37 Degendered Demon Voices: A Chinese Ghost Story (1987) and Female Sexuality

A Chinese Ghost Story has a familiar premise. A man, staying the night at an unfamiliar location, is seduced by a ghost girl seeking to lure him in to destroy him. The movie, however, breaks from this convention by turning the ghost girl, Hsiao Tsien, into the love interest of the protagonist, Ning. In her place as an antagonist, the film introduces the Matron, a Tree Demoness responsible for Hsiao Tsien’s seductive danger. The Tree Demoness is degendered, existing outside bounds of typical femininity and sexuality, and this makes her a danger in the film’s eyes. Meanwhile, Hsiao Tsien loses her danger and becomes a model for the perfect wife. By playing with gender, sexuality, and antagonism, A Chinese Ghost Story forces women to walk a fine line of being sexually appealing but also chaste and submissive in order to be safe for men. Hsiao Tsien’s initial role as an antagonist shows how female sexuality is construed as a threat to men. When the audience is first introduced to Hsiao Tsien, one of her defining traits is her sexuality. She drapes herself over Ning and leans in close, grabbing his hands as if holding him captive. She tells Ning that she “only need[s his] warmth to cure [her]”.^[1] She fits the trope of a classic seductive ghost, luring men in to kill them. Her identity as a character revolves around sex and her relationships with men. This sexuality is portrayed as a threat. This is an established convention of ghost stories; the story the movie is based on, “The Magic Sword and the Magic Bag,” states that Hsiao Tsien must “seduce [men] and do all sorts of shameful things with them” in order to feed a demon.^[2]  In A Chinese Ghost Story, Hsiao Tsien is still bound by another, forced to seduce men for the Tree Demoness. This revelation that she does not want to be a threat to men but has no choice allows her to become a love interest. Her sexuality, previously a danger to Ning, is partially nullified by her lack of agency; the danger in a woman is her choice to pursue sex with men. Hsiao Tsien, however, does not lose her role as a sexual object. Even after becoming a love interest instead of a threat, Hsiao Tsien continues to be a sexual figure. The narrative continuously finds opportunities for sexual encounters, such as having her take off her clothes and enter a bath with Ning to evade the Tree Demoness.^[3] Hsiao Tsien becoming a safe love interest means restricting her agency while still maintaining her role as an object of the male gaze.

The Matron’s role as an antagonist shows how a lack of appealing sexuality, too, is demonized. Hsiao Tsien is an overly feminine and sexual character, showing the story’s anxiety about female sexuality, but the Tree Demoness is the opposite. She is older and less overtly sexual, though still focused on treating men as prey. Notably, her gender is confusing. She is referred to as a matron and dresses femininely, but is played by a man. Her voice modulates between male and female. This has a basis in mythology. A demon has multiple forms, with the male form being more powerful than the female. The Matron is on the tipping point of this transformation, retaining elements of femininity and masculinity. This transformation is grounded in myth but still begs the question of why the film would portray her this way; her status as a being who transgresses gender boundaries is unimportant to the movie and her character is not present in the original story. The Tree Demoness is not sexualized the way Hsiao Tsien is; her body is construed as monstrous instead of sexually threatening. Hsiao Tsien is never the subject of any sort of body horror, but the Tree Demoness transforms into a grotesque monster of flesh, tongues, and teeth. Here we see two ways that female bodies are seen as threats. Hsiao Tsien is dangerously feminine, her beauty only a tool to lure men in. The Tree Demoness is dangerous in the way that she sits outside of gender boundaries. If Hsiao Tsien is demonized for her sexuality, the Tree Demoness is a threat for her lack of sexuality. She is degendered to deny her the male gaze and the movie decides that this makes her scary. Playing with who has control over sexuality, A Chinese Ghost Story reveals that female sexuality is only seen as safe when it is controlled by men. Though the Tree Demoness is not a sexualized figure, that is not to say that her role in the story does not involve sexuality. From her first line – “How dare you hide a man from me?”^[4]—the Tree Demoness sees men as an object of conquest. She does not appeal to the male gaze but she is still in charge of sexual threats; she is the one who forces Hsiao Tsien into seducing men to kill them. She is also responsible for Hsiao Tsien’s arranged marriage to the Dark Lord. Despite her degendering, the matron is still a sexual threat, a woman with control over relationships. She pulls at the boundaries of female roles in society in two ways: she is a threat for her control over sexuality and yet she is also a threat for her refusal to conform to the male gaze. It should not be a surprise, then, that her introduction into the story comes at the same time as Hsiao Tsien transforms from a threatening ghost girl into a love interest. As a love interest, Hsiao Tsien is chaste, submissive, and obedient. She loses her threatening agency over her own sexuality from the moment the Tree Demoness is introduced. Having another figure control her sexuality allows her to become this model of a perfect wife for Ning. Just as in the original story, Hsiao Tsien transforms from an evil temptress into a wife. In “The Magic Sword and the Magic Bag,” she fulfills a role of filial piety. In both the story and movie, this happens because she gives her remains to Ning, which controls how she manifests—Hsiao Tsien becomes a safe figure of femininity once she and her sexuality are literally in the hands of a man. By playing with who has control of sexuality, A Chinese Ghost Story creates a tightrope of femininity that women must walk. If women are sexual and actively seek out relationships with men, they are construed as a dangerous seductive threat. At the same time, if they resist the male gaze, they are still seen as a threat for their control over sexuality. The movie’s anxiety over female sexuality assigns danger to any woman with agency over sexuality and demands that women walk a middle line. Like Hsiao Tsien at the end of the movie, they must be a perfect wife, soft and submissive. They must allow themselves to be objects of the male gaze while also not engaging in sex for themselves. A Chinese Ghost Story reveals the complex ways that female sexuality is judged.

Bibliography

Ching Siu-tung, director. A Chinese Ghost Story. Film Workshop, 1987. 1 hr., 35 min.

Pu, Songling 蒲松齡, “The Magic Bag and the Magic Sword,” in Liaozhai zhiyi 聊齋誌異 (Strange Tales from a Chinese Studio). Translated by John Minford. Penguin Classics, 2006. 168-179.