Author: Max Mayo

The Taipei 5 Newsletter, Vol. 1

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In December 2018, my siblings, my brother-in-law, my girlfriend and I embarked on a trip to Taipei and Bangkok for the holidays. Starting in the Fall of 2018, I began periodically sending out a periodical for our group, The Taipei 5, in order to get us informed and excited about the regions we’d be visiting. Each volume contained just a handful of recent media links that I would then provide thematic background for. Posted here post-trip for posterity are the four volumes I prepared. In each volume, I may add some new comments in italics that reflect a deeper or revised understanding of what I thought before the trip. 

August 6th, 2018

Members,

Below are two articles from this weekend with Taiwan related news. Interestingly, the three largest cultural influences on the island (The Mainland, Japan and the USA) are tangible forces in each story.

China – Taiwan Tunnel

Fascinating plans for a China “Chunnel” that will not happen anytime soon. Even though it may not be financially or politically feasible, this type of project tells you a lot about the kinds of pressure and control China would like to have over the region.

Something like this project seems farther away than ever. President Xi and President Tsai recently traded barbs over the fate of the island and tensions are higher than normal. Even more interesting: though Tsai presided over massive electoral losses in the November election, recent polling suggests that more Taiwanese than ever (approximately 47%) expect Taiwanese independence to take place in the future and reject the “one-China” principle. I suspect cross-strait tensions and support for independence are linked and are likely to temper down, but the long term trend points to some sort of independence referendum down the line. If such a referendum were to happen, this would become the most important story in the world and the most challenging nexus point yet for the US and China’s struggle for geopolitical dominance. 

Baseball in Taiwan

Really funny piece. I did not know that Baseball was transmitted to Taiwan by Japan and not the US. One thing that you will see when you watch the Taiwanese movies pre-trip is how much Japan shaped the island in its imperial image and how (and why) this image lingers to this day. We tend to use shorthand and think of Japan as a major importer of US culture and ideals, both in the industrial revolution and in the post-war era, but this missed a lot and is by no means the end of the story. Perhaps we should really be thinking about Japan as both a cultural synthesizer and exporter. Not only is Japan historically a major conduit for “western” values and trade in East Asia, you could argue that what they are demonstrating (or demonstrated decades ago) to Taiwan, South Korean, Vietnam, etc is that you can absorb these western values, achieve great prosperity and not lose your identity along the way.

On a separate note, I didn’t know that aging MLB baseball players go to Japan and Taiwan to retire. You see the same thing with NBA players in China and obviously soccer players here in the US. When you’r rich but suck at the sport, just overpay for old stars! We’ll have to keep our eyes peeled for some Elephant Brothers jerseys. . .

I also devised a list of Taiwanese films and books to read pre-trip, hence the reference to movies. On the Japanese front, I did not have the data to back up my assertions at the time, but I do now. Joe Studwell’s How Asia Works is an excellent primer on how and why North-East (Japan, South Korea, Taiwan and China) and South-East Asia (Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia and The Philippines) developed so differently in the 20th century. One of the major takeaways is how the northern group followed Japan’s and Germany’s pre-war developmental examples in employing land reform and “export discipline,” while the southern group did not. It’s obviously more complicated, with Western intervention playing an important supporting role, but the fundamental story is consistent on an economic level for each stage of development. We did not see any Elephant Brothers jerseys. . .

Enjoy!

-Max

What I’ve Been Watching

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Capernaum – For this western viewer, this is an eye-opening and harrowing snapshot of what is going on in Beirut seen through the lens of a 12 year old boy named Zain (played by a Syrian refugee with a demonic zeal in his eyes) living and hustling on the streets. You see an environment that is festering with poverty and overcrowding, buffeted by desperate regional migration from Africa and Syria. The city, the state and the family unit as completely dysfunctional. The grimmest, funniest and best sequence is when Zain is basically raising an Ethiopian baby alone! and features Zain dragging his child, Jonas, around on a skateboard in a pot. . . My main critique is of the courtroom frame for the story, which gets a little too sappy for my taste. Director Nadine Labaki uses impressionistic cinematography and a frantic editing style to capture it all. She is someone to keep an eye on.

Happy Hour – This nearly 5 and a half hour film is an absolute delight. You follow four female friends in their 30’s, basically just exploring their friendships and personal relationships. Much of the film focuses on the mundane – family unit routines, jobs, commutes – until one of the friends reveals she cheated on her husband and is now filing for divorce. Things set off from there though nothing is ever that dramatic or boils over, it’s almost anti-Hollywood; nonetheless, it builds and builds into something dynamic, complex and alive. Director Ryusuke Hamaguchi has a penchant for holding on the smallest details for as long as possible, surprising you later as the meaning sinks in. Scenes are rarely less than 10 minutes and frequently much longer. His digital cinematography was inspiring too, it has that HD soap opera look, but over time i found it got me much closer to the characters. Again, it felt more real. For example, he plays a lot with contrast, opting to shoot characters in front of bright windows, knowing you won’t be able to see the actor. He’s also quite restless with his editing and framing. A picnic scene with the 4 women will feature 6-8+ different angles and he’s constantly switching between them. I cannot wait to see Hamaguchi’s latest, Asako I & II.

Destroyer – Seedy, opioid fueled LA neo-noir. Nicole Kidman is disturbing and hideous, a make-up feat I thought impossible. Similar to Aaron Katz’s Gemini, this one can’t compete with the best LA noirs this century (Mulholland, Dr., Drive, Brick, Inherent Vice, BR2049) but still manages to carve out its own little space. Director Karyn Kusama favors marginal genre tweaking here, reminded me a lot of Soderbergh’s genre exercises.

Week in Review: May 21st – 27th, 2018

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Who We Are and How We Got Here – This will be one of my favorite books I’ll read this year. David Reich’s Who We Are and How We Got Here details the still nascent field of ancient DNA analysis, how it is upending the existing scientific hierarchy, and how ancient DNA is retelling the story of human evolution on planet Earth. Before this period, we had to rely on anthropology, archeology, philology, and older science, like carbon dating, to triangulate knowledge about human prehistory. Now, thanks to cheaper DNA sequencing technology and new methods of comparative analysis, scientists can gather a bone segment from central Eurasia and quickly know, with near absolute precision, which historic population of humans that sample is from, where that population came from and which populations were near them. The major revelations are twofold; first, pre-historic human populations have been moving around the globe almost continuously since the hypothetical (now in question!) “Out of Africa” theory; and second, these human populations have been mixing with each other for just as long. The implications here are massive. For example, you will learn repeatedly that Earth’s current racial demography is a relatively recent state of affairs and there have been numerous races before. The book details only 30 known human population mixture events, of which there are more still yet to be discovered; these events represent mixtures of populations more genetically disparate than modern Europeans are to modern Asians. There is a steep learning curve to this book, but Reich makes the cutting edge technology understandable for a layperson (read: me) while layering in a moral optimism to the findings. One cannot come away from this information without a profound sense of connection to our species’ shared history.

The Nasher Sculpture Center – A few unsurprising thematic clusters of permanent collection classics comprised the main exhibit on this visit, but the experience was still rich due to Renzo Piano’s wonderful design for the building. His penchant for overhead natural light in gallery spaces is still underrated, and the building’s comb-like structure up’s that ante with glass walls on north and south ends. The joys of that building were then tempered by the sculpture garden which I found a bit generic now that we live in an age where every modern art museum does more or less the same thing here.

The Crow Collection – Only the ground floor was available, but even with one floor and only two micro-exhibits, The Crow Collection is a gem for the city of Dallas. The first exhibit detailed a full set of Japanese samurai armor piece by piece. The armor was arranged on a mannequin in the center of the room allowing for a 360 degree analysis of the many pieces and ornaments. The second exhibit was a brief survey on the history of Korean ceramics. . . which was pretty fantastic luck because Korean ceramics happen to be my favorite ceramics in nearly every way: their colors, their glazes, and most of all, their shapes. The works were arranged by time period and paired with contemporary Korean ceramics for some interesting contrasts. I am always astounded by how distinct, elegant and sophisticated these works are from this tiny peninsula. My suspicion is that the extreme pressures of being sandwiched between the massive, ubiquitous cultures from China and Japan made such creativity possible and necessary.

Week in Review: May 14th – 20th, 2018

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Claire’s Camera – Even Hong Sang-soo’s experiemental, slapdash editing ruse is more interesting and more fun than most film efforts, a testament to his talent. Here he’s gathered regular Kim Min-hee and French titan Isabelle Huppert to make a low stakes, 70 minute love triangle drama, shot on the streets of Cannes while the three of them were attending the eponymous film festival a few years ago. The film is a sort of artist’s statement (though its difficult to know when Hong is sincere. . .) about Hong’s approach to editing and the act of capturing someone on camera. Claire (Huppert) takes Polaroid pictures of characters throughout claiming that when you take a photo of someone, the person is changed. To look at that photo is to look at the distance between what you have changed into and what you were. Thus, filmmaking is the act of capturing change. Making all of this more complicated is the non-linear editing. Frequently the film jumps backwards and forwards in time, testing the viewer to not only compile the timeline but to focus on how the characters are imperceptibly changing.

Racer and the Jailbird – Belgium director Michaël R. Roskam newest, starring the beautiful Adèle Exarchopoulos and the beautiful Matthias Schoenaerts. I haven’t seen Roskam’s much lauded Bullhead and this film doesn’t whet the appetite. To start, Racer features a bizarre narrative with no less than three jarring plot shifts that actually change what the film is about. Most viewers having seen the first 30 minutes will not be expecting this film to have more to say about terminal illness and reform-based justice systems than bank robbing or racecar driving. Even more confusing, the movie was marketed as a sexy, Euro-crime thriller. At the very least its a surprising ride featuring two genuine francophone stars in their prime, I’m just skeptical that there is much of anything going on under the hood; a strange injection of Americana, sentimentality and Christianity in the final moments left me scratching my head.

The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant – I saw this Cuban production at the Kennedy Center in Spanish with a very poor translation. Thus, any nuance this performance contained was lost on me. It did make me want to see the Rainer Werner Fassbender film on which it is based. The story is about a lesbian love triangle in West Germany and focuses on the changing power dynamics in a liberalizing Europe. This rendition maintains the location and time period of the film, but utilizes 4 male actors in drag for the lead roles. For an informed review from someone who did not need the subtitles I recommend this: PLACEHOLDER.

My Next Guest Needs No Introduction – Tina Fey is an important and hilarious comic, and this interview is an excellent introductory biography of her. She seems to be truly struggling with how to navigate our ever more politically correct world and the toxic culture of social media. I will talk about this a bit below, but I would like to see her stay away from SNL.

John Mulaney: Kid Gorgeous at Radio City – As a fan of John Mulaney, I was happy to see him provide a mostly entertaining special that, if venue size is any indication, epitomizes his well-earned popularity. I was also surprised by the size of his ambition, as this special is a claim to the comedy throne left vacant by #MeToo. But in lieu of this, I was left a bit sad. When comics go bigger, its inevitable that they will also have to be broader. This is a pop culture law of physics. In this special, Mulaney is louder, nastier, more machismo than normal, and though these are necessary land grabs for a broader comedy identity, I found I was laughing much less. Mulaney in conversations, interviews, working behind the scenes, and in smaller productions is weirder, brainier and riskier, traits that have gotten him this far. I hope he finds ways to maintain those characteristics as his star continues to rise.

Saturday Night Live – I was so high off of the Sterling K. Brown episode that I ended up watching the rest of this season. I would liken it to watching a clown car drive up off a ramp placed at the edge of a cliff and then continuing to watch as the clowns plunge into gorge, exploding on impact. That is to say, it started funny, and then quickly became very not funny and sort of painful. Witnessing Tina Fey host this finale was the final gut punch. She’s so talented and the years where she was head writer on SNL are some of the very best in the show’s history. Unfortunately, the skits they wrote for her were either overly reliant on that legacy, presenting old favorites devoid of their necessary cultural context, or dead on arrival political commentaries that have typified this season. My advice for Tina, follow the wise Kylo Ren’s advice and, “let the past die. Kill it, if you have to. That’s the only way to become what you were meant to be.”

Tully – Jason Reitman, Diablo Cody, and Charlize Theron have teamed up again for possibly their weirdest film yet. I was excited for this one, as Young Adult, their previous collaboration is probably Reitman’s best film. Tully is an om to the maternal experience and a fairly interesting indictment of new age lifestyles. I don’t think this movie works in the end, nor have I thought much about it since, but I enjoyed myself thoroughly despite its flaws. Cody is just a fun writer (I recommend seeing Jennifer’s Body for her finest work) and Theron can make any material compelling.

Michael Che Matters – Surprisingly funny. More people should be talking about this. Che is actually offensive in this special and seems sincere about it, repeatedly building a tension with his audience that his jokes then release. The fun is seeing how long he can sustain the awkwardness before he lets the audience off the hook. It goes without saying, but this guy is going places.

Week in Review: May 7th – 13th, 2018

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Can It Happen Here? Authoritarianism in America – A collection of essays pertaining to the topic of authoritarianism in the Age of Trump. Edited together by Cass R. Sunstein, formerly the Obama Administration’s regulatory czar, the collection includes thinkers from across the political spectrum. There is no straight answer to the book’s title question, and not all of the essays even try to attempt answer it. What is starkly clear after reading this book is that forms of authoritarianism have existed in this country before, are existing now, and will exist in the future. The degree of authoritarianism is a constant battle, for now being waged within judicial system and the vast government bureaucracy. The most shocking essay here is by Jonathan Haidt and Karen Stenner. Together they show, through a series of graphs and tables compiling behavioral surveys and the recent election results in the USA, the UK and France, that there is statistical evidence for a large authoritarian receptive group within our modern populations. Basically, ~35% of people tend to have these authoritarian dispositions and this number does not go away. It has been sitting under all of our liberal democracies for as long as the data is available. This population is not always a threat to democracy, but pending the types of stimuli (geopolitics, domestic social issues, economic variables) the group can be activated. Trump’s approval rating is completely stable at around ~40%, and the reason for this can also be explained by Haidt’s and Stenner’s analysis. Even if issues and leaders that activate the authoritarian response in that third of our population continue to maximize a negative response, it is still possible to win back democratic majorities; but the threat that this irrational group poses to liberal democracy will be ever-present.

Spider-Man: Homecoming – Probably the funniest Marvel film I’ve seen. Thor: Ragnarok is it’s closest competition. A lot of the fun comes from the fact that Peter Parker is a 15-year old, a notion that is fully baked into the plot. For example, at one point near the end Peter is giving chase to the Vulture, played by a scene chomping Michael Keaton. Peter ‘borrows’ a sports car to catch up and he’s driving really poorly, wrecking the car along the way. We’ve spent the majority of the film watching him train with his powers in his new suit, developing fighting proficiency and learning to problem solve on the fly, and then we get these funny little reminders that, “oh yeah”, he’s a kid and he doesn’t even have a driver’s license! This is also a good New York movie and the best recent blockbuster about puberty.

Dust in the Wind – The third and final installment in Hou Hsiao-hsien’s coming of age trilogy, this 1986 film deals most overtly with the opening urban/rural divide that resulted from Taiwan’s rapid industrialization. Train rides, tunnels and stations across the island feature heavily in the film, as its two young protagonists, Ah-yuan and Ah-yun, move to Taipei to earn money for their respective families in their rural village. The uncertainty and lack of direction in their new urban environment confuse and alienate their relationship, one that could otherwise blossom into a romance. Matters are complicated even further when Ah-yuan is called up for his conscription. Hou seems intent on showing the limits of agency afforded to these youths and their distant families. Fittingly, the final shot of the film lingers over the green valley of the village, as grey clouds blow above in the wind.