後現代都市中的移民與愛情：蒂帕梅塔的多倫多電影

Immigrant and Love in the Postmodern City: Deepa Mehta’s Toronto Films

蒂帕梅塔的多倫多影片處理多倫多後現代都會中的愛情與家庭的可能性，可以被視為多倫多這個垂直（有階級）的鑲嵌玻璃的縮影：以盎格魯──撒克遜族白人（WASP）的「愛情共和國」為中心，外加上三部呈現南亞裔生活圈的影片。這個鑲嵌玻璃不是靜態僵化的：梅塔在《愛情共和國》與《寶萊塢／好萊塢》中採用「雜多」策略將電影中的「家」開放為離心、跨族裔、跨性別的多元溝通空間；在《山姆與我》與《戀獄天堂》中，她則利用「離散」策略為弱勢角色開放傳統家庭之外的活動空間。「雜多」和「離散」既是文本策略，也是本文反異國情調的脈絡化閱讀策略：本文將四部影片像是四個色塊拼湊成多倫多鑲嵌玻璃的一角，處理文本內和文本之間的對比和對話，讓這塊鑲嵌玻璃所建構的多倫多離散空間（diaspora space）成為一個有限度地容許跨族裔、跨性別對話的社會空間。

The present article adopts a “contextualizing (or anti-exotic) reading strategy” to analyze Deepa Mehta’s four Toronto films in juxtaposition to one another. The contextualizing reading deals mostly with the logic of hybridity and diasporization in each of the four Mehta films, but the article ends with connecting the texts with two other “contexts”: their commercial and discursive contexts and their inter-textual connections. In exploring the possibilities of love and family, Deepa Mehta’s Toronto films present a microcosm of Toronto as a vertical mosaic: centered by a WASP “republic of love,” surrounded by three South-Asian family circles. The vertical mosaic is a dynamic one through Mehta’s hybridization process, which allows the characters in The Republic of Love and Bollywood/Hollywood to create de-centering, cross-cultural and cross-gender meanings in word as well as in action; Mehta also breaks open and diasporizes the family spaces in Sam and Me and Heavens on Earth to allow the immigrant characters to evade the power centers in action, in monologue and in fantasy. The article concludes that Mehta’s Toronto films hybridize Toronto’s white center and allow their characters to evade power centers only to a limited degree. However, a contextualizing reading of the films, by tracing their textual logic, their commercial and discursive contexts and their inter-textual connections, can not only avoid the traps of exoticization but also carved out a diasporic space which allows cross-cultural and cross-gender dialogue, interactions and associations.