Gender, Power and the Gaze in the Taiwanese TV Series Falling (2013)

Abstract

The Golden Bell Award-winning TV series Falling was released in 2013 and aired by the Taiwan Public Television Service. The short series of six episodes was marketed as an idol drama; however, it stands out from this genre through its different narrative structure, role types and relations. It is not centered around the building of a relationship between the typical superior man, in looks and material assets, and a less-than-perfect woman, in terms of looks and typically feminine character traits, with an interfering female character possessing the traits which the protagonist lacks. Rather it plays with this formula by placing the three protagonists in a similar pattern of interaction, but instead of love relationships, the series focuses on a growing-up process of searching for and negotiating subjectivity both by the female protagonists, and the male one. This process takes place within a network of changing power relations involving both main and secondary characters, while the primary epistemological method is gazing, an activity in which, interestingly enough, the viewer is also engaged.