Hou Hsiao‐Hsien reviewed

Abstract

Press reviews of Hou Hsiao‐Hsien’s films appeared in a range of European magazines at a time when Hou’s films were hardly, if at all, available for watching in European cinemas. This essay asks what, in this context, may have been the reviews’ function. By way of an examination of a representative sample of these texts, I argue that, far from negotiating a relationship between, on the one hand, the producers, distributors and exhibitors of Hou’s films and, on the other hand, Hou’s European public, reviews of Hou’s films served to mediate the gradual and capillary instillation of new modes of viewing films. Reaching Europe very sparingly at a time when European cinemas had finally capitulated to the increasingly aggressive marketing strategies of distributors of Hollywood produce, the construction of Hou Hsiao‐Hsien as an auteur became available for the ‘educational’ realignment needed in order to sell Hollywood cinema better, not in spite of, but because of, the negligible European circulation of Hou Hsiao‐Hsien’s films.     

The eloquence of the taciturn: an essay on Hou Hsiao‐Hsien

Abstract

Dust in the Wind, a color film set in the verdant mountains of Taiwan, includes two scenes almost identical to the black‐and‐white and silent films by the Lumières, shot at the end of the nineteenth century: Arrival of a Train at La Ciotat and Passage Through a Railway Tunnel. As Hou’s mise‐en‐scène consists of the fixed camera angle with its long takes, it is the means of transportation that brings motion to the film, controlling dramatic elements of each work. The luxury cars, which appear in his first three romantic comedies, symbolize the rich and the motorbike the common people. The drivers are all young women, but an automobile cannot be a setting for love. In Daughter of the Nile and Goodbye South, Goodbye, the cars offer no protection to men trying to escape. Compared with the thematic negativity that the automobile possess in Hou’s universe, the motion of the passing trains, taken from many angles, offers rich and profound significations. When the camera is inside the train, the protagonists are taciturn, such as the two adolescents in Dust in the Wind who show their intimacy with each other without saying words. When the camera is next to the tracks or on the platform, the situation changes. In A Time to Live, A Time to Die, Hou depicts the grandmother sitting next to her grandson at a shop by the train and sipping sweet ice while behind them passes a freight train that emphasizes the anxious solitude of the old woman exiled from her homeland. A sublime depiction of the sense of powerlessness of both the deaf‐mute photographer and his family before a passing train is the scene on the deserted platform in A City of Sadness. In Café Lumière, the young woman and her friend in the passing train recognize how valuable they are to each other without saying words. This taciturnity suggests a certain kind of love that needs no sexual language.     

Hou Hsiao‐Hsien’s films: pursuing and escaping history

Abstract

This article situates Hou Hsiao‐Hsien’s films in the post Cold‐War global setting. It discusses two common interpretive approaches to Hou Hsiao‐Hsien’s films – French auteurism and ‘national allegory’ – and puts these two approaches within their historical context of Cold‐War and post Cold‐War global politics. The article places the rise of Hou Hsiao‐Hsien’s films parallel to the rise of the mainland fifth generation of film directors, pointing out that their apparently opposite directions – Hou Hsiao‐Hsien going political in his Taiwan trilogy and the fifth generation film directors going apolitical – are part and parcel of the same phenomenon of alternative politics in its particular contexts and the reconstruction of a new identity politics. Particular attention is given to Hou’s Taiwan trilogy, Flowers of Shanghai, and Coffee Jikou.     

Hou Hsiao‐Hsien’s two dreams of light and shadows

Abstract

In traditional Chinese culture, dreams are often more than a narrative ploy or an extension of the authors’ imagination, but instruments for musings on life. This essay is an attempt to study Hou Hsiao‐Hsien’s aesthetics in The Puppetmaster and Flowers of Shanghai from the perspective of dreams. The former is like a lucid dream where the ageing puppet master is the person in the dream, while Hou the filmmaker is the passer‐by who saunters into the dream and puts it down on record. The latter, on the other hand, is an inebriated dream where the plan‐sequences are weaved together by black‐ins and black‐outs as in a dream from which no one wants to wake.     

An interview with Marie-José Mondzain: what is an image?

ABSTRACT

Marie-Jose Mondzain is one of the major philosophers writing about image, iconography, and representation today. In this interview, she discusses a few of the central ideas in her approach to and thinking about the nature of image and image-making as they bear upon the emergence of subjectivity and visibility in general. According to Mondzain, images are not visual objects we may or may not see; rather they are the site where the visible and its invisibility crisscross each other in opening the field of presence. Images, as Mondzain says in the interview, are cracks or leaks in being. They are where lights first come in and where man and beings are born to each other in their being-in-the world, that is, in their truth. Moving beyond historical and theoretical reflections, Mondzain turns to discuss things and scenes of mass media of late, addressing issues of pleasure, anxiety, desire, and the like, wherein ideologies, power, and the lure of images can be seen to intersect with our everyday life that has become irrevocably one of passive mobility. To the point at every turn, her answers to questions in this interview provide a glimpse to her forceful thinking and insights.     

Facing history with a sense of awe: an interview with Professor Mizoguchi Yūzō

In this wide-ranging interview and discussion with Kuan-Hsing Chen and Sun Ge, Mizoguchi Yūzō describes the origins of his interest in China studies and the process through which he developed his perspective on China, Japan, and the world. Mizoguchi details his break with both old-style Japanese Sinology and Western-influenced scholarship, which assumes Japanese superiority over China and takes Euro-American society and concepts as its standard. Mizoguchi suggests that historians can and should cultivate a new subjectivity for themselves and understanding of the history of the world as a whole through an approach to China that attempts to understand China’s own internal historical processes rather than assuming the universality of Western processes. He discusses his efforts to help reform the institutional structure of China studies in Japan, and further touches on the part played by Japan in China’s modern history as well as its historical relations with Taiwan and Korea.     

Just‐Do‐It‐(Yourself): independent filmmaking in Malaysia

Abstract

This paper pursues the genealogies of mi-yi (secret doctors) as a threshold figure to attend to the questions of state-mediated governance and knowledge power concerning medical modernity in postwar Taiwan. To consider the mi-yi figure as symptomatic of Taiwan's medical modernity, I inquire into the question of how the scientific discourse of modernity as purported by the class of medical professionals converges with state power to discipline and regulate medical subjects and practices vis-à-vis the discourse of mi-yi. To this end, I analyze the anti-mi-yi discourse that emerged since the 1950s to discuss how the modern medical profession employed a language of science, rationality, and security that initiated an extended state surveillance of unregulated medical subjects and practices. The second part of the essay reads Chen Yingzhen's novella, Zhao Nandong as part of Taiwan's medical “archives” to explore the politics of embodied medical labor as a situated instance of the contradictions of medical modernity. I situate the literary imagination of Zhao Nandong in the social context of mi-yi discourse to frame the erased labor and violence, the ways in which the histories of these labors have been doubly obscured by the conflation of nationalistic historiography and positivist knowledge production of sociological categorizations of Taiwan's modernity.     

Two Ancient Civilizations See Closer Cultural Ties in the New Millennium——an interview with Hellenic Cultural Minister Mr.Giorgos Voulgarakis

Li： Could you please give a brief introduction on history and present situation of cultural exchanges between Greece and China？ Voulgarakis： Our cultural relations are based on the Agreement on Cultural Cooperation between the Greek and the Chinese governments that was signed on the 22nd of September, 1978. This agreement is still being implemented through the Executive Program on Cooperation in the field of culture, over the last three years.     

Multicultural Education in a Post-Race Political Age: Our Movement at Risk?

The 2008 elections ushered in a new era in U.S. politics with implications for race relations and social justice activity. Drawing parallels between the contemporary African American community and splintering undercurrents in the National Association for Multicultural Education (NAME), the author urges cross-generational coalescence around an organizational agenda accentuating critical multicultural education for this new era.     

Micro: global music made in J‐pop?

Abstract

This article tackles J‐pop as a result of diverse influences from Western music. Its strength stems from its capacity to ‘tame the exotic’, i.e. assimilate and recreate from styles that were uncommon for Asian cultures by integrating elements of rock, reggae, hip hop, etc and labelling these J‐rock, J‐reggae, J‐rap. This assimilation and indigenization process in J‐pop creation could be seen as a way to resist against competitors from other places of music production. The article also attempts to identify the specificities and assets of J‐pop in the music scene in general. It elaborates on J‐pop's coolness, and the reason why it could expand throughout East‐Asia. Pop music and pop culture flows in East‐Asia could be regarded then as a means to trigger a sense of community and togetherness through the consumption of pop culture products. Throughout the analysis on J‐pop, the article will rely on one musical example, Def Tech and Micro, as this artist tends to explore various musical genre and intermingles them, so as to create a specific style, coined ‘Jawaian reggae’.     

Innovation： a Key to Increased Cultural Exchanges An interview with Victor Konnov,director of Russia Cultural Center in Beijing

The year 2014 marks the 65th anniversary of China-Russia diplomatic relations and the Year of China-Russia Friendship for Youth. It is also the 4th anniversary of Russia Cultural Center （RCC） in Beijing. Thanks to its achievements in promoting China-Russia cultural ex- changes, RCC has gained increasing recognition among Russian expatriates and Chinese people who are interested in Russian culture. Our magazine recently took an interview with Mr. Victor Konnov, R CC＇s director.     

Government Plays a Key Role in Protecting Intangible Cultural Heritage：An exclusive interview with Chinese vice cultural minister Zhou Heping

Just before China celebrated its second ＂National Cultural Heritage Day＂, our staff reporter had an interview with Chinese Vice Cultural Minister Zhou Heping.     

The left‐wing movement in Malaya,Singapore and Borneo in the 1960s: ‘an era of hope or devil’s decade’?

Abstract

The 1960s was a period of Leftwing resurgence in the world. As Britain was disengaging from its empire, the ethnically plural societies she had generated within her protectorates and colonies in Malaya, Singapore, Sarawak, North Borneo and Brunei threw up anti‐colonial movements that began struggling towards self‐determination and national independence. These movements manifested the ideologies of communism, socialism, nationalism and communalism. As British imperialism began planning its retreat, the competition for power among the local movements became intense. In Malaya, the largest of the five colonial territories, the communist party launched an armed rebellion in 1948 in the name of national liberation and independence, but made little headway. As Singapore and Malaya were closely linked and ruled, Britain introduced emergency rule in both territories. Most leftwing parties disappeared. Nationalist and communalist parties in Malaya emerged and eventually succeeded in securing national independence from Britain in 1957. Singapore was given a measure of limited self‐government in 1955, while Sarawak, North Borneo and Brunei were gradually awakened towards self‐government. Leftwing parties re‐surfaced in Malaya, and in Singapore, Sarawak, North Borneo and Brunei in the 1950s and 1960s, and made some headway in parliamentary elections. This paper presents a historical account of their resurgence, which was however short‐lived.     

Political aesthetics: activism,everyday life,and art’s object in 1960s’ Japan

Abstract

Around 1960, revolutionary forms of activism and critique emerged to challenge administrative forms of politics and daily life. In Japan, despite massive strikes and widespread protest, the ruling party used a Diet majority and riot police to renew the USA–Japan Security Treaty. After this display of force, this party’s new administration sought a new legitimacy, and a means to assuage and co‐opt the defeated opposition, through promoting a depoliticized everyday world of high growth and consumption, and a dehistoricized national image in preparation for the 1964 Tokyo Olympics. Among those activists who emerged to contest this new cultural politics, a diverse group of young artists worked to repoliticize daily life through an interventionist art practice. Their practices arose out of a particular local, playful art practice, whose focus on the material debris and spaces of the economic expansion led to an engagement with the transformations of daily life. Focusing on the art practices connected with the yearly exhibition, the Yomiuri Indépendant, I examine the advent of a critical art examining the everyday world of Japan in the late 1950s and early 1960s, reflecting on its complex relation with an internationalized art world and domestic art scene, mass culture, and domestic protest movements. Examining the history of this art illuminates the state’s investments in a normative cultural order, and a particular configuration of the politics of culture in the early 1960s.     

The city as extracurricular space: re‐instituting urban pedagogy in South Asia

Abstract

This paper addresses the pedagogic and disciplinary challenges posed by the effort to understand urban spatial practices and institutional histories in Bombay/Mumbai, and other postcolonial South Asian cities. Many cities in the region, such as Chandigarh and Dhaka were designed as iconic of the abstract space of the nation‐state. The dominance of the nationalist spatial imagination in the understandings of public space, citizenship, and the metropolitan environment – combined with the functionalist perception of architecture and spatial practice – have resulted in an urban pedagogy that regards the city only as a technological or physical artefact. Architectural education and urban pedagogy is therefore unable to address the diversity of social‐spatial formations in the city, and its political regime of predatory development, tactical negotiation, and blurry urbanism. To better understand this new regime, we require a collaborative urbanism that treats the city as an extra‐curricular space by which we can reconstruct existing institutional frameworks. Drawing on the work of CRIT (Collective Research Initiatives Trust), Mumbai, this papers explores the post‐industrial landscapes of the Mumbai Mill and Port Lands as a case study in two extracurricular research projects, which grew into urban design and community planning interventions in the Mumbai Metropolitan Region, where urban spaces became the arena for re‐imagining the relations between knowledge production, institutional boundaries, and civic activism on which nationalism has imposed a long estrangement.     

‘Migrations of Chineseness’: in conversation with Ien Ang

This paper explores John Hersey's Hiroshima (1946) and Nagai Takashi's The Bells of Nagasaki (1949). These two best-selling books published in the US and Japan in the late 1940s portray the experiences of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Although they appeared in a similar period—a postwar transition and a herald of the Cold War—their reception was strikingly different. Hersey's piece acquired international currency when the representations of the atomic bombings in Japan were censored under the US Occupation. Since then Hiroshima has virtually remained the ‘first and only’ text about the atomic bomb victims widely read in the US. Nagai's memoir, a rare exception allowed to be circulated nationwide under the censorship, and elevated to a canonical voice of Nagasaki's experience, however, has been the subject of controversies in Japan from the 1970s. The paper argues that despite these differences, both works share parallels in narratological strategies, such as historical emplotment, the personalization of the event, compassionate identification, the valorization of the power of the atomic bomb, and the promotion of compartmentalized knowledge. These effects create a psychological deterrent for readers not to confront larger political and ethical problematics of Japanese colonialism and postwar US hegemony in Asia. Their discursive entanglement and ostensible dissociation symbolize the ways in which trans-Pacific knowledge on the atomic bombings has been shaped postwar for many decades.     

Stewart,O’Reilly,and The Rumble 2012: Alternative Political Debate in the Age of Hybridity

This study explores the internet-only political debate held in the run-up to the 2012 U.S. presidential election between political-entertainment personalities Jon Stewart and Bill O’Reilly. Independently produced and financed through a version of crowd-funding, the debate offers a window into the fundamentally hybrid nature of contemporary mediated political discourse. A novel form of hybrid celebrity politics afforded by emergent technological, economic, and cultural forces, the so-called “Rumble in the Air Conditioned Auditorium” interwove televisual celebrity, political advocacy, affective spectacle, and deliberative exchange. In so doing, it spoke to the increasingly complicated nature of representation, authenticity, and the possibilities of political speech in a hybrid media age.