Societal Frameworks and the Restrictions of Vanguard Sexuality
In Ang Lee’s 1993 film The Wedding Banquet, a gay Taiwanese-American man’s attempt to satisfy familial expectations through a marriage of convenience becomes an unexpected trap, revealing how heteronormative social structures capture and transform those who attempt to manipulate them. Released during a period of emerging Asian-American and LGBTQ+ cinema, Lee’s film diverges from traditional queer narratives that primarily focus on individual sexual identity or coming-out stories. Instead, the film explores the more complex domain of how romantic societal institutions dictate and exercise power over queer relationships through mechanisms of control and conformity. By linking the visual and narrative mechanisms of the film with queer theory frameworks of Butler, Berlant, and Sedgwick, this essay examines how the film’s progression—strategic performance to entrapment to liberation—reveals the disciplinary power of matrimonial and cultural traditions. When protagonist Wai-Tung attempts to satisfy his parents through a fraudulent marriage of convenience, what begins as a calculated performance becomes a demonstration of how heteronormative frameworks reshape relationships that attempt to subvert them. The film ultimately reveals that social institutions do not merely oppose or exclude queer sexuality, but rather function as disciplinary mechanisms that gradually mold individuals into performing traditional expressions of love. Through this lens, Lee crafts a nuanced critique of how matrimonial traditions and cultural expectations create an environment where authentic queer relationships must either conform to heterosexual models or find novel ways to reconstruct these inherited institutions—suggesting that true resistance may lie not in rejection of these structures, but in the reimagining of romance.

Lee’s strategic deployment of heteronormative relationship dynamics begins in the film’s opening sequences. This serves not to simply normalize queerness, but to illustrate how ingrained these structures are in all romantic relationships (and their depictions). Through careful mise-en-scene and narrative framing, Simon and Wai-Tung’s domestic life is portrayed as a mirror of heterosexual romance. Their relationship conforms to traditional gender roles: Wai-Tung embodying the assertive, career-focused partner and Simon assuming the nurturing, domestic role. This conformity manifests visually in their makeshift romantic dinner scene, where Lee’s attention to costume and set design—Wai-Tung’s formal dress shirt contrasting with Simon’s casual attire, the juxtaposition of romantic candles with a mundane pizza box—creates a scene that could be lifted from any conventional romantic narrative. Even their argument about vacation planning and Wai-Tung’s grand gesture of a Paris trip employ tropes familiar to heterosexual romance films, suggesting how thoroughly heteronormative patterns shape queer expressions of intimacy. This pattern is evident across queer media as Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick observes in Epistemology of the Closet, “The legacy of gay representation has often been caught between assimilation and othering, where attempts to normalize gay relationships frequently rely on heterosexual frameworks” (72). While some queer cinema critics view this adherence to heteronormative patterns as regressive, Lee’s employment of these tropes serves as a familiar base to highlight his critique of how societal frameworks shape all relationships, regardless of orientation. The apparent normalcy of Simon and Wai-Tung’s relationship thus becomes not just a point of accessibility for audiences, but a crucial foundation for understanding how societal pressures will later force Wai-Tung into more explicit performances of heterosexual norms. Their initial voluntary adoption of heteronormative patterns foreshadows how these same patterns will eventually become instruments of constraint rather than choice.

The wedding games sequence powerfully demonstrates how cultural institutions transform voluntary performance into genuine entrapment through the ritualistic control of heteronormative traditions. Lee’s cinematography traces Wai-Tung’s gradual loss of agency as his calculated attempt to appease his parents becomes a forceful mechanism of heterosexual conformity. The camera consistently positions Wai-Tung in medium or long shots, often obscured by wedding guests or in frame with traditional decorations, visually emphasizing his diminishing individuality within the collective ritual. Particularly revealing is the sequence where wedding guests force the couple to perform traditional declarations of love—Lee’s camera holds on Wai-Tung’s increasingly strained expression as he mechanically recites prescribed phrases, while quick cuts to Simon’s pained observation from the margins underscore the real emotional cost of this performance. This epitomises Butler’s argument of, “The public regulation of fantasy through the surface politics of the body is the mode by which gender hierarchies and heterosexuality are constituted” (172). The wedding games, with their prescribed gender roles and ritualistic teasing, exemplify this regulation, operating as disciplinary mechanisms that physically and emotionally coerce each participant into heteronormative performance. Drawing on Lauren Berlant’s concept of how “institutions of intimacy” create “zones of familiarity and comfort” that explicitly exclude non-hetronormative relationships (283), the scene reveals how cultural traditions don’t merely pressure individuals to conform—they actively reconstruct intimate relationships to conform in the zone of fantastic public ritual. This reconstruction is most evident in the traditional bed-making ceremony, where the forced laughter and orchestrated joy serve not just as uncomfortable moments for Wai-Tung, but as steps in a process that gradually transforms his initial strategic deception into genuine entrapment. The scene’s progression from awkward performance to genuine distress charts how cultural rituals operate as mechanisms of control, preparing the ground for the more intimate coercion that follows in the bedroom scene.

The post-wedding bedroom scene crystallizes how societal structures transform strategic performance into genuine entrapment, marking the moment where institutional power achieves its most intimate form of control. Lee frames this controversial scene through a series of increasingly claustrophobic shots that mirror Wai-Tung’s psychological confinement by heteronormative expectations. The scene’s power stems from its careful visual construction: Lee employs tight close-ups of Wai-Tung’s face that emphasize his emotional turmoil, while the warm, traditional red decor of the marriage bed creates an oppressive frame that literally and figuratively traps him within cultural expectations. This visual entrapment perfectly illustrates Butler’s argument that “the performance of gender and sexuality is not a voluntary choice but the forcible citation of a norm, one that takes place within a highly rigid regulatory frame” (24). The scene’s pivotal moment comes with Wei-Wei’s utterance of “我要解放” (“I want to liberate you”)—a phrase carrying multiple layers of meaning in its Chinese characters: 解 (understanding/solution) and 放 (release/place) suggest not just sexual liberation but Wai-Tung’s involuntary release from his commitment to Simon and his submission to heteronormative expectations. Lee emphasizes this transformation through the scene’s sound design, where the chaos of the ceremony transitions to a tense silence which is broken by the traditional Chinese wedding music when they begin to have sex. This makes Wai-tungs shift from public performance to private surrender, serving as the culmination of marriage’s disciplinary power, where the institution’s regulatory force achieves its ultimate goal: transforming a performance into procreation. This transformation reaches its final form with Wei-Wei’s pregnancy, demonstrating the efficacy of societal structures and ability to trap individuals who believe can subvert it. The production of a child represents not just a biological outcome but the final seal on Wai-Tung’s entrapment within the very institutions he thought he set out to escape, setting the stage for the film’s radical reimagining of family structure that follows.

The film’s final sequences present a radical reimagining of family structure, suggesting liberation paradoxically emerges from institutional surrender. Lee subverts audience expectations by pushing the narrative away from an absolute rejection of heteronormative structures or assimilation into heteronormativity. Instead, the film crafts a complex dialectical resolution where Wai-Tung, Simon, and Wei-Wei create an unconventional family unit that both acknowledges and transcends traditional boundaries. The visual composition of these closing scenes deliberately echoes earlier moments of conventional family gatherings, but with crucial differences that signal this new arrangement. When Wai-Tung’s parents finally discover the truth, Lee frames the revelation through a series of increasingly intimate close-ups that contrast sharply with the distant, formal shots of earlier family scenes. This resolution aligns with theorist Michael Warner’s argument that “queer culture has found ways to cultivate a collective ethos of dignity in spite of shame, without following the modern narrative of pride” (43). The film’s final moments show all three protagonists sharing domestic space in a sequence that mirrors the opening scenes, but now with Wei-Wei integrated into what was previously a monogamous relationship. Lee’s camera work in these closing sequences employs fluid, circular movements that contrast with the static, rigid framing of earlier scenes, suggesting a more flexible and inclusive concept of family. The pregnancy, rather than serving as the final seal of heteronormative triumph, becomes the catalyst for their reinvention of the structure to support child raising—one that accommodates both traditional familial obligations and queer relationship structures. This resolution suggests that true resistance to heteronormative institutions might lie not in outright rejection but in creative reconfigurations that expand their boundaries while maintaining their core function of creating sustainable family units.

Through its careful examination of how societal frameworks shape and constrain queer relationships, The Wedding Banquet ultimately reveals that true liberation may emerge not from rejecting heteronormative institutions but from reimagining them entirely. Lee’s film moves beyond simple binary oppositions between assimilation and resistance, suggesting instead that the very mechanisms of control that constrain queer expression might also provide the tools for its reinvention. The progression from heteronormative performance to entrapment and finally liberation manifests as a thesis of how LGBTQ+ relationships can reinvent themselves under the evident disciplinary mechanism of society. By concluding with a family structure that satisfies traditional familial obligations while accommodating queer relationships, the film suggests that resistance to heteronormative frameworks need not take the form of complete rejection. As the film demonstrates, the very rigidity of these social structures—their ability to capture and transform those who engage with them—might ultimately provide the foundation for their own reconstruction. In this light, The Wedding Banquet stands as a prescient examination of how queer relationships might navigate and ultimately transform the very institutions that seek to constrain them to form a new sexual vanguard.

Works Cited:

Rubin, Gayle. “Thinking Sex: Notes for a Radical Theory of the Politics of Sexuality.” Pleasure and Danger: Exploring Female Sexuality, edited by Carole S. Vance, Routledge, 1984, pp. 143-178.

Povinelli, Elizabeth A. “Notes on Gridlock: Genealogy, Intimacy, Sexuality.” Public Culture, vol. 14, no. 1, 2002, pp. 215-238.

The Wedding Banquet. Directed by Ang Lee, Central Motion Pictures, 1993.

Butler, Judith. Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity. Routledge, 1990.

Sedgwick, Eve Kosofsky. Epistemology of the Closet. University of California Press, 1990.

Foucault, Michel. The History of Sexuality, Volume 1: An Introduction. Translated by Robert Hurley, Vintage Books, 1990.