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Title: Portrait of an Onnagata Rating: 2.4 out of 4 Reference: Director, Tineke Hulsbergen. Library of Congress subjects: Shibajaku, Nakamura Kabuki Actors--Japan--Biography Theater--Japan Female impersonators--Japan Sociology subjects: The body Men & masculinities Sexualities Reviews and Numerical Ratings 3 Graduate workshop participants were fascinated by the ideas that men could “steal” women’s roles and that men in these roles could become regarded as “more feminine” than women, to the point where they influenced definitions of gender roles. The borrowings between gender and class relations and the resurgence of kabuki as a counter-globalizing force were also considered important layers in this video. It was recommended that more historical context would be useful for this video to work (e.g., on the samurai, merchant, peasant class structure) and that a contrast to China (where men used to play women’s roles in the Beijing Opera, but no longer do) would also be helpful. Graduate workshop 2 Not a very good video, but it was informative. The narrator (in voice over) and interviewer are British and that constructs, in my mind, contrasts between very different British (western) and Japanese (non-western) cultures. The British narrator occupies a powerful position from which to interpret Japanese culture; I felt this story should have been told by the Japanese male actor. Overall, Japanese culture is objectified by the way the video explores issues of gender & sexuality, as constructed in ancient Japan, and as maintained through kabuki theatre. In kabuki, female roles are played by male actors (the Onnagata). This demonstrates that gender is only socially constructed and that the physical body - whether male or female - does not determine gender identity. That a man can act & look like a woman breaks down this notion of gender as biological. The video also reveals how men view women, and how they most value in women qualities of femininity, docility, and modesty. Thus, though it’s not constructed as a sociological video, issues of gender & sexuality were raised. I would recommend this for a history course (given how it is narrated) but it would also benefit sociology courses on gender & sexuality. For 3rd & 4th year students. Kisrene McKenzie (undergraduate) 3 Opening 10 minutes, on the history of Japanese on-stage and off-stage gender roles, are really good. They show the relations of gender, sex, & sexuality and - because they’re shown from a non-European perspective - highlight the social construction, performativity, and historicity of sex & gender roles. There’s a few essentializing references - e.g., “for a man to portray a woman convincingly takes centuries of tradition” [!] - but as the whole video is on essentialism, these references could further the discussion. The remainder of the video, on one Onnagata’s career, could be used to identify how femininity is defined. Lecture topics: sex, gender, essentialism, social construction, performativity. Kathy Bischoping & oscar wolfman 2 This video should only be shown with a number of caveats: ignore the imperious voice-over & make it part of the explicit discussion of orientalism/cultural imperialism in class. The video is visually beautiful, with a sensual scene of the young male actor carefully applying make-up to “become a woman.” His discussion of becoming onnagata as a matter of heart & soul, which is passed from father to son might challenge a number of stereotypes. While this video could be used to discuss historical and local conceptions of gender & sexuality without trying to map them onto the “West”, the video also essentializes “traditional Japanese culture”, & gender. For lectures on performativity and gender; cultural imperialism; essentialism; soc/work/gender. Patti Phillips 3 Very interesting history of kabuki & gender. For first 12 minutes, relies primarily on still images, usually of paintings, which makes the video less engaging. Poor video colour. Riley Olstead 1.5 Interesting, but bears very little relevance to
sociologists. This video seems more appropriate for a Fine Arts class.
It was good to see that Japan had resisted Westernization by maintaining
Japanese traditions within the theatre. But the time spent on how male
actors perfected the roles of these Onnagatas, how many hours they rehearsed,
the mastery of the falsetto voice in males, the appeal to homoerotic
appetites for titillation purposes, & the success of holding an
expressionless face in order to not tamper with the makeup, makes this
video rather inappropriate for the Sociology Department. Belinda Godwin
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