1. Feminist Readings of Farewell My Concubine & Like Water for Chocolate

2. PostModern Attack on Metanarratives n Both films challenge dominant cultural metanarratives n Farewell My Concubine: F Legalism and communism (Marxism) F The state is the answer n Like Water for Chocolate: F Patriarchial traditions Reconstructing identity

3. Feminism n A challenge to patriarchial / phallocentric metanarratives F Political/social F Psychological F Mythic/literary n Based upon concept that identity is a culturally based social construction Deconstructing icons

4. Jacques Lacan (1901-81) Internal Battle of the Sexes PSYCHOANALYTIC CRITICISM IMAGINARY (feminine) n Mother n Plentitude n Creative n Dreams & fantasies n Illogical n Madness n Holiness n Freedom n Rebellion n Ideal n Individual expression SYMBOLIC (masculine) n Father n Lack and desire n Restrictive authority n Ordered reality n Logic n Controlled sanity n Ritual n Repression n Social conformity n Accepted imperfection n Social conformance

5. Farewell My Concubine Revisionist history n Historical Reading (Scar, Root-Seeking) F The film as revisionist history; a statement against the Communist - Marxist metanarrative (rooted in Legalism) F Homosexuality depicted as a perversion F State suppression of individuality, creativity, traditions, mythologies F 8 Model Plays (under Mao)

6. Farewell My Concubine You are who you love n Psychological reading F Love and and identity F The other defines us F Lack of the other frustrates our desire for fulfillment F Yin/yang (hermaphrodite) F Douxi: idealized image of Xialou F Juan: idealized image of Douxi F Frustrated, broken relationships F Pressure of state leads to betrayals F Psychological neuroses

7. Farewell My Concubine A Lacanian twist n Psychological reading F Social construction of identity F We all have female side that is repressed by the patriarchal symbolic order (language and laws) F Plot driven by ironic twist of Lacan theory F Douxi forced to become “girl” F Douxi lives in Kristeva’s world of “poetry, holiness and madness”

8. Farewell My Concubine Freudian slip-ups Freudian reading n All people are bisexual n Bisexuality/Oedipal complex resolved by presence of father figure (order/rules) n Douxi’s is never resolved n Master becomes his father / superego (the authoritarian gaze) n Ego is battleground between id and superego

9. Farewell My Concubine Displacing our anxieties Freudian reading n Desires frustrated; develops neuroses and employs defense mechanisms F Depression F Repression F Paranoia F Displacement F Projection n Transfers/displaces unresolved conflicts and aggressions onto substitute object (Xialou and opera)--cathexisis

10. Farewell My Concubine Language speaks us Lacanian reading n Douxi’s identity constructed outside himself n Language used to construct his identity n Remains in the imaginary stage n Never adjusts to the patriarchial symbolic order n Searches for the ideal (maternal state of plentitude); experiences “perennial lack” n Existential hero of the feminist order (creativity, beauty, holiness, poetry, loyal to the ideal)

11. Farewell My Concubine The yin and the yang Metaphysical reading n Yin/yang n Incompleteness in this life n Yearn for perfection n Desire for harmony with all nature n Adoration of enlightenment (the bodhisattva ) n Suffering is the result of desire n There is foulness in men and women n Karmic retribution

12. Farewell My Concubine Karma Metaphysical reading “Calamity and misfortune cannot gain entrance of their own into a person’s life. It is the individual who calls them in.”

13. Like Water for Chocolate A feminist masterpiece? Feminist reading n Magical realism as an expression of the feminist semiotic order F Fantasy, romanticism, nostalgia, sensuality, poetic n Total reversal of the patriarchal order n Rejection of Western icons of women

14. Like Water for Chocolate A feminist masterpiece? Feminist reading n Identity socially constructed n Creates repressions and psychoses F Dona Elena: “control freak” (displacement) F Tita: fantasy and projection F Desire for fantasy, freedom, passion

15. Good Bad n Woman n Passion n Fantasy n Rebellion n Intuition (recipes) n Free-spirited individuality n Man n Reason n Reality n Order n Scientific knowledge (medicine) n Social order/family responsibility Binary oppositions

16. Good Bad n Woman n Passion n Fantasy n Rebellion n Intuition (recipes) n Free-spirited individuality n Man n Reason n Reality n Order n Scientific knowledge n Social order Binary oppositions PASSION

17. Like Water for Chocolate A feminist masterpiece? n “A sappy melodrama.” n “A film that makes women prisoners of their own libidos and hormones.” n “Sets back feminism 100 years.” n “…all her women are sluts or adulterers, while the men are pigs and wimps.” n “Esquivel is an immature love child.”