I was a child when I saw The Wedding Banquet with my parents. I don’t remember whether we saw it at home or at the cinema but I know we saw it together. I recently rewatched it and it’s clear I didn’t really understand what I saw the first time around.
The plot revolves around a sham marriage between Wai-Tung, a gay Taiwanese man who lives with Simon, his white American boyfriend, in Manhattan, and Wei Wei, an artist from mainland China who squats in a dilapidated loft owned by Wai-Tung. Wai-Tung is in his early thirties and receiving ever more pressure from his parents, who live in Taipei, to get married and start making grandchildren. They don’t know that their son is gay or that he has been living with his boyfriend for five years.
Simon is the one who cooks up the sham. He figures that if Wai-Tung won’t come out of the closet, then a sham marriage would placate his parents and stop their attempts at matchmaking. Simon is shown as sympathetic to Wei Wei and thinks that the sham will enable her to stay in America.
The lie – I’ve met a woman and we’re getting married – spirals out of control when Wai-Tung’s parents show up for the wedding and decide to throw a banquet. All of Ang Lee’s “Father knows best” movies are really good at showing how difficult it is to communicate within families.
Wai-Tung cannot tell his parents that he is gay because he is their own only child. He knows that they expect him to continue the family line by having children. However, a gay man in the 1990s cannot do so. The movie is driven by Wai-Tung’s internal conflict between who he is and what is expected of him.
Early in the movie, Wai-Tung tells Simon that he thinks the lying is stupid, but that he’s used to it. Wai-Tung has been lying for so long and to so many people that lying is like breathing. The only one who knows the truth is Simon. Inexplicably, Simon accepts this situation.
The extent of the lying is illustrated in a series of scenes, starting with what feels like a throwaway scene early in the movie, Wai-Tung is walking home when he encounters a friend on a bridge. Wai-Tung is going one way and his friend is going the other. This friend greets Wai-Tung quite informally and mentions that they haven’t seen each other in a while. Wai-Tung blames work and hastily agrees that they should get together sometime while attempting to get away. They take their leave and the next time we see the friend is at the banquet, where he drunkenly tells everyone that he and Wai-Tung go way back.
Between the two scenes is the “de-gaying” scene where all traces of Wai-Tung’s life with Simon are removed from their home before Wai-Tung’s parents arrive. The scene is played for laughs but, after the banquet, it becomes clear that Wai-Tung hides from his Taiwanese friends who are not invited to his house. Wai-Tung’s chosen life is spent with Simon and Simon’s white gay friends who, it is implied, are mostly out of the closet.
Wai-Tung’s clothes also speak to his double life. In public, he dresses conventionally in a suit and tie. Despite saying at one point that “it’s June,” Wai-Tung is almost always fully dressed. Simon, on the other hand, dresses much more casually and lightly in clothing that is clearly gay-coded. While Simon’s clothes tell us about who he is, Wai-Tung’s clothes allow him to hide in plain sight.
Early in the movie, a man rides by Simon and Wai-Tung’s house on a bicycle while Simon is taking out the garbage. The man jokingly harasses Simon before inviting him and Wai-Tung to play basketball. The scene – which includes shots of some conventionally dressed older people who Simon describes as unfriendly, disapproving neighbours – hints at the dangers implicit in living openly as a gay person.
The fight scene also demonstrates the danger of the truth. The two lovers fight when Wai-Tung tells Simon that Wei Wei is pregnant. By this point, the three characters involved in the sham have gotten quite sloppy. Simon is walking around in a wifebeater and boxer shorts and neither Wai-Tung nor Wei Wei seem to mind. The parents, likewise, say nothing.
There is a moment in the fight when it seems that the lie might be exposed. The three characters are yelling in English and behaving so oddly that Wai-Tung’s mother starts asking questions. She is shut down by her husband, who tells her to shut up and eat. We find out later that the father knows about Wai-Tung and Simon but wants to keep the lie going. Lung Sihung, the actor who plays the father, suggests that the father is aware something is afoot by ever so slightly shaking as he yells at his wife to pipe down.
When Wai-Tung finally breaks down and tells his mother that he is gay, he is afforded only partial relief. His mother is saddened and in denial but does not react angrily. Instead, she tells him that his father cannot find out and Wai-Tung agrees. After telling his mother, Wai-Tung starts dressing a little more casually and is able to fall asleep on the couch again.
During the banquet, Ang Lee makes a cameo as a wedding guest who opines, “You're witnessing the results of 5,000 years of sexual repression.” His statement is in response to a white guest’s surprise at the drunkenness and sexual innuendo on display.
The line is illustrative in at least two ways. First, the wedding guest is describing what Chinese receptions are like and why. On the wedding night, the bride and the groom are expected to have sex and this will be the first time that they can have culturally sanctioned sex. In fact, once married, you are expected to have a lot of sex because you are expected to have children but it is culturally verboten to do so before marriage. Everyone at the wedding reception knows this and, in combination with copious amounts of alcohol, the reception acts as a release for all kinds of repression.
However, in the movie, the bride and especially the groom are not looking forward to sex and, for the groom, there is no end in sight to the repression.
The wedding night scene is brief. The set up is that the guests who storm Wai-Tung and Wei Wei’s hotel room won’t leave until the two have removed all their clothes. Once the guests leave, Wei Wei decides to put the moves on Wai-Tung who says no but doesn’t resist. In the current day, some viewers consider what happened to be rape or sexual assault. Certainly, the scene is uncomfortable. I would argue that it’s not technically rape because Wai-Tung is a man. He could have fought off Wei Wei because he is stronger than she is. Was it assault? Probably.
Two things are clear: one, the scene is in the movie to further the plot and two, the scene does not suggest that Wai-Tung is bisexual.
In order for the movie to make sense, Wai-Tung has to be very gay. If he was bisexual, he could just find a woman that he likes and live conventionally. Everything about Wai-Tung suggests he would like very much to live as he is expected to. His problem is that he can’t. When he finally tells his mother that Simon is his lover, he tells her that he’s always been like this and that Simon is so dear to him because with Simon he has finally found happiness.
For the purposes of the plot, Wei Wei needs to get pregnant and needs to keep the baby. This, I think, is why the uncomfortable wedding night scene exists. You simply can’t have the second half of the movie without the pregnancy.
The pregnancy heightens the stakes and allows the movie to explore more dramatic themes.
Wei Wei’s decision to keep the baby grants Wai-Tung’s parents their most cherished wish, which makes the news that their son is gay go down easier.
The future child lightens Wai-Tung’s burden. His relief when Wei Wei says she wants to keep the baby is the relief of a man who is finally able to fulfill his duty. Without the child, his parents’ disappointment would be total.
News of the pregnancy drives a wedge between Simon and Wai-Tung but Wei Wei’s request that Simon be one of the fathers of her child brings him back into the fold.
Finally, Wei Wei’s decision enables her to get what she wants: a green card and a secure place to live so that she can focus on painting.
At the end, the characters are more truthful but still enveloped in some level of lying. This state of affairs could be said to mirror the situation of gays in North America in the 1990s. Wai-Tung has told his mother. Simon knows that Wai-Tung’s father knows. Wai-Tung has not been rejected by his mother. Simon has been tacitly accepted by Wai-Tung’s father. Simon, Wei Wei and Wai-Tung come to an understanding. Everyone gets something that they want but no one gets everything they wanted.
At the beginning of the movie, Simon speaks Chinese to his physiotherapy patient but he otherwise presents as very American. Apart from speaking English and being the least conventionally dressed character, Simon’s Americanness is put on display when he, as Landlord Simon, inexplicably presents gifts to Wai-Tung’s parents (when has a landlord ever given his tenant’s parents gifts!?).
He gives Wai-Tung’s mother wrinkle cream and he gives Wai-Tung’s father a device to monitor his blood pressure after his recent stroke. These are terrible gifts from a Chinese perspective. The wrinkle cream tells the mother that she looks old. The device reminds the father of his poor health.
The gifts are played for comedy but later, the gift to Wai-Tung’s father is used to suggest that the gap between East and West can be bridged. Just as Wai-Tung and Simon are about to have sex in the afternoon because they think no one is home, they happen upon Wai-Tung’s father. The father is sitting with the device when he notices his son and tells him that he thinks Simon's device is quite useful. Simon is then shown helping the father use the device.
The movie ends with multiple partial bridges and compromises, which feel truer to life than a dramatic full disclosure. Wai-Tung tells his mother the truth, which shocks and disappoints her, but does not cause her to reject him. Wai-Tung’s father tells Simon that he knows and tacitly accepts Simon but won’t let Simon tell Wai-Tung. Finally, Simon bridges part of the gap by not telling Wai-Tung why he is smiling after Wai-Tung remarks that he and Wei Wei should go tell his father about Wei Wei’s decision to keep the baby.
My partner stopped short of calling me an oracle the other day. I was distraught and attempting to explain the reasons for my distress. We had just learned that he is being laid off. I have been taking the news poorly because I take bad news poorly.
My partner is more reserved. He has emotions but he hides them. Only sometimes do they seep out. My emotions have been all over the place and I am not good at hiding them.
Rationally, the news is bad but not catastrophic, at least not immediately. No one knows whether anything will ever go right again but we are not, at the present time, completely exposed to the elements. We have savings and some time, so it could be worse.
In between sobs, I told him that the layoff news seems to have set off something within me. I’ve been trying to stay balanced despite the manifold ways that the world keeps trying to knock me off course. But in the video game we call life in a pandemic of denial, every time you think you’ve figured out the game, another curve ball comes at you.
My main issue is a complete lack of motivation. I don’t mind barely doing anything and the thought of doing more frightens me. I don’t want to put myself out there. The job market is terrifying. I can’t countenance pretending to care while everything around me goes to shit. I insist on masking. I insist on not unduly exposing myself. My refusal to deny the ongoing viral clusterfuck means that I am not an attractive hire.
Then there are my skills, which are all skills that AI claims to be able to replace. I do not believe that AI can replace my skills. But I do think that AI can convince employers that my skills are not worth paying for.
After all, why bother learning anything when you can just ask a chatbot? Sure, the chatbot might give you the wrong answer but nobody’s perfect. Who cares if the same chatbot can also convince you to kill yourself or others? There are too many people anyway. Who cares if the chatbot is going to use up all the fresh water or poison the air? We don’t need those things! The important thing is to save money and stop thinking. Thinking is something that pesky humans do.
I can write. I know (more or less) the rules of English grammar. I can translate French into English. I can edit. I can teach. These skills, which I have spent a lifetime cultivating, are all going the way of the dodo. Sure, people can’t think very straight these days and they’ve never been able to write very clearly, but none of that matters now that they think a chatbot can do it for them.
After I told my partner about my lack of motivation, I justified it by pointing to our current state. “Look,” I said, “everything is upside down. What’s good is bad and what’s bad is good." I can’t see, I told him, how I can motivate myself to do anything given that this state of affairs creates a force field of depression.
He thought about it and replied, jokingly, that, although he didn’t want to respond as an AI would and claim that I was a brilliant oracle, he could see my point. For readers who may require a bit more proof, here’s a short list of things that are upside down.
Note: In light of the layoff news, I’ve added a "leave me a tip on Ko-fi" button on the main page and, for reference purposes, just below this note. You can leave me a tip if you enjoy what I write and want to show your support. If you prefer to lurk without paying, as I generally do, just ignore this message and carry on as you were.
Recently, I moved. The move was made somewhat under duress. My former landlord announced that they wanted to sell and listed the apartment. I could have stayed until it sold. My presence would have delayed the sale, but I didn’t want to have to deal with viewings. I didn’t want to ask visitors to wear respirator masks but be unable to really insist that they do it. I didn’t want to get stuck finding an apartment in the winter. I was overwhelmed by the nebulous but ever looming threat of homelessness.
In response to a myriad of negative thoughts and emotions invading me at all hours, I started a frenzied search and found another place. I asked my former landlord for some compensation in return for leaving the apartment and they accepted. I’m still angry about feeling forced to move and think I should have asked for more, although I wonder whether there is an amount that would have satisfied me. I suspect that there is not.
It is much more fun to watch something not sell when you are not living in that thing. I have only negative hopes for the sale of that apartment. I hope it takes forever to sell. I hope that it sells for much less than the absurd asking price that the former landlord has set. I hope that they have to do a lot of work to sell it. I wish to hear only bad tidings.
I know that any landlords who read these words will think that I am being harsh. “You weren’t forced out! You chose to leave,” I hear them say. I chose to leave because I wanted to avoid a highly stressful situation that would only become more stressful as time went on and the landlord’s desperation invariably increased. I chose to leave so that my life wouldn’t be swallowed up by a real estate transaction that I would not benefit from.
The new apartment is older and larger but mostly bereft of walls. The building is smaller and the area is not as nice. The rent is higher and there is no elevator. I worry that the air conditioning will not work next summer. The dryer is terrible and the washing machine is not great.
I must admit that the extra space is nice. I’m no longer tripping over or bumping into things. Nor am I constantly moving things out of the way in order to make way for other things that I want to use. The apartment has more storage and the bathroom is larger. Although the old apartment was hardly noisy, this one is very quiet. When I first arrived, the lack of noise made me wonder, ever so briefly, whether I was in some sort of horror movie. Did anyone else live in the building or was I the only one left alive?
The new apartment is a 90s loft conversion and, even though it was recently renovated, it contains elements that remind me of the 90s, namely a skylight and a large sliding window door. The fact that it is a loft is also very 90s. It’s the sort of place that a teenage version of me would have wanted to live. In some ways, it’s the future that I dreamed of because I was too young to realize that tastes and trends change.
The move has thus engendered a layered form of nostalgia. I feel nostalgia for the place I just left, which I enjoyed living in even though it was a bit soulless. It was a newish build and smaller, so it was easier to heat and cool. The building was well constructed and managed; the neighbours were quiet. I lived there for years and I would have lived there for longer if the landlord hadn’t decided to list.
The nostalgia that I feel in the new apartment is refracted. It’s nostalgia for other places that are in some way similar to this place. The quietness, the laneway and the large sliding window door remind me of my childhood. The skylight, functional kitchen and larger bathroom remind me of my father. Sometimes I feel a strange, impossible urge to show him this place. “Look, dad,” I say. But he died twenty years ago, so I’m really having this conversation with myself. In that conversation, I want to believe that he would have approved of the design even if he would have been concerned that I am only renting.
The move has made me think of my father a lot. Before I found the new apartment, my vulnerable state made me long for the stability that only my father had provided. The move occurred just before the 20th anniversary of his death. As I finished unpacking and started to settle in, I was forced to contend with the passage of time. I thought of how far I’ve come and how much I still miss him.