This short paper aims to critically analyze a contemporary Taiwan Residents film, The Fourth Portrait, directed by Meng-Hung Chung, from the perspective of Delenzian theories. In Deleuze＇s two books on cinema, the di...This short paper aims to critically analyze a contemporary Taiwan Residents film, The Fourth Portrait, directed by Meng-Hung Chung, from the perspective of Delenzian theories. In Deleuze＇s two books on cinema, the discussion of images demonstrates the entangled juxtaposition of the three levels： brain-thought, cinema-screen, and world-images that compose the cinematic consciousness. Through the interacted movement-images and time-images, the film unfolds the storyline within the aesthetic pleasure of poetic sentiment that gradually leads the audience to learn that a wandering boy, Hsiao-Hsiang, after the death of his father, has had several adventurous encounters that gradually expose the secrecy of his traumatic family： His birth mother has no decent job and his step-father has killed his own brother. This broken family has been haunted by the shared guilt and the undead memory as Derrida famously claims that hauntology precedes ontology. As the past coexists with the present, Deleuze analyzes the concept of I, with a central fracture in its pure form of the past demonstrating an ontological enigma that remains forever a secret. When the director uses the four portraits to indicate the four important events of this wandering boy, he deliberately leaves empty the fourth portrait, the self-portrait of the boy; it remains as an incomplete piece which symbolizes an enigma of his own life. It shows certain constitutive unnamable forces acting within the boy that seduces him forever to painfully misrecognize himself.展开更多
The study deals with Demetria Martinez＇s Mother Tongue （1994）, which is a love story between a Mexican American woman and a Salvadoran refugee. The female protagonist, Mary, delves into connotations of love, expand...The study deals with Demetria Martinez＇s Mother Tongue （1994）, which is a love story between a Mexican American woman and a Salvadoran refugee. The female protagonist, Mary, delves into connotations of love, expanding it to understanding of the other. The story deploys politically imbricated religious practices in relation to the U.S. Sanctuary movement in the 80s. Mary＇s amorous encounter with the other leads her to discover the expansion of friendship and solidarity and, ultimately to rediscover religiosity based on reawakened ethics. This study argues that the melodramatic mode employed in this novel implicitly reveals an inherent aspiration for the sacred, albeit not fully representable. The author＇s involvement in the genre of romance and the melodramatic mode ironically attests to her striving for the spiritual ideal and ontological answer. In the end, this essay reveals that drawing on the popular melodramatic narrative, the romantic engagement with the alterity can be more efficiently introduced into the ontological quest for the absolute presence.展开更多
文摘This short paper aims to critically analyze a contemporary Taiwan Residents film, The Fourth Portrait, directed by Meng-Hung Chung, from the perspective of Delenzian theories. In Deleuze＇s two books on cinema, the discussion of images demonstrates the entangled juxtaposition of the three levels： brain-thought, cinema-screen, and world-images that compose the cinematic consciousness. Through the interacted movement-images and time-images, the film unfolds the storyline within the aesthetic pleasure of poetic sentiment that gradually leads the audience to learn that a wandering boy, Hsiao-Hsiang, after the death of his father, has had several adventurous encounters that gradually expose the secrecy of his traumatic family： His birth mother has no decent job and his step-father has killed his own brother. This broken family has been haunted by the shared guilt and the undead memory as Derrida famously claims that hauntology precedes ontology. As the past coexists with the present, Deleuze analyzes the concept of I, with a central fracture in its pure form of the past demonstrating an ontological enigma that remains forever a secret. When the director uses the four portraits to indicate the four important events of this wandering boy, he deliberately leaves empty the fourth portrait, the self-portrait of the boy; it remains as an incomplete piece which symbolizes an enigma of his own life. It shows certain constitutive unnamable forces acting within the boy that seduces him forever to painfully misrecognize himself.
文摘The study deals with Demetria Martinez＇s Mother Tongue （1994）, which is a love story between a Mexican American woman and a Salvadoran refugee. The female protagonist, Mary, delves into connotations of love, expanding it to understanding of the other. The story deploys politically imbricated religious practices in relation to the U.S. Sanctuary movement in the 80s. Mary＇s amorous encounter with the other leads her to discover the expansion of friendship and solidarity and, ultimately to rediscover religiosity based on reawakened ethics. This study argues that the melodramatic mode employed in this novel implicitly reveals an inherent aspiration for the sacred, albeit not fully representable. The author＇s involvement in the genre of romance and the melodramatic mode ironically attests to her striving for the spiritual ideal and ontological answer. In the end, this essay reveals that drawing on the popular melodramatic narrative, the romantic engagement with the alterity can be more efficiently introduced into the ontological quest for the absolute presence.
