{"id":23894,"date":"2021-01-30T12:50:36","date_gmt":"2021-01-30T12:50:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.currentaffairs.org\/2021\/01\/the-refreshing-gender-politics-of-the-rise-of-phoenixes\/"},"modified":"2021-02-03T10:01:35","modified_gmt":"2021-02-03T10:01:35","slug":"the-refreshing-gender-politics-of-the-rise-of-phoenixes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/2021\/01\/30\/the-refreshing-gender-politics-of-the-rise-of-phoenixes\/","title":{"rendered":"The Refreshing Gender Politics of \u2018The Rise of Phoenixes\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Every couple of years, I rewatch the first one-and-a-half seasons of Showtime\u2019s The Tudors,<\/em> a deeply stupid show for which I nonetheless retain a perverse nostalgic fondness. The sets and landscapes are beautiful, the soundtrack is all subtly muzak\u2019d versions of medieval dance tunes, and the episode scripts are replete with exquisite moments, such as Henry VIII saying \u201cI hate time itself\u201d<\/em> while gesturing weakly at an astrolabe. The leading men have modern haircuts and look like British footballers at a half-assed fancy dress party. There are a lot of deeply likeable grifters to root for: from Sam Neill\u2019s Cardinal Wolsey, constantly torn between his ambition to be pope and his need to take a goddamn nap, to Natalie Dormer\u2019s Anne Boleyn, who is so contemptuously beautiful that \u201cinventing a fake religion\u201d honestly feels like a proportionate seduction tactic. Most delightfully of all, despite the showrunners\u2019 best efforts to make everything as sexy as possible, the characters still have to spend a significant amount of time standing in front of mullioned windows reciting Wikipedia articles about theological conflicts in order to keep the plot moving forward. It\u2019s great fucking television.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n
As someone with a sad job and an itchy brain, I am constantly trying to find something<\/em> to watch on TV that will occupy my attention and not make me feel miserable. A lot of the \u201cbinge-worthy\u201d shows that my friends suggest to me are ultimately too violent for me, or too sad, or too stressful<\/em>, in some hard-to-define way. Unless I am forcing myself to sit through some piece of socially important television for educational purposes, I really don\u2019t want to watch, say, a vicariously humiliating interpersonal drama, or a wry reflection on the difficulties of modern life. That\u2019s not to say that I want television that\u2019s devoid of any <\/em>emotional stakes: I like shows that touch on broad themes that resonate with me. But, in an escapist mode, I want something that excites my imagination and feels reasonably distanced from my day-to-day life. To this end, I mostly watch things like murder mysteries, space operas, and sort-of-historical-but-mostly-nonsense dramas about royal court intrigue. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
After I completed my most recent biennial viewing of The Tudors<\/em> (stopping, as I always do, at the point where the torture and executions start to definitively outstrip the lewd theological shenanigans), I was once again at a loss for something to watch. After a few false starts, my friend Lyta Gold pointed me towards a new Chinese drama that had just been released on Netflix called The Rise of Phoenixes.<\/em> I had barely watched any Chinese television before, but from the show\u2019s trailer, The Rise of Phoenixes<\/em> appeared to meet all my requirements: attractive people, lavish costumes and interiors, characters using chess boards (or, in this case, Go boards) as an exposition tool for political machinations, etc. The first episode also demonstrated a refreshing willingness to narratively allude to violence without fully showing it, which\u2014as an actual human baby so easily fooled by simulated gore that I have to check parental viewing guides for action movies before I watch them\u2014I deeply appreciated. I quickly settled in, hoping this would be a good one.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
As it turned out, it completely devoured the next few weeks of my life, and not just<\/em> because of my love of intricate imperial succession conflicts. I was also riveted by the presence of the first genderfluid protagonists that I, personally, had ever seen on a television show of this kind.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The show <\/em>is set in a fictional kingdom called Tiansheng. The story follows two main protagonists: one, Ning Yi, is the calculating sixth son of the Tiansheng emperor, who is constantly maneuvering to discredit his brothers and remove them from the imperial succession. The other protagonist is a young woman named Feng Zhiwei, who is sometimes Ning Yi\u2019s accomplice and at other times his rival. In the first scene where we meet her, Feng Zhiwei is wearing men\u2019s clothes: we learn that her younger brother is a bit feckless, and that she loosely impersonates him from time to time. Later, after being implicated in a murder, she takes on a fulltime male disguise and starts going by the name Wei Zhi, eventually becoming the emperor\u2019s designated top scholar and a trusted royal official. The rationale for the cross-dressing here is a little sketchy: Feng Zhiwei never seems to work out a fully consistent backstory for her male persona, and continues publicly associating with her birth family in both her male and female identities. This vagueness generates constant scrutiny and speculation about \u201cWei Zhi\u2019s\u201d origins, which is hardly ideal if you\u2019re trying to live undercover. <\/p>\n\n\n\n