As I watch these images, a lot of questions come into my head. For
various reasons, I could barely put them into words. Some are probably
unspeakably stupid or perhaps offensive. I'd ask what I wanted to and
then immediately regret doing so. I might say "why?" but not want an
answer. I might say it was a waste of time or I might object to this
sort of thing being shown on the national news, while continuing to
watch. I probably have many more reasons for not having a proper response to voice I
might not have the words, I'll still be forming my opinion, unsure of
what's right or wrong. In any case, it could well not be my place to
comment; commenting affects nothing; of all the comments my comment
would be the least well-informed.
This is it: Inside a
family home, a man prostrates himself before a distraught woman. She
slaps him repeatedly in a wild manner, so upset that she hits him
variously on the head, back and shoulders, seemingly without aiming
anywhere specific. He hardly moves a muscle, though he's continuously
bowing his head to the floor. The crying woman holds up some print-outs
of pictures from the scene of a car crash, but since the man is facing
the floor she thrusts a page under his nose. After a cut we see a shrine
within the same house. The man crawls into shot, still bowing but
moving towards the shrine, where a young man's picture is framed. Next
we see an elderly woman in the street outside saying that she only had
one son, and such a good one and now he's gone. Back inside we see the
woman again and she's crying, while the man who's prostrate in front of
her bows his head over and over.
These pictures made me
think that we don't need to see this personal, almost ritualistic
process of disgrace. Yet I want to write about the empty devastation of
seeing these pictures. Drink-driving is awful. That could be the
message. Taiwanese news programmes deliver heart-rending stories from
the heart of the lives of strangers, ready to be scrutinised and pored over. This could be the message. I don't know.
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