Although the photographs are able to traverse the social fantasy, they are themselves fantasy as they form a rhythm of repetition and variation. On
41 “Social hysteria is not only a real problem (false accusation) with an illusory cause (fear of a “psychical” reality) but an illusory problem (witches, child abusers) with a real cause (fear of social disruption)” (Caudill 97).
the one hand, the photographs with the repetition of chain stage the desire for the stable social order: we chain them in order to maintain the order in reality since we do not know how to solve the problems of the mental patients.
Further, the repetition of the photographs stages the desire to understand, or to connect with them through taking and reading photographs.
In taking photographs, Chang faces the photographed, devolving part of his authority, providing the space for mental patients to pose themselves in front of the camera. The statement ”When I push the shutter, it’s me, but it’s them, too” (Kobersteen 11) can be transformed as “When the camera is shot, it is they as well as Chang who are speaking.” On the one hand, they speak while they express themselves partly free in front of the camera; on the other hand, Chang speaks while he chooses the way to point his camera and shoot.
This takes place in the process of photographing and remains in the photographic fantastic space. In other words, what cannot be confronted directly in reality can be envisaged in the process of taking and reading photographs.
On the other hand, the repetition of the images also screens the social antagonism that we pretend it does not exist. We think that the society would be safe by chaining these mental patients. However, Chang’s
photographs traverse the social fantasy; at the same time, he constructs his fantastic space, preventing the real awakening42 in reality to take place. The repetition of photographs forms a fantastic space to keep the unbearable real situation (our realization of the chain as fantasy) from being present directly in reality but leave the traces of it in the photographic images. It is an inherent transgression that not only traverses the social fantasy but also keeps us safe in reality.
Thus, photography and fantasy create each other. As Chang shoots the frontal, whole-length portraits, the behavior of framing is the result of fantasy.
He traverses the social fantasy by showing us the sinthome and meanwhile avoiding the institutional aspects of this issue and the imagination of Long Fa Tang Temple, which is alienized by the society. Meanwhile, Chang’s photographs lead us to see the social fantasy since they leave the traces of it.
Since Chang spends about six years working on this project, he must have learned many problems of this issue. However, he intentionally chooses to present the photographs with minimal elements to bring out the complicated incongruity of this issue for us readers to think about hereafter.
42 In the Seminar of the Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis, Jacques Lacan develops the notion of fantasy through an interpretation of the well-known dream about the ‘burning child.’ Žižek interprets the meaning of the dream. “[The father awakens in order to] escape the Real of his desire, which announces itself in the terrifying dream.
He escapes into so-called reality to be able to continue to sleep, to maintain his blindness, to elude awakening into the real of his desire” (Žižek, Sublime 44-5).
3.5 Conclusion
In this chapter, I study the photographs in The Chain to see how Chang’s photographs deal with the real contradiction of the society in Taiwan. As his most famous work, this series of photographs are de-contextualized but presented with frontal whole-length portraits of the mental patients, who are a social sinthome for Taiwan’s society. The theme of chain and split is activated by the repetition and variation of the photographic images, helping us to see how the chain works as fantasy in reality.
It is worth noting that in “Letter of a Madman,” the addressee is the patient’s mother and he keeps calling her to bring him back home since he is a well-disciplined squad leader now. Similar to the clinical psychoanalytic approach, Chang catches the beginning of the chain in family relationship:
part of the reasons for the chain in Long Fa Tang Temple to be set up is due to the social and familial exclusion (or abandonment). It binds the mental patients, excludes them, and meanwhile maintains the invisible chain of family in reality. In the asylum, the governor considers these patients as family members;43 but this family is based on the physical chain. Thus, the
43 “While the religious character of Lung Fa Tang has been weakening, its household character has been increasing. Besides Hieh Kai Fang, there are now more than 20
family of Long Fa Tang Temple is already disintegrated. As for the patients’
family, because they send the patients to the asylum, their family chain is then incomplete. Thus, the chain in this series of photographs is the split family chain.
monks and nuns serving as ‘Brothers’ and ‘Sisters’ and more than 700 patients, of how around 150 are ‘squad leader,’ qualified to lead others on the Chains and to be team leaders. Hieh Kai Feng says, ‘I don’t treat them as patients.’ Hsin Hsien refers to them as ‘students’ or ‘Lung Fa Tang’s children’” (Lai and Tedards, “Diary” 19).
Chapter Four: Discovering the Split in Double Happiness 4.1 Preface
In this chapter, I study how Chang discovers the split in the photographs of Double Happiness.44 Through a close reading of the book, I shall see how Chang interprets the cross-cultural marriage between Taiwanese men and Vietnamese women in the series of photographs.
As for the issue of cross-cultural, transnational marriage between Taiwanese men and Vietnamese women, the journalists usually report the situation of the Vietnamese women in Taiwan as social problems (Lim and Chang 187-213). The researchers deal with this issue by field study or statistics to analyze the reasons for these women to marry a stranger in Taiwan45 and to illustrate the results and problems of this cross-cultural marriage. As for the photographic images, Shu-Zi Ho takes the photographs of the 19 Asian brides, who move to Taiwan from Vietnam, Indonesia, Cambodia, and Tailand after marrying Taiwanese men. When Ho exhibits
44 According to the format by Parr and Badger, the details of this book are as follow:
Aperture, New York, 2005.
Hardcover, clothbound, 160 pages.
9.25×6.5 in (235×165 mm).
125 duotone images.
Photographs by Chien-Chi Chang. Essay by Claudia Glenn Dowling.
45 These women are mostly daughters of fishermen and farmers. They want to marry Taiwanese men to improve their standard of living and send money back to Vietnam.
This economic concern is the main reason for them to accept the brokered marriage.
Dowling; Hsiao.
her photographs, she puts one clear photograph of the woman with her children aside from another similar but dimmer images. On the second photograph, the woman’s words are printed: she narrates her own experiences of cross-cultural marriage in Chinese. Thus, Ho still takes some kind of anthropological approach and deals with the results and problems of cross-cultural marriage from the perspective of the brides. However, Chang takes a different perspective: he is not only concerned with the reasons, and is now tracing the results,46 but also keeps the observation close to the way the couples decide to get married with each other, which is seldom paid attention to. He takes six trips to Ho Chi Minh City with four different marriage brokers and Taiwanese grooms between March 2003 and May 2004 (Lehan 74-9). I will study this latest book to see how he interprets the cross-cultural, transnational marriage with photographs so as to catch his perspective on this issue.
The book Double Happiness focuses on the process for Taiwanese men to pick up Vietnamese women and get married in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, within around three days. These photographs are either whole-length and three-fourth-length portraits, or mug-shot style portraits, which are similar
46 He keeps contact with the seven couples in the last part of this book and takes their photographs after they are married.
with those in The Chain; the book is about marriage, which corresponds to the subject in I Do I Do I Do. There are mainly six sections in this book, which include the photographs of the process from selection, checking ID, counseling and wedding celebration, the essay “The Pursuit of Happiness” by Claudia Glenn Dowling and seven cases of brokered marriage. The essay is a third-person narrative and the narrator seems to follow the men from Taipei to Vietnam, to choose their brides. From this essay, we catch some details in the whole process mainly from the experiences of three men, who are named Betel Nut, Kid and Chubby Guy according to their characteristics. This essay helps us to situate the photographs and to keep close to what Chang may try to present. In this chapter, I argue that Chang discovers the split in the theme of the book. Through studying the book, we shall see from this split, the structure of fantasy, which leads the cross-cultural, transnational marriage between Taiwanese men and Vietnamese women.