Urban Migrants &

Chance Encounters in and away from a PM City

《一席之地》 (A Place of One’s Own 樓一安 ) 《流浪神狗人》 (God Man Dog 陳芯宜 )

Postmodern City Texts

Outline

1. Postmodern Urban Films: Chance Encounters and Migrants in a Postmodern city

1. Similarities between the two films 2. Capitalist Society and Consumer Culture

• 《流浪神狗人》 God Man Dog• 《一席之地》 A Place of Our Own

The Characters in 《一席之地》

• Singers: Cathy and Mo ( 凱西 and 小莫 )

• Funeral and Graveyand business: Mr. Lin and his wife ( 林師傅的靈厝，阿月嬸照顧墓園 )

• Others: 鐵樂貓

• Subplot—• The aborigines’ demonstration

for their home ( 為家園請命抗議的阿美族三鶯部落 )

• Mr. Lin’s son 阿剛 ; Two brothers’ searching for a burial ground ( 彥碩兄弟 )

The Characters in 《流浪神狗人》

• Hand model Qing ( 青青 )and her architect husband Xiung ( 阿雄 ): marriage problem; infant death

• Huang ( 黃牛角 ), his wandering gods ( 神明車 ) , and A-Xian ( 阿仙 a homeless orphan)

• A-Yung ( 阿勇 ) and his wife from 台東永康部落 , his daughter Savi

SIMILARITIES? God Man Dog and A Place of One’s Own

Similarities: Commercial Culture, Margins, the Supernatural & Power Centers《一席之地》• Media and culture industry –

band & singers • Aborigines in 三鶯部落 , the

displaced singer and • The supernatural: graveyard

and paper houses• The powerful: gang ( 融資公司 )

and entrepreneur's sons • Main Motif: House of this life

and after

《流浪神狗人》• Media and culture

industry– architect and hand model

• Aborigines as migrant works

• The supernatural: gods • The powerful: boss• Symbol: God & Dog

Overall Commodification: Urbanization

1. A Place of One’s Own—Taipei and Taipei county

Culture industry -- affects the singers’ relations

-- style ( 路線 ) and 莫子’ s death as a promotion strategy

Real estate -- “house” “packaged” commodity for gaining surplus values, but not as heritage, or for permanent residence ( 安身立命終老 ) 59:00

-- placeless-ness of those on the margins of the capitalist system (e.g. urban migrants, and residents of illegal dwellings)

- the rich’s insistence on having a burial “place” and a paper house.

Overall Commodification & Urbanization

2. God Man Dog— -- model: fragmentation of women’s

bodies; e.g. Qing’s hand, and Savi’s friend’s leg

-- truck delivery of produce to Taipei-- Spa center ...

Overall Commodification & Urbanization

2. God Man Dog— a far-reaching circle (from Taipei to 永康部落 (in Taitong)

-- in the metalogistical space ( 超物流空間 ) which transcends the boundaries of cities or nations.

• “Urbanism is, to a large extent, a vast metalogistics unfolding both in place and in motion. Cities are pivotal sites at which the everyday exchanges between built and unbuilt environments occur [city and nature]. Yet cities also are where much of what transpires is regarded as international relations between different spatially divided economies, governments, and societies.”(Luke 159)

Chance Encounter in Postmodern City Film

• plot development: flows and rapid movements chance encounters and connections which are transient and non-kinship based-- connections of good will or mutual support (some even

romantic and fantastic) e.g. 《一席之地》《流浪神狗人》

-- Indifferent or unnoticed connections e.g. 〈公寓導遊〉-- systemic exploitation, accident, [criminal acts] – e.g.

〈公寓導遊〉、《流浪神狗人》、《一席之地》

Urban Migrants & Chance Encounters

Global Capitalist System

善意連結

漠然

惡意對待

Solutions?

• By chance? With good will? • OR—facing one’s limitations in order to re-

establish one’s self and relations– self – responsibility and lack– limitations– Death and Other– Ways of facing the limits – rationalization or

“hospitality”

A PLACE OF ONE’S OWN

《一席之地》Your comment on the characters?

Their places and limits? The juxtaposition of the singers, real estate sales

and workers in funeral business?

Plot & StructureTransitions: 1. The advertising blimp 2. 沒有掌聲、沒有噓聲，那到底是怎樣？Mo’s failure vs. Cathy’s rise to fame 3. 林師傅：他們連鼻屎大的地也要來搶Mr. Lin’s health & house4. Mo and Cathy’s drifting apart; Lin’s displacement

Beginning & Ending

21:26; 1:01

Emotionally Displaced: The Two Singers

Mo – • Talented but no longer

popular• music expressive of the

discontent of urbanites (next slide)

Cathy• Uprising star • Obedient to the agent

Randy’s arrangement • Upset by Mo’s stubborn and

wayward behavior but still loving him and recognizing his talent (willing to follow his suggestions to change her music)

莫子— singing 10:00 (http://www.wretch.cc/blog/eeok168/13710352 )

Mo’s Lyrics

超渡• 地產賽鴿文字天堂

熱島旁的靈長肉乾面紙商機熱汗與冷房滿腦頓挫啊啊啊啊

二十一克紅燈超渡四十二秒靈魂重複二十一克生命超渡四十二秒迷航重複

lightness and transience

• Style – punk, but not electronic music

一席之地 1:16• 看著饑餓和慾望在腐朽

坐聽嘲諷和巴結在發酵是你的狗你的瘡疤和那個不用金銀財寶我只要你的

信仰燃盡只剩指尖的菸輕浮虛無我不曾著地沒有城府沒有立場沒有羞辱咒喊上蒼還我 一席歸屬

• lightness and groundless

Cathy’s

• 心疼你憤世嫉俗的愁悵告訴我明天還是沒兩樣就算我為你而胡思亂想你不痛不癢

不想這樣 只要溫飽一場你想不想 讓自己燃燒發光

Physical Displacement and Emplacement

Mr. Lin -- open about his own

death (part of the 20%) -- threatened to sell his own

house (illegal construction) -- deprived of his house and his

paper house

The Paper House -- with surveillance camera,

ma-jang room, guns and body guards, credit cards

-- extension of worldly desires

Physical Displacement and Emplacement

• 小剛 as real estate agent

• Resolution: 我一定要成功，我一定要賣出第一棟房子 49:00

• “Solution”: selling his father’s house

• 黃金地 (44:17; 45:37)

Logic of Connections: Physical Displacement Connection?

Logic of Connections: Physical Displacement Connection

• Cathy attending the rally for 三鶯部落’ s right to their residence Mrs. Lin’s helping the wife of one deceased aborigine.

• Mr. Lin asked to move to Mo’s apartment let him stay there

• Mrs. Lin’s talking to the dead (32:00-; 36:04 visiting 巴奈 giving money to her)

Facing one’s limits

我一定要成功，我一定要賣出第一棟房子49:00

免甲仙，我自己衰到我自己 1:29:00

Hospitality

• Derrida -- ”Absolute hospitality requires that I open up my home and that I give not only to the foreigner (provided with a family name, with the social status of being a foreigner, etc.), but to the absolute, unknown, anonymous other, and that I give place to them, that I let them come, that I let them arrive, and take place in the place I offer them, without asking of them either reciprocity (entering into a pact) or even their names” (25).

• Open one’s home, accepting the others without assimilating them

Indifferent Chance Encounters

Street and Hospital scenes

The Ending: Exploitation & Assimilation: Mr. Lin Deprived of both houses

• 爸你的房子在走ㄋㄟ

The Ending: Exploitation & Assimilation: Mo Commodified

• 莫子珍貴遺物 80000• Radio show, book, CD• Blimp• Concert and TV walls

GOD MAN DOG

Your comment on the characters? Their places and limits?

The juxtaposition of cultural workers, the urban migrantsAnd wandering gods?

《流浪神狗人》

Overall Commodification: The Ads – Fragmenting human bodies

Ads ：Duplicated Images of Faces

•

Two Kinds of “Ads” ：Rings and Religion

• Religion: more later

The Village Urbanized Spa Center

•

Aborigines’ Resistance: 拆遷抗議

•

From the Village to the City: Peach 水蜜桃

•

City’s Margins: Informal Economy

•

Treadmill (跑步機 ) as lifestyle and something to win & sell

• Pipe

Physically Displaced: Stray dogs and Buddha Statue Car 神明車

• Stray dogs: seen in the neighborhood of Qing’s apartment building, in the mountains

• Statues• 阿仙 (1:11) 沒有家，是幽靈，生下就死了。

• fragmented

Emotionally Displaced1. A-Xiong busy with his work;

2. Qing – postpartum depression3. A-Xiong Masturbates to release himself

•

Broken Family: Emotionally Displaced Couple1. Qing –tries to help herself Infant’s sudden death

2. Seek comfort in religion without success affair self-injury

• 34:00 infant death

Broken Family: Alcoholism and Economy

1. A-Yong: alcoholism2. Savi: forced to go to Taipei to practice 散打拳擊 kick boxing

1:03 援交

Religion as Solutions?

• 青 – a religion which rejects the other gods • 阿仙 – share the peace charms with the

statues 平安符• 黃牛角 – 1:10 respecting gods

Logic of Connections

• Commercial system of connections • Qing’s Leaving the City – Accidents and Possible Dangers – Good will 99

Meta-Logistics

The value differences of the following commodities Revealing class differences

• Peach -- 100 a piece, precious for A-Yong; rotten and thrown out in the studio

• Kila 公仔 – 500 or 6000 a piece1. Resistance to commodification of homeland 拆遷抗議

2. Migrants’ survival tactics 買賣贈品：利用行銷策略 (strategies)存活技巧 (tactics)-- 抽獎和大胃王比賽獎品

Chance Encounters Possible Dangers in Theft, Confused Identities and Car

Crash Accidents deaths and law suits 合理化 (rationalization) –

1) 青青 – facing death; it could have happened to us; 手不過是手 (1:36); needs time for healing

2) 阿勇 ： feeling guilty after the lawyer asks him to lie in order to look innocent seen as a Filipino caught by the police

3) 黃牛角 : Money owed to the temple = peaches for the kid; earn money later for his artificial limb.

Coincidence: gasoline for suicide gasoline for 黃牛角’ s truck

None is the final solution to their problems.

CONNECTIONS IN GOOD WILL

Showing Concern Opening one’s self

The Migrants’ Good Will

• Migrants– not fully at home • 阿美’ s expression of concern

– 青青– 阿仙

• 阿仙 – sharing charms with– 神像、十字架、聖母像

• 黃牛角

黃牛角與神

• 51:03

1:02

黃牛角 and Statues of different kinds

•

Wandering Gods and Dogs

• 1:10The end

全球化與他者的臉

• Globalization 非地點 (non-place) • Taipei Globalized and thus de-localized? 台北失去在地性 ?

• Migrants and floating signs can be recontextualized –

• In different networks; such as the commercial system, that of chance and choice, or meaningful connections and social network

• Where is the Other?

The Face of the Other 他者的臉

• 道德就是與不可解的他者面對面；換句話說，就是容許同中有異，我中有他，言有未言。

• The face is present in its refusal to be contained. In this sense it cannot be comprehended, that is, encompassed. It is neither seen nor touch － for in visual or tactile sensation the identity of the I envelops the alterity of the object….（ Levinas 《 Totality and Infinity 》， p194）

Quan-ying: Sympathy or Indifference?

•

CLIP 2-3

46:00

Reference: 2008 台北縣三鶯部落迫遷

(http://www.coolloud.org.tw/tag/2008%E4%B8%89%E9%B6%AF%E9%83%A8%E8%90%BD%E8%BF%AB%E9%81%B7)

• A film and a news report: http://support-sanying.blogspot.com/ • 看見天堂 Smile http://www.youtube.com/watch?

v=xdA5xwLouU8&feature=related

References

• Luke, Timothy W. "Codes, Collectives, and Commodities: Rethinking Global Cities as Metalogistical Spaces." Global Cities: Cinema, Architecture, and Urbanism in a Digital Age. Eds. Louise Krause, and Patrice Petro. Rutgers UP, 2003: 157-74.