Abstract
Wei Te-Sheng’s Warriors of the Rainbow: Seediq Bale (2011) is a Taiwanese historical epic film that posits the Seediq aboriginals’ gaya doctrine and headhunting tradition as the core value that underlies their decision to carry out the Wushe Incident against the Japanese colonizers. While the film seemingly revolves around the Seediq tribesmen’s attempt to practise gaya through headhunting, it paradoxically shows the disintegration of the original meaning of the headhunting custom under the extremely oppressive colonial regime. This paper argues that the enmeshing of the terms “tradition,” “ritual,” and “massacre” as a convenient and dramatic mode of storytelling has resulted in shifting the critical focus away from the more pressing subject of the constructive nature of anticolonial violence. By drawing on Jean-Paul Sartre and Frantz Fanon’s notion of violence as a force that recovers the coherence and self-knowledge of the colonized, this paper aims to provide reasons for and potential ways to separate ritualistic violence of headhunting from violence as a positive mechanism through which the colonized can reconstruct their identity and achieve anticolonial freedom. By rejecting the straightforward reading of the viscerality of the aboriginal violence as an inexorable product of the aboriginal culture and breaking the link between the Wushe Incident with the Atayal aboriginal people’s headhunting ritual, this paper hopes to extend both the scope and the significance of the film as a cultural text that points to the constructive nature of anticolonial violence.
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Disclaimer: All third-party content on this website/platform is and will remain the property of their respective owners and is provided on "as is" basis without any warranties, express or implied. Use of third-party content does not indicate any affiliation, sponsorship with or endorsement by them. Any references to third-party content is to identify the corresponding services and shall be considered fair use under The CopyrightLaw.