Liminal Space Between Social Strata: Voice-Over Narration in The Great Buddha+

Abstract

Based on his previous short film The Great Buddha (2014), Taiwan independent filmmaker Huang Hsin-yao’s first feature film The Great Buddha+ (2017) depicts the unbreakable gap of the social strata in contemporary Taiwan from different angles: classes, gender, and ethnic groups. One of the outstanding features of this film is the director’s use of the Hokkien language for his voice-over. Huang’s voice-over thus reframes and refocuses the representation and narrative of this film. This chapter not only analyses the gap between social strata portrayed by Huang both visually and linguistically, but also highlights the narration of Huang in Taiwanese Hokkien in this film that seems to widen the gap for emphasising his own identity and stance as a member of a Hoklo ethnic group. On the other hand, despite his presence as a Hoklo person linguistically, his reframing enables the viewing for both socio-cultural groups in this film. This double voyeurism is represented through both the lens of the car dash-cam and the camera of this film. Huang’s voice-over refocuses between both views that blur the clear division of the social strata. My chapter argues that instead of building the border between “self” and “others,” his voice-over presents an alternative view for examining different socio-cultural groups both within this film and in the context of Taiwan society in the digital age.