Rewriting the History of Taiwanese Vernacular Cinema: Black-and-White Film Stock, the Conversion to Color Film and Party-State Cultural Governance
Date Issued
2015
Date
2015
Author(s)
Su, Chih-Heng
Abstract
This thesis investigates the rise and fall of Taiwanese-dialect cinema, which was identified as a a counter-hegemonic project against the monolingual ideology in Taiwan. How did Taiwanese-dialect film manage to rise in the 1950s while the émigré regime Kuomintang(KMT) officially banned the use of Taiwanese-dialect? Even more curiously, why did the Taiwanese-dialect film suddenly die out around 1969; a year when almost a hundred films were produced, while next to none appeared five years later? By using archival research and secondary records, I challenge the common myths that Taiwanese-dialect film was born naturally because of the land reform which enhanced the farmers'' income, and its abruptly demise was due to the entrepreneurial myopia. In this thesis, I will argue the rise of Taiwanese-dialect film is because that Taiwanese filmmakers skillfully acquired overseas capital to take advantage of the favorable policy on importing film stock, which was strictly regulated and heavily taxed back then. In the climate of Cold War, the KMT had to fought against the Communist Party of China to win over overseas Chinese. In order to co-opt filmmakers overseas, the KMT initiated the treatments for reducing the tax credit of film stocks. So the shrewd Taiwanese filmmakers pretended to co-produce with Hong Kong companies in order to obtain cheaper film stock. Next, I argue that the demise of the Taiwanese-dialect film is due to the conversion to color film and the lack of black-and-white film stocks. After the huge successes at the box office of Mandarin films, including The Love Eterne and Oyster Girl, the KMT systematically promoted the production of Mandarin color films and initiated a national language campaign to stigmatize the usage of Taiwanese-dialect. All of this caused barriers for Taiwanese filmmakers to cross the threshold to color films. While despised for its low quality, Taiwanese filmmakers produced lots of films and even made Taiwan the third largest film producing country in 1966. However, the Taiwanese-dialect cinema was forced to die out in the 1970s due to the lack of cheaper film stocks. The case of Taiwan brings out three often neglected components by production-of-culture literatures when analyzing cultural industries: the condition of raw material supply, the introduction of new technology, and the governance of the nation state.
Subjects
Taiwanese-dialect Film
Production of Culture
Film Stock (Raw Material)
Technology Introduction
Party-State Cultural Governance
Type
thesis
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