So thatās assault, right?
Just for the recordā¦
Apologies, forumosans. This has turned out to be a rather long and winding post.
Reading this story last night, I felt a genuine sense of sadness about the lack of empathy for the victims of White Terror, which crossed ethnic lines and damaged so many people here.
Instead of empathy, there is a startling sense of entitlement among the last remaining loyalists to the old guard (aka the dictatorship). Think about this: the current government, which promised some sort of re-engagement with Taiwanās White Terror (more than forty years of arbitrary arrests, disappearances, detentions, executions, and deliberate secrecy), is now reconsidering the use of public resources (prime public space, tax money, and symbolic capital such as naming an MRT station) to glorify the dictator.
The current Minister of Culture has not approached this matter in a knee jerk manner that we saw during the Chen Shui-bian era, where the Dictator Hall was suddenly renamed Liberty Square. She has instead moved carefully through some complex terrain: engaging the past, how to use public space, etc. For those of us who saw the amazing Reimagining Memorial exhibit a while back, we know this can actually be an opportunity to think things through and to try to do things differently with an eye to the future.
If the unhappy woman who assaulted the minister wants to set up a shrine in her home to Chiang, I would not support her decision (in fact I think it would be misguided) but it would be her money and her home. In short, it would be her business. But the use of public space and our tax money for such purposes is a matter of debate and public policy. I am sorry, that public space and all the tax money used to support its current form does not belong to her. The fact that she thinks it does belong to her speaks volumes about the lasting damage caused by the party-state era. Itās time to change it.
Guy
Hereās a post script related to the Imagining Memorial exhibit I briefly mentioned above. It was a memorable and engaging temporary exhibit housed inside the main Dictator Hall buildingābut it was, I discovered, a bit tricky to find. As I was searching for it, I showed the name of the exhibit in Chinese to one of the elderly volunteers at the Hall. He vigorously told me that is not what I want to see and instead tried to direct me to the old exhibits showing Chiangās belongings, accomplishments, etc.
This experience underlined for me how difficult it is for progressives (and I view the current Minister of Culture as a progressive) to get the machine to move. The number of dictatorship loyalists may be decreasing but they are still on the ground, especially in politically conservative places like central Taipei City.
Guy
Itās assault, I think she should be jailed for a few days to dissuade any other over the hill actors and politicians whom nobody cares about any longer from āstagingā shite like this to get their faces in the news cycle and their names on the lips of the public. Itās shameless grandstanding and assault. Fawk that leathery
witch
She was also sentenced to five years in jail for killing somebody while driving. Low life.
She needs to be sued by the victim. Thatās the only proper course of action.
Phew.
Is no one else thinking how does one become the minister of culture and what exactly is their job?
The Ministry of Culture is quite new, barely 5 years old here in Taiwan. It was born of a splinter of the GIO and the Department of Culture, mashed together and raised to Cabinet level. They had to build the whole thing from scratch.
The press is having a field day. Dig the accomopanying picture:
https://tw.news.yahoo.com/éę äøå°å§-ä½ ęÆę» äŗē¾©č¦ēå½¢č±”-063019709.html
From her glory days.
This is a position that shouldnāt exist in a modern democracy. It sounds like itās straight out of Orwellās 1984. Itās even worse than the Government Information Office.
They do promote Taiwan arts, opening more venues, especially in the South. They also support concerts, copyrights, arrange dialogues between producers and musicians, promote music education -there is a whole new university dedicated to music production, for exmaple. Fundin, eduication, promotion.
They are indeed dragging a lot of the dubious past but it is being changed slowly. For example, they have adapte dthe music awards to include Internet music.
I donāt see the connection to Orwell . They fund the arts.
āMinistry of Cultureā sounds very Orwellian. The government has no business involving itself in culture. The involvement of the Ministry of Culture in transitional justice should be a pretty good indication of that.
I guess it depends on what you think should be the role of government. Some people like myself would feel uneasy about the government playing a role in culture.
I suspect one reason some forumosans donāt seem to understand the function of āgovernmentā and ācultureā together is that you are Americans, with massively powerful cultural industries that can dominate and crush other nationsā cultural industries.
For those of us from smaller, less formidable countries (and yes I include Taiwan in this group), itās a no brainer than you need some kind of state support for certain aspects of culture to survive.
And of course a Ministry of Culture can act in a dumb-ass manner (though in my view they are not doing so now). But so can other ministries!
Guy
Or they can focus on a thriving middle class which are your cultural Consumers historically.
It just sounds like a huge cluster fuck of corruption unchecked and propaganda machine. Art is subjective so itās not like people can really check them on much. As far as I know, sounds potentially bad allowing the gov to determine what to promote in art and culture. They could be promoting their buddies private art collection to increase their worth.
If culture needs government support to survive, itās already become completely irrelevant, big country or small.
OK, my American friend, picture this. You are living in a country next to a very large powerful country that speaks the same language but has a different history, a different set of values. Your countryās movie theatres (note the spellingāI hope this gives you a hint) is utterly dominated by Hollywood films, telling American stories over and over. Yes some of them are good stories, some of them are not. Yet none of them tell stories about your own community, your own country, your own home.
If you think this situation is awesome, I cannot help you. But if you can discern why some governments think we need a broader range of stories being told, and space to tell them, then you can start to understand whatās happening.
If this point is too hard for you to understand, I would also draw your attention to the national interest angle that may be more comprehensible to you. The Alliance Francais, the British Council, the Goethe Institute, the Japan Foundationāall have an interest in promoting their respective national cultures. The counties funding these organizations are not small but they think this is a rational use of state resources to further their interests.
And if this is not intelligible to you, then I wish you a good day. : D
Guy