{"id":306,"date":"2013-05-23T12:52:34","date_gmt":"2013-05-23T11:52:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/melodramaresearchgroup\/?p=306"},"modified":"2013-06-16T17:46:48","modified_gmt":"2013-06-16T16:46:48","slug":"melodrama-screening-and-discussion-29th-may-jarman-7-4-7pm","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/melodramaresearchgroup\/2013\/05\/23\/melodrama-screening-and-discussion-29th-may-jarman-7-4-7pm\/","title":{"rendered":"Melodrama Screening and Discussion, 29th May, Jarman 7, 4-7pm"},"content":{"rendered":"<h1>Posted by Sarah<\/h1>\n<h1><strong>All are welcome to attend the\u00a0fourth of the Summer Term\u2019s screening and discussion\u00a0sessions which will take place on the\u00a029th of\u00a0May in Jarman 7,\u00a0from 4pm to 7pm.<\/strong><\/h1>\n<div>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>We will screen Keeley&#8217;s choice: <i>Happy Together<\/i> (1997, Wong Kar Wai, 96 mins)<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/melodramaresearchgroup\/files\/2013\/05\/happytogether1.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-307 aligncenter\" alt=\"happytogether1\" src=\"http:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/melodramaresearchgroup\/files\/2013\/05\/happytogether1-300x168.jpg\" width=\"300\" height=\"168\" srcset=\"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/melodramaresearchgroup\/files\/2013\/05\/happytogether1-300x168.jpg 300w, https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/melodramaresearchgroup\/files\/2013\/05\/happytogether1-1024x576.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/melodramaresearchgroup\/files\/2013\/05\/happytogether1-500x281.jpg 500w, https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/melodramaresearchgroup\/files\/2013\/05\/happytogether1.jpg 1600w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Keeley has very kindly provided the following information:<\/p>\n<p><em>Happy Together<\/em> follows the ill-fated love story of Lai (Tony Leung) and Ho (Leslie Cheung) who travel from Hong Kong to Argentina for a holiday. Their relationship goes adrift and Ho leaves for Buenos Aires. A disillusioned Lai starts working at a tango bar to save up for his trip home. When a beaten and bruised Ho reappears, Lai takes him in and the explosive relationship continues, only to inevitably come to an end. After meeting a Taiwanese boy, Chang, at the restaurant where he works, Lai&#8217;s life takes on a new path, while Ho struggles to come to terms with his broken heart.<\/p>\n<p><i>Happy Together<\/i> is an intentionally contentious choice to screen as part of a melodrama research group so I would like to introduce my selection. Firstly, I wanted to select something close to my own research interests in gender and sexuality studies. Additionally, I also wanted to, following in the vein of <i>Poltergeist<\/i>, screen something a little different to the wonderful films we have seen so far. So here we have a film featuring gay protagonists from the Hong Kong new wave. Something queer, Eastern and contemporary!<\/p>\n<p>But \u2013 is <i>Happy Together<\/i> a melodrama? Returning to the discussions of \u2018what is melodrama?\u2019 that fuelled our early meetings, I would like to propose an investigative analysis of the film in this week\u2019s session. Some things we could discuss:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Use of music<\/li>\n<li>Narrative construction &#8211; especially the ending<\/li>\n<li>Character construction and the trope of ill-fated lovers<\/li>\n<li>Related to last week\u2019s suggested reading, Thomas Elsaesser\u2019s \u2018Tales of Sound and Fury: Observations on the Family Melodrama,\u2019 what about the symbolic power that objects (or places) have within the film?<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Kenneth Chan\u2019s \u2018Tactics of Tears: Excess\/Erasure in the Gay Chinese Melodramas of <i>Fleeing by Night<\/i> and <i>Lan Yu<\/i>\u2019 offers us an introduction to the cultural context of melodrama in China (and relatedly, Hong Kong) and also a noteworthy discussion of homosexual pleasures and narratives within the Chinese melodrama. Significantly, I believe it also offers us a way to understand some of the problematic parts of the film which perhaps negate the elements of melodrama which <i>are<\/i> present. With this in mind I think it will be particularly useful to draw upon Chan\u2019s analysis of the \u2018erasure\u2019 of melodrama in <i>Lan Yu<\/i> (p.154 onwards) in our own discussion of <i>Happy Together<\/i>.<\/p>\n<p>Do join us if you can. <strong>And please note we start at 4pm.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Posted by Sarah All are welcome to attend the\u00a0fourth of the Summer Term\u2019s screening and discussion\u00a0sessions which will take place on the\u00a029th of\u00a0May in Jarman 7,\u00a0from 4pm to 7pm. &nbsp; We will screen Keeley&#8217;s choice: Happy Together (1997, Wong Kar &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/melodramaresearchgroup\/2013\/05\/23\/melodrama-screening-and-discussion-29th-may-jarman-7-4-7pm\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5401,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[50575],"tags":[50677,50675,50625,50626,50665,20536,100154,50666,50624,50676,50678,50679],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/melodramaresearchgroup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/306"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/melodramaresearchgroup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/melodramaresearchgroup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/melodramaresearchgroup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5401"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/melodramaresearchgroup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=306"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/melodramaresearchgroup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/306\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":309,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/melodramaresearchgroup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/306\/revisions\/309"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/melodramaresearchgroup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=306"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/melodramaresearchgroup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=306"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/melodramaresearchgroup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=306"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}