| Summary: | 碩士 === 國立中興大學 === 台灣文學與跨國文化研究所 === 103 === In this thesis, I explore how Wei Te-Sheng constructed Taiwanese identity through three films: "Cape No. 7," "Seediq Bale," and "KANO." Moreover, I also investigate how Japanese colonial memory become a portion of the creation of Taiwanese identity and how it connects to contemporary Taiwanese society. In short, I explore the relationship between Taiwanese identity and Taiwanese contemporary society through these films.
The order of chapters in this thesis is not arranged according to the release dates of films, but to the thematic logic as follows: Chapter Two uses "Seediq Bale" as the main subject of discussion, and it explores how Seediq people get downgraded as Hanjin (Taiwanese barbarians) owing to colonization, and how they are able to form a Taiwanese identity through psychic reformations. This chapter also inquires the possibility for their tradition of ancestral worship—through which isolated individuals are grouped as a collective—to shape the absolute nature of Taiwanese identity.
Chapter Three will focus on the film "Cape No. 7" and how Taiwanese locality and Japanese colonial memory together form a Taiwanese identity. First, in "Cape No. 7," it is possible to see that Wei Te-Sheng uses his knowledge of historical memory and images of the mass to produce the film in order to form a collective identity and thus shape the diversity in Taiwanese identity. Moreover, the Japanese colonial memory and images of the mass in "Cape No. 7" not only calls for a collective identity on the Taiwanese identity, but also lead to its disintegration.
Chapter Four''s main subject of analysis is the film "KANO." In this film, experiences of modernity during the Japanese colonization of Taiwan are studied in order to discover what kind of Taiwanese identity can be created. First, in "KANO," Wei Te-Sheng presents the progress of modernization in Taiwan through the constructions of modern facilities, which connect the land and its people. Additionally, the modernization progress shown in the film also shows that people in “KANO” accept modernity unconditionally. Last, the predetermined universal values set in modernity—as reflected in the unconditional acceptance of it—in fact promotes the integration of different ethnic groups at the same time as the formation of multi-ethnic coexistence and prosperity of the Taiwanese identity.
In short, although these films above show three different Taiwanese identities, they all have one similarity: representation of the homogenous Taiwan. Indeed, in these films, Wei Te-Sheng, the director, tries to mask the differences among different ethnic groups in order to form an equal and homogeneous Taiwan. His attempt to shape a homogeneous Taiwan also reflects the desire and practice of constructing a unified self—or subjectivity—in the contemporary Taiwanese society in the epoch of globalization and the rise of China.
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