I have just returned from a screening of the first of two parts of the 2011 Taiwanese film “Warriors of the Rainbow: Seediq Bale” (賽德克·巴萊), and I am still somewhat in shock. The film depicts the 1930 Wushe Incident, in which a number of Taiwanese aborigines of the Seediq Bale tribe rose up against Japanese colonizers. Over 130 Japanese were killed (including women and children), while hundreds of Seediq Bale (lit. “true men”) died in the fighting. I understand that the second half of the film, which I have yet to see, depicts (in part) the Japanese response, in which a great many aborigines were killed. It is certainly an incident about which we hear very little – it is completely overshadowed by events such as the Marco Polo Bridge Incident, the Mukden Incident, and the Nanjing Massacre, which occurred several years later, in mainland China. Yet, within the contexts of Taiwanese history, the history of Japanese Empire, indigenous & colonial studies, and the like, it is actually quite interesting and important; certainly, within a historical narrative of a series of encounters between the Japanese and the Taiwanese aborigines, stretching back as far as 1871, if not earlier, it seems an incident of some considerable importance and interest.
There is so much to this film that I scarcely know what to say. In fact, I hesitate to say anything at all, because anything I say would need to expounded upon, expanded out, explained fully, and balanced out by additional statements as well, over the course of many pages. All of the issues this film touches upon are quite complex, and if there is a side or a stance to take, I do not know where I stand. So, rather than risk misrepresenting myself, or influencing your experience or interpretation of the film, I suppose I shall just leave it at this, and allow you to draw your own conclusions, and your own thoughts and questions.
I am very thankful to Profs. Kuo-Ch’ing Tu, Kate McDonald, and Anne-Elise Llewallen, for their comments after the film, putting it somewhat into context, and helping us begin to think about some of the issues this film raises. This review by scholar Darryl Sterk likewise discusses a number of those issues, and is quite thought-provoking; I am sure there are plenty more reviews out there taking a variety of different stances and expressing a diversity of reactions.
US Version Trailer:
The film was shown earlier this year in a limited release in a handful of major East and West Coast US cities, as well as in various British, European, and Chinese cities, in an “international version,” cut down to about 2 1/2 hours. I am glad that the Center for Taiwan Studies here at UCSB is showing instead the full, uncut, Taiwanese version of the film, even if it is closer to 4 1/2 hours. The second half will be shown here at UCSB’s Multicultural Center Theatre sometime in January. I look forward to it, and to the discussions which might emerge out of it.
上り口説 Nubui Kuduchi 
[…] but it’s also a short one. Films by Wei Te-Sheng, such as Cape No. 7 (trailer above), Seediq Bale, and the 2014 film KANO (dir. by Umin Boya, a member of the Seediq tribe), show that very vibrant, […]
I wish I had written out more here; coming back to this post years later, I would have liked to see what I was thinking, and what I might have written! Though, I know that I would not have left it like this, such a brief and empty entry, if I thought I could say what I wanted to say unproblematically. Whatever my thoughts were, they must have been touching upon really touchy or difficult points, if I felt I had to leave them unsaid. It can be really difficult to discuss these issues sometimes when one feels such pressure to have to avoid at all costs being mistakenly seen as pro-colonialist, or Orientalist/racist or anything… but, as happened in this post, the end result is that we say nothing. Even the film itself – the Taiwanese director, actors, and crew, and the Taiwanese audience – allow themselves to show the Japanese as complex, nuanced, sympathetic, and to show the aborigines as, yes, victims and honorable and human and all of that, with a beautiful culture and a rightful claim to the land, but as people who (like any people) were not some ideal perfect pacifistic society, but were violent, had in-fighting, and so on.
One thing I do remember from our discussion was a question of how to represent cultures like the Seediq, who in some respects fall right into negative stereotypes of the violent primitive savage? Of course, as sympathetic, anti-colonial, pro-indigenous, progressive folks, we want to see any and all cultures as beautiful and worthy of appreciation and respect. But, if a culture so resembles the stereotype, does that mean it’s horribly offensive bad filmmaking? Or does it mean that’s just how the culture truly is? How do we negotiate between those things? Though I have some limited background myself in Hawaiian and Pacific history, I imagine that those more fully expert in (mainland) Native American Studies would have a clearer sense about these issues…
And, another point which I remember from the film, and which struck me again in listening to East Asia 4 All’s recent podcast about the film, is the emphasis on Japanese colonialism, and omission of discussion of the Han Chinese impact upon Taiwan, and upon the aboriginal peoples. I do believe it shows up somewhat in the film, as there are Han Chinese characters in addition to the more numerous and dominant Japanese and aboriginal groups. But, while I certainly count myself no apologist for Japanese colonial violence, I don’t think the Chinese should be excused here. And I say that not politically, per se, but as a historian. If anything, I say it anti-politically, in questioning or critiquing the Chinese or Taiwanese national narrative. Han Chinese came to Taiwan in significant numbers only a few hundred years ago, in the Qing Dynasty, and in much more significant numbers only within the last century or so. They, too, are colonizers, and it would have been good to see just a little more attention paid in the film, and in the podcast discussion, to the “violence” done against indigenous people, their culture, and their freedom & sovereignty on their ancestral lands, etc., by the Chinese settlement, even before the Japanese arrived.
Hopefully, spitting out these comments here doesn’t get me in too much trouble – bringing up a few points which I could have, should have, perhaps, kept for a more well-considered, edited, blog post; precisely the things I failed to say in a careful enough manner, and thus didn’t say at all, in the post itself, above.
In any case, I am still curious what it was I was thinking at the time. Hopefully I have my notes somewhere…
from another window has all the Hitchcock