While there are no burnings at the stake before mass audiences, the unleashed force of fiery public opinion creates a similar setting of fear, notoriety, and shame. White-collar worker Ye Lanqiu (Gao Yuanyuan) finds her life turned upside-down overnight as her name and face are mercilessly slandered on the web. Set in our contemporary Internet-based society, Chen's latest film depicts media sensationalism, urban loneliness, and the grievances of a rapidly developing society. Like many developed 21st century Chinese cities, the film's urban environment features both the fruits of technological connectivity as well as the sinister underbelly of living your life online.

For many citizens in today's world, an online profile can be an extension of one's daily life. Direct interactions can be supplemented through connecting on the internet - you can discover one's favorite music, foods, films and sports with just the click of the mouse. There's probably room here to learn more about the person in question, and use that information to enhance your relationship and enrich peer-to-peer interaction. But for Ye things go completely in the other way. After being diagnosed with advanced lymphatic cancer at the beginning of the film, the secretary to a high-profile business tycoon makes a scene in public. Her actions are understandable, for a diligent young woman suddenly informed of her failing health isn't expected to retain politeness of a normal functioning human being.



Unfortunately the society she lives in leaps at the sight of anything that stands out from the grind of a daily routine: Ye refuses to allow an elderly man her seat on public transportation. Such an instance is rather uncommon in Chinese urban environments, given the cultural understanding that caring for elders is of utmost importance, and yet Ye is dazed by her medical condition and thus appears to be a rude and snobby member of the upperclass stratum. Coincidentally, an intern reporter for the news channel Dragon TV Yang Jiaqi (Wang Luodan) happens to be on the same bus. Eager to come off as an important contributor to her position, Yang does what every other onlooker could have done but decided it wasn't worth it: pull out her smartphone and furtively video record the scene.

This action that captures the incriminating evidence begins the online cascade. Yang hurriedly brings what she hopes will be her big break to her boss Chen Ruoxi (Yao Chen), who herself is a young ambitious woman managing many editors and interns, hoping to impress her supervisor and rise through the ranks of her hierarchical media corporation. She identifies certain qualities of the video that can translate into relevant social commentary: today's society is losing its focus on human interactions; elderly folk are becoming increasingly marginalized; the upper middle-class are too narrowly concerned with their person livelihoods and forget those of their fellow city dwellers. The quick news story with the original video recording is an explosive hit, and it doesn't take long before the sensation travels to those who personally know Ye.

The secretary is hoping to take a couple-week sick leave in order to let her reality fully sink in and find the money for her expensive medical treatment. Her boss is Shen Liushu (Wang Xueqi) has always harbored a soft spot for his secretary, although it is more of a desire to get in bed with her than anything else. Ye is unable to articulate herself properly, choking on tears instead of mustering the courage and belief that she needs time off in order to deal with cancer. Enter another coincidence, where at that moment Shen's wife Mo Xiaoyu (Chen Hong) walks into their private office meeting, and seeing the tear-eyed secretary uncomfortably wrapped in the tycoon's arms, interprets the scene in a completely different way. Jealousy ensues, and hours later things only escalate when both tycoon and wife watch the evening news spit out details of Ye's daring and scandalous public behavior.

Here is where the online world intimately connects with the personal. Ordinary citizens just like Ye are suddenly made aware of the secretary's spontaneous slip-up. Their paths would likely have never crossed her own, and yet through the media, Ye's identity and personality are narrowed down to one single signifier: her apparent ignorance at social norms and unwillingness to offer her seat to an older man in need. Yet this is such a poor representative of Ye's character: her time with Shen's company and accomplishments are only partial indicators of her composed and dedicated worldview. She lives alone in modest surroundings to simply make a living in an honest way. Other administrative staff to Shen gossip in hushed tones that the tycoon clearly has a favorite, and yet acknowledge that Ye wholly deserves what praise she receives from her boss because she goes above and beyond in her work. Too rapidly do these whispers turn inconceivably nasty, as the news story gets aired and colleagues start referring to Ye as "the woman on the bus."

Perhaps it is because her mind is stunned by the news of her cancer, but Ye is the last one to discover how her image has been completely slandered online. She doesn't go looking for it, and only finds out when those around her finally break the news to her. The way in which her story suddenly becomes the most shared item in a matter of hours is a social phenomenon that many are of course still trying to explain. What really makes compelling material - what are the criteria that distinguish interesting stories from the truly viral? Indeed Ye's situation breaks the barrier that endless marketing directors and brand strategists identify as the major obstacle: the huge leap between the viral and everything else.

Going back to Chen and Yang at Dragon TV, their decision to emphasize social commentary is key. Arguably the choice to simply air the video without attaching some significance to Chinese viewers would have triggered a very different reaction: people would have shook their heads and murmured their disagreement, and then moved on. The messages of social degradation and decreasing standards of public etiquette strike a completely different chord. Ye's behavior takes a completely different note, because when framed in Yang's suggested manner, the secretary's actions link much more intimately with the rest of the population at large. And the implication that somehow Ye is representing a widespread dysfunctional element within society is much darker, much more relevant to media consumers. They don't like the idea of inner contamination when it comes to them personally.



Importantly, Chen and Yang are not depicted as malicious sensationalists preying on the weak. The structure in which they operate in clearly tolerates nothing less than the truly eye-catching. Before Ye's diagnosis, Yang's previous story pitches at Dragon TV are rejected on grounds that they hold little relevancy to contemporary social matters - things like small foreign scuffles and news bites will be read yet not retained, picked up and then discarded. Yang is therefore pushed to identify something more 'meaningful' and relevant, and of course Chen is in an equally rough position. Prior to airing the story, Chen actually has her doubts concerning the ethics of such publication, yet Yang reassures the intern that it's the guaranteed way to make one's mark in the company, since getting a long-term position is only possible with "a major story like this with your name on it." Both Chen and Yang are not inhuman media sharks, but rather going along with how the system operates so that they themselves aren't chewed up.

These structural realities are ways of showing that no one is the antagonist in the film, not even the sleazy tycoon Shen, who too finds his privileged life constantly shaken by the far-reaching effects of the internet, where nothing online is too private. Ye is traced to her workplace; those aforementioned administrative staff? They play their part in the viral stream, latching and then passing on the content after adding their own momentum. Even their seemingly insignificant online comments translate in a big way, for they allow the meticulous media personnel to figure out where Ye works and that she works for Shen. Hence director Chen's message is clear: the money and prestige really don't matter much, as the wrong statement or photo or two minutes of footage are enough to ruin everything overnight.

Today social media in general tends to get a mixed reaction. Networks like RenRen - the mainland Chinese equivalent of Facebook - along with microblogging sites such as Sina Weibo allow ordinary folk to express their opinions online, as long as sensitive issues in politics or religion or human rights are not directly addressed. The social cohesion of the online sphere can translate into truly overwhelming phenomena when you have the world's most populous nation having their say on the internet. Take the 2012 Summer Olympic Games in London, particularly the track event starring Liu Xiang for the Men's 110m Hurtles. He raised the expectations of so many during his stunning gold medal performance at the 2004 games, yet did not participate in the final race on home turf Beijing in 2008 due to injury. When a similar ending took place in London, the online reaction was staggering: nearly 20 million messages containing Liu's name surfaced in just five minutes after the event had aired.

Such a reaction only confirms what Chen's Ye has to endure in his 2012 film. Although some may point out its hyperbolic arc, the eager participation in exploiting the viral content does have some grounds. As mentioned earlier, there is no straight-up antagonist in the film, and indeed in the tech-savvy Chinese populace there aren't too many out there who truly want to destroy someone's life through an online epidemic. Yet Ye is caught within the explosive momentum of the world wide web, and though social media in China media is good for more than celebrity gossip and rampant pictures of cats, netizens do play their part in consuming the media and deciding to deem it worthy of passing it along. They probably don't realize what it could build up to, nor are they terribly invested - until the next big story takes shape in the following days, and the next phase of the viral storm starts to build. Chen's concluding scenes in his film interestingly also involve media - does this give online transmission a redemptive quality in addition to its unstable form, or is it more cynical, where the only possible solution is along the very same lines that caused the disaster?