Film Screening:

The Sandwich Man
(Hou Hsiao-hsien, Wan Jen and Tseng Chuang-hsiang, 1983, 107 min, Taiwan, in Mandarin w/ English subtitles, Color, DVD)

-- Introduced by Prof. Leo Ching (AMES)!

In the short list of watershed moments in Taiwanese film history, the release of The Sandwich Man has to be near the top. It prompted the so-called “apple-peeling incident” that snowballed into a public outcry against censorship, and it marked the maturation of director Hou Hsiao-hsien, soon to become one of world cinema's greatest filmmakers. Widely regarded as the work that ushered in the New Taiwanese Cinema, The Sandwich Man follows the lead of other omnibus films of its era, whose purpose was to give young directors a chance to explore their creativity and address social issues.

Based on short stories by the nativist writer Huang Chunming, the three episodes in this film explore the local and everyday effects of distant modernizing forces in Taiwan during the cold war period, when the country developed its economy with help from the United States. The English title of the film is derived from the film's first vignette, directed by Hou Hsiao-hsien, tells about a man who ekes out a living for his young family by carrying advertisement sandwich boards. The second vignette tells of two ambitious young men who discover too late that a product they are trying to sell is defective. The third vignette explores what happens when a poor laborer is struck by a high-ranking American official's automobile.

Hou’s short, The Son’s Big Doll, found a cinematic correlate to nativist preoccupations: long takes that make visible the plight of common people, a colorful soundtrack of competing dialects. As critic Jonathan Rosenbaum has noted, it’s a perfect film of Chekhovian proportions, and it showed that Hou, who had until then directed only romantic comedies, could be the serious voice of an entire generation. Tseng Chuang-hsiang’s short, Vicky’s Hat lightens things up, but shoehorns enough satire to segue into Wan Jen’s controversial The Taste of Apples, a black comedy about a common man who gets hit by an American’s car, triggering a mad political scramble. With expressionist absurdity, it holds the KMT government’s feet to the fire and mocks Taiwan’s fantasy of American exceptionalism. The short not only kick-started Wan Jen’s career as Taiwanese cinema’s boldest satirist, it also chipped away at state censorship by initiating a stand against the government’s proposed cuts.

About the "Paradox of the Post-Cold War in Asia" Film Series:

When was the Cold War in Asia? Are we now living in a Post-Cold War world? This semester, we ask these questions through dialogues organized around film screenings and international workshops.  We explore what might be revealed and hidden when the 20th century of unending wars in Asia is framed as the Cold War. The paradox continues into the Post-Cold War present, a moment of a rising China and the United States' pivot to Asia. Reframing these questions from the perspectives of the Koreas, Taiwan, and Okinawa, the series illuminates new ways of seeing the legacies of unending wars and impasses in the region today.

Workshop I - Fri Feb 28, 10am-3:00pm, Franklin Center 240:
"Paradox of the Post-Cold War in Asia: Korean War and Beyond?"

10:00am: Welcome

10:20am-12:00pm: Panel: When was the Cold War in Asia?

Namhee Lee: “Déjà vu?: The Return of the Ghost of Yusin and re-Cold Warring of the Korean Peninsula”

JJ Suh: “The Cold War that Wasn't: North Korean Nuclear Crisis and the Unending Korean War”

Cheehyung Kim: “Work is a battlefield: the legacy of war communism in North Korea”

Discussion

12:15 -1:15pm: Lunch

1:15-2:15pm: Keynote--Bruce Cumings: “Not War/Not Peace: The Suspended Korean War Under a Nuclear Shadow”

2:15pm-3:00pm: Roundtable Discussion

Workshop II - Mon March 24, 10am-3:00pm, Franklin Center 240:
"Independence": Okinawa, Taiwan and Beyond
Participants: Tomiyama Ichiro (keynote), Leo Ching

Cost: Free and open to the public

Sponsors: The Department of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies (AMES), The Asian/Pacific Studies Institute (APSI), the Korea Forum, the Program in the Arts of the Moving Image (AMI), and the Program in Literature.