One Child Nation is a participatory, expository documentary in which one of the directors, Nanfu Wang, actively is a part of the narrative as she explores how the one-child policy affected ordinary people and daily life from 1979 through 2015. When I saw the preview for this movie, I knew that I would see it. Whenever people criticize people for having too many children and suggest forced sterilization, I reflexively respond, “We don’t want to be like China,” although it is too late because as Wang points out at the end of the documentary, we already are.
One Child Nation is extremely relatable because it is primarily about Wang confronting her disillusionment as an adult, a woman, a mother and a proud Chinese person with being misled to conflate her love of country with infallibility of the government and the party, both of which were complicit in the criminalization of nature and ordinary people that morphed into financial exploitation and inflicting psychological damage upon countless people that hitherto has only been exposed with respect to the Catholic Church and the Magdalene asylum or laundries. Regardless of language, race, religion or country, the common thread is physical domination and condemnation of women’s bodies, murder to abuse of children by institutions and the inequitable burden of such policies placed on the poorest people’s shoulders.
One Child Nation reminded me of Three Identical Strangers in its unresolved implications. Even though the policy has ended, the effects are still being felt, and no lessons were learned as reflected by changed behavior. A new policy exists, but the techniques for enforcing this new policy are chillingly the same: propaganda, ordinary people within families and local government complying unquestioningly with the government’s edicts; repression of journalists and freedom of speech; no concept or outrage of the violation of a human being’s rights to her own body; no punishment for the financial exploitation and separation of children from their families. The unlearned lesson is that the collective’s domination over an individual’s life is wrong, especially because societal concepts of right and wrong change over time. Though Wang never invokes Godwin’s law, as each interviewee says that he or she had no choice and cede individual responsibility to a “strict” government, it is hard not to be reminded of the Nazis’ eugenics program. The most chilling, but unintended aspect of her condemnation is when someone threatens Wang’s mother if she attempts to interview women forced to have abortions. A once friendly reunion turns vicious and menacing. We never see Wang interview one of these women. Is it because of that threat, the women don’t want to talk or Wang couldn’t find them? We don’t know. People are deft at expressing their disapproval without directing anger at those that demanded their obedience. This documentary is an effort to stem back the lack of institutional memory by trying to remind people of the existence of this policy.
One Child Nation is one of the few documentaries that while clearly taking sides and is advocating a specific side of the argument, it is not necessarily a preach to the choir documentary and could potentially change hearts and minds. I was brought up fundamentalist, and this documentary is everything that pro lifers fear about abortion, family planning and any form of birth control being a quick hop, skip and jump to sterilization. When you hear conservative Christians terrified at the idea of international law and government having control over children, they aren’t railing against children being protected, but government seizing and separating parents from children, which is rich considering some of these same people support Presidon’t’s policy of separating undocumented immigrant parents from their children yet in the past remained silent on the forced sterilization of women of color on US soil (though they are very vocal against the abortion as a racist surreptitious way to kill black babies). Oh, the cognitive dissonance. This documentary could attract both women right’s activists and pro lifers horrified at the effect of the one-child policy, but pro lifers will be shocked and hopefully their empathy for and perspective of pro choicers will change after seeing a movie that is so vocally condemning of abortion in this particular context. Those viewers will probably bend themselves into pretzels to avoid Wang’s conclusion and distinguish America’s laws from China’s, but the point will be made.
One Child Nation can be graphic. There are images of discarded fetuses on trash heaps. It is a strong documentary in spite of its flaws. It is obvious that the directors are very emotionally involved in this story, and at times, it gets repetitive, and lacks a certain distance so it does not occur to them to address certain issues although they come tantalizingly close. For instance, why not give men vasectomies after they have one to two children depending on the region? Also because this documentary was filmed without official government sanction, we never get the perspective of those that created the policy, just the boots on the ground. It actually speaks to the widespread impact of this policy that Wang can make a documentary using mostly personal connections, and it can still adequately depict quotidian life in a repressive regime.
Even though I normally roll my eyes at performative motherhood, i.e. when women say now that they are a mother, they can truly understand an issue that was only theoretical before, I thought that the image of Wang as a mother, an investigative filmmaker and chronicler in One Child Nation was effective and as refreshing as images of mother legislators. In male dominated fields such as filmmaking, I actually think that highlighting motherhood is useful because it no longer can be used as an obstacle to a career, but a part of the biography. Men being fathers and having careers are not something considered as mutually exclusive or a detriment, but for women, it still is, but in addition, Wang is a mother, putting herself and her baby in possible danger to uncover a story. I love that a woman is unquestionably occupying a normally masculine roles without any criticism being directed at her for putting herself or her baby in danger. Is that progress or has it not occurred to anyone that it could be dangerous? Either way, I’ll take it.
I highly recommend that you see One Child Nation. Even though it is flawed because it is a subject so close to the filmmakers’ heart, it also provides a critical perspective of the immediate past and a sheep mentality to an unethical imposition by a fascist government over the individual. Unfortunately some Americans may not realize how germane these lessons are for us.
