The Ruined Map 破损的地图
Video
2023
"The Ruined Map" is an avant-garde film merging existential themes, 3D animation, and distorted audio in a subterranean setting. It opens with a train scene of Christmas fireworks, signaling an epochal shift. This sets the stage for a narrative of disintegration and disorientation. The film reflects my experiences moving to Holland as a gay Chinese man, grappling with Eurocentric and Sinocentric oppression.
It delves into the complexities of identity, masculinity, and cultural imposition, influenced by my struggles with sexual racism on dating platforms and the ever-involving link between Chinese masculinity and nationalism outlined in Everett Yuehong Zhang's "The Impotence Epidemic." The narrative fictionalizes a Chinese male navigating the impacts of Western pornography, eventually working as a pornography translator in Rotterdam. This character embodies the challenges of queer existence and the critique of normative and pharmacopornographic influences on masculinity, exploring themes of displacement, dysphoria, and resistance.
The film targets audiences who also navigate the intersections of identity, sexuality, and cultural displacement. The text is a blend of Chinese, Japanese, and English. It presents a surreal and dreamlike narrative, with impossible clues guiding the transition from subjective to planetary scale amidst linguistic instability. It uses the imagery of bananas and twinkies - slurs for East Asians assimilating into Western culture - to challenge stereotypes and express a nuanced critique of cultural and sexual inferiority. These symbols, animated to oscillate between inflated and deflated states, inhabit liminal spaces that evoke feelings of loneliness, desperation, and an intimate yet unsettling subversion of East-Asian stereotypes.
《破损的地图》是一部前卫影片，在地下场景中融合了存在主义主题、3D动画和扭曲的音频。影片以一段圣诞烟花的火车场景开场，暗示着时代的转折，为一个关于瓦解与迷失方向的叙事铺垫。这部作品反映了我作为一个中国男同性恋者移居荷兰的经历，以及与欧洲中心主义和中国中心主义压迫的抗争。
作品深入探讨了身份认同、男性气质和文化强加的复杂性，这受到了我在交友平台上经历性别种族主义，以及Everett Yuehong Zhang在《阳痿症流行》中所描述的中国男性气质与民族主义之间不断演变的联系的影响。叙事虚构了一个中国男性在西方色情文化影响下的经历，最终在鹿特丹从事色情作品翻译工作。这个角色体现了酷儿存在的挑战，以及对规范性与药物色情制品对男性气质影响的批判，探索了流离失所、性别焦虑和抵抗的主题。
影片面向那些同样在身份认同、性取向和文化错位交织处寻找出路的观众。文本混合了中文、日语和英语。它呈现出一个超现实而梦幻的叙事，用不可能的线索引导着从主观到行星尺度的转变，在语言的不稳定中穿行。影片运用香蕉和Twinkies（对同化于西方文化的东亚人的贬义词）的意象来挑战刻板印象，表达对文化与性别自卑的细腻批判。这些符号在膨胀与瘪缩状态之间摇摆的动画中，栖居于临界空间，唤起孤独、绝望的感受，以及对东亚刻板印象既亲密又令人不安的颠覆。
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