A Cinema of Pleasure: He Xiaopei’s Home Video Aesthetics and Queer Feminist Politics

Bao, Hongwei

Abstract

This article examines He Xiaopei’s films and filmmaking career to discern how they help her articulate a queer feminist politics. He Xiaopei (Figure 1) is one of the best-known queer and feminist filmmakers and activists in contemporary China. She has made ten films so far, including The Lucky One (宠儿 2012), Our Marriages: When Lesbians Marry Gay Men (dir. He Xiaopei and Yuan Yuan, 奇缘一生 2013), Yvo and Chrissy (如此生活 2017), Playmates (玩伴 2019) and The Bad Women of China (中华坏女人 2021). Referred to as a ‘pink crusader’ (Zhang, 2013), He Xiaopei was a pioneering queer activist in the 1990s Beijing and played a crucial role in China’s Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender (LGBT) movement (He, 2001). Since the 2000s, she has been known as one of the most articulate advocates of queer feminist politics in China. Her politics is consistently manifested in her films and social and political activism. This article situates He Xiaopei in the global women’s cinema tradition, highlighting He Xiaopei’s queer feminist intervention into the feminist debate about the use of pleasure in feminist cultural politics. It also examines the close relationship and dynamic interaction between her personal biography and the narrative, style, content, aesthetics and politics of her films. I suggest that He Xiaopei’s films can be best described as a ‘cinema of pleasure’, films celebrating women’s sexual pleasure and sexual agency, and that their ‘home video’ format and aesthetics effectively facilitate the expression of a queer feminist politics.

Citation

Bao, H. (2023). A Cinema of Pleasure: He Xiaopei’s Home Video Aesthetics and Queer Feminist Politics. In F. Chan, F. Elliott, & A. Willis (Eds.), Women in East Asian Cinema: Gender Representations, Creative Labour and Global Histories (13-28). Edinburgh University Press

• Publication Date: 2023-12
• Deposit Date: Aug 6, 2023
• Publisher: Edinburgh University Press
• Pages: 13-28
• Book Title: Women in East Asian Cinema: Gender Representations, Creative Labour and Global Histories
• Chapter Number: 1
• ISBN: 9781399504928
• Public URL: https://nottingham-repository.worktribe.com/output/23982877
• Publisher URL: https://edinburghuniversitypress.com/book-women-in-east-asian-cinema.html
• Contract Date: Aug 1, 2023