Homosexual men (and lesbian men) in a heterosexual genre: Three gangster films from Hong Kong

Of the East Asian film genres that have captured the attention of film goer s internationally, it should be of little surprise that martial and heroica lly masculine genres have been the most popular, for violent action transla tes well into any language. Although it has been no secret that male martia lity often leaks into homoerotic desire (on the part of the audience, too), three Hong Kong films from 1998 have finally explicated the generic homose xuality that the action genre has been (defensively) ashamed to admit all a long. However, rather than posit this textual homosexuality as transgressiv e, the generic forces under which these films operate rewrite their homosex ualities, both gay and lesbian, into generic modes fashioned around regress ive oppositions of gender, and not progressive liberations of sexuality.