Boogie Opera: Eddie, Douzi, and Artistic Convention.

MOTION pictures; BOOGIE Nights (Film); FAREWELL My Concubine (Film); UNITED States in motion pictures; CHINA in motion pictures

This article presents a comparative analysis of two motion pictures, Boogie Nights and Farewell My Concubine, hereafter referred to as Boogie and Concubine. This approach is adopted to bring the discourses of both films into sharper relief and distill the essential culturally situated narratives in each. These two films employ personal and epic portrayals of history to expose and scrutinize their respective nation's dominant ideologies. Boogie spans the years 1974 through 1984 in the Southern California pornographic film industry. Concubine takes place between the years 1925 and 1977 in the world of Chinese Opera. While Boogie is a glib, rambunctious film set in the American disco era of the ridiculously naive, Concubine is a dark, somber cinema portraying the horrors of the twentieth century. Both, however, are morality plays for their nations which employs visions of history and art in similar fashion. The coupling of the two works is not based on their similarities, although several characteristics will be noted. While Concubine narrates the effects of Chinese history, including the Cultural Revolution, upon two stars of the Chinese opera, Boogie follows the path of a young American porn star into the 1980s