I’m late to the game, but I finally watched Marry My Dead Body (《關於我和鬼變成家人的那件事》, literally “Concerning me becoming family with a ghost”) on Netflix over the weekend (available with English subs). The film did have its moments although not all of the jokes landed to me.

The name in Chinese follows a pattern of using overly wordy titles that started more or less with another film You are the Apple of my Eye  (《那些年，我們一起追的女孩》, literally, “Those years, and those girls we chased together”). This formula is a little played out now in popular culture, however, and I think they could have gone with something a little snappier. There’s also a euphemistic tone to the Chinese title, as the marriage part is not stated overtly, referred to just as “becoming family.” The English title, although a little inaccurate in terms of spirit versus corpse, has a touch of humour to it in its echo of the phrase “over my dead body,” so I’d say the English title works quite well, as it reflects the enmity between the two main characters at the outset in typical rom-com fashion.

The film is largely well-meaning in its message: essentially that stereotypes and discrimination are a result of ignorance, and that, once homophobic people interact in a meaningful way with gay people, they begin to see them as human.

A closer look at the film, however, suggests a slightly less charitable interpretation of its message. This is essentially a separation between “being gay” as comic performance, whether it’s the comic relief of the central police officer’s partner, referred to in English as “Chubby” (小胖), or the slightly more nuanced portrayal of the deceased Mao Pang-yu (referred to as the infantile sounding “Mao Mao,” as gays love pet names?) and “being gay” in the sense of pursuing or acting on sexual desire for other men, as displayed by Mao Mao’s ex-boyfriend and the gym-goer in the opening scene. Chubby never acts on his sexuality and is limited to eager glances which are played for laughs; Mao Mao is given a little more latitude, perhaps because he’s dead and therefore non-corporeal, but his lust is directed at the straight protagonist and is therefore unrealizable.

The only characters who are actively seeking or engaged in homosexual affection in the film are the treacherous ex-boyfriend of the deceased Mao Pang-yu and the gay gym-goer in the opening scene. The ex-boyfriend, Chen Chia-hao, (played by Aaron Yan who, incidentally, has been embroiled in a #MeToo scandal after allegedly filming sex with a younger man without permission) gets physically attacked by both the protagonist and Mao Mao’s dad, violence that is justified within the narrative of the film as retribution for cheating on Mao Mao while he was still alive and for lying to him about his interest in getting married. However, this is one of the only gay characters in the film we see kissing/being overtly intimate with another gay man and he is violently attacked twice (albeit Mao Mao’s father apologizes). The other gay character who is overt about his sexual desire is the gay gym-goer in the rather problematic opening scene in which Wu Ming-han (no nicknames because he’s straight) is undercover at a gym and flirts with him in a rather over-the-top seizure-like bout of winks. When propositioned by the gay gym-goer in the changing room, Wu shows his badge and things escalate quickly; Wu slams him down on the ground announcing a drug search premised on “a feeling” (gay panic?), then searches his possessions for drugs in violation of procedure. (Was the flirting really necessary for this to be accomplished, although it’s obviously supposed to be a comical scene?) He is chided for this behaviour and sent away from his precinct to a local police station, but it seems like our sympathy is still largely supposed to be with Wu, as the gay gym-goer has clearly used his political connections to get retribution. Other police officers also hint that his reaction was reasonable but feel that he has to be more politically correct, so it does feel the film engages in double-speak; The surface arch of the film is how the protagonist slowly becomes tolerant (see Slavoj Žižek on tolerance here) of gay people, but underlying this narrative is a more complicated message: the place for gay people is comic relief and if they step beyond those bounds, violence is understandable, if not the answer.

That said, this is a vast improvement on some other recent portrayals of gay people, like the much-vaunted Chinese series Addicted, which, I discovered after reading two of the novels (****FOR RESEARCH PURPOSES ONLY, OF COURSE***), actually portrays two straight guys who are only “gay” for each other, in typical Boy’s Love fashion. Back when I first arrived in Taiwan, members of different “straight” boy bands would routinely be challenged to play dumb games on game shows that would have them “accidentally” kiss, while adoring female fans watched on screaming. (Incidentally, Aaron Yan was in a similar, if more famous, boyband, Fahrenheit.)

This show on Channel V, back in the day, 《模范棒棒堂》 (the title is a pun on the name of presenter 范瑋琪, but means “Copy Lollipop”, “Lollipop” being the name of the boyband featured) often featured the kind of scene seen below:

Essentially, Boy’s Love can be boiled down to male-on-male romantic behaviour for the pleasure of a female observer, the latter often referred to as fujoshi in Japanese or in Chinese “腐女” (literally “rotten girls”/ near homonym of the word “婦女”/woman).

Mao-mao possesses some of the gangsters during a fight scene and makes them kiss each other in a weaponization of homosexual affection played off for laughs (eww… what real man would want to kiss another man is the implication, albeit without consent). One of the harder-to-understand characters is the gym-bunny-looking gangster who Wu Ming-han and Mao Mao inexplicably come across in a gay bar, but who, when Wu Ming-han chats him up, calls him the equivalent of a f*gg*t (死gay) and throws him on the ground. … Come on, dude, you’re in a gay bar… I guess it could be explained away as him collecting protection money or something, but (and not to verge into stereotype myself) his clothing did look kinda…

You could go one step further and say Wu Ming-han and Mao Mao’s father can accept Mao Mao as gay only because he’s dead, and all that remains are the cute/funny/sassy stereotypes of being gay without the threat of gay sex or affection. However, this might be taking things a little too far, and there are genuinely sweet moments in the movie, particularly how comfortable Mao-mao’s grandmother is with the idea of gay sex, although again, only in his incorporeal state. One of Mao-mao’s most urgent final wishes is to delete photos and videos off his phone and although some of the deleted content is actual porn, he also deletes pretty innocent photos of him and his boyfriend from his phone. The final revelation concerning Mao Mao’s dad’s real reasons for reacting badly to his marriage announcement is also quite sweet.

Ultimately, the film does portray Mao Mao as more than just a stereotype and there are some quite amusing parts and unexpected twists in the tale which kept me watching. It’s also an imaginative idea to combine more traditional folk religion with modern life, particularly the adoption of gay marriage in the spirit world.

3/5