아피찻퐁 위라세타쿤 영화의 퀴어다움을 찾아서

Queerness of Apichatpong Weerasethakul's 'Blissfully Yours' and 'Tropical Malady'

The films of Apichatpong Weerasethakul could be read as queer movies on the one hand, but on the other as non-queer movies. They wiggle their ways with desire that makes cracks on the normative idea of sexuality and furthermore on sexual identity in general. Queerness, as a name of particular eroticism, could be created on the level of arbitrariness and fortuitousness. If his films are queer movies, it is not because that they portray homosexual eroticism but because that the portrayal of specific eroticism oscillates through another kinds. If they are not queer movies, it is because that the floating sexuality would be a part of the spectrum of which abnormal identities consist. This paper tries to reconstruct the queerness in <Blissfully Yours> (2002) and <Tropical Malady> (2004) focusing on the sexual relationships of characters. Though <Blissfully Yours> presents characters' heterosexual relationships on the surface, it could be read as a symptom of suppression of homosexual desire as well as a disequilibration between heterosexual and homosexual desire. It's queerness lies in their floating and interchangeable sexuality and relationships. <Tropical Malady> presents a fantastic space where characters are acquiring queer identities by way of becoming-animal. Its fantastic moment of becoming-animal creates a new language of re-territorialization of representation of queer subjects. Representation of queerness in <Blissfully Yours> and <Tropical Malady> could be read as a constant antagonism between rethinking sexual identity of Thai tradition and practicing an alternative queer culture to that of the West. It is imperative not only to reflect on the Thai socio-cultural and historical contexts, but also to reconsider the representational strategy on queer subjects in queer movies, if we are to understand the complicated and palimpsest texures of “queerness” of the films of Apichatpong Weerasethakul.