The Monstrous Human: A Comparison Between the Pale Man and Xenomorph

By Colin Kerekes, Edited by Duncan Geissler and Ella Kilbourne

Introduction 

Guillermo Del Toro has long been considered an auteur of horror and fantasy cinema. His artistry is interwoven with concepts of spirituality, magical realism, and monsters, having had an affinity towards creature creation from youth (Morehead 2015). The two most memorable movie monsters to him are the Gill-Man (Ricou Browning) from Jack Arnold’s The Creature from the Black Lagoon (1954), which would later inspire the creature in his critically acclaimed The Shape of Water (2017), and the Xenomorph (Bolaji Badejo) from Ridley Scott’s Alien (1979). In focusing on the latter, Del Toro felt an attraction and appreciation for the Xenomorph, namely due to its technical aspects. He describes being impressed by the fact that though the creature was played by a man in a suit, the construction of the costume acted to conceal these human features, breaking “every rule about how to shoot a man in a suit” (Del Toro 2013).  In other words, it seems the design of the monster made the body a transformative vessel, blending a humanoid structure with the physicality and visual details of an otherworldly creature. 

There is a duality to Del Toro’s relationship with monsters. He views them as inherently beyond human comprehension, yet at the same time he recognizes a presence of monstrosity in humans. In an interview with NPR, Del Toro described this distinction, explaining that “monsters in fantasy are one side of the road and the other monsters, the real ones, the ones we experience in the news and in the stock market are the other side, you know?” (Del Toro 2011). In his seminal work, Pan’s Labyrinth (2006), he introduces a slew of grotesque and fascinating monsters, including the highly memorable Pale Man (Doug Jones), a vile, drooping creature with eyes on its hands and a taste for human flesh. However, while these monsters convey elements of horror in the film, the true horrors lie in the human brutality of the cruel fascist dictator, Captain Vidal (Sergi López). 

With the same perspective used for his own work, Del Toro has referenced the true villain in Alien not as the Xenomorph itself, but rather the human corporations behind its havoc. In an interview conducted for the 2018 released television program, James Cameron’s Story of Science Fiction, Del Toro states that “the difference [between] human and a monster is the will” (Del Toro 2018). He seems to find an innocence in monsters. More than anything, he feels that the evil of monsters is often a product of animalistic habit, while human evil is calculated. Therefore, I will conduct a comparative analysis between two iconic monsters in cinema, the Pale Man and the Xenomorph, in order to understand how the creators behind these creatures perform a perversion of the human body in order to reveal the evils of humanity. The design elements of both monsters, as well as their narrative functions, leave the viewer to question who the true monster is in each respective film, imparting ideas of monstrous human tendencies including greed, fascism, sexual predation, and corporate materialism. 

The Pale Man 

Pan’s Labyrinth follows the young Ofelia (Ivana Baquero Macías) as she traverses two lands – the harsh landscape of post-civil war Spain and a fantastical realm of mythical creatures which serves as a heightened version of her real-world dangers. In this fantasy world, she must endure three trials in order to earn her rightful place as the Princess Moanna. Concurrently, she must persist beneath the brutal influence of her new stepfather, Captain Vidal. We are introduced to the Pale Man through her second trial, as he sits at the head of a banquet table. As his title suggests, he is pale, hairless, completely still and hunched over. His skin sags and folds onto itself. His thin stature accompanied by loose skin parallels the features of a person who has undergone extreme weight loss. Yet at the same time, he is surrounded by food and shown to consume his victims. 

Gianluca Balla, lecturer in Digital Arts and Game Design at Brunel University London, defines harnessing the uncanny, an inhuman image that mimics that of a human figure, as a key aspect of monster design in media. He explains that for character designers, “knowing how to deform the human anatomy to generate terror in the viewer is essential” (Balla 2023). The Pale Man and Xenomorph are both monsters that have distinctly human features which are distorted to create discomfort in the viewer. David Martí, makeup artist for Guillermo Del Toro, explained that the vision for the Pale Man involves a human figure that is “stick-thin with hanging skin” (Martì 2022). While the monster was initially left as is, Del Toro desired to warp these human elements, opting to remove both his eyes and nose. 

The Pale Man only has nostrils. He has a mouth, but his lips appear almost carved out. He has eyes, yet they are placed in the palms of his hands, and the tips of his fingers are blackened to mimic eyelashes. Essentially, the Pale Man has all the features central to a typical human face, yet they are distorted in some way. It is this distortion of human elements that both makes him a monster and functions to reveal aspects of human corruption and immorality. Del Toro has said himself that “the Pale Man represents all institutional evil feeding on the helpless” (Del Toro 2017). His appearance parallels the degradation of those in power. The way in which his skin droops evokes the impression that he is weighed down by ambitious greed. The way he interacts with his setting suggests aspects of greed in humanity and dictatorship. Gabrielle O’Brein, film critic awarded by the Australian Film Critics Association, understands the “Pale Man's elaborate dinner table” and his positioning at the head of this table to mirror Captain Vidal’s self-serving display of power, as well as the imagery of a “priest [who] happily feeds himself while the Spanish people go hungry” (O’Brein 2016). To be at the head of the table is a sign of leadership. However, the Pale Man’s leadership is indicative of a thirst for might and intimidation. Backlit by a roaring fire, he guards the table of delicacies and asserts dominance over literal and figurative nourishment. While otherwise lying dormant, looking down at the food like it is his domain, the being grows vicious when the starved Ofelia, in a display of disobedience, eats a grape. It appears that the actions of the Pale Man also support this lust for dominance. He is not shown eating any of the food on the table, yet when awakened, he revels in eating the heads of two helpless fairies. Through this, he gains a better sense of control over his body. Feeding off the weak physically and mentally empowers him. 

Jade Patterson, researcher of Languages and Linguistics at University of Melbourne, defines the “fusion of disparate elements [...] as essential features of the grotesque body” as understood through Victor Hugo’s The Hunchback of Notre-Dame (Patterson 2018). She continues to describe that these disparate elements are what characterize monsters, particularly literary monsters, as representations of moral fracture in society and the human psyche. They act as “physical mirrors of an inner deformity” (Patterson 2018). Semiotic theory can be applied to these concepts. Semiotics involve the study of signs in visual imagery and how these signs convey social and cultural meanings to the viewer (Scholes 1982). Yulia Sofiani, lecturer of History at Siliwangi University, notes that horror is a genre intertwined with semiotic theory, because it is concerned with making cultural references, as well as manipulating the viewer to an extent (Sofiani 2017). When applying this framework to the Pale Man, his physical abnormalities that distance him from conveying unadulterated humanity make him emblematic of the distortion of mortal values prevalent in the film’s fascism-infused setting. The audience is implied to absorb the monster’s image and apply these signs of corruption in the natural world to their overall interpretation of the monster’s grander thematic purpose. 

In a sense, the Pale Man’s behaviors impersonate Captain Vidal’s. Vidal grows stronger in his fight to protect fascism with each innocent body he violates. For instance, he gains a sick sadistic pleasure in creating physical pain. Early in the film, he rapidly beats the face of a farmer to a bloody pulp who hadn’t even been a viable subject of suspicion. There are numerous scenes throughout the narrative that illustrate Vidal’s merciless torture methods. We can understand these savage acts as a physical assertion of his assumed patriarchal authority. While the Pale Man seems disconnected from Vidal’s narrative role, the elements of his appearance and conduct, in the words of Patterson, fuse to be a manifestation of Vidal’s “inner deformity” (Patterson 2018). This is no more prevalent than in the Pale Man’s blindness. O’Brein continues to analyze that “the monster can only see after inserting his eyes into his hands, reinforcing the senselessness of a blind machine that subverts creativity” (O’Brein 2016). Vidal is that senseless machine. He shoots Ofelia at the end of the film, an embodiment of childlike creativity and compassion, because in his totalitarian perspective, the people must be submissive in mind and action. The Pale Man is a visual representation of this evil. He chooses to see only when he hopes to consume acts of rebellion. Otherwise, he will remain disengaged from those around him, just as a fascist dictator would. 

The Xenomorph 

The Xenomorph in Alien assumes a much more inhuman design, yet it persists in being an amalgamation of disparate parts like the Pale Man – namely, the blending of human sexual organs with that of machinery. Its physique is oftentimes shrouded in darkness. The extraterrestrial beast stands on two legs much like a human would, with humanoid hands and feet webbed at the fingers and toes. Its chest takes the shape of an exposed ribcage. Where it differs from a human silhouette is its elongated head with no eyes, and mechanical tail which slithers behind as it stalks its prey. Barbara Creed, Cinema Studies professor at the University of Melbourne, deciphers the design of the Xenomorph’s head to imitate that of a phallus (Creed 1986). Screenwriter of Alien, Dan O’Bannon, describes that the head’s structure originated with a “human skull.” H.R. Giger, designer of the Xenomorph, sawed the “jawbone off” and extended it “six inches.” O’Bannon elaborates that Giger then “put an extension” on the missing jawbone to create a distortion effect, “attaching other fixtures to it and building a new extension on to the back” (O’Bannon 1997). The creative process here is not so different from Del Toro’s process in designing the Pale Man – taking what is human and progressively distorting these familiar structures to create something strange and foreign. According to the novel Alien Legacies: The Evolution of the Franchise, Giger’s original concept art that inspired the Xenomorph broke “down the binary divisions between body and machine” and “human and non-human”, while exploring human sexuality and sexual acts through abstract creatures (Abrams & Frame 2023).

The Xenomorph in appearance and action conveys themes of sexual assault and corporate abuse. To focus on the first, the Xenomorph is not only visually akin to sexual organs, but also sexually predatory in the way it treats its victims. Alien follows a crew on a futuristic space vessel, the Nostromo, as they are terrorized by a Xenomorph. The Facehugger, an early stage of the Xenomorph’s development, attaches itself onto Kane’s (John Hurt), one of the crew members, face early in the film, orally impregnating him with the embryo of a Xenomorph. This is later understood to be an act of impregnation when the next stage of development, the Chestburster, breaks through Kane’s chest in blood-spurting excess. Both the Facehugger and Chestburster can be acknowledged as signs for sexual organs. The Facehugger is spider-like, yet its surface resembles a human vagina. The Chestburster is snake-like, and in similarity to the adult Xenomorph, is phallic in nature. In interpreting these congruences, the audience is forced to liken these extraterrestrial attacks to deeds of sexual violation. Even though these scenes of horror are undeniably works of science-fiction, they evoke discomfort inherently tied to intrusive human actions. Like how the Pale Man’s consumption is emblematic of exploitative tendencies of human dictators, the Xenomorph’s predatory behaviors mimic human predators. 

The Xenomorph’s appearance is as much tied to the idea of technology and machinery as it is to sexuality. The monster is not necessarily fleshy. Much of its exterior appears solid to the touch. Its teeth are almost metallic, as well as the end of its tail which is sharp like a blade. While we see human elements in its design, we also see images of tools or weapons, a union of materials rather than parts of an organism. It resembles a human body that has been engulfed by fragments of machinery. The true villain of Alien, as regarded by Penny Crofts, Professor of Law at University of Technology Sydney, is the fictional company Weyland Yutani that is “nefariously planning to sacrifice workers in order to capture the alien to study for biological warfare” (Crofts 2021). 

Weyland Yutani is expounded as a mega-company involved in space colonization. Its goal is to create technological weaponry from the alien organisms it harnesses. Machinery ultimately plays a large role in the corruptive nature of Weyland Yutani. For example, film critic Rob Ager explains that the design of the Nostromo is brimming with devices of corporate messaging, like the “data display screens shoved over the head of the crew in the canteen” (Ager 2021). Technology is used in a way to control the thoughts of the crew. The highly technologically advanced ship acts as a cage where the lives of those inhabiting it are considered expendable. Through this evaluation, the bits of machinery that feel nearly ensnaring on the Xenomorph’s body resemble how this human-run corporation exploits and infringes on the wellbeing of its human workers through a focus on technological innovation. Before the Xenomorph is even introduced, we see the creature of the Space Jockey, a corpse on a derelict ship. “The pilot appears uncomfortably fused with technology and industry, possibly against its will, which would make it a slave to the machine” (Ager 2021). These visual signifiers of man-made corruptive technology are present in nearly all of the film’s extraterrestrial figures, not just the Xenomorph, and the viewer must recognize that to truly comprehend the film’s moral disposition. 

Conclusion 

While the Xenomorph is visually divergent to the Pale Man, both condemn aspects of humanity, particularly the aspect of humanity that grants a single person, or groups of persons, unreasonable power over others. Their designers took the familiarity of human anatomy, and mangled it to nightmarish, grotesque proportions, but each film illustrates that there is no greater nightmare than the reality of the evil that humans can inflict upon each other. These monsters serve as a reminder that just as hints of humanity exist in monstrous bodies, the capability for monstrosity is almost inherent in humans. As Guillermo Del Toro put it, the “true monsters in our lives are real, are human” (Del Toro 2011).

Works Cited 

Ager, Rob, director. ALIEN - the Corporate Monster (Film Analysis by Rob Ager). Collative Learning, 20 Apr. 2021, https://youtu.be/_7fn-QRVqe4?feature=shared. Accessed 2023. 

Abrams, Nathan, and Gregory Frame. Alien Legacies the Evolution of the Franchise. Oxford University Press, 2023. 

Balla, Gianluca. “Adapting visual references in concept art for films and video games in Design Uncanny Monsters.” Journal of Adaptation in Film & Performance, vol. 16, no. 1, 2023, pp. 133–145, https://doi.org/10.1386/jafp_00093_1. 

Creed, Barbara. “18. ‘horror and the monstrous-feminine: An imaginary abjection.’” Feminist Film Theory, 1999, pp. 251–266, https://doi.org/10.1515/9781474473224-028. 

Crofts, Penny. Aliens: Legal Conceptions of the Corporate Invasion, 2021, www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/1535685X.2020.1862521. 

Del Toro, Guillermo, director. Pan’s Labyrinth . Warner Bros Entertainment Inc., 2007.

Gross, Edward. “Death of a Maiden .” Hrgiger.Com, 1997, hrgiger.com/alien4a.htm. 

"Guillermo Del Toro's 'Eternal' Monster Obsession." Talk of the Nation NPR, 2011. ProQuest, http://libproxy.usc.edu/login?url=https://www.proquest.com/other-sources/guillerm o-del-toros-eternal-monster-obsession/docview/900859345/se-2. 

James, Emily St. “In Our New Feature, Guillermo Del Toro Takes Us through His Biggest Firsts.” The A.V. Club, 21 Nov. 2023.

Morehead, John W., and Doug Jones. The Supernatural Cinema of Guillermo Del Toro: Critical Essays. McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers, 2015. 

Martí, David. “How Iconic Movie Monster ‘the Pale Man’ Was Created.” Literary Hub, 25 Sep. 2022, lithub.com/how-iconic-movie-monster-the-pale-man-was-created/. 

O'Brien, Gabrielle. "Liminal vision: transformation and renewal in Pan's Labyrinth." Screen Education, no. 83, Oct. 2016, pp. 110+. Gale Academic OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A467335932/AONE?u=googlescholar&sid=bookmark-AO NE&xid=c4536afa.

Patterson, Jade. “Unspeakable monsters: Grotesque bodies and discourse in Victor Hugo’s notre-dame de paris and l’homme qui rit.” Australian Journal of French Studies, vol. 55, no. 2, 2018, pp. 122–137, https://doi.org/10.3828/ajfs.2018.13. 

Robinson, Christopher L., 'The Progeny of H. R. Giger', in Nathan Abrams, and Gregory Frame (eds), Alien Legacies: The Evolution of the Franchise (New York, 2023; online edn, Oxford Academic, 23 Mar. 2023), https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780197556023.003.0004 .

Scholes, Robert. Semiotics and Interpretation. Yale University Press, 1983.

Scott, Ridley, director. Alien. Twentieth Century Fox Home Entertainment, 1979. 

Zaimar, Yulia Sofiani. “Semiotic Analysis of Valak and Lorraine in ‘The Conjuring 2’ Movie.” Scope : Journal of English Language Teaching, vol. 1, no. 02, 2018, p. 219, https://doi.org/10.30998/scope.v1i02.1112.

Home, Sweet Home: Evolution of Home through Shared Memory in A Girl Walks Home Alone At Night and Happy Together

By Rhea Mehta, Edited By Alexis Lopez, Alison Church

As Zakir Khan proclaims in Tathastu, “When it comes to home, whether you leave it willingly or not, when you do, you never part ways easily. Like a fabric that is overstretched, you get torn away from it. And the loose threads will remain unbound forever. You’ll wear those wounds on your back forever, reminding you of being uprooted” (Khan 41:06-41:26). Although far more beautiful in Urdu, Khan’s message elegantly describes the delicate relationship between migration and home. The shared sentiment of any person who has been exiled, has had to flee, or has simply left a place, is the need to return home. But for those who have never seen it, what is home? In Ana Lily Amirpour’s A Girl Walks Home Alone At Night (2014), Iran is reimagined through the eyes of a generation that has little to no memory of it. Instead of trying to depict Iran in its most true, historical form, Amirpour morphs time and space to embody the characteristics of Iran that exist in the shared cultural memory of the diaspora. Alternatively, in Wong Kar-wai’s Happy Together (1997), home is a low-hanging fruit, a clear memory that is crucial in guiding Fai back to Hong Kong. But Hong Kong’s own identity is fractured by its constant transitory nature. Wong Kar-wai shapes time and space to construct a temporary home, embodying the same transitionary qualities that Hong Kong represents. Both films construct the concept of home through memory, whether it be shared or individual, and connect feelings of nostalgia and belonging by emphasizing spaces of isolation and loneliness. By analyzing the scenes where the main characters find home, we can understand what home is and where it can be found.

In A Girl Walks Home Alone At Night, Amipour constructs a fictional Iran, melding together a shared perception of what Iran was and the American sensibility she grew up in to create a fictional reality. At its core, the film tries to mirror something it has never seen before. As Wiese explores in “Female Desire and Feminist Rage: Ana Lily Amirpour's Reworking of the Vampire Motif in A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night,” the mirror imagery is distorted due to the fictional, and even fantastical, nature of the setting and “the conditions of exile” which are “characterized by the fact that people can no longer visit their homeland in order to form a picture of the social reality there. Thus, the designed mirror image lacks the original in front of the mirror, just as the Iranians in exile lack Iran” (Wiese 10). Amipour tries to allude to images of Iran by using visual motifs such as ornaments, television programs, and shared practices like cosmetic surgery and using Farsi as the language of the film (Wiese 10). The way that Amirpour tries to make the USA feel like Iran is significant, as it stems from information that is shared between generations through stories and memories. It is by linking vivid memories passed down through the diaspora that Amirpour creates a space in between America and Iran: a space that looks like a suburban town in America, but through ornamentation and manipulation, carries the weighted memories of the Iranian diaspora. 

What, then, is home? If the space Amirpour has constructed is neither Iran nor America, what can be defined as home? The answer to this question lies within the scene in which the unnamed vampire, henceforth referred to as the girl, invites Arash, the protagonist, to her house. In the short five minute scene, the audience watches the girl guide a dazed Arash into her room. She rids herself of her chador, essentially removing her superhero cape, and lays herself bare for him. With every opportunity to kill him, she instead chooses to lay her head on his chest, swaying to the American music that plays from her record player while the disco ball bounces light off of the many posters in her room. The music playing in the background is Death by White Lies, which repeats the phrase, “Fear’s got a hold of me.” This is significant as it plays into the audience’s preconceptions that she will bite and kill him, almost foreshadowing it. Yet, the girl is afraid for a different reason: she has become used to bad, violent men, but is now faced, for the first time, with a good man who does not provoke her feminist rage. Moreover, Arash is dressed as a vampire, his costume reflecting the girl’s true identity. This shared trait, though it may only be momentary, allows the girl to feel emotionally closer to him. Furthermore, the use of lighting in this scene, which comes from behind the girl, illuminates Arash’s side profile and, when he looks up, his neck, which is particularly interesting. It seduces the audience with a promise of violence but supplants a delicate moment of acceptance. The setting is idyllic, the music is ‘romantic,’ and she is content. This is her home. This moment is vital within the narrative of the film because it seals the authentic relationship the girl desires– this is one of the only moments where the girl feels at home (Wiese 11). As seen in this scene, Amirpour crafts the idea of home through relationships, emphasizing those in which the girl is empowered in the dynamic structure, as she is with Arash and other characters like Atti. Amirpour places such emphasis on relationships more than she does space and time to define the lens through which she perceives home. 

Alternatively, Fai in Wong Kar-wai’s Happy Together is obsessed with the physical place of home. Dictated in the past tense through his memories, the film chronicles his longing to return to Hong Kong from Argentina. Yet Hong Kong is not a foreign concept to Kar-Wai, or Fai, unlike Iran is to Amirpour. It is a space known well, a space that Fai believes is home. However, as the movie progresses, Kar-Wai goes on to deconstruct space. He adds a transient quality to the spaces that exist outside of Fai’s apartment, framing this singular spot as only a temporary home. This is shown through the cinematography: when they are in the apartment, the camera is not shaky or hand-held as it was previously, but has transitioned to a stable, calm presence. Fai is also bolder, arguing and talking more, expressing emotions that burst forth in moments of comfort. But Kar-Wai introduces Chang, who transforms their dynamic. While in the kitchen, the camera movement slows down, allowing Chang and Fai to create an intimate space within a place usually not considered home. Therefore, although Happy Together seems to chase a safe space, home is actually defined by the relationships. 

Through these relationships, Fai creates his own sense of home, the connection standing in for the physical location he pursues. As Kar-Wai explains, “[T]his film is not merely about two men, but about human relations, human communication and the means of maintaining it” (Siegel 279). I would argue, however, that this film is actually about three men. While Po-Wing allows Fai to understand why space is transient, with their toxic relationship and toxic sensibilities, Chang allows him to feel comfortable with another person. The emphasis on relationships and the transient nature of space is demonstrated in the scene where Fai stops at a shop in Taiwan that is owned by Chang’s family. It is in this moment that Fai understands what home is and to what extent his relationship with Chang has influenced his life. Beginning with a shaky handheld camera guiding the audience to watch an array of local restaurants with flashy neon signs, Chang is drawn into a warmly lit and bustling establishment. The camera is framed from the perspective of someone in the stall, perhaps alluding to Chang’s presence in the scene. The people working in the restaurant, Chang’s family, immediately welcome Fai in, and as he watches them scamper around, he is filled with a sense of warmth. The handheld camera movement gives the scene a feeling that is akin to a home video. In the moment where he stands by the phone, the camera frames him as an intruder in the space just as a spout of steam arises from the food. Waiting on the woman who is getting him water, supposed to be Chang’s mother, he is framed by amber lighting and soft steam, which creates a sense of warmth for the first time in the film. The blurry focus and warm lighting also suggest that even though he may not be in Hong Kong yet, this small shop in Taiwan has the same sense of belonging and home he is chasing after. At that moment, the voice-over recounts how lucky Chang is to have a place to return to. But what Fai fails to understand is that it is not the place that matters, but the people. This moment is one of the few in the film where Fai doesn’t seem alone. 

However, the importance of relationships is not the same between the two movies. This is because unlike A Girl Walks Home Alone At Night, Kar-Wai’s film does not deal with exile as much as it deals with displacement. As Marc Siegel explores in “The Intimate Spaces of Wong Kar-wai,” Happy Together doesn't paint a portrait of Buenos Aires; instead, “it uses certain Argentine spaces in order to localize Hong Kong concerns and perceptions” (Siegel 278). Argentina is never considered home, even when formations of a safe space emerge within it. Kar-Wai even confirms this, stating that “[I]t's more like I'm remaking Hong Kong in Buenos Aires” (Siegel 278). Kar-Wai does this by scattering transient spaces like bars, fast-food joints, and other small locations around the film (Siegel 278). These spaces are not only parallels to Kar-Wai’s other films but also reflections of the transitioning nature of Hong Kong itself (Siegel 278). Here, Kar-Wai used his personal memories of things he related to, which held allusions to Hong Kong to create a world that mirrored one he intimately knew. 

In conclusion, both A Girl Walks Home Alone At Night and Happy Together explore displacement and belonging: two key worries of the diaspora. They contextualize the concept of home through space and relationships, allowing for a thorough realization of what or whom home could be. It also traces how being far away from home emphasizes relationships and a shared culture of memory in order to keep the diaspora alive. Although each film deals with a different degree of separation between place and recreation, through thematic and stylistic choices, both filmmakers sketch portraits of their memories in new spaces, reimagining what home would look like in another world.

Works Cited 

Wiese, Doro. “Female Desire and Feminist Rage: Ana Lily Amirpour’s Reworking of the Vampire Motif in A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night.” [Sic] - a Journal of Literature, Culture and Literary Translation, No. 2., 12, 2022, https://doi.org/10.15291/sic/2.12.lc.3. 

Siegel, Marc. “The Intimate Spaces of Wong Kar-Wai.” At Full Speed: Hong Kong Cinema in a Borderless World, edited by Esther C. M. Yau, NED-New edition, University of Minnesota Press, 2001, pp. 277–94. JSTOR, 

http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.5749/j.ctttv5g1.17. Accessed 9 May 2023. 

A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night. Dir. Ana Lily Amirpour. Perfs. Sheila Vand, Arash Marandi, Mozhan Marnò. Film. VICE Films, 2014. 

Happy Together. Dir. Wong Kar-wai. Perfs. Leslie Cheung and Tony Leung Chiu-wai. Film. Golden Harvest Company, 1997. 

Tathatsu. Dir. Zakir Khan. Perfs. Zakhir Khan. Online Stand-up Comedy Show. Amazon Prime, 2022. 

https://www.amazon.com/Tathastu-Zakir-Khan/dp/B0B8QTZSDM/ref=sr_1_1?keywords= %22Tathastu%22&qid=1683525810&s=instant-video&sr=1-1