A Must-Read on Transnational Chinese Cinema and Global Queer Film
Challenging Singular Perceptions of Chinese Cinema and Male Homosexual Identity
Providing Critical Analysis of Representations of Male Homosexuality in Contemporary Chinese Cinema
Since the 1980s, cinema from China, Taiwan, and Hong Kong has gained increasing prominence on the global film stage, allowing marginalised gender identities to emerge in the public sphere. In this book, author Lam Song-fai examines the politics of representation in these films, reflecting on the boundaries of queer discourse within contemporary film studies. He offers in-depth analyses of significant films and filmmakers, including Ang Lee’s The Wedding Banquet, Chen Kaige’s Farewell My Concubine, Zhang Yuan’s East Palace, West Palace, and Wong Kar-wai’s Happy Together. The discussion extends from Tsai Ming-liang’s queer cinematic poetics and Stanley Kwan’s aesthetic of gay-themed films to transgressive performances in pre-modern Chinese opera and the exploration of sexuality and identity in postmodern diasporic contexts.
This book integrates critical theory, cultural studies, and postcolonial thought with sharp observation and nuanced theoretical insights. Whether you are a general reader, a student of cultural studies, or a scholar of film studies, this work offers valuable perspectives on contemporary Chinese cultural politics, cinematic representation, and queer culture.
Author: Song Hwee Lim
Translator: Chan Shuen
Editor: Enoch Yee-lok Tam
Proofread: Lina Xie
Art & Design︰So Lai Ping and Hsu Wai Lun@mmmmor studio
Edition: First edition, December 2021
ISBN: 978-988-74161-8-0
DOI: https://doi.org/10.70783/celluloidcomrades
Page: 336
Price: HK$148
Language: Complex Chinese
Content
Writing, in Times of Peril: Preface to the Chinese Edition
Introduction
1 Screening Homosexuality
2 The Burden of Representation: Ang Lee’s The Wedding Banquet
3 The Use of Femininity: Chen Kaige’s Farewell My Concubine and Zhang Yuan’s East Palace, West Palace
4 Travelling Sexualities: Wong Kar-wai’s Happy Together
5 Confessing Desire: The Poetics of Tsai Mingliang’s Queer Cinema
6 Fragments of Darkness: Stanley Kwan as Gay Director
Conclusion
Works Cited
About the author
Song Hwee Lim
Professor in the Department of Cultural and Religious Studies at The Chinese University of Hong Kong. His Chinese publications include the monograph Tsai Ming-liang and a Cinema of Slownes and the co-edited volume Parallel Texts: Intellectual Debates in Cultural Studies.
About the translator
Chan Shuen
Pen name: Rain Chan. A doctoral candidate in the Literature Division of the Department of English at National Taiwan Normal University. She is also a part-time lecturer, film critic, and translator. Her translations include Leftover Women: The Resurgence of Gender Inequality in China (2015), This is London: Life and Death in the World City (2018), Gaga Feminism (2019), and The Art of Drag (2021). She specialises in academic translation, particularly in the field of gender studies.
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Recommendations (in order of Chinese name strokes)
Celluloid Comrades re-examines the emergence of queer male figures on the big screen in 1990s Chinese-language cinema with a sharp critical lens. It challenges essentialist identity politics and the hegemonic interpretations of queer liberation discourses. Instead, it weaves together perspectives on national and local contexts, global cultural economies, geopolitics, visual aesthetics, and the politics of representation. By mapping out the conditions and mechanisms of activation, negotiation, and practice, this book disrupts fixed notions of homosexuality within Chinese-language contexts and opens new avenues for understanding.
──Wang Chun Chi, Executive Director of Taiwan Film and Audiovisual Institute
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
Song Hwee Lim’s book might well be a love affair—or a revolution: penetrating, tumultuous, transformative, birthing new histories, imaginations, and fates. Chinese celluloid wraps itself around queerness, opening not only an invitation to read but also a gentle, sharp, and deliberate call to watch alongside him, to keep penetrating the established power relations. Because the effort must continue.
──Chow Yiu-fai, Professor, Department of Humanities and Creative Writing, Hong Kong Baptist University; Lyricist
Praises and Reviews
Most significantly, Lim demonstrates remarkable caution and self-awareness in his application of contemporary theories and concepts. For instance, he highlights the material premises implicit in “diaspora” discourses. While emphasising the importance of class identity, he also critiques a certain tendency towards “leftist cultural romanticism” within academia. Particularly insightful is his critical reflection on current LGBTQ+/queer discourses, such as his observations on homophobic perceptions and the subversive value of transgression.