Against The Hype

Photopost: Lust, Caution and Mahjong

Colin Low — Sun, 28 Feb 2010 18:17:33 +0000

I kickstarted this blog on the fifteenth day of the last Chinese New Year with a review of the delightful Oriental-themed Kung Fu Panda. Today, on this blog’s first lunisolar anniversary, I have mahjong on the brain, having played many bouts of it in the earlier days of this festive season.

To mark the occasion, let’s take a closer look at one of Lust, Caution’s most crucial scenes, an exemplar of how the movie uses mahjong to encode meanings, whether among its characters or to the audience. Here, we are treated to the mutual seduction of the two leads, Mrs Mai (Tang Wei) and Mr Yi (Tony Leung), as well as Mrs Yi’s canny reactions to the same.

Prior to the game at hand, Mrs Mai was caught in the rain as she entered the Yi residence, and found herself sheltered under Mr Yi’s umbrella, and offered his handkerchief. It is in the ensuing scene that he plays his first and only game of mahjong in the movie.

At a telling juncture of this game, Mrs Yi claims her husband’s discarded tile with a 碰 pèng (to form a set of three identical tiles), just as Mrs Mai is about to claim it with a 吃 chī (to form a set of three consecutive tiles):

As there are only four of each tile, the 碰 pèng takes precedence, allowing Mrs Yi to thwart Mrs Mai’s ascent to victory. Now that Mrs Yi has claimed three of the one tile that Mrs Mai needs, it is highly unlikely that Mrs Mai will be able to complete that set. This is especially since one can only claim discarded tiles using 吃 chī from the player on one’s left, and Mr Yi has already been alerted that she needs the 七筒 qītǒng tile, thus being able to withhold from discarding that tile if he has it in his hand. Stepping away from the narrative, we might say that Mrs Yi is claiming possession over her husband, in the face of the potential seductress.

So what does Mr Yi do? He discards the same tile again.

Even Mrs Mai is a little stunned by this (or pretends to be) before she claims his discarded tile. With his implied complicity, she now boldly feigns for Mrs Yi to call her when Mr Yi is free to visit her tailor, taking out her notebook and pen. Mrs Yi replies, “Mrs Mai, I already have your phone number.”

It’s a call of Mrs Mai’s bluff, but Joan Chen cleverly subdues Mrs Yi’s voice, and then drops her eyes as she discards her tile. In other words, Mrs Mai hasn’t fooled Mrs Yi, but the latter makes no fuss. Triumphant, Mrs Mai now claims Mrs Yi’s discarded tile with a 碰 pèng, and sallies on with her plan, hastily scribbling the rest of her “un-needed” phone number before claiming Mrs Yi’s tile:

We have now entered the last round of this game. Mr Yi makes his move, then bends to his right to reach for a snack. Mrs Mai’s phone number is conspicuously in view, and as he looks at it—

“Ah, does this mean I’ve won?” asks Mrs Mai. He looks up to find that she has.

The fourth player, Mrs Xiao, topples Mr Yi’s tiles to check that he has been legitimately discarding tiles to form a good hand, not simply feeding Mrs Mai her winning tiles, and finds that she is unable to accuse him of any foul play (Mr Yi is smarter than that):

Mrs Yi, to Mrs Mai: “You seem to have a fair bit of luck today.” As she says this, she throws a knowing glance at her husband. Not only does this line of hers accuse Mr Yi of having a hand in Mrs Mai’s “luck”, it also non-diegetically refers to Mrs Mai’s larger game of ensnaring Mr Yi. To that accusation, Mr Yi smiles back, his mouth full of snack.

In the next scene, Mrs Mai will receive a call…

I don’t know how many of Lust, Caution’s western critics were familiar with the nuances of mahjong when they saw the film, or if they even managed to get those nuances without any prior knowledge of the game. How do you feel about this scene?

WALL·E vs Spirit

Colin Low — Fri, 29 Jan 2010 07:15:01 +0000

In my WALL·E review, I noted this complaint:

Usually, Pixar wraps its keen observations of human foibles around the plight of their victims: neglected toys in Toy Story, unappreciated superheroes in The Incredibles, maltreated marine life in Finding Nemo, and so forth. But WALL·E’s own abandonment never grows into an issue against the humans here…

So what exactly was I expecting from Pixar? I wouldn’t have known, of all things, that the webcomic XKCD would provide the answer:

Randall Munroe, XKCD’s author, writes: “On January 26th, 2213 days into its mission, NASA declared Spirit a ’stationary research station’, expected to operational for several more months until the dust buildup on its solar panels forces a final shutdown.”

“Crying” in Mulholland Drive

Colin Low — Thu, 21 Jan 2010 17:23:38 +0000

I haven’t yet parsed (nor could I possibly) all of the mysteries and wonders of David Lynch’s Mulholland Drive after my first enraptured viewing, but how hypnotic is that scene in Club Silencio where Rebekah Del Rio sings “Llorando”, her a capella Spanish cover of Roy Orbison’s “Crying”? Her clear and tremulous voice, that creased forehead and weathered face, captured close-up over a dark background, echo more powerfully as a naked embodiment of desire than almost any musical number across the cinematic decade that followed. (And what are musical numbers meant to be but embodiments of desire?) The scene is wondrous in its simplicity, cutting between close-ups of Del Rio, weeping for a lost love, and of Naomi Watts and Laura Harring, weeping for beauty.

Mulholland Drive sustains its mystery by baring its heart in scenes like this one or Watts’ fabled audition, even when it complicates them with the futile threat of being illusory. What illusion? When Del Rio collapses as her voice plays on, or onlookers clap to Watts’ tear-choked breaths, we aren’t disappointed that “it’s all a sham”—because we remember. And so the magic persists: beyond death, beyond reality.

Tweeting the Movies

Colin Low — Fri, 15 Jan 2010 04:34:53 +0000

Here are my Twitter posts on some of the movies I caught in the past year:

District 9: Bracing as a quasi-documentary on alien immigrants, and as a horror film on unwanted transformations; opaque as an action flick.

Double Indemnity: I just don’t get classic actresses playing hysterics. c.f. Leigh in A Streetcar Named Desire, Hepburn in Long Day’s Journey into Night

Fighting: A formula film without the formula’s best parts: the sweat-soaked anticipation, the thrill of the win, or, y’know, the actual fighting.

Funny Girl: Nearly a revue meant to showcase Streisand’s talents at belting and rapid-fire line delivery; Streisand redefines stardom.

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince: Potter fatigue has caught up to me; all of J.K. Rowling’s missed dramatic opportunities keep thwacking me in the face.

Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade: Sturdy pulp movie, with stars (Ford, Connery, Phoenix) that knew they were stars, and how to act as stars.

Katong Fugue: How is it that celluloid pianos so readily channel their player’s inner desires? (c.f. The Piano)

Moon: “Thoughtful scifi” for beginners: promising premise, predictable plotting.

Paper Heart: Shades of When Harry Met Sally, with clever, disciplined use of the handheld trope.

Paranormal Activity: Oscillates like Julie & Julia between its annoying and gratifying plots, but with demons (actual v boyfriend) not cooks

Public Enemies: Retreads Bonnie and Clyde, laced with the irony that even America’s Most Wanted doesn’t beat its citizens’ self-absorption.

Ratatouille: Anyone (who can reconstruct whole recipes from scratch with just a whiff) can cook.

Silkwood proves that horror movies are scarier when they feel like a part of life, especially one you haven’t the means to escape.

Taken: dooming teenagers worldwide to clampdowns on travel by their paranoid parents, who believe that kidnappers lie at every foreign turn.

There Will Be Blood score is such a keeper: each track is flavorful and distinctive! If it didn’t fit the images, that’s the movie’s fault.

Up: Apart from the vignettes of lifelong marriage… eurgh. Eurgh. Pixar at its most infantile.

The Wedding Banquet: Queer domesticity warms my soft heart.

West Side Story: (Romeo + Juliet’s plot) – (Shakespeare’s poetry) = Awful book scenes. Rita Moreno sets her scene ablaze; other songs nowhere as fiery.

You Can Count on Me: Exactly what the title says.

A Toast to AgainstTheHype.com!

Colin Low — Wed, 06 Jan 2010 08:14:52 +0000

I’ve moved! My old site name, TinyEpiphanies.com, was a holdover from my younger days when I needed a general label to hold forth on anything I wanted. I’ve since learnt that my favourite writing for this site involves railing against the excessive hype plastered on nearly every awards contender nowadays, and leveling a more nuanced critique of its glories and missteps.

Hence: Against The Hype.

Please update your links and bookmarks to AgainstTheHype.com! For feed readers, please update your feed to http://www.againstthehype.com/feed/. Here’s to a great new year!

A Toast to Singapore Film!

Colin Low — Sat, 19 Dec 2009 22:24:06 +0000

I have joined the writing team at SINdie, short for Singapore Independent Films Only, which I think amply covers the scope of the blog. “Independent”, though, is pretty redundant at this point, since we’re long past the short-lived post-war era where Singapore had a thriving studio film industry. For my debut reviews, I attended a night screening of 26 short films from aspiring local filmmakers at the Nanyang Technological University’s School of Art, Design and Media, though I had to bow out after sixteen films to catch a public bus home (not to mention that a consecutive run of about five films before I left made a good case for leaving).

Here’s a snippet from my favourite piece of the lot, a joint review of four of the shorts:

While SINdie’s regular policy is to give each film its own post, I’ve packaged together these four films, which span three languages (English, Mandarin, Tamil*), because they suggest a regrettable tendency for local filmmakers to receive their storytelling and scoring influences from charity show montages or social awareness ads.

Sure, After Skool, Shifting Feet, Father and Ananthi differ in the precision of their cinematography, editing and makeup, which are especially strong and steady in those last two films. But they’re all prone to breaking out the “touching” melodies at key moments, and in all their stories, one character commits an unfeeling transgression against another, only to have a later turnaround scene that casts this character in a less stonyhearted light:

After Skool: A bunch of bullies beats a girl bloody (seriously, she’s like marinara) for having an old auntie’s photo in her pendant, only to have one of them soften after she picks up the fallen pendant, realising its significance as she sits by the unconscious girl’s bedside**.

Shifting Feet: A guy pooh-poohs his girlfriend’s dancing aspirations, only to join her in a waltz after her extended ballet scene (and boy, is it extended).

While SINdie’s regular policy is to give each film its own post, I’ve packaged together these four films, which span three languages (English, Mandarin, Tamil), because they suggest a regrettable tendency for local filmmakers to receive their storytelling and scoring influences from charity show montages or social awareness ads.

Sure, After Skool, Shifting Feet, Father and Ananthi differ in the precision of their cinematography, editing and makeup, which are especially strong and steady in those last two films. But they’re all prone to breaking out the “touching” melodies at key moments, and in all their stories, one character commits an unfeeling transgression against another, only to have a later turnaround scene that casts this character in a less stonyhearted light:

After Skool: A bunch of bullies beats a girl bloody (seriously, she’s like marinara) for having an old auntie’s photo in her pendant, only to have one of them soften after she picks up the fallen pendant, realising its significance as she sits by the unconscious girl’s bedside… (Full review)

It’s great at SINdie: not only am I already getting a much better feel of local film in just my first two assigned screenings, we’re also the only Singaporean blog to focus explicitly on homegrown films, which means that the filmmakers themselves often look to our reviews for encouragement and critique (though, given my hard-assed expectations of formal incisiveness, they might often find more of the latter from me).

I’m here to serve!

A Toast to Chicago!

Colin Low — Thu, 17 Dec 2009 08:00:41 +0000

I haven’t posted in a month, and a lot of things have happened to me since then: among others, I’ve joined a film writing team, started learning Japanese, and programmed cherished movies for my friends. I’ll get to some of these as the days roll by, but none, none of them can top…

… not understanding why Sally said the story of her life hadn’t started yet…

… because mine feels like it’s already begun.

Thirty-three years later, here I come!

“God save Illinois.”

Top Movies of the Decade

Colin Low — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 23:45:36 +0000

Unlike most critics, I don’t get to watch a whole slew of movies as they are released. I have the luxury, though, of knowing critics whose tastes dovetail with mine enough that I tend to watch good movies (or at least interesting ones) whenever I rent them. So while most critics are now gearing up to write their personal Top 100 lists for this decade’s movies, I’ll be taking up the opposite challenge of watching all the movies listed by the critics I trust most, and writing one-liner comments on each. Beginning with Tim Robey of the Telegraph, and adding other critics as they post their lists, I’ll slowly make my way through their recommendations and rank them by my own tastes. To start:

Movies I’ve seen so far from these lists (ranked in descending order):

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (‘04): A patchwork quilt of relationship truths and clever scifi, culminating in the wisest romantic insight since Annie Hall
The Incredibles (‘04): Deft, rocket-paced flexing of superheroes into crises of identity and family (full review)
Erin Brockovich (‘00): Finally, a star vehicle that fully capitalises on Julia Roberts’ prickly edges
Julia (‘08): You won’t find a more sober and disciplined director-actor pair playing so drunk, desperate and out-of-control
Birth (‘04): Nicole Kidman thrives in close-ups and in being profoundly disturbed; this movie indulges her
The Bourne Supremacy (‘04): Whip-smart, breakneck spy thriller that sustains Jason Bourne’s clear-headed urgency while suffused with the pain of his loss
The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (‘01): Epic worldcrafting, with actors and designers attuned to the demands of old-school myth
In the Mood for Love (‘00): Aestheticised within an inch of its life, which fits brilliantly its tale of yearning and suffocation in ’60s Hong Kong
Before Sunset (‘04): Sadness and self-absorption jostle in this narrow Parisian sequel to the gloriously expansive and romantic predecessor
Synecdoche, New York (‘08): A heartfelt meditation on self-centredness and ageing; relies on your capacity for deadpan humor, sadsack-watching and between-the-lines editing
Kill Bill Vol 1 (‘03): Candy-coloured pop fantasia of actresses and Japanese action movies, with a drop in mid-film momentum from Uma’s ineptness with bimbo humour
The Hurt Locker (‘09): More realistic, tense sequences of warfare than you’ll find elsewhere, though the soldiers teeter a bit towards broad enigma
There Will Be Blood (‘07): Fiery tempests wrought from the earth’s depths, Jonny Greenwood’s alien strings, and Daniel Day-Lewis’ oil baron. But things can get un-illuminatingly loud
Memento (‘00): Gimmicky collage of noirish scenes, blank-slate grieving and emotional manipulations held fast by a punchy existential twist
Sideways (‘04): Depends on your mileage for sadsacks, especially when they’re insulated by narrative perks, e.g. sex with the luminous Virginia Madsen
Adaptation (‘02): Depends on your mileage for sadsacks, especially when they’re insulated by narrative perks, e.g. being fictional
No Country for Old Men (‘07): Cleaves too easily into standalone scenes of well-edited tension and recycled caricature-humour to truly earn its mopey “bleak” ending
King Kong (‘05): Fanboy-wank remake bloated with CGI, wrapped around a cross-species romantic core that should have ventured beyond mere gestures at empathy
Mysterious Skin (‘04): Alternates between its boring and its exploitative plots, though Joseph Gordon-Levitt’s hustler gets a few emotionally raw/tender encounters
Hunger (‘08): I’m tired of arthouse exploitation as an excuse for male nudity, or vice versa; hurling shit-stained walls and clichéd police brutality at me doesn’t help

(The movies I have yet to see, or don’t remember enough to write about, can be found after the jump.)

Unseen movies from Tim Robey’s list (ranked in ascending order):

100. Dogville (‘03)
99. A.I.: Artificial Intelligence (‘01)
98. Tropical Malady (‘04)
97. Monster (‘03)
96. The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada (‘05)
95. Atanarjuat, the Fast Runner (‘01)
94. Last Resort (‘00)
93. Sugar (‘08)
92. In this World (‘02)
91. The Last Victory (‘04)
90. Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead (‘07)
87. A Time for Drunken Horses (‘00)
86. Sympathy for Mr Vengeance (‘02)
85. The Fountain (‘06)
84. Gerry (‘02)
83. White Material (‘09)
81. Frozen Land (‘05)
80. The King of Kong (‘07)
79. Johnny Mad Dog (‘08)
77. Les petites vacances (‘06)
76. Abouna (‘02)
75. We Own the Night (‘07)
74. School of Rock (‘03)
73. The Night of the Sunflowers (‘06)
72. Yella (‘07)
71. Red Road (‘06)
70. Downfall (‘04)
69. Summer Hours (‘08)
68. Deep Water (‘06)
67. Secret Sunshine (‘07)
66. 13 Lakes (‘04)
65. Requiem (‘06)
64. Bright Star (‘09)
63. Uzak (‘02)
62. Capote (‘05)
60. Modern Life (‘08)
59. Nationale 7 (‘00)
58. The Corporation (‘03)
56. When the Levees Broke (‘06)
55. I ♥ Huckabees (‘04)
53. The Wrestler (‘08)
52. Lady Chatterley (‘06)
51. The Fall (‘06)
50. Bus 174 (‘04)
49. The Circle (‘00)
48. Adam & Paul (‘04)
47. Y tu mamá también (‘01)

46. Kings and Queen (‘04)
45. Couscous (‘07)
44. The Company (‘03)
43. Punch-Drunk Love (‘02)
40. The Son (‘02)
39. Spring, Summer, Autumn, Winter… and Spring (‘03)
38. The Holy Girl (‘04)
37. Solaris (‘02)
34. Los Angeles Plays Itself (‘03)
33. The Sun (‘05)
31. Songs from the Second Floor (‘00)
30. Amores perros (‘00)
29. Far From Heaven (‘02)
28. Code Unknown (‘00)
27. Donnie Darko (‘01)
25. Morvern Callar (‘02)
24. What Time is it There? (‘01)
23. Talk to Her (‘02)
22. The House of Mirth (‘00)
21. Eureka (‘00)
20. I’m Not There (‘07)
19. Our Daily Bread (‘05)
17. Spider (‘02)
15. A Prophet (‘09)
14. 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days (‘07)
13. L’emploi du temps (‘01)
12. Black Sun (‘05)
11. The Piano Teacher (‘01)
9. Junebug (‘05)
8. INLAND EMPIRE (‘06)
7. Yi Yi (‘00)
6. demonlover (‘02)
5. The New World (‘05)
3. The Death of Mr Lazarescu (‘05)
2. Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World (‘03)
1. Mulholland Dr. (‘01)

Unseen movies from the Skandies Top 20 list (ranked in descending order):

1. Dogville (‘03)
4. Mulholland Dr. (‘01)
6. The New World (‘05)
8. 25th Hour (‘02)
9. Yi Yi (‘00)
12. Silent Light (‘07)
14. Werckmeister Harmonies (‘00)
15. Irreversible (‘02)
16. Zodiac (‘07)
17. Ghost World (‘01)
18. The Man Who Wasn’t There (‘01)

19. Trouble Every Day (‘01)
20. Gerry (‘03)

Review: (500) Days of Summer

Colin Low — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 23:59:13 +0000

Despite the title, (500) Days of Summer is not about a sunny romance, as the narrator is quick to warn you. “This is not a love story,” he intones, and he’s probably referring to the routine heartbreak in movies that accompanies any belief in love. But he’s also right about the relationship at this movie’s core not being about love. See, there are two kinds of romantic comedies in this world: the ones that divide people into Men and Women, and the ones that don’t. (500) Days of Summer hastily identifies itself as one of the former, in a kitschy montage that narrates how Joseph Gordon-Levitt (the Man) believes in love, and how Zooey Deschanel (the Woman) turns heads wherever she goes. How are you supposed to react to a montage like that? He’s the guy of this movie, and she’s the girl: they’re going to fall in love.

Except they don’t. From Day (1) that Deschanel’s character waltzes into mopey office-cubicle hipster Tom’s life, his eyes follow her in slow-mo as it dawns upon him that she’s the girl of his dreams. Days later, when she identifies The Smiths through his headphones and gushes about the band, that’s confirms it. So when she keeps not asking him out, and later tells him that she isn’t looking for anything serious, it floats right past Tom’s rose-tinted sensors even as we’re yelling in exasperation at the movie screen, and things go predictably downhill from there. (500) Days of Summer has been dubbed an anti-rom-com, but it deserves that label not because the two leads don’t end up together, but because it’s an unromantic study of infatuation at its most blinkered.

Once we have shorn the misleading connotations off the title, (500) Days of Summer is literally just about the five hundred days that Tom has known the Deschanel character. (Guess her name.) Well, no, not literally—the movie skips over the days when nothing happens, leaving something resembling a “greatest hits” compilation of Tom and Summer’s relationship. It also alternates back and forth along the timeline, steadily converging on the actual breakup. Some critics have noted that this is an accurate representation of the fragmented remembrance of romances past. More cynically, though, it’s a structure that well suits first-time feature director Marc Webb, whose experience lies in music videos.

Conspiring with the writers, cinematographer and editor, Webb orchestrates a fistful of engaging, standalone scenes with visual wit and tasteful music choices. A heartbroken Tom sits in a cinema, watching himself in famous Ingmar Bergman scenes. A split-screen of a party scene plays out the difference between Tom’s expections and reality. A documentary about finding love cuts from one familiar talking head to another, until it alights on Tom’s sullen, confused face. Part of the fun of these scenes, and Gordon-Levitt’s performance in them, derives from how they make light of his self-serious acting persona. Not that Gordon-Levitt is a stranger to comedies, being an alum from TV sitcom 3rd Rock from the Sun and teen comedy 10 Things I Hate About You, but his acting revival in the past decade has been largely marked by such dour roles as his child-abused gay hustler in Mysterious Skin. The presence of numerals in (500) Days of Summer’s title might have been an unintended cue to Gordon-Levitt’s return here to his comic roots, but we still never expect a “serious thespian” to be game enough to re-enact that perennial scene where the guy, having gotten laid the night before, prances through the streets in afterglow and a silly grin. Except Gordon-Levitt does go there. And he dances. And interacts with animated birds. And sings.

Zooey Deschanel gets to show off that last item, more ingratiatingly than Gordon-Levitt, but that’s about it: the movie mires itself in Tom’s headspace, leaving Summer an unfortunate casualty of that narrowed perspective. We never get to know much about her as a person, though as an ideal we get plenty—nowhere more obvious as when we get a fractured montage of various close-ups on Summer, brandished once as a listing of what Tom loves about her, and then later as a listing of what he hates. The movie tends to be clever like this at Summer’s expense, but in the straight-up conversation scenes, Deschanel acquits Summer from the two extremes of angel and demon by being blunt about her character’s desire for no commitment. The approach makes Summer feel more real, mingling her honesty and frostiness, and it’s these moments that clearly signal Tom’s pathetic blindness to who she is. Ultimately, though, Summer’s under-writtenness impairs Deschanel’s battle against both her past typecasting as a fantasy girlfriend and her own gleaming irises and bubble cheeks, which give her the look of a porcelain doll. The script doesn’t help much either, trapping Summer into a caricature of defensive frigidity with an early throwaway line about her parents’ divorce, which I don’t think any conceivable actress can recuperate.

To its credit, the movie takes a few playful gambles on our understanding of Tom and Summer. One arrives at the centre of the movie’s converging timeline, and turns on our knowledge of The Graduate. If you haven’t seen that 1967 movie starring Dustin Hoffman and Katharine Ross, you might not get (500) Days of Summer’s reference to how Tom misreads its ending as romantic, while Summer bawls her eyes out as the movie affirms her belief that love can’t be the antidote to not knowing where one’s life is headed. The other gamble comes after this revelation, when Tom and Summer return to an old hangout and find that they’ve swapped their perspectives on love and fate. Deschanel shines best here, since her character’s offscreen actions have matured her into a happier, more wistful person than before, and the framing, costume, lighting, script and performance rally around Summer’s newfound faith. The movie, however, loses its nerve over Tom’s corresponding loss of faith. Unlike with Summer, Tom’s apparent change in perspective doesn’t signal any growth on his part, except where the script can find a place for its politically correct platitudes. Just a few scenes prior, Gordon-Levitt already had to contend with a cringeworthy monologue against the evils of capitalism, and a hokey plot turn about embracing one’s dreams. But it gets worse from there, as the movie finally rewards him for his infatuation by providing him with a new love interest, and punishing us for our time by providing us with a horrific final twist. (Guess her name.)

Words of Devotion and the Appeal of Queer Couples

Colin Low — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 15:59:18 +0000

The things movies make you do: I watched the college romance Words of Devotion (Ai no Kotodama) recently and it was the first Japanese movie I brazenly loved, despite its glaring formal flaws; now I’m brute-learning the characters of hiragana, one of the many “alphabets” in the Japanese language. What we do for love!

I’ll have more to say in the future about Words of Devotion, its lovely coupling of the leads prior to the start of its narrative as well as its cringeworthy elements. But the movie also stoked my interest in a broader discussion: What is the appeal of queer couples in movies, over and above the appeal of watching people in love, period?

For me, the basic appeal of queer couples lies in that their social and sexual roles are not pre-defined by their bodies, at least in relation to each other. While the feminist movement has done much for equality between the sexes, a heterosexual couple is still far more beholden to heteronormativity than a queer one is, since the overt physical difference that marks a man and a woman dictates their unspoken gender roles, whether or not they choose to subvert it.

That the partners in a queer couple are of the same sex means that this work hasn’t been done for them. Although sometimes it is, when one partner is assigned more obviously masculine or feminine traits, allowing the queer couple to be ascribed gender roles as though they were man and woman. This easy way out is the source of my shared complaint with Melinda Beasi in her “Thoughts on Yaoi“, although she focuses specifically on the prevalence of “seme/uke” (that is, “dominant/submissive”) distinctions in Japanese queer fiction.

In Words of Devotion, this phenomenon is implied rather than overt. The longer-haired, high-spirited Tachibana (Saito Yasuka, left on top) is first shown cooking in an apron, and later receives a Brokeback Mountain-style hug (see right) from the sullen, more well-built Shinya (Tokuyama Hidenori, right on top). What’s interesting, though, is that in the Japanese comic from which Words of Devotion was adapted, Tachibana and not Shinya was the overtly dominant partner of the two. While I read the swap partly as a capitulation on the moviemakers’ part to a heteronormative reading of the two actors’ bodies, it makes for an interesting metatextual exercise to ascribe their roles in the comic to the characters as they appear in the movie, especially since they share no explicit sex scenes that might tamp down their specific roles. (The movie also doesn’t tie their social roles down too strongly: both have jobs, and Shinya is the pettier and more jealous one.)

A further question that the movie posed is why the representations of queer couples are dominated by male, majority-race characters. (I used “majority-race” rather than “white”, which is too Western-centric; the racial thing happens in Asian countries as well, as it does in Words of Devotion.) Of course, it’s partly because majority-race men have more social power and are treated as the “norm”, even outside queer fiction. But I think the appeal is more complicated than that. Traditional theories of objectification (as popularised by Laura Mulvey’s essay “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema“) focus on how art tends to assume a man’s role in objectifying women; but a gay man cannot objectify his partner without in a sense consenting to his own objectification as a man himself. Thus the sexual representation of gay men in movies have stronger political implications than that of lesbian women, since their status as women already positions them as traditional visual objects. A similar line of reasoning applies to the majority-race status, at least in contrast to minority races, who already come ascribed with “other”-ness.

Of course, the above discussion is rather simplified. Recently I bought Lee Edelman’s Homographesis: Essays in Gay Literary and Cultural Theory off the net, so I’m looking forward to learning about the greater complexities of this subject. Look forward to further reports after this book has arrived.

Other Links
Fanfic Symposium: “Why Do I Like Slash? Plain Answers from a Het Woman”

Journal of Sex Research: “Slash Fiction and Human Mating Psychology”