The spectral sounds of fear and fantasy in Bai Jingrui’s Bliss

Four Moods (1970) is a collaborative four-part film directed by Bai Jingrui, King Hu, Li Hsing and Li Han-hsiang, portraying the blurred boundaries between human and inhuman, nature and supernature through distinct emotional ‘moods’, as reflected in its Chinese title: Bliss, Anger, Sadness and Happiness . This article focuses on Bai Jingrui’s Bliss , a reimagining of Pu Songling’s ‘Nie Xiaoqian’ from Strange Tales of Laiozhai . Employing a silent-film style devoid of dialogue or narration, Bai relies entirely on music and sound to tell the story of two contrasting female ghosts. This segment redefines ghost–human narratives by exposing paradoxes in binary oppositions and revealing how the marginalization of the ‘other’ constructs notions of normalcy. Oscillating between fear and fantasy, Bliss reflects dominant aesthetic and ideological conventions of its time. This article underscores Bai’s innovative use of sound to challenge vision-centric norms and disrupt the ocularcentric world-view embedded in western culture.