公視孽子中同性性愛的含蓄美學 李佳軒，中央大學英美語文學系碩士©版權所有 2003年，公視連續劇孽子風光上檔。本劇改編自1983年白先勇同名小說孽子，由於小說本身已經具備的高知名度以及公視向來對弱勢族群所展現的社會關懷，使得本劇的上檔以及上檔之前的諸如製作、選角過程都獲得高度的注目，大家都在看形象良好的公視頻道將如何再現白先勇小說中「惡名昭彰」的同性戀角色。一如預期，孽子一劇的播出不僅獲得同志社群廣大的迴響，更在學術、文化及娛樂領域引起廣大的討論。隨孽子一劇上檔而至的研討會、演講和電視電台的訪問和報導，都成為孽子現象的一環。 本文所採取的角度是將白先勇孽子及公視孽子看成是特定時空脈絡下的文化產物，也是權力佈署的場域---主流異性戀體制意識型態、公視的製作動機、同志團體的期待、通俗劇商業考量、以及白先勇對原作的堅持---種種因素都參與其中，宛如一場權力的角力競賽(power struggles)；種種的複雜因素看似互斥，有時卻又彼此交錯而強化。同性戀在公視頻道的最終再現，即可視為角力(power struggle)之後的結果。因此，藉由批判性地細讀公視文本，本文企圖追溯種種權力佈署的蛛絲馬跡，以了解當代台灣社會中的同性戀形塑。 本文主要沿用了劉人鵬與丁乃非對含蓄美學的討論。藉由細讀公視孽子對白先勇小說中同性愛場景(homosexual sex scenes)的含蓄再現來揭露公視如何在「擁抱同性戀」、「將同性戀去污名」的偽裝之下將同性性愛魍魎化為一不可見、不可辨識的魍魎主體。此一分析所導引出來的問題將會是同性戀(homosexuality)與同性性愛(homosexual sex)之間的關聯性，以及除了「同性戀」的概念之外，「恐同」如何地於公視孽子中被再現。最後，本文將企圖歪讀公視孽子中某些含蓄的同性性愛場景，企圖將含蓄美學逆向操作並加以酷異化。 　　The Reticent Translation of Homosexual (Would-be) Sex Scenes  in the Crystal Boys TV Series (A shortened version of a 30-page chapter from my thesis Translating Nie Zi(1983) into Crystal Boys(2003)) According to Liu Jenpeng and Ding Naifei, “reticent politics” is “not merely a poetics and a rhetoric, but a socio-familial force and power,” which “circulates in everyday practices along pathways that maintain the ‘normal’ of persons and things as well as of actions and behaviors” (5). As noted by them, the reticent politics can and does travel in the guise of how homosexuals or same-sex persons, feeling and acts are tolerated in Chinese tradition to “deploy its particular force.” In the TV series Crystal Boys, “in the disguise of how (‘normative’) homosexuality is embraced,” reticent force is deployed to reject “actual” homosexual sex (practices). Through Public Television’s reticent translation of the homosexual sex scenes in Pai Hsienyung’s novel, homosexual sex (practice) is subtly turned into what they have theorized and defined as “penumbrae”—the unspeakable, unspoken, unrecognizable, and unrecognized. In this paper, following their discussions on reticence, I will point out how Public Television reticently avoids or punishes homosexual sex (practices). Through “questioning, speaking, and publicizing” that initial reticent force, I hope to reverse and subvert the reticent disciplinary force (Liu Jenpeng and Ding Naifei 33).1 At the end of this paper, I will offer alternative queer readings of some of these reticent homosexual (would-be) sex scenes as a means to activate the counter-reticent force. I. The Reticent Translation of Homosexual (Would-be) Sex Scenes In the TV series, homosexual (would-be) sex2 scenes are no longer filled with an explicit sense of shame and guilt. Compared with the novel, the TV series depicts these scenes in a lighter and easier tone. Take for example the scene where, in Zhao Ying’s room A-qing celebrates Zhao Ying’s birthday: when A-qing and Zhao Ying “look into each other’s face,” Zhao Ying’s homosexual desire is hereby initiated, after which the homoeroticism that is going on between them at this moment is interrupted when Zhao Ying’s mom knocks on the door. In addition to this scene, A-qing and Zhao Ying’s sex in the chemistry lab is depicted in a lighter tone. Nevertheless, despite the fact that the homosexual (would-be) sex scenes in the TV series are no longer explicitly coded in terms of death and shameful images, some of them are associated with death and shame motif in another way, at the level of narrative—sex either occurs as some kind of compensation for a kinsman’s death or serves as the cause of a kinsman’s death. In Public Television’s reticent translation, the novelistic imagery of death that is linked with homosexual sex in the original novel is now displaced onto the film narrative sequence. In the TV series, a typhoon’s attack on A-qing’s home and Buddy’s death, which belong to different time in the original novel, are rearranged and interlaced with A-qing and Zhao Ying’s two homosexual (would-be) sex scenes mentioned above. These events now occur in the following order: first, a typhoon passes through A-qing’s house, second, Buddy gets sick owing to the typhoon’s attack, third, A-qing leaves sick Buddy at home, going to Zhao Ying’s place celebrating Zhao Ying’s birthday, fourth, A-qing goes home finding Buddy faint on the floor and then sends him to the hospital, fifth, Buddy dies of acute pneumonia in the hospital, and sixth, in the chemistry lab, Zhao Ying comforts sad A-qing. With this rearrangement of the narrative sequence, A-qing’s homoeroticism becomes the scapegoat for the deterioration of Buddy’s death owing to his leaving Buddy alone and spending the afternoon with Zhao Ying. As the viewer Hei Hsienyung illustrates, “different from the original novel, in this adaptation, A-qing’s homoeroticism is linked with Buddy’s death, for he fails to take care of sick Buddy owing to his ‘date’ with Zhao Ying. […] In other words, A-qing realizes his homosexuality and feels guilty about it, because it causes Buddy’s death […].”  Further, owing to the chronological adaptation, A-qing’s sex with Zhao Ying somehow becomes the compensation for Buddy’s death. A-qing, guilty about Buddy’s death, sobs in the lab and is comforted by Zhao Ying, after which the two have sex. On the one hand, Buddy’s death in a way offers a “proper” circumstance for A-qing, who is then overwhelmed by the sorrow of losing his brother, to move one “brave” step forward—kissing and making love to Zhao Ying—exposing his homosexual desire. However, on the other, in seeming to help “legitimate” and “rationalize” A-qing’s homoerotic move toward Zhao Ying (as though this arrangement would make A-qing’s homoeroticism more acceptable for the public audience) through A-qing’s grief, the force exhibited by this significant “brave” step to show A-qing’s own sexual orientation seems to become reticent.3 In Public Television’s translation, homoeroticism is deflected and partly channeled toward the expression of familial loss. On the one hand, the reticent strategy turns homoeroticism into the generalized human feeling for the loss of a beloved. On the other, owing to the kinship between Buddy and A-qing, the homosexual sex (practice) motivated by the grief caused by Buddy’s death is incorporated into the whole heterosexual familial system so as to solidify the familial bond. Moreover, in the whole homosexual sex scene in the lab, there is no shot-reverse-shot that sutures the audience with either of the two homosexual characters. When A-qing and Zhao Ying make love on the ground, the camera, which creeps slowly from behind the chemistry equipment shelf toward the two indulged in sex, indicates a view that does not belong to A-qing, Zhao Ying, nor even to the lab supervisor that comes afterwards from the opposite direction of the camera’s position witnessing their affairs—it is a voyeuristic view that leads the audience, not to identify with, but to peep at the homosexual lovers. The homosexual sex scene here is turned into a mere spectacle, while the two beautiful young actors, Fan Zhiwei and Yang Youning, become the sex objects of gaze to be consumed. Commenting upon the audience’s voyeuristic desire, Zhao Yanning has theorized that “homophobia, though involving the emotions such as anxiety and fear, exhibits some kind of pleasure. This pleasure is always exhibited in the move of “seeing.” (156). In her analysis, it is not “what is seen” but “what to see” that offers pleasure. Through this mere move of seeing/wanting to see, to distinguish the viewers/seeing/heterosexual from the objects of gaze/seen/homosexual, the viewers’ unstable heterosexual subject is affirmed. Hence in the scene, though the audience could only see vaguely A-qing and Zhao Ying’s tangling bodies and the clothes scattered around, through the mere move of seeing/wanting to see, the heterosexual audience’s normative and dominant subject position is endorsed and reassured. Besides A-qing and Zhao Ying’s sex, in Public Television’s narrative, A-qing and Wang Kuilong’s sex is also linked to the kinsman’s death and is reticiently rechanneled to serve as a kind of emotional compensation for that familial bond. Similarly, their sex is interrupted—this time owing to A-qing’s strong grief toward Huang Lixia’s death.  So far in my discussion, A-qing and Zhao Ying’s and A-qing and Wang Kuilong’s homosexual (would-be) sex scenes in Crystal Boys, different from those represented in the original novel, are interrupted at the “preliminary stage,” i.e. before the intercourse starts, and sometimes at an even earlier stage. They are not violently removed (from the TV representation) but reticently interrupted in the television narrative. In Zhao Ying’s room, his mother’s “coincidental” knocking on the door interrupts when Zhao Ying’s homoeroticism is awakened; while in the hotel scene, A-qing and Wang Kuilong’s sex is interrupted by A-qing’s grief. Even in the lab scene, unlike the original novel that recounts A-qing’s intercourse with Zhao Wusheng in the lab, the TV series does not even explicitly tell us if A-qing and Zhao Ying “did it or not.” Judged from the drillmaster’s rebuke right after they get caught, the only thing we are sure of is that they “hug and kiss” (1: 99). As we can see, Crystal Boys, though seeming to “champion the legitimacy of (‘normative’) homosexuality,” prevents homosexual sex (practices) from happening. In Public Television’s reticent translation, homosexual sex (practice) is interrupted or otherwise channeled to some kind of emotional compensation for the loss of a kinsman as if homosexuality could only be justified as an extension of blood relationship—a romantic-as-derived-familial feeling.  Undeniably, Crystal Boys, as a prime time TV series genre, has its own (reticent) codes, such as violence/sex-off-the-stage. Also, it becomes a routine that when trying to maintain and further enhance the audience’s high viewing interest, a melodrama interrupts its sex scenes only to postpone them. However, we must not forget that Crystal Boys, as almost the first Taiwan prime time TV series centering on homosexuality, was given the attention on its representation and production much greater than as a prime time TV series. For example, the homosexual sex scenes in the series are interrupted, but never merely to be postponed. Homosexual sex (practice) is not only off-the-stage, i.e. avoided in the imagery, but also avoided in the narrative. Hence, this chapter could be viewed as an analysis of how the prime time TV series’ (reticent) codes join Public Television’s (homophobic) reticent force to translate the homosexual (would-be) sex scenes. The policy of avoiding homosexual sex also works in the relationship between Little Jade and Lin Maoxiong. After giving Lin Maoxiong a tour to Taipei city, Little Jade walks him back to the hotel at the night. Invited to come in “for a drink,” Little Jade chats with him in the room. After some conversation, Lin Maoxiong walks slowly toward him and touches him on the head. This scene ends here and is immediately followed by the day scene where, in Moon Beauty’s house, A-qing and Moon Beauty ask Little Jade, who just comes back, if he has spent the night “in bed” with Lin Maoxiong. Little Jade denies, explaining, “Mr. Lin is really a decent guy. Being with him, I feel like a happy and innocent child and no longer have to flatter others or play tricks” (1: 276; translation mine). In Public Television’s TV representation, the night Little Jade spent with Lin Maoxiong becomes an abrupt ellipsis in the narrative—we know neither what exactly happens that night after Little Jade is persuaded to stay overnight, nor the reason why Little Jade denies having sex with him by explaining that being with him, he feels like “a happy and innocent child.”  In Public Television’s translation, reticent force, “in the disguise of how (‘normative’) homosexuality is embraced,” is deployed to interrupt or avoid the occurrence of the homosexual sex practices. They either appear in the form of symbols—in the scene where Wang Kuilong and A-feng play in the pond in New Park, the “big bright red” lilies held in A-feng’s and Wang Kuilong’s hands (phallic symbol) and the fountain gushed and wetting all over their bodies (sperm imagery)4—or are subtly transformed into the ambiguous (the night that Little Jade and Lin Maoxiong spend in the hotel as an ellipsis), the circuitous (A-qing’s sex with Zhao Ying as compensation for Buddy’s death, and A-qing’s sex with Wang Kuilong as compensation for Huang Lixia’s death), and the mere spectacle (the voyeuristic shot in the lab scene). Otherwise, they become the cursed (A-qing and Zhao Ying’s homosexual would-be sex scene in Zhao Ying’s room triggers Buddy’s death). Homosexuality is hence legitimate only as affect, specifically in the forms of romantic same-age relationship or romantic-as-derived-familial feeling. Actually, Public Television’s reticent redeployment of homosexual (would-be) sex scenes reveals its anxiety about homosexual sex (practices). Ye Dexuan’s summary of Guy Hocquenghem’s theory further facilitates our understanding of the threat homosexual sex (practice) may cause to dominant power structures: “The homophobia hidden behind the dominant discourse is actually the fear of anus—gay men de-sublimate anus, associating it with sex/sexual pleasure at a symbolic level, and de-linking it from the centrality of phallic reproductive sexuality” (“The Hunting Specter” 80).5 Homosexual sex/anus challenges the phallic order in which sexual desire equals reproduction. Accordingly, we see how, opposed to the affect of homosexuality that seems to be de-stigmatized and legitimate (though only in the forms of same-age romantic love and romantic-as-derived-familial feeling), homosexual sex practices are again and again—in Public Television’s reticent translation—turned into the “penumbrae,” becoming the unspeakable, unspoken, unrecognizable, and unrecognized. To use Liu Jenpeng and Ding Naifei’s words, Public Television is “not homophobic,” just “above all reticent and tolerant” (34).6 II. Queering Reticence As Liu Jenpeng and Ding Naifei note, “Reticence of course has its own reversal subversive and resistant forces. Whether or not the latter can take effect as a counter-directional form of reticence, awaits continued questioning and speaking and publicizing of that initial reticent force” (33). Through questioning, speaking and the making public of reticent disciplinary forces, more penumbrae subjects that were hidden/invisible get the chance to come into shape, and be recruited to resist. So far in this paper, I have questioned and publicized that reticent force in Public Television’s Crystal Boys. However, this move, though crucial, can only be a starting point. To actually activate the reticent force “in the reverse against the normal order,” I will queer reticence by offering some alternative readings of the reticent homosexual (would-be) sex scenes in Crystal Boys (6).7  Let’s first reexamine the scene where Little Jade and Lin Maoxiong spent the night in the hotel room. Analyzed previously, this scene ends when Lin Maoxiong walks slowly toward Little Jade, touching him on the head, and then is immediately followed by the scene where A-qing and Moon Beauty ask Little Jade the next day, who has just come back, if he has spent the night “in bed” with Lin Maoxiong. In Public Television’s reticent strategy, what happens that night after Lin Maoxiong’s touching Little Jade’s head become the ellipse. Significantly, A-qing and Moon Beauty’s doubt (whether Little Jade “sleeps with” Lin Maoxiong) together with Little Jade’s questionable reply exactly highlight the abruptness of that ellipse and thus evokes the audience’s voyeuristic desire as well as the ambivalent anxiety for that suspicious ellipse—“whether the ‘decent guy’ and the ‘happy and innocent child,’ the ‘father and son’ did it or not”?  In D.A. Miller’s famous essay “Anal Rope,” he queers Hitchcock’s film Rope by giving a remarkably interesting analysis of the film’s camera movement and cutting. In his analysis, of the five blackouts Hitchcock manages in this way, four seize the occasion offered by the men’s backside, which operate to peep at/occult the perforation of the anus/gay male sex, which reveals such ambivalence between “wanting to see” (i.e. the camera’s stop on the men’s backside) and “preventing it from taking place” (i.e. the immediate blackouts). Miller further illustrates, “the blackouts come as proof positive that there is nothing to see, unless of course what is laid bare, through the imperfections of the joins, is the structure of the join itself, hence the very operation of closet”—a homophobic cueing (126). That is, the abruptness of the blackouts that intends to conceal the anus/gay male sex paradoxically reconfirms that there must “has been something to see instead of this operation [of closet]” (126). Similarly, in the hotel scene in Crystal Boys, we see the “imperfect joins” (i.e. the abrupt ellipse in that night after Lin Maoxiong touches Little Jade on the head), which precisely exposes what D.A. Miller has termed the mechanism of “operation of the closet”—a homophobic ellipse. This abrupt ellipse, meant to occult and deny the homosexual sex between Little Jade and Lin Maoxiong, paradoxically reconfirms that there must has been “something” happening on that night after Lin Maoxiong touches Little Jade’s head. Accordingly, from the moment Lin Maoxiong pats Little Jade’s cheek as an expression of saying good-bye, after which he hesitates and finally decides to call back Little Jade to enter his room “for a drink,” the audience are put into the position of “being just about to see what we are waiting for”—the spectacle of homosexual sex that is always deferred and suspended—with our voyeuristic desire of that spectacle continually intensified owing to the prolonged state of expectation. Interestingly, the whole hotel scene is crosscut with the scene where Old Chou comes to Moon Beauty’s house looking for Little Jade: first, outside the hotel room, Lin Maoxiong invites Little Jade into the room “for a drink,” second, Old Chou, believing Moon Beauty’s lie that Little Jade goes out to take care of his sick mother, waits for him in Moon Beauty’s living room, and third, inside the room, Little Jade and Lin Maoxiong chat. Through Moon Beauty’s lying to Old Chou, this crosscutting implies that Lin Maoxiong has replaced Old Chou as the latest “sugar daddy.” It reinforces the audience’s suspicion about Little Jade and Lin Maoxiong’s sexual relationship. When inside the room, Lin Maoxiong walks, exceedingly slowly toward the bed where Little Jade sits, with his eyes looking attentively at Little Jade, this is when the audience’s voyeuristic desire mounts to the peak. At this right moment, this intensified desire is abruptly suspended by the scene’s shift to the next day, thus with the audience left in great doubt. However, owing to the “imperfect joins”—a homophobic ellipsis—this “operation of the closet” turns out to reconfirm the occurrence of Little Jade and Lin Maoxiong’s homosexual sex acts on that unspoken/unspeakable/unrecognized /unrecognizable night. In this way, this reticent scene can work in reverse not only because it indicates the happening of homosexual sex practice but also because this sex relationship is “aberrant” in many ways: it is cross-generational, it involves money, and the most important of all, it generates incest anxiety.  In the hotel scene, we see how the audience’s voyeuristic desire is gradually intensified. Similarly, in another reticent scene, the chemistry lab scene, we see how the TV representation actually positions the audience as voyeurs. As discussed previously, in this scene, A-qing and Zhao Ying’s sex becomes a spectacle, for during the whole homoerotic scene, there is not any shot-reverse-shot that sutures the audience with either of the two homosexual characters. Instead of helping the audience identify with A-qing or Zhao Ying, the camera creeps from behind the chemistry equipment shelf to their having sex in the dark as if leading the audience to peep the homoerotic sex acts and consume the beautiful male bodies. Nevertheless, the public’s voyeuristic desire could be subversive against the reticence that functions to maintain the “normal order.” In Zhao Yanning’s essay “The Invisible Power: an Epistemological Analysis of Regulatory Discourses of Non-Reproductive and Non-Consanguineous Relationship,” she offers a profound insight into the newspaper representation of social events related to homosexual sex. She writes, “the eternal gap between the actual state of [homosexual] sex and its representation [in mass media] causes the viewer’s/peeper’s reaction of anxiety, excitement and panic. The viewer’s/peeper’s voyeuristic desire [i.e. to see the homosexual sex, the obscenity] is, ironically, a desire to construct the viewer/peeper himself/herself as an obscene subject” (156).8 In her analysis, this voyeuristic move, like homosexual sex, exceeds that “normal order” and thus belongs to the field of the “obscene.” That is, in offering the pleasure to peep A-qing and Zhao Ying’s homosexual sex acts in the chemistry lab scene (as well as in intensifying the audience’s voyeuristic desire in Little Jade and Lin Maoxiong’s hotel scene), Public Television is turning the public audience into obscene and illegitimate sex subjects while turning Crystal Boys into an obscene and illegitimate text. Works Cited English Reference: Foucault, Michel. The History of Sexuality. New York: Vintage, 1990. John, M. Clum. “Seeing Gay.” Acting Gay: Male Homosexuality in Modern Drama. NY: Columbia UP, 1992. 3-36. Miller, D.A. “Anal Rope.” Representations. 32 (1990): 114-133. Pai, Hsienyung. Crystal Boys. Trans. Howard Goldblatt. San Francisco: Gay Sunshine Press, 1990. Seidman, Steven. Beyond the Closet. New York and London: Routledge, 2002. Silverman, Kaja. Male Subjectivity at the Margins. New York: Routledge, 1992. Chinese Reference Crystal Boys (孽子). 20 episodes. Dir. Cao Ruiyuan (曹瑞原). Per. Fan Zhiwei (范植偉), Jin Qin (金勤), Tuo Zonghua (庹宗華), and Ke Junxiong (柯俊雄). Public Television. DVD, 2003. Hei, Hsienyung (黑先詠). “One Light that Changes it All” (一點靈光全體皆活) Public Television Official Discussion Forum Website. 2003 <http://www.pts.org.tw/~web01 /boys/> Liu, Jenpeng and Ding Naifei (劉人鵬，丁乃非). “Penumbrae Ask Shadow: Reticent Poetics, Queer Politics” (魍魎問景: 含蓄美學與酷兒攻略). Working Papers in Gender/Sexuality Studies (性/別研究) 3-4 (1998):109-155. Ye Dexuan (葉德宣). “The Haunting Specter of Familialism—an Analysis of the Discourses of Nie Zi” (陰魂不散的家庭主義魑魅—對詮釋孽子諸文的論述分析). Chung-Wai Literary Monthly中外文學. 24.7 (1995): 66-88 ---. “From Domesticity to Police Interrogation: the Patriarchal National/Familial Discipline of the Body in Nie Zi” (從家庭受勳到警局問訊—孽子中父系國/家的身體規訓地景). Chung-Wai Literary Monthly中外文學. 30.2 (2001): 124-154 Zhao, Yanning (趙彥寧). “The Invisible Power: an Epistemological Analysis of Regulatory Discourses of Non-Reproductive and Non-Consanguineous Relationship”(看不見的權力—非生殖非親屬規範性論述的認識論分析). From Queer Space To Education Space (從酷兒空間到教育空間). Ed. David D. W. Wang (王德威). Taipei: Rye Field Publications, 2000. Zhang, Xiaohong (張小虹). “Nie Zi’s Shame Performativity”(孽子的恥辱踐履). United Daily News, March 1, 2003. 註釋： According to Liu Jenpeng and Ding Naifei, “This (reticent) force may also be activated to work in the reverse, against that ‘normal order,’ disturbing or harassing it, or invoking shades and shadows and shadows and other uninvited guests. Significantly, if we do not or cannot describe that normally circulating reticent force so that its deployment is recognized, then the reversal of that reticent force, its subversive counter-usage will remain buried, less effectively activated in the shadow world of rumors” (6). 【回本文】 Since what acts can be qualified as “sex” may be controversial, before moving on, I shall clarify that my usage of the word “sex” in this thesis, unless particularly specified, refers to almost all kinds of erotic acts including kissing, caressing, and intercourse. If the erotic scenes are/seem interrupted before any erotic acts takes place, I call them “would-be sex.”【回本文】 Before I move on, I shall clarify that I am not arguing that “owing to the time when A-qing has sex with Zhao Ying is when he loses his loving brother, there is no homoeroticism between them”; instead, I am proposing a danger, a caution as to how, through Public Television’s narrative strategy, Buddy’s death and A-qing’s sex is made cause and effect, and homoeroticism and homosexual practice might hence be relegated to the loss of a kinsman.【回本文】 We can further reconfirm the scene’s sexual implication by the words of Chief Yang, who watches A-feng and Wang Kuilong play in the pond, that “now, their union is going to be like a blazing fire meeting the dry wood” (1: 460) (「這下天雷要勾動地火啦」).【回本文】 「隱藏於主流論述背後的同性戀恐懼，其實正是對肛門的恐懼。因男同志使肛門去昇華—使其在象徵層次上和性快感再次連結，脫離了陽物生殖性慾的勢力範圍。」【回本文】 In its original text: “For they [i.e. the structures and techniques of speech, thought and feeling that conform to a poetics and force of reticent words and actions] say they are not homophobic, they are above all reticent and tolerant.” Of course, the comment “not homophobic just above all reticent and tolerant” is ironic (both here and in its original text).【回本文】 After making public that reticent force, the second step of my strategy—queering reticence—would be to find the leak, the “imperfect joins” in that reticent homosexual (would-be) sex scenes and then non-reticently undo that reticent force, unmasking these scenes. Even so, I believe that, in some other “perfect” reticent homosexual (would-be) sex scenes without the “imperfect joins,” some viewers might find the reticent (would-be) sex all the more provoking and sensational than the non-reticent one. Such reaction to the reticent force may resemble what Foucault has mentioned “the perpetual spirals of power and pleasure” in which pleasure and power are linked together, reinforce each other, and become a network (45). However, such an analysis may require a great knowledge background of image theories, audience analysis, and media mechanism. Thus, this thesis does/can not cover that part but anticipates to recruit and interpellate relevant penumbrae discourses to resist. 【回本文】 「性的真實與在現之間無法彌補的鴻溝，以焦慮、興奮、驚惶等情緒展現出來。所謂觀看(或一般所稱偷窺)的慾望，反諷的是正是觀看自我建構自我成為一個猥褻主體的慾望。」【回本文】