School of Culture and Communication - Research Publications

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Start date: 1991 × Subject: cultural studies × Author: Martin, Francesca ×

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    Vive L’Amour: eloquent emptiness
    Martin, Fran (British Film Institute, 2003)
    Vive L’Amour (Tsai Ming-liang, 1994), winner of the Golden Lion at the 1994 Venice International Film Festival, is the second part in a three-part film-cycle by Tsai Ming-liang, the Malaysian-born art-house director working from Taiwan. Following Rebels of the Neon God (Tsai Ming-liang, 1992) and preceding The River (Tsai Ming-liang, 1996), Amour contributes to Tsai’s ongoing filmic exploration of the conditions of human subsistence in millennial Taipei. His films’ settings amid the city’s dismal concrete and neon streetscapes, their minimalist stories of the aimless days and nights of drifting, marginal characters and their austere cinematic style have earned Tsai his name as filmic philosopher of existential anxiety in post-‘economic miracle’ Taiwan.
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    Introduction
    Martin, Fran (Hodder Arnold, 2003)
    Before you begin reading this book, take a moment to think about its title: Interpreting Everyday Culture. What kind of project does this title suggest? What’s the definition of ‘everyday’, and what sort of ‘culture’ might characterize it? And, whatever definition we agree on, is ‘everyday culture’, in any case, amenable to interpretation? Or does the very ordinariness and taken-for-grantedness of the culture of our day-to-day lives make it inherently resistant to academic elucidation? Evidently, since you hold in your hands an entire book written by us on this subject, we’re going to try to convince you that there is indeed much to be gained from subjecting everyday culture to intellectual scrutiny. But we want to start out by drawing your attention to what a strange, slippery, and paradoxical concept ‘everyday culture’ is, despite its deceptive obviousness. Consequently, the interpretation of everyday culture is often a counterintuitive -even unsettling- endeavour. But in the pages that follow, we hope to show you how it’s also a very rewarding project, one that can lead to unexpected and illuminating insight into the surprisingly complex significance of all the things we do, day after day, while barely noticing that we’re doing them.