(Note) Feel free to share any thoughts and ideas, as long as they are expressed logically and rationally.
As a Taiwanese, I have often found it boring when trying to watch a Taiwanese TV show/program/film. Over the past 10 years, there has been an irresistible wave of Korean popular culture, prompting Taiwanese producers, directors or even the authority to create a similar sense of our own cultural identity by making numerous films and dramas, yet most of them ended up in failure.
Why is it so hard to re-produce the success of Korean popular culture? The loss of subjectivity in one's own culture could be the critical factor. This might seem harsh to the majority of Taiwanese people, but one thing we(as Taiwanese) have to admit is that most of our films and TV shows has a deficiency in originality, and what’s even worse, is that most of them are out of touch with reality.
I may not be an expert at creating films or TV shows, but I strongly believe that the Taiwanese entertainment industry has a significant void that cannot be filled simply by imitating other cultural influences. According to Harry Triandis' definition, the concept of subjectivity in culture is "a characteristic way of perceiving its social environment"; in other words, one's uniqueness is largely determined by the situation that allows for mental and spiritual connections with the world, and such connections are inimitable.
It is true that such a topic is debatable, and, in some ways, dangerous, while I personally think there should have been more discussion that can help us figure out who we truly are. Surely more theories and studies are needed in order to better understand what’s going on inside our cultural identity, and this is just a beginning.
