Hello, I’m Xuemin.

Welcome to Episode 6 of Abnormal Relationships.

Today we discuss forbidden love. “Forbidden” refers to moral norms, ethical rules, or social expectations in a particular setting. A relationship forced into secrecy because it crosses those rules is forbidden love.

 

Looking back, many love stories that deeply moved me as a child were forbidden.

The White Snake and Xu Xian in The Legend of White Snake, Bai Mudan and Lü Dongbin in Legend of the Eight Immortals, and Rose and Jack in Titanic crossed boundaries between human and demon, immortal and mortal, or social classes.

Most memorable was Ang Lee’s Brokeback Mountain, which I saw in high school—the first time same-sex love deeply moved me.

Ennis and Jack meet and love on Brokeback Mountain but cannot remain together. Under social pressure, both marry after descending yet cannot forget each other.Note: We strongly condemn marriages entered through deception. Though society must improve, individuals still have choices.They begin a twenty-year forbidden love, occasionally meeting on the mountain but always descending to lives of longing and constraint. Despair makes Jack increasingly reckless; he even sleeps with his wife’s friend’s husband. After a fierce quarrel he and Ennis separate, and Jack dies in an accident.

At the end, Ennis sorts Jack’s belongings and finds two shirts wrapped together: Jack’s jacket around Ennis’s bloodstained plaid shirt. He holds and inhales Jack’s jacket, then reverses them, placing his own shirt around Jack’s.