Queer cinemas of the Sinosphere: Queer China goes out

Abstract

This article looks at Wang Chao’s 2018 feature Looking for Rohmer (aka Seeking McCartney) as a cultural product that employs and breaks with the existing notions of queer Sinophone cinema. Utilizing the image of China’s globalization project of ‘going out’, it argues that the film forms part of new Queer Cinemas of the Sinosphere that imagine China as an active participant in a global queer culture, where tourism, consumption, and free distribution are part and parcel of a new ethnonationalist imaginary of global Chineseness. The second half of the article contends that queer independent transnational cinema, which presents a similar view of China as part of the world, works alongside China’s globalization project. Significantly, these film productions exhibit the potential for destabilization of the heteronormative family unit, proposing more nuanced investigations of queerness, community building, and national belonging.