(RE)CAPTURING THE ‘ABSENT’ MEMORY OF THE JUNE 4TH INCIDENT: An analysis of Lou Ye’s Summer Palace (2006)

Abstract

The June 4th Incident at Tiananmen Square marked the end of the student revolution for liberty and democracy that took place in Beijing in 1989. This thesis discusses the film text Summer Palace (2006) directed by mainland Chinese director Lou Ye. By analysing the narrative structure, the use of excessive sex scenes and the film’s engagement with documentary footages, this thesis sets out to address the following questions: How does filmic representation of trauma allow memory and its associated traumatic effects to be vicariously passed onto the viewer? Based on the relationship between the embodied spectator and the screen image, how may the spectator experience June 4th affectively?