In this book I seek to make three points about the relationship between the film industry and the audience with respect to the case study of post-2000 Taiwan queer romance films. Firstly, the film industry attempts biopolitical control over the audience for the sake of capital reproduction/financial sustenance. To achieve this control, the industry adopts communicationefficient cinematographic language, mainly from financially successful film works produced in Hollywood or the East Asian region. Besides this, the industry connects film products to a range of consumer products and markets the packages across multiple media platforms. Both efforts are aimed at seducing the audience's senses and, by extension, governing the audience's bodily capacities. Secondly, the biopolitical control in question is pursued with the assistance of film prosumption. With film product production, prosumption is inherent in filmmaking because for filmmakers to communicate cinematographically they must engage their spectatorial histories, which affectively prescribe how the spectator-turned-filmmakers express their subjective sensory perceptions. With film promotion, prosumption is instantiated by Internet marketing, whose optimal operation requires potential film audiences to affectively and actively participate in computational-networked communication. In either case, the film industry capitalises on film audiences’ bodily capacities (to act, to communicate online or by means of the film medium) for value/profit generation. Lastly, the biopolitical control by the film industry yields unpredictable results. This is because media technologies do not by themselves dictate the (re) configuration of bodily capacities. The body links up with other bodies or everyday objects (consumer commodities) to modify and diversify the effect of communication, including the effect of cinematographic communication and Internet communication. On the basis of this modification/diversification, the body retains a quality of volatility while the film industry cannot avoid the impact of precariousness despite the endeavour to exercise control over the audience.

Precariousness in Prosperity

Since my field research, much has changed with regard to the operation of the Taiwan film industry. Between 2010 and 2013, there are nine locally made feature productions that have grossed more than NT$ 100 million ($ 3 million).1 Compared to the legendary Formula 17, which was celebrated for grossing NT$ 6 million ($ 200,000) in 2004, local films have made impressive progress in terms of box office receipts. Thanks to increased production budgets, the improvement of technical skills has also been remarkable.