Weaving Fiction With Reality: Interview with Island Nation Producer Isaac Wang

Island Nation is one of Taiwan’s first series on the intricacies of Taiwanese politics and history during its transition from an authoritarian state to a democracy. Set in the 1990s, the series touches on several controversial topics, including the 1996 Taiwan Strait Missile Crisis and the first-ever presidential election in Taiwan, by weaving fiction with reality. 

In this exclusive interview with Ketagalan Media, Island Nation producer Issac Wang answers questions about behind-the-scenes secrets, Island Nation’s significance in the development of Taiwan’s film industry, and the show’s political implications in modern-day Taiwan. 

Interview by Ketagalan Media Editor-in-Chief Chieh-ting Yeh, originally in Mandarin – with help from Aurora Chang. Translation by Milo Hsieh. The original Mandarin transcript can be found here.

Chieh-Ting Yeh: It is rare to see historical and political TV shows in Taiwan. What was the hardest thing about telling a historical or political story? And what are the future prospects for the development of historical or political TV shows in Taiwan? 

Isaac Wang: The difficulty in Taiwan for TV shows in the historical or political genres is finding the right way to tell the audience a story they haven’t lived through for themselves. 

For a long time in Taiwan, one issue with even touching politics on TV, is that we all got yelled at during the authoritarian era. It’s about survival. If you talk about politics, you’ll get in trouble. In Taiwan’s film industry, the common wisdom is “if you want to live, don’t even think about politics.” This means there were very few opportunities in Taiwan to tell a good political or historical story. Political drama is pretty hardcore; you need a lot of practice, and we just never had that in Taiwan. 

We’re working on it now. But it’s not like we can tell the audience, “if you can’t understand the drama, that’s your fault.” We do get annoyed at the audience for not “getting” the show because they don’t understand the historical or political context beforehand. But as part of mass media, that’s not the right attitude. As film professionals, it’s on us to find a way for the audience to understand and enjoy the story without effort. So this is the first difficulty we’ve encountered. 

The second difficulty is that since there are so few existing works of this genre – especially shows that put politics on center stage. Island Nation is probably the first of its kind in Taiwan. So we have to present it well to everyone, but everyone has a different interpretation of the history in the show. It’s a recipe for a public relations disaster.  

And some people think our show is a documentary. The Taiwanese audience is used to watching historical or political shows like its actual record. Especially a lot of older folks watch the show and they expect it to tell the story just as they remember it. I don’t know if there’s a way around it, except to wait until there are so many political shows with different perspectives, that people are used to it. 

When watching foreign shows, it’s much easier to see them as “fiction” than as a documentary. For example, in America, you don’t see people fight as much about TV shows’ “political leaning” because there are just so many shows out there. Don’t like a show because it’s “too Democrat”? Watch the Republican show. Don’t like something because it tells the story from a white perspective? You can find one from a black director. 

The US, South Korea, not to mention Japan, all have mature and developed film industries that allow for different shows to appeal to different people. Taiwan is not there yet. These, I think, are the two most difficult struggles we’ve encountered.

Yeh: I have to ask – For Island Nation 2, the search for a network or a platform to pick up the show has been controversial. According to Island Nation’s Facebook page, the attitude by several transnational streaming platforms is that “this show is great, we are interested, but nevertheless we are concerned given the China factor.” Did they explain what they mean?

Wang: We did contact two transnational streaming platforms, and they were quite friendly towards us. They were impressed by the quality – especially since we did it with such a small budget. Compared to shows from other countries, our show is a bargain! They also really liked the pacing of our storytelling.   

One platform in particular told us directly that it was not the China market per se, since they were not in China at all. But what were they afraid of? A public relations crisis. If they stream Island Nation 2, are they going to get trolled by Chinese netizens or even the Chinese government? Maybe they’ll have to take down the show even outside of China. These are issues that the streaming platforms would have to deal with.

Take the example of Xinjiang cotton. That controversy hurt a lot of international brands, did it not? Another case is Janine Chang (張鈞甯), whose master’s thesis included a title that referred to Taiwan as a country. Because of that one single word, Chinese netizens threatened to cancel her. 

Content streaming platforms probably would hate to deal with these crises. They need to devote resources. One representative jokingly told us that had we not had so much attention, they could just host it under-the-radar. So I understand how it is like for them, and they communicated their concerns to us in good faith. I understand how they feel and dealt with the ways they did – there is no problem – it’s just a reality we have to deal with.

“No matter how much you compromise with China, it’s not enough for them!” (scene from Island Nation 2).

Seriously, platforms are not necessarily afraid of hosting political shows. The real concern is the reality of Taiwan-China relations as it is presented. Many American shows portray China as the hypothetical enemy, and there was little room for China to protest. (Ed.: there have been movies that were altered due to concerns over Chinese reaction, like Red Dawn and Top Gun.) Why? Because it’s just fiction, just made up. But when it deals with Taiwan and China, China will for sure throw a huge fit. This is how I see it.

Yeh: Within Taiwan, the preconception is that the film industry shuns political and history shows. They’re expensive, because you need to create sets, costumes, and do research and fact-checking. On top of that, political or history shows are open to unfair criticisms and attacks – people complain about political correctness, or historical inaccuracies. Or just like you said, many Taiwanese may take them as historiography or documentary, so they complain about how they’re different from reality. Are there opportunities to improve upon these situations? And if so, what would your approach be?

Wang: This boils down to two things. No matter the type of history or politics in question, it’s all about throwing money at it. The more money you throw at it, the more realistic and epic it’ll be. Like in Hollywood, if you want a set from some historical period, it’s all just computer-generated by now. That costs a lot of money. Not to mention industrial expertise; does Taiwan have that? 

The other point is that because there are so few shows like these in Taiwan, the audience is not used to them. As I said, the US, Japan, and South Korea have political shows of many different types and perspectives, and their audiences are used to seeing them as fiction. People usually don’t argue about those shows. 

An analogy is protesting in Taiwan. Thirty years ago, we had to write down our wills when we marched on the streets. Many of the more senior activists used to have to make arrangements for if they die or disappear. Now, protesting is just like going to the mall. So as time passes, something that used to be controversial will become very simple and normal, without any sort of tension to be expected.

Protest scene in Island Nation 2.

So what we’re doing now is, trying to make these types of shows easier to produce, to make the industry more mature. Compared to Hollywood or South Korea, which have entire supply chains with specialized services to produce these types of works, we have to make everything in-house, from scratch. 

This is about whether the industry is mature or not. Are there screenwriters? Do they have experience in our genre? What about the props? In Hollywood, they get to blow up entire blocks for movies all the time. There are profitable prop-making companies because the market is big enough to support that. If they want tanks, they get tanks. If they want World War II era props, they get World War II props. 

For Island Nation’s first season, we needed eight cars for the presidential motorcade, two motorcycles, and six of another type of cars – and they had to be from the 90s. We’re looking for cars only twenty to thirty years old, but we couldn’t find them in Taiwan, because there is no market for vintage cars for films. So we had to go all over Central and Southern Taiwan to find them, and transport them all the way up to Yilan to film. 

Do you see how difficult doing this would be? By the way, these cars couldn’t even go on roads, because they have no license plates. And we would have to get them from collectors because nobody uses them in TV production in Taiwan. And when there is no market, there are no shows of the type that can be made, because it’s difficult for people to survive in businesses like this.

“Is this much of a surprise?” (scene from Island Nation 2).

So I think the most important need is to set up a supply chain in the industry. First, there needs to be investment, and government support, especially to grow the industry in its infancy. The government doesn’t have to contribute directly, it just has to incentivize businesses. 

And before we could get good shows, we need to answer a few questions: how do we ensure that investors can get returns on investments? How could we assist producers to acquire these budgets? How do we help market the products overseas and domestically? What types of regulation would help? Only after we accumulate a lot of expertise and the industry has matured, can we have good shows.

So right now in Taiwan, it’s not like we could get good shows even with money. We need to get rid of the idea of sinking a huge budget into one “flagship” TV drama. In Taiwan, many of these small and medium-sized topics can be made into shows for as little as NTD$ 30 million (~USD $1 million). This is a great way to practice. The same budget that goes into a “flagship” could allow many different teams to acquire expertise. I think we need this kind of accumulation of talent. 

For example, we like to compare ourselves with South Korea. But I need to say that we could not catch up to them even in ten years. South Korea has an entire economy of scale going on. It’s mature. It’s a mini Hollywood. Its size, its ambition, and its topics are not subpar compared to Hollywood. 

If we want to surpass South Korea’s film industry, we need to look at how its film industry “trained” for the past twenty years. What was it doing during the first decade? They were busy making crappy shows! Do you know what I mean? They made shows that were crappy but made money. 

When President Kim Dae-jung was the President of South Korea and was negotiating trade with the US, he insisted that South Korean movie theaters be required to show only South Korean films for 146 days a year.  

What does this mean? It means that South Korean film investors will have a place to play them and make money. When there is demand, businesses in South Korea are willing to invest. And on top of this, there is a lot of government encouragement, tax benefits, deductions, and other types of incentives. That’s how you get an ecosystem, a market.  

So the Koreans made their entertainment industry a national priority. President Kim Dae-jung clearly set an objective called “21st century Cultural Korea,” with a concept of “intangible territory.” Whereas in the past nations invaded and pillaged other lands to expand their territory, South Korea was going to “expand” their “territory” through cultural exportation. 

Was it successful? Of course! Now all of Asia is a part of this “cultural territory” of South Korea. You can see how much Korean culture was sold this way – using historical shows to promote Korean food and culture throughout the world. 

We need to do the same for Taiwan. I would even say that in the face of China’s ambition of cultural hegemony and influence, this is really about Taiwan’s national security. It’s a battle to control the narrative over Taiwan’s sovereignty. It’s the difference between our version of history and their version of history. We need to compete. It’s a clash of soft power, a war that’s already happening.

So does Taiwan need these historical and political shows? Definitely it does. We need to be able to build narratives and national memories about our own past, through drama and entertainment. It must be done because it’s so important.

Political shows are important in all nations. There need not be a lot of them, but they are crucial. Why doesn’t Taiwan have any? It’s been thirty years since the lifting of martial law. We’re a democracy. We are supposed to be this “shining beacon of democracy” in Asia, but we don’t have any political shows. Western democracies and Asian democracies have them – so we need to have them as well. We can’t not have them.

Yeh: Here in the States, many of my friends are quite interested in Island Nation. We want to know what you think of the response to the show from overseas. I also want to know, for the people who have not actually lived through the history, or are not familiar, or even foreigners, what do you think the hook is for them to watch the show?

Wang: We do have fans from overseas–not just from America, but in Malaysia, Hong Kong, and even fans from China who hopped over the Firewall to watch our show. But political commentator Mr. Yu Jie (余杰) did write a post saying that it was one of the best Taiwanese shows he’s watched. 

About how to hook the interest of audiences today, we’ve invited many celebrities and politicians from across the political spectrum to do cameos for Island Nation. In the second season, we were able to get politicians from seven political parties to appear. Celebrity cameos are tricky because if they’re not done right, you’ll break the viewer’s suspension of disbelief. For us, because Island Nation is a show on politics with interwoven facts and fiction, we were able to use cameos to great effect I think.  

Like for example, we invited the KMT legislator from Kinmen Chen Yu-chen (陳玉珍) to make an appearance. She was a coffee shop owner in another cameo she did – but that was weird, right? Why is she a coffee shop owner just randomly? A part of this is to make recognizable people appear in front of the TV in ways that made sense for younger people with less knowledge of history.

Another example is to have Wang Ping-chung (王炳忠, politician best known for his extreme pro-China views) appear in the show as the anchor for China’s state media China Central Television – young people would think it’s funny. These are hooks to make it easier to approach material that may otherwise be heavy and hard to understand. That’s my strategy.

“To express China’s determination to defend the integrity of China’s territories,” said CCTV anchor, portrayed by Wang Pin-Chung (scene from Island Nation 2).

For the younger crowd, their understanding of things like the 228 Massacre, the Nanking Massacre, or the Sino-Japanese war of 1895, is the same: a lot of people died a long time ago somewhere. They don’t have the emotional connection to the history. So our methods make it easier for a younger audience to get into the story. 

It is harder to use these as hooks for foreign audiences, because these Easter eggs have no effect whatsoever for foreigners. Whether you’re A-list or B-list in Taiwan, once you’re outside of Taiwan no one’s heard of you. So at the very least, we had to try to make the story easy to understand for a foreign audience. 

Yup, it’s gotta be easy to understand, interesting, and attractive. And we also have another thing we spent effort on – translation. Why is this important? Because the overseas team understands what the foreign audience likes. Taiwanese professionals often assume audiences abroad care about the same things that appeal to a Taiwanese audience, when it’s just not true. 

An example is how poorly the film Warrior of the Rainbow Bridge: Seediq Bale did at the North American box offices. To us, it’s a classic in Taiwan’s film history. To the US, it’s a theme that people have seen hundreds of times. Genocides. Massacres of Native Americans. All have been made into large-scale productions many times with high technical expertise. So how do we grab the attention of the American audience? 

Just because there is this part of history in Taiwan, it doesn’t mean that anyone else is interested. We can’t win on production value or visual impact. So Taiwanese films and shows have to adjust the perspective and the way it tells the story convincingly. 

We’re still trying to experiment with this. For example, in the first episode of Season 2, we had a “Baizhe Lake Incident” which is based on the Qiandao Lake incident of 1994. If someone is interested in the narrative, they would want to Google it to find out what actually happened. And there has to at least be the correct name made available to them.

Going back to South Korea, there was a time when South Korean films were even worse than Taiwanese films. But as we watched more Korean dramas in Taiwan, we started to understand South Korea, like how we started to understand America and Europe. It’s a long-term process. I don’t think it’s possible to be done in a short time, but someone has to start the work, like how Island Nation is starting a genre in political TV shows. 

To reach Western audiences, we tried to include events that might interest foreign crowds. We tried to portray the attitude of the US State Department in the 90s. Although the attitude towards China and Taiwan is very different now, I thought we could at least attract audiences that are interested in international relations or US-China-Taiwan relations. People might want to know what happened between Taiwan and China in the 90s. And then we could figure out what works and what doesn’t. Each production gives us new data – there is no way to expedite this – we are still working on this.

“I’m really fed up with these Taiwanese” (scene from Island Nation).

Yeh: Lastly, I am interested in the political figures doing cameos. How did you invite people in both the pan-green and the pan-blue camps, with opposing political positions, to make the show together? 

Wang: I’m not that good with people. Just look at me, you can tell I have no friends. But I’d visit these people in person and try to convince them. I would tell them: first, it’s a lot of fun. Second, there are benefits for both sides. A lot of politicians are friendlier than we think. And smarter.

So that’s how I tried to persuade them. Sure, there are inevitably politics involved. But regardless of their stance, they are typically all very open to these opportunities. Many senior politicians, or people at the very top, whether you like them or not, are not dumb. If they can survive in politics to get to the top, they have to be very smart. So I don’t think it’s actually too difficult to get them to show up. 

For the first season, we wanted to invite former Speaker of the House Wang Jin-pyng; People’s First Party’s James Soong (former Taiwan provincial governor and presidential candidate), KMT Chairman Johnny Chiang, KMT’s Eric Chu. Even President Tsai Ing-wen. There are a lot of considerations, and so I tell them that it’s a collaboration. 

We don’t just invite politicians. In the second season of Island Nation, for the scenes depicting the 228 incident of 1947 and the July 13 Penghu incident of 1949, we invited families of the victims of the incidents to appear on the show. We had a scene depicting the ceremony where the President formally acknowledged and apologized for the massacres for the first time after 48 years. We invited the actual victims’ family members that were there, to play themselves in our scene. For them, no acting was necessary.

For them to appear as a part of the production, it gives the scene a human component. And it weaves fiction with reality. It’s a force stronger than film production, stronger than any actor can portray. It’s real people with real emotions from that real moment in history. 

“And how my father died, I did not know” (scene from Island Nation).

And this is what we wanted young people to see. Those scenes, they were a little sad. But it’s a testament to history. This is what we wanted. Yep. To invite those who actually experienced it for themselves to show how they actually felt. 

The first episode of Island Nation can be accessed free of charge on Youtube (Mandarin version) and on Asiania (English subtitle available). Access to the rest of the show can be found on Asiania.