City on Fire: Comments by Lou Proyect

[Michael Hoover]

> >Oh, I laughed between squirms too. The violence was so extraordinary
> >it was hard to know how to take it. The gender politics of the movie
> >were quite strange - there were only two women of any consequence in
> >the cast, and both were near-mute ciphers; 
> >Doug
>
>Some HK films have a quite
>interesting sex/gender politics of representation, however:  Wong Kar-wai's
>_Chungking Express_ and _Happy Together_, for instance.  And how about
>Peter Chan's _He's a Woman, She's a Man_ and _Who's the Woman, Who's the
>Man_?  And check out Brigitte Lin's performance in Ronny Yu's _The Bride
>with White Hair_.
>Yoshie

Also, check out Brigitte Lin in *Bride with White Hair 2*, *Swordsman 2*,
and *Swordsman 3*.  Lin's characters blur boundaries and representations,
simultaneously expressing what Barbara Creed calls 'perverse masculine
desire' for the collapse of gendered borders and male fear of becoming
woman - 'the ultimate scenarios of powerlessness.'

And various films with Michelle Yeoh whose ability to deliver more than
a few swift and sharp kicks spawned a subgenre of action-heroine flicks.
In *Wing Chun* (based on real-life s/hero Yim Wing-chun) Yeoh's character
learns martial arts in order to escape an arranged marriage.  She is
mistakenly identified as a man because of her male dress and is forced to
endure incessant sexist comments.  The bad guy in the film's final battle
laces his speech with comments about sex and power: "Not everyone can tame
a wild horse.  I'll give you a ride."  Wing-chun's superior fighting skills,
however reduce him to a pre-pubescent boy.   Michael Hoover