¶ … Masculine in Happy Together
Chinese Film
The paper will focus upon the issue of masculinity in Happy Together, a film written and directed by acclaimed director, Wong Kar Wai. "Happy Together" is also the name of a song by The Turtles. It was a popular lovesong about the classic story of boy meets girl and they fall in love. Happy Together is another sort of lovesong, but one more bittersweet about when boy meets boy, and they cannot stop falling in and out of love. The film takes place in the late 1990s in Argentina. Ho Po-Wing and Lai Yu-Fai are young lovers from Hong Kong on holiday in Argentina. They once bought a lamp of a famous waterfall that exists in Argentina. The couple is madly in love with each other, whether they are together or broken up. Over the course of their excursion/road trip in Argentina to the falls, they get lost on the road. Ho Po-Wing dumps Lai Yu-Fai, played by the famous Tony Leung. This film is one of at least three films Wong Kar Wai and he have worked on together. The young men become stranded in Argentina without enough money to return to Hong Kong. As much as the men butt heads, there exists an undeniable connection between the two, as illustrated in Ho Wo-Ping's return into Lai Yu-Fai's life after an abusive new boyfriend prompts a visit to the emergency room. The paper will discuss the ways the narrative, the aesthetics, and the semiotics of the film contribute to a definition of masculinity that embraces, challenges and rejects traditional Chinese conceptions of men and what is masculine.
Wong Kar Wai is a film director and writer known for his imaginative and unique cinematic style. He is more recently known in the west for such films as In the Mood for Love and its sequel, 2046. Audiences and professionals alike are often astounded when learning that Wai often approaches a project and may shoot an entire film without first having written the script. The writing of the script often comes during or after the production stage of his film. This is a highly unorthodox and daunting practice that Wai repeatedly pulls off with grace, innovation, and a beauty that is both fluid and precise. This aesthetics, editing, and narrative style of the film are clearly influenced by other film movements such as the French Nouvelle Vague, film noir, and the Independent style that characterized Generation X The film pays homage to film noir and Generation X is by the narrative structure of the film, as well as the fact that about half of the first act is shot in black and white. The portion of the protagonists' relationship that was good, before they depart for Argentina, is shot in black and white.
Wai often pushes the envelope or walk the edge when it comes to his film. He pushes audiences with regard to aesthetics, to narrative, to characters, and to the act of storytelling in general. Chinese culture is traditional and that traditional attitude most definitely extends into what is acceptable behavior and tastes for a man. Though in western cultures, such as American cultures, for example, there too are restrictive attitudes toward acceptable expressions of masculinity, relative to Chinese culture, there is a great flexibility or wider spectrum of what is acceptable than traditional Chinese culture. Therefore, the mere fact that the two main characters are gay men is a big deal. It is a bold statement. Furthermore, they are openly gay men who live abroad in South America. Exposing and discussing the Asian presence in Latin American is yet another way that Wai demonstrates his creativity and innovation. It is arguable, that living in a traditional culture and country such as China is exceptionally difficult for homosexual men and that their love and their relationship would not have had the opportunity to see itself through or play itself out at all or at least not in the same ways had the film be shot on location in Hong Kong, rather than Argentina. The color palette of the production design and the lighting design underscores the vibrancy and
Chinese' Food and the Model Minority study in ethnic cuisine and culture, marginalization and commercialization, and the paradox of exoticism. The anthropological theme studied for this work was that of the ethnic compromises and paradoxes inherent in creating a "Chinese" restaurant in America, for Americans. In every English speaking country from England to Canada, Chinese food is a huge business. For many immigrants it is one of the only businesses ready
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