Hauntological Aesthetics in Taiwanese Animation Feature Grandma and Her Ghosts (1998)

Document Type

Article

Publisher

Association for Chinese Animation Studies

Publication Date

2-21-2021

Abstract

In her recently published monograph Puppets, Gods, and Brands: Theorizing the Age of Animation from Taiwan, Teri Silvio insightfully observes that for the author, the animation model could also be utilized to display “how specific local cultural traditions make sense of and contribute to global transformations.”[1] Further, Silvio observes that “recent transformations of Taiwanese animation practices offer alternative (and not just reactive) concepts of animation in the broader sense, and thus, alternative ways of imagining and bringing into being the Age of Animation.”[2] Among the many understudied animation works that Silvio discusses, the classic Taiwanese animation feature Grandma and Her Ghosts (1998), directed by Wang Shau-di, is mentioned as a successful example representing “folk Daoist magic with an environmental theme.”[3] As Silvio observes, in this animation, “Daoist magic is framed, not within the wuxia genre, but within a nostalgic family drama about a boy from the city visiting his grandmother in the countryside.”[4] Building on Silvio’s ground-breaking work, this essay explores the hauntological imaginations in this seminal animation film. Animated cartoons, from an Eisensteinian point of view, could “return the reviewer to a pre-logical state, to the realm of sensuous thought.”[5] Eisenstein terms animation’s ability to articulate “freedom from ossification” and take on nascent and dynamic forms of expression as “plasmaticity.”[6] The potential of animated cartoons to bespeak the transgressive and the metaphorical, furthermore, invites an engaged discussion of hauntological aesthetics in animation films representing ghosts, with a focus on Grandma and Her Ghosts.[7]

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