The Wedding Banquet Analysis

Ang Lee challenges the racial stereotyping and heteronormativity present in Hollywood through his film The Wedding Banquet. The Wedding Banquet is a 1993 film about an interracial, homosexual American couple, Wai Tung and Simon. Due to the patriarchal nature of Taiwanese culture, Wai Tung cannot reveal his sexual orientation or his relationship with Simon to his parents and is therefore incessantly pestered by his parents in Taiwan to get married and have children to carry on the family name. In order to make Wai Tung’s parents happy, Wai Tung and Simon attempt to trick them by having Wai Tung marry Wei Wei, a Chinese tenant of Wai Tung’s. This backfires when the parents come to America to meet the bride and consequently leads to an extravagant Chinese-style wedding banquet that results in Wei Wei becoming pregnant despite the fraudulency of their marriage. Her pregnancy grants Wai Tung’s parents their wish to have a grandchild, but further corrodes the already tense relationship between Wai Tung and Simon. As The Wedding Banquet comes to an end, a desperate Wai Tung reveals his true relationship with Simon to his mother, who is understandably shocked and instructs Wai Tung to not tell his father. Unknown to all of them, Wai Tung’s father actually understands English and already knew Simon and Wai Tung were in a relationship, but kept quiet because of his desire to have a …show more content…
Not only was it rare for an Asian to casted as the main protagonist in an American film, but Asian characters were also usually depicted according to Hollywood stereotypes where Asian males were usually portrayed as either emasculate or sexual predators, while Asian females were either exotic objects of sexual desire or the fabled overbearing tiger mom. Wai Tung and Wei Wei do not conform into any of the stereotypical molds for their