Finally, in this part of my thesis, I want to discuss the overlap of the film’s onset and ending. In the first scene of the film, the mother played by Yang Kuei-mei combs her hair and gloomily stares at the sleeping children. The scene implies the beginning of the family’s disintegration. Nevertheless, at the end of the film, after the mother played by Lu Yi-ching rescues the children, the scene switches back to the time before the family falls apart. In the house with burnt black walls, the family members happily celebrate Lee Kang-sheng’s birthday.
The burnt walls in the last scene imply the fall of the family, which could be connected to the first scene where the wall is the same burnt black. Considering the composition “A Day Out”
Lee Yi-cheng writes in the last scene, the overlap of the plot suggests the homeless life is a swirl and there is no way out. From the perspective of language, the English translation “A Day Out” is Jiaoyou (郊遊) in Chinese, the same as the Chinese title of Stray Dogs. The two English translations of Jiaoyou play a double game here. On one hand, Jiaoyou means “a day out” for the busy citizens who seek for the relaxation from the hustle and bustle of daily life.
On the other hand, the Lees already live in the half-wild margin of the city, indicating the situation of no way out. The difference between the norm, namely, the settled and employed citizens, and the homeless is here blurred. The salaried are trapped in the highly competitive lifestyle, and the homeless are deserted by the society. Both sides are exploited by the logistics of unfree free trade and the thanatopolitics of capitalistic operation.
Nonetheless, if we view this repetition as the natural recycling process of life and death, the repetition of the plot might be an ecosystem in another way. One scene when Lee Kang-sheng is singing Yue Fei’s Man Jiang Hong in Stray Dogs might be taken as the evidence of this surmise. Man Jiang Hong appears in the textbook of junior high school in Taiwan. It talks about Yue fei’s want to take revenge for the Song Dynasty on the Jin Dynasty, founded by the Jurchen people. The poem, or ci (詞), can be explained as Lee’s attitude to revenge for his life
and get out of the situation as a homeless man. In addition, Lee cries when singing this song.
This reaction explicitly reveals Lee’s disinclination to accept his status quo. What he lacks is the means to return his miserable life to the felicitous one before, when he is still able to enjoy the massage chair as shown in the last scene. If we only focus on the plot itself in this film, the film will be left as it is and there is no way out. However, if the creation of this film is taken into account, explanatory route will be different. Tsai’s action of shooting this film and exposing it to the public’s eyes can be regarded as an intervention. Kao’s mural in the film linking to his and other artists’ experiments in East Asia is the second intervention, and the theorization of this thesis the third. It is the artistic and intellectual intervention that converts the homeless issue into the energy against the devastating capitalistic power relation. In such revelation, Lee’s life becomes the stepping-stone to doubt the endless production and consumption of capitalistic ideology, and the interventions further counterbalance the destructive power. Therefore, the repetition of the plot is broken up by the formation of this film. In this sense, the repetition becomes tentative and contingent. The exposure of Lee’s homeless life fertilizes the critiques on the homeless issue, the other homeless people, and Lee himself. Lee’s dead end in life reversely nurture the soil for reflection on the cultural production of capitalism. The whole operation is similar to the ecosystem, where the lives also come and go repeatedly. The death does not mean no way out, but it will turn into fertilizers for other lives, and the whole system is circulating.
From this viewpoint, Heidegger’s and Benjamin’s theories can also serve as the complement to the discourse of destruction and rejuvenation. Both of them were seeking the ideal of repetition in life and death or repetition in depression and prosperity, instead of leading things into the blind alley. Witnessing the postwar ruins, Heidegger turned to a philosophical ideal that produces not “housing” but “dwelling,” which leaves no ruin in the world by leading a pastoral ecofriendly life (Pensky 72). Life and death meet at Heideggerian farmhouse and Totenbaum, the coffin. The wooden houses where people dwell also rot away with the dwellers
who pass away. Both of living and dwelling are temporary in such ecological cycle. From this viewpoint, the homeless nomadic lifestyle, incorporating with the artistic social movements, is in fact a life of pastoralism in the sense of Heideggerian ideal. As the Lees in Stray Dogs who are sheltered in the ruins bring life back to the deserted building, the act of squatting in the deserted buildings reuses and revives the waste left by the capitalistic exploitation, making the dead space vigorous again. Even though the ruins are still private properties, the rebellion against the law to squat in the ruins reversely makes the deserted buildings dwellable. What’s more, in the process of creating the ruins and reusing the ruins, the ecological system might evolve. Benjamin in his Arcades Project provides a more positive meaning to the ruin theory.
For Benjamin, Paris is a city “between nature and history: seismic, volcanic, uncontrollable, deeply angry, beyond argument,” and the arcades are like the lava which constantly changes or even destroys Paris, but meanwhile the volcanic ash will fertilize the city and make it flourish again (Pensky 80). Furthermore, Benjamin also analogizes the arcades in Paris to the primitive caves. The arcades are not included in Paris’ urban planning, but the commercial activities boosted the cave-like arcades. Therefore, the emergence of the arcades is in reality against the national urban design of Paris, but reversely provides shelters for the walkers and revitalizes the once deserted areas. By the same token, the homeless way of life, with artistic and intellectual intervention, reversely activates the deserted ruins created by the fast-developing society, and it is the intervention that converts the homeless issue into the energy against the devastating capitalistic power relation. It therefore seems ironic that the commerce and capitalism, believed to be the power of prosper, creates numerous ruins, whereas the homeless incorporating with the artistic acts, seeming to be futile and unproductive, make the ruins dwellable again by squatting in them.
Recalling the anti-commercialist attitude of this slow movie, we find that the release of Stray Dogs aims to break the oppression of modern consumerism and capitalism. Tsai’s charity acts to raise money for the homeless, hand in hand with Zenan Homeless Social Welfare
Foundation (Renan shehui fuli cishan shiye jijinhui 人安社會福利慈善事業基金會), also explains his intention to speak for the homeless. If there is no artistic and intellectual intervention, the ecosystem composed of the homeless, the ruins, and the international capital force is pathological. This is why I shift the point from the repetition of the plot to the ecological cycle consisting of the destructive power of the capitalism and the reactive force of artistic social movements. Under such premise, I would like to suggest the grassroots power and community building as the possible implementation of Orwellian small garden and kitchen in the workhouse and Kao’s introduction of the artistic movements and experiments in East Asia.
The sociological theories and real examples will be introduced in the next chapter.
Chapter Four: Sociological Theories of Community-building Schemes
From the inspiration of George Orwell’s “small farm” and “kitchen garden,” and Stray Dogs linking to the artistic acts and movements, the silhouette of community-building concept faintly emerges (Orwell 215). In Down and Out in Paris and London, Orwell puts forward the issue of small farm and kitchen garden inasmuch as he hopes to make the tramps useful and productive by providing them “a sound day’s work” which can feed them decently (215). This can be seen as the prototype of the community-building project I am going to discuss in this chapter. On the other hand, the artistic movements introduced by Kao are also an embodiment of community-building project, and Tsai cinematizes the homeless issue to make it visible to the public. Both of Orwell and Tsai sincerely care for the underprivileged; otherwise, their works will not be presented as they are. In other words, they hold the value of humanity and criticize the institutions which dehumanize the destitute. To reify the conception of humanity, I would like to borrow James and Grace Lee Boggs definition that humanity is the ability to reflect upon the past, think about the present and “project into the future” (14). With such premise, in this chapter, I will firstly investigate James and Grace Lee Boggs’ ideas of revolutions from their historical introductions to the French Revolution, the October Revolution in Russia, and the Chinese Communist Revolution in the twentieth century. With the analysis of historical revolutions and her experience of movements in Detroit, Grace Lee Boggs develops the philosophy of revolution further in the twenty-first century, and highlights the idea of grassroots power. Although the revolutions in the twentieth century and the grassroots power in the twenty-first century all put emphasis on the power of the proletariats, it should be noticed that the leading role was shifted from the state-scaled plans to local communities consisting of members as individuals.
Second, the theories about socialism and its new proposals in the twenty-first century will be discussed. Instead of adopting the dichotomy of capitalism and socialism, Erik Olin Wright categorized the economic structure into capitalism, statism, and socialism, none of which can independently form a society. Therefore, he then brought out the concept of hybrid, in which the social empowerment penetrates into state power and economic power. The examples of social empowerment mentioned by Wright provide more theoretical foundation for Kao Jun-Honn’s Multitude aforementioned, in which the topic surrounds the local movements in connection with the homeless people. I will take the sociological hypothesis as the hinge to link the issue of homelessness to the community-building projects, and to seek the possible solutions to the long-lasting yet suspended social problem.
In England, the question of homelessness might have originated from the Black Death in the fifteenth century, with the dissolution of the monasteries as social support. In the nineteenth century, the desolate living condition in the workhouses was created under the exercise of the New Poor Law. With industrial development and social change, the question of homelessness nowadays can be ascribed to the malfunction of the capitalistic society, in which the surplus of production fails to be distributed to some homeless people. Despite the failure of communist nations in the twentieth century, it would be risky to fall into the black-or-white fallacy by taking capitalism as the only solution to social economy. On account of the economic inequality, exploitation, poverty, and so on, the role of capitalism in our daily life should be revisited, reconsidered, and reappraised.