Farewell My Concubine is a drama directed by Chen Kaige in 1993. Although Farewell My Concubine and To Live have different perspectives but they both have the same aspects in reflecting on the histories of why tragedies have happened. Both films have similar history background setting which is set in the time where Cultural Revolution takes place. It is about the story of Chen Dieyi and Chen Xiaolou and how their lives are affected by the Communist Party. When Dieyi is small, a line in the opera is “I am by nature a girl, not a boy”, but he always says it wrong as “I am by nature a boy, not a girl” to protest and defend his male figure. Dieyi is a male, but he is forced to play a female character in the Peking Opera, which this has confused himself on whether he is female or male and he could not differentiate between reality and fantasy; playing a female role brings up the question of whether Dieyi is homosexual or not. In the traditional history of China, being homosexual is a disease, which needs to be treated by doctor. Dieyi truly loves Peking Opera, which he believes himself as the incarnation of the concubine he plays in the opera; therefore, this led him to have special feelings with Xiaolou, his brother who plays the king. During the Japanese invasion of China in the 1930s, Dieyi performs Peking Opera to the Japanese leaders to save Xiaolou, …show more content…
“During the Cultural Revolution. In 1966, China 's Communist leader Mao Zedong launched what became known as the Cultural Revolution in order to reassert his authority over the Chinese government” (“Cultural Revolution”). The supporters of Mao are called the Red Guards, who are mainly high school students. The Red Guards attack the teachers, intellectuals, and even their own families to show loyalty to Mao. There are Five Black Categories in the Cultural Revolution, which are landlords, rich farmers, anti-revolutionists, bad-elements, and rightists (Xiaobin Yang). In the film To Live, Long Er is being labeled as landlord during the Cultural Revolution, which he gets shot by the Communists for being a landlord and a counterrevolutionary. In addition, Fugui’s daughter dead of laboring her baby in the hospital due to the fact during the Cultural Revolution, all the doctors are being labeled as counterrevolutionaries and being locked up in the jail. If there has been a gynecologist in the hospital, Fugui’s daughter would not die; therefore, the Cultural Revolution is a direct cause of Jiazhen’s death. Moreover, Mao encourages the use of propaganda black board and big character posters to criticize and attack other people. In Farewell My Concubine, Dieyi and Xiaolou is captured by the Red Guards, and they have to hang a big sign in front of their chests listing their crimes, which they are being