Stray Dogs seeks to examine the essence of life, as Tsai mentions. The same-as-real-life length of time, defined as slowness, could be the evidence. Tsai argues that his films represent life, and the time in his films equals to the time of real life. Therefore, in Stray Dogs, Lee Kang-sheng eats half of a lunch box for three minutes and forty-eight seconds, and Chen Shiang-chyi
4 The outcome of ruins brought by capitalism coincides with the situation of Detroit in the US described by Grace Lee Boggs.
as well as Lee Kang-sheng watches the charcoal drawing on the wall5 for thirteen minutes and twenty-five seconds. Different from the commercial movies, in real life we can also eat a lunch box for minutes. We may stare at an artwork that attracts us for a while. In Tsai’s films, the movie watching experience is not an escape from the tedious daily routine. Instead, he forces the spectators to experience the reality of life by staring at the scenes of everyday life in the actual time flow.
Tsai introduced that the origin of movie is literally “motion pictures.” The objects move in the fixed frame, as The Arrival of a Train at La Ciotat Station shows. By going back to the origin of movie, Tsai intends to rebel against the commercial movies, which switch the scenes rapidly and are connected to the cultural production of capitalism. Stray Dogs’s content of homelessness also combines with its form as a slow film. Similar to the audience who have to stare at the nearly motionless takes, Lee Kang-sheng has to hold the sign, staring blankly. In comparison, the motorcyclists in the scenes briefly stop at the red light, glance at him, and drive away. At other moments, he either lives with his children or wanders in the wilderness.
His life, as the slow movie itself, is slow, for he has no economic surplus to fill in his futile life as an unemployed homeless man. Lim suggests that the slowness represents “the politics of aesthetics” rather than pure aesthetics of “luxury in a capitalist modernist milieu” (31-32). The
“excessive temporality” demonstrated by the slowness also “raise[s] questions about the politics of time, the value of speed, and the material forms in which different temporalities manifest their ideological investments” (32). That is, the slow films raise the question of cultural investment in the commercial movies. The commercial movies bring speed and excitement to the spectators. However, the highly competitive capitalistic society is already a rapid society, in which the time is pressured and citizens are forced to speed up to catch up with the rapidness. In this way, the citizens are trapped in the rat race, having no way out from
5 Coincidentally, the charcoal drawing was drawn by Kao Jun-honn, and afterwards was discovered by Tsai.
the game of speed. On the other hand, the slow films present to the audience what life should originally be. The question of slowness is sublimated from the pure discussion of aesthetics to the problematic operation of the capitalism and commercialism in the movie industry or even the broader issue of exploitation and humanity.
In the context of Stray Dogs, Lee’s boring life resonates with the deadtime. Lim defines the deadtime as nothing, if little, moving during a period of a scene in slow films. However, it is the deadtime that reveals the emptiness of life when the audience are forced to endure the slowness of the movie. Possibly the film aims to criticize the hustle and bustle and material surplus in the city that cover up the bare feelings without too many sensory stimuli. As Tsai states in the behind-the-scenes story, the supermarkets and hypermarkets always give off the impression of oppressive material surplus (230). The material surplus is instead replaced by the excess of time in the slow films and the lives of the homeless. The audience are also forced to endure the boredom of the film, the real life, in the process of watching the film. Probably this is also one of the meanings of huan zhi ben chu that Tsai intends to convey. The homeless taste the emptiness in life, and the audience are exposed in the atmosphere of boredom while watching the movie, too.
In addition to the images, the sound in the film also implies the contrast between material excessiveness and scarcity. The noise of the background sound in Stray Dogs can also be seen as the oppressive feeling of material surplus and temporal shortage in capitalistic society. Lim sorts out the sounds of crying, peeing, and sexual activities as the “uncomfortable sounds” in Tsai’s movies (133-40). In Stray Dogs, the uncomfortable sounds derive not from bodily fluids and movements but from the noise of motorcycles and construction sites. It is the noise produced by non-human objects that makes the experience of watching slow movies uncomfortable and intolerable. In Stray Dogs, Tsai combines the form of time in slow movies, the experience of watching slow films, and the content of slow life as the homeless. He claims this movie will be his last feature film, and the combination might also be viewed as the
refinement and annotation to his achievement in movie industry. With the three elements in his film, the slowness becomes the true life. The fast-paced capitalistic life is thus exorcized under Tsai’s operation of slowness. For instance, when Lee Kang-sheng stands on the safety island holding the sign showing the advertisement of real estates, the motorcycles and automobiles roar through. When Lee pees and smokes beside the bogs in the construction sites, the noise of constructing pierces in. The uncomfortable sounds produced by human bodies are overlapped by even more uncomfortable sounds as the symbols of capitalist prosperity in Stray Dogs.
Perhaps Tsai intentionally disposes the noise of capitalistic speeding society in the background in order to compare the simple life of the homeless. The Chinese philosopher Zhuangzi claims that “[tao] is in that excrement” to indicate that tao exists everywhere (Zhuangzi). I would suggest that the real tao for Tsai, exists in the homelessness. Although Lee Kang-sheng, as a homeless person, may die without legal protection or attention from the public, the essence of life discloses itself in such bare, empty, and boring life. However, I am not claiming that people should literally lead a homeless life. Instead, the homelessness can be taken as a concept. The homeless life of Lee Kang-sheng serves as the rebellion against the capitalistic exploitation on the workers. The simple life is also the core value to construct a small local community, where people can live peacefully and decently with their neighbors or the ones they love. The bottom-up value of leading a simple life in a local community may resist the top-down hegemony of international commercial activities, which exploit the workers, the consumers, and human beings generally.