Conclusion

Abstract

The preceding chapters examined how the semiotics of exile— cultural, colonial, migratory—is reflected in genre-upsetting, the semiotics of photography, displaced film codes, Taoist pitfalls, postmodern signification, and the symbol of female doubling. I utilized a wide spectrum of film semiotic theories—from structuralists to poststructuralists, from narrational theories to theories of intertextuality and feminist theories—in order to shed light on my argument. Drawing extensively on Roland Barthes, Christine Metz, Peter Wollen, Vladimir Propp, Jacques Derrida, Mikhail Bakhtin, Bertolt Brecht, Stam, Naboli, Mulvey, and Doane, I attempt to establish a film semiotics of exile, which has not been done in previous film scholarship. Such a film semiotics of exile, as the deep structure of film form and tropes, is discussed in close connection to the cultural specification of exile as manifested in the trajectory of mainland cinema from the fourth to the sixth generation, and in the representative directors of Hong Kong Second New Wave and New Taiwanese Cinema.