| Getting It on Film:Representing and Understanding History in A City of Sandess[悲情城市] |
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作者 |
Chi,Robert |
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出版年 |
1999 |
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文獻出處 |
Chi,Robert。《Tamkang Review》。1999，第29卷4期，頁47-84。 |
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語言 |
繁體中文 |
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關鍵詞 |
A City of Sadness、Trauma、Memory、Hou Hsiao-hsien、Cinema |
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摘要 |
A City of Sadness [Beiqing chengshi, dir. Hou Hsiao-hsien, 1989] marks a turning point in contemporary Taiwanese history. It was the target of various attacks based on the ambiguity of its political intentions. The politicized debates surrounding the film often interpret it too quickly in terms of nationalistic discourse. As a result, details of the film''s representational strategies are often overlooked, along with significant formal links to other literary and, cinematic texts addressing similar themes. Specifically, the film itself problematizes temporality, narration, affect, and communication in ways that suggest a psychoanalytic theory of history-as-trauma. But the paradoxical status of contemporary trauma discourse itself further suggests that the very notion of a national history is a negative relation in the present rather than a positive content rooted in the past. In other words, the strategic "failure" of A City of Sadness to represent what it was expected to represent holds open an alternative space of public discourse, a space which self-consciously questions both political resistance and communal affect. Therefore, the film occupies a crucial position in the genealogy of "Taiwanese identity." |
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摘要 |
A City of Sadness [Beiqing chengshi, dir. Hou Hsiao-hsien, 1989] marks a turning point in contemporary Taiwanese history. It was the target of various attacks based on the ambiguity of its political intentions. The politicized debates surrounding the film often interpret it too quickly in terms of nationalistic discourse. As a result, details of the film''s representational strategies are often overlooked, along with significant formal links to other literary and, cinematic texts addressing similar themes. Specifically, the film itself problematizes temporality, narration, affect, and communication in ways that suggest a psychoanalytic theory of history-as-trauma. But the paradoxical status of contemporary trauma discourse itself further suggests that the very notion of a national history is a negative relation in the present rather than a positive content rooted in the past. In other words, the strategic "failure" of A City of Sadness to represent what it was expected to represent holds open an alternative space of public discourse, a space which self-consciously questions both political resistance and communal affect. Therefore, the film occupies a crucial position in the genealogy of "Taiwanese identity." |
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