Homosexual Case

Homosexual, as a sexual orientation, is a ubiquitous basic pattern of behavior in the long human history. But homosexual culture, a subculture, has been a controversial topic since it emerged. Whether in Eastern or Western countries, homosexual subculture is out of the main stream. Even America, which ranks top three of the open countries in the whole world, used to put suffocating stress on its homosexual countrymen.

In modern Chinese society, the issue of homosexuality is no longer whether it is legal or not, and it has been transformed into the issue of the relation between the mainstream and the marginalized. In such a relation, the prejudice and rejection of the public, the impact of feudal thoughts on Chinese people is so huge that the ordinary people still regard homosexuality as a dreadful monster and the ordinary people's prejudice against the homosexuality is very serious. While in America society, the homosexuals have been through a difficult development, from silence, compromise to coming forward, protest. Upon the deep look into homosexual evolution history in America, from the dissenting voices and persecution that homosexuals suffered, the findings can indirectly give us another view on other minority groups and thus raises the attention of society. To most of the Americans, the phenomena about homosexuality are normal and acceptable.

The movie is undoubtedly the most direct manifestation of the social sense of the times, and the Chinese and American homosexuality movies are no exception. Since the 1990s, the movies with the homosexuality as the theme have become the hot topic of the public. Throughout these homosexuality movies, however, it can be found that Chinese and American homosexualities have a different tendency which is embodied in the outcome and the identity differences of the characters in the films. In American homosexuality movies, the identity of homosexuality is given as an ordinary and normal identity and there is no criticism and opposition against the homosexuality; what's more, the society is tolerant of homosexuality and gives more concern to the homosexuality; while most of the Chinese people hold the attitudes of objections to it, but as the change of times, their attitudes are changing, too.

Though there is a small quantity of the movies with homosexuality as the theme, every one of them is thought-provoking and makes the public pay more attention to the homosexuality. By taking the stories of gays as the theme, Ang Lee's The Wedding Banquet and Brokeback Mountain show the audiences the attitudes of Chinese and Americans toward homosexuality.

The purpose of this paper is to make a comparison of Chinese and American Homosexuality through the two movies of Ang Lee, The Wedding Banquet and Brokeback Mountain. Through the comparison of the two movies, this paper aims to conclude the different attitudes toward homosexuality in different cultures and times with the