In the series of photographs, we see the process of the couples’ taking wedding pictures first, which show us how the wedding pictures are taken.
In the studio, the bride is posing according to the direction of the photographer, who not only composes the pictures and shoot the camera, but also tells the brides how to pose (Fig. 2.1). Aside this photograph, Chang juxtaposes another one24 with a similar plot: in both cases, the brides’ poses and dress styles are similar, too. Here, the photographers’ hands, appearing as a shadow, seem to dominate the process of photo-taking while the brides appear as dolls, who do not show their mobility at all. We see that generally in wedding pictures, the brides’ differences are not presented; their names and individual stories are lost in the process of idealizing the images. In another photograph, the couple, who stand in front of a fake background, look up happily with their hair blown by the wind from the electric fan in order to achieve the desired effect.25 Under Chang’s camera, it seems that the big fan is going to engulf them. From this photograph, we see how the
24 Chang, Chien-Chi. I Do I Do I Do. (NYC10438) Magnum Photos. <http://www.
magnumphotos.com/c/htm>. Path: Photographers; Chang Chien-Chi; I Do I Do I Do;
slide 4.
25 Chang, Chien-Chi. I Do I Do I Do. (NYC10450) Magnum Photos. <http://
www.magnumphotos.com/c/htm>. Path: Photographers; Chang Chien-Chi; I Do I Do I Do; slide 7.
wedding pictures lie, so as to produce the expected images, which might fulfill our desire to become the protagonists in the so-called fairytale dream.
Nevertheless, we see the wedding industry works as fantasy: the photographer is one of the agents in this industry; the fan, the background and the spot light are the instruments helping him. As he mentions the relation between symbolic order and fantasy, Žižek tells us that fantasy does not help us to realize the desire that is prohibited by the symbolic order (Žižek, “Seven” 13-5). On the contrary, fantasy works as the very act of the establishment of symbolic order, the installation of Law. Illustrated with the story of Paradise Lost, Žižek tells us that Adam disobeys God’s words and eats the apple so that he loses what he disobeys in order to keep it (jouissance);
he even finds out his decision rather than makes it. It is because fantasy works here so that Adam cannot see that his desire is taught by fantasy, which offers him an empty gesture to make his own decisions.
In the case of the photographs here, although most people know that in wedding pictures, their images are idealized and they can choose how they want to be looked at or who they want to become, they do not understand that they have no free choices at all: they have to pose according to the photographer’s direction; they spend lots of money and take at least one
whole day off to take pictures in order to look special (jouissance) in their wedding album but it is by so doing that they lose their names and individual love stories with their mates are lost in due course. Their uniqueness is unified with someone else’s. Chang’s photographs show that instead of their own choices, their fairytale dream is a commercially-determined one: the wedding boutiques strengthen the fairytale dream, constructing the scenes to teach the couples how to make the dreams come true in the wedding albums.
Thus, Chang’s photographs lead us to look awry at an angle, with an
“interested” view, so that we see the ritualized wedding industry work as a fantasy: the wedding industry indeed installs the Law that teaches us how the wedding pictures should be. In the process of taking wedding pictures, we think we have totally free choices to decide how we look but actually it is an empty gesture fantasy is offering.
After the fantasy of wedding pictures has been traversed by looking awry, the straight photographs we used to see in wedding rituals become sharply contrasted as a formless spot. Chang firstly shows us the looking awry scenes, which not only immediately represent the fantasy of wedding pictures but also challenge our straight perspective by leading us to look awry at surprising angles. Then, when we see the straight scene (“as it really is”)
later, we do not read it as usual but the gaze puzzled by our desire and anxieties gives us a distorted, blurred image. The way we used to see things is changed.
In this book, besides reflecting the local visual culture and the wedding industry, Chang also pays attention to the new local culture, which is the group wedding ceremony,26 and the ritual of post-reception games or parties27 in Taiwan. In this photograph, on the group wedding to celebrate one elephant’s 80th birthday at zoo, the grooms are asked to kiss the brides when the elephants, named Lin Wang and Ma Lan, watch in the back (Fig.
2.2). Except the facial characteristics, we can hardly tell the differences between the couples. The kiss on group wedding means to be an extremely publicized vow belonging to each couple. The elephants’ blessing, which draws the elephants into the symbolic order, appears to recognize the couples’ marriage. Besides, there is a double repetition in this photograph.
Firstly, one characteristics of ritual is repetition:28 the couples going through
26 Group wedding ceremony is recently developed in Taiwan and becomes quite popular.
It is often held by city government and can consist of as few as 6 couples or as large as 100. People usually do not know one another. The couples gather at some spot, go through a ceremony hosted by the mayor, and they are asked to kiss for some minutes;
finally they receive some presents and leave on their own way.
27 The post-reception games or parties are held after the wedding banquet. Usually, it is the couple’s close friends or relatives who join in. The couple has to play some games demanded by their friends or relatives.
28 “[The Rites] are fixed modes of actions” (Durkheim 36). “[The] real function of a rite consists […] in a general action [which] remain[s] always and everywhere the same”
the wedding ceremony are repeating the ritual of marrying. Then, each couple repeats the same ritual (together) without presenting their personal differences; that is the second repetition. The double repetition strengthens the point that they show their happiness towards the public, the camera, and even the elephants to prove their happiness as well as their social roles as newlywed husbands and wives.
Such is also the case in the post-reception games, in which the couples have to do what their friends and relatives demand. In one photograph, the bride with a blindfold is asked to touch the calf of participants to tell which one is her husband.29 Her head is in the center of the photograph while the others stand around looking at the “performance;” one of them even holds a video camera to record it, which is likely to be shown to the people who are not present now. Žižek tells us that fantasy teaches us how to desire and
“the original question of desire is not directly ‘What do I want?’ but ‘What do others want from me? What do they see in me? What am I to others?’”
(Žižek, “Seven” 9). The photographs of wedding scenes are indeed the very case in which the couples try to fulfill the other’s desire, instead of their own
(Durkheim 286).
29 Chang, Chien-Chi. I Do I Do I Do. (NYC10491) Magnum Photos. <http://www.
magnumphotos.com/c/htm>. Path: Photographers; Chang Chien-Chi; I Do I Do I Do;
slide 49.
ones, in order to be recognized in the symbolic order, proved as husband and wife. Through rituals, their identities are recognized by the society, satisfying the social expectation, so that they themselves become the objects of desire of the society.