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This is Queer ART!!
This Director, writers and actors responsible for East Palace, West Palace (1996) perfectly dramatise what it means to be queer, what it means to not just confront but to understand masculinity as a gay man, and its also a treatise on exactly how much joy, authenticity and humanity masculinity strips from men.
Beautiful, artistic, violent, poignant and hopeful all describe this pathbreaking film, said to be the first mainstream Chinese production that is explicit about same-sex struggles - both within and against society and family, but also the most painful and bitter struggle that takes place within oneself.
One of the most striking scenes is A’Lan’s recounting to Officer Xiao Shi of his first time with another man, when he discovered masculinity and what it was like to be ‘the girl having sex with the boy’. This cognitive distortion that is gender performance of masculinity, far more than his sexuality, is what defines and distorts his relationship with sexual desire and his desperate pursuit of love with other men on these blighted terms.
One thing East Palace, West Palace is *not* about is “authoritarian Chinese” state repression or some kind of uniquely Chinese way of doing down the gays or any of the knee jerk McCarthyist insufferable western review points that infest this space 🙄. We know this, because we can picture the same exact scenes of cruising, police harassment and entrapment, as well as the internalisation of harmful, high risk community practices in every single country on the planet even today - including in countries with legal provision for same-sex marriage and other formal rights-based policies.
I also highly recommend this LetterBox review that delves into the film’s main gender politics of how being sexually desired but having to access sexual pleasure through that gendered prism corrupts our understanding of intimacy and ‘love’: https://letterboxd.com/kariso/film/east-palace-west-palace/
The tenderness, the brutality, the honesty with which he confesses to how much he wants - no, needs to give himself to masculine power has shaped A’Lan’s whole life, frustrated his happiness and cemented his constant loneliness. His collision with Police Officer Xiao Shi is therefore no chance meeting for *either man* and that coming together of one closeted and in-denial, and the other fatalistic but resigned in acceptance of a future of thrilling self-abnegation, is ultimately a potentially life changing event for both men.
Bravo to this queer team of artists!
Beautiful, artistic, violent, poignant and hopeful all describe this pathbreaking film, said to be the first mainstream Chinese production that is explicit about same-sex struggles - both within and against society and family, but also the most painful and bitter struggle that takes place within oneself.
One of the most striking scenes is A’Lan’s recounting to Officer Xiao Shi of his first time with another man, when he discovered masculinity and what it was like to be ‘the girl having sex with the boy’. This cognitive distortion that is gender performance of masculinity, far more than his sexuality, is what defines and distorts his relationship with sexual desire and his desperate pursuit of love with other men on these blighted terms.
One thing East Palace, West Palace is *not* about is “authoritarian Chinese” state repression or some kind of uniquely Chinese way of doing down the gays or any of the knee jerk McCarthyist insufferable western review points that infest this space 🙄. We know this, because we can picture the same exact scenes of cruising, police harassment and entrapment, as well as the internalisation of harmful, high risk community practices in every single country on the planet even today - including in countries with legal provision for same-sex marriage and other formal rights-based policies.
I also highly recommend this LetterBox review that delves into the film’s main gender politics of how being sexually desired but having to access sexual pleasure through that gendered prism corrupts our understanding of intimacy and ‘love’: https://letterboxd.com/kariso/film/east-palace-west-palace/
The tenderness, the brutality, the honesty with which he confesses to how much he wants - no, needs to give himself to masculine power has shaped A’Lan’s whole life, frustrated his happiness and cemented his constant loneliness. His collision with Police Officer Xiao Shi is therefore no chance meeting for *either man* and that coming together of one closeted and in-denial, and the other fatalistic but resigned in acceptance of a future of thrilling self-abnegation, is ultimately a potentially life changing event for both men.
Bravo to this queer team of artists!
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