Borders in the film viewing space: Benshi and linguistic territorialization in colonial Taiwan, 1926–1933

Abstract

Studies on early cinema regard benshi as a figure that introduced and filtered foreign cultures through his narration and performance. Colonial Taiwan developed a benshi culture no less popular than mainland Japan. What makes Taiwanese benshi practices even more exceptional is the complexity and hybridity of the language-scape. By studying benshi in colonial Taiwan, this essay foregrounds the multilingual and multicultural elements that converged in the viewing space. Through investigating the confrontation between the police and the benshi affiliated with Taiwan Cultural Association that was active from 1926 to 1933, this article contends that the language hybridity cracked open a dynamic and provisional public sphere where the benshi contested colonial governance for more freedom of expression and political engagement. Drawing on colonial newspapers, archival records and interviews, I argue that dialects territorialize a provisional public sphere that endowed local film lecturers with limited agency from the total control of the colonial governance. Dialects used by the benshi exercised a dual function: it created cognitive borders in the colonial viewing space to limit colonial intervention on the one hand and carved up a public sphere where the discursively divided communities might be able to reconnect with each other (i.e. China and Taiwan), on the other.