Do You Know I Am Looking at You? Visual Pleasure and Body Politics in Tsai Ming-Liang's Films

The thematization of the change in socio-cultural patterns as a result of urbanization in many of Tsai Ming-Liang's films has been frequently acknowledged. Tsai's films often deal with urban alienation of a society in which people are emotionally blocked and seemingly afloat in a state of loss. His vision of contemporary culture is elaborated through his portrait of Taipei city as an urban malaise in which people are cut off from one another and from their feelings, moving around in drab, underlit apartments, cheap hotels, gay saunas, looking for sexual comfort to alleviate their loneliness and isolation. The city spectacle articulates the desires and emotions of modern people, which have been blocked and offered no spiritual escape routes.