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A. Lee’s Varied Bricolage - Focused on Hybridity in The Wedding Banquet and Eat Drink Man Woman
The Journal of Chinese Cultural Studies
2019,
(43), pp.285-306
DOI : 10.18212/cccs.2019..43.013
Publisher : The Society For Chinese Cultural Studies
Research Area : Chinese Culture
DOI : 10.18212/cccs.2019..43.013
Publisher : The Society For Chinese Cultural Studies
Research Area : Chinese Culture
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Hybridity is the main feature of two films, The Wedding Banquet (1993) and Eat Drink Man Woman (1994) made by Ang Lee. This article explores how the aspects of hybridization have been represented and changed from the following elements such as national culture, gender, generation to each individual. The film director Lee also has hybrid identity so that he is good at representing various characters’ hybrid identities within two films. First, in the film of The Wedding Banquet, we can find out the Others who come across in hybrid boarder. In this film, there are two representative characteristics of hybridity such as eastern culture and western culture and heterosexuality and homosexuality. However, A. Lee does not insist for audiences to judge which is right. He just represents that each culture has its own characteristic. Second, in the film of Eat Drink Man Woman, there are hybrid individuals following to essential life. The father and four daughters have the difference between their identity and life style. Each person pursues different life goal to find out his/her inner identity including social and role identity. A. Lee utilizes the various chinese food in this film to represent these kind of hybridities that characters have, which are changing from traditional values to modern values or vice versa. He also does not concentrate on the special person but show their own hybrid values through their behaviour and selection. So we can say that these two films represent not hybrid cultures but hybrid individuals. Also A. Lee deals with these hybrid things from collision, conflict to harmony, recognition. Thus, we can call his works - The Wedding Banquet and Eat Drink Man Woman - bricolage in french.
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