Divergent staging of East Asian patriarchy within the Confucian order in Taiwan’s transnational television drama co-productions

ABSTRACT

Using Letter 1949 (2009, hereafter Letter) and Fathers Don’t Like Each Other (2011, hereafter Fathers) as case studies, this article explores the contrasting presentations of capitalist patriarchy in the otherwise young-women oriented Taiwanese television dramas that collaborated with China. Their narratives bear marks of the larger Cross-Straits contestations. China’s dominant narrative of capitalist patriarchy traditionalized as Confucian paternalism, shared by Taiwan’s Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT), is seen in Fathers; and the post-authoritarian, democratic, non-official narrative in Letter. The exemplary person (junzi) is illusive in Letter, yet ideally illustrated in Fathers aligning with state ideologies of China and the KMT.

KEYWORDS:

• Confucian capitalism
• Confucian patriarchy
• Cross-Straits co-production
• East Asian pop culture
• junzi
• Taiwanese television drama

Acknowledgement

I would like to thank Liew Kai Khiun and the two anonymous reviewers for their insightful comments that have greatly contributed to improving this paper.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Jocelyn Yi-Hsuan Lai

Jocelyn Yi-Hsuan Lai (PhD) is an Assistant Professor of the Department of Communication Arts at Fu Jen Catholic University, Taipei, Taiwan. Her research focuses on transnationalized Taiwanese television workers and television culture. She has published essays in the Taiwan-based journal Mass Communication Research and in three book volumes: Routledge Handbook of East Asian Popular culture; Asian Cultural Flows: Creative Industries, Policies and Media Consumers; Asia-Pacific Film Co-productions: Theory, Industry and Aesthetics.