Let's Fall in Love . . . to Stay Healthy—Whether and How Qiong Yao's Romance Fits into Healthy Realism
As a film genre devised both to reflect social realities and to promote moral values, healthy realism was introduced into the Taiwanese cinema scene by the Central Motion Picture Corporation (CMPC) in 1963. Since then, an issue that remains an academic conundrum for the scholars of this type of film is whether and how screen adaptations of Qiong Yao’s novels by filmmakers working in the healthy realism genre fit into the model. This paper seeks to enter the debate by revisiting the generic features of healthy realism and reassess the role played by romantic love in this style of movie. The first part of this paper revisits the definition of “healthy realism,” analyzing why the genre remains within the scope of realism despite its intended use as government propaganda, and explores the effects of romantic melodrama in achieving the realist aim of the model. The second part of the paper features analyses of the plots of Oyster Girl and Four Loves with the intention of discerning the motive force of the society of which healthy realism films sought to treat, an undertaking which leads to the discovery that romantic love is an essential element of healthy realism when it serves as the affective condition for bio-power and thus supports the modernization efforts described by the film model. The reliance on melodramatic devices and the significance of romantic love to the underlying social relations pave the way for the entry of Qiong Yao’s romance into the healthy realism genre.