12:51 AM me: TTV does give an impression of Taiwan as a normalized liberal society in keeping with the spirit of the times
12:59 AM V: You talk about normalisation so skeptically, but what other perspective would they have?
1:00 AM It's like saying, boy, you can tell those Mainland TV shows are up to trouble by how hard they try to hide how naturally inscrutable and untrustworthy Chinese people are
1:04 AM me: it's like... Zhang Ailing writing about being love stricken in WW2 Japanese occupied Shanghai. One also gets the sense then that Republican China was modern and normalized, when it was actually mired in corruption and faced existential threats from the outside
1:06 AM Think about Shame...Amah! (which was published in 1944, before the war ended)
1:07 AM did you get the sense from the story that China was/or was about to be engaged in a struggle for its national survival?
1:10 AM I think normalization is meant to speak to a universal audience. In any age you would have people talking about love, nostalgia, childhood, innocence, remembrance
1:11 AM intentionally or unintentionally placed, it exists; it's reassuring
1:12 AM me: but it is tempting to think that the people on these TV shows reflect a society that has privileged access to normalization by the virtue of its "values", when another society under very different circumstances and values did experience it, as have others1:13 AM that is the skepticism I am trying to convey
