FAREWELL MY CONCUBINE
A film review from The Maoist Internationalist Movement
REVISIONIST HISTORY AT ITS BEST
This film chronicles the lives of two young boys (who become men) from 1925-1977. As children, the boys are forced to become theater actors in a boarding school which resembles a boot camp. They are in training to join the so-called high culture of the Peking opera, which the film lauds as beautiful.
There is a current of homosexual tension in the relationship between the two men. Douzi, the man who plays the female role in their rendition of "Concubine," falls in love with his partner, Shitou. Shitou does not return his feelings, and later marries a prostitute (played by Gong Li from RAISE THE RED LANTERN) whom Douzi deeply resents. It is in part because of the gay love that this movie was initially banned in China. (1)
Further reasons for the initial (and current) censorship of FAREWELL MY CONCUBINE include the portrayals of suicide and political dissent. (2) But the most interesting part of the movie is its portrayal of gender--exploring the way that gender is constructed and privileged. Douzi is not simply a man in love with another man. As the line between his opera character and his real life is blurred, he is also at the same time a woman (the concubine) in love with a man (the king).
On the more reactionary side, the movie includes scenes from the Cultural Revolution, in which the masses randomly denounce their friends, wives, and family, but do not engage in political struggle to try to reform the rich actors or ex-prostitutes. The only scenes of the Cultural Revolution are chaotic and destructive. There is no indication that any positive change occurred during that time period at all.
The director, Chen Kaige, was 14 in 1966 when he "wrongly" denounced his father. He later regretted his "betrayal" and when he became a big movie director, he let his father work for him on the movie sets. (3)
Director Chen Kaige, on his American tour promoting the movie, denounces Communism and the Cultural Revolution as evil. (3) "When I was a junior in high school, we believed in a very beautiful world ... we heard a lot of good things about communism... I didn't realize that was the wrong thing to do." (3)
While MIM has publicly accepted responsibility for its support of Mao and the Chinese Communist Party, even with what did go wrong during the Cultural Revolution, FAREWELL MY CONCUBINE does no justice to the positive steps taken at that time, including the steps taken to erase the distinction between high and low culture. Chen Kaige's self-interest in promoting his movie, as well as passing it by the reactionary Deng-regime censors, means that he "forgets" to show his viewers the real political struggle of the Cultural Revolution.
- MC31 & MC255
Notes: 1. The Montreal Gazette 11/6/93, p. E5. 2. MacLean's 11/8/93, p. 62. 3. Chicago Tribune 10/31/93, p. 32.
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MIM Distributors, PO Box 3576, Ann Arbor MI 48106-3576. E-mail: mim@blythe.org
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