Corporeal Movies: The Cinematic Body in Tsai Ming-Liang’s Films
研 究 生 ： 陳姿穎 Student： Tzu-Ying Chen
指導教授： 林建國 Advisor： Dr. Kien Ket Lim
國立交通大學
外國文學與語言學研究所文學組
碩士論文
A Thesis
Submitted to Insttute of Foreign Literatures and Linguistics College of Humanities and Sciences
National Chiao Tung University in partial Fulfillment of the Requirements
for the Degree of Master
in
Foreign Literatures and Linquistics July 2007
Hsinchu, Taiwan, Republic of China
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身體電影：蔡明亮電影中的身體影像
學生：陳姿穎 指導教授：林建國博士
國立交通大學外國文學與語言學研究所文學組碩士班
摘要
本文主要以「電影影像」作為立足點，不只討論身體，更重視電影框架下的身體影
像，以期重新檢視蔡明亮的電影。第一部分重申電影影像「在與不在」的特點，如同鬼
魅般的存在與外在世界有著雙重的關係。蔡明亮電影中的身體影像如同極簡主義作品屏
除多餘附加意義，讓身體不被角色或情節矇蔽，讓日常身體的慾望、習慣與活動形成一
種身體景觀(cinematic spectacle)。這種日常身體景觀能與觀眾對自身身體的經驗連
結，並且提醒觀眾身體的存在。第二部分以「特寫」理論檢視蔡明亮電影中的身體影像，
以巴拉茲(Bela Balázs)對「臉部特寫」的定義並非空間而是情感向度為起點，將靜默
痛苦的身體當成「臉部表情特寫」，提出蔡明亮電影裡身體影像中的靜默以及疲憊姿態
其實是簡化直接的意義表達，以期望觀者以凝視特寫般的專注來檢視這些身體。如張小
虹所說，將情感「表」在「面」上，將不可見翻轉為可見。因此，「身體特寫」不只是
一個靜止的影像，而是有內在的情感漫溢在影像上，而蔡明亮電影中的靜默以及疲憊才
能存有莫名的強度。身體的姿態與細節流露出一種生活狀態，而這狀態就是蔡明亮電影
的故事情節。身體姿態即是電影景觀。第三部分將以早期「歌舞雜耍表演」美學
(vaudeville aesthetic)來檢視蔡明亮歌舞片段中的身體影像。在這歌舞片段中，身體
影像作為主要觀視愉悅來源。但蔡明亮的歌舞片段如同單一個體嵌入電影敘述裡，截然
不同的觀影經驗將觀眾拉回一個有距離的位置。並且，歌舞片段中誇張的服裝與佈景實
為蔡明亮蓄意與傳統歌舞片作區隔，嘲弄嚴肅性與一般社會價值觀。因此，蔡明亮的歌
舞片段帶有坎普(camp)的顛覆性。
關鍵字：蔡明亮、身體影像、肉體性、特寫、情感強度、歌舞雜耍美學、坎普、華語電
影、台灣電影
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Student: Tzu-Ying Chen Advisor: Dr. Kien Ket Lim
Institute of Foreign Literatures and Linguistics
National Chiao Tung University
ABSTRACT
My thesis studies the cinematic body in Tsai Ming-Liang’s films. Tsai marks a significant
turn in Taiwan cinema history, shifting from historical nostalgia to self-reflection. Criticisms
of Tsai’s films often emphasize their symbolic meanings or the social references to the urban
Taipei. Tsai’s concerns, however, are not only for the human body as a suffering receptacle in
the modern world, but also the peculiarity of the film medium. In light of this, the “cinematic”
body, instead of the body image, repositions the relation of the film medium and the spectators,
where the suffering receptacle refers also to the corporeal spectators.
My thesis attempts to establish Tsai’s cinematic body as a spectacle of corporeality. Firstly,
applying minimalist aesthetics, Tsai effaces redundant indicative references from the
cinematic body so to accentuate the presence of the body itself and constitutes an exhibition of
the bodily habits, gestures, and actions. The exhibition of the biological needs contains a
collectivity that communicates with the spectators’ everyday experience. The spectacle of
corporeality, therefore, forces the spectators to stare as if confronting a close-up. This close-up
is not, according to Bela Balázs, estimated by spatial distance but by emotional intensity that
expels excessive performance and requires obvious nuances. Tsai’s films, from this
perspective, tell an alternative story through the silent and everyday body. And Tsai’s musical
numbers are usually ignored for its disruptive function in the narrative. Instead, they can be
seen as a return back to “vaudeville aesthetic” in Henry Jenkins’ phrase. Vaudeville aesthetic
carries the features of the explosive visual pleasure and fragmented narrative structure.
Through vaudeville aesthetic, Tsai frustrates the musical convention of naturalization that
mixes the imagery and the real. The characteristic of failed seriousness in Tsai’s musical
numbers also holds camp sensibility that situates the spectators in a distanced position from
the musical spectacle.
Keywords: Tsai Ming-Liang, Cinematic body, Corporeality, Close-up, Emotional intensity,
Vaudeville aesthetic, Camp, Chinese cinema, Taiwan cinema
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First of all, I would like to express my sincere gratitude to Prof. Kien Ket Lim, my advisor,
who led to the world of film studies and helped me find my own approach to Tsai
Ming-Liang’s Films with greatest patience. And I also thank him for always providing me
useful information and inspirable thoughts.
Also, I would like to present my special appreciation to Prof. Ping-Chia Feng, Prof. Iris
Tuan, and Prof. Wendy Lai, who spent time reading my thesis and offered valuable
suggestions. Their advice helped me examine Tsai’s films from different perspectives. And I
must show my gratitude to all of the professors at the Graduate Institute of Foreign Literatures
and Linguistics in National Chiao Tung University. For the last three years, I have learned a
lot from them.
Furthur, I shall present my thanks to Yi-Yin Liu and all my classmates who helped a lot
through those three years. And my appreciation also goes to Ssu-Ying Chen and Dexmond
Huang who were willing to give me useful suggestions.
Most importantly, I must thank my parents K. M. Chen and L. H. Chen and my sister M. Y.
Chen whose supports and love have been the energy for me to finish this thesis.
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Chinese Abstract
………...
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English Abstract
………..
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Acknowledgement ………..
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Contents ………..
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Chapter One
Introduction………...
1
Chapter Two
The establishment of the Cinematic Body………
18
Chapter Three
The Cinematic Body in Close-ups………
31
Chapter Four
The Camp Taste: A Vaudeville Body……….
51
Chapter Five
Conclusion……….
65
Works Cited
………...
74
Chinese Works Cited ………...
80
Filmography ………...
88
Chapter One: Introduction
Most film critics do not simply watch but “read” TSAI Ming-Liang (Cai Mingliang)’s films as literary texts.1 They tend to concentrate on the referential world beyond the films and search for meanings in that “reality.” What they ignore or miss out is the fact that film itself is the object of study and film analysis should be carried out by taking the film as a medium. Mostly without dialogue, Tsai’s films do not function as a mere narrative entity; rather, he pays more attention to the medium. Therefore, a more suitable way to analyze his films relies on a proper cinematic analysis rather than a literary interpretation.2 Just like the well-quoted line from Jean-Luc Godard, “Not blood, red” (qtd. in Thomson 78). On screen, it is not the meaning of “blood” but the bright color of “red” that shocks the spectators. So we should not stop short at “what” the meaning is but should discuss “how” it works.
My thesis aims at analyzing the cinematic body in Tsai’s films through his employment of the film medium. In other words, this is not a study on the human body of flesh and bones, but on the body image of the cinematic. To begin with, the cinematic body is a projected image on the screen, but it, too, has a strange presence between two-dimensional and three-dimensional worlds. It is happening but it is not really there. In this light, we may say
1
Tsai Ming-Liang has been a widely-used translation by all critics and publications and I did not put his given name before his last name. I will follow Wade-Gilles transliteration system because people from Taiwan adopt this system. Following Wade-Gilles, I will give pinyin transliteration in a parenthesis. I will adopt the authorized translation, if there is one, such as I-Chu Chang or Kein Ket Lim.
2
The term literary denotes the quality of literature. Steven Shaviro prefers the term literal for images that “does not correspond to any sort of presence” (26).
that a film does not happen on the screen but in the mind of the spectators. I, therefore,
accentuates on the relationship between the cinematic body, the camera, and the spectators. In the process of watching Tsai’s films, I want to ask: How does Tsai’s cinematic body, devoid of words, communicate with the spectators? What is Tsai’s unique methology of storytelling?
Tsai’s films mark an enormous shift in Taiwan film history. Different from the concern placed upon on family, society, and the nation in other directors, Tsai searches inwards within each individual. This may be related to the diasporic experiences of Tsai’s, who was raised in Malaysia but has lived and made films in Taiwan for many years. In addition, the fast pace in urban life in Taipei may also be the reason why Tsai has turned to the inner world of people living there.
During his early years in Taiwan, Tsai engaged in various fields of activities, such as stage plays, scenario, and TV series, such as his early play A Wardrobe in the Room, a popular scenario The Endless Love, and a TV series The Kid that Tsai works with Kang-Sheng LEE (Kangsheng Li).3 Later, he decided to devote himself to cinema. With his previous
experiences, he understands that film medium has its own uniqueness compared with the other forms of performance arts and establishes his unique film style. He prefers new or inexperienced actors to the experienced ones, as the latter tend to overact in their movements, voice, and facial expressions. Likewise, he has also made documentaries, such as My New
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Friends and A Conversation with God. It seems that he is more interested in the
unsophisticated, natural presence of the characters, whether he is making a documentary or a feature films. It is also undeniable that Tsai’s films are influenced by the theatre. Critics such as Ivy I-Chu CHANG (Aizhu Zhang) have already given a profound discussion. As my study does not attempt to repeat earlier investigations, I wish to analyze rather the invisible intensity of delivering a story in Tsai’s films through the cinematic spectacle of the body.
There have been many research works on Tsai’s films, in which critics suggest that his films represent the collapse of patriarchy in Chinese ethical value. Mei-Ling WU (Meilin Wu), for example, notes that Tsai’s films represent the decline of “the rootedness of the Confucian family state” (80). Gina Marchetti expands this idea to the political opposition between
Mainland/fatherland and Taiwan (118-20). Other critics accentuate the issue of homosexuality, for it impinges on the value of what a family should be. And still more critics believe that the urban isolation and lonesomeness in Tsai’s films reveal a sense of loss in the capitalist society where carnal desire, that of homosexuality in particular, has been repressed (Chen-I HSU [Zhenyi Xu] 38). All these findings provide valuable contributions and carry their own conceptual weight. However, like what Tien-To LI (Tianduo Li) observes, Taiwan film critics are often dependent on “textual analysis” and ignore the relationship between films and spectators (10-11). That is, most critics tend to read films as literary works. They take the
cinematic image as a signifier that can directly refer to the thing in itself (das Ding an sich).4 In contrast, my study analyzes Tsai’s films on the premise of the film medium. The cinematic body is not equal to any human body because it is built upon the characteristic specific to the film medium. And the cinematic body I want to discuss in this study is not anything
metaphorical or psychological. It is not a body whose identity is wiped out by its character in the narrative. My main emphasis here is the full presence of the intensity inscribed in the cinematic body in Tsai’s films. As Pin-Chia FENG (Pinjia Feng) points out, the body in Tsai’s films demonstrates “a semioticization of the body” and “a somatization of story,” in Peter Brook’s phrases (102; qtd. in Peter Brook xii). The cinematic body becomes the primary source of meanings.
In the interview with Kien Ket LIM (Chienkuo Lin), Tsai mentions that silent films are better films because they are closer to the nature of the medium (15). The film medium consists of movements and other filmic elements that are meant to affect the spectators. By giving the spectators their due position in film studies, I focus on the interaction between the film medium and the spectators. Without words, the cinematic body is actually in the same situation with the spectators who are silent in the cinema. Only bodies, the cinematic one and those of the corporeal spectators’, are left. This is how Tsai communicates with his spectators. He wants his spectators to watch, but not to read, his films.
4
Thing in itself is a concept favored by Immanuel Kant. H.M. Werkmeister writes that the thing in itself can be taken as “distinguished from objects of sensory experience (phenomena)” (304).
I draw attention to the cinematic intensity of the body in Tsai’s films. But one thing to note is that it is not easy to categorize Tsai’s films into one certain genre or to put them under examination according to any film convention. As a result, this thesis does not engage in any singular systematic theory but follows one major subject: Tsai’s cinematic body. And
therefore, my analytical approach to Tsai’s films is also a “minimalist” one in that I deliberately avoid dealing with textual analysis and the historicality, without, however, ignoring their importance. Before examining Tsai’s films from their historical perspective and developing into a more complicated theory, I believe it is necessary to take the term
“cinematic” as the fundamental premise and theoretical frame of my thesis. As a result, although my theoretical approach is subtractive in kind, my analysis will not work in a void but strive to achieve unity. My discussion will be divided into three parts. In the first part, I examine the corporeality in Tsai’s cinematic body through Pier Paolo Pasolini’s concept of brute language and minimalist aesthetic style. In the second part, I suggest that Tsai employs the technique of close-up to generate the invisible intensity and display a bodily attitude of life. In the last part, my main focus lies in the cinematic body in Tsai’s musical numbers that contain the vaudeville aesthetic and the subversive power of the camp taste.
The Cinematic Body of Everydayness
levels: physical reality, visual reality, and mental reality. Visual reality is a distorted physical reality and is formed as mental reality in the spectators’ mind. In 1895, Lumière brothers introduced cinematography to the public. Film was to them a mere technological means of reproducing life. Afterwards Georges Méliès used cinematography to create a fantasy that brought the spectators to a never-never land, such as the moon. Yet The Arrival of a Train at a
Station does literally bring the train to the screening room, though the spacecraft does not
actually land on the moon. They are both visual reality. These events happen in a cinematic world where the relationship between things and human beings is different from the one in physical reality. And what makes the physical reality a cinematic one is due to filmic manipulation. The silent film Berlin, Die Symphonie einer Grossstadt by Walter Ruttman makes a good example here. The fragments of the physical reality of Berlin combine together to form a joyful rhythm of the city in the spectators’ mental world and the cinematic Berlin is not just Berlin anymore. It becomes a symphony.
Of course, we cannot deny that the physical world is the material for a virtual world, but we have to realize that virtual reality distorts and modifies it. Different from paintings, cinematography contains documentary values.5 André Bazin celebrates the photographic image as the object itself and then cinema perfects the reproducing mechanism with the objectivity of time. It is this “disturbing presence of lives” that connects physical reality and
5
Documentary values means that the reproducing mechanism is automatic, without the interference of the human beings. What is in the photographic image is being recorded in reality (“The Virtues” 47).
mental reality together in an ambiguous relationship (“Ontology” 14). Mainstream Hollywood films could make a case here. The techniques of fast editing and special effects bring the spectators into a fantasy-like reality and indirectly influence the way of how the spectators perceive the world. This is the reason why films could be a medium of propaganda, for politics or for commercial world.6
The term cinematic body, therefore, recognizes the interference of the cinematic manipulation and distinguishes the cinematic body from the human body. Steven Saviro introduces the term cinematic body in his book of the same title The Cinematic Body. There he adheres to Deleuze’s theory that insists on the difference between the cinematic perception and the natural one. Shaviro criticizes semiotic and psychoanalytic film theory for their “fear for images” (14). He indicates that the fullness of images is reduced to a lack. Shaviro provides an excellent discussion on the characteristics of the film medium and an alternative perspective on film studies. And yet his understanding of the cinematic objects as
“nonintentional and asubjective,” no matter a human body or a thing, is open to criticism (31). Although he admits that the cinematic body belongs to the realm of visual reality, he denies the specificity of the human body on the screen. Hsiao-Hung CHANG (Xiaohong Zhang), therefore, puts her doubt on the Deleuzian theory because it is devoid of humanism and
6
Benjamin in “Works of Art in the Age of Reproducibility” points out that the new technology of reproduction causes the disappearance of aura. That is, the exhibited value of an artwork is substituted for the cult value. The work of art in the age of reproducibility is, therefore, available by the mass, instead of upper-class appreciators. In the epilogue, Benjamin is concerned about that fascism takes advantage of this mass reproduction to
refuses to acknowledge the emotion that the cinematic body may contain (173). In order to examine Tsai’s cinematic body, Pier Paolo Pasolini’s discussion on the
bruteness of the cinematic language may provide an alternative perspective on the cinematic
body. He acknowledges the difference between the cinematic language and the semiotic one. He believes that the physical reality is the raw material for the cinematic language, after much manipulation. As a result, the cinematic language still contains the bruteness, or the
“disturbing presence of lives” in Bazin’s phrase, but it is re-constructed as poetry (“The Virtues” 47). Pasolini’s the cinema of poetry does not situate the relationship between the
cinematic body and the physical reality at an extreme opposition (173). The bruteness
collected from the physical reality is related to the everyday experience or a quotidian body. As Rey CHOW indicates, the bruteness or the banality of the everyday reveals a collective experience (“Sentimental Returns” 640). By the same token, the repetitive actions of drinking, urinating, and having sex in Tsai’s films must also reveal a collectivity of corporeality that connects the cinematic body to the corporeal spectators.
The collectivity of corporeality denotes also another characteristic in Tsai’s films: his minimalist style. He takes away everything that can be taken from the cinematic body, including social references, motivations, or sexual orientation. Unlike most mainstream Hollywood films, the cinematic body is the only main focus in Tsai’s films. Whereas his strategy is a subtractive one, it also reveals more. The pornographic actress in The Wayward
Cloud can make a case here because it is when Tsai makes her unconscious that the heaviness
of her body is keenly felt. In the meantime, the minimalist style helps to realize Tsai’s concept of the body. A cinematic body should be presented as a whole, by which I mean that a
cinematic body is not just a face, a sexual organ, or even a character. The cinematic body as a whole contains emotions indicative of suffering, confusion, and loneliness.
The Cinematic Body in a Close-up
Tsai’s films always mark a significant transition from the 1980s to the 1990s in that they “no longer focus nostalgically on the history, memory, or stories of bildung” (Wen-Chi LIN 88). He erases unnecessary background information that would obscure the presence of the cinematic body. His narrative style does not rely upon the dialogue because words obstruct the implicit intensity that the cinematic body generates. In most narrative films, it is the
characters that tell the story, not the cinematic body. That is, the presence of the body has been ignored. And the meaning of the dialogue sticks to its surface and is always stable. It is as if the characters told a story literally.
The central problem of Tsai’s corporeal movies is that how does the cinematic body tells a story without words or plots. The theory on close-ups may provide a clue. But this close-up need not be one that is traditionally understood. Bela Balázs proposes a “new dimension” of the close-up (60). He argues that a close-up is not a matter of space. In his understanding, a
crucial moment could be a close-up even if it is in a full shot. He hence believes that a close-up may tell a story in which words are not necessary. In a close-up, an obvious nuance can reveal much information and emotion. In that case, a relatively simple story may contain an intensive drama underneath. As Hsiao-Hung Chang suggests, Balázs and a few other three film critics such as Jean Epstein, Siegfried Kracauer, and Walter Benjamin do not confine a close-up to a matter of distance. She recommends that a new dimension of a close-up should be estimated by emotion (144). If the emotion reaches a certain level, the cinematic
experience is similar to a close-up. This is because the emotional intensity demands that the spectators focus on this scene, and this becomes a close-up. A close-up of distance intends to direct the spectators’ attention to a certain scene. On the other hand, a close-up of emotion requires the spectators’ attention on a certain situation. Tsai’s cinematic body is a close-up from this perspective.
Chang then proposes that a close-up is a process of “e-motion, the motion of emotion” (144). That is to say, a close-up is not just an appearance or a stable surface. The externality (surface) and the internality (depth) do not stand in opposition, but in cooperation. Through a close-up, the spectators are forced to stare at the surface so that the internal emotion can reach them. This process cannot be estimated by the chronological time. A close-up has another temporality. It does not refer to a certain historical moment. It is engaged, rather, with the here
never been stories. There are only situations…” (“The Senses I (b)” 242). In that case, a close-up of emotion does not just carry explicit information for the narrative development. It has its own internal narrative system that Bálazs has called “the hidden subtle adventures of the soul” (84).
Tsai’s cinematic body contains the process of “e-motion” because of Tsai’s long takes. As we can observe, the cinematic body does not carry explicit information very much. Most of the time, the cinematic body repeats only the daily routines. But Tsai gives these ordinary movements some time to let their inner intensity sur-face. Therefore, Tsai’s films are a psychological communication with the spectators. The cinematic body and the spectators are both in a state of silent interaction. At some level, we may say that the cinematic experience in Tsai’s films is that of a communication of the bodies. Balázs also writes, “a close-up provides an entire scene” (65). That is, a close-up constitutes a cinematic spectacle. And Tsai’s close-up of the cinematic body is a cinematic spectacle of the corporeal body with some inner emotion.
A question arises is what this cinematic spectacle of the corporeal body tells in Tsai’s films. To begin with, the cinematic body in a close-up of emotion is engaged with the temporality of here and now, as well as the everydayness. And a close-up often banishes words but celebrates the presence of the body. Another issue that should be brought up here, then, is what the cinematic body in a close-up imparts. Deleuze has once applied this idea of Cassavetes’ s, “…the character is reduced to his own bodily attitudes, and what ought to result
is the gest, that is, a ‘spectacle,’ a theatricalization or dramatization which is valid for all plots” (192). Namely, Deleuze regards that the cinematic body and its gestures, instead of characters, can be a spectacle that reveals the bodily attitudes. In light of this, Tsai’s cinematic body in a close-up embodies its bodily attitudes and narrates a spectacle of attitudes for the everyday life, for desire, and for the world.7
The Camp Taste: The Vaudeville body
Musical numbers in Tsai’s films are usually neglected by film critics, as the aesthetic style is totally inconsistent with the central narrative. And even though some critics deal with this topic, they tend to believe that the musical scene is a site where the actors and actresses could escape from the alienated situation of the central narrative. Song-Yong SING [Songrong Sun], for instance, regards that the body in the musical numbers reveals a sense of nostalgia. He says that the characters are “searching for their identity” and the musical numbers with songs of 1950s or 1960s provide a space for the characters and the spectators to locate their identity (64-65). Admittedly, these numbers look back on the past and imply that this musical world is a utopia. But little attention has been given to the unconventional elements of the
musical numbers, including their narrative relevance and the lip-synching to the oldies.
7
There is another interesting linkage between Deleuzian concept of “attitudes of the body” and Tsai’s What
Time Is It There? In discussing the “cinema of attitudes and postures,” Deleuze mentions that the French New
Wave provides an example and “the model actor would be Jean-Pierre Léaud” (193). In What Time Is It There?, not only Hsiao Kang watches precisely the film 400 Blows, whose lead role is played by Jean-Pierre Léaud.
Chia-Yu CHANG (Jiayu Zhang) in her thesis indicates that the conventional musical genre aesthetics tries to make a harmonious cooperation between the musical numbers and the central narrative. She writes, “It is exactly the blur of the real and imagery that makes a musical film so appealing to the audiences” (2). To insert a singing and dancing sequence in the central narrative is to normalize or naturalize it. Chang, then, points out that the
embodiment of the naturalization is “the flow,” by which she means the performers flows smoothly into the dancing and singing scene (8). The musical sequence would not suddenly break into the narrative so to alarm the spectators. Instead, in order to be fully naturalized, the musical numbers will work their best to serve the central narrative.
In Chang’s observation, the differences between the classical Hollywood films and Tsai’s musical numbers are very obvious. Tsai’s musical numbers does not flow into the state of narrative imagination, but feel more likely to have been roughly inserted into the central narrative. The musical numbers always take place in a location different from that of the previous scene. The story in the central narrative and the numbers form a loose relation.8 Apparently, Tsai does not try to naturalize the musical numbers but intends to isolate the musical units and make them inconsistent with the rest.
To explain this inconsistency, vaudeville aesthetic may provide a useful point of
8
The central narrative and the musical numbers are loosely connected by the lyrics that imply the inner emotion of the characters. But those lyrics do not support the development of the plot and cannot be taken as the dialogue spoken directly from the characters, either. Instead of taking them as part of the narrative, I would rather put my emphasis on the lyrics as part of the musical performance than on the interpretation of the textual meanings.
departure. Vaudeville was one of the popular theatrical shows before the birth of the
cinematography. In order to appeal to as many audiences as possible, vaudeville consisted of various shows that were loosely related. The only aim of vaudeville show was to attract the audiences’ immediate attention and make them stay and pay. After the cinematography was born, the film industry tried to integrate the vaudeville style into musical films and comedies. That is what Henry Jenkins has called, “vaudeville aesthetics.” The film structure at that time presented a sense of inconsistency. Those vaudeville shows were stuffed into the film
structure and loosely connected with the main narrative line. Tsai’s musical numbers, similar to vaudeville shows, are also coarsely inserted into the films. Their relationship with the main narrative line is also loosely connected. Most importantly, the cinematic body is the central attraction of Tsai’s musical numbers. The emotion does not hide inside the body but is directly epidermized on the surface.9 It does not require the spectators to feel, by staring, the intensity as the central narrative; instead, the emotion is on display to attract the attention actively. The bright colors, the masquerade, the exaggerated gestures are the indications of the attention. The cinematic body still constitutes a cinematic spectacle in Tsai’s musical numbers. It is because the lip-synching technique prevents the cinematic body from talking or singing on their own. As a result, the cinematic body, including its mouth, can focus on its own performance to become the attraction of the show.
9
“Epidermization” originally means grafting the deeper skin to the upper one. In Black Skin, White Mask, Frantz Fanon uses the term to describe the self-abasement of the minor races. My usage is closer to the former one which refers to a visible bodily change.
I would therefore suggest that these musical numbers could be more than a passive escape, as some critics believe, but a positive subversive dynamics known as camp taste. As Jack Babuscio indicates, camp taste consists of four elements: irony, aestheticism, theatricality, and humor (129). He explains that camp taste frustrates the seriousness of normality to create the effect of irony and humor. Esther Newton also points out that the “incongruous
juxtapositions” creates the playfulness of the camp taste (103). And most camp critics agree that camp belongs to gay community because of its oppositional position to the mainstream culture. Tsai’s musical numbers obviously embody the aesthetic value of camp taste. In her essay “Pornography, Musical, Drag, and the Art Film: Performing ‘Queer’ in Tsai
Ming-Liang’s The Wayward Cloud,” Vivian LEE believes that the camp taste in Tsai’s musical numbers not only embody the camp aesthetic form, but also provides the power of
“self-critique and subversion” (133). In her understanding, Lee considers genre blending of art film, classic Hollywood musical film, and pornographic film as the subversive power in Tsai’s musical films. The manipulation of different generic conventions can be taken as the act of destabilizing the normalcy.
Lee made several important statements on the camp taste in Tsai’s musical films, in The
Wayward Cloud most exclusively. She also puts her emphasis on the actress I-Ching LU
[Yijing Lu], the spider woman who fails to present the stereotype of a femme fatale, and Hsiao Kang, the crocodile man that points to homosexuality and the erect penis that reveals a sense
of exhaustion in the musical numbers. But I want to go further than this. Firstly, vaudeville aesthetic, including the ruptured structure in the narrative and the physical attraction achieved, also signals how the conventions of musical film genre are shaken. Incidentally, Kuei-mei YANG [Guimei Yang] in The Hole also provides an alternative drag queen image. Yang’s drag performativity is extremely exaggerated and glamorous that her cinematic body does not reveal any sense of failure.10 Rather, Yang’s drag queen image overdoes the “heterosexual performativity,” in Judith Butler’s words, so that she becomes camp (237).11 According to th the camp sensibility is an attitude, not necessarily a gay production.
is,
Gay sensibility, as in Babuscio, is intended by the authors. Any camp taste, he finds, is a reflection of the author’s gay sensibility. Given that the intention of the film directors should be taken into account, Yang’s cinematic body in the musical numbers is then a site of
manipulation, a space where Tsai relieves his repressed gay sensibility in the mainstream world.
My thesis consists of five chapters, including an introduction and a conclusion. “Chapter One: Introduction” is a review of criticisms and studies on Tsai’s films. There I examine how film critics have discussed Tsai’s body image and then briefly introduce the main issues my next three chapters will deal with. Following the introduction, “Chapter Two: The Cinematic
10
In contrast, Lee comments that I-Ching Lu’s ageing body represents a sense of failed seduction (132).
11
Richard Dyer also mentions the overdone heterosexual performativity that makes Judy Garland camp. He points this out quoting a letter to him which thinks that Garland “was so damned ‘straight’” (“Judy Garland” 107).
Body of the Everydayness” seeks to elaborate the concept of “the cinematic body” and gives an analysis of the corporeality of the cinematic body and the corporeal spectators. “Chapter Three: The Cinematic Body in a Close-up” attempts to examine the corporeality of the cinematic body in relation to the cinematic spectacle in a close-up of emotion. The cinematic body uses only the body language to communicate with the world and the spectators. In “Chapter Four: The Camp Taste: Vaudeville Body,” I put my emphasis on the unconventional generic aesthetics in Tsai’s musical numbers and relates them to the early style of the musical films: vaudeville aesthetic. Also, I tend to take this unconventional act as an embodiment of camp taste, a subversive power against normalcy. In the last chapter, I will conclude my thesis with a brief summary and put my stress again on the cinematic spectacle of corporeality as inscribed in the cinematic body.
Chapter Two: The establishment of the Cinematic Body
Cinema conjures up human beings as phantom objects, as Rey Chow once notices (“Phantom Discipline” 1393). Indeed, phantomness defines the essence of cinema. Cinema is a heterogeneous world of convincing reality but with different spatial-temporality. Its
ambivalent relation with the referential world is a rupture where cinematic manipulation comes into play. Stepping into the field of film studies, we need, therefore, to recognize this interfering power of cinema and stick to some kind of phantom reasoning. Nonetheless, Rey Chow is not the first one who promotes the “cinematic” quality in film studies. Dziga Vertov, the leader of the Soviet kino-eye theory, puts his emphasis on the perfection of the camera eye. He believes that a kino-eye man is a builder who transforms raw materials into
rhythmical/abstract entity. And he terms the objects in front of the camera filmic objects (20). Ever since then, more and more film critics who have always taken the word “cinematic” into their considerations as their object of study.
In this chapter, the human body in Tsai’s films is my object of study whose utmost feature is its cinematic quality. For this reason, I opt for the term cinematic body, rather than
body image. By emphasizing the word cinematic, I examine the human body in Tsai’s films as
a virtual body in moving picture, rather than in still photography or painting. Swinging between the realistic and the illusory, I argue that the cinematic body in Tsai’s films preserves
the documentary value of everydayness and is also upheld by minimalism at the same time. I will first analyze the strange existence of the cinematic body: “present in absence,” as in Maurice Blanchot’s term (qtd. in Shaviro 17). Afterwards, I argue that the cinematic body displays its own corporeality, interacting with the corporeal spectators, through everydayness and minimalist aesthetic. I will particularly lay my emphasis on the discussion of The
Wayward Cloud, by comparing the everyday/minimalist body with the pornographic body.
The Cinematic Body as an Everyday Practice
“Being present in absence” may be the best description of this “phantom” quality of the cinematic, carrying out one ambiguous position of the cinematic world. As Shaviro explains, “Images are neither true nor false, neither real nor artificial, neither present nor absent; they are radically devoid of essence” (17). The word “essence” here suggests that the cinematic image should not be easily stabilized by the meanings given from the referential world. It is this ambiguous position that the presence of the cinematic image maintains a close relation with reality but still retains a rupture in between. Also, it is this rupture, absent of essence, which holds the possibility of the cinematic manipulation. As Rudolf Arnheim puts it, “Thus the lack of depth brings a very welcome element of unreality into the film picture” (274). In other words, the specificity of “being present in absence” is the creative power of the film medium.
Likewise, Pier Paolo Pasolini points out also this indefinite position of the cinematic. He argues that cinema has “a double nature”: both objective and subjective (173). The objective nature refers to the raw material, or brute objects in Pasolini’s terms. Film directors are also authors who choose their raw materials, reconstruct them, and create another nature of cinema. He writes, “The two moments of the above-mentioned nature [a double nature] are closely intertwined and are not separable even in the laboratory” (173). In other words, cinema is never an authentic representation of the referential world but the camera will automatically preserve the bruteness of reality. Chow, therefore, links Pasolini’s theory to the everydayness of Chinese directors in her essay “Sentimental Returns.” She argues that the use of the quotidian in films carries “a vast collectivity of actions, gestures, movements, and habits” (640). It is because this collectivity comes from the bruteness of the experienced reality that connects with the spectators, and so it carries a sense of “sentimental returns” (642-651). In this line of reasoning, she concludes that Zhang Yimou’s The Road Home holds a collectivity of country lifestyle that reveals “the logic of a socialist ideal” (645).
Obviously, Tsai’s films are also filled with everyday activities, such as drinking, urinating, or walking. However, his use of the everyday does not resemble Zhang Yimou’s. First of all, Tsai’s everyday use sticks to the biological needs of a corporeal body. In other words, Tsai’s use of the everyday does not only sustain the “brute objects” in the experienced reality, but also “brutely” exposes the everyday body as a display of corporeal existence.
Tsai’s everyday use, therefore, focuses on the body itself. Hence, if the everyday actions and habits in Zhang’s The Road Home express a collectivity of country lifestyle that implies some social idealism, as Chow says, Tsai’s everyday use displays a collective corporeal body. The collectivity of corporeality does not indicate certain country or urban lifestyle. The corporeal presence carries no further implication than suggests an everyday condition, the plainness of corporeality.
Tsai’s everyday use has an affinity to Benjamin’s description of cinema’s “optical
unconscious.” Benjamin argues that the camera eye has an ability to capture things that people are so familiar with but so easy to ignore. So, he praises the camera eye for its power of making examination. He describes, “We are familiar with the movement of picking up a cigarette lighter or metal, and still less how this varies with different moods” (266).
Correspondingly, Tsai’s everyday use intends to refamiliarize us with people’s unconscious actions and habits in everyday life. Through his camera, he reminds the spectators of their corporeal bodies. So, the cinematic body in Tsai’s films can communicate with the spectators through the collectivity of corporeality.
The comparison of Tsai’s everyday use to Zhang’s indicates that the collectivity of corporeality is not engaged so much with “sentimental returns.” Corporeality does not return to a certain historical point: it is rather an existential condition that is in question. The everyday temporality is dwelling inside the cinematic body. As a result, the instantaneity of
the brute everydayness becomes an optical violence, seeking to directly unsettle the corporeal spectators. Tsai himself is also aware of this corporeal effect. He, more than once, explains that it is the spectators’ own corporeality that has caused their unsettlement, as they are not used to watching themselves on screen (“Liang’s Words II” 68; Yi-Zhi Wang 246).
The point is that Tsai’s use of the everyday does not serve to facilitate his narrative development easily. The major function of this use is to reveal what existence is. As we can observe, Tsai does not just capture the repetitive everyday activities. He also employs long takes to avoid the interference of montage that may contribute to repetition. As a result, these long takes preserve for their audience a strong sense of existence. And this sense of existence is reserved in the details of these body movements. Take Vive L’amour, for example. Yang’s six minutes of weeping in the last scene maintains a situation of loneliness, the bruteness of everyday life. And during the whole six minutes, the loneliness displayed does not belong solely to Yang. The corporeality of the cinematic body starts to connect with the spectators and triggers their own loneliness. Jared Rapfogel also indicates thus, “This idea is not to carry as along on a narrative wave, but to let us engage with the here and now. This is what gives Tsai’s films their remarkable sense of presence, and their tremendous emotional weight” (“Tsai Ming Liang” par. 6). We may say that the temporality in Tsai’s films does not engage with liner causality or real time, but with the emotional status of the cinematic body and also the spectators “here and now.” Accordingly, “existence” understood in this context is not a
representation of the physical presence. Rather, it is a presence of the psychological condition, a phantom present in absence.
The Minimalized Body and Corporeality
The everyday use of corporeality is not a practice of addition, but of subtraction. This practice takes away the redundant social reference and achieves “a simplicity of a corporeal body.” As Rey Chow observes, the characters in Tsai’s films are the cinematic images of “remnants of social relations, […] in the form of bodies, gestures, movements, and looks” (“A Pain in the Neck” 129). She argues that in the so called “incest scene” in The River, darkness has already effaced the social relations and sexuality. In this alternative space of sauna room, there is no father and son, nor a man-man sexual scene. There are only corporeal bodies with biological needs. For that reason, Tsai’s aesthetic strategy is a minimalist one. The effacement of the social relations and sexuality can be taken as a practice of minimalism. Wen-Chi LIN (Wunchi LIN) has been indicated that Tsai’s films express a sense of insignificance by “Tsai’s minimalist narrative style that does not really tell a story” (“The Representation of Taipei” 89). But the minimalist strategy does not only apply to the narrative style, but also on the
cinematic body. It is a minimalized body that as Hal Foster writes, “Thus, far from idealist, minimalist work complicates the purity of conception with the contingency of perception, of the body in a particular space and time” (40). The cinematic body has been striped off
additional meanings, in order to let the corporeality stand out.
When we say that the aesthetic strategy in Tsai’s films is a practice of subtraction, it does not mean that the minimalized body is emptied out. The spirit of minimalism lies deeper. Mies van der Rohe, a famous minimalist, once said, “I opt for an intensive, rather than extensive form” (qtd. in Minimalisms 9). In that case, the plainness on the surface is not a limitation. In fact, the simplicity opens the possibilities to more interpretations and participations of the
spectators. Minimalists argue that the meaning of the artwork does not come from a direct
depiction, but from the communication between the work and the spectators. This implies that the author is not the only source of meaning. A minimalist work should also anticipate the participation/temporality of the spectators: the time of appreciating. Consequently, the subject/object relation looses its stable position, from “I [author] express” to “I [spectator] perceive” (Foster 43). In this line of reasoning, the sheer presence of the corporeal body movements, such as drinking, urinating, and having sex, does not reduce its cinematic intensity for its plainness.
As Anatxu Zabalbeascoa and Javier Rodríguez Marcos put it, “The more ambiguous and indeterminate these spaces are, the more interested spectators will participate in them” (90). Hence, the minimalized body in Tsai’s films is a recipient that can undertake more
interpretations, though none of them can be definite. The beauty of the vulgar plainness invites the corporeal spectators to communicate and connect with the presented corporeality
more easily. In other words, the practice of simplicity does not silence the everyday body, but amplifies it. Rey Chow has also pointed out that the banality of the everyday activities does not ruin the intensity of romantic love. In contrast, the plainness of “the vulgar realities of everyday life” is an “indispensable part of a love relationship” (“New Wave” 41). In
conclusion, the plainness of the vulgar body movements could provide a positive emotional impact and an ambiguous space/temporality for the spectators to participate in.
An Analysis of The Wayward Cloud
The Wayward Cloud obviously criticizes the pornography industry for its artificial use of
the cinematic body.12 The discussion on the pornographic films has been divided into two groups. One group is concerned with the social morality of the pornographic films. The critics in this group worry that violence and objectification of female body implicated there could lead to degrading influence on the society. The other group acknowledges the existence of the pornographic films and admits its transgressive power over social normality. But The
Wayward Cloud does not belong to either group. Rather, Tsai stands by his belief in the
everyday/minimalized body and is opposed to the cinematic manipulation of human body in
12
The pornography industry and the pornographic films here refer specifically to that of low-budget mass production. As we can observe, this kind of pornographic films is quoted in Tsai’s early films. For example, in
The River, Hsiao Kang’s mother has a lover who sells pornographic films. In The Wayward Cloud, there is a
roomful of pornographic films in a video rental store. But the issue of the whole pornography culture is complicated and also not the main point of my thesis. Instead, I put my emphasis on the hard core pornographic films and its aesthetic strategy on the cinematic body.
the pornography industry.
Compared with Tsai’s minimalist style, the pornography industry’s strategy follows the practice of addition.13 The cinematic body in Tsai’s films does not have an absolute identity o an obvious social relation but aims instead to expose plain corporeality. On the other hand, various social relations or lifestyles are implied in the cinematic body in pornographic films. And the cinematic body in pornographic films is mostly sensational and willing to have sex. This artificial desire is always embedded in the cinematic body. The added identities and the artificial desire have only one destination: sexual intercourse. Ke-Hua CHEN points out also that the plot in the pornographic films “explicitly or implicitly suggests nudity” (17). In that case, the cinematic body of addition is just a tool for the purpose of exhibiting intercourse, scarcely carrying any emotional weight beneath it.
r
In The Wayward Cloud, the mock pornographic scene in the beginning echoes the
traditional impression one has of the pornographic films. In this scene, Hsiao Kang and Sumomo Yozakura play the doctor-nurse relation. Hsiao Kang wearing a doctor uniform crawls onto the bed where Sumomo lies. His white coat is a just a loose cover of his nude body. The doctor identity is then an added veil/tool meant to be ripped off later. Afterwards, Tsai applies his strategy of subtraction on the pornographic body, like in an experiment. He
13
Laura Kipnis argues in Bound and Gagged: Pornography and the Politics of Fantasy in America that pornography industry does not stand on its own in relation to other popular cultures but is also a form of expression. It is true that contemporary Hollywood industry, as well as pornography industry, aims at a fantastic, artificial world, but pornography industry seems to put its emphasis on the body alone. Though there is a strong contrast between the everyday body in Tsai’s films and the pornographic body, it does not follow that
takes the veil away, including the identity, social relations, and the will to have sex. As a result, the female pornographic body loses her consciousness in a later scene. The myth of the
pornographic body fails in its wake. Without this veil, Sumomo becomes a heavy, motherly body, an ordinary body. This minimalized body makes the pornography shooting afterwards ridiculous and tiresome. The strategy of subtraction is also employed in shooting the male pornographic body. Originally, Hsiao Kang is a penis that never becomes diminutive, as in other male porn stars. After the myth breaks down, Hsiao Kang becomes an ordinary man who might not have an erection whenever he wants it. Ironically, he cannot even have sex with his lover. At the end, there are only suffering, ordinary bodies in this minimalized everyday “pornography industry.”
Another cinematic manipulation of the pornography industry is the technique of
“close-ups,” used specifically on the sexual organs. These close-ups carry no further meaning than the exhibition of sexual intercourse. The implication is obvious enough on the surface, likewise the organs to tools. As in The Wayward Cloud, Sumomo uses her private part to open a bottle while a camera man shoots this scene in a close-up. Pornography industry applies this shooting approach as a means of enlargement, so to cut off other parts of the body, as if the whole body were reduced to a sexual organ. Therefore, the definition of body is not complete in the pornographic films. In contrast, Tsai does not enlarge the sexual organs. He deliberately replaces them with a watermelon. The cinematic body can then reserve its entity by this
absurd substitution. Obviously, Tsai has a different definition of the body from that of the pornography industry. The pornographic body is always cut into pieces as sexual organs, whose aim is to display the details of sexual intercourse. Tsai, then, insists on the
completeness of the body, whose aim is to show the collectivity of corporeality.14 There is a further question that needs to be mentioned here. Pornography and the pornography industry could be two different things. Since it is an industry, pornography industry has its own commercial considerations. But it does not suggest that pornography is meant to be a product to sell. Tsai has also a different definition of pornography. Pornography does not, to him, refer only to nudity. Rather, it is a pervasive need and an acknowledged secret. He has once mentioned that pornography would be a controversial issue to talk about and believed that it would have a strong cinematic intensity. However, pornography does not depend on nudity, but on the way we use for expressing it (“Vive L’amour” 49). Obviously, all of his films involve in the issue of pornography. But these erotic scenes do not arouse sexual pleasure or lead to the exhibition of intercourse as pornographic films do. Instead,
pornography is there and dwells in the everyday body to disclose the unsatisfied desire in everyday life. This everyday life belongs to the realm of love, as Chow mentions above of the quotidian use as “part of a love relationship” (“New Wave” 41). In other words, while
14
Tsai’s insistence is obviously shown when Taiwan’s Government Information Office (GIO) tries to ban the poster of I Don’t Want To Sleep Alone because of the exposed hips. He mentioned in a speech that the focus on the hip blinded the view of the whole body, which shows the cinematic body in Tsai’s films does not lead to the destination of nudity or sexual organs. See “A Talk on I Don’t Want To Sleep Alone” 14 Mar. 2007.
pornographic films exercise in the regime of fantasy, the pornography in Tsai’s films is connected with the collectivity of everyday life, where the unfulfilled desire abounds.
In The Wayward Cloud, pornography is inserted into the everyday banality when Hsiao Kang and Shiang-Chyi CHEN (Xiangqi Chen) are eating crabs, drinking watermelon juice, or smoking under a table. The direct communication between two bodies is implicit but the inner intensity is obvious. But when they intend to make physical contact, nudity and sexual scenes are failed in the spectators’ expectation. The frustration, on one hand, reminds of everyday corporeality and magnifies the awkward physical interaction between two bodies, on the other. To summarize, the pornography in Tsai’s films is not a tool for the fulfillment of visual
pleasure that, in fact, will never be fulfilled. Pornography dwells in the everyday body of the cinematic, not in a fantastic body that fails to be mass-produced by pornography industry.
Conclusion
The minimalized body of the everyday life in Tsai’s films has the dynamics of fluidity. The plainness of this body is susceptible to various interpretations, none of which, however, can be settled down. Tsai’s strategy of subtraction is to efface any definite meaning and to create an ambiguous, abstract spatial-temporality. As in Tsai’s films, the traffic, the moving crowds, and even the invisible communication through phone lines gives the ambiguous space a sense of fluidity. Likewise, the image of water also delivers a sense of unsettlement while
the water always goes in and out through the invisible water pipes in the building, in the way it goes in and out of the cinematic body. After all, Tsai’s cinematic body often wanders in the city. In Vive L’amour, we see the cinematic body wander in the place where the ashes of the dead are secured. The cinematic body later floats to a foreign country in What Time Is It
There?. In The Skywalk Is Gone, the movement of the pedestrians is confused because the
routine has been changed. In this light, Tsai’s cinematic body does not just wander among some abstract spaces, but lingers also from film to film. A sense of ambiguity/fluidity is revealed.
Everydayness is also an uncertain temporality in that it does not belong to a certain point of the history. Everydayness is also implanted in the abstract space that does not refer to a fixed location. The ambiguity of everydayness allows the cinematic power to merge the cinematic body easily. Yet the plainness involved, or the minimalist style, does not refer to the quality of transparency. Meaning can hardly be transparent, when the plainness of
corporeality in Tsai’s films is not a sheer surface, but carries also the emotional weight beneath it, though invisible. This cinematic intensity is often neglected in film studies, due to its nondescript nature. In the next chapter, I will continue to discuss this cinematic power of the invisible emotional weight in Tsai’s films.
Chapter Three: The Cinematic Body in Close-ups
The cinematic body in Tsai’s films is cut off from its social reference to elicit an everyday body of the cinematic. This everyday body, then, becomes a minimalist body that magnifies instead the indescribable intensity inside the body. In this chapter, I take the process of magnification as a close-up embodiment since the camera seldom turns away from the cinematic body. I approach the mechanism of close-ups in an understanding not limited to its technical sense. That is, a close-up needs not to be a human face or an enlargement of objects. That the cinematic body could be understood as a close-up is formulated in terms of intensity, instead of space. It is the emotional weight that makes the cinematic body a close-up. The employment of a close-up is endowed with the aesthetic value to intensify the cinematic spectacle.15 As a result, the magnified power does not tell a regular story, but reveals rather a attitude for life through gestures, movements, and facial expressions. Tsai intentionally dire the spectators’ attention closely onto the cinematic body and causes a totally different visual impact on the spectators. On the whole, in the last chapter, the everyday body of the cinema has been understood to be a close-up in the spectrum of time, displaying the corporealit the everyday life. Contrarily, in this chapter, I will focus on the obvious nuances of the cinematic body itself in the spectrum of intensity.
n cts tic y of 15
The adjective aesthetic is in contrast to the term technical. The aesthetic value of a close-up in Tsai’s films does not depend on the capacity of enlargement, but of intensification. Through this aesthetic value, Tsai establishes his own unique style of filmmaking.
An Alternative Definition of a Close-up
Conventionally, the close-ups are discussed under the proposition of spatial distance. As far as the distance is concerned, a close-up is restricted to be a spatial magnification of the
appearance. As Walter Benjamin points out, “With the close-up, space expands; with slow motion, movement is extended” (265). But the camera eye enlarges not only the details. The spatial-temporality is different from those beyond it. The time seems to be slower, the space narrower, the emotion stronger. In other words, it is rather a process of chemistry than a mechanical variation involved. Therefore, Benjamin accentuates the “entirely new structures of matter” within a close-up (266). A close-up that brings a certain cinematic intensity could be more than a part of narrative development. Hsiao-Hung Chang also argues that according to the early film theorists, what constitutes a close-up is essentially the intensity of the interior emotion. A photogenic landscape or a breath-taking moment could be categorized as a
close-up because of “the impact of proximity” (Epstein “Magnification” 239).16
As Jean Epstein points out, “the close-up limits and directs the attention” (239), and the spectators are forced to look closely or attentively at a close-up.17 But the situation is r in the employment of the close-up in Tsai’s films. I would rather suggest that, due to the
eversed
16
The word “photogénie” or “photogenic” does not mean that one person looks pretty in front of the camera. This word indicates rather that one filmic image, enhanced by filmic production, shows the greatest intensity of mind, even in a few seconds.
17
When the spectators are watching a movie, their perception of the cinematic image is more attentive than the one of their surrounding environment. And the perception of a close-up is more intensive than the one of a regular full shot.
intensive emotional weight and the attentive perception from the spectators, the cinematic body that “directs and limits the attention” actually takes place in a close-up, with which the temporality is suspended into a situation of everyday life.18 And the cinematic body is tr in a framed space as if the air is impenetrable.
apped
I would hereby apply Béla Balázs’ discussions to define the cinematic body in Tsai’s films as a close-up. At least four characteristics of the close-up in Balázs’ “The Close-Up” and “The Face of Man” can be enumerated: silent soliloquy, simplified acting, simple face, and simple story. First of all, silent soliloquy is the inner dialogue spoken to the eye, not to the ear. “Close-ups,” writes Balázs, “are the pictures expressing the poetic sensibility of the director. They show the faces of things and those expressions on them which are significant because they are reflected expressions of our own subconscious feeling” (56). Balázs’ notion of close-ups is “physiognomy,” which shows that every filmic object can have a facial expression that communicates with the spectators. In other words, the spectators and the cinematic image intersect at the site of intensive attention through visual intimacy, not spoken words. Likewise, the silent soliloquy refers specifically to the silent cinema. During the silent film era, actors and actresses were forced to signify the unspoken words using their body movements and facial expressions. People found that body gestures and the subtle facial movements spoke better than words. Birds that rest on the trees rushing to the sky, for
18
The temporality in a close-up like this is estimated on emotional weight but not on chronological (causal) logic. That is, a close-up contains a condition of uncertainty and therefore, accentuates the suspended emotion rather than the story.
example, may indicate a gunshot. Afterwards, when the sound cinema arrived, a few critics even worried that certain precious characteristics of the film medium would be gradually ignored. Obviously, Tsai’s films show his agreement with these critics. Tsai has once said that he appreciated early cinema more than contemporary films, for early cinema thought highly of the film medium (“Reading” 15). As we can observe, Tsai seldom lets the cinematic body talk in sync sound and, at some level, his films share an affinity to the silent films. As a result, every little movement becomes a focus of attention as if it is in a close-up. Every obvious nuance of the body seems to reveal an invisible face speaking directly to the spectators’ eyes.
Within a close-up, the space narrows down. There is no room for huge movements. But this does not mean that things have to remain motionless in a close-up. On the contrary, in a close-up, every little movement carries a great power with it. As Balázs describes it, “In films in which a slight movement can express a deep passion and the tragedy of a soul can manifest itself in the twitching of an eyebrow, broad gesturing and grimacing become unbearable” (76). It is the “economy of expression” that happens only in close-ups. In Tsai’s films, the
cinematic body seems to be motionless and tired. But in the intensive close-up of the whole body, the heaving movements of the breathing chest and the frowned eyebrows can show extraordinary feelings from inside. In The River, for example, when MIAO Tien (Miao Tian) and Chao-Jung CHEN (Zhaorong Chen) meet in front of a McDonald’s, their eye contacts
reveal invisible sexual desire underneath their “straight faces.”19 The same happens in Vive
L’amour when May Lin and Ah-Jung first meet in a café. They do not speak a word, but May
Lin turns her head slightly sideways and meets Ah-Jung’s gaze through the corner of her eyes. And then, when she lifts up the coffee cup near her mouth, or when she stops to watch a poster, every little glance and every gesture speaks effectively to Ah-Jung and the spectators. These implicit but significant movements draw the spectators’ attention as if they are in a close-up. Although the cinematic body is in a full shot distance from the camera, the emotional intensity has made the shot a close-up.
Silence is also a close-up of inner voice of the cinematic body. Susan Sontag points out in “The Aesthetics of Silence” that silence is a bodily speech. She believes that the presence of the body speaks louder than “weightless” words (20). That is, the less the cinematic body speaks, the stronger the presence would be. And that is why Sontag argues that silence
“engenders a stare” (16) in that the look is a voluntary action, whereas the stare is an attentive, compulsive one. Therefore, the cinematic body in Tsai’s films can manifest its presence and its emotional weight more effectively through silence.20 In that sense, silence magnifies the presence of the cinematic body and directs the spectators’ stare to it as if the body were in a
19
Straight face, on one hand, means an expressionless face and on the other, may imply the pretence of normal sexuality.
20
Tsai’s films are, in fact, not silent films because the characters talk sometimes and the background sync sound exists. By silence, I mean that the films do not depend on spoken language to develop the narrative plot. Sontag also puts her emphasis on the comparison between silence and speech and puts some doubts on the “authenticity of language” (20). She writes, “Or how, when one talks less, one beings feeling more fully one’s physical presence in a given space” (20). From this perspective, the aesthetics of silence creates an effect of a close-up in that silence draws attention on the cinematic body and lets it generate its silent monologue.
close-up, or the “object of attention” in Sontag’s phrase (13).
Balázs also indicates that a pretty face is totally not necessary in a close-up (78). Within a close-up, a beautiful face becomes a mask and tends to be false in that a close-up uncovers the sub-consciousness of the face. Any dramatic acting would fail in a close-up. This is why Tsai insists on using “professional non-actors.” They are basically themselves on the screen. This kind of actors/actresses does not act to be others. Tsai seldom uses professional actors who act too hard in a theatrical way.21 The camera in Tsai’s films, however, is the one for the close-up. The spectators stare at the details, especially the “intimate details” of their faces. Sub-consciousness cannot be acted. A close-up explores not only the surface, but also what lies underneath. In like manner way, if we take the cinematic body as a close-up, the whole body can be taken as a facial expression that delivers one’s inner feelings. So, the physical movement needs not be dramatic or elegant but ordinary. A close-up can elicit the obvious nuance of emotions out of simplicity.
As we mentioned above, when it is speechless, the cinematic body in Tsai’s films lets the inner face/body speak. The silent monologues, then, constitute the whole story. Basically, the story depends on the ups and downs of the emotion, not the narrative plot. Leo Ou-Fan LEE finds that the space in Tsai’s films sucks up all the meanings (73) and I would suggest that Tsai’s cinematic body does, too. The story goes inward to the cinematic body, not outward to
21
Tsai reveals that professional actors are trained to perform in a dramatic way in front of a camera. This kind of acting is “unnatural” (“Reading” 16), especially in his films.
the plots. In that case, a simple narrative line would often suffice. Too many dialogues and plots would obscure the inner face, the inner story. As in Rebels of the Neon God, after Hsiao Kang’s father kicks him out of the door, his mother stands sadly beside a mirror that also reflects the vague image of the angry father. Both of them do not say a word but the silence is intense. The micro-drama still lingers during this silent moment. “The micro-tragedies in the peace and quiet of ordinary families,” Balázs notes, “were shown as deadly battles, just as the microscope shows the fierce struggles of micro-organisms in a drop of water” (85).
Tsai has once said that his films are closer to simplicity than the micro-cosmos and its details do (“Reading” 27). He suggests that he makes films by shooting one person simply and plainly. I would suggest that Tsai’s films contain the characteristics of simplicity and the micro-cosmos at the same time because of the close-up. The form of the cinematic body can be simple, being silent and ordinary but a close-up uncovers/magnifies a micro-cosmos inscribed in the everyday body in Tsai’s films.
The Body Attitude of the Cinematic
It would not be true to say that Tsai’s films have no storyline at all. Tsai’s cinematic body, likewise, is not reduced to emptiness, either. Kuang LU describes Tsai’s films as
