All about 1895

An Ideological Analysis of TV Serials from the Two Sides of the Taiwan Strait

  • Lee Pei-Ling
Keywords: Ideology and media, Ideological criticism, China-Taiwan relations, 1895

Abstract

The Treaty of Shimonoseki ceded Taiwan from China to Japan at the end of the Sino-Japanese war in 1895 and the country was then colonized by Japan until 1945. After the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) won the Chinese civil war in 1949, the Chinese Nationalists (Kuomintang 國民黨 , KMT) retreated to Taiwan, leading to a new period of separation between China and Taiwan. Over the next 60 years, Chinese and Taiwanese people experienced different political regimes and propaganda and, accordingly, developed different political perspectives on history. The ceding of Taiwan to Japan in 1895, an important historical event in China’s modern history, is explained, described, and understood differently in different sources, including the content of television dramas in China and Taiwan. This study applies ideological criticism to examine two television serials, Taiwan 1895  from China and The War of Betrayal 1895  from Taiwan, both of which describe the same historical events of 1895. The aims of the paper are to discover what kinds of ideological messages are delivered and how images of the “Self” versus the “Other” are constructed in the chosen artifacts under the ideologies of China-centred and Taiwancentred paradigms. By analyzing the role of television in diffusing ideologies, this study supports an examination of the impact of ideology and the power of discourses on popular culture, to increase the understanding, and even to seek common ground across the two sides of the Taiwan Strait.

Author Biography

Lee Pei-Ling

Dr. Pei-Ling Lee is currently assistant professor in the Department of Speech Communication at Shih Hsin University, Taipei, Taiwan. She received her PhD in Communication Studies with an emphasis on Communication and Culture in 2008 from Bowling Green State University, Ohio, USA. She has been actively presenting papers at academic conferences on international, national, and regional levels. She has also published research articles in different academic journals, books, and conference proceedings. Her research and teaching interests comprise the relationship of rhetoric and cultural studies, identity studies on communities and ethnic groups, propaganda and media, and public speaking.

Published
2013-12-12
How to Cite
Pei-Ling, L. (2013). All about 1895: An Ideological Analysis of TV Serials from the Two Sides of the Taiwan Strait. Archiv orientální, 81(3), 495-514. Retrieved from https://aror.orient.cas.cz/index.php/ArOr/article/view/358
Issue
Vol. 81 No. 3 (2013)
Section
Research Article

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