Shang-Sing Guo | Swingin' / 2020

trumpeting their love

by Douglas Messerli

 

Shang-Sing Guo (screenwriter and director) Swingin' / 2020 [23 minutes]

 

Taiwanese writer and director Guo explores the world of a child, Qiu Qui, growing up with two gay fathers in the chaotic, often sad, but nonetheless utterly charming short film Singin’ from 2020.

     11-year-old Qui Qiu (Po-Hao Juan), who attacks a young girl attempting to lift up her dress in his school, is thoroughly slapped and pushed off by the child, and then chastised by his school teacher Miss Zhu (Ling Qiu), as well as his male friend Yi-Hong, who denounces him as a pervert. It’s all been an attempt to prove that he too is manly and not gay as his peers tease him for being just because he has two gay fathers.

       Mr. Hu (Steven Chiang) is called to the school; and even he is teased by the children for being a faggot as he passes through the halls on his way to Miss Zhu’s room. She attempts to explain the situation, but is overly anxious concerning Qiu’s behavior. She suggests that it might have been better if the boy’s father showed up, but Hu explains he is the boy’s father since he recently married Mr. Li (Mountain Kao), and he prefers to be called Mr. Li also. Qui is also addressed as Li Wei-Zhong by the father who severely reprimands him and asks what he would feel if someone pulled down his pants, which he proceeds to immediately do, Qui pulling them up and running off into the streets with Hu/Li on the chase.

    When he finally catches up to Qui, via auto and on foot, the child splashes water on Hu’s expensive red lace outfit sending Hu into a kind of childlike fury before leaving his son to find his own way home.

      Li wonders where the child is, Hu suggesting he’s gone to visit a friend. Meanwhile, he takes up his trumpet and joins a small jazz combo for an incredibly lovely jazz number* which he performs with echoes of the words, “faggot” and “sissy boy” rustling in the background. One can never get those words out of one’s head, thrust into the air by uncomprehending children, even as an adult.

      Meanwhile, Qui spotting Yi-Hong (Jasper Wu) from his class, follows the boy and another friend, perhaps in envy or just curious to observe their more “manly” activities, whatever those may be. He observes them break dancing together while Yi-Hong’s girlfriend looks on. Later the couple visit a pet shot, looking at the various aquariums of fish, and Qiu follows, checking out the fish for himself. Finally, Qui catches up with Yi-Hong and begins to fight him for his having told on him.

 

      The gentle jazz tones, as the night arrives, continue in the small club where Hu plays, now filled with customers. The film now alternates between shots of Hu playing his horn and poor Qui taking a beating from his friend. We know, without saying, that some of the blues intonations that come from that horn, have probably been borne from just such beatings in Hu’s own childhood. Hu finally stops mid-note, puts down the horn and rushes out, Li behind him.

        We discover the full truth of the morning’s incident, after the beating, as Qui screams out to his aggressor, “I did what you told me to do. And you betrayed me. What am I to you?” Finally, Qui tells him to go away.

        The fathers, meanwhile, now on the street, are desperately trying to spot the location of the son via cellphone, Hu the more dramatically affected. When Li tells him to calm down, he declaims, “Now I am the Drama Queen!” Just what we suspected, the fuller situation is now voiced by the grown man, who himself tells his husband that when he was a child the boys called him a faggot and a sissy, and now going to the school to help Qui, the boy’s classmates called him the same thing. Miss Zhu, every time he sees her, gives him that same look: “Fag!” The continuity of the experience through the years, the cycle of what may be happening to their own son, is almost too painful to accept. They spot the boy on the internet connection as being nearby, and Li promises the next time there is a “Mother’s Meeting,” he will join him. Hu suggests he’s demeaning himself; they’re called “Parent-Teacher” conferences.

         The boys, now friends again, spot the girl Zhen, who Qiu Qiu has attacked that morning, and Qiu wants to go over to her to apologize, only the manly thing to do.

         At the same moment, a man next to her at the arcade begins to hassle her, finally exposing himself; the boys rush to help, but she kicks him in the exposed balls and all three take off on a run. Both Qui and Yi-Hong apologize, Yi-Hong admitting that he put Qui up to it in order to prove he wasn’t a fag like his Dads. The harasser reappears, now attempting to kidnap the girl in revenge, but Qui takes out his key and jabs it up his ass at the very moment that Hu and Li appear, sweeping up the boy in their arms, Hu apologizing to his own son.

       Back at the club, Hu plays up a storm, as the two boys watch with joy, Yi-Hong discovering that his friend’s dads are rather remarkable, particularly when after the jazz set, Li sweeps up Hu and plants a kiss on his lips in front of the crowd. Yi-Hong is amazed, while Qui tells him that they do it every night: he’s used to it.

      Later, we see Qui attempting to play the trumpet in their upstairs apartment, told by both his Dads to stop so that the neighbors won’t complain. They tease him about having a crush on the girl who’s been at the center of the day’s activities, and he turns away, a slight smile on his face as he complains of their teasing.

        Guo presents this domestic tale in bright neon-like colors, larger than life and filled with the wonderment of a child’s eyes. And it is, after all, a kind of wondrous tale that could never have been told just a few decades ago. What I realized in watching this excellent short was how remarkable it is that every year there are hundreds of such short LGBTQ films produced through universities, government subsidies, and independent support all over the world, representing as many different views of what it means to be lesbian, gay, bisexual, transexual, and transgender. It’s too bad that heterosexual audiences aren’t seeing most of these films in the same way that LGBTQ individuals watch heterosexual movies. They’re missing so very much that would open their minds to what love truly means.

 

*The jazz numbers were composed by Minyan Hsieh, with Steven Ma on drums, Alan Wang playing the trumpet, Yeh Cheng Ting on piano, and Chun-Ting Wang on double bass.

 

Los Angeles, March 10, 2023

Reprinted from World Cinema Review (March 2023).