Farewell My Concubine, Hello Emotional Rollercoaster

Tuesday morning’s screening of Farewell My Concubine was overall a very emotional ordeal for me. The heart-wrenching disciplining scenes of the children were not only stirring up sympathy, they also reminded me of my childhood in Taiwan. My childhood in the capital city, Taipei, meant that competition was fierce. Everyone was pushed by the teachers, parents, and peer-pressure to perform at nothing less than our best at school. If we did not meet expectations, we are almost guaranteed a punishment of some sort -and not only from our parents, but our teachers as well.

See, Taiwan’s education (and much of how the society functions, really) is based on a negation system. Using punishment to deter us from making mistakes or falling short of requirements isn’t uncommon at all. In fact, that is how we learned to thrive in the competitive environment. You are to be nothing but the best (or at least the top three). We count marks on our exams by subtracting the number of wrongs from the would-be perfect score, which I thought was always faster than adding all the rights together, which the teachers here do. So while it was warming to see the kids deal with their unreasonable training and punishment with humour, the odd familiarity also brought forward heart-ache for their loss of innocence and an imposed maturation (but perhaps only in determination and discipline).

Another big reason that I was totally absorbed and invested emotionally in the film was that my dad was a performer of Peking Opera. Or at least I’ve seen pictures of him doing so. I have never actually heard him talk about it -it was in his college days, and I didn’t find out until we were sorting through pictures to put in his memorial slideshow. So for a good chunk of the film when Deiyi and Xiaolou were performing, I was picturing how my dad would’ve looked and sounded like if he was on stage. It didn’t help that I was bawling my eyes out at my missed chance to discuss with him -and especially him!- about this interesting and long-standing art of our culture. Then I shed some more tears for missing him dearly.

It’s going to be hard for me to detach myself from this film emotionally and talk about it logically… especially with a familiarity and a certain sympathy to the two main characters’ childhoods, I’m having a hard time seeing this as a “modern queer” film.

Truth and Dare

sometimes I look at this

and feel that I’m okay with the way I’m living

because I’d like to think that I’m a good liar.

Then I see this

and feel that maybe I’d be far better off speaking the truth…

but right now I can’t see myself doing it.

I can’t bring myself up to even let my voice shake.

My Love Affair with Writing

The difficult part about blogging is that you have to keep it up. Sometimes when life gets in the way and you have no time to sit down for three hours (or more) to write, it’s frustrating. Like the past two weeks. I don’t know why I’m still so busy. I’m only taking 3 classes, one of which is distance ed!!! I guess a stage manager’s life is always hectic though; no time to really relax because you constantly have projects on-the-go. There are a handful of ideas and topics that have come out of yesterday’s class that I’d like to discuss, but they’re still waiting for me in my notebook! The other frustrating thing is that I hate staring at the computer screen for an extended period of time. But to write I have gotten used to typing my thoughts into square boxes like these… so I’ll just have to suck it up and produce coherent posts!

‘Till the next post,

xoxo

A Gendered Culture

I’ve been wanting to take a closer look at gender and identity issues ever since I discovered I might bend the other way. But being in a traditional Chinese AND conservative Christian household has prevented me from doing a lot of things the Bible finds “wrong”. All I really want to do is BE myself and brave the freedom of expression! After spending recent years in “discovery”, my eyes have opened… in a more liberal sense. I have become alarming aware of how gendered my mother is -and frankly, most of the adults in her generation are. The most frustrating part? They don’t realize it at all. The social construct and accepted understanding of what is a female and what is a male have been cemented in their lives that they don’t even question it. They’ve mistaken the gender norm as facts rather than societal expectations and trend. I think gender is fluid; and sex is purely biological. You are determined male or female most prominently by your physical features, and anything else materialistic that we put on top is what we acquire from the society later on.

I remember a while back, there was a news story about a Toronto couple raising their newborn “genderless”. Their two older kids can choose what they want to wear, what toys to play with, and the colours of their belongings. The couple’s choice to raise their kids this way has stirred up a small controversy, and they assure the public that it does not have an ill effect on the children. In fact, “their choice not to openly reveal the children’s sexes made those around them more aware and gave the children more liberties to decide what they wanted for themselves.” And more recently (like last week) Australia introduced a third gender option on passports! This is a big step towards breaking gender stereotypes in society. The binary opposition is so prevalent in society and innate in us (because we are symmetrical beings) that it’s hard to fight against it. We are raised a certain gender, after all, and certain expectations are in place for being an either-or in the binary… so what is the point I’m trying to make if this notion of gender is, indeed, so deeply-rooted in our world? I think a good start would be to educate yourself and those around you about gender. Heck, even I’m not informed enough to lecture…. just thought a change of expectations would be nice.

Another Kind of “Queer”

Somehow the topics of a couple of the courses I’m taking this semester matched nicely. Besides GSWS, I’m also taking FPA 311, which has different topics each semester depending on who the instructor is. I was excited to hear Christine Stoddard is back as a sessional and is lecturing on “Feeling Queer: Affect and Contemporary Culture”. I had her as an instructor for FPA 111, which is the equivalent of introduction to art history. It was one of the most memorable classes, as it was the first time I was introduced to many big artist names which became familiar throughout the years at art school.

So after having gone to GSWS on Tuesday, I went to FPA311 with a predetermined definition of “queer” in my head… But that only confused things more. In 311, the term “queer” is not limited to just describing sexual orientation. It encompasses anything that means “odd”, “off”, or “strange”. It is due to this definition that so many people rejects the term. “Queer” isn’t “abnormal” (I use these terms loosely because I believe they are objective. In this case, “normal” means “accepted social norms”). So this label shouldn’t be used to describe anyone, no matter their orientation, because it could be interpreted as derogatory and demeaning.

But in the contemporary sense, the term expands to cover more grounds. And this is where I get tripped up… what is queer contemporary art? Why? How does it make us feel? That is what FPA311 is about. We’ll continue to examine and discuss this feeling of queer and the “affect” it brings… So I better screw my head on straight, and make sure I don’t confuse myself in these two classes!

Queer Cinema

I was an hour late to my very early class on the first day of classes. The class, GSWS (Gender Studies and Women Studies) 431: Local Sex on Global Screen, started at 8:30am. It is a class where we’ll be examining “the globalization of sexual cultures and the emergence of queer cinema and screen culture outside of North America and Europe. We will analyze the impact of globalization on local expression of sexual practice and gender identity. In turn, we will also explore the various ways in which these mediatized expressions reframe our understanding of gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender issues from postcolonial, transcultural, and comparative perspectives.” (from the syllabus)

Sounds intriguing, right? As an introduction, the instructor got us thinking and writing down our answers for “what is queer cinema?”. I think to define that we have to first define the term “queer”. What is queer? What does it mean? Is it just an umbrella term for anyone who identifies as anything other than heterosexuals? Or is it more generic, used to mean “odd”,  “off”, or “strange”? For the purposes of this class, I think it is safe to say that “queer” is anything outside the gender binary norms. So, any films presenting ideas and notions outside the gender binary norms would be deemed as “queer cinema”.

I see it as a genre rather than a standalone style of filmmaking. It’s sort of like what my friend says about gay marriage. It’s what it is – marriage, and simply that! It’s a union between two people who happen to be of the same sex. We don’t take a gay shower, eat our gay breakfast, put on our gay clothes and go to our gay jobs! So why the term “gay marriage”!? (Well, I have an inkling… there’s this thing called the constitution. And in the constitution it states that a marriage is a union between two persons of the opposite sex. So “gay” was added in front of marriage to help the general public distinguish what was in question). Same could be applied to “queer cinema” in my opinion. It is just cinema, like any other style, genre, or conventions of filmmaking. It may contain themes, ideas, issues concerning or pertaining to the interest of the queer community, and could be made for or by people who identifies as queer. So I say “queer cinema” is a genre, such as western, horror, slapstick, etc.