To Love and Freedom: Post-martial Law Subjectivity in Detention and Your Name Engraved Herein

Abstract

This paper investigates the contemporary cinematic representation of the White Terror period (1949–1987) in Taiwan. The government started the process of Transitional Justice in 2017, uncovering and articulating the violence of the martial law period, which has coincided with Taiwan’s search for visibility and recognition on the international stage. Meanwhile, the PRC’s military threat to annex Taiwan turns the collective memory of White Terror into a cautionary tale of dictatorship. Considering this historical and political context, I examine two commercial films set against the martial law period, Detention (2019) and Your Name Engraved Herein (2020). I argue that the two films, in their criticism of authoritarianism, construct antagonism between a paternalistic state apparatus and innocent, idealistic youth in melodramatic romantic narratives. With their hyperbolic expression of physical and psychological struggles, the pursuit of love and freedom is upheld as the ultimate expression of humanity. The romantic subjectivity formed in the melodramatic love stories eventually displaces the historical trauma, turning into escapism or gender binarism. Rather than locating and mediating the complexity of trauma, the two films celebrate liberalism by perpetuating stereotypes and exclusionism.