Gender, Romance, Performance
Farewell My Concubine: An Opera Actor Trapped in His Identities
Farewell My Concubine (1993), the movie which won the Palme d'Or at the 46th Cannes Film Festival and other awards like BAFTA for Best Film Not in the English Language, is widely considered as one of the greatest Chinese movies ever. Based on the drifting life courses and relationship between two actors of the homonymic classical Peking Opera, the movie depicts a panoramic view of Chinese history and culture from the end of the Qing Dynasty to the Cultural Revolution of P.R.C.
This article gives an analysis on the complex identities of the controversial protagonist Dieyi from three different perspectives respectively: gender, romance and performance. By demonstrating and clearing up the clutter of the protagonists’ identities in these particular aspects, this article claims that Dieyi is neither homosexual nor transsexual, but rather an artist who does not understand the distinction between virtuality and reality.
Gender
Traditionally in Peking Opera, the female characters dan (旦) were performed by cross-dressing male actors, such as the notable Peking Opera artist Mei Lanfang (梅兰芳) who was known as “Queen of Peking Opera” and one of the male protagonists of Farewell My Concubine, Dieyi (蝶衣). The duality of Dieyi’s identity between performance and reality is the very foundation of the movie.
Dieyi is the son of a prostitute who is not able to raise him by herself, so she gives her son to a Liyuan (梨园), which is an elegant expression of “troupe” in Chinese, as an apprentice so that he may be able to feed himself in the future.
The movie’s beginning is set in the 1910s, when Peking Opera was popular in China, but the training in Liyuan could be arduous because the masters were extremely harsh to their apprentices. Being ruthlessly beaten by the masters was a daily routine for the young apprentices. One of the apprentices in the movie even commits suicide just to avoid the brutal punishment.
Because of his “feminine” appearance, Dieyi is trained as a dan. Dieyi shows his gift in his training, but he is troubled by one particular line; “I am by nature a girl, not a boy.” Dieyi’s idea of his gender identity is so strong that when he is asked to show his talent to a vital manager in the Peking Opera business, he intentionally changes the line to “I am by nature a boy, not a girl.” It is clear that Dieyi cannot tell the difference between performance and reality. He could have acted as he were by nature a girl on stage while being by nature a boy in reality. But in Dieyi’s mind, where the distinction between theatre and reality blurs, he is either a boy or a girl. He cannot be both. Unquestionably, he is punished relentlessly by his master. But still, he would not change his mind until his best friend in Liyuan, Xiaolou – who is another male protagonist of the movie – interferes. The master beats Xiaolou because of his unwanted interferences. To protect Xiaolou, just like how Xiaolou always protects him, Dieyi speaks out loudly that “I am by nature a girl, not a boy.” By this claim Dieyi not only successfully protects Xiaolou, but also protects the integrity of his virtual and real identity. From now on, Dieyi in his performances and Dieyi in reality are no different. He is by nature a girl, and this changes his relationship with Xiaolou drastically.
Romance
As their best Sheng(生) performer in Dieyi and Xiaolou’s Liyuan, which is the male character in Peking Opera, Xiaolou is chosen to be Dieyi’s partner in the play Farewell My Concubine where Dieyi plays the concubine Consort Yu and Xiaolou plays the king Xiang Yu – Consort Yu’s husband. Dieyi and Xiaolou quickly become the most popular star performers of Peking Opera in Beijing relying on this play. Meanwhile, their relationship changes.
From their first meeting in Liyuan, Xiaolou sees and takes care of Dieyi as his little brother and nothing else. Dieyi may think the same at first, but after playing the sad love story Farewell My Concubine over and over again, Dieyi, who has no idea of the differences between reality and performance, gradually falls in love with his unrelated elder brother Xiaolou. It is natural for Dieyi to think this way, because in his mind he is Consort Yu and Xiaolou is Yu’s husband Xiang Yu – they are destined to fall in love with each other. This is how the play goes. And what is the distinction between play and real life? There is no such distinction in Dieyi’s mind. He will not even consider why he falls in love with his unrelated brother. He just does, just as the concubine in the play.
Sadly, Xiaolou is well aware of the distinction. What is ironic, even funny, is that he would never even consider falling love with his little brother, because in that time no man fell in love with any man. He cannot understand Dieyi’s obsession with him, just as he cannot understand Dieyi’s obsession with acting. It is merely an act, is it not? This divergence leads to the fighting and final destruction of their relationship – Dieyi cuts his throat in front of Xiaolou with the latter’s sword, just like the concubine does in the final scene of the play.
The so called “romance” between the two never actually exists, because both Dieyi’s own wishful thinking and the wishful thinking itself is an illusion based on a performance which does not and would never exist in reality.
Performance
It is intriguing that the two brothers’ diverse attitudes towards identities lead to different artistic performances. Dieyi is considered the better and more important one in their partnership of performing the play Farewell My Concubine. This is because Dieyi does not comprehend the difference between acting in a play and living a life.
Nietzsche, in his The Birth of Tragedy, follows the pessimist philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer and argues that theatre creates an alternated space similar to but not the same as reality where the audiences escape from the reality and find self-affirmation in the terror and ecstasy staged in the performance. The complexity of performance and theatre, according to Nietzsche, is that besides providing its audiences with an escape from the cruel reality, it also helps them affirm the meaning of their very existence by demonstrating the abyss of human suffering alike to reality.
In brief, theatricality is based on authentic human experiences and this is why it moves people – it is concerned with their everyday lives. But on the other hand, it is altered and adapted for certain reasons so that it is not reality after all. For example, melodramas do not clearly engage with the existential angst of human life. On the contrary, they merely provide amusement. They create a temporary shelter from the certain death of every human-being, which is the very origin of the existential angst. This is why some playgoers sees plays as an escape from their real life, and this is why the identities of performers are complicated. Their characters and their everyday life are connected, similar but not the same.
As a sensitive and gifted performer, Dieyi is unconsciously aware of the subtle relationship between performance and reality. And it leads to the result that his performance in the homonymous Peking Opera Farewell My Concubine is overwhelmingly convincing to his audiences. Paradoxically, Dieyi’s disability of telling the difference between reality and performance on one hand totally destroys his relationship with the one he believes he loves while on the other hand it lets him become the best performer of Consort Yu of his time.
Even though Dieyi finally accepts his line and cries in his performance that “I am by nature a girl, not a boy”, it is not equal to an explicit gender identity claim that he believes he is a girl but not a boy. His crying of this particular line breaks the essentially blurry line between reality and performance in his mind. This is the reason why he fails in his relationship with Xiaolou while he ironically triumphs in his performance career. It is clear that Dieyi’s trouble is not exploring his gender and sexuality, thus it is senseless to claim that he is either homosexual or transsexual; he is an artist who does not understand the distinction between virtuality and reality. His disability of separating his identities apart leads him to an illusionary one-way relationship and even his death, while it also lets him touch the essence of performance and become a better artist.
Bibliography:
Nietzsche, Friedrich Wilhelm. The Birth of Tragedy; Or, Hellenism and Pessimism. Project Gutenberg.