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Courchesne, Jade Christina Marie

University of British Columbia

This thesis examines the rising trend of diasporic ‘return-to-roots’ narratives in contemporary Chinese and Korean transnational cinemas. I analyse the touristic travels featured in four films — Un Printemps D’ailleurs (2017), The Farewell (2019), Riceboy Sleeps (2022), and Return to Seoul (2023). As first- and later-generation immigrants, the characters are territorially, and at times, emotionally estranged from their motherlands. What, then, becomes of the diasporic sojourners who have no familiarity at all with their nation’s customs, language, and modes of interpersonal connection? I argue that their unmet expectations in the homeland may lead to psychic predicaments of loss and disillusionment, especially if they encounter multiple disappointments with familial interactions, geographic belonging, and self-image. Filmmakers draw from these painful processes of psychic paralysis and culminating anger within their communities to locate psycho-/somatic manifestations of racial unease on screen. Formal aesthetics are intentionally disjointed and deformed, meandering and rhythmic, fluid and experimental — whether through lingering long takes, extreme wide shots, unconventional cuts, or time jumps. Both travelling ‘back home’ and travelling ‘to home,’ the characters model strategies in counter-remembrance and offer up re-territorialized, embodied spaces that trouble the boundaries of nation and collective memory.

Text

2024-09-05

Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International

http://hdl.handle.net/2429/89176

Cinema and Media Studies

University of British Columbia

UBCV

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/