The Women’s Revenge

Prior to Taiwan’s lifting of martial law, a group of films influenced by the European wave of exploitation movie was produced in the 1980s, including Never Too Late to Repent, Woman of Wrath, On the Social File of Shanghai, Woman Revenger and Queen Bee. This filmic genre featuring the motif of “women’s revenge” would usually portray some severely oppressed heroines before culminating in bloody plots of vengeance. In continuation of Su’s creative context of “re-shooting” in recent years, The Women’s Revenge uses Taiwanese exploitation movies as a starting point to reexamines the problems of body regulation, seeking social novelty, modern discomforts and mediatized body. It also discusses how plots based on feminism have been turned into exploitation movies, reflects on the misunderstanding and exploitation of female sexuality in the system of image, and exposes how the contemporary body is manipulated by image technologies.

For the artist, these films point to a blackhole in history, in which a mixed bunch of images devours possible clues to explore the life politics of an entire generation. Formally speaking, the artist also takes part in the violent vengeance upon men by transforming himself into one of the avenging women – the box office guarantee for the 1980s Taiwanese cinema and the Best Leading Actress of the 20th Golden Horse Awards, Lu Shao-Fen, with a peculiarly proportioned body – through makeup and the technology of deepfake. The transformation also symbolizes an attempt to understand and experience women’s world with a man’s body.

#Exploitation_film #Cultfilm #Gender #Socialrealism #Deepfake