John Hsu’s ghost film Detention (2019) adapts a popular video game from the company Red Candle. Set in Taiwan’s oppressive White Terror era (1947-1987) under Chiang Kai-shek and his son, the film’s Chinese title Fanxiao (返校 return to school) points to the custom of designated dates during the summer vacation for students to return to school for a checkup of the progress due in their homework as well as for group cleaning of the school grounds and facility. (Throughout my schooling K-12 and college in Taiwan, I had never figured out which came first.) Yet fan is a double entendre on return (返) and revolt (反). Indeed, Detention returns to the White Terror to denounce it, upend it. Reversing not only to the past but also the present, even the future, the film’s claustrophobic mise-en-scène of Cuihua High School (翠華中學) is to be demolished to make way for the skyscraper Cuihua Tianxia (翠華天下Cuihua Under the Heaven), as the giant billboard outside the shuttered school gates advertises. Hua epitomizes Chineseness since time immemorial; tianxia is the revered term for universal values. Read More
