farewell my concubine cultural revolution

When Master Shi visits the school, he must assess the attractiveness of the students in order to determine their roles in the opera. Farewell My Concubine takes place during the Chinese cultural revolution, and throughout the novel the political and social aspects of China are constantly changing. The Party alters the intentions of the arts in order to use it as propaganda, eliminating and ridiculing the authenticity of Peking opera. As a history buff, I appreciated that. The loss of his first finger symbolizes the sacrifice he had to make for his success, but when he loses his second finger his career is over, and that critical imperfection serves as a representation for the fragility within beauty and the arts.This website uses cookies to provide you with the best browsing experience.This website uses cookies so that we can provide you with the best user experience possible.

She goes on to describe Dieyi’s treasures as “Empty garments of long dead beauties” (143), and the way she connects his materialistic passion to death conveys an illusion and lack of life within his obsession. Art does not recognize the limits of nationality’” (159). The fact that the unattractive children are deemed as “rejects” accentuates the negative connotation of ugliness, something evidently crucial that cannot be changed or avoided. "Farewell My Concubine" falls somewhere in between those two for revealing what China went through in the 20th Century. At the same time, it attempts to do no less than squeeze the entire political history of China in the twentieth century into a three-hour time-frame. Dieyi’s inability to conform to the communist ideology demonstrates his pride and resilience; he is willing to sacrifice everything for his passion for the arts, and Lee indicates the severe consequences of his actions when she writes, “Unrepentant and unremorseful, Dieyi was headed straight for the executioner’s gun.” (160)As communist China develops rapidly, the Party eradicates traditional opera because it does not speak to the new ideology, since actors are celebrated and raised above the population.

"Farewell My Concubine" is nearly a 3 hour movie in Chinese with subtitles.

Lee writes, “It was a lot like buying pork in the market – one chose lean or marbled meat depending on one’s own taste. Later I’ll save up to buy the best costumes I can. Starring the much-loved actress Gong Li… By comparing the boys to meat, their humanity is diminished to their physical appearance, and Lee is representing the parallel between acting and prostitution. In the novel, makeup symbolizes the utilization of beauty in order to conceal.

Lee demonstrates how even from a young age Dieyi’s role in the theatre is the basis of his identity. However, Dieyi’s passion never ceases, and Lee demonstrates his dedication when he writes, “No matter how much difficulty he was in, Dieyi would not pawn his costumes.

During the scene at the House of Flowers, Lee describes the area as a “glamorous illusion,” alluding to artifice, and she emphasizes the objectification regarding physical beauty when she writes, “Whenever one saw a girl he liked, he summoned her with a wave, and she would walk over languidly in her high heels, hips swaying” (89). Lee describes Dieyi as “utterly convincing as the beautiful Yu Ji” (69), conveying him as the exemplification of what it takes to succeed in the Peking Opera.Throughout the novel, Lee represents the power of beauty within the arts as a way to conceal reality, and she incorporates makeup and costumes as symbols in Dieyi’s life to demonstrate the artificial foundation of his character. "Farewell, My Concubine" is a movie with two parallel, intertwined stories. The immense significance of physical attractiveness is what makes Dieyi stand out and become so successful; he is constantly described as beautiful and delicate and meeting all the harsh beauty standards. Additionally, Lee incorporates the motif of sounds when describing the impact of the revolution to demonstrate how the new regime pays no attention to beauty or melody and only intends to be loud and noisy.

Fastness A Translation from the English of Edmund Spenser As the novel is based around the Peking Opera, the role of beauty is greatly significant within both the themes and characters, and the author demonstrates how the cultural revolution transforms the idea and purpose of beauty from the beginning of the novel to the end. She goes on to write, “One by one, the most attractive children were singled out, leaving only the fat, the dull-witted, and the homely to stand to one side.

Other articles where Farewell My Concubine is discussed: Chen Kaige: Farewell My Concubine follows the lives of two Peking opera actors, Cheng Dieyi (played by Leslie Cheung) and Duan Xiaolou (Fengyi Zhang), from their youth and rigorous training in the 1920s to the years after the traumatic Cultural Revolution. When Lee writes, “His room was a treasure trove of curios and objects of art, all of them the finest that money could buy” (142), she demonstrates how Dieyi’s character did not change throughout his life; he is still that young boy passionate about collecting valuable artifacts of the opera. Firstly, after the Party performs renovations on the opera house, they hang up propaganda signs where the poetic couplets used to be, stating, “‘Art should serve the goals of socialism.’ The verses were clumsy and did not attempt to match the poetic quality of the lines they had replaced” (190). Lee uses the makeup to allude to the artifice within Dieyi’s character and his constant attempts to conceal his true self through beauty. In the school, there is also a large emphasis on physical beauty and the distinct separation between the beautiful and the ugly.