{"id":2809,"date":"2021-02-21T16:39:11","date_gmt":"2021-02-21T08:39:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/acas.world\/?p=2809"},"modified":"2021-02-24T22:28:09","modified_gmt":"2021-02-24T14:28:09","slug":"hauntological-aesthetics-in-taiwanese-animation-feature-grandma-and-her-ghosts-1998","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/acas.world\/cn\/2021\/02\/21\/hauntological-aesthetics-in-taiwanese-animation-feature-grandma-and-her-ghosts-1998\/","title":{"rendered":"Hauntological Aesthetics in Taiwanese Animation Feature Grandma and Her Ghosts<\/em> (1998)"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Li Guo<\/strong><\/p>\n

In her recently published monograph Puppets, Gods, and Brands: Theorizing the Age of Animation from Taiwan<\/em>, Teri Silvio insightfully observes that for the author, the animation model could also be utilized to display \u201chow specific local cultural traditions make sense of and contribute to global transformations.\u201d[1]<\/a> Further, Silvio observes that \u201crecent transformations of Taiwanese animation practices offer alternative (and not just reactive) concepts of animation in the broader sense, and thus, alternative ways of imagining and bringing into being the Age of Animation.\u201d[2]<\/a> Among the many understudied animation works that Silvio discusses, the classic Taiwanese animation feature Grandma and Her Ghosts<\/em> (1998), directed by Wang Shau-di, is mentioned as a successful example representing \u201cfolk Daoist magic with an environmental theme.\u201d[3]<\/a> As Silvio observes, in this animation, \u201cDaoist magic is framed, not within the wuxia<\/em> genre, but within a nostalgic family drama about a boy from the city visiting his grandmother in the countryside.\u201d[4]<\/a> Building on Silvio\u2019s ground-breaking work, this essay explores the hauntological imaginations in this seminal animation film. Animated cartoons, from an Eisensteinian point of view, could \u201creturn the reviewer to a pre-logical state, to the realm of sensuous thought.\u201d[5]<\/a> Eisenstein terms animation\u2019s ability to articulate \u201cfreedom from ossification\u201d and take on nascent and dynamic forms of expression as \u201cplasmaticity.\u201d[6] <\/a>The potential of animated cartoons to bespeak the transgressive and the metaphorical, furthermore, invites an engaged discussion of hauntological aesthetics in animation films representing ghosts, with a focus on Grandma and Her Ghosts<\/em>.[7]<\/a><\/p>\n

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Fig 1: A still from Grandma and Her Ghosts<\/em>, 1998<\/p>\n

The concept of hauntological aesthetics, Mark Fisher incisively observes, could be immediately related to the use of hauntological music in cinema and television, although the term itself bespeaks a connection with deconstruction theory and postmodernism. Jacques Derrida famously puts, \u201cTo haunt does not mean to be present, and it is necessary to introduce haunting into the very construction of a concept.\u201d[8] <\/a>Martin H\u00e4gglund, in addressing Derrida\u2019s formulation of hauntology in contrast to \u201contology,\u201d observes that \u201cWhat is important about the figure of the specter, then, is that it cannot be fully present: it has no being in itself but marks a relation to what is no longer<\/em> or not yet<\/em>.\u201d[9]<\/a> Building on these critical discussions, Fisher proposes two directions to understand hauntology, that is, the \u201cno longer,\u201d which though in actuality has ceased to be present is \u201cstill effective as a virtuality,\u201d and the \u201cnot yet,\u201d which in actuality \u201chas not yet<\/em> happened, but which is already<\/em> effective in the virtual (an attractor, an anticipation shaping current behavior.\u201d[10]<\/a> Hauntology, with this understanding, could express anxieties about spatial or temporal crisis. As Fisher observes, haunting \u201ccan be seen as intrinsically resistant to the contraction and homogenization of time and space.\u201d[11]<\/a><\/p>\n

Wang Shau-di\u2019s animation feature expresses this hauntological aesthetics throughout the story. Doudou, a boy who grows up in metropolitan Taipei city, is sent to his grandma\u2019s village near Keelung one summer when his mother has to leave and visit his father who works at the sea and has suffered a sudden injury. Doudou\u2019s grandma is a Daoist practitioner who can mediate with ghostly beings, assist their voyages to reincarnation, and exorcise evil spirits. Unwittingly, out of curiosity, Doudou tears off a Daoist Talisman which is used to seal a jar containing an evil ghost. The ghost escapes and enters the body of Grandma\u2019s cat. It devours all wandering ghosts, souls of abandoned animals, and even spirits of human beings, amassing its own power and shape continuously. Taking advantage of Doudou\u2019s homesickness, the demon attempts to persuade him to \u201csell\u201d his grandma to a trash collector by collecting three of her tear drops, so that Doudou could purchase a house and live together with his parents in eternal happiness. Though temporarily hoodwinked, Doudou quickly realizes the demon\u2019s evil intentions. He assists Grandma in defeating him and releasing the many devoured ghosts from the demon\u2019s body. Eventually, the ghostly characters, including Grandma\u2019s own friends in the village and deceased animals\u2019 spirits, embark on a path of rebirth in happiness. Doudou too develops a closer emotional bond with his Grandma.<\/p>\n

Whereas Hollywood animation cartoons could have influenced Wang Shau-di and Huang Li-ming in their preparation of Grandma and Her Ghosts<\/em>, neither of them had any experience in animation-making and ultimately had to find their own way to present an indigenous Taiwanese story. Due to budget challenges, Wang had to resort to a Korean company for animation technology support. The Korean company \u201casked Wang to deliver 250 \u2018key frames\u2019 within a week. These key frames are images that show the animators where everything in a scene needs to be at \u2018key\u2019 moments. The animators then animate all movements in between.\u201d[12]<\/a> Indigenous animation industry veterans Pongo Kuo, Fish Wang, and Chen Weisong helped Wang with the composition.[13] <\/a>The animation\u2019s ground-breaking take on hauntological aesthetics was enthusiastically received by the market and film audiences, but suffered ideologically charged criticism and censorship at the indigenous Taiwan Golden Horse film festival. Although the animation was a hallmark in the history of Taiwan\u2019s indigenous animation production, its content about ghosts and mediators, or the so-called \u201canomalies, strength, disorder, and spirits\u201d (guai li luan shen<\/em>) were deemed as counterproductive and harmful for children under twelve, the projected audience for animation. This repressive and largely Confucian moral and didactic discourse in the governmental rationale about Grandma\u2019s Ghosts <\/em>fails to address the film\u2019s innovative take on animation for adult audiences, nor does it respond to the market\u2019s demand for more indigenous animation works.<\/p>\n

The animation film focuses on hauntological subjects, that is, the wandering ghosts or the so-called \u201clonely souls and wild ghosts\u201d (gu hun ye gui<\/em>) who have ceased to exist in the human world and have not yet been given the chances of being reincarnated. These drifting souls include both deceased human beings as well as animal species, such as the snake Flat who was crushed by a truck, a helpless beached whale, Grandma\u2019s recently deceased friend, and many nameless ghosts taking temporary residence at her rustic home. They possess the molding mushrooms inside her house or even crumble into her toilet shed. The evil spirits were carefully sealed into jars by Daoist talisman and allocated separately to a small hut. In stark contrast with the modern urban apartment building that Doudou lives in, Grandma\u2019s village, located near the seaport of Keelung, represents a hauntological landscape. To the lonely Doudou, left behind by his travelling parents and unwilling to be considered akin to a wandering ghost, the rural space may first appear to be a \u201cnon-place\u201d with no facilities of modern life. Even Grandma herself first appears against the backdrop of a stormy light as a surreal, ghost-like figure. And yet, the animation represents Doudou at the threshold of a new epistemic journey, knowing, perceiving, and interacting with the ghosts in this seemingly alienated terrestrial sphere, not yet<\/em> understanding his own connection to it.<\/p>\n

The haunted village is by no means a romanticized, homogenized space. The deserted site of the boat manufacturing factory, a haunted site of industrial ruins, is taken by the demonic feline as its territory, thereby posing a threat to the weak and peripheral ghosts. Illustrated with a robotic, monstrous, and ever-enlarging body, the possessed cat refuses to be reborn as a human being, but rather seeks boundless power by devouring the souls of the deceased and the living, mechanizing soulless wild animals as weaponized zombies. This automated monstrous predator could represent the destructive forces of modernization, haunting and preying on the human world, breaking the bridging path between life and the ethereal world, thus annihilating the possibilities of transformation and rebirth. Whereas some traditional fantastic narratives portray ghosts as \u201cagents of the past\u201d who seek revenge, redemption, or justice, the animation under discussion represents the ghosts also as haunted subjects who are subject to fear, weakness, inability of communication, and who are often victims of an abuse of power.<\/p>\n

Inherent in the story is the Daoist belief of pity and sympathy for others. The power of redemption, for those haunted subjects, ultimately rests with human beings\u2019 moral and ethical decisions. Grandma\u2019s ritualistic praying and practices at the Ghost Festival (Chungyuan Festival, on lunar July 15) offers the wandering ghosts opportunities to achieve redemption and enter their afterlives. The handmade water lanterns function as vehicles for the departed to travel on the river between the human world and the ethereal world. The human characters\u2019 ability to see the ghosts is mobilized by emotive sympathy. Wishing to turn the grandma the exorciser into a haunted one herself, the cat demon asks Doudou to collect three drops of Grandma\u2019s tears and sell her as a loveless, abandoned one. By wetting his own eyes with grandma\u2019s tears, Doudou would be able to see the wandering ghosts himself, just like his grandma. Noticeably, in this dramatized scene, the cat demon conjures an illusion of material comfort (a house for Doudou and his parents) and proposes betraying human trust and emotions for individual gain (selling grandma for the sake of Doudou\u2019s nuclear family). As illustrated in Doudou\u2019s evoked hallucination, materialism is represented as a haunting threat to familial and kinship relationships. Ultimately, Doudou\u2019s sympathy for the devoured ghosts and love for his grandma overcomes his private desire for material goods (toys, gifts, and parents\u2019 doting attentions). Whereas Grandma practices magic to exorcise evil forces and shepherd the weak ghosts through their atrocious journeys to rebirth, Doudou\u2019s eventual triumph against the monster feline is much attributed to his \u201cFive-Thunder Palms\u201d which pierce the monster with authentic human qi<\/em> and disintegrate his immense form.<\/p>\n

In traditional western animations, a ghost is often illustrated as \u201ca semitransparent, filmy, drifting being. It may not have legs or arms; its entire body could resemble cloth with no body underneath.\u201d[14]<\/a> A ghost is marked by its unique movement across space. \u201cThe head might lead the action and pull the drifting body along almost as if moving through water. Effective ghosts might be animated using invertebrates (land or sea) as inspiration.\u201d[15] <\/a>Among the numerous examples, one recalls Casper in the theatrical cartoon Casper the Friendly Ghost <\/em>(1945), in which Casper the ghost is depicted as a wandering child seeking to make friends with others, rather than to frighten people like adult ghosts. Casper could \u201cfly, move through solid objects like walls and turn invisible.\u201d[16] <\/a>The voices of the ghost in animation often reflect the character\u2019s personality. Jack Mercer who voiced the ghosts in television cartoons provided the ghostly voices for Casper the Friendly Ghost<\/em>. When the ghost was put on trial in \u201cNot Ghoulty\u201d (Paramount Cartoon Studios, 1959), Mercer\u2019s ghost shouted to a jury full of ghosts, \u201cCasper is on trial because he always breaks our ghostly laws! He will not shriek or boo or scare, he wants to make friends everywhere.\u201d[17]<\/a> The ghostly characters in these animations differ from traditionally haunting or creepy ghost images, but rather use their supernatural powers to good purposes.<\/p>\n

Hauntology is \u201ca fundamental refutation of ontology.\u201d[18] <\/a>Michael Peter Schofield rightly observes that in the hauntology of media, viewers and critics, rather than looking for fixed definitions of forms and practices, should explore \u201chow moving images are haunted by their origin in stills photography; how digital media is haunted by its analogue forbears; and how contemporary animation practices are haunted by earlier techniques, and crucially, our fuzzy memories of them on screen.\u201d[19] <\/a>The animatic, Alan Cholodenko argues, \u201cis the uncanny reanimation of the dead as living dead, of what after Jacques Derrida we call lifedeath.\u201d[20] <\/a>Animation is \u201cthe hauntological root of all moving images — an illusion of \u2018moving forms as shadows, spectres\u2019.\u201d[21] <\/a>The hauntological strategies and appropriations in film editing and sound production in cel animation bear traces of indexicality, in evoking references to a past or the departed that could be brought back to life through miracles and magic. However, Schofield observes, \u201canimation\u2019s real link to the past, or even the authenticity of the associated memory is not as important as affect when it comes to haunting — that the ghosts must resonate with us somehow, with some prior experience, a feeling of loss rather than any specific meaning.\u201d[22]<\/a> The materiality of vintage animation bears similarity with the \u201cauratic decay of aging photographs\u201d although that what is indexed on it is rather illusory.[23]<\/a><\/p>\n

Hauntological aesthetics also could be \u201can allegory of knowledge.\u201d[24]<\/a> Hauntological art or art that induces a hauntological reading or aesthetic effects could be considered as \u201chaving two stages, or layers.\u201d[25]<\/a> The first layer presents \u201csomething that\u2019s in some way idealized — this is often but not always an image involving the past,\u201d an enchanting image that is often dissociated from its historical context. The second \u201chauntological layer\u201d complicates, challenges, and exceeds the first layer, \u201cundermining or damaging it in some way and introducing irony into the work, and represents the opinionated viewpoint of the present.\u201d[26]<\/a> To a certain extent, Grandma and Her Ghosts<\/em> epitomizes the city child Doudou\u2019s epistemic encounter with the \u201chauntological layer\u201d beneath the modernization discourse on the first layer, that is, the spectral aura of traditional rustic values, practices, and lifestyle that sets off, ironizes, and disrupts the materialistic promises of happiness in individual lives.<\/p>\n

Grandma and Her Ghosts <\/em>bespeaks animation\u2019s potential of facilitating the affect of paramnesia through hauntological imaginations. Paramnesia, as a much-contested term, has been considered as referring to \u201cdisturbance of memory in which real facts and fantasies are confused.\u201d[27] <\/a>Paramnesia bespeaks a weak or erroneous associative tendency, characterized by losses of emotive memories or misidentifications. Some describe the symptom of paramnesia as pathological \u201cassociation of the present with the past (d\u00e9j\u00e0 vu), or excessive dissociation of the present from the past.\u201d[28] <\/a>The colossal cat demon in the animation afflicts paramnesia upon Doudou\u2019s character, and through staging false illusions poses a threat to the familial relations between him and Grandma. Ghostly characters, such as Grandma\u2019s deceased neighbor, the Whale, the snake, and the homeless girl Apple, rather than being represented as mere fantastical beings, each has a story and carries emotive bonds with family and friends who are alive. Ironically, human beings themselves often suffer paramnesia and can neither perceive these ghosts nor establish connections with them, except for a few characters, including Grandma, Ah Min, and Doudou. In the animation, one\u2019s ability to see these ghosts represents an ability to establish emotive associations with the past. Losing such abilities could be traumatic (such is the case of Ah Min when he loses the sight of the Whale\u2019s spirit and other ghostly characters as he grows up). The ultimate crisis in the story takes place when the colossal robot-like demon threatens to devour all spirited beings, ghosts, animals, and human beings, and turning all into paramnesiatic beings incapable of achieving any form of emotive associations with reality or each other. The animation could be interpreted as an unwitting allegory of urban inhabitants\u2019 paramnesiatic loss of personal, emotive, and communal associations with Taiwan\u2019s indigenous lifestyles and practices in an alienating postindustrial environment. The animation ends on a more hopeful note, depicting Doudou carrying on the family practice of destroying demon spirits, and returning again to visit and stay at Grandma\u2019s house the next summer.<\/p>\n

The animation\u2019s take on hauntological aesthetics and its articulation of anti-consumerism is compellingly displayed in Doudou\u2019s interlinked dreams after agreeing to \u201csell his grandma\u201d under the evil black cat\u2019s persuasion. Bespeaking Doudou\u2019s anxiety about the spectrality of materialism, both of his dreams constitute the so-called \u201chauntological layer\u201d of the animation which \u201cproblematizes, compromises and obfuscates the first layer\u201d (in this animation Doudou\u2019s materialist illusion), \u201cundermining or damaging it in some way and introducing irony\u201d into the character\u2019s point of view.[29] <\/a>At the beginning, Doudou dreams of himself as a toy vendor selling a kind of self-invented doll called \u201cgrandma toys\u201d to several children of his age. He is pushing a small vendor\u2019s cart which has walking paws like those of a disembodied, lurid animal. The dream bespeaks a nostalgic longing for his urban life, its material comforts, and the plentiful supply of children\u2019s toys. It turns out that the kind of doll that he is selling is none other than a miniature of Grandma herself dressed in a doll\u2019s outfit, with a bizarre sword and a shield as decorations. When chided as being \u201cugly,\u201d the toy-size Grandma jumps out of the plastic box and, in a rage, strikes Doudou\u2019s forehead with the artificial sword. In an immediately ensuing dream, Doudou finds himself confronting a blazing, impious enormous monster vaguely reminiscent of the body of the trash-collector, who only buys \u201cabandoned things\u201d and demands that Doudou sells him his Grandma. He grabs a round pendant from Doudou\u2019s necklace, from which Grandma jumps out and transforms into an invincible muscular boxer and defeats a mechanical demon in a digital game. The monster, enraged that Doudou has cheated him, grabs Doudou in his gigantic fists, extends tens and thousands of gripping sinister tendrils, and asks Doudou to sell his own useless self to him. The most ominous part of the dream is the monster\u2019s mocking remark that Doudou himself is \u201can utterly useless thing,\u201d a ghoul-like inept being with no substance and value. This hauntological encounter prompts Doudou to volunteer to help Grandma with her vending business. The specter of consumerism invades Doudou\u2019s dream world and demands that he reflect on his choice and judgement of right and wrong, innocence and guilt. Notably, in both dreams Grandma is a powerful exorciser whose force defeats the demons and wakens the grandson from his illusions.<\/p>\n

Elements of the hauntological setting of the village in contrast against the bustling urban space could be found through numerous nostalgic or even obsolete on-screen objects and spatial arrangements. In contrast against the compartmentalized apartment buildings where neighboring families are separated, Grandma\u2019s home is a traditional brick and tile construction with a courtyard, characteristic of early Taiwanese houses. As critics observe, the interior of the house also consists of vintage furniture and traditional spatial divisions. Utensils for daily usage at Grandma\u2019s house, including various kinds of earth pots and basins, are characteristic of traditional rural lifestyle.[30] <\/a>The animation opens with a scene of four elderly rural women, who are ghosts themselves, making the death robe for the dying neighbor grannie at a table at Grandma\u2019s house, with the grannie herself participating in making her own death gown. The eerie scene, cast in a sheer and dazzling deific light from an opening in the roof, is however reminiscent of the early Taiwanese tradition of women participating in manufacture work at home. Spatial arrangements in the village, including the public phone booth, and telephone at Grandma\u2019s house, as well as Ah Min\u2019s blue-and-white sandals and his bike are all evocative markers of earlier Taiwanese village life and grassroots culture.[31] <\/a>On top of this nostalgic setting, the characters\u2019 vocations represent traditional life and work style, as illustrated by Grandma\u2019s work as a Daoist shaman and a street vendor, and by the character working as a recycler of abandoned items.[32] <\/a>At the beginning of the animation, we witness these translucent wandering ghosts emerge from Grandma\u2019s house and disappear into the sky, when the grandma chases them away so that her grandson Doudou would not be scared.<\/p>\n

The mysterious moonlit village activates a hauntological imagination of the viewer and recalls a time of yore when the ghoulish and the macabre co-existed with living beings and frequently intruded in everyday life. As Chia-ju Chang insightfully observes, the animation envisions that \u201cthe harmony of the eco-community is actualized via the hybridity of human beings and nonhuman animals, and the participation of the invisible realm — a symbolic gesture of positive human and nonhuman animal interconnectedness.\u201d[33]<\/a> This supernatural vision \u201cis enacted by way of a folk ritual that warrants the continuity of all sentient beings.\u201d[34] <\/a>In this enchanted world, ghostly characters, whether they are newly deceased human beings or animals, loom and search on their wandering sojourns driven by personal desire. The water lanterns carry the haunted ones to their desired destinations. The recently expired grannie insists on having a photo of her deceased husband on the paperhouse lantern so that she could be reunited with him in the underworld. The whale yearns to ride a water lantern and visit his family. The animation\u2019s rendering of the Daoist ritual of making and releasing the water lanterns into the sea embodies a hauntological imagination as the audience, along with Doudou and Grandma, see off the ghosts on their voyages to rejoin their loved ones. Whereas at the beginning of the story, the sea embodies the agonizing separation of Doudou and his mother from his travelling father, the indigenous practice of releasing the water lanterns gestures toward the possibility of healing and family reunion. Through the description of Doudou\u2019s friend Ah Min, the audience knows that the stranded whale was discovered lying dead at the sea shore, signifying an underlying ecological predicament hovering over the idyllic seaside village. Likewise, Flat the snake was crushed by a cargo truck which rushes through a red light, subtly indicating the loss of social ethics in an age of rapid economic development.<\/p>\n

Among the indispensable aspects of the animation film\u2019s hauntological aesthetics are the experiments of sound, voice, and music. In hauntological aesthetics, the ghost embodies the estranged, unheard, unspeakable other. \u201cThe ghost\u2019s secret is not a puzzle to be solved; it is the structural openness or address directed towards the living by the voices of the past or the not yet formulated possibilities of the future.\u201d[35] <\/a>Of all the phantasmagoric characters in the film, the most disconcerting one is the rapt and ominous cat demon with its menacing high-pitched voice (dubbed by Jeffery Hsu), \u201cI will sell your Grandma away!\u201d Whereas in the Japanese animation tradition, voices are often recorded after the animation is done, in the case of Grandma and Her Ghosts<\/em>, the voices of the characters were recorded based on drafts of sketches of the story only, before the animation process was completed. This practice allowed the animators to prioritize the voice artists\u2019 performances (based on imagination of characters\u2019 mood in every scene) as constituents of the ensuing animating process. Granting the animators access to the dialogues spoken allows them to estimate the frame-by-frame timing of the delivery of the lines. Director Wang reflected on the process of voice performance, commenting that the voice actors for Doudou and the snake Flat actually performed the actions in the scenes in the process of dubbing. Technological practices in sound recording and editing unquestionably could bestow the animation\u2019s spectral and imagined rustic backdrop a form of aural existence or even a kind of sonic materiality. The spectral apparition of the animation\u2019s title following the opening spooky scene tosses in the Mandarin characters along with Taiwanese phonetic symbols in an eerie music. The prevalent usage of Taiwanese Hokkien by Grandma in her dialogue with ghostly characters and others around her emphasizes an ecologically affable indigenous linguistic context in a traditional agrarian society which precedes and overtakes the Mandarin-speaking urban social space; this indigenous linguistic context of a pre-industrial era constitutes part of a hauntological soundscape that resists being homogenized in the tidal wave of modernization.<\/p>\n

Music effects and songs in the animation enrich the eerie hauntological soundscape of the animation. When Doudou is about to leave at the end of his stay, the animation, in the nostalgic song \u201cFlying Baby,\u201d flashes back to Grandma\u2019s earlier memories of Doudou and her recent days of tears and laughter spent with her grandson, and her inevitable separation from him as the song ends, \u201copen my eyes, it is time to say goodbye.\u201d The song on departure and separation, an extradiegetic score (music out of the plot), contributes to the acoustic dimension of the film with an alienating effect as the viewers, along with Grandma in the story, ponder the imminent separation when Grandma and Doudou share a brief moment of happiness on their bike ride. The melodies of the song buttress together Grandma\u2019s recollections of her daughter\u2019s departure after marriage, the joy of seeing Doudou\u2019s infant photo, and her recent times spent with the grandson. The soundscape of the animation haunts the characters in the story as well as the viewers, weaving together specters of the pasts with their present moments. The title of the song \u201cFlying Baby,\u201d besides addressing the disintegration of rural families in a rapidly modernizing society, also foreshadows the inevitable departure of the roving ghostly characters (be it Grandma\u2019s friend, the snake, or the beached whale) on their journey to rebirth. Meandering in and out of the story, the melody could signify joy of seeing and interacting with the apparitions (as when the stranded whale first soars into sky when learning walking with Ah Min and Doudou), or indicate the characters\u2019 sorrows when they bid farewell to the ghosts (as when the freed spirits eventually depart on the path of reincarnation). Reminiscent of the song\u2019s title, the whale\u2019s translucent and freely flying spirit in the end assures reunion with his human friends, for, as Grandma says, \u201cAnimals have good memories.\u201d The hauntological dimension of the story eventually promises a form of narrative closure, that is, a capsule of memories in the future days of yore.<\/p>\n

Whereas the film has been hailed as a hallmark of indigenous Taiwanese animation, the animation commits to ample experimental innovations in animation techniques. Notably, as several scenes in the animation display, juxtaposed with indigenous cultural elements are frequent evocations of postmodern sci-fi tropes. An iconic site of industrial ruins, the abandoned boat factory which the cat demon occupies, is illustrated as postmodern hauntological architecture, its remnants silhouetted against the dark skyline indicating the bankruptcy of utopian, modernist idealism. Rather than evoking or renewing alternatives of hope, a hauntological architecture \u201cmakes a point of deconstructing the old, defunct and \u2018untrue\u2019 rather than merely reviving it.\u201d[36] <\/a>In Grandma\u2019s words, the forsaken factory is presented as \u201ca place with the strongest force of yin<\/em>,\u201d an abject locale that bespeaks the expense and failed promises of modernization. As hauntological architecture, it is an uncanny construction that \u201cshows the past as it exists and is perceived from inside the present.\u201d[37] <\/a>Against this postmodern setting of industrial ruins, the feline-shaped demon gains its full form as a colossal, metalized, and ever amassing monster who, denied the possibility of reincarnation because of evil doings in his previous life, avidly seeks to attain absolute freedom as a penultimate fiend against all spirited existences, a non-dead apparition with no memory, emotionality, or desire for self-redemption and resurrection. Confessing that \u201cI never spit out things I swallow,\u201d the insatiable and terrifying monster is none other than an embodiment of the materialistic giant in Doudou\u2019s previous dream. The robot-like zombie cats, whose souls were devoured alive by the demon, are weaponized as automated deployments in violent attacks of Grandma, Ah Min, and Doudou who are attempting to save the devoured ghosts and souls. In the final confrontation between Doudou and the demon, after Doudou defeats the fiend with his Five-Thunder Palms, the demon disintegrates in blinding beams of light. The camera swiftly shifts to a distanced view of the deserted boat factory which first casts out speedy neon beams of pink, red, yellow, and blue, then explodes in a massive mushroom-shaped cloud of debris accompanied by a giant ethereal ring of light. Gothic and rapidly superimposed neon lights of yellow, pink, and red were used earlier in the violent scene when the black cat devours the green-colored ghostly spirits in the jars in Grandma\u2019s storage room. The explosion scene intensifies the hauntological visual impact staging the eventual annihilation of the phantom fiend along with the vile territory that he resides in. The exploded boat factory, a site of industrial ruins, represents not so much a repressed past, but rather a self-destructive specter of materialism and what John Riley calls \u201cfailed futures.\u201d[38] <\/a>The dystopian image of the explosion indicates environmental disasters and damage inflicted upon the haunted indigenous ecological system despite the triumphant discourses of modernization and rapid economic expansion.<\/p>\n

To conclude, hauntology, John A. Riley observes, \u201cwith its focus on spectral traces and uncanny discontinuities, can fix our attention on these moments and help us to determine how they are relevant to our ongoing sociopolitical moment.\u201d[39] <\/a>Grandma and Her Ghosts<\/em> offers a reflexive gaze at the out-of-joint social and ethical values rooted in traditional agrarian communities and their cultures as sources of empowerment, but also ironizes the techno-futuristic discourses of modernization and industrial revolution. And yet, the film\u2019s courageous search for re-territorializing Taiwanese animation in the global animation industry is part of an arduous and prolonged journey. In a 2018 interview, animator Mai Ren-jie, who contributed to the characterization of Grandma as a Daoist priestess and to the animation story boards, mentioned his thwarted wish that he could have been listed as an animation director of Grandma and Her Ghosts<\/em>, side by side with the filmmaker Wang Shau-di, to prove that Taiwan\u2019s professional animation industry could produce a successful indigenous animation work rather than relying on non-specialist filmmakers. This request was denied by Rice Film International Co., Ltd because of Mai\u2019s lack of a college-level education.[40]<\/a> In December 2020, twenty-three years after the release of Grandma and Her Ghosts<\/em>, Taiwan Film and Audiovisual Institute launched a project to seek funding for preservation and digital restoration of this classic animation. The recent decade has witnessed a new wave of Taiwanese animation, including On Happiness Road<\/em> (Golden Horse best animation feature, 2017), City of Lost Things<\/em> (2020), and Secret Weapon<\/em> (Golden Horse best animation short film 2019), among others. The return of Grandma and Her Ghosts<\/em> in a digital restoration could be all the more exhilarating and momentous for critics, viewers, and fans alike in re-envisioning Taiwan\u2019s animation industry, its histories, and the changing ecologies of indigenous animation production in the future decades. <\/p>\n

[1]<\/a> Silvio, 26-27.<\/p>\n

[2]<\/a> Silvio, 11.<\/p>\n

[3]<\/a> Silvio, 168.<\/p>\n

[4]<\/a> Silvio, 168.<\/p>\n

[5] <\/a>Herhuth, 2018.<\/p>\n

[6]<\/a> Eisenstein, 21.<\/p>\n

[7] <\/a>Fisher, 2012.<\/p>\n

[8]<\/a> Derrida,161.<\/p>\n

[9] <\/a>H\u00e4gglund, 82.<\/p>\n

[10]<\/a> Fisher, 19<\/p>\n

[11]<\/a> Fisher, 19.<\/p>\n

[12]<\/a> Teng et. al, 11.<\/p>\n

[13]<\/a> Teng et. al, 13.<\/p>\n

[14] <\/a>Beiman, 186.<\/p>\n

[15] <\/a>Beiman, 186.<\/p>\n

[16] <\/a>Cawley &Korkis, 1990.<\/p>\n

[17] <\/a>Grandinetti, 2007.<\/p>\n

[18] <\/a>H\u00e4gglund, 82.<\/p>\n

[19] <\/a>Schofield, 25.<\/p>\n

[20]<\/a> Cholodenko, 10.<\/p>\n

[21]<\/a> Ibid.<\/p>\n

[22] <\/a>Schofield, 35.<\/p>\n

[23]<\/a> Ibid.<\/p>\n

[24]<\/a> Harper, 2009.<\/p>\n

[25]<\/a> Ibid.<\/p>\n

[26]<\/a> Ibid. <\/p>\n

[27] <\/a>Sno, 339.<\/p>\n

[28] <\/a>Ibid.<\/p>\n

[29] <\/a>Harper, 2009.<\/p>\n

[30]<\/a> Yu, 65; Yeh and Wang, 242-243.<\/p>\n

[31] <\/a>Yu, 66;  Yeh and Wang, 242-243.<\/p>\n

[32] <\/a>Yu, 67-68; Yeh and Wang, 242-243.<\/p>\n

[33]<\/a> Chang, 266.<\/p>\n

[34]<\/a> Chang, 266.<\/p>\n

[35] <\/a>Davis, 378-379.<\/p>\n

[36] <\/a>Harper, 2009.<\/p>\n

[37]<\/a> Harper, 2009.<\/p>\n

[38]<\/a> Riley, 19.<\/p>\n

[39]<\/a> Riley, 18.<\/p>\n

[40] <\/a>Mai, 2018.<\/p>\n

Bibliography<\/strong><\/p>\n

Beiman, Nancy. Animated Performance: Bringing Imaginary Animal, Human and Fantasy Characters to Life<\/em>. London: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2017.<\/p>\n

Cawley, John, and Jim Korkis, edited. \u201cCasper.\u201d In Cawley and Korkis, Encyclopedia of Cartoon Superstars<\/em>. Ephraim, WI: Pioneer Books, 1990. URL: http:\/\/www.cataroo.com\/cst_CASPER.html<\/a><\/p>\n

Chang, Chia-Ju. \u201cPutting Back the Animals: Woman-Animal Meme in Contemporary Taiwanese Ecofeminist Imagination.\u201d In Sheldon H. Lu and Jiayan Mi edited. Chinese Ecocinema: In the Age of Environmental Challenge<\/em>. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2009. 255-269.<\/p>\n

Cholodenko, Alan. \u201c(The) Death (of) the Animator, or: The Felicity of Felix; Part II: A Difficulty in the Path of Animation Studies.\u201d Animation Studies<\/em> 2 (2007): 9-16.<\/p>\n

City of Lost Things<\/em>. Directed by Yee Chih-yen, written by Yee Chih-yen. 1 Production Film, Gamania Digital Entertainment Company, Taichung Film Development Foundation, 2020.<\/p>\n

Davis, Colin. \u201cHauntology, Spectres and Phantoms.\u201d French Studies<\/em> 59.3 (2005): 373-379.<\/p>\n

Derrida, Jacque. Specters of Marx: The State of the Debt, the Work of Mourning and the New International<\/em>. New York: Routledge, 1994.<\/p>\n

Eisenstein, Sergei. Eisenstein on Disney<\/em>. Calcutta: Seagull Books, 1986.<\/p>\n

Fisher, Mark. \u201cWhat is Hauntology?\u201d Film Quarterly<\/em> 66.1 (2012): 16-24.<\/p>\n

Grandinetti, Fred. Jack Mercer, the Voice of Popeye<\/em>. Albany, GA: Bearmanor Media, 2007.<\/p>\n

Grandma and Her Ghosts<\/em>. Directed by Wang Shau-di, written by Huang Li-ming, performed by Jeffery Hsu, Wen Ying. Rice Film International Co., Ltd, 1998.<\/p>\n

H\u00e4gglund, Martin. Radical Atheism: Derrida and the Time of Life<\/em>. Stanford University Press, 2008.<\/p>\n

Harper, Adam. \u201cHauntology: The Past Inside the Present.\u201d Rouge\u2019s Foam: Excessive Aesthetics.<\/em> October 27, 2009. Accessed January 29, 2021. URL: http:\/\/rougesfoam.blogspot.com\/2009\/10\/hauntology-past-inside-present.html<\/a><\/p>\n

Herhuth, Eric. \u201cThe Ontology, An-Ontology, and Hauntology of Animation.\u201d Animationstudies 2.0. <\/em>December 31, 2018. Accessed January 28, 2021. URL: https:\/\/blog.animationstudies.org\/?p=2818<\/a><\/p>\n

Mai, Ren-jie.\u201cOn Animators in Taiwan: An Interview with Mai Ren-jie.\u201dStar EToday<\/em>, April 3, 2018. Accessed January 20, 2021. <\/p>\n

On Happiness Road<\/em>. Directed by Sung Hsin-yin, written by Sung Hsin-yin, performed by Gwei Lun-mei, Te-sheng Wei, Bor Jeng Chen. Ablaze Image, 2017.<\/p>\n

Riley, John A. \u201cHauntology, Ruins, and the Failure of the Future in Andrei Tarkovsky\u2019s Stalker<\/em>.\u201d Journal of Film and Video<\/em> 69.1 (2017): 18-26.<\/p>\n

Schofield, Michael Peter. \u201cRe-Animating Ghosts: Materiality and Memory in Hauntological Appropriation.\u201d International Journal of Film and Media Arts<\/em> 4.2 (2019): 24-37.<\/p>\n

Secret Weapon<\/em>. Directed by Fish Wong. Chimney Animation, 2019.<\/p>\n

Silvio, <\/em>Teri. Puppets, Gods, and Brands: Theorizing the Age of Animation from Taiwan<\/em>. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2019. <\/p>\n

Sno, Herman N. \u201cD\u00e9j\u00e0 vu and jamais vu.\u201d In German E. Berrios and John R. Hodges, eds. Memory Disorders in Psychiatric Practice<\/em>. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000. 338-347.<\/p>\n

Teng, Cathy, Chuang Kung-ju. Translated by Scott Williams. \u201cOriginal Animation from Taiwan: Telling Our Own Stories.\u201d In Taiwan Panorama<\/em> 1 (2019): 8-17.<\/p>\n

Yeh, Jen-Chieh, and Lan-Ting Wang. \u201cUsing Animation Images to Investigate the Visual Communication of Taiwanese Cultural Elements.\u201dJournal of CAGST. <\/em>June 1, 2015, 235-250.<\/p>\n

Yu, Jo-Sien. A Research on Mandarin Digital Teaching Material: Folk Culture in Grandma and Her Ghosts<\/em>. Master Thesis. Taichung: National Taichung University of Education, 2019.<\/p>\n

Bio:<\/strong><\/p>\n

Li Guo (associate professor) teaches Chinese language, literature, culture, and Asian literatures at the Utah State University. Her interests in scholarship include late imperial and modern Chinese women’s narratives, folk literature, film, and comparative literature. Guo\u2019s research displays an interdisciplinary approach, bridging women and gender studies, narrative theory, vernacular literatures and cultures, bringing an innovative perspective to traditional, text-based analysis of tanci<\/em> fiction. She is the author of Women\u2019s Tanci Fiction in Late Imperial and Early Twentieth-Century China<\/em> (Purdue University Press, 2015), and Writing Gender in Early Modern Chinese Women\u2019s Tanci Fiction<\/em> (Purdue University Press, forthcoming 2021). Her articles appeared in Modern Chinese Literature and Culture <\/em>(MCLC<\/em>, <\/em>2019), Frontiers of Literary Studies in China <\/em>(FLSC<\/em>, <\/em>2011, 2014), Tulsa Studies in Women’s Literature<\/em> (2014), CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture <\/em>(2013), Film International<\/em> (2012), and a forthcoming essay in Prism: Theory and Modern Chinese Literature<\/em> (2021). She has co-edited special issues for MCLC <\/em>(2019), Journal of Chinese Cinemas <\/em>(2017), FLSC <\/em>(2014, 2017), and CLCWeb <\/em>(2013).  <\/p>\n\r\n\t\t