The last part includes seven couples’ photographs from the process of selection to the agreement and marriage. Each couple has three photographs taken: the first is the women lining up for selection, the second is the couple
who just agree to get married, and the third is taken on the couple’s wedding ceremony.49 Here, we review the process we see in the previous sections, which are narrowed down to seven cases. In each case, Chang identifies their names, takes their photographs in casual clothes after they decide whom to marry, and shows the scene of their own wedding.
In the first photograph among the three, we see the selection process again so that the previous impression is strengthened. In the beginning, both of them enter into fantasy—the marriage brokered in order to pursue happiness—so as to seek resolutions of the real problems in family: the women want to improve the standard of living and the men are pressured by the expectation of marrying and bearing children. As they are in the process, they understand at first that there is something in them more than themselves which their possible mates want; that is to say, they learn that what their mates desire are not they themselves but something in them. The fantasy of the marriage based on romantic love does not happen on either side or they will not accept the brokered and assembly-line-like marriage. Thus, they somehow traverse the fantasy of love-based marriage so that they can go through the process of selection.
49 Chang, Chien-Chi. Double Happiness. (NYC36328; NYC36361; NYC36367)
Magnum Photos. <http://www.magnumphotos.com/c/htm>. Path: Photographers;
Chang Chien-Chi; Double Happiness; slide 103-5.
As they do so, they appear to enter another fantasy: they believe that marriage helps them to pursue happiness. In the second photograph among the three, we see their relation is establishing but we are not sure how it is and how it will be. Yet the woman in the second photograph looks different from that in the first one: she appears from being immobile to attaining mobility. While presenting the couple together, Chang’s photographs do not restrict in dealing with the gender hierarchy that usually mentioned in the concern of this issue, but show us that although they go through the uniform process, their relations can be non-fixed and the couples’ relations in these seven cases are different, too. Nevertheless, their unfamiliarity cannot hide under Chang’s camera. When they really get one to marry, they encounter another real problem that fantasy cannot deal with—the alienation between two individuals from different cultures. On facing the real problems again, they also choose to run into the symbolic order: the wedding celebration and the wedding pictures provide the structure of fantasy for them. In the third photograph among the three, we see that the couples pose for pictures;
sometimes there is another man helping them to do the “performance,” to show how lovely a couple they are. Although they know what their mates long for are not themselves in the beginning, they still try to believe that it is
possible for them to become a lovely couple in the near future. This is indeed the structure of fantasy, which works around them.
However, the fundamental fantasy seems to lie in Chang himself. When he observes and represents these processes, he pretends that his look is a neutral one which is not influenced by the fantasy, which works around these people. His fixed attitude and sharp critiques in this sense seems to offend the industrialized cross-cultural brokered marriage. In these photographs, it is hard for us to see the complexity of the cross-cultural marriage. However, it is very likely that the more he believes he is outside of the fantasy, the more it is possible for his taking photographs as the way to seek the symbolic resolution towards the real problems.
Žižek interprets Lacan’s words on the gaze thus: “The gaze is […] a point at which the very frame (of my view) is already inscribed in the ‘content’ of the pictures viewed” (Žižek, Looking 125). In other words, when we look at a picture, we are already gazed at by the object; that is the stain on the picture.
This object seems to be decided first before we look at it. It appears that I only see part of the picture without noticing the stain but I am totally and thoroughly gazed at by the stain, which is the object of the Other’s desire.
Thus, when Chang stands outside of the fantasy of such a brokered marriage,
the gaze is not his gaze at the couples but the gaze of cross-cultural marriage that gazes at him first from the photographs he takes. The stance of the photographs is one-dimensional because that Chang understands the complexity of cross-cultural experiences and tries to show us that both the brides and grooms know nothing about it and because that when he stands outside witnessing these processes, he seems to have many questions on how they could decide to go through and accept such a brokered marriage relation.
His one-dimensional perspective appears to consider the marriage violently and he himself strongly rejects it. It is possible that he tries to avoid the appearance of the gaze, to escape from the object, which may lie in the social fantasy of the brokered marriage, such as the reasons for Taiwanese men to pick up Vietnamese women (rather than the other countries), the economic and psychological pressure and expectation from the couples’ families and societies, the role of the brokers, and the problems of social class, birth rates and the population structure relating to this issue. He avoids the complicated levels of the social fantasy to avoid the gaze of the cross-cultural marriage. Thus, photographs appear to be the symbolic resolution to his unsolvable situation and he seems quite sure of his own position when he faces the interlacing of the social fantasy of the brokered marriage and his
own fantasy of the cross-cultural union.
4.5 Conclusion
In this chapter, I study the photographs in Double Happiness to see how Chang interprets the cross-cultural marriage between Taiwanese men and Vietnamese women. As his latest book, Chang shows us how fantasy supports this brokered marriage. Through the theme repetition and superimposition, we see that the couples do not have free choices in the process. Even when they decide who to marry, the alienation between two persons from different cultures cannot hide under Chang’s camera.
Nevertheless, fantasy works around them so that they somehow believe it is a way for them to pursue happiness.
Among Chang’s three books, two of them deal with marriage, which is the possible foundation of a new family. In the book Double Happiness, this question is more complicated. It is not only about brokered marriage, but also about cross-cultural encounter. There are indeed two chains and two boundaries: one is marriage, which is a possible foundation of a new family and the boundary from strangers to husband and wife; the other is cross-cultural experiences, which is the challenge of different cultures and the
boundary between Taiwan and Vietnam. Double happiness is thus double boundary and double chain of family and of culture. This complicated problem of family and cross-culture seems to be an important concern of Chang.
Chapter Five: Conclusion 5.1 Preface
In this chapter, I aim at concluding this study in three aspects: first, I plan to discuss the de-contextualized photographs in the three photobooks; then I will try to illustrate the theme of chain/disintegration in Chang’s photographs; finally, I wish to see the characteristics of Chang’s photography.