Coppelia and the Malecon

What do I know about Cuba? Very little. Never bothered too much about it. Too far away. Except when the film Strawberry and Chocolate came. It was wonderful, richly layered, with fine characterisations and plot development. It brought Cubans to life. It gave me a glimpse of them as real people, with laughter, pathos, honesty and grit. It gave me a glimpse of Havana, the rundown tenements, the 50's cars held together by string and a prayer, plying the streets as unmetered taxis, the catholicism under the glower of the state, the black economy, desperate and liberated at the same time. And scenes from it were filmed at Coppelia in the park, famed for the best ice-cream in Cuba, and on the Malecon, the seawall that is the front face of Havana.

So when by chance I ended up in the city itself, I absolutely had to see both. I walked the length of the Malecon for over an hour -- it is a few kilometres long, facing the Gulf of Mexico -- and while enjoying the fairly stiff breeze (a cyclone was passing through) and the spray from the surf hitting the rocks, I tried to figure out which spot exactly it was where the scene was filmed.

I walked even further, to see Coppelia, with the aim of eating ice-cream there -- of course! -- but unfortunately, it was closed for renovation. Even so, it was great to be in the vicinity, the university district, for the film was partly set among university students, and it was a homecoming of sorts to see real students hurrying about to class or to lunch, or just loitering around with friends on street corners.

And I thought to myself : see the power of film? See how, in an hour and a half, it had given depth to the idea of Cuba such that my walk-about did not feel like a first encounter, but an enrichment of something I already knew? See how it had created affiliation in me to two places in Havana such that I absolutely must see them with my own eyes, stand there, sit there and touch them? See how it had made me more interested in Cubans as people, more sensitive to them as individuals? And indeed I was. I was readier than usual to strike up a conversation at the slightest opportunity. It was hard and easy at the same time. Hard, since I spoke no Spanish. Easy, since I was considered a curiosity on the island, with an Asian face.

"Hapan!", they would call to me with a smile (it's the Spanish pronunciation of 'Japan').

"No, no, not Hapan," I would reply, and this would intrigue them even more, and so we would start to talk.

I spoke with 4 university students, a shopkeeper having a slow day, two 15-year-old schoolboys with nothing to do, just bicycling around on a lazy Sunday, an old couple on a park bench, an engineer (or so he said), strumming his guitar in the evening, a teacher walking his dog, not a few (female) prostitutes walking the night, among them an 18-year-old male part-timer, who in the day was serving his military service. And a vice-minister in the government.

But most of all with Vladimir (yes, that's his real name and he really is Cuban), a waiter in the hotel, who fell head over heels for me. I'm not kidding! What did he see in me???

But I am digressing. This essay is really about the power of film.

Compared to the decades when gay people were non-existent on the cinema screen, the last 10 years or so have seen a small explosion. This is not to say that all the portrayals of gay people, especially gay men, have been flattering. Most of the more commercial releases have been criticised by the gay community for pandering to stereotype, depicting us in drag, or as limp-wrists. We're made the butt of jokes, the overplayed queen, the male prostitute or occasionally the deranged psychotic murderer.

It is highly controversial whether this kind of visibility is better or worse than invisibility. But even here, things have been evolving, if ever so slowly. Gay characters have, in a few recent films, become less 'fringe' or outlandish, although it is still true that they rarely seem to have any sex life or love interest. But the optimist in me says this is just a matter of time. It's going to come.

Interestingly enough, it is as likely to come via Chinese cinema as via American cinema. The film Happy Together by Wong Kar Wai -- banned in Singapore, by the way, but available underground through pirated VCDs -- which was given just one legitimate screening at the 1998 Film Festival, broke new ground. If you look critically at it, you'd see that this highly-acclaimed film, which won the Best Director's Award at Cannes in 1997, is built entirely around a gay relationship, with no reference at all to the heterosexual world. It's as if heterosexual people don't exist, or at least, don't have sex!

Seven films at the 1998 Singapore Film Festival had gay characters or gay-related content: Happy Together, Hold You Tight, East Palace West Palace, Love and Death on Long Island, The Hanging Garden, Johns and Licensed to Kill. The first three were in Chinese, the other four in English. As always, there were huge turnouts from the gay community. The Hanging Garden was sold out by the second day, from telephone and internet bookings alone. You may ask, if the gay community rushes like this for tickets, where is there any chance for the straights to catch these movies and 'benefit' from it? Good question; I don't know the answer, although having said that, Happy Together had quite a significant attendance from straight-looking people.

But sometimes, the more 'commercial' of the films from the Festival come back for commercial release, and then it gets to a wider audience, as do other films that don't come in via the Festival route. Even in Singapore, they can do fairly well. In & Out had a run of a few weeks despite being in the shadow of the monster Titanic. It would be interesting to know if this one, together with the other films with gay characters in the past few years, have changed perceptions among those who watched them. I wonder if anyone is planning such a study. But going by personal experience, such as Strawberry and Chocolate and what it did to me with Cuba, I think it must have had an effect.

Talking about effect, I have the feeling that the grittier films like Happy Together and Hold You Tight are actually more powerful as opinion-benders than the "happy-ending" ones like In & Out. The grittier films take a much closer look at gay lives, warts and all. They make us more believable.

No doubt many people don't watch movies. Many, even those who do, don't care to watch a gay-related movie. But if they are so unreceptive to not even want to watch such a film, then it would not work its magic on them anyway. What matters is that bit by bit, a small part of straight society is exposed to our world, the gay people in it, the highs and lows of our lives, and the stunning recognisability, not the alienness, of our feelings. It's great that Chinese cinema is bringing this in alongside Western cinema, for it makes it undeniable that homosexuality is not a western thing, but as inherent in Asian (or at least Chinese) society as any.

The gay community in Singapore owe a debt to the Film Festival organisers. They have shown great courage in bringing in films despite controversial content and in pushing the censorship boundaries by getting their films shown uncut, and even getting special exemptions for banned films. The seven films this year have been particularly satisfying, and if a straight film-goer had been to them all, he would have gotten a Cuba each of seven different aspects of gay experience: the pain of a gay relationship falling apart; male sexuality on the continuum from latent to open homosexuality and the tentative beginnings of relationship; seduction, repressed homosexuality, and the power of being out; infatuation and obsession; homophobia in families, running away and teen suicide; male prostitution and love amidst it all; and gay-bashing.

I don't think anyone can come out of these films and be the same again.

© Yawning Bread 

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