When the supermasochist Bob Flanagan nailed his penis to a piece of wood in front of a live audience, it was called performance art. When Chris Pontius sheathes his penis in a cotton puppet, dangles it in front of a live snake, and then braces himself for the fangs while his buddies double over in glee, it's known as Jackass.
Puppet Show is the opening bit in Jackass Number Two, the second feature-length collection of stunts, pranks and self-inflicted trauma from Johnny Knoxville and his merry band of skate-punk yahoos. Much of what follows is too obscene to be described here; suffice to say that disreputable things are done with the ejaculate of a horse. It is also too exhilarating to spoil. Debased, infantile and reckless in the extreme, this compendium of body bravado and malfunction makes for some of the most fearless, liberated and cathartic comedy in modern movies.
You may prefer a Buster Keaton gag to the spectacle of a man leaping from a trampoline into a ceiling fan, but you can't argue with its purity of expression. At the root of the Jackass project is an impulse to deny the superego and approach the universe, with all its hard edges and shark-infested waters, as an enormous, undifferentiated playpen. That, and the impulse to watch a 180kg woman belly-flop on top of a midget. The Surrealists would have loved these guys, and relished the film's signature image: the application of a leech to the surface of an eyeball.
In the March 9 edition of the Taipei Times a piece by Ninon Godefroy ran with the headine “The quiet, gentle rhythm of Taiwan.” It started with the line “Taiwan is a small, humble place. There is no Eiffel Tower, no pyramids — no singular attraction that draws the world’s attention.” I laughed out loud at that. This was out of no disrespect for the author or the piece, which made some interesting analogies and good points about how both Din Tai Fung’s and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co’s (TSMC, 台積電) meticulous attention to detail and quality are not quite up to
April 21 to April 27 Hsieh Er’s (謝娥) political fortunes were rising fast after she got out of jail and joined the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) in December 1945. Not only did she hold key positions in various committees, she was elected the only woman on the Taipei City Council and headed to Nanjing in 1946 as the sole Taiwanese female representative to the National Constituent Assembly. With the support of first lady Soong May-ling (宋美齡), she started the Taipei Women’s Association and Taiwan Provincial Women’s Association, where she
It is one of the more remarkable facts of Taiwan history that it was never occupied or claimed by any of the numerous kingdoms of southern China — Han or otherwise — that lay just across the water from it. None of their brilliant ministers ever discovered that Taiwan was a “core interest” of the state whose annexation was “inevitable.” As Paul Kua notes in an excellent monograph laying out how the Portuguese gave Taiwan the name “Formosa,” the first Europeans to express an interest in occupying Taiwan were the Spanish. Tonio Andrade in his seminal work, How Taiwan Became Chinese,
Mongolian influencer Anudari Daarya looks effortlessly glamorous and carefree in her social media posts — but the classically trained pianist’s road to acceptance as a transgender artist has been anything but easy. She is one of a growing number of Mongolian LGBTQ youth challenging stereotypes and fighting for acceptance through media representation in the socially conservative country. LGBTQ Mongolians often hide their identities from their employers and colleagues for fear of discrimination, with a survey by the non-profit LGBT Centre Mongolia showing that only 20 percent of people felt comfortable coming out at work. Daarya, 25, said she has faced discrimination since she
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