Gender in Chinese Cinemas

This entry in the British Film Institute-sponsored international centenary celebration of cinema -- in which noted directors presented a film exemplifying their country or region's cinema and its origins -- represents China, or rather one aspect of the country's large body of work as seen through the eyes of Hong Kong filmmaker Stanley Kwan.

Kwan uses the film as not only a means to examine the role of homosexuality and transgender issues in the films of China, Hong Kong and Taiwan, but also to look at the evolving roles of family and cultural attitudes in Chinese society. Kwan begins the film on a personal note by recounting a number of early and innocent encounters with men that led to his fascination and love of them.

As a film-buff Kwan was fascinated by the almost exclusively male world of Hong Kong action cinema and by the almost homoerotic (in his opinion) bonds formed by the heroes. To further his theories, Kwan also cites the widespread use of swords, knives and other phallic symbols in the story. From there Kwan moves to films in which women portray men and men portray women (as in Farewell My Concubine), ending the film on a more personal note.

Keywords:

camp (Susan Sontag)

cinema and collective consciousness

film and identity (Stuart Hall)

archaeology of knowledge (M. Foucault)

histories (not History)

sex/gender nexus

difference(s), sameness

queering Chinese cinema

political cultural poltics and inter-Chinese Cinema(s)

fatherhood/ Law of the Father, Oedipus Complex, 

psychoanalysis and film studies

mirror stage, the Symbolic

-----------------------------------------
A Transcription by Steven Feldman of the Opening Fifteen Minutes of
Yang ± Yin: Gender in Chinese Cinema,
A Film to Celebrate 100 Years of Cinema by Stanley Kwan:

[Title:] Chapter 1: ABSENCE OF FATHER (1)

VOICE-OVER BY STANLEY KWAN: When my father took me to a bath house, it was the first time I'd seen so many male bodies. These shots from my film, Actress, evoke that memory. My father died when I was fourteen. My memories of him are mostly memories of longing for his love, because I always felt that he preferred his daughters to his sons. We were so poor when I was young that I had to sleep with him, head to toe, on a sofa, and I recall touching him while pretending to be asleep. I also vividly recall the smell of his body. This picture is one of the few that I have of him. He didn't like to be photographed.
[Title:] Chapter 2: FEMININE AND MASCULINE FACE AND BODY
V.O. (VOICE-OVER): Most of the films I've directed have centered on women. They include Red Rose White Rose, Actress, Rouge, and Love Unto Waste. Why do I make so many films about women? Does it mean that I'm rather feminine myself? I'm sure that it does have something to do with the women in my family. As the eldest son, I became the official head of the family at the age of fourteen. The others' lives suddenly came second to mine. My sisters had to leave school and start work to help pay for my education, and my mother became a resilient woman who worked tirelessly to hold the family together and provide for her children. As a result, I felt less like a surrogate father than like a child. The women of the family supported and protected me.

Like everyone in Hong Kong, I grew up fascinated by martial arts films. The genre was always popular, but it peaked in the early 70's when Bruce Lee came back from America and starred in four kung fu films. His premature death in 1973 was shattering. It really was as if a legend had died. [footage of Bruce pummelling Chuck Norris in Way of the Dragon]
V.O.: For me, the appeal of the genre was less the kung fu or the swordfighting than the spectacle of male bodies in action, very often half naked. The master of the genre was Zhang Cher, who discovered stars like Wong Yu, Di Long, David Chiang, and Fu Shung. Actually, Bruce Lee wasn't really my type. I preferred Wong Yu, an ex-swimming champion from Guang Jo. Unfortunately, I can only show these images from his films. Shaw Brothers, the company which produced them in the 60's, wouldn't allow us to use any clips.

Zhang Cher was a Shaw Brothers contract director at that time. Virtually all of his films focused on men and male relationships. CHANG CHEH: At that time, Chinese cinema was unique in the world. No other film industry gave top billing to women. Women stars in western films still come second today. Back then, even Ingrid Bergman got second billing. I felt the Chinese emphasis on women stars was strange, so I set out to make very masculine films. It was one way to move Chinese cinema forward. 'Martial chivalry' films were an old Chinese genre. They showed swordplay for its own sake. But King Hu and I set out to make more of fight scenes. We tried to make the fights express ideas and themes. Realism didn't come into it. We explored our fantasies. [an amiable, brotherly clip from The Slaughter in Xian, 1990]
V.O.: One of the action stars who became popular in Zhang Che's films was Di Long.
TI LUNG: Men relate to each other much as they relate to women. I agree with Chang Cheh about this. Men have their own charisma, their own way of moving, that can be attractive, too.
PEGGY CHIAO, CRITIC: Those Chang Cheh films are all about male bonding. He worships the male body. All those muscles, all that nudity. It's all very sexual. I think it's his vision of male paradise! Very interesting.
CHANG CHEH: It's my reading of a Chinese tradition, nothing else. No Chinese reader thinks of homosexuals when he reads a book like The Three Kingdoms. Nobody thinks the heroes of Water Margin are gay.
V.O.: There's a strong emphasis on phallic weaponry, bodily penetration and even disembowelment in many of Zhang's films. I asked him how much he was aware of the symbolic undercurrents.
CHANG CHEH: Freud tells us that everything has sexual origins. He finds sexual symbolism everywhere. Swords, knives, even guns can be male sexual symbols.
[A foreboding clip from The Slaughter in Xian starts.]
CHANG CHEH: I don't know if it's true or not.
[As the Slaughter in Xian clip continues, a man is graphically impaled by being lowered onto a two-foot-long spike.]
V.O.: I wondered what considerations Zhang had in mind when he cast his action heroes, especially when he introduced newcomers, like Wong Yu.
CHANG CHEH: Wang Yu and Ti Lung were traditional hero types, tall and well-built. The exceptional one was David Chiang. I chose him because I liked him, and I liked the fact that he wasn't a traditional hero. Men in old Chinese films were weak, book-reading types. The swordplay genre gave us the classical hero type: tall, well-built, square torso. David is nothing like that, so I took a risk with him. There's an attractive sense of evil about him, too.

When I began making films, I wanted to do something new, so I tried to see some old traditions in a fresh way. The traditional Chinese hero has no truck with women. He's much more concerned with his male friends. The classical archetype is the novel The Three Kingdoms. Its heroes are the brothers Liu, Guan and Zhang. They're the epitome of what I wanted to show in my films.

[two clips from A Better Tomorrow]
V.O.: John Woo was Zhang Cher's assistant director on several Shaw Brothers films in the early 70's. He started directing kung fu films himself soon after, but the films which eventually led him to Hollywood were his gangster thrillers of the mid-80's: A Better Tomorrow, The Killer, and A Bullet in the Head.

Many critics have seen links between his films and Zhang Che's, especially in their celebrations of male bonding. I asked Zhang Che if he sees the connection himself. CHANG CHEH: I doubt I had any direct influence on John Woo. Maybe we have similar tastes. Maybe that's why people compare our films. He's obsessed with love/hate relationships and inner turmoil. That's why his A Better Tomorrow resembles my Blood Brothers [a film John Woo worked on]. The parallels are obvious.
V.O.: In The Killer, John Woo shows the intense bond which develops between a charismatic hitman and the cop who sets out to catch him. Scenes like this one, in which the cop helps the hitman to extract a bullet from his arm seem consciously homoerotic. I asked John Woo if he saw it that way himself.
JOHN WOO, DIRECTOR: Any homo-erotic feelings in this are unconscious. There may well be some, I'm not sure. I just set out to express emotion very directly.

Some things in The Killer couldn't be said verbally. Their mutual admiration is expressed visually. The scene in which Danny Lee helps remove the bullet from Chow Yun-Fat's arm: I didn't conceive of it in sexual terms. I just saw them as people who'd got beyond the 'first date' stage.

Whenever I deal with such romantic relationships -- whether the characters are men or women -- it always comes out strongly in the films. I don't mind how the public takes such scenes or how they react to the film as a whole. Once the film is finished, it no longer belongs to me; my original feelings no longer matter. Viewers will have their own feelings. [clip from The Killer, in which Danny Lee says, "His eyes are so intense. Easy to empathize. Eyes full of passion."]
V.O.: I wondered if John Woo would feel able to include scenes like these in the Hollywood films he makes now.
JOHN WOO: To make films here like the ones I made in Hong Kong -- films on male bonding or 'martial chivalry' -- I'd have to work outside the mainstream. Otherwise, no way.