Brian Hioeby Brian Hioe
語言:
English
Photo Credit: Film Poster
THE MOVIE Murder of the Century sparked controversy in society, after news broke that the film aimed to depict the Lin family massacre.
The Lin family massacre refers to the killing of pro-democracy activist and former DPP chair Lin Yi-hsiung’s mother and two daughters in February 1980. Lin was, at the time, under 24-hour surveillance, but no culprit has been named regarding the killings.
It is generally thought that state security forces killed Lin’s family members as a warning to the dangwai movement. At the time, as this was during Taiwan’s authoritarian period, the Taiwanese government suggested that the killings were the result of a split in the dangwai movement, and attempted to pin blame on American academic Bruce Jacobs, who visited Lin’s home that day.
Lin is still alive today. However, after news reports about the movie, it emerged that the filmmakers had not sought the consent of the Lin family nor contacted them.
Likewise, comments by actors in the film stated that they hoped to make the incident “less scary”, that the massacre was depicted as a Sherlock Holmes-style mystery further alarmed, as well as that the plot seemed to focus on the Taiwan Garrison Command. Details of the script have been reported on as depicting the Lin family massacre as orchestrated by a Su Beng-like political figure, Su Beng being a pro-independence revolutionary of the 20th century whose proteges were often involved in the democracy movement.
More questions were raised after it became known that director Hsu Kun-hua was the grandson of Taiwan Garrison Command spokesperson Hsu Mei-lin. The Taiwan Garrison Command was the policing institution responsible for suppressing political dissent during authoritarian times. Phase 2, the production company that financed the film, was also found to be owned by a restaurant executive operating in the Chinese market.
The actors involved in the movie have since apologized, with some stating that they were unaware that Murder of the Century did not seek permission from the Lin family to depict the Lin family massacre and that they should have been more sensitive to such unresolved history. Post-production on the movie has been suspended for now. Minister of Culture Li Yuan has suggested that the film may violate the law by depicting events as a massacre without seeking the permission of the involved family.
Either way, Murder of the Century illustrates a disturbing trend in Taiwanese society, by which the crimes of the authoritarian past are made light of or simply used as the backdrop for the drama of a movie.
Chung Mung-hong’s The Embers proved a similar film, featuring a plot involving the descendants of White Terror victims seeking to take revenge on those who committed crimes against their parents in a murder mystery. The conclusion of the movie suggests that the crimes of the past were, in fact, necessary to maintain stable social order in similar times.
The Embers did not prove as controversial as Murder of the Century, probably due to the director’s greater fame, and that the movie is not about any specific historical incident as the Lin family massacre.
It is, in fact, the case that recent Taiwanese movies have depicted the authoritarian past for a popular audience. Yet more often this was to great praise. This has been the case not only with recent award-winner A Foggy Tale, but also the Detention franchise–which adapts an actual incident involving the violent repression of a Communist reading group in Keelung to horror aesthetics–or other works, as the video game Unforgiveable: Eliza, which adapts the White Terror to a murder mystery precisely in a way that grapples with the question of authoritarian complicity.
A new generation of Taiwanese creatives has grappled with the authoritarian past by adapting it into a form that young people may be intrigued by. For this, such works have been seen as not only creatively successful, but also grappling with Taiwan’s authoritarian past in its messiness.
Not so with others, however. It proves unfortunate to see films such as Murder of the Century and The Embers attempt to whitewash Taiwan’s authoritarian past, or simply treat it as material for a drama. This is far from appropriate when the killings that took place in the course of the White Terror are still in living memory.
Such incidents show the challenge of transitional justice in Taiwan, then. The authoritarian past is becoming distant enough as to be trivialized by young people who did not experience such events, even as the crimes of the past are far from resolved.