Disrupting boundaries of desire: Gender, sexuality, and globalization in Tsai Ming-liang's cinema of the oppressed

This dissertation explores the representation of gender, sexuality, and globalization in Tsai Ming-liang's films. Not only does it provide a close reading of Tsai's eight feature-length films, but it also situates his films in the context of Taiwan New Cinema as well as the rise of tongzhi (gay and lesbian) movement in Taiwan. In contrast to the films made by other Taiwan New Cinema directors, Tsai's films conjure up a unique minimalist and diasporic aesthetic that draws scrupulous attention to the critical aspects of gender, sexuality, and transnational cultural flows in Taiwan and abroad. Nevertheless, his films do not portray (homo) sexuality as innate and natural, nor do they embrace the kind of visibility and identity politics that the mainstream tongzhi movement advocates. Instead, his films illustrate how genders and sexualities are multiple, changeable, performative, and interconnected with a wide range of other social identities and power relations.;The introduction begins with a brief literature review of feminist and queer discourses, and then provides a general overview of Taiwan New Cinema and Taiwan's tongzhi movement. It investigates the intertwined relationships between Tsai's Malaysian-Chinese background, his ambiguous sexuality, his success in the international film circuit, and the major characteristics of his eight feature films. Chapter One looks into Tsai's first two features, Rebels of the Neon God (1992) and Vive L'Amour (1994) to rethink the advance of gendered globalization in enhancing the individual's sexual mobility and unshackling the grip of the traditional family. Chapter Two offers a queer reading of The River (1997) and Goodbye Dragon Inn (2003) to visualize the invisible heteronormativity in Taiwanese society. Chapter Three examines how Tsai uses the paradigm of upstairs and downstairs and the seven-hour difference between Paris and Taipei to allegorize and undo gender hierarchy in The Hole (1998) and What Time Is It There? (2001). Chapter Four investigates the ways in which the figure of the stranger is used to envision a shared marginality in The Wayward Cloud (2005) and I Don't Want to Sleep Alone (2006). The conclusion would further conceptualize the disruptive and empowering implications of strangers in Tsai's films.