Drags and Gender Play in Pili Budaixi

• Main Authors: Wei-jen Chen, 陳威任
• Other Authors: 林錥鋕
• Format: Others
• Language: en_US
• Published: 2015
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/gnc362

碩士 === 國立中央大學 === 英美語文學系 === 103 === This thesis is a study of the drags in Pili Budaixi. As the largest puppetry company in Taiwan, Pili Budaixi has been devoting great effort to promoting budaixi culture. It offers a great variety of gender plays and focuses on drag characters. To enhance its popularity, it has tried to reflect social conceptions of gender. On the other hand, it participates in debates over the gender norms by staging the instability of gender binarism. Chapter one discusses how dubbing plays with gender conceptions when the voice of one character does not go with his or her other gender traits. When a male character speaks in a female voice, that may create difficulties for the audience in gender identification. Analyzing the interplay between the display of drags and gender binarism, chapter two is concerned with how the manipulation of gender norms highlights the problem of gender ambiguity. Commenting on how gender disguise allows women to do what they are unable to do as women, chapter three argues that Pili Budaixi affirms women’s achieved status rather than ascribed status by demonstrating their capacity for leadership, their endurance in facing difficulties, and their commitment to fulfilling their social responsibilities. Chapter four recapitulates the characteristics of gender plays the thesis has discussed in the first three chapters while adding a new perspective by commenting on how a new character, Bu Xiang- chen, gives a new twist to the gender plays.