The Other: Exploring the Life of An Intersex Individual in A Stigmatizing and Discriminating Society

This creative thesis aims at showing the effects of stigma and discrimination on intersex individuals and how they can lessen the effects of stigma and discrimination through the medium of a screenplay titled The Other. I apply the theory of stigma as the main foundation of the creative work and the theory of self-acceptance as the resolution. Utilizing the genre drama and the conventions of modern youth films, I employ the main character’s suffering and contentment accordingly to highlight the detrimental consequences of stigma and the psychological gain of self-acceptance. The Other follows Alexander Wijaya, then 16 years old, a boy who embarks on a self-discovery journey after discovering his intersexuality. As he faces bullying and other grievances, Alex begins to have self-doubt and feel ashamed and isolated. Later, Alex realizes his worth and retrieves back his confidence after he decides to accept his body the way it is.Keywords: Intersex, Stigma, Discrimination, Self-acceptance.

Introduction

This introduction chapter outlines the theoretical framework of the book, and the methodological potential of the act of “screening,” when exploring the interplay between image and idea, politics and culture, film talent and audience in postwar Hong Kong film culture. While concepts of reflecting and viewing imply a unidirectional relationship between film and subject, the author argues that “screening” focuses more on the processes through which cinema contributed to the building of Hong Kong’s postwar community and identity. By using the double meaning of “screening” as both revealing and concealing, the author argues that postwar Hong Kong cinema—which in this book include 1950s and 1960s official documentary films, leftist family melodrama, and youth films— both conceals the anxieties of the British colonial government during the Cold War, and exposes the different narratives constructed by local filmmakers about what it means to be Chinese citizens during the postwar period. This introduction also takes into consideration the importance of postwar Hong Kong audiences, both real and implied, whose spectatorship was negotiated at the intersection colonialist and nationalist “address” and a familial and localized “reception.” This study has implication for the fields of Hong Kong, Chinese cinema, Cold War, and film reception studies.

Kim, Soo-yong (September 23, 1929--)

Trained as a filmmaker during the Korean War, Kim Soo-yong debuted in 1958 amid the South Korean film industry’s postwar recovery and became one of the representative Korean filmmakers of the 1960s. Under the film policies of Park Chung-hee’s military government, the film industry suffered from censorship and quotas. The literary film emerged as an important genre signifying quality and artistic merit. Kim’s 1965 Kaenmaŭl [Seaside Village] marked him as a leading director of literary adaptations, which account for half his prolific oeuvre of over one hundred films. Kim also worked in popular genres, including comedy, melodrama, youth films, and anti-communist films, but is remembered for films that display realist, non-paternalistic perspectives on postwar society. His 1963 film Hyŏlmaek [Kinship] depicted the generational divide among North Korean defectors living in poverty on the fringes of society in the industrializing South. Seaside Village provocatively took on the sexuality of widows in a fishing community and contained lesbian innuendos. Several of his films also demonstrated a formal modernism. The 1967 An’gae [Mist], regarded as one of his highest achievements, employs experimental montage and a temporally complex flashback structure. In later years, he has been credited with helping ease film censorship in South Korea.