[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
.8 The more obscure the phallus, the moretransformative possibilities with which it is vested.In fact, since itsdebut in Freud s psychoanalysis, the penis has been an absent presence,or a present absence.9 The sword is a perfect phallic symbol not onlyfor its aggressiveness but for its occluded-ness  encased in the scab-bard, untainted by the blood it has shed, the erection of the penis15 EA Cinema_237-252 28/1/08 11:42 Page 240240 East Asian Cinemasimplied.Layers of veiling come to be crystallised not in  Name-of-the-Father , but  Name-of-the-Sword.The  Name-of-the-Sword , in turn,sets off a signifying effect, the centre of which is the absence of theobject, a void behind the name.The phallic sword can also be taken tofigure, in Bataille s Erotism: Death and Sensuality,10 as both an instru-ment of love or eroticism and an instrument of death.Yoking togetherseemingly unrelated spheres, all these thinkers, Pound and Eliotincluded, manifest a shared desire to, in a single stroke of weddingantitheses, grasp the totality, or oneness, of things.In essence, theoristsare in search of a systemic explanation that is constructed by humanspeech, but goes beyond it in a way evoking the so-called  oceanic feel-ing in mysticism.11 They are after the unnameable, like the vowel-less,well-nigh unpronounceable YHWH in Judaism or the  You-Know-Who in Harry Potter.Global PhallusAt one of the entrances to the Bronze Exhibit Hall in Beijing sForbidden City stands a Shaoyu sword, dating from the late Spring-Autumn period (652 476 BC).As if made of steel, the blade shinesafter 2,500 years.Like a silent spell, 20 ancient characters are inscribedin gold down the middle on either side.The blade and the words cutthrough time, constituting an aura of power, where violence and cul-ture  even grace  are immanent in the symbols of sword and script.Arising out of the Asian dialectical philosophy of yin and yang, of Wenand Wu (the literary and the martial), the calligraphic brush and thesword have long defined masculine empowerment in Asian culture and,in recent decades, Asian films.The adage  litouzhibei ( strength pene-trating to the back of the paper ) complements calligraphy in themetaphor of swordsmanship, namely, the force of the brush goesthrough rice paper in the same manner that a sword severs its target. Li ( strength ) alludes not so much to muscle strength as qi (breath orinner strength), elevating the calligrapher from the physical world.Theprecursor to Chinese swordplay films, wuxia xiao shuo (novels ofchivalry), frequently juxtaposes the book and the sword, as in the lead-ing contemporary practitioner of this genre Jin Yung s Shujian enchouji (The Chronicle of Book and Sword, Favour and Hate).In the West,heroic feats must also be performed through art.Achilles and Odysseusare indebted to Homer, the hero with the pen; Beowulf and Sir Gawainand the Green Knight owe their existence to anonymous Old English andMiddle English bards; the symbolic loss of swords of Antony, Othello15 EA Cinema_237-252 28/1/08 11:42 Page 241Brush and Blade in East-West Cultures 241and others depends on Shakespeare s poetry; Don Quixote with hismakeshift lance requires a Cervantes.The contemporary medium crystallising the union of sword and artis global cinema.As the world shrinks in the vein of David Harvey stime-space compression,12 film-makers omnivorise various warrior tra-ditions, Western and Eastern, for the late capitalist market.Dominatedby post-Fordist circulation of capital, information and images, televi-sion and cinema are key players in this globalisation.Reality is increas-ingly interwoven with what Jean Baudrillard terms hyperrealsimulacra.13 Drawing from the aura of various heroic traditions forprofit-making, global cinema routinely flattens these traditions to thepoint of a  funhouse of hyper-real media images and.of floating sig-nifiers in the postmodern carnival [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]