Visioning a queer documentary: Huang Hui-chen’s Small Talk

Abstract

ABSTRACT Small Talk, a 2016 Taiwanese feature-length documentary film, records the process by which the director, Huang Hui-chen, attempts to repair the traumas that have alienated her from her mother A-nu, a butch Taoist priestess, through a series of recorded conversations and monologues. Critical concern over the ethics of the documentary, largely concerning issues of informed consent, arose quickly after its premiere. Such critiques, however, assume the existence of an omnipotent, monophonic, and dominant documenter and thus fall prey to a linear understanding of history that disregards the dynamic tactics deployed by the individuals documented in the film. The film never solely represents A-nu’s history, but rather consistently features the improvisatory process of filming itself. Furthermore, this queer documentary allegorizes what I call a queer khan-bong practice and a reflexive backstage. The former refers to a local practice of resistance that appropriates Taoism, folklore, and the popular codes of working-class queer communities; the latter encapsulates a semiotic networking among a feminine community, which constantly reflects upon its own operation and structure. It is through these two tactics that Small Talk activates an approach to queer documentary that underscores the ways in which queer histories are constructed and mediated.