City on Fire: Comments by Lou Proyect

Michael Hoover hoov at freenet.tlh.fl.us
Sat Sep 25 05:27:29 PDT 1999



> Doug wrote:
> >What can I say, I don't see many action films. So I don't know if the
> >guns are as phallicized in most action movies as they seemed in this
> >one. Or maybe I should say their phalluses were gun-i-cized.
>
> HK films look (to us) more over-the-top and comically so than
> run-of-the-mill Hollywood stuff, because cultural differences (from our
> viewpoints) are added to self-conscious parody
> The continuum between homosocial desire and homoeroticism may be
> self-consciously (if mutedly) built in a film's texture,
> Mostly, it is not explicitly acknowledged with obviously sexual gestures
> or dialogues (or at least could not be in the past); that's where guns come
> in handy.
> Yoshie

Re. over the top: Julian Stringer, while not rejecting knowingly playful and self-reflexive readings of Woo as a 'master blaster, suggests that they are matters of taste that restore textual power to white western audiences at the very time when white people in HK are losing their economic/social privilege.

Re: homoeroticism: Berenice Reynaud, Steve Rubio & Jilian Sandel (latter two, a couple of Doug's Bad Subjects buddies?) are among those who have emphasized Woo's 'homoerotic charge.' Others, while not discounting such, suggest that western men don't touch or become physically intimate with one another outside of romantic relationship (Mikel Koven), that the east doesn't always produce western conventions of masculinity & femininity (Tony Williams) and that homosexuality in the east exists mostly as a non-issue rather than a topic to cogitate over (Patrick Tan). Sandel has indicated that Woo informed her that, irrespective of his filmic intentions, he doesn't oppose homoerotic interpretations of his work. Elsewhere, Woo has pointed out that viewers can construe his films in myriad ways.

As for Hong Kong itself, discrimination against lesbians and gays is not illegal despite the fact that a statute prohibiting homosexual acts was abolished in 1991. And while the social climate is still not liberal, gay culture became visible in the arts and nightlife during the run-up to the handover, and the gay community now views itself as part of a movement for human and political rights.

Cinematically, gays in HK films have mostly served as comic relief or as vehicles for 'normalizing' hetero-identity. Thoughtful exceptions include Wong Yak-sun's *The Twin Bracelets*, a scathing look at the oppression experience by two women desiring to express their love for one another in a culture of arranged marriages and Shu Kei's *A Queer Story*, which examines life of a closeted middle- aged man torn between his male lover and pressure to marry his woman- friend. Also, check out Jacob Cheung's *Intimates* (scripted by Anita Tong) which weaves issues ranging from arranged marriage, female sexual celibacy, and self-abortion to generational difference, male sexual exploitation, and lesbian companionship into its story and films of Stanley Kwan and Ching Siu-tung who not only deconstruct ways that cinema 'naturalizes' socially constructed masculine fantasies and ideologies but also problematize essentialism that Judith Mayne calls 'a heterosexual division of the universe.'

Wong Kar-wai maintains that his *Happy Together* is not a gay film, while amomg some gay audiences, the movie is perceived as a statement about gay relationships as dysfunctional, suggesting homophobia. Denise Tse Shang-tang, while taking criticisms of Wong seriously - political and social issues are not his priority, he has no sense of obligation to be fair to gay community of which he is not a part, his hetero-male privilege allows him to sidestep issues important to queer Asian communities - concludes that the film's importance lies in having brought explicitly gay sexuality to the screen. Michael Hoover



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