In Writing History, Writing Trauma (2001), Dominick LaCapra took the concepts of “acting out” and “working through” from Freud, developed the two terms, and applied them to historical studies. In LaCapra’s view, “acting out is related to repetition, and even the repetition compulsion—the tendency to repeat something compulsively” (142). It is as if one was “haunted or possessed by the past and
performatively caught up in the compulsive repetition of traumatic scenes—scenes in which the past returns and the future is blocked or fatalistically caught up in a
melancholic feedback loop” (21). LaCapra further elucidated that, in the process of acting out, one relived the past and seemed to be caught in the past “with no distance from it” (143). To those who act out the traumatic experience, the distinction between past and present is blurred. “Working through,” as LaCapra recounted, could then be regarded as a countervailing force which “counteracts the force of acting out and the repetition compulsion” (22). LaCapra explicated that via “working through” “one is able to distinguish between past and present and to recall in memory that something happened to one (or one’s people) back then while realizing that one is living here and now with openings to the future” (22). Here LaCapra foregrounded the
future-orientation of trauma. Only through “working through” can a person free himself or herself from the past, start to review the past from a “critical distance” (143), and engage in the present life.
LaCapra’s interpretations of “acting out” and “working through” are helpful in my analysis of the characters’ experiences with trauma in Green Island. For example, Ryan vividly portrayed how Li Min, the narrator’s mother, “acted out” her traumatic experience:
Baba [Dr. Tsai] threw open the door. Three men. Mama [Li Min] would recall three men clustered at the door, their dark figures blocking the faint morning light, and when she could talk about it again, she would note the same thing over and over: “They were so young. Just boys.” Boys who tackled my father at his first words and dragged him away as my mother stuttered her protest. (26)
At the moment when Dr. Tsai was arrested and dragged away, Lin Min was
traumatized because, to her, such experience was too unexpected and overwhelming to comprehend when it occurred. In Writing History, Writing Trauma, LaCapra also discussed the repetition of words as a symptom of acting out. As LaCapra put it,
“words may be uttered but seem to repeat what was said then and function as speech acts wherein speech itself is possessed or haunted by the past and acts as a
reenactment or an acting out” (90). In the case of Li Min, she acted out her traumatic experience in the form of compulsively repeating the same thing: the Chinese
Nationalist soldiers were so young but brutal.
In Green Island, we can also observe the narrator’s elder sister Ah Zhay’s re-enactment of her traumatic experience. In the novel, when the narrator asked Ah Zhay about what exactly happened during the March Massacre, Ah Zhay told the narrator that she saw a man, a body on the street:
He [the dead man] was on his back. His arm was over his face. His coat was torn and his blood was in the street around him. She [Ah Zhay]
dreamed of the man for years […] For years, she uttered apologies under her breath to the fatherless girl. (134)
Even after twenty-five years had passed, Ah Zhay remembered clearly the shocking scene and the appearance of the dead man. In Unclaimed Experience: Trauma, Narrative, and History (1996), Cathy Caruth defined trauma as “the response to an unexpected or overwhelming violent event or events that are not fully grasped as they occur, but return later in repeated flashbacks, nightmares, and other repetitive
phenomena” (91). In the case of Ah Zhay, she acted out her traumatic experience in the form of nightmares. Moreover, she imagined that the dead man had a daughter.
For several years, Ah Zhay felt guilty and kept apologizing to the imaginary girl for the reason that she saw the dead man but could do nothing for him.
Ryan also depicted the haunting influences of trauma on the narrator. When talking about her father Dr. Tsai’s disappearance, the narrator stated that:
I held a constant fear that he could just disappear. Thirteen years had passed since his return, and yet I still wondered each morning if that would be the day that Baba was gone again. (179)
Here the narrator was incapable of reviewing the past from “a critical distance.” Even thirteen years had passed since the father’s return, the narrator was still haunted by the fear of her father’s disappearance.
To the narrator, Jia Bao’s assassination was another traumatic event. After Jia Bao’s murder, the narrator stated that “I found there are memories too painful to recall in detail, so my mind slides over them” (343). On the day before the narrator met Jia Bao’s wife and passed Jia Bao’s urn to her, the narrator told herself that “everything that came before today no longer existed” (309). In her process of acting out, the narrator was unable to confront the trauma, so she eschewed the painful memories and pretended that nothing happened. Before Jia Bao was assassinated, he told the narrator that he wanted to write a book regarding the March Massacre, martial law, and the White Terror. The narrator promised that she would help translate his book. However, after Jia Bao’s murder, the narrator put the manuscript away and never read it for more than two decades because of her deep regret and sense of guilt towards Jia Bao’s death.
At the end of Green Island, I infer that Ryan presented the possibility of working through the historical trauma. In the epilogue, the narrator found Jia Bao’s
manuscript, re-read it, and decided to rewrite it. In my view, the narrator’s attempt to rewrite Jia Bao’s book indicated that she was no longer trapped in the past and was capable of looking towards the future. In Writing History, Writing Trauma, LaCapra
asserted that writing trauma “ involves the process of acting out, working over, and to some extent working through in analyzing and ‘giving voice’ to the past—process of coming to terms with traumatic ‘experiences’” (186, emphasis original). Following this line of thought, the narrator’s rewriting of Jia Bao’s book could be viewed not only as the narrator’s reparation to Jia Bao but also as her way to work through the trauma. From my perspective, the unnamed narrator could be interpreted as a
mouthpiece for Ryan to present the possibility of working through and foster a future-oriented view of trauma.
In the concluding part of Green Island, the narrator paid a visit to the 228 Peace Memorial Park and the flashpoint of the 228 Incident: Number 183 Nanjing West Road. When the narrator saw “the faces of the dead, dozens of men in black-and-white photos” exhibited in the memorial museum, she recounted:
My father’s [Dr. Tsai’s] face was not among them. No memorial was built for the men who had survived by selling their souls. The thousands who had disappeared over the years, stained as criminals, who emerged back into the light as neighborhood pariahs for nothing more than the desire to claim an island as their own. No memorial for the men more complicated than martyrs—or for the families who’d had to relearn the hardships of the everyday. (377)
Here, the narrator was not stuck in the sense of grief, regret, or guilt. Instead, she re-examined the past and made a comment on the historical relics with “a critical distance.” The narrator’s visit to the memorial museum could be regarded as another example of her “working through.” Her reflections also reveal that the victims of the 228 Incident and White Terror were not limited to the identifiable martyrs whose names were engraved on the cenotaphs and commemorated in the memorial
museums. The narrator’s words drew our attention to the unrecognizable and hidden victims of historical trauma, which include Dr. Tsai and the younger generation such as the narrator herself.
In Writing History, Writing Trauma, LaCapra elucidated that “working through does not mean avoidance, harmonization, simply forgetting the past, or submerging oneself in the present. It means coming to terms with the trauma, including its details”
(144). After her short trip to the historical sites, the narrator stated that “something had happened here once, but other things had too, and life went on” (377). The narrator did not simply forget. She reviewed and attended to the details of the past occurrences but she was no longer haunted or possessed by the memory. “Working through” enabled the narrator to look back from a critical perspective and at the same time look towards future possibilities.
To conclude, I contend that Ryan reconstructed Taiwan’s dark history from a transpacific and young-generation perspective and introduced a future-oriented view of history through her fiction-writing. In this sense, Green Island could be read as a textual memorial to the 228 Incident and White Terror. For readers not directly
involved in the historical disasters but remaining implicated in and entangled with the memories of the 228 Incident and White Terror, Green Island could inspire them to critically re-politicize the historical trauma.
Chapter Three: Detention
In January 2017, the Taiwanese game developer Red Candle Games released a survival horror video game, Detention (返校), which soon became a big hit at home and abroad. Detention is a 2D atmospheric horror side-scroller17 set in the 1960s undemocratic Taiwan under martial law and featuring Taiwan’s distinctive religious and cultural elements, such as Cheng Huang Temple, Seventh Lord, Eighth Lord, Taoist spells, bowl of rice with incense sticks, moon blocks, and budaixi puppets. On account of its unique traditional Taiwanese elements and agonizing but gripping plot, Detention topped the game ranking on the Steam platform18 in Taiwan on the issuing date and was ranked the third best-selling game in the global ranking on the Steam platform within three days of its release. Given this resounding success, Detention was adapted into a film of the same title directed by Han-chiang Hsu (徐漢強) in 2019.
The film director Hsu is also a game enthusiast. On the first day of the game Detention’s release, Hsu downloaded and completed the game in a few hours. Hsu stated in a post on his Facebook that he was astounded by the completeness of the game and its exquisite visual design. He even shed tears over the absorbing stories embedded in the game. To Hsu, what the game portrayed was not simply a frightening campus story but engrossing stories relevant to Taiwan’s collective memory.19 In an interview for Gamexpress Hsu recounted that “I hoped the story could be promoted to more people who were not video game players […] I wanted to remind audiences that
17 Side-scroller is a kind of video game in which the game screen is viewed from a side-view camera angle. When the game characters move right or left, the screen scrolls with them.
18 Steam is regarded as the largest digital distribution platform for PC games which provides users with installation and update of games.
19 Please see Hsu.
freedom we owned nowadays was not easily obtainable. We could never forget it was because of countless people’s efforts that we could enjoy freedom at present.”
(Gameexpress, 00:06:18-00:11:11).
When shooting Detention, Hsu intended to keep the film faithful to the spirit of the original game but at the same time avoided making the film identical to the game for otherwise the film would look like a video game live stream. In the interview for BIOS monthly, Hsu stated that he reordered and “dramatized the game plot” when adapting the game for the screen (par.12). More specifically, instead of letting the camera only follow the single character Fang Ray-shin (方芮欣) from the beginning to the end, Hsu foregrounded the other main character Wei Zhong-ting (魏仲廷) and gave him more presence. In addition, Hsu fleshed out other supporting characters, such as the underground reading club members You Sheng-jie (游聖傑) and teachers Zhang Ming-hui (張明輝) and Yin Tsui-han (殷翠涵). In so doing, Hsu complicated the plot, providing his audience with more clues to imagine what could happen in Taiwan in the 1960s.
To reproduce the scenes of the 1960s, the film crew conducted numerous field research. They visited the Jing-Mei White Terror Memorial Park to collect historical materials and to gain historical knowledge about the White Terror. The director and performers also paid a visit to the aged victims of the White Terror to listen to their life stories and experiences of being persecuted, attempting to build connections with the oppressed and to get closer to the historical trauma.20
The release of the film Detention not only sparked heated discussion of Taiwan’s authoritarian past but also aroused political controversy. Detention used the White
20 For details about the production process, please see the interview by Weng (翁煌德).
Terror as the backdrop for its setting and portrayed how people lived under the
Chinese Nationalist government’s authoritarian rule. Some people questioned whether the film was a part of political manipulation to smear the Chinese Nationalist party as the film was released at a rather sensitive moment (i.e. four months before the 2020 Taiwanese presidential election) and was funded by the DPP-led Ministry of
Culture.21 On the other hand, those who supported the film criticized that neither Kuo-yu Han (韓國瑜), then the mayor of Kaohsiung, nor the director of the Bureau of Cultural Affairs at Kaohsiung attended the premiere of the film. The supporters of the film asserted that the two officials’ absence indicated that the KMT-led Kaohsiung City Government did not wholeheartedly support the film.22 To veer the public attention from the politics and back to the film itself, the executive producer Lieh Lee (李烈) clarified that all accusations were unfounded. She hoped the public could put more emphasis on the intriguing storylines in the film as well as the democratic values that the film attempted to explore.23
Among the reviews, Han Cheung asserted that Detention could be acclaimed for brutally portraying the horrors of life under martial law. Cheung categorized
Detention as a psychological horror film which probed more deeply into the human psyche than the game. As Cheung put, Detention “[focused] on the human aspect and [explored] how people behave and handle their desires under a strictly controlled society” (par. 9). In Cheung’s view, although it was a pity that the elements of Taiwan folk religion in the game were removed from the film, Detention successfully drew the attention of the Taiwanese audience.
Anthony Kao in his review then attempted to link Detention’s genre to its
21 Please see the internet news by Central News Agency (中央社).
22 Please see the video clip on YouTube uploaded by TTV NEWS (台視新聞).
23 Please see the post by 1 Production Film Co. (影一製作股份有限公司) on Facebook.
historical concern. He asserted that Detention used “psychological horror” to portray the traumatic impacts of the White Terror (par. 3): it is a “full-throated exercise in transitional justice” and could be regarded as a significant milestone in reckoning with Taiwan’s authoritarian past (par. 10). In a similar vein, Brian Hioe contended that films themed on the White Terror in the past three decades had often been categorized as art films.24 Nevertheless, in Detention, the “horror film aesthetics” was utilized as a strategy to “convey the authoritarianism of the White Terror” (par. 9). For Hioe, Detention is a mainstream commercial horror film that has successfully urged
increasing numbers of Taiwanese young people to take the first step to learn about the history of White Terror.
Although Detention received mostly favorable reviews, criticisms of the film should not be overlooked. Daphne K. Lee in The News Lens contended that
“Detention [was] a bold attempt to explore a sensitive topic but [failed] to achieve much beyond scratching the surface with its clichéd plot and didactic screenplay”
(par. 1). She explicated that “the carefully crafted suspense and plot development [were] reduced to a petty love affair” in the second segment of the film (par. 14). In Lee’s words, the lengthy story of love and revenge revealed the screenwriter’s lack of creativity and sensibility (par. 14). In addition, the conclusion of the film simply asked the survivor to “remember and live on with hope” and the phrase “to freedom” was relegated to a slogan (par. 15). Lee contended that “Detention [was] released during a time of heightened political divide in Taiwan and ongoing civil unrest in Hong Kong,
24 Hioe has cited A City of Sadness (1989) directed by Hsiao-shien Hou (侯孝賢) as well as A Brighter Summer Day (1991) by De-chang Yang (楊德昌) as examples. In addition, I notice that there are other domestic films on the White Terror, such as Banana Paradise (1989) by Tong Wang (王童), Super Citizen Ko (1994) by Ren Wan (萬仁), Good Men Good Women (1995) by Hsiao-shien Hou (侯孝賢), March of Happiness (1999) by Zheng-sheng Lin (林正盛), Prince of Tears (2009) by Fan Yang (楊凡), and Girlfriend, Boyfriend (2012) by Ya-zhe Yang (楊雅喆).
which arguably [was] the perfect timing for a film that [discussed] oppression and freedom” (par. 14). Yet Detention failed to truly acknowledge the oppressors and to go deeply enough into discussing the persecutors. “Detention [bordered] on exploiting a collective pain for commercial success,” remarked Lee (par. 19). Here, Lee’s
comments aroused a thought-provoking question: why did not Hsu precisely name the persecutors in Detention if the film was dedicated to promoting democracy and freedom? I shall discuss this question in later sections.
In the previous chapter, I examined how Green Island represented the 228 Incident and White Terror. Also, I discussed how Green Island introduced a
transpacific perspective and a young-generation point of view to look at the historical trauma and to rethink the concept of justice. In this current chapter, I intend to extend my discussion from Green Island to Detention. My focal point in this chapter is to explore how Detention, as the latest cinematic representation of the White Terror, helps us reconceptualize the idea of justice and enriches our remembrance of the historical trauma. In the following discussion, I first make a comparison between the narrative strategies adopted respectively in Green Island and Detention. I locate my focus on Hsu’s symbolic representation of the persecutors and past atrocities in contrast to Ryan’s more realistic methods. Then, I move on to examine particularly the storyline of the main female character Fang and explore how Detention blurs the boundary between perpetrator and victim. I conclude this chapter by analyzing how the two main characters Fang and Wei “act out” and “work through” their traumatic experience.