Dancing for the Dead: Funeral Strippers in Taiwan dir. by Marc L. Moskowitz (review)

Abstract

126 Journal of Chinese Religions Dancing for the Dead: Funeral Strippers in Taiwan Directed by MARC L. MOSKOWITZ. Columbia, SC: Daunting Head Productions, 2011. 38 min., high definition color DVD. Chinese and English with English subtitles. US$19.95. In the 1980s, “electric flower cars” (dianzi hua che 電子花車) became a common part of Taiwanese funeral processions, weddings, and temple festivals. These brightly decorated cars feature stages at the back on which scantily clad young women sing, perform erotic dances, and occasionally strip. Dancing for the Dead is the first documentary film which focuses on the phenomenon of electric flower cars, contextualizing the seemingly paradoxical mix of religion and pornography within the history of innovation in Taiwanese folk religious practice and global consumer capitalism. The film is designed for teaching undergraduates who are unfamiliar with Taiwan, and would be suitable for classes in comparative religion, anthropology, Chinese/Taiwanese studies, and gender studies. Dancing for the Dead presents footage of historical and contemporary Taiwanese religious festivals, including both electric flower car performances and other types of temple festival performance, as well as interviews with electric flower car performers, troupe managers, and local scholars. Background is provided through the narration and shots of daily life in urban Taiwan. The film accomplishes one of the basic goals of ethnography, making a seemingly exotic practice comprehensible, by allowing the interviewees to explain some of the basic beliefs that underlie it—that gods, ghosts, and ancestors have the same desires for entertainment as living people, and that a “hot and noisy” (re’nao 熱鬧) atmosphere is highly valued and seen as the sign of a successful event. At the same time, the diversity of Taiwanese attitudes towards the use of erotic dancing in religious events is presented; we hear from a government official who wants to regulate “unhealthy” performances at temple festivals as well as a well-known (former) flower car dancer who explains the discipline and artistry that characterize her “honorable” profession. The issue of the sexualization of young women is contextualized through a history of the increasing visibility of the female body in the Taiwanese entertainment industry. This includes both a discussion of how temple festival performances other than electric flower cars tend to be gendered, with shots of both the martial, sometimes bloody performances of men and the delicate “national dance” style performed by teams of women. Director/narrator Marc Moskowitz also notes how the sexualized female body has become a taken-for-granted staple of advertising and television programming in Taiwan, as in many other contemporary capitalist societies. The film is quite short, and makes its points clearly. It would serve as an excellent conversation starter in undergraduate classes. But there are many images which will no doubt leave students with questions, so it should probably not be taught in isolation. The film gives a good feel for the sights and sounds of Taiwanese folk religious festivals, family rituals, and Book Reviews 127 urban street life, and a teacher could take discussion in a number of directions. Here I would like to suggest some ways in which the film might be supplemented to facilitate discussion on different topics. Electric flower cars are associated almost exclusively, in their religious context, with “folk religion.” Moskowitz explains that Taiwanese folk religion combines the worship of Daoist and Buddhist deities, and emphasizes the historical tradition of constant innovation in folk religious practice. Several of the interviewees note that electric flower cars are often used in the worship of “low,” or yin (陰) gods, and that the practice is often associated with the subculture of triads. For students unfamiliar with Chinese folk religion, some further information on the place of folk religion in Taiwan, in relation to more organized, text-based religions such as Buddhism, Daoism, and Christianity might be useful. Folk religion has been strongly associated with Hoklo (福佬 / 河洛 / 鶴佬) ethnic identity in Taiwan, in opposition to a pan-Chinese identity, and it might be interesting for students to see how the image of the electric flower car has changed from the 1990s, when it was often used by Taiwanese novelists and film directors as a symbol of the decline of “authentic” Hoklo culture, to the early 21st century, when...