Why Does Dongfang Bubai Have to Be a Woman? Queer Rewriting and Cultural Politics in 1990s Hong Kong Cinema

Abstract This paper investigates the radical reimagining of figure Dongfang Bubai in Tsui Hark’s iconic 1992 film, Swordsman II . It argues that the casting of Brigitte Lin and the character’s resulting androgyny constitute a deliberate political-aesthetic strategy, serving as a profound allegory for Hong Kong’s crisis of subjectivity on the eve of its 1997 handover. To unpack this strategy, the paper weaves together a multi-layered theoretical framework, integrating Judith Butler’s theory of gender performativity for close textual analysis, while drawing on the intertwined postcolonial and cultural theories of Petrus Liu, Howard Chiang, Victor Fan, and Homi Bhabha to situate the film within its specific historical and political context. The analysis first historicizes the dense allegorical stereotype the film subverts – a figure tied to critiques of Maoist power and the pathology of a “castrated” national body. Against this backdrop, the paper demonstrates how the film’s fluid performance, framed by Hong Kong’s liminal condition of “extraterritoriality,” re-codes these allegories. Ultimately, the paper concludes that, played by Lin, Dongfang Bubai’s refusal to be contained becomes a powerful strategy of geopolitical self-writing from the margins – a “transtopia” of identity – asserting a unique mode of Hong Kong cultural authorship.