Disease As Metaphor

Tsai ming liang has taken the lead to surge the second wave of Taiwan New Movie since he started directing films which are different from the traditional New Movies. Tsai's works always take on the mind desert and the Kafka-type desolation. He takes his own angle of view to focus on the body, city, family and psychological disease in modern times, and uses chilly or scorching scene language to describe the deserted and hopeless world. Therefore his movies are the soundless rap on Taiwan New Movie and even all Chinese movies. In another word, the way Tsai originally refers straight to the individual privacy area, becoming the watershed of Taiwan New Movie, plays an important part in Taiwan and Chinese movies since 90's. And its ponderance is still increasing.The first part refers to Body. In Tsai's films, body is the most popular and effect property. Hiding in the body exterior, there are plenty of zoology metaphors. Threeimagoes——communication, peephole and body variation will be expounded. I will takegood use of theories from "A Semiotics of the Cinema", Chistian Mets and "Theory of Mirror Image", Jacques Lacan. And I will also recur to Body Describing Theory.The second part concerns on City. The City Image is the space where Tsai expresses the imagoes. And it also shows the great difference between Tsai's films and the other Taiwan new movies. Identification and absence of status, including time status and space status, are the hidden motif in Tsai's films. The two statuses appear the serious feeling of "statusless" in Taiwan. And due to all sorts of historical or current reasons, it ultimately leads to the identification and absence of the collective "Taiwan" status. In the third part, I will bring it back to the film itself, seeking for the special art style in Tsai's film, the relations and reformations to the Taiwan new movies, some conjunction between Tsai and the early movie theories, and the adoption from the western stagecraft theories and practice. I also prefer the comparing method when referring the reflection of 'Theory of interval' in Tsai's films.