With more than 800 titles in its catalog, GagaOOLala appears to be thriving in its mission to become “gay Netflix,” just a month shy of its second birthday. However, founder Jay Lin (林志杰) says there’s another component of Netflix to emulate — expanding the platform’s original content beyond Taiwan.
“Netflix’s strategy includes finding suitable topics in other countries and empowering local directors to find and tell the stories,” Lin told the Taipei Times.
Last month, GagaOOLala launched its Queer Asia series, an extension of its Queer Taiwan mini-documentaries, which looks at marriage equality as well as other less-explored topics such as drag queens, sexual services for disabled people and same-sex couples raising children. The Hong Kong and Philippines editions are already available for free on GagaOOLala, with Japan and Vietnam coming next.
Photo: PORTICO MEDIA
“We wanted to start with relatively LGBTQ-friendly countries,” Lin says. “We’re not going to go straight to [socially conservative countries] such as Brunei and Malaysia; that will cause us too much trouble.”
PROGRESSIVE SOFT POWER
With homosexuality still illegal in her country, Malaysian director Gan Li-ling (顏莉玲) can only dream of filming Queer Malaysia one day. She has to be discreet while screening her Queer Taiwan and Queer Hong Kong productions back home, mostly relying on invitations from LGBTQ-friendly schools, bookstores and coffee shops.
Photo: PORTICO MEDIA
“I’m always surprised by the variety of people who attend these screenings,” Gan says. “One can only imagine how desperate people are to openly discuss LGBTQ issues in Malaysia.”
Lin says GagaOOLala generates much interest in these conservative countries because as an Internet-streaming-only OTT (over-the-top) media platform, it is free from local censorship laws. Lin says there have been no problems with local governments since GagaOOLala keeps its advertising lowkey and social media-oriented, and also consults with LGBTQ leaders in each target country.
Despite suffering a setback during Saturday’s elections, when voters passed three referendums by anti-marriage equality groups, Taiwan’s progressiveness in LGBTQ issues is an important source of soft power that can potentially influence neighboring countries, Lin says. In addition to the Grand Council of Justice’s ruling for same-sex marriage to become legal by May next year, Lin says the LGBTQ community has relatively high representation in local productions, whether it be a “very gay” movie or inclusion of LGBTQ characters in mainstream productions.
“In many countries, you can’t even have a homosexual minor character,” Lin says.
Through Queer Asia, Lin hopes that people can look beyond their own countries to learn from the different successes and struggles of LGBTQ communities elsewhere. For example, while the LGBTQ community in Hong Kong is less visible and same-sex marriage is still illegal, its Court of Final Appeal ruled in June that immigration authorities should recognize existing same-sex marriages and civil partnerships when it comes to foreigners applying for spousal visas.
BEYOND TAIWAN
After completing the Queer Taiwan series, Gan turned her focus to Hong Kong. Like the Taiwan series, Queer Hong Kong began with an overview episode covering a number of personalities, moving on to the late lesbian pop star Ellen Joyce Loo (盧凱彤) and LGBTQ foreigners, contrasting between Western white-collar workers and Southeast Asian migrant laborers.
Gan says that on the surface, Hong Kong’s LGBTQ scene is pretty similar to Taiwan’s. But due to the lack of democracy in Hong Kong, LGBTQ rights is often not the first priority for social activists there. She also noted that interviews with Taiwanese take a lot longer because they often wear their hearts on their sleeves and speak from a personal angle, while Hong Kong activists are more deliberate and objective.
“The first episode paints a general picture of the scene with local Hong Kong activists, but as we delve into other ethnic groups, viewers start to see the huge contrasts that exist in the same city,” Gan says.
Japan is included because of its close ties with Taiwan, the popularity of its culture in Asia and as a tourist destination. Lin says that Japan is also ahead of Taiwan in certain ways — in 2011, Japan for the first time elected two openly gay male politicians to office.
Since many people are enamored with Japanese culture, Queer Japan looks at subcultures such as “boys love,” a homoerotic genre of manga and anime targeted at women.
As for the Philippines, Lin says it is contradictory — it’s the most Catholic country in Asia, but has a prolific LGBTQ film industry and has many popular LGBTQ celebrities. Meanwhile, Vietnam is an officially atheist country that lifted a same-sex marriage ban in 2015, although it still does not recognize such unions.
Before moving on to the rest of Asia, Lin plans to launch an international crowdsourcing platform for film talent to facilitate more original productions from different countries. His company is also trying to figure out how to bring these documentaries to more mainstream viewers, starting by putting some episodes on YouTube.
“We don’t just want to be an LGBTQ movie platform,” Lin says. “Although we’ll still focus on LGBTQ issues, we hope to get more general interest in these topics. It’s still hard to advertise as many mainstream media outlets are reluctant to offend their investors or business partners. And due to social media algorithms, people who don’t follow LGBTQ issues won’t receive our ads. How do we cross over to the silent majority?”
“Why does Taiwan identity decline?”a group of researchers lead by University of Nevada political scientist Austin Wang (王宏恩) asked in a recent paper. After all, it is not difficult to explain the rise in Taiwanese identity after the early 1990s. But no model predicted its decline during the 2016-2018 period, they say. After testing various alternative explanations, Wang et al argue that the fall-off in Taiwanese identity during that period is related to voter hedging based on the performance of the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP). Since the DPP is perceived as the guardian of Taiwan identity, when it performs well,
The Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) on May 18 held a rally in Taichung to mark the anniversary of President William Lai’s (賴清德) inauguration on May 20. The title of the rally could be loosely translated to “May 18 recall fraudulent goods” (518退貨ㄌㄨㄚˋ!). Unlike in English, where the terms are the same, “recall” (退貨) in this context refers to product recalls due to damaged, defective or fraudulent merchandise, not the political recalls (罷免) currently dominating the headlines. I attended the rally to determine if the impression was correct that the TPP under party Chairman Huang Kuo-Chang (黃國昌) had little of a
At Computex 2025, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) urged the government to subsidize AI. “All schools in Taiwan must integrate AI into their curricula,” he declared. A few months earlier, he said, “If I were a student today, I’d immediately start using tools like ChatGPT, Gemini Pro and Grok to learn, write and accelerate my thinking.” Huang sees the AI-bullet train leaving the station. And as one of its drivers, he’s worried about youth not getting on board — bad for their careers, and bad for his workforce. As a semiconductor supply-chain powerhouse and AI hub wannabe, Taiwan is seeing
Jade Mountain (玉山) — Taiwan’s highest peak — is the ultimate goal for those attempting a through-hike of the Mountains to Sea National Greenway (山海圳國家綠道), and that’s precisely where we’re headed in this final installment of a quartet of articles covering the Greenway. Picking up the trail at the Tsou tribal villages of Dabang and Tefuye, it’s worth stocking up on provisions before setting off, since — aside from the scant offerings available on the mountain’s Dongpu Lodge (東埔山莊) and Paiyun Lodge’s (排雲山莊) meal service — there’s nowhere to get food from here on out. TEFUYE HISTORIC TRAIL The journey recommences with