「都會˙流行˙李宗盛 —李式情歌文本中的性別敘事與愛情話語」

Following the development of capitalism in the western world in the 80’s, the music industry in Taiwan reached its high peak and became the production and marketing center of the world’s Mandarin music market. With the ride of his times, producer Jonathan Lee experienced and opened up a prosperous and sensational page for the Taiwan popular music. The circumstances for music consumption of the mass-oriented culture may be viewed through a large amount of Lee’s best-selling songs. Under the general context of consumption within capitalism, this thesis intends to look deep into Lee’s texts by the sexual perspective and the concept of cultural industry brought out by Frankfurt School theorist, Theodor W. Adorno, in order to analyze and explain the unique vocabulary of love that has been formed through Lee’s hierarchical power within the history of Taiwan popular music for over the past thirty year. This thesis mainly focuses on analyzing the following three forms of Lee’s texts, “urban-female love song”, “non-urban-female love song” and “reinterpretation of the author”. In the first form, “urban-female love song”, it is being discussed that among a serial of female singers Lee successfully promoted, how he managed to transform the consumer symbols within the context of consumption culture through the reproduction of the texts and images. In addition, what sort of quality and types of female consciousness had been expressed through the songs is also being discussed. In the “non-urban-female love song” form, according to the Lee’s theory of love, a comparison is made with the albums he produced using “love” as the main theme to discuss the traditional man-being-more-privileged-than-woman relationship constructed by non-urban-female singers. And then, the thesis also wants to analyze the “female view of love” which is Lee re-writed from the male view and performed by male singer who was Lee promoted. Lastly, with the constant reoccurrences of previously published songs within Lee’s self-albums, the strong points of view about love due to the reinterpretation of the song producer himself are thus being discussed. Lee has his own unique and important stand in the history of popular music in Taiwan. From the modernity expressed by his most representative production, the “urban-female love song” series, to the love world constructed by “non-urban-female love song” and “male love song”, Lee’s love narration is analyzed through his heterogeneous creation of texts. These include his love philosophy of motto type, the negative talks of love, and the neutral emotional fields. Last of all, this thesis is to discuss reflectively whether the blue print of love produced by Lee’s popular music in Taiwan, through his sexual identity, is a limitation or a profound initiation.