| Abstrakt: |
This paper opens a new chapter to extant studies of fengyuepian by looking closely at Ai Nu/Intimate Confessions of a Chinese Courtesan (1972) and Ai Nu xinzhuang/Lust for Love of a Chinese Courtesan (1984) with respect to three main themes, female homoeroticism, memorialization and melancholizing, discussing them in relation to the master–slave imaginary that structures the films’ respective plots. Popularized by Shaw Brothers, fengyuepian are, to put it simply, erotic films in which sexual acts and desires are overtly presented. My essay firstly characterizes the female homoerotic imaginary in the two fengyuepian, or for that matter, the films themselves, as both part of and yet apart from a queer-tongzhi consciousness. In a related way, it then explores two distinct modes of non-depressive melancholias in the films. With regard to the former, it argues that the film's memorial and melancholizing modes of articulation yield analeptic turns that drive affective abreaction, bridging the past and present in symbiotic and transformative ways. Here the film's theme of revenge, an affect of solipsistic melancholia or actional melancholizing, is most telling. There is no revenge theme in the later film which manifests contemplative melancholizing at a communal level. This mode of non-depressive melancholia, I shall argue, prepares the analeptic grounds for allegorical transformation that turns up undercurrents of anxiety about self-identity and self-determination that connect with the political concerns of its time. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER] |
