Fade in-Fade out of the Body-City: Hsiao-hsien Hou and Caf? Lumi?re
Resource
中外文學, 40(3), 007-037
Journal
中外文學
Journal Volume
40
Journal Issue
3
Pages
007-037
Date Issued
2011-09
Date
2011-09
Author(s)
Chang, H.H.
Abstract
As a cinematographic technique, a fade-out causes the picture to darken and disappear gradually and a fade-in is the reverse process to brighten and appear. However, this paper attempts to theorize another fade in-fade out through the film Caf? Lumi?re directed by Hsiao-hsien Hou on the everyday life of Tokyo: “fade” as change; “in” and “out” as movement; fade in-fade out as no longer mere editing techniques or aesthetic forms but a new philosophy of becoming in-between the manifest and the latent, the virtual and the actual.
The paper will be divided into three parts. Part I will take the concept of the fade in light of Fran?ois Jullien’s In Praise of Blandness as a virtual developing and changing, and use this concept to read the body-city of Caf? Lumi?re as a realism of “light,” constantly shifting between the discernible (fading in as concrete figures, things or actions) and the indiscernible (fading out as light, material, image and movement). Part II will move on to the image of the train to discuss how Caf? Lumi?re is basically a film about the city-train connected through “-” as the sign of becoming. While the train as the “visual form of representation” is portrayed everywhere in the film, the train as the “affect” of the body-city is even more haptically felt everywhere in the film. Part III will try to continue the theorization of fade in-fade out by shifting the focus to the soundtrack. It will foreground how the non-personal train sound can be liberated from vococentrism and verbocentrism to become the most important energetic force of the Tokyo soundscape.
Only when fade in-fade out is transformed from “aesthetic form” to “image philosophy” can Tokyo become an affective assemblage of multiplicity, constantly fading in as Tokyo and fading out as any-space-whatever, a body-city that temporarily stands beyond representation and affects us incessantly with its unrepresentable, invisible flow of Life.
Subjects
侯孝賢，《珈琲時光》，身體，城市，淡入，淡出，電車，身動力
Hsiao-hsien Hou, Caf? Lumi?re, body, city, fade in, fade out, train, affect
Type
journal article