Complit302 week 11 transcript
Okay, let's get started today. Um, we're going to talk about Annalise.
Father Knows Best trilogy. And, um, these are three films from the 90s, uh, that, uh,
are part of the Asian wave and the rise of Asian cinema in, um, the United States and in relation to Hollywood.
So these are, um, nominally Chinese films that, uh, became popular in the West in the 1990s.
And they're part of a movement that continues until today.
So we in in this course, you might be wondering, where's the literature gone?
Why are we talking so much about film? Like suddenly it's turned into like a cinema course.
And there's two reasons for that. One is students tend not to read that much and we can't cover so much ground.
Um, you can cover a lot of ground with films.
Um, and the other is that, um, cinema and media is part of the trend since the 90s and since the advent of the internet,
where people are reading much less and they're consuming content, um, on online.
And, uh, the globalisation that took place in the 1990s generated a whole lot of new types of film.
It made possible transnational films and, uh, what were once, um, boutique films on VCR tapes that you had to get from your friends to watch.
This turned into, um, international film festivals and foreign films becoming more popular,
and then transnational film and then transnational film moving online.
And then we end up with, um, a debate about national film, national cinema versus, um,
international recognition at arthouse festivals and the mainstream consumption of transnational cinema.
And this is, um, globalisation was, um, highly contentious because it promised benefits, economic benefits, social benefits.
It offered equality through travel, um, and through the distribution of films because of the promise of the internet and the opening up of free trade.
But it distributed its benefits unevenly.
So the owners of the distribution networks were able to profit.
Um, but this led to a problem of homogenisation and the spread of global culture.
And the globalising, uh, culture spread via the internet and spread through transnational film becomes a challenge for local,
national cinema that's trying to hold on to some kind of identity that is pure,
um, and that is related to tradition,
and that has its own identity that gets challenged by transnational cinema and global versions of traditional film and national cinema.
So the interesting thing about ang Lee is that, um, there is a Chinese cinema course taught by Um Shi Chen just down the corridor from me,
and she doesn't include ang Lee in it because the films are too difficult because they're not really Chinese,
they're kind of Chinese, but they get cuz they get accused of being inauthentic because they're too westernised and unruly,
is a director from Taiwan, and he draws on a whole range of different genres, and one of the main genres he draws on is Hong Kong cinema.
And so Hong Kong cinema is rooted in Russia literature, which is like romance, action,
adventure, fiction about, um, a kind of criminal underworld of, of, um, marginal characters.
And so from The Witcher to Hong Kong to Taiwan, you get ang Lee making films about how he remembers and imagines his China, but his China.
He never lived in mainland China, and he was educated in the United States.
He learned to make films in the United States, and so he's not considered a Chinese filmmaker from the perspective of people from mainland China.
But for Western audiences, he's like the Chinese director that they all know.
And so what I'm trying to present to you is another dimension of the films that we saw in Lagaan, and that we saw in Bend It Like Beckham.
And around the year 2000, we get this, um, question about what does it mean to be British?
What is a British film? How do you make a film about a Pakistani girl who wants to play soccer?
It's beginning to bend the, um, interpretations about national identity and.
It's underpinned by this deeper question about performativity, like what is your identity?
Are you being true to yourself,
or is your identity just as an accumulation of habits that you perform that give you the impression of being having a solid, stable identity?
So, um. Uh. The, um.
Angley has this idea that you need to be true to yourself, and you need to be authentic to yourself.
So he is not arguing that, um, your identity is, um, uh, a version of performed, performed identity.
He's arguing his films, uh, anchored in the idea that you have an authentic true self,
but that that true self has to change and adapt to this conflict between tradition and modernity, between Confucian values and Western values.
And so he explores this throughout a range of his films.
But he's made a lot of films, and he's a really, really important director.
Um, but because he comes out of a theatre background, uh,
he wants his films to be entertaining because his parents wanted him to become a doctor or a lawyer or an accountant.
But, um, he disappointed them by being a filmmaker.
And this disappointment manifested. It manifested itself in the idea that if you're going to make films,
then they have to be entertaining, uh, and they have to be accessible to the mainstream.
So, um, I'm going to talk about pushing House, uh, the wedding banquet.
Eat, drink. Man, woman. And then in the second half, we're going to talk about with Shia and, and martial arts, um, Hong Kong cinema.
And we'll come back to ang Lee with Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, which was considered to be the first crossover hit,
um, as a Chinese film in Mandarin that was subtitled, that had, um, mainstream success.
And, uh, yeah.
So, um, before I launch into all of that, this is a reminder that next week in the tutorial time,
you'll have the the end of semester test, and it will be exactly the same format as the mid-semester test.
Um, and you're going to cover topics from week seven to week 11.
I'm going to provide a recorded lecture for to be to record lectures for week 12.
But those are not going to be in the test. So you don't have to worry about about that.
The questions are going to be similar to the questions in, um, the mid-semester test,
insofar as I will ask you about a concept and you can choose which films or texts you want to use to relate to that.
Right.
So the the reason why we're kind of going round in circles and we're stuck in the 2000 is because I want you to be able to compare and contrast, um,
films that are dealing with different issues regarding, um, you know, identity,
the generational conflict, um, East and West migration, uh, and the conflict between national cinema,
national identity and the global, um, international cosmopolitan type of um,
texts, and also looking at the relationship between nationalism and history,
the way that national films reimagine and reinvent history for the purpose of the present, um,
and the earlier topics where we looked in week seven and week, we're looking at adaptation.
How have different versions of the same story being retold in different ways?
Um, and for example, the The Wedding Banquet by um from 1993 is out now in cinemas.
You can go and watch it and you can watch the 2025 version and compare it with the 1993 version if you want, but I don't have access to that.
You have to go and see it on the big screen, but it's a great film and it will be probably quite good.
So, um, we're going to talk about that. But the point is we'll look at adaptation and we'll look at the way, um,
and week seven is still very much about stories about colonialism and the British Empire and what it's like to be within the British Empire.
And an ambivalent case, uh, week eight looked more about the reimagining of Tagore's story and how you you
introduced the idea of a post-modern sensibility or post-colonial sensibility.
Week nine was about reimagining history with Lagaan, and also performing national identity and looking at gender and sexuality.
Um, and that becomes more important, um, in week 11, in terms of the wedding banquet, the key,
key theme is about sexuality and also identity, um, and about the Confucian family values.
Um, and those Confucian family values are the same as the ones that underpin the.
Joseon Dynasty, and Chun young being the wife's mother and the good wife,
and the subordination to the patriarchy, which you can also find in Bend It Like Beckham, right?
But the directors have their own, um, way of resolving the conflicts,
to have either a happy end or to reinforce the Confucian, the Confucian identity.
Um, another point is that if you go to the library's website and then you go to TV and radio and you go to a TV.
Oh, okay. You log in. If you go to ITV, you can search these films and you can watch the whole film with ads from the 1990s.
Um, you can watch anything that's been on New Zealand television.
So, um. Uh, yeah.
So for example. Okay.
We sign in. Okay. If we run out. Um, let's say everything all at once.
Everything. Everywhere? Yeah, everywhere. All at once.
Okay. So you've got this film here, which I'm not going to talk about, but it's relevant because this is the most recent.
This is another 2023 film. That is the end of the tale of everything that I'm telling you.
So I'm hoping that what we talk about today will give you the tools to analyse and understand how films and Net series that have been,
um, developed in the last five, ten years, like since Covid, that those um, films are part of this big wave that began in the 1990s.
And the question is whether or not the battle over identity and transcultural transnational identity, um, and the issue of globalisation has been,
has been solved because we are now in a period politically of globalisation, thanks to our friend the orange clown,
the fascist, um, who sticker, you know, disconnecting America from the rest of the world.
This is part of this is prompting and provoking a a d globalisation period.
So, um. Yes.
Okay, so ATV is the way you can see all of these films and, um.
Uh. Yeah.
So what I'm hoping you'll be able to do is make connections yourself between these different films, because they all have overlapping themes.
Um, okay, so we were one to aim to characterise the early stages of the Asian wave cinema and the depictions of East and West in Ang Lee's films.
And the Father Knows Best trilogy can be read in terms of Confucian values versus Western values.
Also in terms of traditional Chinese values and modern Chinese values.
So it explores and presents different ideas and new ideas of Chinese ness.
And the themes explored include the nature and importance of love, filial piety, obligation, and personal authenticity.
And the films played to international audiences with mixed receptions.
So they are subtitled semi-autobiographical and they mix and blend genres.
So the Asian wave has a whole range of films from Southeast Asia and and East Asia, um, from the late 90s through the 2000.
And, um, they, uh, they all have a political subtext.
They're a kind of anti orientalism.
So any film that is depicting Asia on screen, um, gets much scrutiny about how it's presenting these, um, these worlds.
And, um, they are often deliberately, um, breaking down Western stereotypes.
So they're in a war with Hollywood to represent themselves.
Um, and these films gained attention because of their aesthetic innovation, the political subtext, their cultural identity and the genre reinvention.
So like, um, yeah.
And so you can find if you search, you can find specific ones for Korea, Japan, China, um, Hong Kong and, and, uh, Vietnam and Thailand.
Um, but they're also part of post-colonial global cinema, which is these critical practices that are exploring the legacy of colonialism,
hybridity, um, the nature of power, asymmetrical power, and the ability to resist colonial power.
So Lagaan is another example, um, of that of a post-colonial film because it's engaging with the national politics.
But, um, it's using the British as the bad guy.
So it's a kind of anti-colonial, um, film.
But you would say that Satyajit Ray's film is more anti-colonial, post-colonial in the way that it reimagines Tagore's story.
Um,
so these films often emerge from and depict countries and cultures that are formerly colonised and then examine the ongoing effects of colonial rule.
Um, so, you know, the destruction of people's identity, the sense of displaced, forced displacement, living in exile.
Um, okay, so we're looking at Pushing Hands, which is family's first, um, directorial debut, and then the wedding banquet and then eat, drink, man.
Woman. He then goes on to make several other films and wins awards.
And then we come back to Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon.
Um, and you can see that he is officially Taiwanese American, and he's studied in the United States, which makes him a mix himself of East and West.
Right. So the points of this week is to say we've looked at east and east meets west as two separate things.
But from the 1990s, does it make sense to talk about East meets West anymore?
If we're looking at global cinema, global writing, most of these films are based on novels.
Um, uh only also has Life of Pi, which is an Indian based film, um, uh, depicting Indian culture.
So, um, his philosophy is I have both theatrical and cinema backgrounds.
The bottom line is you have to open up to your viewer, expose yourself,
although you open yourself up to criticism and all that, and you have to take that step.
You have to be moved by your material at a gut level.
I have to constantly judge if I'm being honest with how I feel and what I put on screen.
I think people respond to that. Honesty is the best policy.
It's just the best way I've found to live my life and go about my career and hopefully be able to sleep at night.
Um, so he co-wrote, um, Pushing Hands with um, James Schamus,
and it's ironically titled Father Knows Best Trilogy because in Confucian values, the father knows best.
But in the films, the father doesn't know best.
And and nobody can really keep to the traditional Confucian role, even though they might try hard to be, um, acting in accordance with Confucianism.
They they they screw it up. So we'll see how that happens, right?
Um, and so, uh, these films that also they explore Ang Lee's relationship to his own father and his, uh, who was an exile from.
Mainland China and who came to Taiwan in 1949 when the PRC was created.
Um, and typically in a world order in which father knows best, the children would display filial piety, obey their parents, and follow his guidance.
But alas, they can't because they're contaminated by the Western world.
They have their own values, um, in the dramatic situations in which Lee's younger characters struggle to fulfil their
filial obligations and their parents do not follow stereotypical roles either.
The trilogy is an exploration of Lee's relationship to traditional Chinese culture, and its accommodation of an adaptation to modern Chinese culture.
So the characters identities are negotiated at the intersection of east and west with within a process of globalisation.
Um, and she um long plays the father figure this actor his he features in all three films um and the the cast um they are the same.
He uses the same actors, um in all three films.
Um, and they have a mix of family drama.
So Pushing Hands is a family drama. The wedding Banquet is a, um, family family comedy.
And then the drink Man woman is a melodrama, so it's kind of ridiculous, um, in the way that it turns out.
And it has a really great deployment. So at the end, there's misunderstandings and things and there's like a big reveal.
Um, and yeah, it's really funny. So these films are a mix of exoticism and authenticity.
So on one hand, they are, uh, an example of the two parts of New York City, because Pushing Hands is in, um, Westchester in suburban New York.
And, um, the wedding banquet deals with a gay couple living in Manhattan.
And, um, so they, uh, using New York as a topos of meeting of East and West as a place where you can reinvent yourself.
Um, because in the wedding banquet, the main character is living a double life.
He's gay, he's living with his partner, Simon.
And, um, his life is great because his family's in China, right?
But he's getting messages all the time that he has to get married.
And so he's thinking, how can I how can I get around this problem?
How can I solve this problem? And he has a he owns a building, and there's an artist woman who lives in that building, and she needs a green card.
And so, um, they figure out that if they get married, she can get her green card.
Um, he can get a tax rebate. Um, and, uh, they can have a kind of manager trois, like three.
And I guess it's not a struggle this. They can have a fake marriage and, um, they can solve the problem.
The only hitch is that the parents decide to come and visit for two weeks,
and so they have to live together for two weeks with the parents to maintain the illusion.
And the, um, it's really funny because the artist woman, she's completely not the wise mother, good wife, but the gay partner, Simon.
He is like the wise mother, good wife, good partner, like he can cook.
And he is really understands Chinese culture and he acts appropriately and he's got good taste.
And um, whereas the, the, um, artist woman is a hot mess.
And so there's a lot of comedic situations like that,
and they have to have a full Chinese wedding in New York with all the Chinese community that come and everyone gets drunk.
And so it's a, um, it's it was a situation where you could see authentic China, like a full Chinese wedding.
They actually put on a Chinese wedding and then filmed it.
So, um, ang Lee tries to generate, uh, authentic situations to, to, um, to film and introduce that, you know,
a like a community wedding in New York of the giant American Chinese community that was, um, that was put into the film.
Okay. So on one hand, the films are exotic because, um, the scenarios are both familiar and strange.
They provide entertaining sense of proximity and distance.
So Ang Lee's films are an example of exoticism in the sense that they recount a here and there for the viewers.
So if you're watching in China, it's exotic, it's in New York, it's transnational Chinese identity.
If you're in the West and you're watching New York, you're familiar with New York,
but you're not familiar with a closeted gay man, um, who's Chinese living in, in New York.
Um, and so you get a window into this other world, and by the same token, the same rules present exotic situations for Chinese, um, viewers.
And like the innate drink man, woman, um, which is set in Taipei in Taiwan.
Uh, we get a view of. Contemporary China or contemporary Taiwan.
Um, and that's also hilarious. So they're they're authentic because in 3 to 3 specific ways.
And this is important for the 10th because there will likely be a question on authenticity.
Right. So they have genuine ingredients and locations are featured.
Right. So eat drink man woman focuses the film on an actual banquet in Taipei, as this hotel and four of Taipei's top chefs prepared the food.
So there's a lot of shots of the food. And it's it showcases Chinese cuisine and it's all real food.
So, um, and then, um, the films incorporate personal experience or elements that are autobiographical.
So, for example, the House in Pushing Hands was filmed in Lee's own back garden.
Um, and the City Hall wedding in the Wedding Banquet dramatises Lee's own vows and exchanges between himself and his father in In Pushing Hands,
while the scenes of the cooking at Home and eat, drink, man woman record Lee's own days working from home.
So when he was in Taiwan and he was trying to make it as a film director, um, right has to write his scripts.
Um, he was living there by himself and being a househusband while his wife supported him financially, and he felt like a failure as a man.
And that that, um, so these autobiographical elements lend a certain flavour or richness to the films.
Um, and they also include frankness.
So frankness is a way of establishing authenticity, because frankness, um, is it comes from the Greek idea of parrhesia,
which has been explored by Michel Foucault in his, um, American Lectures.
But the idea is that if you tell the truth, you risk exposing who you are and you yourself.
And if you speak the truth to people who I put it that could harm you.
Like if you are gay and you come out of the closet to your family, then you are going to put yourself at risk.
And that's the risk of being, um, authentic.
And so this truth telling, the stakes of truth telling are explored in the films because they are trying to highlight, uh,
the difficulties of East-West transnational identity and the lives that these people are living and how they negotiate, um, how they negotiate that.
So these are deeply personal films that interrogate the role of traditional culture, globalisation and family,
um, play in identity construction and through the dramatisation of Lee's lived experience and relationships.
So he's drawing on his own life. They results from and further facilitate confronting conversations about the effects of globalisation
on our lives and the challenges of living up to traditional values in the modern world.
And this is a very common trope in films made around the 2000, um, right up to 2015.
Um, exploring the idea of a transnational identity, how do you explain to your parents what you want to do, how you want to live your life?
So, um, the film, um, blinded by the light, about the Pakistani boy who wants to be a writer and has to confront his father, came out in 2016.
Um, it was the film. Uh, the director of Bend It Like Beckham made the second film, and it's set in the 1980s,
but it's still got this question of how does a son confront his father about not doing something that would be an aspiring middle class job,
like being an accountant or being, um, uh, a lawyer, or going, um, and doing some kind of white collar job.
He decides to go and be a writer. What does that mean for the sacrifices his parents made as first generation migrants?
So, um, uh, and you'll notice that in past lives,
the occupation of the woman who's living in the Korean woman who's living in New York, she's a writer, right.
So this is no accident that these figures of writers,
artistic types who want to go against the the conservative family tradition, um, want to become writers and artists and,
and express their own, um, understanding and creativity versus doing something that's going to be sensible and, um, that will be secure.
Um, and The Wedding Banquet was the first feature film in Taiwan to feature an openly gay relationship on screen.
And that's why, um, Lee notes in the interview here that you have to be you have to be honest and authentic,
um, to try and tell these stories that are difficult to tell.
And I think the world has changed a lot in the last 20 years.
So, um, discussing sexuality on screen, having text is.
No longer. It's still done, but it's not.
It doesn't have the same shock value at all. But it was shocking in, um.
Uh, it was shocking in 1993.
And the wedding banquet, um. For sure.
Okay. These are the films that he's gone on to make after that.
Okay. So, um, I'd like you to watch, um, twister wheel pushing hands.
It's the first ten minutes, and I want you to answer these questions. What is the situation?
What do you learn about each character? Um, how are they characterised?
What dichotomy is being established, and what does the dialogue tell us about this situation?
I'm. Come here.
Okay, so just one piece of information.
So the woman, uh, she's married to a Chinese man who works in, um, New York,
and his father has come to stay with them and has been there for a month, and they've been going on like this every day for a month.
And she's a writer who has writer's block. And, um, that's her friend who's also a real estate agent.
And she's like, we need a bigger house. So they start looking at houses.
But ask the people nearest you what is what's the situation?
What do we learn about the characters? How are they characterised and what are positions being set up,
and what's the dichotomy and what does this what does the dialogue tell us about this situation?
Ask the person next to you or near you. She wants us to do the same thing in the same household.
I seem to be the kind of class princess.
I used. Yeah.
I didn't hear you talk. Oh. Up to.
I'm just trying to make you feel that.
How do we know what what their character is like?
What's their emotional state? What kind of people do you think they are?
What do you think they're thinking? And how do we know that I.
And what do they think of each other? I think so.
Yeah. Yeah. I don't know too much about him.
And he doesn't express the life and experience of. This woman.
Yeah. She was so interesting.
She is being a bit. I think. I think it's not so tolerant of people.
Yeah. Yeah. Nice. Yeah.
I just. I think he's great.
You know. Yeah. Like you mentioned, I don't like to hear the sounds.
Yeah. I don't even know why you order.
Oh, I see, I see. That's what you said.
Throughout the state in some. Ways.
The pom pom pom. I think it's just like our culture.
It's just. More than.
Two and a half years ago.
Yeah, yeah. Well, there, there it's. I think there are more quiet people.
Well, there's. More subtle communication.
Um, like it's not necessary to have conversation all of the time.
Um, but there's there's also very chatty, talkative people all the time, but sometimes it can.
In a traditional family, it can be quite formal. There's the father and he will, and the children will be just quiet.
But that's that's, you know, several generations ago, kids having to sit around the table, you know, like, um.
Yeah. Okay. So what do you what do you.
Remember the earlier she died? What is the situation for you?
How would you. How would you describe the situation? Yes.
I mean, it's a bit awkward. Yeah. It's awkward.
Why is it awkward? Does he speak English?
No, she doesn't speak, you know. He doesn't know how to use the microwave.
I mean, it's 1993. Microwaves were still relatively new, right?
Um. Uh, but he doesn't know how to use that technology.
Um, and it's her house, and he's a guest. All right.
Um, but what do we know about her? What's her personality like?
Do you think? Is she a Karen?
Potentially potentially a Karen I don't know.
What do you what did you notice from the from the clip? Yeah, she's kind of a mess.
Like she can't write and she's like, that's how it is, Benjy.
Crazy stuff that she escaped, that she's been eating out the fridge, so she's obviously got some.
Problems. Yeah, I think it's going. As she's like going out.
She went for a run and just like a whole like like those.
I think we just ran around. So just cleaning up, I don't know, something on.
But she's happy community, the people getting involved.
What what does the old man think about her jogging and her extra punching exercises?
Many smiles, but it's of. Like.
It's a little bit absurd, right? He's a he's a tai chi master.
And so he's doing meditation. He's he's, uh, writing and he's doing his, um, exercises.
So, um, what does he represent? Things that transpired.
Exactly. And what's he wearing? You know, he's wearing the the, um, traditional Chinese clothing.
I'm not sure what you call it, but he's, like, everything he does is, like, typically traditional Chinese.
It's like a tie. Oh, yeah? Yeah. And he's got the sword hanging on the wall, and he's got the calligraphy.
You know, with the philosophy on it. So he's East Asian traditional, right?
Um, and so he's contrast with his son, who's modern.
He has a job. He lives in America. Um, and he's also spiritually well, right.
But he's also a bit frustrated. What is he doing to counter his frustration?
If the writer is sticking a finger in eating the cake? Little by little.
What's he doing to cope with his situation with being in America?
Yes. This not. Yeah.
Chinese films. The TV drama and the Chinese.
The Beijing opera. Right. And how does that affect the woman?
Right. It's terrible. So the film is shot through doorways, and I live in separate sides of the house.
And then they they bump into each other in the kitchen, you know?
And the worlds collide in the kitchen. And there's a son involved as well.
But, um, so anyway, sets up the opposition between the modern, stressed world, sort of the West,
the material world of the West, and the traditional classic traditional world of the East.
Right. Um, which is the typical idea that China is mystical and and spiritual and has these ancient arts, 5000 years of history.
Um, but what happens in the story is that, um, uh, so you see the,
the contrast in the way they eat, like he has a really healthy relationship to food.
He's like eating heartily. She's on a diet with the crackers, and.
But she's eating the cake. Um. Uh, and so you have this idea of, like, the anxious, frustrated individual concerned with appearances and reputation.
She's stressed and disorderly. Office is a mess. She's got writer's block.
Whereas China's a distant source of traditional arts and spiritual practices.
And he's got calm and solace. Um, and but there's the question of like, technology, but what happens is that,
um, uh, Linda's frustrated with this situ, and, um, she only knows shifts.
Um, and she doesn't really. Oh, you can't hear the dialogue in in this room, but, um, you know, he's amused by her.
He finds her a little bit absurd. And, um, she doesn't really make any sincere efforts to try and relate to his culture.
So what happens in the film is that, um, they try to get, uh, Mr. Chu to go and, um, join a group at the community centre, and, um, uh, they try to.
And there he miss it. He meets Mrs. Chen and they form a friendship and a relationship, and, um,
he then decides that he's going to, uh, move out because the tension in the house gets too much.
Uh, and so he he moves out, and he gets a part time job in Chinatown.
And this reverses the relations of the, um, uh, Confucian five relationships,
because the son should be looking after the father, and the father shouldn't be forced to go and live independently.
And so this is a kind of humiliation for the son because he can't, um,
balance like his wife's happy that the old man moved out and Mr. Chu's moved out, but, um, they decide to be independent and to, um,
move out and live as a cooking teacher because they both have the same problem of not wanting to be a burden on their children,
so they develop their own independent lives, uh, which is a reversal of the five relationships.
So, um, in pushing hands, the five relations are not respected as the children disrespect their parents.
And although this is provoked by Linda's modern Western attitude, it's perpetrated.
But yeah, perpetrated by both the Chinese and the American families.
And in the end, Michael, who's the son, attempts to redress his error,
and he goes and finds Mr. Chu in the Chinese community in New York City, where he's re-established his authority,
where he he's able to re-establish re-establish his authority over his son because the son says,
I was wrong to let you move out and please come back and live with us.
Um, and so these relationships between the parents and the children and how the children should correctly relate to the parents,
um, is also a key theme in the wedding banquet.
Um, and you can also talk about, you know, the way that the father missed the two guys and lives in New York and gets a part time job in Chinatown,
and it's a place where he can make himself and reinvent himself in a modern, modern world.
Um, there's a there's one scene and they use it in the, in the, um, uh, it's one scene.
They use it in the trailer to try and make pushing hands look like a martial arts film.
But there's only one scene in the film where he fights somebody in the kitchen of the Chinese restaurant.
Um, but there's a very funny scene where he's in the community centre and decides to teach the people tai chi and, um, yeah.
So there's a lot of slapstick humour. So the wedding banquet, uh, I will show you the, um, clip, and we'll have a break in about ten minutes.
Okay, so don't worry. So this is the wedding banquet. You are cordially invited to a very special wedding.
You have to me. I wait, wait. Maybe you wait.
Tom, wait, wait. In sickness and in health.
Till death do us part. Your sickness and death. The bride is calm.
The groom is cool. And the parents of a picture of happiness.
There's only one problem. Everyone wants to kiss the bride.
Except the rule. What started as a little white light.
You see this way where we can stay in the States. Hey, you can finally get your parents off your back.
Grew into a performance. This was your big idea of amazing proportions.
It was a miracle to be able to take a big tax break. The Samuel Goldwyn Company proudly presents.
Wait a. What do you think you're doing? The most outrageous social event of the season.
Little wedding banquet. Okay.
So again, you have, um, the Confucian idea of the, um, virtuous wife and the good mother and,
um, the role of the wife, uh, being subordinate to her husband and also to her male children.
Um, and so she has to maintain the full virtues of not offend against prescribed ethical codes of behaviour, be restrained in social intercourse.
Don't be too talkative. Uh, maintain high standards of personal hygiene and beautification and carry out domestic duties with diligence.
Right. This is the typical idea. Um, and then in the, um, in the film, as you might imagine,
the stereotype of the gay man that is fastidious, that he's good in a domestic setting, that he has ties.
So he has the he has the virtues of the virtuous wife and the good mother.
Um, and so this becomes this becomes funny when the parents come to stay and, uh, they, um, we we doesn't like Wei Wei doesn't know how to cook.
Right. And so they're in the kitchen. Uh, and we can watch this, this clip.
I don't know why the sound is so bad. I know, that's right.
Was a screen recording. That's me laughing. So, um, in the in the film, they are having to play the different roles,
but the tension begins to build because she falls in love with Michael and, uh, yeah, she falls in love with they both are in love with with him.
And so she's hoping that the paper marriage or the fake marriage could become a real marriage,
and the parents are beginning to realise what's going on.
And so the father, he, he tries to, to, um, do the dishes to fit in because they stay for two weeks and um,
uh, so eventually the, the ruse is never openly exposed.
But at the end of the film, um, the, uh, the father gives, uh, Simon a, um, a red envelope at New Year.
And, um, and this is creating harmony and preserving the appearance of order.
So they deliberately the father realises what's going on, but doesn't disrupt,
doesn't reveal that he knows in order to maintain the harmony of the situation.
And in this way, he acts like a sage because he is acting in accordance with he,
or the idea of doing what's appropriate for the situations in the situation.
The appropriate thing traditionally is to enable the the ruse to continue so that everybody can,
um, pursue their lives without forcing it into a confrontation or fight.
But he lets Simon know that he realises that Simon's the real partner in the situation,
and he does so by, um, giving him this red envelope, which is the money.
So congratulations, we're getting married. It's the wedding gift.
And he spoke English most of the time, but he never played on. Yeah, so it's a bit of a spoiler.
That's the, um, Wei Wei has to sleep with, with, um, the husband on the first night, and they actually have intercourse and so she gets pregnant.
So from the from that, that drunken night.
So they, the parents want a grandchild. That's the purpose of marriage, right.
But then the, um, Simon and the, um, main character, I can't remember his name.
They, uh, um, able to have.
So they end up with, like, a what would you call a mixed family or this three parent, these three parents and a baby coming.
Um, but, yeah, it's a it's a really good film, but the idea is that they maintain they maintain this the secret.
And this is important. It relates to the idea of running.
So, um, in the Analects Council, Confucius says, um, the master says, as for a neighbourhood, um, it is it's run that makes it attractive.
If you choose to live in a place without run, how can you become wise?
So what is the run of a neighbourhood? Is it the place or the community that has?
It's the place of the community that has run well. How does run attract?
What makes run a necessary condition for wisdom? The hypothesis is run is a relational property of communities.
A community is run if it has if it relates to its members in a certain way that allows them to become once.
So, um, Confucius idea was that if you, um, practice virtue yourself and you act in accordance with the five relations,
then the harmony of your individual and the harmony within your family will then
spread to the wider community and then spread out across the whole nation.
So by cultivating the self and living in accordance with virtue,
and trying to strive to live in accordance with the rights, um, then you can cultivate, run.
And if you look at the Chinese character, the left side, this is, um, Lin Manuel.
This is the radical four person. And the main power of the character is two.
So run is about the relationship between people, between two people and, um, uh,
the I don't have a pan, but the character for for people is one stroke and another strike.
It's two strokes like that. Right. So, um, one idea about person here.
You can see the character here about person is that you a person cannot be complete without another person.
That's why you have two strokes. So there's no individual.
The individual can only exist, as it is called, substantiated with the other.
And the primary virtue of the Confucian system is wrong.
Right. Um. And the aim is to become a dancer.
Um, and this idea comes from the Jo dynasty, um, which is the kind of the original dynasty before the Han and the junto was a scholar.
Right. And they're a member of the aristocracy. Kind of like a young band.
Like the hero in Chun Yung. And, um, they were the son of a lord.
But by this time, it had become and had come to represent the standard of conduct for someone in any such social role.
And so it's been translated as a superior man or gentleman, or exemplary person, or a true knight.
Um, and so the term plays a special role in causes of account of moral development, because the gender, um, is a version of the gender is the scholar.
So every scholar she wants to become aims to develop the, the moral qualities of the gender, to develop run.
And, um, this is not an endpoint to moral development, because the aim of the gender is to live in accordance with the Dao,
which means that you can spontaneously act with virtue.
There's no effort, but it takes a lifetime to develop the ability to make,
to make the right decisions and to act in accordance with the virtues spontaneously.
To internalise that takes the lifetime of learning. So you're always aspiring to have this virtue.
So the gender is constantly trying to improve his or her character.
And the ultimate ideal of moral development is that of sheng to be a sage.
So here this is sheng. And sheng means that, um, the gender can deal with um when the.
So the master said, when the gender deals with the world, he's not prejudiced for or against anything he does.
What is yi now? Yi is what is appropriate or a right according to the situation.
And so, um, by the character of Yi can be broken down into a shape and a hand, and, um, I cut a dagger.
So this character is an image of somebody performing a ritual, or sacrificing a sheep covering the throat of a sheep and a sacrifice.
But you're acting on according to the rights, so you do what is appropriate.
So in Confucianism, uh, everything we do,
our whole world is built up of practices and habits and rites and in different situations, you have the right thing to do.
For example, coming to a lecture, the rites prescribed that you don't talk while I'm talking.
Right. And then you come and on time, and that you do the reading before the lecture and that you have questions, you know.
So if you do those things, it's unspoken. But how world in any situation is dictated by rites, by the rites as in Yi.
So they're not even though it comes from the idea of acting in the correct way of a sacrifice or of a ritual.
Our life is filled with rituals. You know.
What is your morning ritual? How do you park a car?
How do you relate to people? What is the appropriate thing to do?
Um, in a given situation.
And so the idea of yi is that practising yi means that you sincerely attempt to act in accordance to the right, and you do the right thing.
Right. And if you can do that, then you will be able to become shame, which is wise, right?
So, um, this is why the father, Mr. Chu, doesn't tell the rest of the family that he understands the three way relationship.
Um, and it enables them to have a grandchild and enables them, the mother, to maintain, to be happy.
Because what happens is that they say, well, we'll just get married. We'll go to the registry office and have a civil ceremony.
So they have this terrible civil ceremony at the, um, town hall, and then they walk out and they'll have the photo of Happy Wedding.
And the mother's, like, crying because she wanted to have a wedding for her son.
And they're like, we have to have the big, proper wedding.
And, uh, Mr. Chu has bumped into an old friend who smoked, moved to, um, New York, and they fought in the war together.
And he runs the hotel. So he says, I'll put on the wedding for free.
And then they have this huge wedding. We. Everybody's invited.
So, um, the. But the point is that, uh, the the film is deeply Confucian in its, in its values.
And, um, that's what gives it parts of it.
That's what gives it its authenticity.
But at the same time, it's also presenting a situation that is, um, uh, difficult to deal with in terms of homosexuality.
And, um, living in this irregular situation for the modern marriage of having a nuclear family.
This is an unusual situation. So, um, both he and his wife respect and preserve the ritual.
The new mix family is based on a combination of frank relations, well intentioned lies to protect one another,
and the celebration of humanity through the recognition of their relationships.
So the last things that going off down through the airport. So as in pushing hands, um, white sons,
fathers able to grow and adapt whilst retaining his adherence to tradition and his mother can accept Wei Wei as a daughter in law,
though within a new mixed family framework, you know,
so in in the um, bend it Like Beckham and Blinded by the light, it's the, um, Pakistani family and the parents who yield to let their children,
and also the English working class family, they let their children pursue their dreams.
They give up. They don't give up entirely on their traditional belief system, but they in that and soften it.
And in a similar way, they, um, you can argue that, uh, it stays true to the Confucianism and the Confucian doctrine deep down,
but your average film goer is not going to get that right, but your average Chinese filmgoer probably will.
So this is where it raises the question about, um, transnational film and how legible it is for international audiences.
Can they decode the messages? Right.
They don't. The significance of the red envelope.
This is a very rich significance of you Chinese, because you get it from your grandparents when at New Year,
and you get it for your birthday and you get money and it's very strong, it's very important.
Um, and key thing, what I could find out about this new film because I haven't seen it yet, is that in the, um, original,
the secret is maintained, but in a imperfect way, you know, with strategically in order to maintain the Confucianism.
But in the 2025 version, they change the they change the situation.
They sit in Westchester, I think, from what I can tell.
Um, but it's the Korean family and the Korean mother or grandmother arrives.
I think it's the mother and the grandmother. The the the Korean grandmother arrives and they try it because in the, uh,
earlier scene here where they where they talk about the, um, the she's talking about the scroll and everything.
It's all really ironic because the whole house looked gay and before they arrived.
Oh, my God, they're arriving. And they have to, like, take all the photos and they change everything,
and they just hang up all the traditional Chinese things to make the house look really Chinese.
And then they are admiring everything. Oh, you live in such a Chinese house.
And then she can tell them all about it because she's an art student and they think she's this amazing,
wise mother and good wife and perfect marriage material, you know, um, but it's it's a lie.
So in the, um, uh, wedding banquet in the 2025 version, the same scene gets played out.
You know, they they have similar scenes. The same. The same scene is played out, except the grandmother.
The Korean grandmother is like, that's total [INAUDIBLE].
You're gay. Clearly. And so at the beginning of the movie, the ruse is broken and it turns into a different sort of film.
So, um, this also, I think, reflects the shift in attitudes to, um, depictions of gay people on screen.
It's different from 1993 to 2025 or so.
Um, but I'm sure they'll have a big Korean wedding and they'll, I mean, I it looks good.
I'm going to go and see it. So, um. Yeah.
Okay, let's take a break and then we will talk about martial arts.
So. Yeah.
You can have a little film festival to prepare for the test.
Uh. Um. Well, you know, it's not.
I. Was pretty.
And. Well. Bob. Gilmer.
Katie. Nathan. I think glad I.
You're not. I've seen.
Don't wait for anything. Yeah. Go for. Um, yeah.
Um, like, um. First. Then I should be able to.
It's just. It's just how? Keeping the sunshine.
You jump on? I should jump, right?
No no, no. I honestly I think see, you know, sometimes.
I'm such. So we can just walk in.
Yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah.
And then you can say, oh, my. Let's.
I didn't see that. One.
So. I think so.
I don't think that any of you know this, because I kind of say I want a free television that leads to the next season.
That going to go. I.
Just cry at my work sometimes.
Oh, yeah. I remember I was 17.
I was. Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah. Thanks. Oh.
Thank you. See you. And you did it.
Um, sure I was. I did.
I'm sorry that this is over. Because you pretty close to me.
Yeah. Yeah. Oh.
I think it's 22 chances to get. It was really good as you idea for us to say sorry.
Sorry, like. You.
Hi. Hi. Um, I don't know if you know this, but there's a screening tomorrow.
I think you don't see everything everywhere all at once. Oh, really?
Yeah, I read it. Um, but are you smarter?
Yeah. On the spot above the quad. Okay. I have a little machine.
Yeah, that would be really good. I think this moving. And when you.
Right. Okay, I'll. I'll announce it.
What time is it tomorrow? It's at five, I think.
Yeah. Okay. Say at 5 p.m. Oh, great.
Great. That'll be good. Okay. Um.
It's not yet. Okay. Easy to play with those colours of.
I. It's possible.
That was just. Just. This of.
Is. Something different because it's not always known about.
How communities can be trusted and if it's not working.
At least I can tell you.
I don't want to argue that this is that.
It's not that. You.
Spoke to me on one. I you.
Okay. I.
Go. You.
Okay. Okay. Um.
Right. Question. Not yet, because I.
The festival. You could.
It's become a little. That's only fair.
The Prime Minister. It looks like.
She's. Visits to.
Okay. Yeah, yeah.
Okay, let's let's skip. Let's keep going. Um.
So the third, the third film in the Father Knows Best trilogy is a drink man, woman.
And this idea is a it's eat, drink man woman is a, um, four character Chinese saying that describes the this is what this is the stuff of life.
So eating, drinking man and woman. The relationship between man and woman.
So, um, this film is a melodrama and so it creates it's a story about one family with three daughters.
And, um, every Sunday they have to go to the father's house and eat dinner together.
Turns out the father is one of the top chefs in Taipei. And so he always makes this amazing, extravagant food.
Um, and the meal is a kind of ritual. And the eldest daughter, uh, is, um,
a kind of a frustrated chef that she's never allowed to cook in her father's
kitchen because she can never get it right and she doesn't really have her own,
um, kitchen. And then another daughter is a, um.
And that the eldest daughter has a very good career and it's become a career woman,
and she's faced with having to move and live over in New York, um, because she gets a promotion and she's always working all the time.
Uh, and then the, the youngest daughter, she's, um, she turns to religion and she's a schoolteacher, so she's sort of very,
um, prudish and, um, uh, doesn't want to have any relationship with anybody because she's devoted to God.
The the mother and the family has passed away. So since the mother died, they've gone into their respective ways of coping.
And there's a third daughter who's the youngest. She she works in a fast food restaurant, and she's a student, and she's, um, uh, she has a, um,
she has a boyfriend, but he's been put in the friend zone, and she's got this other friend.
It's a little bit complicated, but the symbolism in relation to food is a key.
Communicate in the film. And with the youngest daughter working in a fast food chain, it's an influence of the Western culture.
And with the eldest daughter working in a multinational corporation and with the possibility of going to America, she's in a Western frame.
And that modern Western Korea woman role is separating her from, um, her connection with her father and with traditional culture.
And the father's got traditional culture, but he doesn't know what what to do with it.
He's at retirement.
Um, and so he ends up having to he's he's giving secret lunches to, um, the neighbour, the neighbour's son who's going to primary school.
So the primary school kids are getting gourmet food for lunch in the lunchbox,
and then they end up having a relationship with the the grandmother next door.
So just like the, um, uh, the wedding banquet, but because this is, uh, a melodrama and it's,
it's comedic at the end, you have all of these surprises, you know, and they have these, these dance.
So, um, but the food is very important because it's, um, presents authenticity for the film.
And, uh, it creates a conflict between the traditional Chinese lifestyle in Taipei and its modern westernisation.
And the film is presented you'll see it in the in the trailer.
The film is presented in a, um, a very exotic sizing way for, um, the Western audiences and for, for Chinese audiences.
It's a family drama, and it's about the relationship between a father and his daughters.
And, um, but in the Western frame, they focus on the sexual relations, and they exoticized the women so you can see.
And the food, uh. It's important.
Yeah. From the acclaimed director of the wedding banquet, the Samuel Goldwyn Company presents eat, drink, man, Woman The story of three Sisters.
Looking for a recipe for romance and their father, one of the world's great chefs trying to understand the ingredients in this family.
If you can't cope, you can always cook.
You have three women with a taste for life.
And as dad, just trying to stay on the menu with one more laughter.
One five. Action. With a dash of injury.
Honour and adventure makes it. Eat, drink bad.
From director Ali and the creators of last year's surprise hit, The Wedding Banquet in family life as you've never tasted it before.
Uh. Okay.
So you can see you've got the, um, Western film, the Western film poster for its focus on the women and romance and the Chinese one,
where it's focussed on the relationship between the eldest daughter and the father.
She's in a situationship with one of her colleagues in the big company.
Uh, and then, um, she ends up, you know, dumping them and going back and starting her own beginning to cook and things.
It's a really good film. Um, so, uh, to save time, you can read through these notes and you can see in the, um,
in these clips about the significance of the ritualised family and keeping the family together,
but also the three different stories, um, that they, um, where they each explore their own relationships.
And it's a, it's an exploration. We'll talk about more, more in the tutorial.
Um, because it's and it's an exploration of how if you are alienated from your authentic self, if you repress part of yourself,
you'll find a coping mechanism, or you'll find an addiction or something you can displace your frustration onto.
So for, um, she again, she's a schoolteacher and she's a devout, a devout Christian.
And then her students play a trick on her and start writing her love letters that are signed by the PE teacher.
And then she thinks the teacher's falling in love with her, and the PE teacher asks her to go out and she's like, oh no, no, no.
And then, um, it turns out in the end, you know, she's the most, um, she,
she just announces at the dinner that she's moving out with him and that she's pregnant,
like, so she's gone from being the least likely to have a relationship to, uh, the one most in a relationship at the end.
And then, um, jianming, she's the youngest, and she's preoccupied with her, um, her bit.
She falls in love with her best friend's boyfriend,
but the best friend is really stringing along the boyfriend and always, like, um, uh, being mean to him.
And he's always tortured and confiding in her. And so then she ends up, like, moving in with him.
So suddenly the dad's got, like, three daughters at home who then all decide to move out at the same time.
Um, and so they the way that I read this film, uh,
is in relation to Marty's analysis of addiction and authenticity and attachment and the way that you, um, they each develop coping.
They each develop coping strategies. One's a workaholic.
The other one's deeply religious.
Um, and the way that you try to, uh, you know, the youngest, um, jianming, she's really superficial and hasn't sort of no sense of self,
but you've got the alcoholic workaholic and the religious devotion, the old ways of escaping from their, um, disconnected sense of self.
And then in the film, they gradually, um, reconnect.
So, um, they have the, the, the film highlights censored sources of disconnection from one's own cultural and personal identity.
So it becomes a reflection on Western,
the Western ization and the influence of globalisation on the Taiwanese way of life and how the modern life is changing.
But it's not. It's not about like a traditional grass village, traditional life encountering modernity.
It's more about the way that modern Taiwan is changing, um,
under the influence of Western culture, uh, and the pursuit of global economic opportunity.
Um, yeah. So we'll talk about this more in the, um, uh, in the tutorial.
Um, and look at this idea of authenticity as being alienated from your true self, um, and ways of coping, uh, with that.
And you've got links to the films here as well. Okay.
So this is going to be a whirlwind tour of Hong Kong cinema.
So I'm sorry if it's disappointing, you know, but we'll try.
Look at the historical context, Hong Kong cinema and the the role that we Russia um, and generally play.
Sorry for my pronunciation. Um, and why the conception of diaspora is important to the film's production and the extent
to which Hong Kong cinema can be described as cosmo political instead of cosmopolitan.
And why does Hong Kong cinema challenge our conception of East meets West?
So the martial arts cinema originated in the Shanghai film industry in mainland China in 1928 with the release of burning of the Red Lotus Monastery,
based on the martial arts novel. End of the strange.
Here are the regional networks and diaspora connections and the border crossing movement of goods.
Capital drew people that drew Hong Kong and Shanghai together.
There's a kind of an interest city nexus that was, um, maintained and let and through this connection um it's maintained popular cinema.
So when um between 1935 and 1950, when there was a civil war in China, um, you had violence, occupation, civil war,
imperialism, colonial expansion, millions of people were displaced and there was extreme poverty and hardship in the mainland.
So many people were forced to leave Shanghai and go and live in Hong Kong, which was British, or they went to Taiwan.
So that's the historical reason when you have to from, um, in 1911, you have the end of the Chiang dynasty,
and then you have a period of the Republic of China, but then descends into civil war.
And in 1949, Mao wins and declares, um, uh,
the People's Republic of China and the Comintern gets exiled to um Taiwan and sets up its government as the government of China.
So you have to China's and then other countries around the world decide to recognise them.
So the British recognised, um, People's Republic of China in 1951, but in America didn't recognise the PRC until 1973, after Nixon's visit.
And New Zealand didn't recognise, um, mainland China until 1975.
Uh, but there's a reason why this cinema is based in Greater China, Hong Kong and Taiwan.
Um, and so, as Steven told his notes, and this is a really important was a really useful book.
Um, in terms of, um, this topic,
historians have usually have usually pointed to the outbreak of the war on the mainland as the turning point in Hong Kong's film industry,
and led to the growth of local of a local film industry as Hong Kong absorbed migrants fleeing Shanghai.
And these migrants made their own films, and they were based on a nostalgia for life in mainland China.
Because they were in exile, they couldn't go back, right.
So you got this new film industry growing because the people had the skills and the finance and connections.
From Shanghai. They came to Hong Kong, they made their film industry, but they couldn't go back to mainland China.
So they made films that imagined the wish for ancient China, a pre-modern China.
Right. So, um, they have a few episodes of the original, a few short shots from the original of this film.
Um, and we can have a look at that. Um.
So this is what? What they have left. You can sort of see the cartoon Hong Kong films.
It's like special effects. Wright choreographed choreographed battles with the fly by Wire and fireworks.
And the sound effects. From the.
Which. Yeah, yeah, it's pretty much [INAUDIBLE].
Yeah, sure. Oh, yeah.
And and the thing with kung fu movies is they're a little bit like pornography,
where they'll in the script, they'll say, you know, action scene, fight scene.
And then the people who do the performance just do do that.
They don't actively director. So they're just like, you know, the plumber arrives to fix the dishwasher or something, and then it's like action scene.
Something like that. So it's be great, um, quality film, but it's much adored and it's a very popular medium.
And the which language? Languages also that, uh, the literature was also popular literature, and that literature was um,
uh, published in um newspapers as editorials and particularly in Hong Kong.
So the wish of films began in the silent era, and then they had special effects and their they were adaptations of comic books,
and they were serialised novels from the folkloric oral tradition and Chinese opera.
So they have acrobatics and involved in them.
And then, um, they were made they continued to make them in Hong Kong.
Um, and uh, so this connection between the, uh, world, which is a world, it's the other of the good Confucian society.
So the people, the characters, uh, errant knights on quests who are, uh,
travelling on the road between towns, encountering bandits, and they have their own code of honour.
And, um, that code of honour is actually compatible with the Confucian values, but they, um, it's a kind of chivalric person.
And, um, they were the, the fantasised other of people who were living like, um, in the,
in the town and the cloistered aristocracy who were training and trying to live according to the, to the rights, um, and act correctly.
Um, and so, um, we get to, um, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon most of the time.
Um, just. This is a 1960s version of of the, um, Hong Kong cinema.
King ho. So, um. The Shah and Jiang hu.
Um, the Jiang hu, uh, enticing from without and also from within.
So this is one of the required ratings. I've just I've just copied it in to this slide, but, um,
you've got the idea of the Shah and the outsiders comes from the jaw dynasty, and then it develops and then the Ming dynasty.
Um, it's used to describe the world of you, Shah,
which originally referred to the places where mountain hermits would live and eventually came to designate,
um, an underworld or a world of vagrants, and sometimes the world of martial arts.
Okay, so the, um, Jiang Hu is, um, uh, describing this world.
They're kind of like pirates, you know?
Um, and so they are much revered, um, and they have a wandering lifestyle and a rootless existence, and it's seen as a rejection of family.
And, um, so in a society which valued education over physical abilities,
the Shah was seen as an anachronism and a representation of a Chinese cult counterculture.
And so the, the, um, the division between was Shan when she, um, became particularly large during the Han time.
So, uh, when she is language, culture and wu she is the warrior fighting.
So, um, you've got you can be a scholar and you can be a warrior, right?
There's martial, there's a martial gentleman, a genre of of war, and it's agenda of the scholarship.
And these are different ways that you can, um, transcend yourself and live in accordance with, uh, harmony and spread harmony.
So, like in the film Red Cliff, you've got the different generals and some of them, uh, when she and some of them are worshipped.
And the way that they understand tactics and strategy relates to how erudite they are.
So, um, the concept of Shah and Jiang, who is developing over time, and it's a very popular genre.
And in Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, the film is about, um, a sword that gets stolen and the, um.
Uh. And the situations are typical.
So what ang Lee does is he takes the traditional situation.
So this is a typical scene where the um wishy or the um, the hero goes into, um, an inn and a fight ensues.
Ensues. And um, because she has the sword, she's got the sword that the, um, that can make her stronger than anybody can go.
Um, so she's travelling, pretending to be a man, right? Um, I don't even.
She's happy.
She's got no money to pay because she's run away and she's stolen sword, and she's encountered a couple of people outside before she comes in.
And then now the local strongmen from the village have come to, um, deal with her.
But this whole scene is completely typical of English literature, right?
The heroine escapes, goes onto the road, ends up in and encounters the local bandits, kicks their ass, moves on to the next situation.
Right. Um. That's not criticism, Daniel.
Who's guilty of this? Outside the.
Still? No. Yeah.
Right? Okay. These.
How do you know that? So I know why you don't know.
I'm going to tell the hook. Yeah.
How's he doing? He's looking for a license.
That's not my job at all. Do not trouble.
By John Job. What do you do when you shoot?
Which she also supports. Okay, that makes no sense at all.
What? I.
I know. From time to time, for example.
One of the.
So sorry. Get. Oh, yes.
Oh, oh. You don't.
Know that you don't know more than. You know.
You. So the the scene where she's fighting and whilst drinking the cup of tea, that's the sign of the true master.
So you know the story about the man who went, and he studied martial arts in a whole lot of different schools.
And he said, I've been to all these schools around the world, and you've stayed in this temple the whole time.
And he says, okay, let's fight, and I'll just finish my tea and he drinks the tanks,
like fighting with them to prove that it's the one true school is better than than being a dilettante on on many.
Um, so these situations are really typical.
But ang Lee was criticised in China for making a film that was, um, not it didn't have the all of the elements.
It reinterpreted the elements of, um, the, uh, Wilshire genre.
So, um, uh, but you can't avoid criticism in this way.
And it was very, very popular with Western audiences.
And so for the Chinese diaspora who went to see us,
they had sort of a conflicting feeling about it because it was it's a little bit like when you watch you watch a Tarantino film and, you know,
the original genre on which it's based, like a war film or the martial arts films or, um, the gangster movies,
he takes the iconic elements of each of those films and then incorporates them into his films.
So it's like a, um, it's like a mixed what's the word like, for example, in a German war film, the Germans always, uh, going to, um,
put the pitchfork into the, the, the pile of hay in the barn to find to find the resistance person hiding in there, or, um, they they trick.
They trick the person by hearing the accent. Like, they speak German, but they have a slight accent, or they use a word that betrays them.
And, um, so you get all of these, like, amazing moments from a particular genre, but they're all put into 1 or 2 films with, with jazzy music.
So some people felt that this Tarantino and the remixing and the reinventing of the genre, um, discredits the original,
and people preferred the original films with the low quality, um, production values and the kind of hokey special effects.
And, um, because this this is a very high production film, but it was adored in the West,
and it was considered to be a global hit that, um, enabled a Hollywood film,
a kind of Hollywood style film that was using Hong Kong cinema and incorporating
Hong Kong cinema and the the special effects and films like The Matrix with the.
The matrix was the first film that used really decent martial arts, you know, Hollywood blockbuster film, and that came out at a similar time.
So the Asian wave is considered to be very important because it reverses the cultural flow.
The idea was that Hollywood was influencing national cinemas all around the world and that,
um, but with globalisation, non American film industries had this cultural capital.
They had this rich tradition of Hong Kong films, of which the literature of martial arts movies, and that they could, um,
effectively exchange this rich cultural identity for the distribution of a Hollywood film and produce global films that everyone could enjoy.
But you might be viewed as a sell-out or as, um, appropriating a traditional culture for the benefit of an insipid,
um, global culture that's like a watered down version of the original films.
Um, and so that's why it raises questions about is this a Chinese film?
Uh, because of Ang Lee's mixed background from coming from Taiwan and from the production values of the film, and also the way the film was funded.
So, um, it's important that the one of the reasons Hollywood didn't invest in, um, in, in a movie like Crouching Tiger,
Hidden Dragon before was they could buy an already completed Jackie Chan movie
for 5 million and distribute it instead of having to pay 15 million to make one.
Um, but the Hong Kong movies were usually distributed, and they weren't in mainstream theatres.
They were. They had a Chinese theatre in the Victoria Park market in the 90s,
and people could go and watch films, but they were, um, they were dubbed or in with subtitles.
So one of the reasons why this film was considered such, um,
an unexpected success was because it was in Mandarin, and, um, it, uh, was subtitled and normally subtitled.
Films don't go down well with, um, mainstream audiences, because some people don't want to go to a movie to read.
Um, but, uh.
Following on from this tradition, because this is in 2000.
Um, you end up. You end up with everything everywhere, all at once.
Right. Mrs. Wang, are you with us? I am paying attention.
Now you may only see a receipt, but I see a story.
I can see where this story is going. It does not look good.
What's happening? I'm not your husband.
I said function of the universe. I'm here. We need your help.
I'm very busy today. No time to help you.
Why emotions are. I see thousands of envelopes.
You can access the memories and emotions. I just got.
Like many of us. And you.
Maybe your only chance of stopping me. For you.
I am really good. I don't believe you.
Huh? Huh? Huh? He's waiting in the wings.
The universe speaks of. This thing is so much bigger than.
It looks like some. So this film was edited on YouTube and was shot on like an iPhone.
And, um, it won a lot of, um, Oscars.
Uh, but it's about a first generation Chinese family running a laundromat, and then it crosses over with, like, The Matrix.
And she's in the middle of this multiverse and has to save the world. She's like Neo in The Matrix, and then everything's fine.
Everything's really, um, kind of low tech.
So you have to eat something completely weird to trigger your superpowers.
And then it's a martial arts film. But at the core of it, it's called the relationship between evil and the mother trying to save her marriage,
and then her relationship to her daughter, who needs to come out of the closet for, um, uh, for the grandfather.
And you've got the same elements that you have in Ang Lee's film in terms of inter-generational conflict.
You've got the martial arts element mixed in, um, and you've got this mixing of genres.
Uh, so, um, we'll talk more in the, um, in the tutorial about the Confucian roots,
um, in of, of, uh, what's it called, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon.
But the idea just to leave you with one idea is that the Cosmo political because the film is not in mainland China,
but is on the periphery, and it reaches across into Hollywood and also into Hong Kong cinema and Taiwanese cinema.
Um, that it's there's a group of filmmakers like John Woo, Jackie Chan, ang Lee, the uh, um, reinventing Chinese ness and what a Chinese film can be.
And this is not a kind of exotic use of Chinese film.
It's a new type of film that's not cosmopolitan, which is the idea of a a Western or somebody sampling a whole range of different cultures,
or including them like a Western person making a film about China.
It's about a peripheral part of China, an outsider, part of China making a film, um, and reinventing all of these tropes and genres and,
um, basically turning them not against Hollywood, but succeeding through Hollywood and through its distribution system.
Because the problem with non Hollywood films is they didn't have access to the distribution system, and they didn't have the money to fund the films.
And then after 2009, because of the internet and because of the ability for people to make low budget films like,
um, everything else, everything everywhere, all at once, they are able to disrupt the, um, East and west.