Queer Affect, Childhood, and Modalities of Sound in Hong Khaou’s Lilting

Abstract

This article examines Hong Khaou’s film Lilting (2014) in an effort to discuss and describe the expressive modality of sound within the context of grief, diasporic parent and child relations, and Asian unassimilability. The film explores the aftermath of an untimely death: Junn, one of its central characters, is grieving the loss of her only child, while her deceased son’s partner is grieving the loss of his lover. Queer diasporic childhood and its affective dynamics take centre stage in the film. The characters are frustrated by seemingly insurmountable cultural differences, but psychic relief is developed through the sounds of shared grief, queer affect, and the eventual integration of these frustrations. By theorizing frustration and the haptic registers of sound, this article claims that sound can represent healing across differences. In this way, Lilting posits a theory of the reparative work of sound that defies semantic knowledge and returns us to the sonic substance of relationality.