Taiwan's young artists cool to
Next Media animation By Jens
Kastner
TAIPEI - When Next Media
Animation's (NMA) content and business development
manager Michael Logan spoke to Taipei film and
arts students recently, their initial resentment
against the company's notorious computer-animated
news stories was perceivable.
In the
presentation provocatively named "Next Media
Animation: Is this the future of media?" Logan
commented on the clips that have since obtained
cult-status in much of the Western world. An early
highlight was an animation
of Tiger Woods crashing his car after his wife
(supposedly) attacked him with a golf club. There
was The US-China Currency Rap Battle, featuring US
President Barack Obama and Chinese President Hu
Jintao. And there was
Apple chief executive Steve
Jobs being shown chopping a customer's fingers of
with a laser sword so as to improve his iPhone's
reception.
Yet while each clip drew its
laughter, the audience's comments focused on the
ethical aspects rather than on NMA's success, let
alone on artistic value. What became apparent at
this punk-rock style venue was that Taiwan has not
yet come to terms with its most famous exporter of
creativity.
NMA is a Taiwan-based
subsidiary of Next Media, a Hong Kong media
conglomerate. Its business is creating depictions
of news-worthy events to which no footage exists.
In 2010, propelled by the Tiger Woods re-enactment
that went viral on YouTube, NMA broke its
Chinese-language constraints, becoming known to
international audiences. Amusingly, even the clips
produced for export are narrated in, to Western
ears, somewhat hectically sounding Mandarin and
only subtitled in English.
The speed with
which the Taiwanese animators churn out their
products is striking. Some 300 employees are
toiling away at NMA's Taipei studio, each day
creating no fewer than 56 digital re-enactments of
everything from juicy scandals involving Hollywood
actors to grisly murders committed in the
Taiwanese capital's satellite cities. As a
hallmark feature, characters in NMA-animated local
crime scenes are mostly blonde and blue-eyed,
leaving the impression that the Taiwanese public
on a daily basis fall victim to bloodthirsty
hordes of Scandinavians.
Whereas it's the
satire that's known abroad, with 46% of its
audience being in the United States, it accounts
only for a fraction of the total output. By far
the most animations are created for local news
being placed on TV and on the Web site of Apple
Daily, a tabloid subdivision of Next Media.
"If an Apple Daily reporter wants to make
a video report but lacks footage, he orders the
missing part as an animation with us," said Logan.
Addressing the objections of his audience, he made
a puzzling statement: "By using animations, we
don't change laws of reporting; all laws of
reporting still apply."
Logan then cited a
clip depicting former US vice president Al Gore
sexually assaulting a masseuse in his hotel room,
seeking to make plausible why cases like Gore's
are predestined to end up as animations.
"There is no footage. All there is is a
76-page legal document. The story had to be told
with help of an animation," said Logan.
Logan further brought into account that
although he doesn't know whether Tiger Woods
actually smiled or not when driving away from an
adulterous sexual encounter, it was alright for
NMA to freely make up Wood's facial expression.
"By putting a smile on on his face, we don't
change his story, either."
Once again,
Logan's audience reacted with laughter, albeit
hardly convinced.
Significantly more
suspicious of NMA than Taipei's film and arts
students is the island's political caste. In
September 2010, Taiwan's National Communications
Commission (NCC) rejected Next Media's
applications for licenses for a news channel and a
general interest channel. Reasons cited were the
network's plans to present news in a "docudrama"
format, which, according to the regulators, "do
not meet professional standards of journalism and
truthful reporting". It was further noted that
"mass media have a responsibility to ensure that
their programming conforms with ethical and moral
standards acceptable to the general public".
Otherwise, in cases involving the media,
the Taiwanese authorities are considerably less
stringent. It wasn't before January 2011 that
news-like advertisements from government
institutions or government-owned businesses that
are vaguely or not at all labeled were banned.
Even after the ban, the authorities allegedly
continue to turn a blind eye to propaganda
articles of China's state-run media being added as
unidentified supplements to local newspapers.
Seeking to shed light on whether it's the
ruling Kuomintang (KMT) or the opposition
Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) that tries hard
to keep NMA at bay, Tsai Chia-hung, a professor at
Taipei's National Chengchi University, said both
sides have their respective resentments.
"In some ways, the KMT is favored by Next
Media because of the ruling party's long-term
monopoly of resources. But on the other hand, the
KMT is criticized by Next Media for not giving it
a TV channel," Tsai said. "The Liberty Times [the
DPP mouthpiece] may object to the opening of a TV
channel by a media company from Hong Kong."
The charge that Next Media, because it is
a Hong Kong-based company, could spread Chinese
propaganda in Taiwan seems indeed bizarre. The
media conglomerate has from its beginnings
rejected any attempts to pressure it from above or
to make it take sides politically. NMA, like Apple
Daily, has been banned from China for years
because it arguably doesn't shy away from tackling
material politically sensitive to Beijing.
Jimmy Lai, the founder of the media empire
and according to Forbes Hong Kong's 50th richest
person, has never made a secret of despising the
communist leadership and in many instances has
publicly insulted Chinese officials.
According to Tsai, most Taiwanese people
watch NMA's animations for their entertaining
content and like the funny views that are so
different from those shown by other media. And
even though NMA has become far more famous in the
West than any other company representing the
island's creative industry, Tsai doesn't think the
Taiwanese public takes particular pride in NMA's
achievements.
"This is because although
it's very localized, it is still a foreign media
outlet in the eyes of many people", he said.
Huang Hua-hsi, a Taiwanese legislative
assistant, pointed out that "the circumstance that
no other media outlet has so far followed up on
Next Media's business idea proves that in Taiwan
the Hong Kong-founded company has not been as
popular as expected".
He argues that the
frequent breaches of ethical boundaries turns off
the Taiwanese.
"Next Media's concern for
livelihood issues as well as the neutral and
objective of the criticism cannot be discounted,
but their focus on social news and especially on
sex scandals and rape is absolutely unacceptable,"
said Huang.
That, however, has not helped
build up a readership of 2.3 million, just below
the 2.8 million readers claimed by Liberty Times.
Huang said that if a place should be proud
of NMA's creativity that has been exciting the
Western media world, it should be Hong Kong and
not Taiwan.
Why Taiwan was picked as the
location for the animation studios in the first
place was up to Michael Logan to explain. "Other
Hong Kong animation companies have five people
working in the territory and the rest on the
Chinese mainland because it's cheaper. NMA cannot
go to China."
Jens Kastner is a
Taipei-based journalist.
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