A Discussion on the Narrative Strategy and Aesthetic Experience of Documentary Films in Taiwan - Taking Taiwan Public Television Service’s Documentaries of Education Reform Series-“Mirror, Mirror on the Wall” and “Nine Lives” as Examples
A Discussion on the Narrative Strategy and Aesthetic Experience of Documentary Films in Taiwan - Taking Taiwan Public Television Service’s Documentaries of Education Reform Series-“Mirror, Mirror on the Wall” and “Nine Lives” as Examples
Weitsy Wang
Abstract
On April 10th, 1994, the first mass demonstration demanding educational reform marched through the streets of Taipei. The movement was later known as “The 410 Demonstration for Education Reform”. A decade later, Taiwan Public Television Service’s View Point program called on in-house directors and independent filmmakers to produce a series of documentaries on education reform, i.e. the Documentaries of Education Reform series. A total of twelve documentaries were made featuring issues pertaining to education reform, including ability grouping in junior high schools, spoon-fed education, corporal punishment, hair regulation, teaching approaches, a school principal’s idea of how to orun a school, student teacher relationship, and teaching English to preschool children. They are Cry Out Loud, Don’t Cry Principal, Fairy Tale Theater, People with Nine Lives, Mirror, Mirror on the Wall, There’s Light on the Roof, Hsia Hsia’s Contact Book, Carry Your Head to School, I Love Little Devils, Teacher, and Finding Sheep in New Zealand. From subject matter to filming approach, from aesthetic technique to documentary ethics, these films sparked fierce debate between parents, students, education professionals and the media to the extent questioning the essence of documentaries.
This essay takes a rare view of the diversity and rich variety of the aesthetics of Taiwan’s documentary films to re-evaluate the PTS Documentaries of Education Reform series. Critical segments are selected from a number of films to explore how documentary film styles such as “the performative mode”, “the poetic mode”, and “the expository mode” are applied and handled in the series. Innovative narrative strategies including the use of animation, opera, inner monologues, empty shots (空景描述), opposing shots (對立剪輯), separation of time and space (時空抽離), scenario creation, musical narrative, unfolding of emotions, memory playbacks and voice-over commentary are also investigated in detail.
Key words:
Documentaries of Education Reform series, documentary aesthetics, documentary approaches, narrative strategy
I. Introduction
(Taipei) A second year Banciao junior high school student in Taipei County was punished for arriving late to a group assembly a few days ago. The Section Chief of Student Activities punished him by making him do three hundred stand-squat-stands. The boy only made it half way through before he suffered exhaustion and was unable to stand up again. He was in pain for two more days before finally seeing a doctor, who declared that he suffered from rhabdomyolysis (rapid breakdown of skeletal muscle due to injury to muscle tissue). The boy was immediately sent to the emergency room, where he was hospitalized for three days. His parents were infuriated with the Section Chief of Student Activities for excessive corporal punishment. The school has already admitted negligence on their part and stated that they would bear full responsibility. A reprimand has been issued to the Section Chief of Student Activities.
Principal Wu Ji-chu mentioned that last Tuesday the Section Chief of Student Activities summoned all class leaders to the Office of Student Affairs through the broadcasting system. The student, last name Lai, did not hear the message during recess because of the noise level on campus. He arrived late and was consequently ordered to do stand-squat-stands. He was halfway through when his strength failed him. Two days later, he could barely crouch or sit. He was taken to the hospital during school hours. Doctors found that his urine was deep brown in color and that he suffered from rhabdomyolysis. Principal Wu also mentioned that the teacher in question blames herself for his condition. The Teacher Performance Evaluation Commission has already issued a reprimand to the teacher yesterday .
This is a piece of news on corporal punishment in schools. The event took place right when I was writing this analysis report. It proves that corporal punishment has not been eliminated from schools after a decade of education reform. Another piece of news regarding corporal punishment in schools that attracted public attention also took place this year towards the end of March.
(Central News Agency, Taipei 26th)Bad Case of Corporal Punishment in Taipei. Two second grade student felt each other’s “birdies”. One of them was boxed in the ears nine times by the homeroom teacher. Taipei city councilor Liu Yao-ren exposed the incident at a press conference he organized today. The school has apologized. The teacher in question has been suspended and is now receiving psychological counseling.
The incident took place on the 17th of this month. The male homeroom teacher, named Lu, first accused the student, named Chang, of quibbling and slapped the latter three times in front of the whole class. Lu then dragged the boy by the ear and brought him to the Office of Student Affairs. On the way Chang managed to struggle free and hid in the restroom while he cowered and tried to explain. Lu grabbed him and boxed his ears again, this time six times.
Liu stated that Chang’s parents chose not to pursue for fear of hurting their child again. However, the school only gave the teacher a “demerit”, an injustice to the boy and his parents. Liu presented legal precedents regarding inappropriate physical punishment made by teachers in Taipei City schools. He also accused Lu of assault to the verge of child abuse and called him sick .
These random news events keep reminding me of the Documentaries of Education Reform series produced by the Public Television Service (PTS), who put much thought and effort into the series. This essay aims to bring attention to this series of documentaries once again and discuss the aesthetic perspectives and standpoints those wishing to produce documentaries along similar lines and themes could refer to.
Inspiration for the series came from an event a decade earlier. On April 10th, 1994, the first mass demonstration on education reform, later known as “The 410 Demonstration for Education Reform”, marched through the streets of Taipei. It was the first time the public took to the streets to demand reform in our educational system. College professors, housewives, students, and people from all walks of life made up the more than 30,000 demonstrators. They called for “more high schools and colleges”, “smaller classes and schools”, “modernize our education”, and asked for a “Educational Fundamental Act”. The former two aimed for complete reinvention of the educational structure and condition. I was one of the mothers in the masses. My son was eight years old that year.
Ten years later the Department of Education introduced the Nine-year Compulsory Curriculum and the Multi-route Promotion Program (MRPP) for entering senior high and senior vocational schools and colleges. These concrete reform measures attracted much public attention. Thanks to these policies, teachers were able to design their own lesson plans and teaching material. Students no longer depended solely on the one omnipotent exam that would determine their destiny. Nevertheless, Professor Hsia Chu-joe at Graduate Institute of Building and Planning at National University of Taiwan, who was also one of the demonstrators a decade earlier, criticized these reforms for their “serious lack of innovation at the structural level during the last ten years. The Department of Education did a ‘cheap reform’.” Professor Huang Guang-kuo at Department of Psychology, National University of Taiwan, another participant in the parade, also published the Education Reform Manifesto in which he bitterly denounced the added number of new colleges and simplified curriculum for lowering the quality of education. He also claimed that education reform was nothing but a populist dream . While many education professionals set about more detailed planning and discussion of sustainable development for education reform, PTS took its camera into school campuses and started its production of documentaries on education reform.
That year (2004), PTS commissioned both independent and in-house film directors to produce a series of documentaries on this topic. A total of twelve documentaries were made since then up until 2010 featuring issues including ability grouping in junior high schools, spoon-fed education, corporal punishment, hair regulation, teaching approaches, a school principal’s idea of how to run a school, student teacher relationship, and teaching English to preschool children. The production team at PTS originally intended to film encouraging models of the reform ten years after the latter was initiated to applaud frontline educators for their effort. However, upon arrival at the campus the team found that not only were the students grouped into different levels according to academic success, teachers were also grouped into levels and powerless. According to a survey by the Humanistic Education Foundation, in 2003 Yilan County was the only place in Taiwan where 100% of the students were grouped normally without consideration to academic achievement. Varying degrees of ability grouping existed in all the other counties and cities
Parents in Taiwan are all too familiar with the rigidity junior high education, frequent cramming and quizzes and exams, and the fact that all non-high school entrance exam related classes including physical education and health, art and culture, natural science and life technology, and integrative activity are suspended when students enter their third year in school. Teaching becomes focused on repeated exercises to improve students’ grades in the Basic Competence Test (BCT). How do the students feel about this warped and unbalanced learning environment? How do they communicate what they feel? I suppose most people are not strangers, accustomed even, to teachers who measure the length of your hair and your skirt with a ruler in one hand and hold a stick in another while calling out names and handing out test papers. Unfortunately, images documented before 2004 rarely heard, saw, or understood how these youngsters thought of the system. The PTS’s documentary series present truth from people’s memories. Some of it came from suppressed emotions. Some of the subjects were reluctant to be interviewed or filmed. Some of the content was controversial. This essay will discuss the creative imagination and diversity through selected segments from the series. The value of the documentaries is also examined from an ethnographic film research perspective.
II. Textual Analysis
1.Class Ability Grouping: Mirror, Mirror on the Wall（魔鏡）
This film observes class ability grouping in junior high schools through the camera. The system ensures that the best teaching resources are reserved for A-track classes while low-track classes can only pick the leftovers. Students in low-track classes are grouped, labeled, and discriminated against at a tender age despite the fact that their families pay their taxes just like everyone else. This may have a negative impact on how these kids identify with themselves. Furthermore, ability grouping not only assigns students into different levels, but also group teachers into different categories. There is little respect for the right for students in low-track classes to be educated. In an age of knowledge economy, nearly 70% of the students are intellectually abandoned by grown-ups while still in junior high school. Curriculum designed to give priority to academic achievement does not foster creative thinking nor cultivate innovation.
Storyboard
Prelude
△ A junior high school boy stands naked to the waist and looks out of the window into the distance
Naked to the waist boy (off the screen): Don’t know why I am so sad today. I feel so helpless, so sad, very sad. I feel so lonely even when I am surrounded by others. People are lonely. All those who look for companionship find companionship. I don’t know why they don’t think about how others would feel. Instead, they hurt people, mock people.
△A boy in junior high school uniform with a white mask
△Animation, a boy in shorts and naked to the waist flies into the sky
△He is chasing after several junior high school boys in the clouds. They all hold a red apple in their hands, but their eyes are empty lifeless black holes. Their expressions blank.
The Evil Queen sings opera-style: “mirror, mirror on the wall, who is the smartest kid in the school?”
△The Evil Queen appears sinisterly
The Evil Queen sings: only the smartest kids get my big red apple…
△The Evil Queen takes out a big red apple
△The boy naked from waist up takes the big red apple from the Evil Queen
The Evil Queen sings: big red apple…
△The boy stands alone high in the clouds. The group of boys with empty lifeless eyes with red apple in hand pale in comparison
The Evil Queen sings: big and red, beautiful apple…
△The naked boy raises the apple and takes a big bite without checking if it’s poisonous
The Evil Queen laughs sinisterly: hahaha, hahaha…
△The naked boy’s cute face turns blank and his eyes turn into empty black holes
The Evil Queen laughs merrily: hahaha, hahaha…
△Show film title “Mirror, Mirror on the Wall”
A person in the mirror sings: don’t be silly child, don’t be silly child, grown-ups want you to get good grades
△The mirror reflects a junior high school boy wearily trying to cram in a pile of text books he can never hope to finish.
Person in the mirror sings: the school counts on you for good results, forget your sadness, focus on getting the highest grades
△The mirror shows the rising and setting of the sun and the moon. The boy remains buried in his books. He looks exhausted and begins to lose weight until his head fell off.
Person in the mirror sings: but be careful of that big red apple, be aware ,be aware
△The moment he accepts the apple from the Evil Queen
△Shot dissolves to the entrance of a junior high school. Traffic is heavy on the busy street. There are traffic controllers at the entrance. The tone is grayish purple, as if the real world has lost color.
△The traffic island in front of the school is full of advertising banners erected by afterschool cram schools.
△(Fast motion) High angle shot on kids on their way to school.
△(Fast motion) High angle shot on junior high schools students walking zombie-like into a colorless campus as if they were swarms of ants.
△ (Fast motion) The campus starts a ghostly twirl around from the entrance to the playing field to the hallway.
The Evil Queen sings in an opera-like voice: mirror, mirror on the wall, who is the smartest kid in school? Who can make it into the A-track classes?
△A typical junior high school classroom in black and white. Everyone looks up at the chock-a-block blackboard to take down everything.
△A teacher shouts out a student’s name and asks a question.
△ (Fast montage) Shots of junior high school students in class or taking tests.
Chorus: how can you tell who is smart? How can you tell how is smart? Is it fair? (Repeat)
Person in mirror: does getting high grades mean you are smarter?
△Black and white images of junior high school students taking tests in the classrooms gradually turns into color.
△A bronze bust of Chiang Kai-shek at the school entrance
△An interview with the school principal (mainly about the school and his frustration with how local politicians interfere with class grouping and ask for favorable assignments.)
△Scene of students in class.
△Empty shot of the hallways.
△Animation. The Evil Queen comes out of the dark with a resentful expression.
The Evil Queen sings in an opera-like voice: ha, I am the Queen. Only I have the power, only I have the right to decide who gets in the “good classes” and who gets to teach the “good classes”. Give me your conscience in exchange, in exchange…
△Students reading aloud in class.
△An interview with the principal (mainly about how he was forced to pull his daughter off the A-track class roster to make space for a persistent local politician)
△Teachers talk about their strenuous work and heavy burden.
Male & Female chorus: work so hard, work so hard, I work so hard too. Teaching stupid kids is so hard.
△Students who sit in class and take tests lose color and turn into grayish purple tones.
△Students doze off in class.
△On the School Honor Roll is a list of names admitted to first choice high schools such as National Taichung First Senior High School and National Taichung Girls' Senior High School (melancholy blue tone).
△A group of students continue to study outside the exam site(purple tone)
Male & female chorus: students who get high marks are a precious treasure, we must never let any of them go, let’s group our students into good and bad, A and B (repeat)
△Contrasting images from split screens: in the hallways, A-track students studies in their seats in an orderly fashion. B-track students sit on the floor and doze off.
△Contrasting images from split screens: (fast motion) on the hallways A-track and B-track class students move in their own small groups and never mix together.
△An interview with B-track students who talk about being treated unfairly being discriminated against.
The film Mirror, Mirror on the Wall introduces a familiar character, the Evil Queen from the fairy tale Snow White. In the Queen’s hand is a mirror that controls the fate of junior high school students. She is the omnipotent evil force in Taiwan’s education system. She is the figure who determines the rules of the game behind the scenes. “Who is the smartest kid in our class? Who gets to eat the big red apple?” Parents will make every effort using both carrots and sticks to urge their children to work hard to win the “big red apple”. Students have no say in their own destiny. It is impossible to escape this fate when even adults are trapped by the system. They are labeled as “good” or “bad” before they are able to decide for themselves whether the apple is poisonous. They are forced to surrender their young, sunny, pretty souls and plunge into a harsh competition that knows no ends.
Ten years after education reform, a junior high school teacher drops to her knees at the school entrance to plead on the behalf of B-track students. Director Celestine Ding (丁曉菁) observes the lack of change in junior high schools and takes the news event as her starting point to make her film. In her film she uses the simple logic of fairy tales to uncover the complicated structural problems caused by overemphasis on academic achievement. The film also highlighted the mainstream value in schools that is indeed there despite widespread denial . Principals, teachers, and parents are all tempted to bargain with the devil in a game with rules set by an evil queen. The mirror on the wall gives away the secret: you can do it but you must not talk about it. Director Ding uses animation to create creepy scenes and scenes of temptation to present the irony of how grown-ups speak against their conscience. Conventional voice-over is sung in opera-like voices. These styles mostly fall under The Performative Mode (Nichols，2001), which serves to emphasize how serious the issue really is.
In addition to The Performative Mode, The Expository Mode is also applied in the film. However, instead of the conventional approach to using domineering spoken narratives or an authoritative voice of criticism as “God’s voice”, the director skillfully employs fiction figures such as the evil queen and bystanders to sing their perspective and express the director’s personal perceptions and opinions. The idea that there is a secret that must not be told turns out to be most ironic. It clings to the fact that schools continue to practice “class ability grouping” and yet we are reluctant to acknowledge its existence. The film constructs a debate from both sides through opera characters. All the grown-ups in the film are unaware the fact that ability grouping still prevails. The fact is there but we choose to avoid the subject. The opera-like style is similar to the narrator in epic theater. Poetry readings and dances are occasionally inserted into sections and scenes. The main goal, according to Bertolt Brecht, is that the audience is always aware that they are watching a play so that they would not be too involved in the story to lose critical perspective. In a similar manner there is also a narrator in Mirror, Mirror on the Wall who skillfully informs of the director’s point of views, students’ frustration, and teachers’ predicament through opera.
It is a bold touch for the director to apply the aesthetics of alienation effect and dialectical drama of epic theater in documentary films. The stage of an epic theater is purposely designed to rid of all aesthetic symbols of realism to make the audience aware that this is a “story” narrated by “actors” so that they will not empathize with the characters, which hinders “correct” judgment. This was during a time when the fourth wall theory dominated. Epic theater takes away stage symbols familiar to the audience and interferes with common theater narrative approaches. For example borders that hide lighting and sound systems and legs (side curtains) that create sense of entry and exit and illusion of space are all eliminated. The goal is to create an unfamiliar distance to foster conscious awareness: they are sitting in a “theater” to watch the “performance” on stage. The story is fictional. The only “truths” are the political ideas the playwright wishes to communicate .
In a similar manner Mirror, Mirror on the Wall boldly removes observation, participation, and voice-over commentary modes used to record facts commonly found in the typical documentary film. It purposely places the audience in a different viewing experience as if watching a seemingly fictional yet experientially real world through an uniquely “kaleidoscope”. To put it simply, Brecht arouses the spectator’s rationality through the process of “watching a performance” in order to serve the ultimate purpose of judging and reforming society. Director Ding claimed that after much consideration she eventually decided to use the third version at the last critical moment, which is the opera version we see now. This version is more intense because she is reluctant to make another documentary film devoid of a point of view (Interview by Chen Pei-ying, 2004) .
Director Ding notes that she saw how the teacher who taught B-level students burst into tears during an interview because the latter felt her students were treated unfairly. She also observes how teachers, principals, superintendent, county magistrates, and then incumbent Minister of Education evade and avoid the issue and ignore students’ right to education both in their responses and attitudes. This is why she ultimately decided to pick the controversial version in order to shed light on a problem that spans more than two decades and reduces students to a status similar to that of “fruit, vegetables, and poultry, groceries, who are selected, filtered, and certified to win honors for their school” (Interview by Chen Pei-ying, 2004). The production team adds a large number of aesthetic elements during post production to highlight the seriousness of the issue in a highly stylized manner that disrupts the way films are supposedly watched. The film shocked education professionals and schools at all levels. It also ignited much debate over the legitimacy of cameras on campus. The generous use of the performative technique in the film is in a way a bold challenge to the relatively conservative documentary discipline at the time with respect to its aesthetics and ethics. The film also raised many questions regarding the boundary between fiction and truth when “representing reality”.
The Performative Mode acknowledges that the world itself is complicated and in-depth understanding of the world can only be expressed through personal experience and subjective feelings. Therefore performative narrative is essential to the film because it attempts to represent the truth by mixing imaginative, unrestrained, and performative elements to guide the audience into the subjective world of the filmmaker. It is aimed to evoke audience reaction and participation. The performative narrative strategy is commonly used to tell stories of minority or underprivileged social groups, offering the chance to observe their world from a new perspective and with a new sense. This is built on the ideal that documentary films serve as a modifier of subjective public consciousness. In this respect it bears resemblance to the alienation effect of the epic theater. Both are meant to educate and to inspire so that the voices of minority groups could be heard. The aesthetic strategy and approach adopted, i.e. the alienation effect, serve not only artistic purposes but also more specifically to reform society.
2.Corporal punishment: People with Nine Lives (九命人) The documentary People with Nine Lives tell stories of corporal punishment on campus. Students who were victims of abusive teachers come forward to tell their personal stories and the trauma inflicted by these experiences.
Storyboard
△Flickering black and white screen with subtitles
Scene One: Ching-sheng (CS) and his junior high teacher on the phone (10 years later)
CS calls his junior high school teacher. He talks to his teacher about how the physical punishment he suffered in school still gives him nightmares up until this day. But the teacher not only responds by saying that he does not know who CS is but also suggests that if CS has issues he should see a therapist, not call his former teacher.
CS asks the teacher if he still punishes his students physically and wants him to stop beating his students. They talk about how on the eve of CS’s graduation he continued to sign and write class books despite being told not to and was therefore chastised. Obviously the teacher remembers what happened to CS. He hasn’t forgotten.
The teacher says he has not punished students physically for ten years, but CS insists that the teacher slapped him in the face. Both were indignant toward the end of their conversation. The teacher feels that it’s been so long and CS should just let it go. Why is CS asking him about this after all these years? The teacher gets more and more upset and says that such self-centered self-absorbed behavior will be duly punished.
△A long phone conversation. A long take on a flickering black and white scene. We manage to catch a faint glimpse of a statue of Confucius, taken from an angle, from between the overlapping scenes. The take is very long. Confucius continues to stand in the distance. The only thing that changes is the light and shadow.
Scene Two. Restaurant/CS, a grown-up young woman who was physically punished in school, and a middle-aged mother (the teacher is always right).
△Rainy Day. Blurred view of the street. Rain.
△From the French window we see it is raining outside and there are cars going by.
△Close-up on gold fish swimming in the fish tank.
△In the restaurant CS and the two women listen to the teacher blaming CS for past events.
Teacher (off screen, on the phone), “you need to face your own terror, don’t use the class book incident as your excuse.”
△The teacher hangs up angrily
△Film title appears. “People with Nine Lives”. Sound effects made by banging metal mingled with music create a creepy scary effect.
△The girl who was listening to the recorded call covers up her mouth and cries while sharing her experience.
The girl says that the most terrifying thing is that teachers who beat them manage to find excuses to behave like that and then lecture them. She feels wronged but never knows how to argue with the teachers. Teachers never listen to what students have to say. They are only interested in insisting what they believe to be right. .
△Long shaky shot as if the viewer is snooping. The camera watches the three people in the restaurant share their memory of and reaction to corporal punishment from a distance.
Scene Three. Children’s Bedroom. Four junior high school students and a mom. (Describe how school teachers beat them)
△Black flash card shows “9”
The girls talk about things teachers use to beat hem. There are plastic rulers, chair legs, wood sticks, or a slap in the face. Their teachers are irritable and short-tempered. They would grab and hit the victims without getting to the bottom of things first. Nor do they give students a chance to explain. They never apologize either. They are always in a bad mood. These teachers are still teaching in schools today. The mom is surprised to hear their complaint. She has never heard the kids talk about these things before. The reason is that they are used to being treated like this. They feel that there is nothing special to talk about.
△Black and white scene. Medium to close shot. Cramped children’s room. Close up filming without tripod. Shaky camera.
Scene Four. Café/ CS
CS is being interviewed in a café. He talks about his first days in junior high. The teacher asks him to come forward and then grabs his slightly long hair from behind, gives it a hard tug, whirls him around, and warns the rest of the class that no one will appear in school with long hair like this the next day. This marks the beginning of three years of corporal punishment.
△A long hallway in the classroom. The light flashes and then dims alternately. It sways into a dark corner. There’s a feeling of fear and uneasiness.
△Cloud in the sky
△Black and white human heads tied up firmly with ropes and white cloth. A pair of scissors starts cutting the rope.
△Slow motion. A football kicked into the air starts its descent. Sound of thunder.
△A person in black with a large key in hand sways on screen. Sound of thunder.
△The screen dims and then lights up and then dims to create a creepy atmosphere.
CS recalls that the teacher asked him to take his glasses off and then boxed his ears really hard four times. Left, right, left, right. The teacher leaves. The whole class is silent. CS cannot stop crying. His classmates keep handing him tissue from all sides. He cried for the entire class period. It is really hard for him to forget this incident.
△Medium shot. A man holds out his palm in the dark. There’s a crystal cube on his palm made by special effects reflecting the swift movement of clouds in the sky.
△Sound of crowd whispering in the background.
Scene V. Café/CS. (Beaten but still grateful)
CS mentions that the teacher often said he was doing the students a favor by disciplining them. As a result many students are deceived into thinking that they should be grateful for his harshness. CS believes that this is wrong.
△Black and white, low angle. A tall staircase.
△Close up. A small child with the numbers 7718999 stuck to his forehead.
△Close up. The child watches intently as a person drags an iron chain through deserted land.
△Close up. Light turns black and white alternately.
△Medium shot. Advertisement. A person holds a French baguette in hand and smells it as if it’s really really tasty.
△Café. Front view. A glass of juice. Rear view. CS talks about his story. His forehead is cut off from view.
The film title suggests that the director applies an expressionist style to deal with his chosen subject matter, material for which took considerable effort to obtain. Director Wu Mi-sen (吳米森) likens junior and senior high students who are victims of physical violence to people with nine lives, without which they could not survive. These students are a silent group. We don’t see or hear them in the media. Few of them tell their story in public. Their school life goes unnoticed or is taken for granted by most people unless it crosses certain boundaries. But their suppressed emotions and haunting memories would later lead to nightmares. Their horrifying experiences make up the basic tone of this film. Many of the traumas they went through in school and hurt feelings they could not rid off would resurface over and over again later during their adolescent years.
Experiential studies discuss the making, re-presentation, and interpretation of “experience” and how “experience” can be documented (comprehensible/ incomprehensible, writable/unwritable). That is the realm of sociology and ethnography. Field interview and research is a prerequisite to gain access to everyday life experiences. Historic events, the search for theatrical norms, in-depth interpretation, and textual content are the many tools used in an attempt to give meaning to such experiences. Just as the British cultural anthropologist Victor Turner’s once phrased, “hard-won meanings inform the whole human vital repertoire of thinking, willing, desiring, and feeling are said, painted, danced, dramatized, put into circulation” (Turner, 1986) .
If human science is capable of developing new and interesting ways of interpretation, this makes it all the more legitimate for documentary filmmakers to view this particular type of art as a way to express the life experiences of their otherwise silent subjects. It may also be possible for filmmakers to render deeper meanings through their imagination. Profound emotions and thoughts are presented befittingly and freely through painting, animation, dance, and drama. The creator re-interprets the matter once again to offer new perspectives. Director Wu choose to adopt fictional, exaggerative, montage-style approaches to build his narratives which he blends with the interviews to intentionally create a distorted and unstable shooting angle. This, together with almost creepy music and frightening sound effects, creates a style that dominated the first half of the film. Extremely dramatic effects and added elements ultimately became the director’s way to cry out loud.
Most viewers will undoubtedly identify with the director. The majority of those born in the 1950s and 60s have undergone these abusive treatments in school. But the question is why fifty years later, today’s children are still being disciplined and treated according to their grades, the way they dress, what they wear, is the blackboard in their classroom clean, have they followed orders. We have our questions about this.
III. Conclusion and Afterthoughts: the Future of Taiwan’s Documentary Films
Textual analysis on the two selected films is taken as examples for illustration. Detailed discussion of other documentary films in the same series is not possible due to space restrictions. Nevertheless, several other films also built scenes that describe their story. For example the speeches and storytelling in Hsia Hsia’s Contact Book, the many close-ups, photos, works, and classroom decorations that highlight how a teacher uses his creativity to interact and build friendship with his students in I Love Little Devils, the empty shots and generous insert of cuts, scenes, picture cards, and subtitles to mock the absurdity of hair restriction in Carry Your Head to School. Also, the abundant use of inner monologues and fragmented spatial composition to establish relevance and the creation of scenes that build contrast and conflict in Cry Out Loud. The series shape a collective memory of life as a junior high school student.
The Documentaries of Education Reform series appeared in 2004 to speak out on the students’ behalf. Looking back at this period in history is particularly meaningful. Education became a topic of public debate through the force of consensus formed by this series on education reform. Three months after “Mirror, Mirror on the Wall” aired, the “Educational Fundamental Act” explicitly prohibited schools from grouping classes according to ability. Rules regarding hair length and style and corporal punishment were relaxed following the broadcast of relevant documentaries. (Chen Pei-ying, 2004) As the British anthropologist Bronislaw Malinowski pointed out, “ethnographic methodology should include self-statement and self-explanation of the studied community and direct observation made by the ethnographic researcher. Conclusions must be drawn based on common-sense and insight and cultural norms of the studied community.” The approach PTS’s education reform documentaries took is subjective, radical, challenging, and even rebellious. But the production team’s concern for the students and the teachers’ welfare is undeniably genuine. And that is the reason behind the series’ success.
I was doing research at the Fudan University in Shanghai in June and July this year. To my surprise I found that the creative production environment in mainland China is not what it used to be compared to its heyday a decade ago when I wrote a book on documentary films in China. Thanks to the capitalized nature of television media today, other things now take precedence over the subject matter, content, aesthetic form, volume, funding, broadcasting channel, and approach of documentary films. In particular, documentary representation is now dominated by observational and participatory modes. Filmmakers seem to be more reserved and cautious in their approach even in the participatory mode as if there is a forbidden boundary that must not be crossed. In contrast in the past decade documentary films in Taiwan developed narrative techniques that are more energetic, diverse, and influential. This is indeed a commendable progress.
Of course, there is still plenty of room for improvement when compared to documentary films in other countries. The following two issues require particular attention when a large amount of historic material is involved. Firstly, those who manage to find old visual material should contemplate how to tell historic events from their personal perspective; how to define history through visual material; how the material could be represented through modern creative techniques and concepts; so as to remove and relocate the material from its existing historical position to build a reinterpreted meaning. Secondly, those who fail to collect sufficient visual material on historical events should give thought to how to effectively manage its narrative strategy to establish past memories, experiences, emotions and inner feelings; how to create and build scenes while wandering between the real and the imaginary. These are areas that Taiwan’s documentary filmmakers need to give further consideration to in the future.
The French filmmaker and anthropologist Jean Rouch once said in an interview:
For me, as an ethnographer and filmmaker, there is almost no boundary between documentary film and films of fiction. The cinema, the art of the double, is already the transition from the real world to the imaginary world, and ethnography, the science of the thought systems of others, is a permanent crossing point from one conceptual universe to another; it’s like acrobatic gymnastics, where losing one's footing is the least of the risks.(Rouch and Fulchignoni 1988, 299)
PTS’s education reform documentaries emphasize involvement and participation from field to filming to post production, not unlike ethnographic films. While hoping to create an interpretation of the matter through filming and cohabitation with the subjects in question from an insider or emic perspective, the filmmaker also stands at a higher angle to make insightful examination, investigation, and analysis in order to extract the essence and drop the superficial from the filmed objects, events, and people. This manner of research and production is defined as an outsider or etic perspective. Both insider and outsider perspectives are found in the PTS’s documentary series, which not only successfully master the narrative strategy but also place us in the art of double in terms of aesthetic experience. These documentaries allow the audience to transcend boundaries and take them from the real world to an imaginary world so that they get to hear and see from the underprivileged’s point of view. This is precisely the essence of documentary films.
Weitsy Wang
Abstract
On April 10th, 1994, the first mass demonstration demanding educational reform marched through the streets of Taipei. The movement was later known as “The 410 Demonstration for Education Reform”. A decade later, Taiwan Public Television Service’s View Point program called on in-house directors and independent filmmakers to produce a series of documentaries on education reform, i.e. the Documentaries of Education Reform series. A total of twelve documentaries were made featuring issues pertaining to education reform, including ability grouping in junior high schools, spoon-fed education, corporal punishment, hair regulation, teaching approaches, a school principal’s idea of how to orun a school, student teacher relationship, and teaching English to preschool children. They are Cry Out Loud, Don’t Cry Principal, Fairy Tale Theater, People with Nine Lives, Mirror, Mirror on the Wall, There’s Light on the Roof, Hsia Hsia’s Contact Book, Carry Your Head to School, I Love Little Devils, Teacher, and Finding Sheep in New Zealand. From subject matter to filming approach, from aesthetic technique to documentary ethics, these films sparked fierce debate between parents, students, education professionals and the media to the extent questioning the essence of documentaries.
This essay takes a rare view of the diversity and rich variety of the aesthetics of Taiwan’s documentary films to re-evaluate the PTS Documentaries of Education Reform series. Critical segments are selected from a number of films to explore how documentary film styles such as “the performative mode”, “the poetic mode”, and “the expository mode” are applied and handled in the series. Innovative narrative strategies including the use of animation, opera, inner monologues, empty shots (空景描述), opposing shots (對立剪輯), separation of time and space (時空抽離), scenario creation, musical narrative, unfolding of emotions, memory playbacks and voice-over commentary are also investigated in detail.
Key words:
Documentaries of Education Reform series, documentary aesthetics, documentary approaches, narrative strategy
I. Introduction
(Taipei) A second year Banciao junior high school student in Taipei County was punished for arriving late to a group assembly a few days ago. The Section Chief of Student Activities punished him by making him do three hundred stand-squat-stands. The boy only made it half way through before he suffered exhaustion and was unable to stand up again. He was in pain for two more days before finally seeing a doctor, who declared that he suffered from rhabdomyolysis (rapid breakdown of skeletal muscle due to injury to muscle tissue). The boy was immediately sent to the emergency room, where he was hospitalized for three days. His parents were infuriated with the Section Chief of Student Activities for excessive corporal punishment. The school has already admitted negligence on their part and stated that they would bear full responsibility. A reprimand has been issued to the Section Chief of Student Activities.
Principal Wu Ji-chu mentioned that last Tuesday the Section Chief of Student Activities summoned all class leaders to the Office of Student Affairs through the broadcasting system. The student, last name Lai, did not hear the message during recess because of the noise level on campus. He arrived late and was consequently ordered to do stand-squat-stands. He was halfway through when his strength failed him. Two days later, he could barely crouch or sit. He was taken to the hospital during school hours. Doctors found that his urine was deep brown in color and that he suffered from rhabdomyolysis. Principal Wu also mentioned that the teacher in question blames herself for his condition. The Teacher Performance Evaluation Commission has already issued a reprimand to the teacher yesterday .
This is a piece of news on corporal punishment in schools. The event took place right when I was writing this analysis report. It proves that corporal punishment has not been eliminated from schools after a decade of education reform. Another piece of news regarding corporal punishment in schools that attracted public attention also took place this year towards the end of March.
(Central News Agency, Taipei 26th)Bad Case of Corporal Punishment in Taipei. Two second grade student felt each other’s “birdies”. One of them was boxed in the ears nine times by the homeroom teacher. Taipei city councilor Liu Yao-ren exposed the incident at a press conference he organized today. The school has apologized. The teacher in question has been suspended and is now receiving psychological counseling.
The incident took place on the 17th of this month. The male homeroom teacher, named Lu, first accused the student, named Chang, of quibbling and slapped the latter three times in front of the whole class. Lu then dragged the boy by the ear and brought him to the Office of Student Affairs. On the way Chang managed to struggle free and hid in the restroom while he cowered and tried to explain. Lu grabbed him and boxed his ears again, this time six times.
Liu stated that Chang’s parents chose not to pursue for fear of hurting their child again. However, the school only gave the teacher a “demerit”, an injustice to the boy and his parents. Liu presented legal precedents regarding inappropriate physical punishment made by teachers in Taipei City schools. He also accused Lu of assault to the verge of child abuse and called him sick .
These random news events keep reminding me of the Documentaries of Education Reform series produced by the Public Television Service (PTS), who put much thought and effort into the series. This essay aims to bring attention to this series of documentaries once again and discuss the aesthetic perspectives and standpoints those wishing to produce documentaries along similar lines and themes could refer to.
Inspiration for the series came from an event a decade earlier. On April 10th, 1994, the first mass demonstration on education reform, later known as “The 410 Demonstration for Education Reform”, marched through the streets of Taipei. It was the first time the public took to the streets to demand reform in our educational system. College professors, housewives, students, and people from all walks of life made up the more than 30,000 demonstrators. They called for “more high schools and colleges”, “smaller classes and schools”, “modernize our education”, and asked for a “Educational Fundamental Act”. The former two aimed for complete reinvention of the educational structure and condition. I was one of the mothers in the masses. My son was eight years old that year.
Ten years later the Department of Education introduced the Nine-year Compulsory Curriculum and the Multi-route Promotion Program (MRPP) for entering senior high and senior vocational schools and colleges. These concrete reform measures attracted much public attention. Thanks to these policies, teachers were able to design their own lesson plans and teaching material. Students no longer depended solely on the one omnipotent exam that would determine their destiny. Nevertheless, Professor Hsia Chu-joe at Graduate Institute of Building and Planning at National University of Taiwan, who was also one of the demonstrators a decade earlier, criticized these reforms for their “serious lack of innovation at the structural level during the last ten years. The Department of Education did a ‘cheap reform’.” Professor Huang Guang-kuo at Department of Psychology, National University of Taiwan, another participant in the parade, also published the Education Reform Manifesto in which he bitterly denounced the added number of new colleges and simplified curriculum for lowering the quality of education. He also claimed that education reform was nothing but a populist dream . While many education professionals set about more detailed planning and discussion of sustainable development for education reform, PTS took its camera into school campuses and started its production of documentaries on education reform.
That year (2004), PTS commissioned both independent and in-house film directors to produce a series of documentaries on this topic. A total of twelve documentaries were made since then up until 2010 featuring issues including ability grouping in junior high schools, spoon-fed education, corporal punishment, hair regulation, teaching approaches, a school principal’s idea of how to run a school, student teacher relationship, and teaching English to preschool children. The production team at PTS originally intended to film encouraging models of the reform ten years after the latter was initiated to applaud frontline educators for their effort. However, upon arrival at the campus the team found that not only were the students grouped into different levels according to academic success, teachers were also grouped into levels and powerless. According to a survey by the Humanistic Education Foundation, in 2003 Yilan County was the only place in Taiwan where 100% of the students were grouped normally without consideration to academic achievement. Varying degrees of ability grouping existed in all the other counties and cities
Parents in Taiwan are all too familiar with the rigidity junior high education, frequent cramming and quizzes and exams, and the fact that all non-high school entrance exam related classes including physical education and health, art and culture, natural science and life technology, and integrative activity are suspended when students enter their third year in school. Teaching becomes focused on repeated exercises to improve students’ grades in the Basic Competence Test (BCT). How do the students feel about this warped and unbalanced learning environment? How do they communicate what they feel? I suppose most people are not strangers, accustomed even, to teachers who measure the length of your hair and your skirt with a ruler in one hand and hold a stick in another while calling out names and handing out test papers. Unfortunately, images documented before 2004 rarely heard, saw, or understood how these youngsters thought of the system. The PTS’s documentary series present truth from people’s memories. Some of it came from suppressed emotions. Some of the subjects were reluctant to be interviewed or filmed. Some of the content was controversial. This essay will discuss the creative imagination and diversity through selected segments from the series. The value of the documentaries is also examined from an ethnographic film research perspective.
II. Textual Analysis
1.Class Ability Grouping: Mirror, Mirror on the Wall（魔鏡）
This film observes class ability grouping in junior high schools through the camera. The system ensures that the best teaching resources are reserved for A-track classes while low-track classes can only pick the leftovers. Students in low-track classes are grouped, labeled, and discriminated against at a tender age despite the fact that their families pay their taxes just like everyone else. This may have a negative impact on how these kids identify with themselves. Furthermore, ability grouping not only assigns students into different levels, but also group teachers into different categories. There is little respect for the right for students in low-track classes to be educated. In an age of knowledge economy, nearly 70% of the students are intellectually abandoned by grown-ups while still in junior high school. Curriculum designed to give priority to academic achievement does not foster creative thinking nor cultivate innovation.
Storyboard
Prelude
△ A junior high school boy stands naked to the waist and looks out of the window into the distance
Naked to the waist boy (off the screen): Don’t know why I am so sad today. I feel so helpless, so sad, very sad. I feel so lonely even when I am surrounded by others. People are lonely. All those who look for companionship find companionship. I don’t know why they don’t think about how others would feel. Instead, they hurt people, mock people.
△A boy in junior high school uniform with a white mask
△Animation, a boy in shorts and naked to the waist flies into the sky
△He is chasing after several junior high school boys in the clouds. They all hold a red apple in their hands, but their eyes are empty lifeless black holes. Their expressions blank.
The Evil Queen sings opera-style: “mirror, mirror on the wall, who is the smartest kid in the school?”
△The Evil Queen appears sinisterly
The Evil Queen sings: only the smartest kids get my big red apple…
△The Evil Queen takes out a big red apple
△The boy naked from waist up takes the big red apple from the Evil Queen
The Evil Queen sings: big red apple…
△The boy stands alone high in the clouds. The group of boys with empty lifeless eyes with red apple in hand pale in comparison
The Evil Queen sings: big and red, beautiful apple…
△The naked boy raises the apple and takes a big bite without checking if it’s poisonous
The Evil Queen laughs sinisterly: hahaha, hahaha…
△The naked boy’s cute face turns blank and his eyes turn into empty black holes
The Evil Queen laughs merrily: hahaha, hahaha…
△Show film title “Mirror, Mirror on the Wall”
A person in the mirror sings: don’t be silly child, don’t be silly child, grown-ups want you to get good grades
△The mirror reflects a junior high school boy wearily trying to cram in a pile of text books he can never hope to finish.
Person in the mirror sings: the school counts on you for good results, forget your sadness, focus on getting the highest grades
△The mirror shows the rising and setting of the sun and the moon. The boy remains buried in his books. He looks exhausted and begins to lose weight until his head fell off.
Person in the mirror sings: but be careful of that big red apple, be aware ,be aware
△The moment he accepts the apple from the Evil Queen
△Shot dissolves to the entrance of a junior high school. Traffic is heavy on the busy street. There are traffic controllers at the entrance. The tone is grayish purple, as if the real world has lost color.
△The traffic island in front of the school is full of advertising banners erected by afterschool cram schools.
△(Fast motion) High angle shot on kids on their way to school.
△(Fast motion) High angle shot on junior high schools students walking zombie-like into a colorless campus as if they were swarms of ants.
△ (Fast motion) The campus starts a ghostly twirl around from the entrance to the playing field to the hallway.
The Evil Queen sings in an opera-like voice: mirror, mirror on the wall, who is the smartest kid in school? Who can make it into the A-track classes?
△A typical junior high school classroom in black and white. Everyone looks up at the chock-a-block blackboard to take down everything.
△A teacher shouts out a student’s name and asks a question.
△ (Fast montage) Shots of junior high school students in class or taking tests.
Chorus: how can you tell who is smart? How can you tell how is smart? Is it fair? (Repeat)
Person in mirror: does getting high grades mean you are smarter?
△Black and white images of junior high school students taking tests in the classrooms gradually turns into color.
△A bronze bust of Chiang Kai-shek at the school entrance
△An interview with the school principal (mainly about the school and his frustration with how local politicians interfere with class grouping and ask for favorable assignments.)
△Scene of students in class.
△Empty shot of the hallways.
△Animation. The Evil Queen comes out of the dark with a resentful expression.
The Evil Queen sings in an opera-like voice: ha, I am the Queen. Only I have the power, only I have the right to decide who gets in the “good classes” and who gets to teach the “good classes”. Give me your conscience in exchange, in exchange…
△Students reading aloud in class.
△An interview with the principal (mainly about how he was forced to pull his daughter off the A-track class roster to make space for a persistent local politician)
△Teachers talk about their strenuous work and heavy burden.
Male & Female chorus: work so hard, work so hard, I work so hard too. Teaching stupid kids is so hard.
△Students who sit in class and take tests lose color and turn into grayish purple tones.
△Students doze off in class.
△On the School Honor Roll is a list of names admitted to first choice high schools such as National Taichung First Senior High School and National Taichung Girls' Senior High School (melancholy blue tone).
△A group of students continue to study outside the exam site(purple tone)
Male & female chorus: students who get high marks are a precious treasure, we must never let any of them go, let’s group our students into good and bad, A and B (repeat)
△Contrasting images from split screens: in the hallways, A-track students studies in their seats in an orderly fashion. B-track students sit on the floor and doze off.
△Contrasting images from split screens: (fast motion) on the hallways A-track and B-track class students move in their own small groups and never mix together.
△An interview with B-track students who talk about being treated unfairly being discriminated against.
The film Mirror, Mirror on the Wall introduces a familiar character, the Evil Queen from the fairy tale Snow White. In the Queen’s hand is a mirror that controls the fate of junior high school students. She is the omnipotent evil force in Taiwan’s education system. She is the figure who determines the rules of the game behind the scenes. “Who is the smartest kid in our class? Who gets to eat the big red apple?” Parents will make every effort using both carrots and sticks to urge their children to work hard to win the “big red apple”. Students have no say in their own destiny. It is impossible to escape this fate when even adults are trapped by the system. They are labeled as “good” or “bad” before they are able to decide for themselves whether the apple is poisonous. They are forced to surrender their young, sunny, pretty souls and plunge into a harsh competition that knows no ends.
Ten years after education reform, a junior high school teacher drops to her knees at the school entrance to plead on the behalf of B-track students. Director Celestine Ding (丁曉菁) observes the lack of change in junior high schools and takes the news event as her starting point to make her film. In her film she uses the simple logic of fairy tales to uncover the complicated structural problems caused by overemphasis on academic achievement. The film also highlighted the mainstream value in schools that is indeed there despite widespread denial . Principals, teachers, and parents are all tempted to bargain with the devil in a game with rules set by an evil queen. The mirror on the wall gives away the secret: you can do it but you must not talk about it. Director Ding uses animation to create creepy scenes and scenes of temptation to present the irony of how grown-ups speak against their conscience. Conventional voice-over is sung in opera-like voices. These styles mostly fall under The Performative Mode (Nichols，2001), which serves to emphasize how serious the issue really is.
In addition to The Performative Mode, The Expository Mode is also applied in the film. However, instead of the conventional approach to using domineering spoken narratives or an authoritative voice of criticism as “God’s voice”, the director skillfully employs fiction figures such as the evil queen and bystanders to sing their perspective and express the director’s personal perceptions and opinions. The idea that there is a secret that must not be told turns out to be most ironic. It clings to the fact that schools continue to practice “class ability grouping” and yet we are reluctant to acknowledge its existence. The film constructs a debate from both sides through opera characters. All the grown-ups in the film are unaware the fact that ability grouping still prevails. The fact is there but we choose to avoid the subject. The opera-like style is similar to the narrator in epic theater. Poetry readings and dances are occasionally inserted into sections and scenes. The main goal, according to Bertolt Brecht, is that the audience is always aware that they are watching a play so that they would not be too involved in the story to lose critical perspective. In a similar manner there is also a narrator in Mirror, Mirror on the Wall who skillfully informs of the director’s point of views, students’ frustration, and teachers’ predicament through opera.
It is a bold touch for the director to apply the aesthetics of alienation effect and dialectical drama of epic theater in documentary films. The stage of an epic theater is purposely designed to rid of all aesthetic symbols of realism to make the audience aware that this is a “story” narrated by “actors” so that they will not empathize with the characters, which hinders “correct” judgment. This was during a time when the fourth wall theory dominated. Epic theater takes away stage symbols familiar to the audience and interferes with common theater narrative approaches. For example borders that hide lighting and sound systems and legs (side curtains) that create sense of entry and exit and illusion of space are all eliminated. The goal is to create an unfamiliar distance to foster conscious awareness: they are sitting in a “theater” to watch the “performance” on stage. The story is fictional. The only “truths” are the political ideas the playwright wishes to communicate .
In a similar manner Mirror, Mirror on the Wall boldly removes observation, participation, and voice-over commentary modes used to record facts commonly found in the typical documentary film. It purposely places the audience in a different viewing experience as if watching a seemingly fictional yet experientially real world through an uniquely “kaleidoscope”. To put it simply, Brecht arouses the spectator’s rationality through the process of “watching a performance” in order to serve the ultimate purpose of judging and reforming society. Director Ding claimed that after much consideration she eventually decided to use the third version at the last critical moment, which is the opera version we see now. This version is more intense because she is reluctant to make another documentary film devoid of a point of view (Interview by Chen Pei-ying, 2004) .
Director Ding notes that she saw how the teacher who taught B-level students burst into tears during an interview because the latter felt her students were treated unfairly. She also observes how teachers, principals, superintendent, county magistrates, and then incumbent Minister of Education evade and avoid the issue and ignore students’ right to education both in their responses and attitudes. This is why she ultimately decided to pick the controversial version in order to shed light on a problem that spans more than two decades and reduces students to a status similar to that of “fruit, vegetables, and poultry, groceries, who are selected, filtered, and certified to win honors for their school” (Interview by Chen Pei-ying, 2004). The production team adds a large number of aesthetic elements during post production to highlight the seriousness of the issue in a highly stylized manner that disrupts the way films are supposedly watched. The film shocked education professionals and schools at all levels. It also ignited much debate over the legitimacy of cameras on campus. The generous use of the performative technique in the film is in a way a bold challenge to the relatively conservative documentary discipline at the time with respect to its aesthetics and ethics. The film also raised many questions regarding the boundary between fiction and truth when “representing reality”.
The Performative Mode acknowledges that the world itself is complicated and in-depth understanding of the world can only be expressed through personal experience and subjective feelings. Therefore performative narrative is essential to the film because it attempts to represent the truth by mixing imaginative, unrestrained, and performative elements to guide the audience into the subjective world of the filmmaker. It is aimed to evoke audience reaction and participation. The performative narrative strategy is commonly used to tell stories of minority or underprivileged social groups, offering the chance to observe their world from a new perspective and with a new sense. This is built on the ideal that documentary films serve as a modifier of subjective public consciousness. In this respect it bears resemblance to the alienation effect of the epic theater. Both are meant to educate and to inspire so that the voices of minority groups could be heard. The aesthetic strategy and approach adopted, i.e. the alienation effect, serve not only artistic purposes but also more specifically to reform society.
2.Corporal punishment: People with Nine Lives (九命人) The documentary People with Nine Lives tell stories of corporal punishment on campus. Students who were victims of abusive teachers come forward to tell their personal stories and the trauma inflicted by these experiences.
Storyboard
△Flickering black and white screen with subtitles
Scene One: Ching-sheng (CS) and his junior high teacher on the phone (10 years later)
CS calls his junior high school teacher. He talks to his teacher about how the physical punishment he suffered in school still gives him nightmares up until this day. But the teacher not only responds by saying that he does not know who CS is but also suggests that if CS has issues he should see a therapist, not call his former teacher.
CS asks the teacher if he still punishes his students physically and wants him to stop beating his students. They talk about how on the eve of CS’s graduation he continued to sign and write class books despite being told not to and was therefore chastised. Obviously the teacher remembers what happened to CS. He hasn’t forgotten.
The teacher says he has not punished students physically for ten years, but CS insists that the teacher slapped him in the face. Both were indignant toward the end of their conversation. The teacher feels that it’s been so long and CS should just let it go. Why is CS asking him about this after all these years? The teacher gets more and more upset and says that such self-centered self-absorbed behavior will be duly punished.
△A long phone conversation. A long take on a flickering black and white scene. We manage to catch a faint glimpse of a statue of Confucius, taken from an angle, from between the overlapping scenes. The take is very long. Confucius continues to stand in the distance. The only thing that changes is the light and shadow.
Scene Two. Restaurant/CS, a grown-up young woman who was physically punished in school, and a middle-aged mother (the teacher is always right).
△Rainy Day. Blurred view of the street. Rain.
△From the French window we see it is raining outside and there are cars going by.
△Close-up on gold fish swimming in the fish tank.
△In the restaurant CS and the two women listen to the teacher blaming CS for past events.
Teacher (off screen, on the phone), “you need to face your own terror, don’t use the class book incident as your excuse.”
△The teacher hangs up angrily
△Film title appears. “People with Nine Lives”. Sound effects made by banging metal mingled with music create a creepy scary effect.
△The girl who was listening to the recorded call covers up her mouth and cries while sharing her experience.
The girl says that the most terrifying thing is that teachers who beat them manage to find excuses to behave like that and then lecture them. She feels wronged but never knows how to argue with the teachers. Teachers never listen to what students have to say. They are only interested in insisting what they believe to be right. .
△Long shaky shot as if the viewer is snooping. The camera watches the three people in the restaurant share their memory of and reaction to corporal punishment from a distance.
Scene Three. Children’s Bedroom. Four junior high school students and a mom. (Describe how school teachers beat them)
△Black flash card shows “9”
The girls talk about things teachers use to beat hem. There are plastic rulers, chair legs, wood sticks, or a slap in the face. Their teachers are irritable and short-tempered. They would grab and hit the victims without getting to the bottom of things first. Nor do they give students a chance to explain. They never apologize either. They are always in a bad mood. These teachers are still teaching in schools today. The mom is surprised to hear their complaint. She has never heard the kids talk about these things before. The reason is that they are used to being treated like this. They feel that there is nothing special to talk about.
△Black and white scene. Medium to close shot. Cramped children’s room. Close up filming without tripod. Shaky camera.
Scene Four. Café/ CS
CS is being interviewed in a café. He talks about his first days in junior high. The teacher asks him to come forward and then grabs his slightly long hair from behind, gives it a hard tug, whirls him around, and warns the rest of the class that no one will appear in school with long hair like this the next day. This marks the beginning of three years of corporal punishment.
△A long hallway in the classroom. The light flashes and then dims alternately. It sways into a dark corner. There’s a feeling of fear and uneasiness.
△Cloud in the sky
△Black and white human heads tied up firmly with ropes and white cloth. A pair of scissors starts cutting the rope.
△Slow motion. A football kicked into the air starts its descent. Sound of thunder.
△A person in black with a large key in hand sways on screen. Sound of thunder.
△The screen dims and then lights up and then dims to create a creepy atmosphere.
CS recalls that the teacher asked him to take his glasses off and then boxed his ears really hard four times. Left, right, left, right. The teacher leaves. The whole class is silent. CS cannot stop crying. His classmates keep handing him tissue from all sides. He cried for the entire class period. It is really hard for him to forget this incident.
△Medium shot. A man holds out his palm in the dark. There’s a crystal cube on his palm made by special effects reflecting the swift movement of clouds in the sky.
△Sound of crowd whispering in the background.
Scene V. Café/CS. (Beaten but still grateful)
CS mentions that the teacher often said he was doing the students a favor by disciplining them. As a result many students are deceived into thinking that they should be grateful for his harshness. CS believes that this is wrong.
△Black and white, low angle. A tall staircase.
△Close up. A small child with the numbers 7718999 stuck to his forehead.
△Close up. The child watches intently as a person drags an iron chain through deserted land.
△Close up. Light turns black and white alternately.
△Medium shot. Advertisement. A person holds a French baguette in hand and smells it as if it’s really really tasty.
△Café. Front view. A glass of juice. Rear view. CS talks about his story. His forehead is cut off from view.
The film title suggests that the director applies an expressionist style to deal with his chosen subject matter, material for which took considerable effort to obtain. Director Wu Mi-sen (吳米森) likens junior and senior high students who are victims of physical violence to people with nine lives, without which they could not survive. These students are a silent group. We don’t see or hear them in the media. Few of them tell their story in public. Their school life goes unnoticed or is taken for granted by most people unless it crosses certain boundaries. But their suppressed emotions and haunting memories would later lead to nightmares. Their horrifying experiences make up the basic tone of this film. Many of the traumas they went through in school and hurt feelings they could not rid off would resurface over and over again later during their adolescent years.
Experiential studies discuss the making, re-presentation, and interpretation of “experience” and how “experience” can be documented (comprehensible/ incomprehensible, writable/unwritable). That is the realm of sociology and ethnography. Field interview and research is a prerequisite to gain access to everyday life experiences. Historic events, the search for theatrical norms, in-depth interpretation, and textual content are the many tools used in an attempt to give meaning to such experiences. Just as the British cultural anthropologist Victor Turner’s once phrased, “hard-won meanings inform the whole human vital repertoire of thinking, willing, desiring, and feeling are said, painted, danced, dramatized, put into circulation” (Turner, 1986) .
If human science is capable of developing new and interesting ways of interpretation, this makes it all the more legitimate for documentary filmmakers to view this particular type of art as a way to express the life experiences of their otherwise silent subjects. It may also be possible for filmmakers to render deeper meanings through their imagination. Profound emotions and thoughts are presented befittingly and freely through painting, animation, dance, and drama. The creator re-interprets the matter once again to offer new perspectives. Director Wu choose to adopt fictional, exaggerative, montage-style approaches to build his narratives which he blends with the interviews to intentionally create a distorted and unstable shooting angle. This, together with almost creepy music and frightening sound effects, creates a style that dominated the first half of the film. Extremely dramatic effects and added elements ultimately became the director’s way to cry out loud.
Most viewers will undoubtedly identify with the director. The majority of those born in the 1950s and 60s have undergone these abusive treatments in school. But the question is why fifty years later, today’s children are still being disciplined and treated according to their grades, the way they dress, what they wear, is the blackboard in their classroom clean, have they followed orders. We have our questions about this.
III. Conclusion and Afterthoughts: the Future of Taiwan’s Documentary Films
Textual analysis on the two selected films is taken as examples for illustration. Detailed discussion of other documentary films in the same series is not possible due to space restrictions. Nevertheless, several other films also built scenes that describe their story. For example the speeches and storytelling in Hsia Hsia’s Contact Book, the many close-ups, photos, works, and classroom decorations that highlight how a teacher uses his creativity to interact and build friendship with his students in I Love Little Devils, the empty shots and generous insert of cuts, scenes, picture cards, and subtitles to mock the absurdity of hair restriction in Carry Your Head to School. Also, the abundant use of inner monologues and fragmented spatial composition to establish relevance and the creation of scenes that build contrast and conflict in Cry Out Loud. The series shape a collective memory of life as a junior high school student.
The Documentaries of Education Reform series appeared in 2004 to speak out on the students’ behalf. Looking back at this period in history is particularly meaningful. Education became a topic of public debate through the force of consensus formed by this series on education reform. Three months after “Mirror, Mirror on the Wall” aired, the “Educational Fundamental Act” explicitly prohibited schools from grouping classes according to ability. Rules regarding hair length and style and corporal punishment were relaxed following the broadcast of relevant documentaries. (Chen Pei-ying, 2004) As the British anthropologist Bronislaw Malinowski pointed out, “ethnographic methodology should include self-statement and self-explanation of the studied community and direct observation made by the ethnographic researcher. Conclusions must be drawn based on common-sense and insight and cultural norms of the studied community.” The approach PTS’s education reform documentaries took is subjective, radical, challenging, and even rebellious. But the production team’s concern for the students and the teachers’ welfare is undeniably genuine. And that is the reason behind the series’ success.
I was doing research at the Fudan University in Shanghai in June and July this year. To my surprise I found that the creative production environment in mainland China is not what it used to be compared to its heyday a decade ago when I wrote a book on documentary films in China. Thanks to the capitalized nature of television media today, other things now take precedence over the subject matter, content, aesthetic form, volume, funding, broadcasting channel, and approach of documentary films. In particular, documentary representation is now dominated by observational and participatory modes. Filmmakers seem to be more reserved and cautious in their approach even in the participatory mode as if there is a forbidden boundary that must not be crossed. In contrast in the past decade documentary films in Taiwan developed narrative techniques that are more energetic, diverse, and influential. This is indeed a commendable progress.
Of course, there is still plenty of room for improvement when compared to documentary films in other countries. The following two issues require particular attention when a large amount of historic material is involved. Firstly, those who manage to find old visual material should contemplate how to tell historic events from their personal perspective; how to define history through visual material; how the material could be represented through modern creative techniques and concepts; so as to remove and relocate the material from its existing historical position to build a reinterpreted meaning. Secondly, those who fail to collect sufficient visual material on historical events should give thought to how to effectively manage its narrative strategy to establish past memories, experiences, emotions and inner feelings; how to create and build scenes while wandering between the real and the imaginary. These are areas that Taiwan’s documentary filmmakers need to give further consideration to in the future.
The French filmmaker and anthropologist Jean Rouch once said in an interview:
For me, as an ethnographer and filmmaker, there is almost no boundary between documentary film and films of fiction. The cinema, the art of the double, is already the transition from the real world to the imaginary world, and ethnography, the science of the thought systems of others, is a permanent crossing point from one conceptual universe to another; it’s like acrobatic gymnastics, where losing one's footing is the least of the risks.(Rouch and Fulchignoni 1988, 299)
PTS’s education reform documentaries emphasize involvement and participation from field to filming to post production, not unlike ethnographic films. While hoping to create an interpretation of the matter through filming and cohabitation with the subjects in question from an insider or emic perspective, the filmmaker also stands at a higher angle to make insightful examination, investigation, and analysis in order to extract the essence and drop the superficial from the filmed objects, events, and people. This manner of research and production is defined as an outsider or etic perspective. Both insider and outsider perspectives are found in the PTS’s documentary series, which not only successfully master the narrative strategy but also place us in the art of double in terms of aesthetic experience. These documentaries allow the audience to transcend boundaries and take them from the real world to an imaginary world so that they get to hear and see from the underprivileged’s point of view. This is precisely the essence of documentary films.
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