Farewell My Concubine

          After the class in which we watched an excerpt of this movie I went home to watch the rest because I was so intrigued by it. I must say that while I did learn a lot about Chinese Opera, I also experience more Chinese history that I ever have before. The way the story was told, in which what was happening in the world affected the theatre and the lives of these two men was astonishing.

           I found that I sided more with the man who wished to keep the traditions in the opera. I feel that if you want to do something that is completely new and different from the traditional style do not try to pass it off as traditional style, which was a problem that the opera faced in the movie. The younger generation wanted to call their modern musicals traditional Chinese opera. Let new things remain new things and gain popularity through their devices alone.

            Now that I have ranted on tradition for a while I also wanted to segue to my thoughts on how the students used to the taught in the theatre. Personally, I think it is a crying shame that teachers can no longer be strict with their pupils and still be respected. That’s what makes us actually learn in my opinion, being challenged. We have a certain level of laziness in us that must be bypassed. The teachers of opera in this movie understood this, even if it was a bit extreme for western tastes. But as seen in the movie as we move on to the younger generations, the students become more and more lazy and want things to just be given to them without effort. Hey lose respect and that’s when the art form begins to lose its polished charm.