The Ideology Officer and The Pinocchio

Once upon a time, there was a Pinocchio in Taiwan. And it wasn’t told clearly what he had to do, really, to become a human.

But the greatest credit of Girlfriend, Boyfriend (2012) is something else. Unlike so many things we see today, it did not shy away from saying that youth is not without ideologies. In fact, youth is the time for ideologies.

It was 2012. And the world did not turn so right-wing as it is today. Taiwan too has always been a hotbed of global politics. It’s true that the film did not touch upon global affairs, and we have no way of saying how censor-board-friendly it would have been otherwise. But it did focus on Taiwan’s own history, and a generation growing up while living through it all.

And it is also a film against growing up. It is also against partying with the president or attending a luxury gay wedding at a private pool for its own reasons, all of which it gives away so easily.

‘Disruptive student behaviour is often a sign of problems at home’

The story unfolds under the martial law of Taiwan, in a high school. The year is 1985. And the first scene is the schoolgirls, stripping down to their shorts.

After a while, it becomes clear that it was someone’s reenactment of their own youth. Someone who’s no longer a high school student.

What is the most rebellious thing you did when you were young? And if you did not rebel at all, were you really young? Ever? And after all, what are the censor-board-friendly ways to rebel?

Those are questions for another story, perhaps. But if you did not, perhaps you won’t connect with these scenes. If your youth was spent accepting everything, this film is not for you.

And for those who did, they’d relate with terms like ‘subversive magazines’. It seems to be an artifact that gets referenced in Taiwanese films over and over again, especially in the films about white terror. It was one of the darkest periods of the country’s history.

The same artifact exists in other histories, too. And it doesn’t have to be Taiwan for you to connect. What was it called where you were? A banned book? A film no one must see? A piece of music? And when did you discover all of it was commercialised? When did a memory you cherished so much first let you down?

It calls for all this soul-searching. After all, one can never be sure how much a film can teach rebellion. It too doesn’t fall from the sky or just start when hormones start erupting. Any sort of rebellion is fostered culturally. It is transmitted at least from a banned radio frequency, if that’s what it takes, like it did in East Germany.

The film has so many quotable dialogues. In one of the scenes, it defines what rebellion is quite properly: ‘one person dancing alone is a rebellion. If the whole school dances together, that’s the will of the people’

What it does not clearly spell out is, rebellions also capitalize on people’s hunger, unmet needs and desires. But it ends up showing it pretty well, by showcasing how it ends one day.

The Ideology Officers

The man who wanted to reenact his own youth once was a high school student. Though he looks too old to play one, the story compensates for it. He grows up with the same face, same body, and almost the same wrinkles. He is taken to the guardian’s room to discuss the unruly girls under his care. There, he is told once again, ‘disruptive student behaviour is often a sign of problems at home’.

Was this a reenactment, too? Explaining a lack of discipline through psychological factors? Was it society’s new way of coping? It is pretty clear that it hasn’t always been like this.

Two and a half decades ago, Taiwan’s schools were employing ideology officers to check on their students. The film has an acrostic poem in one scene, with initial letters of its lines forming words that simply mean, ‘fuck you’. Fuck the system, fuck the ideology officer. Fuck everything.

It gets caught. Another magazine has him naked. When it arrives in the school, the ideology officer discovers it. A speech goes off in the microphone, unless his accomplices cut off the line. Then, the sound of a sudden explosion. The magazine starts flying in the air.

Whose nostalgia is it all? And how did it play out for you, in your own life? If you were one of them? Those rebels?

It is worth telling, even when it ends. Even when you are no longer rebelling. When you made peace with everything, already. That is why the film exists.

‘Fighting with the police feels heroic, doesn’t it?’

The film cuts off to the year 1990. When the three characters are slightly older, but still young. They still have no clue what to do with their own lives.

Mabel. Liam. Aaron. Instead of ideology officers, it is the police this time. They are joining a protest in the city square. Plainclothes cops are sneaking in. The gay boy who’d wish to reenact his memories decades later approaches one of them. To offer him sex and then to try to snatch away the camera with which the guy was secretly clicking photos of the protesters.

There is a blackout during Aaron’s poem. He is Liam’s crush and went up on the stage to recite something, ‘here’s a message for the police officers’.

This scene is perhaps too relatable due to all the visuals of dark places lighting up with phone’s flashlights we see today. In 1990, Taiwan’s protesters were lighting it up with their gas lighters in their pockets. And all of them were smokers. It looks pretty much the same.

Mabel, the practical girl who once sneaked out to sell banned books and magazines, brings the boys home. She tells them not to fight the cops if they arrive.

‘Fighting with the police feels heroic, doesn’t it?’ She asks.

Deep down, she knows it will be useless. And acting upon all the romantic ideologies is probably too childish. Or perhaps, that’s what the film has to say in this scene. Is it the scriptwriter perhaps, scolding their own past self?

This segment ends with Aaron finally kissing Liam, and forcing Mabel to weep over it. The first gay kiss of the film took too much courage, quite visibly. But after this, only a few scenes are left. Until this trio separates, and each goes their own way.

The Birkin Bag

The year is 1997. By now, Aaron and Mabel are married. A lot of unbelievable news follows. The most shocking one, perhaps, is that Aaron now likes Birkin bags.

Mabel herself is frequenting the gay pool parties reserved for the top elites of the city. It is exclusive, and not accessible for the commoners. We aren’t told how Aaron or Liam from their schooldays would interpret it. But none of them probably mind it today.

For people like them, who resemble them in real life, it might as well spell out ‘rainbow capitalism’. It is something the queer community is too familiar with. It always precedes legal rights and recognition. And the fact is, it has to precede. A gay wedding can still happen in a country where being gay itself is a crime in its lawbooks. That privilege is always reserved for a few. And without it, one cannot suddenly expect it will arise from the proletariat in a world growing increasingly capitalist, where they are meant to be toyed with and quite often, massacred. In most cases, the mighty proletariat cannot catch the train. They are often never told about the existence of ideologies. Instead, they become police informers.

But the shock remains. Aaron now likes Birkin bags. That itself is a blasphemy against all ideologies. But clearly, they’ve already grown out of them. Just like people grow out of their old shirts and trousers.

‘Talk about freedom and democracy! Fuck you and your big talk!’ Liam shouts at them in one scene.

And before this, it already reveals Aaron as the son-in-law of the president. He has tasted success. Liam seems to be the only one who’s still miserable, who can’t afford a Birkin bag.

This is where mostly all rebellions end. It can be bought and sold out, just like anything else. Ultimately, all human histories and fights for liberation die a commercial death in the end, with most of the rebels settling for a Birkin bag.

But after that, it also becomes a time for a flashback.

The Pinocchio

Before the film ends, Liam sees his boyfriend with his family at the grocer’s. He tells Mabel that he was stalking him.

‘He couldn’t tolerate bitter melon. After he married, his wife served a lot of bitter melon dishes to train him out of it. And he always tells me that I’m the only person in the world who’d endure bitterness for him.’

Eventually, the boyfriend decides to brave it, and confronts Liam. Under his wife’s watchful eyes.

Liam says, ‘thank you for all these years, thank you for everything.’

Soon after, Mabel and Aaron are leaving Taiwan after a political scandal that headlined them. Aaron leaves her for a while and goes to a corner in the airport, and calls his daughter.

He tells them, ‘Pinocchio managed to escape from the whale’s belly. But he lost his father. But after that Pinocchio did so many amazing things! So, we should be brave, too, like Pinocchio. Want daddy to sing a song?’

Mabel discovers. It isn’t clear what happens next. Perhaps, she realizes that she has once separated Aaron and Liam, and stopped them from having a life together. Because she finally runs out of excuses to keep lying to herself.

Their story ends somewhat abruptly here. There is nothing more after this. The film jumps straight to the year 2012.

The Flashback

The ending circles back to the two daughters causing mayhem in their high school after stripping down to shorts. Liam is their guardian by now. People in the school ask him if he is their father. One of the girls calls him elder brother instead.

They are Mabel and Aaron’s daughters.

The film cuts back to their days of youth. In the final scene, Aaron, Mabel and Liam are riding their own motorbikes on the highway. Perhaps, in the year 1987.

No one knows what happened to Pinocchio. But this film, directed by Yang Ya-che, is a tribute to all the Pinocchios who could not escape. And to everyone who still dreamed and rebelled.

It is also a tribute to every queer forced into the closet. To every gay boy who never had a choice.

Gwei Lun-Mei is a known face to everyone who watches Taiwanese films. She portrayed Mabel. Joseph Chang played Liam, and the Taiwanese-Welsh actor, Rhydian Vaughan, was in Aaron’s role.

To this day, there are so many people who resemble them in real life. None of them ever came without ideologies. Girlfriend, Boyfriend does justice to them. Or, better to say, to the ones who ended up abandoning their beliefs altogether and grew up. And it does tell everyone not to grow up, but shows at the same time that everyone has to.

And one day, there’s no more fighting ideology officers. They too keep on existing, in different shapes and sizes. In other forms. The state or the machine—neither gives up control. The control gets refined.

In 1985, algorithms did not exist on the phone’s screen. Now they are replacing the human ‘big brothers’, who are always watching. And people are still rebelling all the same.

To those who still do and who do not anymore, the film will speak. And to everyone else who never rebelled as well, though they will have to make their own interpretations.