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Lesion
Rent
"The Focus" and "Rent" recreate the authoritarian education I received in my adolescence, which caused me lasting trauma and a distorted understanding of love. This kind of authoritarian education of "the deeper the love, the more severe the blame" and "the more ears and mouths a girl has", is a microcosm of the education, culture and politics of a certain generation in Taiwan. The junior high school I attended still implemented corporal punishment. For example, if the test score was less than 90 points, one point less would be hit. Some teachers used hot melt glue, and some used wooden sticks to hit the students' palms. Some teachers would yell and some would throw chalk at students. It seems that I learned from that time that if I want to be loved by adults, I must cater to the expectations of others and become an excellent person. Only in this way can I avoid physical pain and be treated well. Even though more than ten years have passed since my junior high school years, this anxiety of "becoming a better person" to be loved is still deeply engraved in my body and mind, and projected into my fear of (intimate) relationships. In "The Focus", my heart is the focus of my disease, which brings about the brittleness and collapse of my body (depression, regret, and thus affects my life). In "Rent", the characters gain the qualification to be loved by giving up/emptying themselves to make room for others (birds) to live in.