悲慘世界中的喜劇視境：試論王童的臺灣三部曲

A Comic Vision in a Tragic World: On Wang Tong’s Taiwan Trilogy

與侯孝賢相比，王童或許不是一位革新影像的電影作者，但卻是一位優秀的說書人，其融合悲劇與喜劇的故事風格，其實是中國文學中笑謔傳統的延續與再生。本文借助西方的喜劇理論探索王童臺灣三部曲中的喜劇元素、精神與視境：首部曲《稻草人》 就設定了喜劇的基調，包含性與身體的喜劇元素以及偶然與巧合的喜劇情節，「危機」帶來「轉機」與「生機」，但又在故事的最後顯現出對未來的不確定感；《香蕉天堂》的喜劇意識主要展現在小人物與國家機器的角力上，但並非是小蝦米對抗大鯨魚的英雄主義，而是弱者寄生蟲般的抵禦技藝；最後《無言的山丘》中性、排泄物、醜怪的身體等喜劇元素與情節交織發展成複雜的象徵網絡，不只是批判了日本的殖民體制，更對人性貪婪的本質進行嘲諷。王童悲喜劇的最終價值並非引發恐懼或憐憫的情感，而是知識性的；它提供了一個觀看世界的矛盾性、曖昧性與複雜性的雙重視境，不但看到事物的正反兩面，更理解到正反面相生相依的道理。

Compared with Hou Hsiao-Hsien 侯孝賢, the Taiwanese director Wang Tong 王童 cannot be considered a revolutionary auteur in terms of film language, but no one would deny his talent for storytelling. As a storyteller, Wang Tong combines the tragic and comic and thus revives the tradition of melancholic laughter in modern Chinese literature. Using the theories of comedy, this essay explores and articulates the comical elements, spirit, and vision of Wang Tong’s Taiwan trilogy. The first part of the trilogy, The Straw Man, sets up a variety of comical devices, including grotesque bodies, chance, and coincidence, and manifests a comical rhythm of death and rebirth. Nonetheless, the seemingly happy ending of the film departs from the “living happily ever after” formula of pure comedy by hinting at the uncertainty of the future. The second film, Banana Paradise, besides employing the comic elements of the first film, mediates the struggle between the apparatus of the nation-state and the marginal underclass from Mainland China. Without using any big heroic action against the powerful, the powerless employ the tactics of parasitism, living with the oppressor of the nation-state and taking advantage of it for their own survival. The final film, Hills of No Return, endows the comic elements of sex and excrement with symbolic meanings, and critiques not only the Japanese colonial regime but also greedy human nature and the dehumanization of the market. As a whole, Wang Tong’s Taiwan trilogy provides a double vision through which the audience can recognize the contradictions and ambiguities of human affairs and can thereby avoid the one-sidedness inherent in the act of judging.