Lust lost in (Beijing's) translation
By Kent Ewing
HONG KONG - It is ironic that Beijing's latest campaign to turn the world's
most populous country into a sexless nation coincides with the release across
Asia of Ang Lee's award-winning film, Lust, Caution, which takes
eroticism to new heights in Chinese-language cinema.
While Lee's co-stars - veteran Hong Kong actor Tony Leung Chiu-wai and film
ingenue Tang Wei from the mainland - engage in sexual calisthenics for packed
audiences in cinema houses
throughout the region, China's State Administration of Radio, Film and
Television (SARFT) is busy banning advertisements for women's underwear. The
problem, it seems, is the targeted lingerie's provocative selling point:
propping up sagging tops and reining in expanding middles.
The ban also includes products that claim to improve sexual performance, sexual
toys and "inelegant images" - whatever that might mean - in ads for "adult
products". "Illegal 'sexual medication' advertisements and other harmful ads
pose a grave threat to society," warned the SARFT notice.
This latest salvo from the broadcast watchdog is the continuation of a campaign
against sex and violence on the airwaves that started this past summer and has
since gathered steam. Last month, SARFT ordered 11 radio shows off the air in
southern and central China for broadcasting content that, at its worst, the
agency described as of an "extreme pornographic nature". In addition, the
watchdog censured two radio stations in Sichuan province for airing programs of
"indescribably squalid, erotic, and indecent content".
Television shows about cosmetic surgery have also been axed, as have
American-Idol-style talent shows, apparently because regulators are rattled by
the mass voting, via mobile phones and the Internet that they encourage,
In the minds of the Chinese leadership, all this censorship is an admirable
effort to clean up the country's airwaves ahead of the all-important 17th
National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party, to be held October 15 in
Beijing. After all, when President Hu Jintau and Premier Wen Jiabao are
re-anointed by the congress for another five years as the country's dynamic
duo, they want the nation's collective mind focused on patriotism and purity,
not lingerie and lust.
And then along comes Lee's movie, which won the Gold Lion award for best
picture at the Venice Film Festival last month, to remind us that Chinese
people have sex, too. In fact, they can be spectacularly good at it - although
in Lee's dark and perverse tale the lovers' cries of ecstasy and union are
snarled in a complex web of war-time suspicion and sadomasochism whose violence
can be shocking.
The film's brutal honesty stands in sharp contrast to SARFT's see-no-sex,
hear-no-sex approach. So it is no surprise to learn that, on the mainland, Lust,
Caution will be shown without the steamy, sometimes violent sex -
which, in another irony, will render the film virtually meaningless.
But don't get the wrong idea. Lust, Caution is a long film - some
critics complain, at 158 minutes, too long - but only about 10 minutes of it
takes place in the bedroom. That 10 minutes, however, is key to understanding
the kinky underside of what is otherwise a routine spy story.
Set mostly in Japanese-occupied Shanghai in the early 1940s, the film tells the
story of how an innocent student named Wong Chia Chi (Tang) comes to be the
seductive part of an assassination plot targeting a Mr Yee (Leung), an apostate
who is collaborating with the Japanese as an intelligence chief.
Like Lee's last film - Brokeback Mountain, an ultimately tragic tale of
gay love between two American cowboys for which he was awarded best director at
the 2005 Academy Awards - Lust, Caution is born of a short story that
gripped his imagination and took him into new and equally daring sexual
terrain. In making Brokeback Mountain, Lee's camera lingered over the
poetry of the Wyoming landscape described in Annie Proulx's story but presented
the sex with restraint and discretion.
Lust, Caution also soaks in the styles and atmosphere of Hong Kong and
Shanghai in the late 1930s and early 1940s, but where Eileen Chang, famed
author of the story on which the film is based, only hints at the darkly
erotic, Lee decides to depict it in excruciating detail.
The first sex scene between Leung and Tang does not come until the movie is
more than 100 minutes old. That the scene borders on rape is disturbing enough,
but this is a rape in which the victim - Tang as spy - appears to have
triumphed. Other scenes that follow, featuring contortions beyond the Kama Sutra,
make it impossible to distinguish between pain and pleasure or love and
loathing in a relationship that has taken on all the complexity of the
occupation and war that serve as its context.
Lee, 52, a native of Taiwan who has lived, studied and worked in the US for
nearly 30 years, shot the scenes over 11 days on a closed set before he was
satisfied. He has admitted, however, that he had qualms about using them.
"I first thought there was no way to make this short story into a film because
there are many things in the story that Chinese would consider as immoral, such
as sexual suggestions," he said. "It depicted the dark side of the heroic
deeds, things we would feel uncomfortable with." But, in the end, he felt that
making the film was "my destiny ... I decided to face it".
That said, Lee's destiny will be somewhat compromised when Lust, Caution
is shown on the mainland. To please Chinese censors, he has agreed to cut out
the sex and violence. The Category III rating for the film in Hong Kong allows
admission to no one under the age of 18, but the mainland does not have a
ratings system, so any film shown there must be considered acceptable for all
ages.
Audiences are flocking to see Lust, Caution in Hong Kong - where the
film earned an unprecedented US$474,000 in its first three days - and in
Taiwan, where it took in a record-breaking $1.07 million in the same time
frame. Not as much interest is expected in the US because the film has been
given the country's most restrictive NC-17 (no one under 17) rating, which is
usually associated with pornography. Also, critics say the film's length and
the fact that it is mostly in Mandarin with English subtitles will discourage
American audiences.
On the mainland, however, you can count on mountains of interest, and it is too
bad mature audiences there will not be allowed to view the film as it was
intended to be seen by one of the world's most gifted directors, who happens to
be Chinese. With the pulsing passion of the story lying on the censor's floor,
those audiences are likely to be left scratching their heads at the film's end.
They are also no doubt scratching their heads over ludicrous bans on
advertisements for push-up bras and other forms of figure-enhancing underwear.
Indeed, Chinese officialdom seems to be the last bastion of moral prudishness
in a country whose people have never been more liberal in their attitudes
toward sex. These looser sexual mores come as a predictable consequence of
China's great economic boom and rising incomes, especially in the cities.
Now it is time for the government to also loosen up. Yes, this will lead to ads
for scanty lingerie, sex toys, sex aids and more. That is the inevitable
downside of sexual openness. On the upside, however, such a campaign can dispel
deep-seated ignorance and lead to more responsible attitudes about sex.
How can you properly address sexually related problems without dialogue? For
example, prostitution is illegal, yet commonplace, in China. Let's talk about
it. And, certainly, let's talk about great films and great literature - sex and
all.
Kent Ewing is a teacher and writer at Hong Kong International School. He
can be reached at kewing@hkis.edu.hk.
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