Flaneuse or Innocent: Blind Women in Chinese-Language Visual Culture in the New Millennium

Abstract

An attempt to integrate disability studies with Sinophone studies, the article locates the models of the blind flaneuse and the sweet innocent in Chinese-language visual cultural texts. These texts are from the first decade of the twenty-first century, as the rise of China and neoliberalism loom ever larger. The type for the sweet innocent is Charles Chaplin`s ”City Lights”, in which a blind girl, sweet and innocent, passively awaits help from male benefactors. In opposition to the dependent sweet innocent, who is taught to stay at home to avoid participation in the city, the blind flaneuse, a notion inspired by Walter Benjamin`s flaneur and modified by feminist and disability studies scholars, insists on venturing into the urban scene largely on her own. Zhang Yimou`s film ”Happy Times” focuses on a blind girl, pitied by a group of able-bodied benefactors who manipulate her trust, who decides to seek independence as a blind flaneuse. In ”The Eye” from Hong Kong, the blind girl as a flaneuse supported by a disability-friendly city is ironically transformed into a sweet innocent, relying on a male professional after a well-intentioned sight-restoring optical surgery is imposed on her body. In the pictorial book ”Sound of Colors” by the acclaimed artist Jimmy in Taiwan, the blind girl, who relishes more colors in her mind`s eye than the able-bodied citizens who are bored with their colorless everyday life, affirms her self-reliance through her complicated but regulated survival skills in the city; however, likely motivated by neoliberalist logic, the adaptations of ”Sound of Colors” work to undermine this blind girl`s autonomy and impose companionship upon her. Singapore`s ”Be With Me” reveals how an ethical relation of trust can be maintained in a global city by featuring a senior woman whose multiple disabilities challenge the manifold biases against gendered and disabled minorities.

本文研究二十一世紀初以視障女性為主角的華語視覺文化文本，含中國電影《幸福時光》、香港電影《見鬼》、台灣圖文書《地下鐵》、改編《地下鐵》的香港電影、新加坡電影《和我在一起》（Be With Me）等等。本文藉著分析這些文本，討論身心障礙者在多個東亞都會（大連、香港、台北、新加坡等等）中發展的存活方法和引爆的倫理問題。這些文本正好在中國崛起與新自由主義的聲浪席捲東亞的時候浮現，呼應了或挑戰了向「錢」看齊的時代主旋律。本文特別提出兩個用來描繪身心障礙女子的模式：一種是卓別林電影中再現的「苦命花」，將身心障礙女性定義為在高速現代化過程中，柔弱可欺、只能被迫等人（即參與現代化的男性勞工）救援的小可憐；另一種是筆者被身心障礙研究啟發而倡議的「漫遊女」（班雅明「漫遊者」的女性版兼身心障礙版），將同一批女子想像為可能獨立自主、不需枯等好心（男）人的都會生活參與者。在《幸福時光》中，盲女主人翁被一批自以為好心的「身心健全主義者」當作「苦命花」來看待，但她卻寧可自立自強，在處處威脅視障者的都會中自尋生路，她以「漫遊女」之姿，批判好心人的倫理瑕疵（他們騙取她的「信任」）。本文接著指出：《見鬼》展現了漫遊女逐漸被迫成為苦命花的主流化過程、圖文書《地下鐵》打造棄絕苦命花模式的漫遊女、電影版《地下鐵》卻又倒退回到苦命花模式。新加坡的《和我在一起》則以難以被簡單定義的身心障礙生命樣態，挑戰了主流社會看待盲女以及信任感的種種成見。