Fandom (6)--An Idiosyncratic View From the Inside

He's a Woman, She's a Man (Part 2) There are many examples of Leslie embodying gender difference on celluloid. In addition to the character of Chen Dieyi in Farewell, My Concubine, there other film roles and, equally important, several music videos in which Leslie explores a sexuality that is not mainstream hetereosexual.One of Leslie's most important music video productions was the video for the song "Bewildered." It is clearly a representation of a relationship between two men--depicted as the story of a young ballet dancer and an older choreographer or artistic director. Virtually the entire history of the  relationship is told in the guise a series of dance rehearsals, with the young man as performer and the older man (Leslie) as the more passive spectator. A delicate but obvious expression of desire, resistance and surrender is represented in this video, which Leslie  starred in, directed and edited.Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mvwGkldKD_Q&playnext=1&list=PLBA6DCF66D761BB2EAt the beginning of the video, interspersed with brief glimpses of images suggesting a sexual connection between the two men, Leslie is presented as being in control:  first giving a "time-out" and then a "stop"signal to the young dancer. It is difficult to know if these images represent a past, present or desired future relationship between these men. Despite the hint of an intimate connection between them, Leslie sits as a passive observer as the young man dances for him, an interested but unengaged voyeur. This changes at the moment in the video when the dancer walks over to Leslie and he literally overshadows the older man, perhaps symbolizing Leslie's first awareness of the younger man's desire for him. The scene then shifts to images of the two figures as silhouettes viewed through a translucent a scrim (a device Leslie had used voyeuristically to incorporate the audience into one of his costume changes in The Passion Tour). The young dancer still performs for the rigidly immobile older man, who stubbornly remains a passive and disengaged spectator. The dance of seduction has commenced, but Leslie remains cool and non-committal. Even when Leslie is embraced by the young man, he remains unmoved.  After this sequence, there are two short scenes, each showing Leslie walking away from the young man, showing that he is not interested in a relationship with the young dancer. The next few shots then depict Leslie and the dancer isolated in separate frames, no longer paired, no longer in relationship. But then, somewhat surprisingly, the physical consummation of their relationship is implied when the men appear naked together, with highly stylized movements that suggest their physical and emotional union. Finally, in a series of quick cuts, we see Leslie smiling for the first time.  But it is ambiguous whether or not this relationship has a happy ending, as the video ends at this point.Although Leslie didn't say anything about the music video when it first was broadcast, a Hong Kong television station refused to air it, saying that it was a gay-themed video and would offend viewers. Leslie responded that it was a video about a relationship between two men, but that it could be any of a number of relationships and did not not necessarily depict a sexual relationship. (I find Leslie's statement somewhat disingenuous, however, given how charged the video is with suppressed longing that is certainly more homoerotic than fraternal or filial.) That Leslie directed and edited the video implies that he had complete control over the imagery he created and the way it communicates to audiences.  I, personally, have never read this music video as anything other than the story of a sexual, if not a romantic, relationship between two men.)The shift in Leslie's image from a pop idol to a serious artist willing to explore sensitive topics began back in the early 1990s.  First, he starred in the critically acclaimed and then in F , in which he played the openly gay Peking Opera performer Cheng Dieyi. This was followed by another starring role in Wong Kar Wai's iconoclastic martial arts picture, . Now no longer a Cantopop teen idol who had successfully branched out into films, Leslie Cheung was one of Hong Kong's most accomplished and lauded actors. Interspersed among these star turns in art house pictures, Cheung continued to make popular comedies and dramas. He played an effeminate man in and the darkly romantic hero in .  One role that had particular resonance for Leslie may have been Sam Koo in Peter Chan's H and W . In those two films, Leslie plays a top Hong Kong music producer who has fallen in love with his young, apparently male, protegee. Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=do3NEBHIY2c&feature=relatedBut Sam Koo is a homophobe who struggles against his attraction to what he thinks is another man.Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=58w53IRNJtE&feature=relatedAlthough the audience knows from the beginning that Wing is actually a young woman (played by actress Anita Yuen), Sam Koo labors under the misconception that Wing is an effeminate young man until the end of the movie. The film is replete with stereotypes of gay men as effeminate, hysterical and even sex-crazed, so we have to wonder what Leslie thought of the film, overall. But his interpretation of Sam Koo and his struggles to be honest with himself about his (supposed) gay sexual orientation, and the way in which Sam comes to accept thimself after a period of intense self-doubt and struggle, is richer and more powerful that a romantic dramedy of this sort typically elicits from its actors. Leslie brings to this role his own experience of being a gay man in the Hong Kong entertainment business. It is an industry that, especially for a young rising singer whose appeal rests primarily on being a teen idol, demands stars who project a squeaky clean heterosexual public image. In late 1996, Leslie relaunched his music career with the release of the album . A number of sophisticated and artistically made music videos were released to promote this album. The most outstanding of the bunch is "Red." It is a stylish black and white video that presents a nightmarish and even violent vision of longing and desire. It features three protagonists, Leslie Cheung, Karen Mok and Jimmy Wong. As the video begins, we are presented with Leslie experiencing a nocturnal dream-like vision of sexual desire featuring a scantily-clad Karen Mok. Before long, Jimmy Wong appears in brief glimpses, interspersed in scenes of Leslie and Karen that are highly sexually charged. Initially, the most probable interpretation is that Leslie and Karen are having an affair and Jimmy is Karen's husband or boyfriend. But, as the video progresses, it is images of Jimmy that begins to replace Karen as the object of Leslie's desire. By the end of the video, she has broken the bounds of Leslie's imagination (or dream world) and begins to assert herself against the growing attraction between the two men and, consequently, her marginalization as their object of desire. In an act of defiance or frustration, she hurls a telephone through a window, breaking it. Up until this point, Leslie (and the viewer) could believe that what has transpired has all been simply a dream or a fantasy. But, confronted with the broken glass, Leslie begins to see that this dream appears to have a corporeal reality of its own, outside of his subconscious or imagination.Video:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a8cXWCOfrjg&mode=related&search=This video is followed by another, "Love By Stealth," featuring the same three protagonists. This time around, right from the beginning, Leslie and Jimmy are presented as mirror images of one another. Karen and Jimmy are clearly the couple and Leslie is the outsider, the voyeur, observing them surreptitiously. Instead of a deserted house in the dead of night, the same house that was the setting for the "Red" video is crowded with people, but Leslie doesn't relate to or interact with anyone as he almost obsessively watches Karen and Jimmy. When Karen confronts Leslie, the viewer is suddenly presented with images from the "Red" video that show Leslie and Karen in a passionate embrace.  By the use of this visual metaphor, we see that Karen now understands the basis of  Leslie's fascination with her.  She has caught him literally red-handed, washing the blood off of his hands. When Karen reads the lust in Leslie's eyes, she slaps him, but is also now intrigued and attracted to him in a way she wasn't before. The spiral staircase, that enigmatic symbol of sexual desire in the "Red" video, reappears in this video as well, representing the ties of desire and perversion that bind the three protagonists together. Although Karen and Leslie appear to be together by the end of the video, the attraction between Leslie and Jimmy reasserts itself near the end when the two men fight, and then look as though they are going to kiss, when, at the last instant, Jimmy's face is replaced by Karen's.Video:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=liclN1U8H28&feature=relatedIt is difficult to know what to make of these two videos. The imagery is fragmentary and dream-like, the product of the subconscious as much as a record of actual actions or relationships. These videos appear to be subconscious maps of desire, more than prosaic re-enactments of any kind of relationship between these three individuals. What is instructive, however, is to look at how Leslie framed these same songs in his 1997 Tour. "Red" is transformed into the Red Tango dance, in which Leslie metamorphoses into a women dancing a sultry tango of desire and rejection with a man. In this number, Leslie becomes the object of desire (of both the audience and his/her male partner). Leslie is the empowered player in charge of the dynamics of this relationship, calling all of the shots, unlike any of the protagonists in the "Red" video.The voyeuristic and exhibitionist qualities of the "Love By Stealth" video are focalized on the actual body of Leslie Cheung himself in the stage presentation of this song. He is the sole protagonist now, alone on a darkened stage, pinned down by a spotlight, wearing nothing but a flimsy dressing gown. This is the number where, at a critical moment, Leslie stands over a fan that blows his dressing gown up and reveals his virtually naked body from the waist down. After offering the audience a brief glimpse, Leslie steps away and his nakedness is covered once more. The audience is invited to openly savor their desire for Leslie's body, but this desire is stoked more than relieved by the exhibitionist quality of those glimpses. Leslie offers himself as a body to be desired, but never to be possessed. He transforms himself into a distant and unattainable vision of desire and fantasy that is, paradoxically, more real and overtly sexual than what we see in the music video. By transferring the locus of desire from Karen and Jimmy to Leslie, the audience is invited to write their own experience into the space. Instead of a three-some that exists apart from the viewer, in his stage presentation of this musical number Leslie creates an exclusively binary relationship between himself and each individual audience member when he turns his actual naked body, not a celluloid representation, into the object of supreme audience desire.Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uhE7GDdZ82s&feature=related