Corner’s: Underground Homosexual Kingdom in the Eyes of Lesbians
As the Taiwanese film critic Huang Jianye concludes, documentary in Taiwan has been developed into an ascendant genre after the success of the inaugural “International Documentary Biennial Exhibition” in 1998. With the shift from obsession with indigenization to excavation of individual life after the lifting of martial law in 1987, possibilities of focusing on minority groups and exploring urgent social issues have been opened up in the local documentary filmmaking. It is no wonder, then, that the creation of the alternative homosexual space was made visible by virtue of the lifting of martial law, or that “the construction of alternative sexual identities in this case was intimately linked to nation-building.” In such context, the lesbian director Zero Chou, who is an insider or “informant” of the gay group, approaches the issue of gay culture from the perspective of this oppressed group who render a renowned gay bar “The Corner’s” as their underground homosexual kingdom. By utilizing the operation of camera as an indispensible tool to indicate the reflexivity and emphasizing the performativity of filmed subjects through self-aware film language, Chou obviously intervenes the shooting process due to …show more content…
Based on Foucault’s argument that the utopian spaces “represent society itself brought to perfection, or its reverse, and … by their very essence fundamentally unreal,” I venture to argue that the gay bar “The Corner’s” as well as the group affiliated to it constitute the homosexual utopia that is bound to collapse. I also choose women’s bodies as a carrier here to locate the interpretations of this covert utopia since they are invested with more symbolic meanings by the filmmaker and can be rendered as a key to initiate the discussion on the fluid desire in this taboo-broken
As the Taiwanese film critic Huang Jianye concludes, documentary in Taiwan has been developed into an ascendant genre after the success of the inaugural “International Documentary Biennial Exhibition” in 1998. With the shift from obsession with indigenization to excavation of individual life after the lifting of martial law in 1987, possibilities of focusing on minority groups and exploring urgent social issues have been opened up in the local documentary filmmaking. It is no wonder, then, that the creation of the alternative homosexual space was made visible by virtue of the lifting of martial law, or that “the construction of alternative sexual identities in this case was intimately linked to nation-building.” In such context, the lesbian director Zero Chou, who is an insider or “informant” of the gay group, approaches the issue of gay culture from the perspective of this oppressed group who render a renowned gay bar “The Corner’s” as their underground homosexual kingdom. By utilizing the operation of camera as an indispensible tool to indicate the reflexivity and emphasizing the performativity of filmed subjects through self-aware film language, Chou obviously intervenes the shooting process due to …show more content…
Based on Foucault’s argument that the utopian spaces “represent society itself brought to perfection, or its reverse, and … by their very essence fundamentally unreal,” I venture to argue that the gay bar “The Corner’s” as well as the group affiliated to it constitute the homosexual utopia that is bound to collapse. I also choose women’s bodies as a carrier here to locate the interpretations of this covert utopia since they are invested with more symbolic meanings by the filmmaker and can be rendered as a key to initiate the discussion on the fluid desire in this taboo-broken