China Love

[osprey_archer]

The 2019 Heartland Film Festival has begun! This year, I kicked off my viewing with China Love, a documentary about pre-wedding photography shoots in China. A few months before the wedding, many young couples in China have an extremely fancy photo shoot together. They get all dressed up in their wedding clothes (often with multiple changes of gowns and tuxedos) and get their photographs taken not only at local landmarks, but in photography studios that have set up all sorts of romantic dreamscape tableaux, so the couple can get their photo taken, say, embracing in a fairy tale forest, or kissing underwater.

It sounded analogous to an American engagement shoot to me, although much fancier, so it surprised me that the director seemed to think western viewers would find the practice so alien. However, she’s from Australia, perhaps engagement photo shoots are not yet rampant there.

Otherwise, I enjoyed the documentary. It’s arguing that these photographs are encapsulating a dream, not only for the young couple - perhaps not even primarily for the young couples - but also for their parents, many of whom got married during the Cultural Revolution, when even suggesting something as sumptuously capitalistic as a pre-wedding photoshoot would have gotten them in loads of trouble. Many of these older couples have only a single photograph to commemorate their weddings: a small black-and-white snapshot of the young couple in what look like normal street clothes.

So these expensive pre-wedding photography sessions aren’t just capitalist excess: they’re helping to heal a cultural wound. There’s a particularly fascinating section about a small volunteer organization that throws simple pre-wedding (well, actually decades-post-wedding) shoots for elderly couples, so they get to enjoy a little bit of the pomp and celebration they were not allowed to have when they got married.

Another twist on the pre-wedding photo shoot: the mother of one of the profiled brides threw a pre-wedding photo shoot for herself just a few years ago - even though obviously her own wedding was a long time before that, and she’s now divorced. She didn’t bother with a groom at all, just got shots of herself as the beautiful bride.

Isn’t that fascinating? Obviously a single documentary can’t cover everything, yet I wished that it had lingered on this phenomenon a little longer. Was this a very unusual thing for this woman to have done, or do lots of older divorced or widowed or single women have such pictures taken? What does it mean to get pre-wedding photos done when you’ve only got one half of a couple?

If nothing else, it suggests that my engagement-shoot analogy is perhaps more misleading than not, because I find it hard to imagine an American woman in a similar position getting a bunch of romantically beautiful photographs taken of herself and calling them an engagement shoot. An engagement photoshoot doesn’t have so much cultural meaning in America that you can utterly detach it from a wedding, but it seems that a pre-wedding shoot in China does.

Comments

[asakiyume]

I feel like there's an opportunity to offer a differently named fancy-dress shoot for people like that one mother of the bride--a "beautiful dreams" shoot, say, where the woman gets to dress in all kinds of lovely dresses but without even the name wedding in it. I mean maybe marriage is still a beautiful dream for some women who have been through a divorce and who have a grown daughter of their own, but I bet there are even more who'd like to enjoy a fancy photo shoot without the wedding tie-in.

I'm glad those older couples are doing pre-wedding shoots, though--I do think it sounds like cultural healing.

[osprey_archer]

Clearly there's a market niche just waiting to be filled!

It's strikes me that most people like to have an excuse for their big fancy photo shoots, though. In the US people get photo shoots for high school graduation, for engagements, on their wedding day, sometimes even for first kid... but I don't think I've seen anyone getting a fancy photo shoot just because they feel like it. Maybe it feels too self-indulgent/selfish to do that when there's no milestone to mark.

[asakiyume]

I think you're right about needing an excuse (though I'm wondering how the excuse of a pre-wedding shoot works for an older divorced woman? I mean I guess the "I never got one of these so I'll have it now" thing works... but if it were me I think that would feel like too thin a connection to the thing--but that' probably a personal judgment call.)

Maybe someone could offer them at significant birthdays? (Say each new decade?) For the older married couples, literally a "you missed out but it's not too late" thing works, but for divorced folks or decidedly single folks, the birthday model might work.

[osprey_archer]

There's probably a photographer somewhere right now trying to get this idea off the ground. Just gotta round up enough influencers on Instagram!

There is also a part of me that is like "But do we really NEED to create more occasions for people to have big fancy photoshoots? It's conspicuous consumption at its most conspicuous and useless!" Sure it can be fun, but it can also be extra pressure.

[kore]

One person I know had family portraits taken every year on the parents' anniversary, I think, and did it consistently for decades, so they had a really nice record of time passing that wasn't super lavish. Birthday or anniversary documentation could be nice in general!

[asakiyume]

That's really nice--a record like that over time is really special.

[kore]

I think I've seen some for women who want to look really sexy in a studio setting, altho those are usually done for SOs or boyfriends. Or people with media presences will get fashion shoots to run alongside articles, or regularly get headshots. But those are work related.

[sartorias]

Fascinating!

[osprey_archer]

I saw the movie description and I thought "I just HAVE to see this one." And indeed, it was fascinating!

[troisoiseaux]

I find it hard to imagine an American woman in a similar position getting a bunch of romantically beautiful photographs taken of herself and calling them an engagement shoot

I know I've seen pictures floating around the internet of women who took engagement- or birth announcement-style photos to celebrate getting a new job or finishing their thesis! I don't know if that's fully analogous, though, because there's an explicit sense of parody in it even as it's celebrating very real accomplishments? They sure are fun, though! :D

[osprey_archer]

I would love to see a finished-my-thesis! photoshoot. Hopefully it involves the person gazing down at a printed-out copy of the thesis as if it were a baby. But that just underlines the sense of parody that you mention, doesn't it?

[thawrecka]

Engagement photo shoots are definitely not yet rampant in Australia!

I've definitely read articles about single woman getting bridal photoshoots in other parts of the world (Japan, mostly) but now I'm also curious if it's a big thing in China or just an unusual thing that specific woman did. Either way, this sounds like a really interesting documentary.

[osprey_archer]

That's like the biggest unanswered question of the documentary. And I know that a documentary can't answer every possible question, but at the same time, I would have been waaaaay more interested in exploring that than discussing the business model of the biggest pre-wedding photo studio in Shanghai.

[silverusagi]

How interesting! I'll have to watch this!

[osprey_archer]

It was super interesting!

[ancientreader]

This movie sounds fascinating -- thanks for the extensive notes. I don't know that it would have drawn my attention on the basis of a bare-bones description.

I wonder, though, about the elaborate engagement photo shoots and the pressure those exert in their turn. I haven't been to a lot of weddings, but the stories I hear and read of how much money people in the US spend on the shower and the hen party and the wedding and the honeymoon and the this and the that and the misery they put themselves through to make everything ~perfect~ ... IDK. Did you get any sense that the young Chinese couples were overshooting the mark in that way, or was it still mostly joyous pleasure for them?

[osprey_archer]

My impression from the documentary is that the brides are often under so much pressure in other areas of their lives (if they're not married by 28, women are considered "leftovers"; if a bride isn't pregnant within a year, both families may start freaking out) that they feel comparatively chill about the photoshoot. They've landed the man! The hard part is over for now! They can take some fun pictures of the two of them sitting on a throne of flowers and not worry about the next hard part (getting pregnant) for a little while yet.