From Mei Lanfang to Li Yugang: theorizing female-impersonating aesthetics in post-1976 China
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From Mei Lanfang to Li Yugang: theorizing female‑impersonating aesthetics in post‑1976 China Thanh Huynh1
Received: 22 August 2018 / Revised: 1 February 2020 / Accepted: 27 February 2020 © Academy for International Communication of Chinese Culture 2020
Abstract The Cultural Revolution (1966–1976) in China marked a period fraught with ideological tensions and violent social reforms that had long-lasting impacts on the traditional performing arts. If, in the decades before, the nandan art, or female impersonation in Beijing opera (jingju), was embodied in the figure of Mei Lanfang—leader of the Four Great Dan (si da ming dan), who played charming feminine characters onstage and fulfilled the role of morally conscious citizens offstage—then the art was banned, stigmatized, and re-gendered during the Revolution. Picking up from when China’s institutional support had allowed jingju actresses to play dan roles previously performed by males, this article historicizes the grassroots phenomenon of Li Yugang’s genre-defying female-impersonating aesthetic and problematizes the very use of current terminologies (e.g., fanchuan, female impersonation, cross-dressing, transvestism, etc.) and Western critical theory to discuss a culturally specific mode of performing whose discursive assumptions need making transparent. Further, the article examines Li’s relationship with the Mei school of acting to theorize the multidirectional strategies with which postmodern female impersonation disentangles itself from its precursor’s ideological commitment: conjuring up simulacra of idealized feminine subjectivities by vying for ever-heightening gratification of the aural and the visual; embracing contradiction and ambiguity; and generating its own self-mutilation and eventual deconstruction. Sketching these female-impersonating strategies will explain how Li Yugang’s aesthetic facilitates assimilating postmodern technology and thematics to promote the Chinese traditional culture, helps address old problems of the artist’s social and cultural legitimacy, and naturalizes the mass audiences’ reception of the androgynous body.
* Thanh Huynh [email protected] 1
University of Central Oklahoma, Edmond, USA
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T. Huynh
Keywords Female impersonation · Aesthetic · Postmodern · Mei Lanfang · Li Yugang · Beijing opera
Problematics of a twentieth‑century female impersonation The juxtaposition of Beijing opera legend, Mei Lanfang, and so-called pop singer, Li Yugang, through the common denominator of female impersonation (fanchuan) seems an odd mixture on several grounds; on the one hand, the constitutive difference in genre—the ultimate criterion that has led critics to draw the neat line between Mei’s highbrow art and Li’s popular cross-dressing performance—ostensibly precludes a comparative analysis of the socio-historical circumstances that shape each artist’s approach to portraying the aesthetic feminine. On the other, the problem of periodization raises doubts about such a project: to what extent can one read the reviv
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