Tai/kuso/camp: 'new opeila' and the structure of sensibility.

The valorization of 'bad taste' has emerged as a central element in Taiwanese subcultural and avant-garde style since 2000. This paper looks at the politics of this emerging sensibility by analyzing the performances of two theater troupes that rework opeila, a formerly abject form of Taiwanese local opera. The Golden Bough Theater's opeila-inspired comedy series is characterized by both sincere nostalgia for working-class culture and an ironic and exaggerated citation of opeila's pastiche of mass-media cliches. The Formosa Zephyr Opera Troupe attempts to reconstruct the queer charisma of opeila's stars - the female actresses who play the male leading roles - while simultaneously emphasizing the phantasmatic nature of nostalgic, iconic roles and the costs of trying to embodying them, especially for 21st-century educated Taiwanese youth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]