WASTE, BOREDOM, AND GHOSTLY TIME IN THE FILMS OF TSAI MING-LIANG

Authors

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.5902/2175497766690

Keywords:

Waste, Boredom, The body, Ghostly time, Modernity

Abstract

This study examines several themes that often emerge in the work of Taiwanese filmmaker Tsai Ming-liang, focusing on his preoccupation with waste, boredom, and a secret, “ghostly” time that runs parallel to human time. While comparisons are inevitably drawn to the French New Wave in terms of attitudes toward modernity, I argue that Tsai develops a much different tone. While the French New Wave might best be characterized by freshness, naivieté, improvisation, playfulness, and a sense of possibility, then Tsai instead offers a much more bleak, post-apocalyptic world in which the consequences of advanced modernity now become
a heavy burden on his characters.

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Author Biography

Raymond Watkins, The University of North Caroline at Pembroke, EUA

Teaches in the English Department at The Pennsylvania State University. His research
interests include visual rhetoric, the interarts, the European avant-garde, film and visual
culture, and twentieth-century European culture. His book, Late Bresson and the Visual Arts:
Cinema, Painting and Avant-Garde Experiment (University of Amsterdam Press, 2018), uses
the framework of media archaeology to examine the neglected color films of the French
filmmaker Robert Bresson (1901-1999).

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Published

2021-07-12

How to Cite

Watkins, R. (2021). WASTE, BOREDOM, AND GHOSTLY TIME IN THE FILMS OF TSAI MING-LIANG. Animus.Inter-American Journal of Media Communication, 20(43). https://doi.org/10.5902/2175497766690

Issue

Vol. 20 No. 43 (2021)

Section

CULTURAL & TECHNOLOGICAL IMAGES

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Copyright (c) 2021 Animus. Revista Interamericana de Comunicação Midiática

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