Representing education in China in the early reform era: The impact of university matriculation on the family and the individual in Father and Son (1986)

During China’s early reform era of the late 1970s and early 1980s, popular film addressed institutional transformation and the effects of change on the lives of ordinary Chinese people. This included transformations in the sphere of education, including the impact of key policies such as the restoration of the university entrance exam. This article investigates the 1986 film Father and Son , a comedy that can be read as a site for dramatizing the ambiguous experience of educational policy change in the 1980s. In Father and Son , while the father in question cherishes the opportunities afforded to his son by new educational policies, the son regards them as a burden and not worthy of serious consideration. This article examines how Father and Son negotiates cultural and generational values around education in the site of the family home. Specifically, it considers how comedic behaviours, expressions and situations are used to represent tension and differing attitudes towards the prospect of university. By taking a case example of popular Chinese comedy, the article offers insights into cinema’s value in bridging official policy and everyday life. It engages with the journal’s theme of advancing Asian cinema studies throughout the world, amid asymmetric political equations, by probing debates about cinema’s representation of education in a comic way during the early reform era, specifically in the 1980s.