Aesthetics of Trance in Contemporary Asian Cinema

• Main Authors: Chun-Hung YU, 尤俊弘
• Other Authors: Song-Yong SING
• Format: Others
• Language: zh-TW
• Published: 2018
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/k6ha3g

碩士 === 國立臺南藝術大學 === 動畫藝術與影像美學研究所 === 106 === Over the past ten years, the concept of "ambiguity" in the cinema has interested cinema studies significantly. In the 1970s, we found a struggling seesaw power: on the one hand, an anti-illusionism which demanded the "reflexivity" (la réfléxivité) existed in the cinema theories; on the other hand, cinema theorists hesitated a little as they destructed the cinema purely. The unsatisfaction with the (cinematic) semiotics (and psychoanalysis) had brewed when some important theorists or thinkers in the 1980s articulated newer ideas. Therefore, in the 1990s, especially in France, we saw a figuration of the "plastic analysis" (l'analyse plastique) or the "figural analysis" (l'analyse figurale). Theorists no longer regarded the images as languages. However, when we try to connect "The Third Meaning" ("Le troisième sens," 1970) of Roland Barthes with Confronting Images (Devant l'image, 1990) of Georges Didi-Huberman, we will find that the arguments of Barthes in the 1970s, in fact, wagged with the apparatus theory. The latter shared the same preference for analyzing the ambiguity with the former after it was published 20 years later. Therefore, I find a puzzle: then, will the spirit which inquired the "reflexivity" be buried under the direct confronting of images? Is it possible for us to face an image reflexively? To be more specific, I try to retheorize "reflexivity" in today's cinema theories. Our hypothesis is: can a spectatorial status called meta-hypnosis exist? If we can compare film watching to a hypnotization, then we are going to discuss the in-between states of consciousness between wakefulness and non-wakefulness that are the subjects we are going to discuss. Built on the research above, this thesis uses trance as the underlying concept, and analyzes Made in Hong Kong (香港製造, 1997) of Fruit Chan (陳果), CURE (1998) of Kiyoshi Kurosawa (黒沢清), Lingchi - Echoes of a Historical Photograph (凌遲考：一張歷史照片的回音) of Chieh-Jen Chen, Shara (沙羅双樹, 2003) of Naomi Kawase (河瀬直美), The Sun (Solntse, 2005) of Aleksandr Sokurov, Syndromes and a Centuary (Sang sattawat, 2006) of Apichatpong Weerasethakul, Autohystoria (2007) of Raya Martin, I Wish (奇跡, 2011) of Kore-eda Hirokazu and 秘密金魚 (2016) of Gan Bi (毕赣). Our strategy is to divide the concept of trance into three Chinese concepts. We translate the trancelike state of the image-body, the body-image and the body-spectator into huang-hu, tong-ling, and chu-shen, respectively. The object is to develop an aesthetics of "altered state of consciousness" via the contemporary Asian cinemas being a touchstone. Under the "aesthetic regime of the art" (le régime esthétique de l'art) of French philosopher Jacques Rancière, we try to pick up a concept which has long be forgotten: an "autonomous segment" (segment autonome) called "bracket syntagma" (syntagme en accolade) by Christian Metz. We want to connect the concept of "bracket syntagma" to some moments that we hardly can express by words in a film. We conclude: huang-hu, tong-ling, or chu-shen, are all pensive (pensif) paroxysms. Doubtlessly, as Hubert Damisch said, the viewing of horror can be violent; however, a paroxysm of an image can also bring the "festival of affects" (le festival d'affects), which is in its another pole. In the end, we will find that the differentiation between normal and altered state during the screening process is indistinct. What is essential is the process of becoming one another, which is going to make us find that the world -- close to the "Whole" (le Tout) in Gilles Deleuze's sense -- seems to be different after we leave the cinema (sortir du cinéma).