The Transformative Power of Cross-dressing Performance across Media

As a theatrical and cultural phenomenon, cross-dressing performance has passed down through many centuries and manifested itself in different parts of the world. In Elizabethan England, women were not allowed to perform onstage, so men had to impersonate women and play their roles. For a long time, Italian opera featured a female impersonator, usually a castrato, who was castrated before puberty in order to retain the high notes and the ranges of his immature voice. In Chinese opera, the male dan (男旦) tradition (i.e., female roles played by male actors) lasted a very long time, and one of its greatest representatives in modern times was Mei Lanfang, who was known both domestically and internationally for his impersonation of ancient Chinese beauties onstage. The male-to-female impersonation seems to have universal appeal across cultures. As Lithgow (Reference Lithgow and Ginibre2005: 7) observes:

When film became a dominant means of public entertainment, cross-dressing performance was manipulated to attract the audiences, who were curious about its process of transformation. In addition, the peculiarities of cross-dressing were taken advantage of in the plot to set up some dramatic situations and gags. In many twentieth century Western movies, cross-dressing is employed as an effective means to create comic atmosphere in a romantic comedy, and its manifestations include men dressed as women or women dressed as men. As Lithgow (Reference Lithgow and Ginibre2005: 8) argues:

Since the 1980s, cross-dressing comedy shows have abounded on Western television, such as the character Edna Everage. The actor’s real name is Barry Humphries, an Australian comedian, who first cross-dressed as Aunt (later, Dame) Edna Everage in his performances onstage and achieved great success. ‘Dame Edna is, in fact, a theatrical phenomenon: the only solo act to play (and fill) the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane since it opened for business in 1663 with Beaumont and Fletcher’s The Humorous Lieutenant’ (Lahr Reference Lahr1992: 2). When his cross-dressing performance was remediated on Television, he became even more popular.

Humphries’s cross-dressing performance is characterized by a blending of comedy and drag. In addition to its comic effects for entertainment, the public images of such cross-dressing performances serve to enlighten people about the fluidity of gender identity, which is consequential in challenging gender norms and defending the rights of various minorities groups. Therefore, cross-dressing performance becomes embodied with ideological implications for social justice for those who live in the margins of society. Richard Schechner says,

During the 1950s to 1970s, cross-dressing, which used to dominate traditional Chinese theatre, almost disappeared as it was generally dismissed as abnormal or degrading in the revolutionary discourse, which echoes what Lu Xun once commented on male dan in the 1920s. In his article ‘Lun Zhaoxiang Zhi Lei’ (‘On Photography and the Like’, 1924), Lu Xun was highly critical of female impersonation:

In China, modernity and revolution are often associated with masculinity, while feudalism and anti-revolutionary activities are often symbolized by ‘unnatural’ women’s images, such as ‘small-feet old women’ and feminized men. During the Chinese revolutions of the 1960s and 1970s, images of masculinity were vigorously praised and propagated, while feminized men were demonized and marginalized. However, in the aftermath of the reform and opening up of China at the end of the 1970s, cross-dressing went through a revival, not so much in theatre, as the impersonation tradition of male dan actors was discontinued, but in cinema and on TV. One of the most successful films which features cross-dressing is Bawang bieji (Farewell My Concubine, 1993), directed by the fifth-generation Chinese film director Chen Kaige, in which an internationally acclaimed film star Zhang Guorong (Leslie Cheung) plays the major role of Cheng Dieyi. Other films include Donggong xigong (East Palace, West Palace, 1996), and Mei Lanfang (Forever Enthralled, 2008) in which Li Ming, another leading Hong Kong actor, plays Mei Lanfang.

In the new millennium, there emerged a new phenomenon of cross-dressing performance on TV, especially in talent show programmes, with Xinguang dadao (Avenue of Stars, 星光大道) on China Central Television as the most well-known, which witnessed the dramatic success of some grassroot performers almost overnight. One of the most representative performers is Li Yugang, whose charm and cross-dressing performance did not just overwhelm the domestic audiences, but also deeply impressed an international audience in many places all over the world. In addition, there appeared a number of young performers imitating Li Yugang, including on talent shows, which rendered cross-dressing performance into a nationwide cultural phenomenon with far-reaching consequences on gender and cultural politics.

While working as a bar singer, Li Yugang developed his talent for singing in both male and female voices. Having received some training from a dan actor of Peking opera, he took part in the talent show competition, Xingguang dadao, in 2006 and won third place in the yearly final, which made him a pop star and idol among many young people. Ever since, Li Yugang began to hold personal concerts both in China and abroad, in which he impersonated some well-known ancient beauties such as Xi Shi, Wang Zhaojun, Diao Chan and Yang Guifei. His cross-dressing performances were broadcast on TV, transmitted through DVD, and watched on the internet, which further attracted a huge number of audiences, many of whom turned into his devoted fans. Then, he was invited to perform at the Spring Festival Gala of China Central Television successively in 2012 and 2013, which consolidated his reputation as an artist of cross-dressing performance. It also means that he and his art were both officially approved by the authorities and enthusiastically supported and welcomed by the majority of audiences in China, which has profound cultural implications.

While indebted to dan performance in Peking opera, Li Yugang’s cross-dressing performance is very different from opera and attained a unique style. He does not hide his real identity as a man. Instead, he takes advantage of his ability to sing and perform both male and female parts, which usually surprises his audiences in a pleasant manner. In an interview, he spoke candidly: ‘I’m not exactly an opera singer. I don’t wear oil painting makeup, and I make my own costumes, which are different from traditional Peking Opera costumes’ (Huang Reference Huang2012). While Li Yugang has appropriated and remediated Peking opera, his cross-dressing performance itself is characterized by an intermedial mingling of opera, talent show, fashion, modern choreography, music concert, and so on, which not only satisfies the aesthetic taste of the new generations, but also renders the performance a commercial success.

The wide appeal of cross-dressing performance represented by Li Yugang demonstrates that the boundaries and norms in terms of gender, race, class, and even cultural identity can become arbitrary and fragile. Concerning the cultural significance of drags, Butler explains: ‘I would suggest as well that drag fully subverts the distinction between inner and outer psychic space and effectively mocks both the expressive model of gender and the notion of a true gender identity’ (Butler Reference Butler1999: 174). Although it was not as politically subversive as the drags in the West, the cross-dressing performance of Li Yugang and others like him has great potential for challenging various social stereotypes and conventions. As I argue elsewhere:

On a positive note, cross-dressing performance both in China and elsewhere has been embodied with transformative power over public sentiments towards social liberalism and justice. As Garber states:

The intermedial representation of cross-dressing contributes to the gradual acceptance of differences in gender politics so that the public become more open to a diversified ecology of gender as well as other social categories. In the meantime, it is also true that there remain all kinds of controversies around and prejudices toward cross-dressing, revealing gender anxieties in different social and cultural circumstances.

Ambiguities in Cross-dressing on Screen

The cross-dressing performance in mass media that is intended to entertain audiences does not necessarily entail subversive effects against gender and social norms, but instead can lead to a reiteration of the binary mindset in support of the patriarchal ideology. ‘For male characters, wearing women’s clothing is liberating in some way … or it functions as a way of reinforcing stereotypes…’ (Maschio Reference Maschio1986: 162). With regard to comic cross-dressing performance on TV, the subversive and the reiterative are often blended together so that any one-sided interpretation sounds coercive and unconvincing. Furthermore, cross-dressing that is represented as delusionary and comic on screen, is sometimes manipulated as a means to undermine the legitimization of sexual orientations outside of the heterosexual norms.

In China, Farewell My Concubine is known for being one of the first films to represent both a cross-dressing performance of male dan in Peking opera and his troubled sexuality. While it was applauded by many for its role in overcoming homophobia among the audiences, it nevertheless was also criticized for queering the queer, with its emphasis on the abnormality in queer identity, especially in terms of the excessive violence and shame associated with the so-called ‘distorted’ gender identity. Ever since the film won the Palme d’Or at the Cannes International Film Festival in 1993, the cross-dressing performance and its impact on gender identity have been a favourite topic of academic work, which has been carried out in different contexts and from a variety of perspectives. Benzi Zhang, for instance, views Farewell as epoch-making for breaking the ‘“languageless” silence in search of an appropriate voice to express homosexual experience and anxiety, which are situated in the most painful and violent period of Chinese history’ (Zhang Reference Zhang1999: 104). E. Ann Kaplan’s response, however, exemplifies the doubleness of criticism. On the one hand, she finds the gay imagery in the film stereotypical; on the other, the introduction of gay sexualities was thought to be unprecedented and ‘should be recognized as progress’ (Kaplan Reference Kaplan and Lu1997: 271). In light of the differences in criticism, it is feasible to analyse how the intermedial representation of cross-dressing performance from stage to screen appeals to the audience and what kind of impact this film has had on public sensibilities of homosexuality in contemporary China.

It was argued that the opera school’s strict training and discipline might have affected Dieyi’s gender identity. At the opera school, Douzi, boy Cheng Dieyi, is selected to play a dan role due to his girlish figure and delicate nature. His everyday training chiefly involves ‘the stylized repetition’ of female-coded acts and singing, which are regulated by the master via cruel punishment. He is trained to walk and gesture like a woman, to sing in a womanly, high-pitched voice – mannerisms which all aim to shape him into a female figure – and further required to perform these stylized acts intensively in order to perfect his female role. Due to this extraordinary female impersonation and performance regimen, Cheng Dieyi apparently assumes a ‘feminine’ nature in his gestures, tastes and desires that are indexical of his differences. Although in his adulthood Dieyi wears men’s suits, the film suggests that he has developed a fascination with women’s dress, especially through his narcissistic gaze at his mirrored reflection, wearing cosmetics and costumes backstage at the opera house.

When the transformation that Dieyi has experienced onstage and offstage is embedded into the film, the intermedial reference to opera on screen reveals the potential of cross-dressing performance in challenging social norms and shaping one’s gendered self. Whether the mere repetition of cross-dressing can have a decisive impact upon one’s sexuality and gender remains doubtful. If this causality was the case, then we might expect all male dans to become queer. Jenny Kwok Wah Lau rightly points out: ‘femininity in Beijing [Peking] Opera is a translation, not necessarily a transgression’ (Lau Reference Lau1995: 23). In effect, the fact that some dan actors were queer used to be a taboo topic in opera circles. Moreover, Dieyi’s transgression could be better explained by the theory of gender performativity. Butler uses the example of drag queen performance to argue that gender is not fixed and biologically determined, but performatively constructed. Yet she is not explicit about how such a transformation of gender identity might take place. In response to criticism of Gender Trouble, Butler re-examined her theory of performativity based on individuals’ will or choice, emphasizing the regulatory force of gender norms. In her later book, Bodies That Matter, Butler (Reference Butler1993: 95) states: ‘performativity is neither free play nor theatrical self-representation; nor can it be simply equated with performance’. While performance assumes a coherent and a priori subject that can take full account of its agency, performativity emphasizes the social norms that affect gendered practices. Dieyi’s queer identity is complicated in that it is not just formed as a result of his theatrical impersonation but also constructed through violent regulation and mistreatment.

As represented in the film, the rules of opera training dictate that one must be punished until one can perfectly repeat acts as instructed. After suffering severe beatings for stumbling over lines, Douzi and his companion at the opera school, Laizi, seize an opportunity to escape from the troupe together, indicating Douzi’s refusal to perform his female role. They eventually return to prevent the Master from punishing Shitou (boy Duan Xiaolou) for helping them escape. Laizi hangs himself with a rope in the training house after witnessing the Master brutally beat Shitou and Douzi. Laizi’s death shocks Douzi into the realization that he must accept his fate: the fate of being a male dan. There seems no way out except death.

Douzi suffers from another, and more overtly violent regulation when a theatre agent visits the troupe to select new talent for eunuch Zhang’s birthday banquet. Douzi is told to sing the song he always stumbles over, and again he incorrectly recites the same line – ‘I am by birth a maiden, not a boy’ – singing instead: ‘I am by birth a boy, not a maiden’. His failure somehow enrages Shitou, who picks up a smoking pipe, thrusts it into Douzi’s mouth and churns vigorously. With blood flowing from his mouth, Douzi recites the song again, this time correctly. Shitou’s sudden, cruel treatment seems to force Douzi into an internal identification with the female role he plays. Later, in eunuch Zhang’s mansion, Douzi must confront the gender he is regulated to identify as for the first time. After successfully performing Farewell My Concubine at the birthday banquet, Douzi is brought to Zhang’s private room, alone, where Zhang sexually abuses him, reinforcing Douzi’s subordinate position as a ‘woman’. To eunuch Zhang, Douzi is nothing but a whore, a clear reflection of the social oppression of women in general, and, in turn, the male dan. The impact of violence on Dieyi’s gender identity has been noted in most research on this film. Some critics protest that these episodes of violence perpetuate the definition of female gender in Douzi (boy Dieyi) as ‘created by pain and deprivation, maintained by substitute satisfactions’ (Lau Reference Lau1995: 24). However, most scholarship fails to acknowledge that representing homosexuality as a result of violence and suffering negates the normalcy of the queer. To de-naturalize the queer is to degrade it. In this regard, the life of a male dan in opera circles is a valid subject for the film, and the representation of cross-dressing from theatre to screen in it becomes a cultural intervention.

It is of great importance to investigate how audiences respond to cross-dressing performances in Peking opera, and its accountability for gender trouble in Farewell. According to Judith Halberstam, gay shame ‘records the exposure, in psychoanalytic terms, of the subject’s castration; indeed, in a psycho-analytical framework, one would be tempted to say that castration is central to shame and that shame is central to femininity’ (Halberstam Reference Halberstam, Essed, Goldberg and Kobayashi2005: 64). At first, Douzi strongly resists his assigned role of male-to-female impersonation in the opera training school, as implied by his repeated error in singing ‘I am by birth a boy, not a maiden’ instead of the correct ‘I am by birth a maiden, not a boy’. Each time Douzi makes this mistake, his palms are severely beaten. This cruelty is visually emphasized through a close shot of Douzi’s wounded, bloody palm. Douzi’s insistence on being ‘by birth a boy’ reflects his fear of, or shame in, being recognized as a feminine male. ‘For a man, wearing women’s dress undermined the authority inherently belonging to the superior sex, and placed him in a position of shame’ (Howard Reference Howard1988: 423–424). Halberstam discusses different solutions to the discomfort of ‘gay shame’, including the urge to aestheticize. Through a process of aestheticizing shame, a feminine male can turn into ‘the idealized and phallic woman who often becomes an excuse for exquisite but dangerous investments in beauty and art’ (Halberstam Reference Halberstam, Essed, Goldberg and Kobayashi2005: 65). Performing Peking opera, Dieyi gradually learns to appreciate the feminine beauty in dan. The longer he practises dan, the more immersed he becomes in his role as a female impersonator.

Totally identifying with the concubine Yuji, Dieyi believes that he is Yuji, the idealized ‘woman’, an illusion which empowers him to combat his ‘gay shame’. As Cui argues,

Dieyi feels confident and proud of his femininity, when female impersonation onstage is widely supported and appreciated by the contemporary audience. Essential to traditional opera, the aestheticizing of feminized men is embedded in the popular culture of that time.

Later, living in the radical period of revolutionary homogeneity during the Chinese Cultural Revolution, Dieyi realizes that he can no longer aestheticize ‘gay shame’. He becomes addicted to opium, which brings harm to both his voice and figure. Once Peking opera and female impersonation are criticized as feudal and decadent, Dieyi’s pride in his art gradually diminishes, rendering him completely confused about his gender identity. When he and Xiaolou are reunited after the Cultural Revolution, they perform together again on an empty stage. Dieyi once again repeats the mistake in reciting: ‘I am by birth a boy, not a maiden’. Immediately following this recitation, he kills himself with the King’s sword, like Yuji, onstage. Here, the intermedial reference to the tragic story between the King and his concubine in the opera adds another layer to the trans-medial process from theatre to screen in the film. For Dieyi, his failure to aestheticize this gay shame through art, thus transforming it into pride, makes life utterly ‘unliveable’.

Nevertheless, it is important to realize that Dieyi chooses suicide to express himself and to assert his homosexual identity. Thus, suicide as a climactic action in the film evokes different responses and becomes vague in its message. In general, Dieyi and his female impersonation are not presented as a threat but rather a release of the pressure enforced by a patriarchal system. In Bodies That Matter, Butler argues that drag performances, which highlight the performative nature of gender, are not necessarily subversive, but can re-instantiate the hegemonic system of binary gender in many ways, and buttress the status quo as much as subvert it. Positing drag performance as either subversive or reaffirming of dominant cultural models of gender and sexuality is overly simplistic. Defining drag as ambivalent, Butler contends that heterosexual culture produces drag for itself:

As far as Farewell is concerned, the intermedial representation of a dan actor as gay should not be regarded as subversive, but rather serves as an exception that the heterosexual social regime would display and then suppress as deviant.

The Entanglement of Intermediality with Interculturalism in Cross-dressing

Apart from its intervention into gender politics, intermedial cross-dressing performance also contributes to critical reflections on social norms and conventional boundaries. While ‘disrupting and calling attention to cultural, social, or aesthetic “dissonances”’ (Garber Reference Garber1992: 16), cross-dressing performance signals a crisis in the categorial mindset. The dismantling of borders in one category has reverberating consequences in other fields as well. As Stryker et al. (Reference Stryker, Currah and Moore2008: 14) argue:

In cultural studies, cross-dressing is intersected by various issues in different areas, including interculturalism in the era of (anti-)globalization.

In his international tours, Li Yugang is able to entertain local audiences as his cross-dressing performance does not just arouse certain kinds of nostalgia among overseas Chinese communities, but it also entails a liberating spirit, which has been claimed as a kind of soft power in conveying new and open images of China and Chinese cultures. Similarly, the success of Farewell My Concubine in global cinema reveals the attraction of traditional Chinese culture, although the film has also been criticized for orientalizing Chinese culture and displaying primitive visions to satisfy the curiosities and stereotypical misconceptions of Western audiences. Nevertheless, the reception of cross-dressing performances across cultures contributes to an inquiry of interculturalism from both inside and outside, and vice versa. The distorted imagination of the other is often magnified in the interactive process of cross-dressing performance across media, demonstrating cultural anxieties. In M. Butterfly (1993), directed by David Cronenberg, and adapted by David Henry Hwang from his play of the same name (1988), the male Peking opera dan actor Song Liling is engaged in a love affair with the male French diplomat René Gallimard. This relationship has cross-dressing criss-crossed with other border crossing issues such as nationalism and cultural identity.

During the production of M. Butterfly, some scenes were filmed in China, and Chinese actors participated in the filming. In addition to the combination of a Chinese and foreign creative line-up, the film constructs a narrative with Chinese–English ‘bilingual’ film language, which foregrounds the influence of Chinese culture. In order to perfectly present the opera performances in the film, the film director invited John Lone, a Chinese actor with a background in Peking opera, to play the role of Song Liling, and Chinese artist Guan Hongjun to be art consultant. The Peking opera performance in the film presents authentic classic arias, such as The Drunken Concubine. Although the singing and lyrics are unfamiliar and obscure to foreign audiences, the film insists on this alienating method of performance in a foreign language to showcase the wonder of Peking opera.

In the form of ‘play within a play’, M. Butterfly presents cross-dressing performances of male actors in three scenarios: the opera performance of Madame Butterfly by Song Liling, the Peking opera performance of The Drunken Concubine by Song Liling, and Madame Butterfly as a cross-dressing performance by Gallimard in prison. These three ‘plays within a play’ run through the whole film and become its prominent form of intermediality, which in the meantime highlight the twists and turns of cross-cultural communication.

In the film, Song Liling’s cross-dressing perfectly interprets a femininity that marks the unique charm of the dan role in Peking opera. Back then, when Mei Lanfang was the king of the Chinese dan role, his stage appearances fascinated both male and female audiences. In this movie, the beauty of Oriental women presented by male actors on the stage deeply impresses the Frenchman, Gallimard. The traditional women’s clothing, exquisite makeup, and elegant and charming posture arouse his imagination about a perfect woman, and fascinate him. While a long shot shows Song Liling, who is performing on the stage, the camera then uses a close-up shot to slowly sweep across the audience watching the play, and then focuses on Gallimard among the audience. The camera gets closer and closer to him, until a close-up highlights his concentrated and entranced expression. Gallimard’s ‘male gaze’ not only reflects the male hegemony within the patriarchal system, but also the Western cultural fantasy for the Orient. Song’s performance of the dan role, seen through the lens of the film, is a re-enchantment of Gallimard’s imagination of Oriental culture as feminine. As Lei writes:

In Gallimard’s eyes, no matter what Song’s true gender, as long as he appears as an ideal female image, he will always be his fragile flower – Madame Butterfly. Therefore, Gallimard’s gaze on Song not only reflects cross-cultural misunderstandings, but also reveals the ideology of Western-centrism. In this way, Gallimard, the ‘voyeur’ or the staring subject, like Song Liling, is also placed under the gaze of those cinema viewers.

Gallimard’s fascination with Song does not just derive from his appreciation of the art of male dan roles, but also his penchant for the femininity presented by cross-dressing, so much so that he stages his own drag show in prison. In order to play Madame Butterfly, Gallimard puts on heavy make-up, long hair, and fancy clothes on the spot, performs a dramatic monologue, and finally commits suicide like Madame Butterfly. Standing at the centre of the stage (prison), surrounded by the audiences, his ‘heroic’ self-transformation and martyrdom are exposed to the gaze of his fellow prisoners. This Western male who used to be the subject of gaze is now playing Madame Butterfly, a fragile flower, and an object to be gazed at by both the on-lookers present and the cinema viewers. This transformation of the relationship of gaze evokes a sense of alienation and self-reflection in the audience, who as subjects of the gaze have to confront the boundaries of gender and race in a cross-cultural context.

Furthermore, the representation of Chinese culture in the film is characterized by complexities, ambiguities, and fragmentation. Peking opera featuring cross-dressing carries the nostalgia and memory of overseas Chinese so that it becomes a symbol of traditional Chinese culture. In the meantime, Chinese culture in the film turns stereotypical. Because of the expression of homosexual love under the mask of a Peking opera male dan actor, Chinese culture represented by Peking opera falls into the cliché of stereotypes, which makes it liable to the reconstruction or re-enchantment of the Chineseness in the discourse of the Other.

It can even be said that Peking opera and dan roles are otherized in the film. The Peking opera performances in the film have become the cultural landscape of the Other under the mainstream Western lens. To some extent, the film presents a Western narcissistic cultural imagination embodied by the reorganization or collage of Westernized Chinese cultural elements that overshadows the subjectivity of Chinese culture. Of course, such kinds of cross-cultural representation and rigid conceptualization are not limited to this film, nor to other American films that represent Chinese culture, but rather they prevail in Chinese American literature as a whole. Perhaps it is true that the diasporic literature or culture in general can hardly avoid such cross-cultural traps. In a cultural market dominated by Western economic and cultural capital, Chinese culture often becomes the passive object imagined, re-constructed and narrated by Western discourse. ‘Once Chinese cultural products enter the international market, their “Chineseness” will always undergo deconstruction, negotiation, manipulation and commercialization’ (He Reference He2022: 312). On the other hand, the film also asks the audience not to fall into a cultural dualism characterized by an either–or cognitive model, highlighting the value of intermediality, transgender and cross-culture. The dissemination of films, which respect the uniqueness of traditional Chinese culture and recognize its charm in general, contributes to the overall image of Chinese culture and the communication between cultures. By means of film adaptations, Chinese cultural elements once again participate in the global cultural production and circulation, and are constructed and reshaped in intermedial performances. Therefore, such intermedial and cross-cultural works possess considerable vitality and cultural value.

As an intertextual, intermedial and even cross-cultural film, M. Butterfly not only involves the transformation and blending of media, but also deals with issues of culture, politics, race, gender and spectatorship. In the process of intermedial and cross-cultural communication, Chinese cultural elements such as cross-dressing will inevitably change or reshape the discourse of the Other. The Peking opera performance and other aspects of Chinese culture in M. Butterfly, which the film director uses to surprise and allure audiences, Western audiences in particular, turned out to be a palimpsest of cultural otherness in the intermediary production process.