Sex, Money, Calculation, and Manipulation in Politics in The Bold, The Corrupt, and The Beautiful

Abstract

The nuance of the film techniques in this color thriller is explored in the frame of female gothic monstrous horror. Control, ambition, desire, and lust eventually destroy Madame Tang’s relationships with her own family, and the story ends in a social realism tragedy. The theme is the ugliness of the human heart, which is even more terrible than ghosts and darker than corrupted politics. The ten female characters are cunning and the three Tang protagonists are calculating and manipulative. The “abnormal, or monstrous, manifestations of the child–parent tie” transforms the standard patriarchy into the female gothic monster loveless hatred relationship. Since Taiwanese New Cinema was developed in the 1980s, I think there is not only Bildungsroman narrative expression, but also the identification swift from China to Taiwan.