bitter 30

I am turning 30 tomorrow. And while I have never really felt or looked my age, the last few days have all been about reflection. Just what have I accomplished in my life? What do I want to do next? What do I want now? Seems like the older you get the less clear your goals and ambitions become; and the more clouded your judgment and decision-making get.

I am turning 30 tomorrow, and there’s a big void in my heart. I don’t have a best friend; I don’t have any really close friends, and it’s near impossible to get anyone to come out to do anything with me. I’ve lived in Vancouver for 19 years and still haven’t found someone I call close. I feel like I don’t belong here. I am a product of immigration, amalgamating cultures, and discrimination. English isn’t my mother tongue and I am not taught to think critically for myself. But when I’m back in Taiwan the locals can tell I am ‘foreign’ just by the way I dress! So I am nowhere and here, stuck in between one homeland and the next.

10 days of working the Vancouver Queer Film Festival have never made me feel so close to being a part of my community yet so lonely. No one besides the staff working at the office knows who I am, because the nature of my job is always behind the scenes. While I enjoy the solitude of my job, I also resent the fact that I remain mostly anonymous. I don’t have a name tag, I don’t have friends, I don’t exist if I don’t show up. I don’t have a QPOC community to which I belong; I don’t have any QPOC friends who shows up for me other times of the year. Once the festival ends I don’t see any of my festival ‘friends’ until the next year. I often volunteer to stay at work later than I need to because I have nothing to come home to, or friends to hang out with if I depart early. Nothing is home except my insanity and the occasional guitar music therapy.

I am turning 30 tomorrow, and I am a queer woman of colour. There. I said it. Checking all the boxes. But that doesn’t make me more memorable than the other white boys on a work shift. No one recognizes or remembers who I am even though we’ve worked together or crossed paths numerous times. I remember who they are, why don’t they remember who I am? Do I have a very forgettable face? Do the things I say not have any weight? Why do I have to keep re-introducing myself? I am practically invisible.

I am turning 30 tomorrow, and I wish I could celebrate with my family. I can’t believe I’ve lived without my dad for 11 years now. Where did the time go? Am I stuck at age 19 from the trauma and shock of losing my father? Would he have been okay with me being into women? Would he have fought with my mom in disagreement over accepting who I am? Would he have been on my side? Would he have defended or disowned me? Would he have shared relationship advice – because that’s all I think about when I encounter difficult situations in relationships? Would he have performed Peking Opera again, just for my amusement? Or maybe we could have worked on a show together? He was definitely the best at giving advice though, and I know that when I turn 30 soon he would have said something wise.

Well, here’s to turning 30: fatherless, friend-less, and hopeless.

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.