Book Chapter/Essay Abstract: Projecting a State that does not Exist

Projecting a State that does not Exist:

Bai Jingrui's Jia zai Taibei / Home Sweet Home

In this essay I argue that Bai Jingrui’s 1970 film Home Sweet Home’s central concern is the politics, both aesthetic and ideological, of depicting migration within a narrative film. More specifically, this film presents the official state position that the Chinese Nationalist Party held regarding students from Taiwan who studied abroad in the late 1960s and early 1970s, many of whom studied abroad and yet did not return. This claim is based on the film’s release by a state studio, CMPC, under state supervision and censorship, in order to further the state’s ideological project through visual media. A close reading of the film illuminate the ways that Bai Jingrui’s aesthetic choices work both in conjunction and disjunction with the intentions of the Taiwan government in 1970.

這篇文章談到白景瑞《家在臺北》(1970)中的特有電影美學與意識形態，以及其背後的政治性, 也就是當時的台灣政府怎麼藉由影視審查制度，將當時的敘事電影收編於其思想控管之下。這齣電影從當時代國民黨政府的立場論及六零年代晚期、七零年代早期關於留學生的一些問題：那時代從台灣到外國去讀書的留學生，大部分離開台灣以後就沒有回來。 這個六、七零年代的事實透過中央電影公司的再生產、運用進步的影像技術，意圖呈現一個屬於國民黨認可的意識形態。但仔細的電影閱讀顯現：白景瑞透過其高明的藝術操作，他的電影時而符合、時而竟能脫出台灣1970年代統治者之意識掌控。

Available in: Transnational Representations: The State of Taiwan Film in the 1960s and 1970s (HKUP, 2014).

Also available in: “Projecting a State That Does Not Exist: Bai Jingrui’s Jia zai Taibei/ Home Sweet Home” In Journal of Chinese Cinemas 4 (2010): 15-26.