Taiwan New Cinema masters swept the globe during the 1980s, and the stylistics they employed soon became a cinematic lingua franca. Hou Hsiao-hsien and Edward Yang, particularly, adapted to the new norms that separated them from their previous generation, and inspired a younger generation—including Tsai Ming-liang, Lin Cheng-sheng, Chen Kuo-fu, Chen Yu-hsun and Chang Tso-chi. Chang’s films show how this generation not only adopted the previous generation’s methods and styles, but also developed distinctive alternatives. And he built perhaps the most subtle and variegated personal style of the post-TNC generation.
I will examine the thematic arrangements and stylistics, particularly narrative structure. The examination of Chang’s preferred mise-en-scène and narrative structure will highlight the relation of his cinematic stylistics to the “director’s intention.
Therefore, I will also consider the “auteur’s intention,” as it is revealed in the aesthetics of Chang’s films.
Themes
When we ponder over “auteur theory,” it comes to mind that the director is identifiably responsible for the film text. But when it comes to a director like Chang, who has only made four feature films in a 20-year career, the recurrence of coherent themes needs more examination. In order to find the identifying mark of the auteur in
a body of works like Chang’s, we need to trace the continuities in his films. Chang adapts recurring themes, which is a distinctive feature of his films. All Chang’s films focus on presenting the realities of life in modern Taiwan. Looking at the world from teenage protagonists’ points of view, Chang captures their angst toward modern society and childhood trauma. These traumatic experiences are presented in the form of violence, reflecting the deformation of modernization in Taiwan.
The Marginalized Teenager
Chang’s films clearly show the predicaments and difficult positions of
underprivileged teenagers. They are in difficult positions because they are unable to acquire “normal” family ties, social mobility, security, and the common human needs for love, respect, support, appreciation and communication. Chang demonstrates that an adult society, in which his teenage protagonists try to fit in in order to best respond to the challenges of growing up, withers in the face of harsh economic and
psychological realities. Every adult’s main goal is to gain profit, to “get ahead,” and not to offer help and support to others. Thus it is difficult for the teen protagonists to find role models to look up to.
Chang’s focus on teenage protagonists’ struggles has been famously
characterized as a kind of “bildungsroman,” the coming-of-age process of teenagers.
In an interview with Xie Ren-chang, Chang said he wanted to “concentrate on presenting teenage life”. After viewing Tsai Ming-liang’s Rebels of the Neon God, Chang felt that “his understanding of teenagers is totally different from Tsai’s,” and he
also thought that “it is pretty comfortable for those teens to do things that violated the law. Their intention can be further discussed” (Hsieh 44). But, he emphasized, his
“thematic preference was definitely not compensation for his own teenage life” (Hsieh 44).44 Teenagers in Chang’s films become a complex central figure that encounters transformation during the narrative moves on. Yet, generally speaking, the
bildungsroman genre relies on identifiable or even standardized plot arrangements, which may include such episodes as misadventure, disillusionment, ordeal and compromise with society.
Some of Chang’s thematic arrangements intends to break the rules of
bildungsroman. When we identify generic subjects in Chang’s films, we can see that juvenile delinquency is most dominant. Instead of successfully entering the adult society, as would ordinary bildungsroman characters, Chang’s protagonists fail and collapse while trying to fit into the adult world. We might call this reverse initiation of teens a kind of “counter-bildungsroman.”45 In Chang’s three films that were
introduced in chapter 2, certain coming-of age themes are very apparent, but some are overturned. For example, the anger and frustration teenagers often feel towards society are highlighted, and teenagers’ reaction under pressure is viewed as a kind of childish response to social values. Chang’s films subvert the bildungsroman
archetypes in which they operate. His protagonists do not learn to become mature at
44 The original Chinese reads, “我還是想專注在青少年這個領域。我看了蔡明亮的青少年哪吒後，
感覺自己對青少年的認知和蔡明亮有些差異，因為那些青少年去殺人放火、偷東西其實是非常 爽，不那麼悶的，所以我想這個領域還是比較有開展性，但並不是什麼彌補心態在作祟。”
45 Here the “counter-bildungsroman” is my own definition of Chang’s thematic preference.
the end of the story—a reversal of typical expectations. This variation on specific generic conventions or formulas helps us understand Chang’s films. The historical and cultural contexts also shape the generic formulas used in his films, illustrating how the intersection of a specific culture and the film’s genre help illuminate his films. In the next section, I will analyze these two contexts.
In Chang’s films, the counter-bildungsroman theme allows us to perceive
different values and meanings. These values satirize the hypocrisy of the adult world, and lead Chang’s films to mild social criticism. If we place Ah Chung in an
angry-teenager generic tradition, it must be characterized as part of a revisionist tradition. Though possessing a similar structural paradigm, it displaces the values and traditions embodied in the coming-of-age paradigm—for Ah Chung, in the end, compromises with adult society, the Ba-Jia-jian group he joined. Chang’s films in fact ignore generic expectations for he doesn’t provide a solution to teenagers’ problems.
Simply put, Chang invites his audience to question the inevitability of trauma in the coming-of-age, maturing process.
One of the most distinctive features that Chang’s three protagonists share is their uneasiness about encountering adult situations. They are often on the edge of society, and their modes of action evince a kind of instinctive reaction that can be highly self-destructive. Chang loves to involve his protagonists in the gangster culture.
When asked why he has had so much interest in young gangster themes, Chang explains that “gang culture in Taiwan is very complicated, and the gangs today operate like small businesses; they have adapted themselves to commercial culture…
If you go to the central or southern part of Taiwan, you see gangs virtually everywhere” (Michael Berry 414). In Chang’s view, the gangster culture and the temptations it brought are easy outlets for teens to choose when they realize that they can not easily succeed in Taiwan’s materialist, capitalist culture.46 Chang was also impressed by the gangster culture in Taiwan during his documentary filmmaking experience.47 We can see that realism in Chang’s films is both historical and cultural.
The young gangsters’ physical features, dress and language, their psychological and emotional temperaments, their masculine and aggressive reactions—all perfectly capture contemporary Taiwan teen-gang culture. These historical and cultural identifications give the films a sense of reality. Chang effectively and skillfully dramatizes the balancing of the two dimensions of the ordinary and the extraordinary in life situations when it comes to the depiction of real everyday life. As a result of these combinations and reversals, the mental and emotional frustration of Chang’s protagonists comes off as appealing and authentic. I am referring specifically to figures like Ah Chung in Ah Chung, Kang-yi in Darkness and Light and Wei and Jie in The Best of Times. All live in oppressed situations, knowing they cannot win.
Nevertheless, they react with a kind of courage, a kind of acceptance—as if they were going to become better people, with better futures. They never deny the reality of their
46 In Taiwan, the situation is in fact even more complicated. Influenced by traditional Chinese culture, performing well in school and on entrance exams are almost the only achievements teens of school age can look forward to. But this situation is largely limited to middle- or upper-class families that can afford the necessary training for children to succeed academically. Therefore many teens from families that cannot afford this are attracted to the brotherhood-centered gangster culture in Taiwan, in order to find their own measure of security. These are the teens Chang presents in his films.
47 Chang has discussed his experience making a documentary about teenagers addicted to joyriding.
He said that it was his first experience working with gangsters, and it inspired him. See Michael Berry,
“Shooting From the Margins.”
situations; rather, they intuitively accept them as the fundamental condition of their existence.
Using marginalized teenagers as eyes on the world, Chang constructs,
interweaves, and finally destroys four aspects of human relationships—family, the affection of lovers, friends, and relationship with the divine spirit. He shows how each teenager works in vain to create a happy future. In fact, it is the very effort to conserve and support these human relationships that forces teens to give themselves totally to what they believe is worthwhile. But, in all cases, the capitalist adult world destroys whatever gains teenagers hope to obtain in the four aspects of human relationships.
Family ties, which are the foundation of human affection, seem a complicated arena that is constricted yet immense. And complex relationships like those of family or communion with the divine can be evaluated as the epitome of Taiwan’s pantheistic society. Though Chang’s protagonists are independent and sometimes have
sophistication that emerges out of their hard-bitten life experiences, they manage to present themselves appealingly as the representatives of underprivileged people in Taiwan. Dramatically, they are almost wholly confined by their neighborhoods, in dire economic straits, with their family members bearing the brunt of historical and
personal trauma. The protagonist in Ah Chung faces emotional embarrassment and family trauma when he sees his mother performing rustic dancing to support her family, and when he mentions his father raping his sister. Kang-yi in Darkness and
Light has to endure the death of her father, a blind massage therapist, and of Ah Wei,
her boyfriend, who had become involved with gangsters. Ah Wei and Ah Jie in The