by Brian Hioe
語言:
English
Photo credit: 零日攻擊 Zero Day Attack/Facebook
ZERO DAY ATTACK ultimately proves more along the lines of speculative fiction, rather than a prescient vision of what an invasion scenario for Taiwan might look like. If the series has some insightful, even moving episodes, others are far less successful. In this sense, the series is, in final evaluation, something of a mixed bag.
Zero Day Attack is often strongest when it comes to depictions of viewpoints that are not as sympathetic to pro-sovereignty Taiwanese. The second episode, “Snake Boy,” and the ninth episode, “Love Forever,” are standouts. “Snake Boy” focuses on a young man who becomes involved in organized crime and is gradually drawn into pro-unification fifth column efforts. “Love Forever” depicts the life of a taishang who struggles to relocate his family out of Taiwan in the course of a Chinese attack, even as his son has pro-independence views.
Yet this is less successful when characterizations are overdone. The influencer protagonist of “Mind Fuck,” for example, gradually becomes brainwashed into disseminating pro-CCP propaganda, but this occurs in an unrealistic manner, as she becomes obsessed with an AI chatbot of Chinese origin. Likewise, while Chapman To appears throughout the series as a CCP operative of Hong Kong origin, arguably the most interesting and mysterious character who unites the show as a whole, his backstory fails to be elaborated on in any satisfactory manner by the time the series ends. The implication is only that he, as a Hongkonger, is not unlike the many Taiwanese who actively aid Chinese United Front efforts.
The conclusion of the series, then, is somewhat unsatisfactory. One does not see any resolution of the storyline in the first episode that began the series and set up the overarching narrative. And while the series, in fact, ends with a Taiwanese victory in fending off a much larger Chinese invading force, there is no effort to depict this as realistic–indeed, the series itself seems to acknowledge the fairy tale-like quality of this victory.
Hence, one is best served not looking at Zero Day Attack as providing some blueprint for Taiwanese to expect what a possible Chinese invasion might look like. Instead, not so different from the Hong Kong anthology film Ten Years, one sees a vision of imagined possible futures for Taiwan if China does invade. And if there are some strong storylines and performances along the way, this can be highly uneven–a particularly weak episode is “Vote for Pig,” which leans into racist tropes about Vietnamese. If a mixed bag by virtue of its composition as an anthology work, perhaps Zero Day Attack is best seen as a product of its times.