Queering the Screen: Spectral Figures and German-Taiwanese Encounters in Monika Treut’s Ghosted

Abstract:In queer German director Monika Treut’s film Ghosted (2009), a plethora of screen apparatuses, including cameras, laptops, and cellphones, mediate encounters among the German protagonist, Sophie Schmitt; her Taiwanese girlfriend, Ai-ling; and Ai-ling’s spectral doppelgänger, Mei-li. Examining how the screen bestows visibility on the otherwise elusive figure of the queer Asian woman while limiting her freedom, this article explores how the comparatively more fluid apparitional lesbian challenges the domesticating effect of racially charged looks by destabilizing various borders between life and death, past and present, the real and the imaginary. Although Treut valorizes the ghost’s unfathomable nature as its source of power, a full acceptance of the spectre’s opacity and epistemological differences inherently conflicts with the desire to bridge German and East Asian cultures.