Ang Lee’s The Wedding Banquet (1993) and Wong Kar-Wai’s Happy Together (1997) are two examples of “New Queer Cinema”, a genre defined in the early 1990’s by academic and film critic B. Ruby Rich. New Queer Cinema defined and described an already existing movement of filmmakers that were examining gay identity and existence from a queer perspective tand rejected heterosexual norms and values (Rich 14). Initially focused on the sociocultural elements of specific films by auteurs like Haynes and Araki, the term was soon broadened to include any films with gay and lesbian content (Berry 214). Initially, these films examined the queer culture and portrayed characters “on the fringes of society” (Rich 13). Gus Van Sant’s My Own Private Idaho brought New Queer Cinema to mainstream audiences, however, a more definitive early example would be Gregg Araki’s 1992 The Living End, a gay road movie that explores nihilism (Berry 212).
On first inspection, The Wedding Banquet does not look like New Queer Cinema. Instead it seems old-fashioned; a traditional generic hetero-normative comedy farce with a gay protagonist. On the other hand, Happy Together is the kind of dark and brooding reflection on queer identity that is typical of the New Queer Cinema. However, The Wedding Banquet is much more of a queer movie than Happy Together. Wong’s Happy Together in intensely focused on one dysfunctional relationship. It is not about being gay. The film could have just as easily been about a destructive heterosexual relationship. Lee’s Wedding Banquet is much more about a myriad of issues that revolve around the entire gay experience. It is a very traditional narrative about a wedding, however it also carefully depicts a distinct urban homosexual culture and lifestyle. It is not just about a relationship between two people, it focuses on being gay in modern society and all the joys, challenges and tribulations that go along with it. Happy Together is about the dark side of love in general, while The Wedding Banquet is about traditional love set in a homosexual social landscape, which makes it more queer-centric.
The Wedding Banquet does not look like New Queer Cinema. His movies are plot and character oriented. He does not make films with cities as characters or rely on cinematography to drive the narrative. In So Queer Yet So Straight: Ang Lee’s The Wedding Banquet and Brokeback Mountain, William Leung describes Lee as an unlikely director to be considered part of the New Queer Cinema movement because he “favors a traditional humanist and social-realist approach to storytelling, so much so that most describe him as a classical filmmaker” (Leung 6). Moreover, Lee is not gay – at all. Personally, he is heterosexual, straight, and is not a “radical” anything. Most of his films are not about gay characters or themes, but Leung argues that is what makes The Wedding Banquet so unique:
What makes these films distinguished and original, I argue, is
not so much that Lee has embraced "queer cinema" per se; rather,
in each film Lee has come up with a cogent and credible way to
reconcile the sensibility of "queer" with the formalist aesthetic of
"conventional" narratives. In the process, Lee may have perfected
his own subgenre—the "queer" film done "straight"—through his
ability to balance and preserve both the power of "queer" content
and the integrity of "straight" narrative style (Leung 4).
The setting of The Wedding Banquet – NYC and a wedding – are about as traditional or “straight” as modern cinema can get. The characters are almost universal stereotypes – attractive and wholesome young yuppies. The plot revolves around historical elements of a patriarchal society complete with a dictatorial father figure. However, Lee cleverly subverts many of the generic contrivances. Wai-Tung is not a stereotypical Asian, who are often portrayed as either emasculated pale weaklings, or terrifying Yakuza gangsters. Instead, he is portrayed as masculine, strong and open-minded (Lo). The wedding banquet itself, as a ritual, is a clear symbol of both traditional heterosexual norms, and sexual repression; the type of expectations and repression many homosexuals feel growing up. A classic orchestrated farce, with many precedents, The Wedding Banquet relies heavily on cinematic antecedents and revels in ironic kitsch – “this so corny and sentimental.” However, it also is so important the main characters create an entire world just to placate Wai-Tung’s parents. His parents can also be seen as symbols of both the East, and of sexual intolerance. However, by the end of the movie, East meets West and wholesome homosexuality is embraced. Culture clashes – East vs. West, Gay vs. Straight, Old vs. New are at the heart of The Wedding Banquet. In Taiwan, the film was marketed as a “family comedy” and not about the oppression of social convention, or as a queer-centric investigation into the challenges of being happy, rich, good-looking through a gay lens. Lee was “anxious that the film be an authentic reflection of a healthy and loving gay relationship” and the film offers a very positive image of gay sexuality (Rich 38).
Lee goes out of his way to show that gays can be traditional and “normal. The scenes involving Wai-Tung’s fake wife pretending to cook every night to impress his parents are interesting. Wei Wei – a “traditional” women - can't even fry an egg. Simon, a gay male, actually prepares the exotic and delicious meals. (Holden) Lee spends a great deal of time in the film examining sexual and social rituals. Food, banquets, marriage are all used to highlight the complex world that gays must navigate. When Wai-Tungs parents meet Wei-Wei, they inspect her for suitability as a mother. They look at her hips and whisper that “she will have lots of babies.” In scenes like this, Lee is not only pointing out the oppression of tradition but how strange heterosexual rituals can be to homosexuals. Instead of portraying homosexuality as weird, traditional patriarchal norms are analyzed and exposed as being both restrictive and sexually strange.
Happy Together is a drama, and much darker than The Wedding Banquet. It aligns closely with Rich’s NQC paradigm. There are no doting parents or loving friendly support systems. There is a dark and moody, strangely alien Buenos Aires that sets the stage for a explosive - yet very familiar - love story. You can see elements of French New Wave throughout the film, the characters disaffected and the visuals telling part of the narrative (Chow 33). Wong Kar-wai starts his film with a passionate and graphic homosexual love scene between the two main characters. It is a trick. The film is not about hot sex, but verbal arguments and petty grudges; the universal challenges involved in maintaining a loving relationship – whether it be heterosexual, platonic or queer. The film “looks” like hardcore New Queer Cinema, but has more of a Tennessee Williams narrative:
After the hot sex of the first few minutes, it all goes
wrong and they fight like bats out of hell for the rest of the movie. But oh, how familiar is the way they fight. “Oh my
god, he’s just like me,’ said my ex-girlfriend said half way through the screening (Ruby)
This universality of the difficulties of human relationships transcends strict queer cinema, that usually rejects heterosexual norms. The themes of many New Queer Cinema films revolves around the unique challenges of being gay. Happy Together concentrates on the unique challenges of relationships in general. The film evokes Sid and Nancy, a surprisingly touching love story involving some initially unsympathetic lovers. When Kar-wai, won Best Director at The Cannes Film Festival, he was attacked by Asian fans “incensed by the gay content,” he advised them, “Just come in five minutes late. They’re brothers.” (Rich 44). The director is amusingly pointing out that the film is about being gay, it is about being mad at someone you love. It could be a brother or lover.
If The Wedding Banquet was pointing out just how “normal” gay couples can be, Happy Together focuses on the universality of being mean and petty to the ones we love. It is not a heterosexual thing, or a queer thing, it is part of all relationships. The two main characters are hopelessly naive, believing they can escape their problems – which is mainly they are just bad for each other – by moving to a strange and sexy country. They want to visit a famous waterfall, a leitmotif that represents beauty and happiness, but the characters are delusion about their love, which is passionately destructive. The only time they are happy is after Ho has been hustling, and is beaten up by a sexual client. Lai has the flu, but still cooks and cares from him, and this period is one of the only “happy” moments in the film. This scene symbolizes their relationship, both are sick and wounded, and Lai is the one who must hold them together. Mostly, they argue about silly things, because they are angry about much larger issues – like Ho’s infidelity and general emotional abuse. Like Lee, Wong uses a classic narrative technique, the road buddy movie, but then subverts in a dark way. They are not carefree and on the road, but stranded and definitely not buddies, but co-dependent lovers trapped in a destructive and abusive relationship.
Happy Together is a film about the misery of love. Not queer love, just love. The Wedding Banquet is complex look into modern socioeconomics, queer lifestyles, historical Asian patriarchal expectations and the “normalcy” of homosexual partnerships. Although Happy Together is a more definitive example of what Rich would consider New Queer Cinema, The Wedding Banquet speaks more about the queer experience. Stylistically, Happy Together “looks” more queer, there is a jarring, raw and exposed tone and mood throughout the film. However, the narrative is too general. It fails to address specific gay issues. The Wedding Banquet looks at a sort of bourgeois domesticity that defined 1990’s homosexuality, and this would continue in gay culture in mass media throughout the decade. A television show, Will and Grace (1997) and later Queer Eye for the Straight Guy (2003) would explore many of the same themes involving well-adjusted urban homosexuals (Berry 228), Rich’s original definition of New Queer Cinema focused on the outsider status of gays, seen through a feminist construct. Most of these films portrayed homosexuality as different, dangerous, difficult and focused on alienation. Happy Together explores these themes, but ultimately concludes that love is painful, regardless of gender or sexual orientation – because almost any audience could relate. Ang Lee however, really subverted these themes in The Wedding Banquet, and showed just how “straight” gay people can be, and how sexually repressed and strange the heterosexual world is. His characters are not “outsiders” but independent and strong individuals navigating the world as queers. This gives The Wedding Banquet its queer street credibility, it explores serious issues without resorting to dark and depressing alienation seen in early New Queer Cinema films, like the nihilistic The Living End. Ang Lee’s version of queer cinema may not exactly fit the definition of Rich’s New Queer Cinema, but it is solidly queer, and exploiting a straight narrative is often more useful in investigating what it realistically means to be gay in contemporary society.
Works Cited
Berry, Chris. "Asian values, family values: film, video, and lesbian and gay
identities." Journal of homosexuality 40.3-4 (2001): 211-231.
Chow, Rey. "Nostalgia of the new wave: structure in Wong Kar-wai's Happy Together." camera obscura 14.3 42 (1999): 30-49.
Leung, William. "So Queer Yet So Straight: Ang Lee's The Wedding Banquet and Brokeback Mountain." Journal of Film and Video 60.1 (2008): 23-42.
Lo, Dennis. "The Politics and Aesthetics of “Asian American” Sexuality in Ang Lee’s Cross-Cultural Family Dramas." Stanford Journal of Asian American Studies.
Rich, B. Ruby. New Queer Cinema: The Director’s Cut. Duke University Press, 2013.
