Celluloid Comrades: Representations of Male Homosexuality in Contemporary Chinese Cinemas

by Song Hwee Lim

"Without question, Song Hwee Lim has presented us with an exemplar of quality scholarship in the study of contemporary Chinese cinemas. By combining an impressive command of Chinese and Western literary as well as film source materials with a sophisticated mode of analysis and an unassuming argumentative style, he has authored an exhilarating book―one that not only treats cinematic representations of male homosexuality with great sensitivity but also demonstrates what it means to read with critical intelligence and vision." ―Rey Chow, Andrew W. Mellon Professor of the Humanities, Brown University

" Celluloid Comrades is a timely demonstration of the importance of queer studies in the field of transnational Chinese cinemas. Lim dissects gay sexuality in selective Chinese-language films, and vigorously contests commonly accepted critical paradigms and theoretical models. Readers will find a provocative, powerful voice in this new book." ―Sheldon H. Lu, Professor of Comparative Literature, University of California at Davis

Celluloid Comrades offers a cogent analytical introduction to the representation of male homosexuality in Chinese cinemas within the last decade. It posits that representations of male homosexuality in Chinese film have been polyphonic and multifarious, posing a challenge to monolithic and essentialized constructions of both ‘Chineseness’ and ‘homosexuality.’ Given the artistic achievement and popularity of the films discussed here, the position of ‘celluloid comrades’ can no longer be ignored within both transnational Chinese and global queer cinemas. The book also challenges readers to reconceptualize these works in relation to global issues such as homosexuality and gay and lesbian politics, and their interaction with local conditions, agents, and audiences.

Tracing the engendering conditions within the film industries of China, Taiwan, and Hong Kong, Song Hwee Lim argues that the emergence of Chinese cinemas in the international scene since the 1980s created a public sphere in which representations of marginal sexualities could flourish in its interstices. Examining the politics of representation in the age of multiculturalism through debates about the films, Lim calls for a rethinking of the limits and hegemony of gay liberationist discourse prevalent in current scholarship and film criticism. He provides in-depth analyses of key films and auteurs, reading them within contexts as varied as premodern, transgender practice in Chinese theater to postmodern, diasporic forms of sexualities.

Informed by cultural and postcolonial studies and critical theory, this acutely observed and theoretically sophisticated work will be of interest to a wide range of scholars and students as well as general readers looking for a deeper understanding of contemporary Chinese cultural politics, cinematic representations, and queer culture.

Genres: Queer, Film, LGBT, China

364 pages, Paperback

First published September 30, 2006

About the author

Song Hwee Lim is Senior Lecturer in Film Studies at the University of Exeter.

See also http://www.intellectbooks.co.uk/journ...

Reviews

[Reeter · Rating 4 out of 5]

Read on the Internet Achive: https://archive.org/details/celluloid...

Great read for the world film nerd. My experience with gay Chinese cinema pretty much stops at Happy Together and The Wedding Banquet, so it was nice to read about gay rep made by and for Chinese audiences.

I highly recommend it for world cinema nerds, and of course, queer cinema nerds.

[Brandon · Rating 5 out of 5]

Song Hwee Lim's Celluloid Comrades is one of those rare delights: an "academic" text that stimulates rather than bores, providing much-needed historical context and interpretive depth to films that the author himself also clearly enjoys. It reads, in short, like a labor of love. Someone outside the usual debates surrounding "Chineseness" and queerness, so common in Chinese cinema and cultural studies circles, at first might not fully appreciate the subtlety and force of some of Lim's arguments, but they are very good ones on the whole. Like many film lovers, I am prone toward skepticism of those with a tendency to over-interpret filmic texts or violently impose pre-given theories on to cinematic material. To be sure, atypical readings can yield useful insights at times, but unless they "fit" in some way with the structure and history of the films in question the latter too often become strangely superfluous in these intellectual exercises. Happily, Lim is immune to these practices; theory, for him, is a means rather than an end.

As a result, he has little patience with the kinds of serial over-readings such as those that plague Rey Chow's uncharacteristically misguided Lacanian/poststructuralist take on Happy Together (to take just one example). While Lim clearly sympathizes with Chow's desire to avoid the sort of reductive readings that insist that pre-handover Hong Kong films, whatever their content, are in some sense really "about" 1997, Lim patiently and rightly points out that there are ample reasons to continue to read this particular film on a social and political register (its closeups of the main characters' British passports at the beginning, the interplay of Hong Kong and Taiwan as home/image, etc.), without denying the other notable characteristics of the film, such as its apparent celebration of monogamous domesticity and the issues that this raises. He brings similarly incisive and engaged takes to his discussions of East Palace, West Palace; Lanyu; and, perhaps most of all, Tsai Ming-Liang's queer (in every sense of the word) trilogy. (Lim is currently working on a book dealing with the auteur's works.)


I would happily recommend this book to anyone with an interest in Chinese cinemas or queer cinematic representation more broadly. The background information it provides and the introductory discussion of Chinese identity alone make it invaluable, but the additional sections are all wonderful and really brought the films--some of which I watched for the first time while reading Celluloid Comrades--to life, opening up new ways of viewing and thinking about them and the questions they raise.