Fabulating Animals: Journey to an Affective Sphere in Asian Film Scene

Abstract

When pet-keeping in the urban space is becoming a vogue as a sign of economic prosperity, stories about such human-animal relationship have illuminated the dialectics of alienation and intimacy of the city dwellers. At the same time, the “sentimental fabulations” (to borrow from Rey Chow) embedded in the life-and-deaths of these animal companions has triggered a critical reflection on the imagery of vulnerability in popular narratives. By looking at a selection of animal-related films produced in Hong Kong, Taiwan, Japan, India, and the PRC in recent years, this paper attempts to map out a preliminary topography of an affective sphere mediated by the cinematic narratives about the animal-other and the human-self, and thus allow a contemplation about cosmopolitanism, modernity, and the increasingly globalized images shared within the claustrophilic time-space of cinema.