Despite the five-year ban on filmmaking in 2006, Lou Ye shot Spring Fever in 2009 surreptitiously in Nanjing. Based on Michel Foucault’s theory of “technologies of the self,” the paper aims to fathom how Lou Ye exerts technologies of the self under Communist China’s ubiquitous discipline and punishment. The findings are, first, in Spring Fever, Lou Ye cites Zhu Zhiqing’s and Yu Dafu’s literary works to embody the yearning of liberation in the early 20th century. On the other hand, Lou Ye uses hand-held cameras to symbolize the mental inconsistency of the human struggle under the conventional social value. As for the plot, though the legal system does not regulate queer’s relationship, the protagonist forms abstinence from leaving his lover to another and maintains fidelity to his lover. Besides, the protagonist also needs to form abstinence from being intimate to his lover in public, and thus he can slide out of the disciplines and punishment from Communist China’s coercion and heterosexual hegemony. Furthermore, the protagonist has the gender presentation that meets the social anticipation in his field of work. He becomes a drag queen after work, which reveals the reconstruction of gender stereotype and challenges the authenticity of regulation of gender. Lastly, though the protagonist is stabbed by his ex-lover’s wife, he chooses not to revenge but to tattoo on the scar, which typifies self-transcendent technologies of the self.
中文關鍵詞
英文關鍵詞
Lou Ye, queer films, technologies of the self, Chinese cinema