Degenerative Teenager, Family and Puberty: The Phenomenological Body in The River

Abstract

The focus on the living conditions of adolesecents has always been an important in Taiwanese cinema. This paper combines philosophical phenomenology represented by Merleau-Pontys body theory with the film phenomenology and unites the presentation of the cinematic body with the audiences corporeal preception to achieve a phenomenological oneness of subject and object. This paper hopes to use The River as a case study to explore tsais concern for marginalized groups and how it evokes emotional resonance in the audience; simultaneously, by examining body narrative and body images, it discusses the audiences visual experience and aesthetic recpetion on a physical and perceptual level, rather than only on a mental one, thus further stinulating academic thinking on the intersubjectivity of film and the body. Specifically, there will be three chapters for analysis: body narrative, situated bodies and role of film technology itself in facilitating the viewers visual experience.