A Critical Look at the Colonial Imagery of “Swallowing”: “Gustatory Vision” and the Reconstruction of Subjectivity in Banana Paradise

This essay focuses on the imagery of swallowed bananas in the post-martial law Taiwanese film Banana Paradise (1989). It argues that the film begins with displaced soldiers’ anxious longing for the sweetness of bananas amid uncertainty, and later, through the protagonist’s act of swallowing—embodied by the characters “Men-Shan,” “Fu-gui Zuo,” and “Qi-lin Li”—the external image is internalized. This act transforms and reveals the invisible “gustatory vision,” integrating and giving birth to a fractured subject with multiple identities. The film not only continues the Taiwanese New Cinema’s effort to reconstruct its own subjectivity but also offers a gaze that resists imperialism.