Archive – Page 2 – CARPE NOCTEM

Consumable Feminism

January 28, 2020January 28, 2020 Wan BoLeave a comment

Feminism has never been more voguish on TV. Many recent shows, including The Handmaid's Tale, The Good Fight, Big Little Lies and Killing Eve, to just name a few, have acquired commercial and critical success. HBO blockbusters like Game of Thrones and Westworld have both featured powerful female protagonists with varying degrees of awkwardness. I have watched all these shows, and they are peculiarly similar. They are all inherently commercial productions to begin with, and they all depict women who fit into the public imagination of feminism: the sort of women who are rebellious, manipulative and capable of shooting a gun unlike those James Bond girls in the good old days. There is something unsettling about this, and I am afraid that we are moving in the wrong direction despite unprecedented media attention given to women.

Between My World and Me

January 6, 2020March 8, 2020 Wan Bo

Don’t get me wrong. This is not a post seeking the most neutral, most inoffensive description of what’s happening in Hong Kong. I am by no means qualified to do that. I have never been to Hong Kong, nor have I or my family directly benefitted from its special political and economic status. As you might have noticed, I do not like to offend others, especially on such a divided issue with both sides feeling so strongly. But to me, this is not a matter of seeking the most apolitical description; the most apolitical description is itself a political statement. This is an issue of personal matter and sentiment. This is an issue between my world and me.

Protected: Joy in the Post-Enlightenment Era: Abraham’s Faith and Zarathustra’s Eternal Acceptance

January 4, 2020September 7, 2020 Wan Bo

There is no excerpt because this is a protected post.

《妖猫传》：空海找寻的无上密，到底是什么？

December 17, 2019 Wan BoLeave a comment

在看了《妖猫传》两遍之后，我觉得这部视觉华丽的电影相当完整，是一部夹带着脍炙人口的历史事件，再加上一定的浪漫想象，并在内容上有深意的电影，对《长恨歌》这首经典也新添新的见解。尽管这样，这部电影说不上是在揭露，或者说批判，更多的是给观众提供一种精神安慰，一种去面对现实的态度。

What is Lana Del Ray Hopeful of?

October 26, 2019January 28, 2020 Wan BoLeave a comment

The closing song on Lana Del Ray's most recent album, Norman Fucking Rockwell, is titled Hope is a dangerous thing for a woman like me to have - but I have. At first glance, it seems too long a title, but in fact, not a single word can be taken out from it. In the minimalist production, Del Ray sings about being a modern American woman with (what she calls) a weak Constitution, reading a suicidal female poet, crying in a church basement and how her audience are perceiving her. It surveys a wide range of emotions and sensations beyond just melancholy and solitude that are featured in most of her old songs. At the end of her most recent and mature album, she concludes with a surprisingly weighty remark with much confession to make and much imagination to inspire.

Lives of Animals, by J.M. Coetzee

October 14, 2019December 17, 2019 Wan BoLeave a comment

In J.M. Coetzee’s lectures on animal ethics, the moral debate quickly evolves into a metaphysical one. Instead of limiting her discussion to whether it is ethical to kill animals, Elizabeth Costello, the protagonist in Coetzee’s fiction, challenges the status of reason and its moral significance. In Peter Singer’s response to Coetzee’s lectures, Peter, the fictional… Continue reading Lives of Animals, by J.M. Coetzee

Camera and Moral Imagination

June 20, 2019June 20, 2019 Wan BoLeave a comment

Documentary is equally guilty of manipulating reality and privileging certain images, opinions and narratives over others. Still, documentary is often associated with its moral language. The audience of a documentary (rather than, for example, a fictional horror) are more likely to feel compelled to act in a certain way and to ethically respond to a situation. How can one reconcile the implicit manipulation of reality and the strong moral imperative that seem to coexist in a documentary?

“White Left” and Surging Chinese Nationalism

April 17, 2019April 17, 2019 Wan BoLeave a comment

It is certainly not easy to be white nowadays. On the Chinese version of the World Wide Web, “White Left” is a term loosely referring to white people who hold left-wing political views. The phrase has acquired negative popularity on various Chinese social media such as Weibo and Zhihu, the Chinese equivalence of Twitter and Quora, since the European refugee crisis and the latest US election. Why do Chinese netizens hate left-wing politics so much? And in particular, why do they target at white people?

Feeling 4.0: Redefined Intimacy in the Fourth Industrial Revolution

November 23, 2018November 23, 2018 Wan BoLeave a comment

On the whole, Her is a sharp, witty film depicting modern human relationship and what we have become without realising. It is as realistic as it is speculative. While in the past semester I have been mostly studying the economic and technical aspects of the fourth industrial revolution, I want to reflect on something personal in this essay. I want to reflect on how the fourth industrial revolution may change interpersonal relationships and how one perceives reality, love and intimacy. Like the film, my reflection can be speculative at times and make certain assumptions, and I do not claim that this reflection accurately predicts the future. I also do not claim to be pessimistic about the future. This reflection is at best the melancholic afterthought following the fourth industrial revolution, or what I call it, Feeling 4.0, after not just jobs, but also conventional conceptions of human existence and metaphysics are lost, for better or worse.

Beyond Meaning: Film-Being and The Production of Presence

June 14, 2018October 14, 2019 Wan BoLeave a comment

In this essay, I contrast Gumbrecht’s insight with the cognitivist and Daniel Frampton’s phenomenological views on cinematic experiences. Borrowing scenes from Terrance Malik’s film The Tree of Life, I propose that cinematic expressions can create presence besides communicating stable, concrete meanings that mostly engage one’s mind. I side with Gumbrecht and argue that merely attributing or reconstructing the meaning of a film, cognitively or phenomenologically, limits the philosophising potential of the medium. After all, film intrinsically philosophises as a physical reality, or film-being.