Halfway Home: The Fractured Family in Queer Chinese Media

Abstract

The structure and dynamic of a traditional Chinese family is incongruent with the normative coming-out trajectory of Western perception, due to the complex influence of Confucian values, collectivist ideals and historical implications of filial responsibilities. Queer Chinese individuals still retain and desires to maintain familial harmony (和諧; hexie), while tactics such as reticence (含蓄; hanxu) and tolerance (寬容; kuanrong) as confrontational tools to abate queerness create fraught tension within the familial dynamic. This is explored through the analysis of two queer Chinese films, The Wedding Banquet (1994) and Saving Face (2004). An innovated imagining of familial acceptance and the possibility of a dynamic restructuring of the traditional Chinese family is also proposed through analysis of the two films.