"Mama! Don't beat me any more! Mama!" Little Ho-ho, a student at the Yungho Wanghsi Primary School, is showing off to his aunt some Taiwanese-language lines he learned from television.
Ho-ho is a typical child of a northern Taiwan mainlander family (i.e. a family which came to Taiwan from mainland China only after WWII). Because he spoke only Mandarin Chinese at home and at school, he didn't really know any Taiwanese until recently. But in the last couple of years his Taiwanese has improved dramatically, thanks to the 8:00 p.m. serials.
Ho-ho's guardian, his aunt Tsui Mei-lan, bemoans the fact that "Taiwan's prime-time shows are violent, and even the love stories have people constantly slapping each other and arguing violently, so they are really not suitable for small children." But when Ho-ho told her that he wanted to watch these programs every evening in order to learn Taiwanese, Tsui, who all her life has experienced the problems of not being able to speak or understand Taiwanese, found it hard to refuse. The child's rapid success at picking up Taiwanese has amazed her.
The revival of reality
Little Ho-ho's line-"Don't beat me any more!"-reflects one of the more common themes of TV shows done in Taiwanese. Beating of children, often by an evil stepmother, is not unusual. This is not because Taiwanese are especially firm believers in corporal punishment. Rather this kind of thing is a "trademark" that has become attached to Taiwanese drama over the course of its history. As a result, even though "nativist drama" has escaped the stereotypical setting of the Taiwanese countryside of the past and increasingly focuses on contemporary urban life, such provocative scenes-playing to elemental emotions to pull on the heart-strings-are still common.
"Taiwanese serials depict the daily life of ordinary people the way they do because of their development process," says Ko Yu-fen, an associate professor of mass communications at Shih Hsin University, who has done a study of Taiwan TV drama. "And now, because of the trend in society of reviving Taiwanese as the mother tongue, Taiwanese drama has been able to leap into prime time to become the mainstream offering in the past few years."
The 8:00 p.m. time slot has long been the flagship and leading money maker for television stations. For a program to get into this slot, besides being commercially viable, in the past it also had to be politically correct. This used to mean: "No use of the Taiwanese language." Because the government wanted to promote Mandarin, Taiwanese was officially seen as a rustic dialect, and was never eligible for prime time. The three government-run television stations of that era-China Television (CTV), Chinese Television Service (CTS), and Taiwan Television (TTV)-had a tacit agreement that they would only show Taiwanese programs at noon or in the 6:30 p.m. time slot, when most viewers would be housewives and elderly people.
The programming for these time slots was low-budget, and the subject matter limited to ordinary life in Taiwan's unsophisticated rural past, mostly tragic tales of mistreated daughters-in-law and the like, or family comedies. Thus, for a long time, Taiwanese drama gave people the impression of being lowbrow.
It was not until 1990, with the broadcasting of the series Love on CTS, that the prime-time language taboo was even partly challenged. This series also raised the quality of Taiwanese drama, and planted the seeds for future efforts.
The show was set against the background of the August 7th Flood of 1959. The story portrayed how some Taiwanese and mainlanders went from mutual misunderstanding to mutual forgiveness. The performers spoke in both Mandarin and Taiwanese. Because the language taboo has long carried heavy political undertones-the opposition has always preferred the use of Taiwanese, the ruling party has, until recently, almost exclusively favored Mandarin-the producers invited many people from the arts community to confirm that Taiwanese was essential for the program, so as to dispel the suspicions of those who would see political motives behind language choice.
Unfortunately, the effort was less than a complete success. For one thing, stereotypes remained strong, and Love still retained many of the old traditions, being a tragic small family drama focusing on a young bride facing hard times after moving into the husband's home. Moreover, because of opposition from high officials at the television network, after several episodes, the performers who had previously spoken in Taiwanese had their dialogue changed to "Mandarin with a Taiwanese accent."
However, because the plot was realistic, ratings were unprecedented, and Love even defeated Widow's Watch, based on a novel by, and also produced by, the vastly popular romance writer Chiung Yao, and broadcast on CTV. At that time, many commentators suggested that Love was successful largely because of the use of Taiwanese. But Lin Ling-ling, a script writer for Widow's Watch, says that the real reason Love succeeded was because of its realistic depiction of the lives of Taiwanese.
Her opinion is that "love stories involving constant hitting and screaming and dramatic twists and turns are not the stuff of real life, and Chiung Yao's series departed too far from reality. This in fact has been a chronic problem of Taiwan's dramatic serials." Love succeeded largely because it wedded realism to Taiwanese subject matter.
Politics in command?
However, though the series was popular, it did not immediately spark a wave of enthusiasm for Taiwanese subject matter. The government around that time adopted a policy of allowing producers to go to mainland China to film, and there was a sudden craze for martial arts series and love stories framed against a mainland backdrop. Still, television stations and producers had awakened to the existence of an audience for "nativist" Taiwanese drama. After the Qingdao Lake incident in 1994, "mainland fever" plummeted, and nativist stories using the Taiwanese language once again saw their star rising.
This time they went right at major political taboos like the February 28 Incident of 1947. Writer Lin Ling-ling used the White Terror as subject matter to write the second major nativist prime-time drama in Taiwan television history-Taiwan Outlaws of the Marsh. It was so popular that its producer, Hsu Chin-liang, ended up making a trilogy around the same theme.
Lin explains: "I always want to write a Taiwanese drama against the backdrop of great events, and the February 28 Incident was at that time just beginning to get intensive open discussion, so there was a lot of commercial viability as well."
Owing to the series' popularity, lead actor Lun Hsiao-hua has become a major television star, while female lead Chen Mei-feng established her image as a traditional Taiwanese woman of gentility and virtue, and has since gotten numerous roles and television commercials.
However, says Lin with a laugh, things didn't go exactly as she expected. "Because the writer, director, and actors all had different political orientations, after the first several episodes which laid out the background of the era were produced, the plot shifted toward traditional family relations and romance, along the lines of the typical prime-time serial."
The series was nonetheless a watershed. Taiwanese was no longer taboo, and indeed identification with "Taiwanese-ness" came to be highly admired. Ko Yu-fen states that it is not difficult to understand these trends against the backdrop of society at that time. Taiwan Outlaws of the Marsh was broadcast just after the first direct popular elections for municipal mayors and provincial governor, when the "underground" call-in television programs were at their peak of popularity, and when discussion of "Taiwanese identity" was at a fever pitch.
Hsu Hsiao-tsu, a former aide to the legislative caucus of the Democratic Progressive Party, recalls that although Taiwan Outlaws of the Marsh did not go very deeply into the historical facts and controversies of the February 28 Incident, he and his friends, enthusiastic student activists in the opposition movement, felt that it was of great symbolic importance that prime-time television-which had always represented conservative values-was broadcasting a series on this subject using both Taiwanese and Mandarin. He laughs, "Even though I usually don't have any interest in watching TV, at that time we tuned in at eight sharp every night, as a kind of moral support."
Ko Yu-fen says, however, that times have changed. Linguistic and historical conditions politicized Taiwanese drama. There had always been controversy over it. But the political significance faded, and, with the daughter-in-law series beginning in 1995, Taiwanese drama became embroiled in a very different controversy-that it was oversimplified and stereotypical, and that the clock had been turned back to the early days of Taiwanese-language programming.
The daughter-in-law series was a collection of all-Taiwanese-language stories broadcast by CTS, describing the relationship between daughters-in-law and mothers-in-law in Taiwan's traditional rural society. The first of the series, The Astonishing Daughter-in-Law, got an enthusiastic audience response, and the show, which like all prime-time serials was broadcast nightly Monday to Friday, lasted for nearly a year.
The hard-pressed daughter in law
The story of The Astonishing Daughter-in-Law is quite simple. The daughter-in-law, played by Chang Yu-yen, is mistreated by her mother-in-law, and, with outsiders butting in and causing trouble, she gets abused from beginning to end. Yet she maintains her traditional womanly virtues, never fights back, and in the end is rewarded with a happy ending. Although Chang does not speak Taiwanese very well, her pitiable demeanor won a lot of sympathy from the audience.
Juan Chin-jung, a Changhua County civil servant and longtime fan of TV serials, says critically, "It drove me nuts watching the daughter-in-law just sit there and take abuse from her mother-in-law day in and day out. Also, the costumes and sets were so crude, there was no difference from a typical 6:30 show." Yet, she says, her grandmother was in tears every day, explaining that young women today could never understand the suffering and indignities endured by daughters-in-law in the past.
Ko Yu-fen ascribes the success of the daughter-in-law series to several factors: "By playing on people's heart strings, using Taiwanese language, and being set against the background of that bitter era, the daughter-in-law series brought together all the traditional elements of the Taiwanese drama, but in addition added new structure and packaging, and integrated the spiciness and conflict typical of an 8:00 show. No wonder it was so successful."
Lin Ling-ling says that criticism of 8:00 serials for being melodramatic is certainly not without foundation, yet, however people may criticize, there are still viewers who can't get enough. The audience is composed mainly of older folk and housewives. In general, they don't want to watch something they have to really think too much about. The simpler the characters and the plot, and the more conflict there is, the better.
Lin adds that intellectuals criticize such shows but in fact don't watch TV. Television stations have always based their decisions on ratings, and it is virtually impossible to expect that they will change a proven formula.
"Rather than say that serials are a mirror of life, it would be better to say that people identify with the characters in these dramas even if their own lives are not as dramatic." These are the terms used by Tsai Yen, a professor in the department of broadcasting and television at National Chengchi University. This is particularly the case for older people and housewives.
According to Tsai, the formula for success revolves around romance or family relations. For dramatic effect, there need to be elements of hatred or revenge, and usually one irredeemably evil character whose purpose is to create obstacles to the romantic or career success of the main character. The focus is extremely narrow-personal achievement. Social issues serve only as background or embellishment. The daughter-in-law series precisely fits this structure.
Realistic fashion
After the daughter-in-law series, there was a uniformity in dramatic serials all following the trend. Taiwanese drama went into a steady decline. However, just when things looked bleakest, nativist drama began to break out of its previous framework with the appearance of the "river of time" structure, characterized by a cross-generational story depicting long-term social evolution in Taiwan. This format incorporates the rural themes of traditional Taiwanese drama, but the stories evolve with time, and also portray modern urban life. Not only has this format given new life to Taiwanese drama, it has also pioneered an entirely new type of television drama-contemporary realism.
Formosa Television had enthusiastic audiences for Springtime Stepmother's Heart in 1998. The character of actress Pai Ping-ping played against the stereotype of the abusive stepmother, instead being a woman who brings two of her own children into a marriage into a wealthy family. She has to deal on the one hand with the lack of understanding from her mother-in-law and on the other look after four children from different families as well as the husband's first wife, who suffers from mental illness. And after financial setbacks, she also has to support the whole family. Because the series was so popular, FTV seized the opportunity and presented a sequel based on the loves and hates of the third generation, which, as expected, also was very well received.
Springtime Stepmother's Heart pulled FTV financially out of the red and into the black, and is considered an extremely remarkable event in Taiwan television history. Executive chairman Chen Kang-hsin proudly calls the new format developed by FTV "contemporary drama."
Lien Chang-yu, a senior reporter covering film and TV for the United Daily News, explains that FTV has been successful in the 8:00 time slot not only because "the use of Taiwanese language fits right in with the trends of the times," but also because "the inclusion of little conversations and incidents that occur in everyday life makes these series accessible and familiar to the viewers." That TV stations agree can be seen from the most recent offering from FTV, Fortune is in Heaven's Hands, which offers a realistic depiction of urban life.
Fortune is also cross-generational. The story begins with the death of the husband of the main female character. She struggles to raise her infant son, and is a frequent target of criticism from her mother-in-law. The son then grows into adulthood, and all the feelings-gratitude, revenge, love, hate-of the older generation carry on into the younger. In the city the children help each other and compete against each other as the story grows increasingly explosive. The combination of traditional Taiwanese and contemporary factors has made the show a hit.
Lien Chang-yu says that recently three of the four broadcast stations have been showing Taiwanese drama, but FTV's ratings stand alone, far ahead of all the others. A show cannot be popular simply by using Taiwanese language, she says-the audience must be able to identify with it. This is how the series Real Love from Hong Kong cable TV has stayed so popular that it has run uninterrupted for several years.
ON programming
The success of serials means that TV stations in Taiwan just keep on cranking them out, broadcasting episodes as quickly as they are shot. This special feature of Taiwan's 8:00 time slot means that one can naturally not be too picky about quality.
Lu Hsiao-fen, a film star who has won numerous awards at the Golden Horse and Asia-Pacific film festivals and who has recently jumped into prime time as the female lead in Fortune, explains: "They have a special name for shows that are being broadcast episode by episode as each one is shot: 'ON programming.' It is common for an episode finished today to be shown two days later."
She finds this situation less than ideal. She says that in order to keep up with the audience's ever-changing tastes, scripts are being rewritten right up to the last minute. Naturally television actors do not have the luxury that movie actors enjoy of allowing themselves time to slowly get in the right frame of mind for a role or scene, but even so, given the fact that TV actors must rely almost exclusively on dialogue and body language to keep the audience's attention, the fact that shooting is so hurried not only waters down the quality of the performance, there is little time even to get the lines right. Such conditions, she feels, make for productions that are really too rough around the edges.
Chou You, who has produced more than 4,000 hours of dramatic series for television, says that prime time is like a battlefield for television stations. Sometimes the producer can't call the shots. Personally, she has always preferred to begin broadcasting only after the entire series has been completed, to ensure quality control. But if a series is doing well, the station will want to extend it, and if ratings are less than ideal, the series must be prepared to wrap up at any moment. The series on which Chou has recently been working had the final rushes confiscated by the network so that it can decide how to edit them, in order to determine how long the series will actually run. "Even I don't know when it will come to an end," she says with exasperation.
Pop merchandise
April Chu, the producer of Fortune is in Heaven's Hands, admits that ON programming is a real bottleneck for Taiwanese drama. But there is no quick-fix. With the practical environment being what it is, people will simply have to think their way out of its limitations.
"ON programming is simply the way Taiwan television works. If the station strategy is set up that way, it's unlikely they will change. The only solution is through restructuring of the content, strengthening the rhythms, reducing the use of pointless patter to draw out the series, improving the dramatic structure, and adding new vitality to the roles."
But how? She takes for example feminist issues, about which she is particularly concerned. Twenty years ago, she wrote a TV serial that overturned the tradition that the female lead had to be chaste, unmarried, and dependent on men; instead her female lead was a middle-aged divorcee with children and a relationship with a younger man. Society was shocked from top to bottom. Today, as she produces Fortune, she still devotes special attention to the molding of the women's roles. From the character of the grandmother to that of the daughter, she insists that the script give them independent and strong-willed vitality.
She says, "Although you can say that prime time serials are merchandise and not art, you have to present up-to-date positive values. You have to be responsible to the audience, and that's also the key to continual innovation."
Developing overseas markets
Taiwanese television serials have always sold well abroad. But some people are concerned that an overemphasis on Taiwanese themes and language will stifle the development of overseas sales.
"By nature, television drama is very localized. Because of cultural differences, overseas audiences will not necessarily like the same things Taiwan audiences do," says reporter Lien Chang-yu. That is why many "blue-chip" producers who control overseas copyrights are unwilling to touch nativist serials. They prefer to do martial arts or love stories that focus on no particular era or social backdrop.
Lin Ling-ling, on the other hand, believes that Taiwanese drama should have no problems holding its own against competition from other areas. She says that Hong Kong drama generally maintains good pacing, but the way they handle dialogue, content, and emotion is not very convincing. PRC TV provides dramas which interpret actual historical events (as opposed to Taiwan's "historical" dramas which are mainly just made-up stories in period costume), but they are too slow-moving. Japanese TV relies mostly on packaging of well-known "idols," with most of the effort going into the aesthetics of presentation, and little emphasis on storyline. Taiwan television drama, on the other hand, has conflict and intensity, and if it is well packaged, it should do well in the overseas market.
"You can't say that there's no overseas market for drama just because it is nativist Taiwanese. After all, Hong Kong drama series have dominated the Asian market for years, yet they also use a Chinese dialect-Cantonese-and are also set against the backdrop of their own Hong Kong society. However, due to the strength of their entertainment industry, they've been able to penetrate everywhere," says Tsai Yen. Taiwan can learn from this experience.
Talent flow
As interactions between Taiwan and the PRC have grown, over the past few years there have been many cases of cooperative filming involving Taiwan, Hong Kong and mainland China, or of the hiring of technicians or performers from one area to work in another. For example, for the martial arts dramas of Yang Pei-pei, the scripts and actors come from Taiwan, the director and the costume designer are from Hong Kong, and the series are filmed in the PRC using mainland technicians. Technically speaking, they are extremely well done. The same goes for Chiung Yao's romantic dramas. However, given the different cultural backgrounds of these people, there are limits to cooperation, and if you factor in political considerations, that makes the situation even more complex.
"Cross-national cooperation is the fastest way to get an infusion of fresh blood, but it is not a long-term solution," says Lien Chang-yu. Recently the PRC has begun to limit the number of people who can work in cooperative projects in order to protect its own TV industry, and sudden changes such as this will inevitably have an impact.
Prime time programming has long been a weaver of dreams for Taiwanese audiences. But there is a huge difference between today's society and that of 30 years ago. If the dreams woven by the serials stay the same, or are even inferior, inevitably the audience will decline. Given the ever growing pluralization of society in Taiwan, these shows must find new talent, overcome formulaic stories, and halt the decline in audience share. Those in the industry must figure out how to draw people back.
p.87
So-called "ON programming"-meaning that series episodes are shot right before the time of broadcast-
is a special feature of Taiwan's prime-time televised serials. The advantage is that the story can
be changed or the series extended or shortened depending upon ratings.
The disadvantage is that quality may suffer. The photo below shows the crew of
the series Fortune is in Heaven's Hands doing an all-nighter
to complete an episode.
(photo by Hsueh Chi-kuang)
p.88
The series Love, broadcast by CTS in 1983, was the first prime-time drama to use Taiwanese, and marked a new beginning for Taiwanese nativist drama. The photo shows the performers who played the two main couples in the series, from left to write: Ma Ju-feng, Chang Chiung-tsu, Chin Su-mei, and Liu Teh-kai. (photo by Tsai Sen-chi)
p.89
With the popularity of nativist Taiwanese drama, Taiwanese-speaking performers are in demand. Such is the case with veteran actor Shih Ying, who is now featured in the CTS series First Family. (photo by Tsai Sen-chi)
p.90
Chang Yu-yen (right) plays a much-abused daughter-in-law in the series The Astonishing Daughter-in-Law. Her pitiable character has resonated with many middle-aged women. (photo by Tsai Sen-chi)
[.91
The Taiwanese "contemporary drama" being shown by Formosa Television in its 8:00 time slot has maintained very high ratings, pulling the station out of the red and into the black. The photo is from the series Fortune is in Heaven's Hands. (courtesy of series producer April Chu)
p.93
There has been growing cooperation between the TV industries of Taiwan, Hong Kong, and mainland China in producing prime-time programming. In the series White Haired Sorceress broadcast on TTV and produced by Chou You, the male lead, Zhang Zhilin, was from Hong Kong, and the female lead, Shui Ling, from the PRC. (courtesy of Chou You)
p.93
Chiung Yao's romances have their own style. They offer intense plots and dialogue and always feature attractive leading men and women. The photo shows mainland actress Zhao Wei (left), who became popular throughout the Chinese world after starring in a Chiung Yao series, pictured with former child star Su You-peng of Taiwan. (courtesy of Joy Production Corporation)
p.93
The series An Official's Wife, produced by Chou You, brought together Taiwanese performer Chen Ya-lan (left) and mainland star Zhang Guoli. Their different accents and acting styles created many comic opportunities. (courtesy of Chou You)
So-called "ON programming"-meaning that series episodes are shot right before the time of broadcast-is a special feature of Taiwan's prime-time televised serials. The advantage is that the story can be changed or the series extended or shortened depending upon ratings. The disadvantage is that quality may suffer. The photo below shows the crew of the series Fortune is in Heaven's Hands doing an all-nighter to complete an episode. （photo by Hsueh Chi-kuang）
With the popularity of nativist Taiwanese drama, Taiwanese-speaking performers are in demand. Such is the case with veteran actor Shih Ying, who is now featured in the CTS series First Family. （photo by Tsai Sen-chi）
Chang Yu-yen （right） plays a much-abused daughter-in-law in the series The Astonishing Daughter-in-Law. Her pitiable character has resonated with many middle-aged women. （photo by Tsai Sen-chi）
The Taiwanese "contemporary drama" being shown by Formosa Television in its 8:00 time slot has maintained very high ratings, pulling the station out of the red and into the black. The photo is from the series Fortune is in Heaven's Hands. （courtesy of series producer April Chu）
There has been growing cooperation between the TV industries of Taiwan, Hong Kong, and mainland China in producing prime-time programming. In the series White Haired Sorceress broadcast on TTV and produced by Chou You, the male lead, Zhang Zhilin, was from Hong Kong, and the female lead, Shui Ling, from the PRC. （courtesy of Chou You）
The series An Official's Wife, produced by Chou You, brought together Taiwanese performer Chen Ya-lan （left） and mainland star Zhang Guoli. Their different accents and acting styles created many comic opportunities. （courtesy of Chou You）
Chiung Yao's romances have their own style. They offer intense plots and dialogue and always feature attractive leading men and women. The photo shows mainland actress Zhao Wei （left）, who became popular throughout the Chinese world after starring in a Chiung Yao series, pictured with former child star Su You-peng of Taiwan. （courtesy of Joy Production Corporation）
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