ABSTRACT
This chapter addresses the intriguing character set-up of the protagonist in The Assassin (Hou Hsiao-hsien, 2015) as a person on the high-functioning end of the autism spectrum—a choice seemingly irrelevant to the narrative. Drawing inspiration from the overlap between the film’s preproduction stage and the filmmakers’ involvement in animal welfare movements in Taiwan, the chapter argues that the characterization should be understood within the context of a discursive exchange between disability studies, modern ethology, and animal studies. The performance of this character not only reflects the film’s broader mise-en-scène design, which actively elicits spectatorial engagement with the nonhuman, but also proposes an anti-anthropocentric paradigm of screen performance more generally.
