佛洛伊德論「詭祕」

黃春明的＜呷鬼的來了＞

定錨角色

似假還真

中國鬼故事母題

視覺效應

「空」即是「有」

結語

From the viewpoint of psychoanalysis, the uncanny suggests that something that we are all familiar with may cause fear. Using etymology to analyze the word 「uncanny,」 Freud makes a comparison between the two German words heimlich and unheimilich. The former means 「the house, familiarity, privacy, and something hidden from the self,」 whereas the latter suggests the opposite—unhomey, unfamiliarity, revelation, and self-exposure. However, he finds out that both heimlich and unheimilich are identical to one meaning, that is, 「the unknown.」 Freud then notes that the uncanny means the revelation of privacy and the hidden, both from others and the self. The exemplar story Sandman involves the uncanny elements such as the uncertainty of real/fantasy and the castration complex (the fear of losing the eye). The uncanny is the return of something repressed in the infantile periods. The other examples would be double images in the mirror, involuntary repetition, and the power of the psyche that indicates the return of primal desires.

Our experiences of the uncanny are different in real life and in fiction because we understand that what happens in the stories may not necessary happen in real life; namely, we adjust our expectations of the uncanny when reading fiction. Only adopting realism in reading fiction can we sense the uncanny effect in the stories. In defining the quality of an uncanny fiction, Freud suggests that the readers project themselves as the anchor characters when they read the stories illustrated both with subjective and objective narrative styles.

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黃春明的＜呷鬼的來了＞

The uncanny elements could be found in Chun-Ming Huang’s (黃春明) short story The Approaching of the Ghost Eater (＜呷鬼的來了＞). The title prepares the readers for encountering the uncanny and the fantastic in the story. Unlike The Sandman where male figures carry out the uncanny elements, females are more important than the males for the readers to sense the uncanny feelings in the story.

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定錨角色

At the beginning of the story, the narrator equips the readers with a poem foreshadowing what might happen in the following. The poem focuses on both visual images (water and the imagination of the narrator) and audio components (the voice of children and animals, the spread of the ghost story). As the readers read on, they find out that lots of grotesque images and settings are used in the story. First of all, the setting for the story is on a haunted highway where lost of car accidents happened. The setting is familiar to most Taiwanese readers since we have heard various ghost stories associated with this particular highway. A contrast appears when two American girls are to listen to and experience the ghost culture of Yi-lan. For them, the wild ghosts in Taiwan belong to the unknown and the unfamiliar culture. The differences between the two enable the readers to expect something unknown to the foreigners to be revealed; namely, the hidden ghost stories come into light with the appearance of anchor characters.

The central characters include the driver Lamb, the Chinese priest, the elder Shen, and the butcher. The second narrator (besides the story’s narrator) Lamb is identified as the figure that reveals his familiar ghostly experiences to the audience and other characters who are unfamiliar with the ghost culture. Through Lamb’s eyes, the readers are able to see how the ghost stories take place. The readers unconsciously identify themselves with Lamb and experience the same ghostly situation as Lamb did. In this case, the readers project the psyche of Lamb to have a 「first-hand」 experience through listening and visiting the actual place. Lamb’s telling ghost stories and the readers』 experience makes this fiction uncanny.

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似假還真

中國鬼故事母題

The uncanny elements are also demonstrated by the tradition of Chinese gothic stories embedded in the stories. In traditional Chinese ghost stories, the empty is an important element. What makes the empty shocking is the appearance of something that is 「supposed to disappear.」 For instance, the flock of white birds should be gone after being burned. However, the Chinese priest’s expression shows that he witnesses the visiting of the white birds in the town again. According to him, someone would still hear the white birds』 wings flapping at night. The reappearance of the white birds not only indicates the tradition of Chinese gothic story but also points out that something private is revealed through the beholders』 sight. Significantly, what is considered 「private」 is made known to the outsiders. As the Chinese priest says, he does not want to talk about the private business of why the town is haunted. He should refrain from telling the outsiders what really happened. The uncanny thus lies in the revelation of the true story. The private information should be withheld from strangers, and once the secret comes to light, the Chinese priest’s heimlich experience would appear to be unheimilich to the outsiders. The  narrative of the uncanny unfolds as the unknown becomes known, and the private becomes public.

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視覺效應

 The 「eye」 effect is also prevalent in this story. Unlike the eyes representing the fear of castration in The Sandman, the eye effect in this story is shown by the use of visual images and the camera. At the very beginning, the poem provides the readers an abundance of water images. The correspondence between the poem and the story of the female ghost calls attention to the duplication of visual images. Like a mirror, the water is capable of producing the reflected images. The images reflected by the creek include the perceived reflection of the little girl (female ghost) in the second ghost story and the elder Shen’s self-reflection of telling the ghost story after the rain pours in the village. What is uncanny here is that the images of water suggest lots of duplication of the grotesque, the private experiences, and the revelation of the hidden past of the town and the character. The repeated use of the water reflects the duplication of what is mentioned in the story before and the echo later in the whole story.

Besides the water image, the use of camera contributes to the uncanny as well. The camera, like a mirror, produces exactly the same images. Interestingly, the narrator also uses flashback to create a 「mirror effect」 in our brain. When we imagine certain events in our mind, we are actually producing something similar (might not be the same) to the reality with our eyesight. The motif of the double here marks the reappearance of similar images, especially in the sense of repetition. The uncanny here thus lies in the repetition images produced by the camera, suggesting that what is mentioned before in the story reprises in the end, just like the way human are reminded of previous experiences in the early stages of life.

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「空」即是「有」

In addition to the repetition of the 「eye」 images, the empty occurs very often in the story. For instance, when asked the ghost story about the flock of white birds, the Chinese priest repeated 「now they (the birds and the ghosts) are all gone」 (163) for four times. Besides, the disappearance of the old temple and the Chinese priest also represents the 「nothing」 motif in the story. The other characters』 curiosity about the ghost stories in Yi-lan also 「vanishes」 after the topic is shifted from the ghost story to Titanic and Leonardo Dicaprio. That the butcher’s disappearance turns out to be a dead body in the end indicates the empty element in the story again. Unlike the reappearance of something that should have been gone, the examples of the empty here do not appear again in the story. Throughout the story, the narrator mentions the empty motif seven times. Interestingly, the Chinese priest seems not to be aware of that he actually repeats the same phrases again and again. It is Lamb (or the narrator) that adds meaning to the repetition. The unconscious situation emerges into consciousness when interpretation is added. The uncanny here, therefore, is something like the sixth sense. Once the character is aware of the repetition, the uncanny appears for the unconscious is unveiled.

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結語

  Huang’s Story The Approaching of the Ghost Eater makes a perfect example of the uncanny because of the contrast between the familiar and the unfamiliar, the readers』 projection of the anchor character’s psyche, the blurry boundary between the hidden and the revealed, the eye effect, and finally the unconscious repetition of certain characters. As Freud suggests, the uncanny is something that cause fear once we relate something frightful to what we have already known. In this case, Huang’s story could call attention to lots of Taiwanese ghost stories resembling the uncanny as well. Besides the uncanny, what surprises the readers may be that once they discover the uncanny elements in the stories, they may realize the uncanny, besides possessing the shocking and extraordinary characteristics, could actually be seen as some sort of beauty. Then, if critics like Freud regards the uncanny experiences as aesthetic, wouldn’t this viewpoint sound 「uncanny」 for the general public as well?     

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