFS animators also support the view that Why Is the Crow Black was not seen as a failure. Yan recalls in the Li et al. (2012: 66) interview: ‘This film was granted an award [at Venice], everyone was delighted.’ Pu (2014: 28) writes that he never thought that Why Is the Crow Black, as an outstanding piece of artwork, would become a bad example after five decades of the Venice Film Festival.

Therefore, at least in the 1950s, there is no evidence supporting the statement that Why Is the Crow Black was seen as a bad example that brought frustration and humiliation to Chinese animators. In fact, in his (1985) article, Zhang described the Crow Incident as an ‘anecdote’, possibly because Zhang, as an SAFS animator, avoided the use of negative words to describe his colleagues. Sharp descriptions of the Crow Incident come from later publications (after 2004), mostly written by younger authors, to enhance the Crow narrative. We suggest that the recognition of Why Is the Crow Black as a negative example (in the 1950s) results from backward reasoning of the foundation of the Chinese School of Animation (marked by The Conceited General) in the context of the 1980s. Defining Why Is the Crow Black as a bad example supports the necessity, correctness and urgency of the national style; it also highlights Te Wei’s key contribution to the exploration of the minzu style. However, this is unfair to the animators of Why Is the Crow Black, since this evaluation devalues these animators’ efforts before the Crow Incident.

The causality between Why Is the Crow Black and The Conceited General

The chronological relationship between the two films forms the serious questioning about the Crow narrative. According to multiple archives, memoirs and interviews with SAFS members, the project of The Conceited General was set up in precedence over the project of Why Is the Crow Black. According to Historical Archives of Shanghai Film (Vol. 6):

in spring [1955], the meishu film group of Shanghai Film Studio established the production team of The Conceited General . . . Te Wei, the director, proposed the slogan of ‘Exploring the way of national form, knocking the gate of comedy style’. (Liu and Bao, 1995: 330)

Pu (2014: 30) makes the same statement about the chronological sequence of the setup of the two films. Li Baochuan checks Popular Cinema [dazhong dianying]’s¹⁷ reports about the two animated films; it was reported that ‘the first colored animation The Conceited General is on drawing’ on 26 June 1955; later, in October 1955, Why Is the Crow Black was discussed (Li, 2013: 36). These documents support the conclusion that the setup of the General project was no later than the Crow project.

Some SAFS members have given details about the two projects in interviews and publications: after the project of The Conceited General was commenced, Te Wei, the director, fell ill and needed surgery. As a result, the project of Why Is the Crow Black was proposed to achieve the annual production target as China was in the planned economy in the 1950s, and Qian Jiajun was the director of Why Is the Crow Black. In an interview, Yan said:

later a lot of people come to ask me, and I said: ‘You are chronologically wrong, and the preparation of The Conceited General was prior to Why Is the Crow Black.’ I was in charge of the production planning of the meishu film group. I am quite clear about this. (Zhou and He, 2012: 42)

Pu (2014: 21) gave the same story. In an interview, Zhu Ziyin (Qian Jiajun’s wife) and Qian Shanzhu (Qian Jiajun’s daughter) confirmed this narrative:

the director of The Coceited General suddenly fell ill, and this project was shelved. The annual task of animation production could not be completed, and everyone felt anxious. My father stepped in at this difficult moment and directed Why Is the Crow Black; this was his first film after he joined SAFS. He spent only seven months to finish Why Is the Crow Black . . . (Zhu et al., 2013: 178)

These interviews and documents jointly prove The Conceited General project preceded Why Is the Crow Black and explain the reasons for it.

Another piece of evidence against the causality between Why Is the Crow Black and The Conceited General is the date of the Crow Incident. According to HACA’s records, the 17th Venice Film Festival and the 8th Venice International Film Festival for Children were held on 16 August 1956. Even if the Crow Incident did happen, this story would be brought back to SAFS several weeks later, due to the technological and political restrictions of communication in the 1950s.¹⁸ The production of The Conceited General was from 3 January to 5 November 1956 (see Li, 2013: 36), and therefore the Crow Incident could hardly subvert The Conceited General’s artistic ideas and styles that had been confirmed in the pre-production stage.

In 2010, Pu wrote a letter to Zhang Songlin, questioning Zhang’s description of the Crow Incident in Zhang and Gong’s (2010) book.¹⁹ In his letter, Pu pointed out Zhang’s chronological mistake, argued that Why Is the Crow Black was not considered as a negative case, and questioned the story of Why Is the Crow Black being misidentified as a Soviet animation by the international judges. In this letter, Pu (2014: 30) also argued that ‘the slogan is irrelevant to the event that Why Is the Crow Black won the award, especially from the chronological perspective.’ Pu wrote that the slogan was proposed in late autumn 1955; it was the next year that Why Is the Crow Black was screened and allegedly won an award at the Venice Film Festival (p. 269). He further underlined ‘(the slogan of) “Knocking the gate of the comedy style” [qiao xiju fengge zhi men] was specifically proposed for The Conceited General’ (p. 269),²⁰ and this slogan had no causal relationship with Why Is the Crow Black. Zhang returned a letter on 7 November 2010, writing: ‘Your opinion about the section of The Conceited General and Why Is the Crow Black is correct . . . Te Wei’s exploration in the production of The Conceited General is irrelevant to Why Is the Crow Black, and they cannot be seen as causally related’ (p. 274). Though Zhang did not say the Crow Incident did not happen, he conceded that the causality between the two meishu films is false. Zhang promised that he would correct this history in a forthcoming publication (Pu, 2014: 274). However, unfortunately, Zhang passed away due to a sudden cerebral infarction in 2012, and the promised publication had not been finished.

Conclusion

The Crow Incident that seemed to have suddenly appeared in Zhang Songlin’s (1985) article has become the mainstream cognition through repeated citing of scholars after the 2000s. Since SAFS animators, such as Pu and Yan, did not hear about the Crow Incident until around 2010, they were too late to question the story of the Crow Incident. The mainstream had become solidly shaped and the voice of questioning was merely marginalized. Many publications have used the Crow Incident as the trigger for the exploration of minzu style as well as the foundation of the Chinese School of Animation. According to CNKI, there are more than 400 journal articles and post-graduate degree theses that mention the Crow Incident,²¹ and most of them merely describe this event with a few sentences to introduce the Chinese School of Animation. In most publications, Why Is the Crow Black has been turned into a symbol of the total imitation of the Soviet style and, on some occasions, this symbol replaces the film itself. Consequently, the Crow Incident has become a reconstructed history, and it has influenced later research and production practices in the field of Chinese animation.

The Crow Incident, as an historical reconstruction, is fragmental and lacks evidence. It is based on what Huang (2022: 329) called the ‘foreigners-(usually anonymous experts)-said-that’ narrative. This narrative was prevalent in socialist and early post-socialist China; during this period, international communication was restricted, and Chinese people used to believe that the Soviet and Western countries were more advanced; therefore ‘foreign expert(s)’ signified technological and academic authority. By emphasizing the speaker’s identity of a foreign expert, the authority and professionality of a particular opinion were expected to be underlined. This narrative usually hides the exact time, place and context of the discussion, and the foreign expert is generally anonymous and therefore has low credibility and is hard to verify. However, the ‘foreigners-said-that’ narrative may turn informal conversations or rumours into general knowledge or theories. The story of the Crow Incident typically applied this narrative, and the anecdotal story of ‘foreigners said that’ has been turned into a social reality in publications and further developed in repeated citations. In this process, the fragmented information is selected, organized and processed in the framework of nationality.

Megill (2007) lists four ways of denying or evading history (or errors of historical practices): historical nescience (the ignorance or rejection of history); the aesthesis of history (to identify history with beautiful/sublime aesthetic objects); history as tradition (to regard history as being for the promotion of specific groups’ traditions); and history as memory and commemoration (to regard history as being for the promotion of specific groups’ memories, or for honouring our dead). These four kinds of historical errors could be mapped onto the story of the Crow Incident, which helps to explain how and why the historical errors in this story have evolved. According to our textual research in this article, some nescience errors in the story of the Crow Incident were probably caused by (and could be explained by) misinformation and mistranslations in the transcultural, transcontextual and translingual communication process in the socialist era. Others are due to the desire to promote SAFS’s traditions and aesthetic ideas. In the 1980s, SAFS animators wished to restore the brilliance they had enjoyed in the 1950s, yet they were facing fierce challenges from foreign animation. The Crow Incident underlines the necessity, correctness and urgency of the minzu-ization in the 1950s, and it expresses the idea that Chinese animation should be aesthetically distinguished from other countries. This story functioned as an allegory that urges SAFS animators in the 1980s to insist on SAFS’s tradition of ‘the Road of Minzu Style’, rather than learning from US or Japanese animation. Consequently, Why Is the Crow Black, as a representative of imitating foreign style, is shaped as a negative example.

The story of the Crow Incident shows an obvious intention to highlight Te Wei’s contribution to Chinese animation. However, this narrative denies the efforts of minzu-ization made by other Chinese animators, and before The Conceited General, which consequently led to negative critiques of all works produced before the year of the ‘Road to the Minzu Style’ (Wu 2018: 22). Furthermore, the Crow narrative describes the exploration of the minzu style, represented by The Conceited General, as a passive result of external pressure (being misidentified by foreign peers) rather than the result of Chinese animators’ self-driven thinking and exploration. According to the Crow narrative, Chinese animators (including Te Wei) were ‘humiliated by this misidentification [and] . . . felt compelled to seek a national style that would make their films’ Chineseness clear’ (Du, 2019: 16). The Crow narrative renders exploring ‘the Road of Minzu Style’ as ‘introspect in a painful experience’ [tong ding si tong] and ‘brave after feeling ashamed’ [zhi chi er hou yong]. This, unwillingly, denigrates the subjectivity, initiative and self-awareness of Chinese animators, including Te Wei, who was supposed to be shaped as an active and self-awarding herald of exploring the minzu style.

The fact that the Crow Incident is a reconstruction of Chinese animation history in the 1950s under the context of the 1980s has been neglected by many researchers, as they usually discuss the Crow Incident against the background of the 1950s without examining how this story was fabricated and communicated, and how it became the mainstream cognition from the 1980s on. However, this reconstruction is not static and homogenous. Due to the ambiguity and confusion of documented records about the Crow Incident, the truth of this history has become vague, which leaves space for further reconstruction of the Crow Incident. From the 1980s on, the story of the Crow Incident continues to develop in different social contexts. In further studies, the process, contexts, dynamics and influences of the reconstruction of the Crow Incident will no doubt be investigated.

Footnotes

Acknowledgements

The authors appreciate assistance from Dr Wang Bo and Miss Marica Gallina, and the peer reviewer’s contribution to the refining of the abstract.

Declaration of definitive version

The authors confirm that this manuscript is the definitive version of this article.

Declaration of conflicting interests

The authors declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship and publication of this article.

Funding

The authors received no financial support for the research, authorship and publication of this article.

Notes

Author biographies

Huang Jifeng finished his PhD programme at RMIT University in 2015. His research interests cover animation, installation art and communication. Huang is currently working at the College of Humanities and Social Science, Nanjing Forestry University.

Li Baochuan is currently working as an Associate Professor and the Dean of the Animation Department at the College of Creative Media, Hangzhou Normal University. As a scholar and a curator of Chinese animation history and animation culture, Li has published several books about Chinese animation history, and curated exhibitions about Chinese animation documents and cultures. Address: Hangzhou Normal University, Hangzhou 310036, China. [ email: 82005904@qq.com]

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