Martial Arts Fiction and Film response
Please read the essay on Ang Lee's film Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon for Tuesday and the essay on the Jin Yong Phenomenon for Thursday. Martial arts fiction and film have occupied an important position in Chinese popular culture and are still central to many forms of popular media. The author proposes a reading of Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon as a work of "diasporic cinema" in the first essay. Was the author convincing in making this argument? What might be some of the most interesting evidences you can locate after reading it? The second essay on the Jin Yong Phenomenon starts with the film Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon and argues for a broader approach beyond martial arts fiction in the long and varying traditions of Chinese story-telling, Mandarin Ducks and Butterflies fiction, and New Literary movements. What interests you most in this essay? How might it relate to issues we've discussed in this class so far? Use textual evidences (quotes with page numbers) to support your responses. Due Wednesday March 5 by 11:59 pm for one extra credit.
The production of Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon was extremely global with Hollywood practice, including many international entertainment companies like Taiwanese company, Hong Kong films company, Sony, Columbia Pictures and other companies and international investment from Paris, Los Angeles, Shanghai, etc. Even though the Crouching Tiger’s production was global, I think the author was convincing in making the argument that the film as a work of “diasporic cinema”. I found these interesting evidences for this argument: First, the background of this story was set in the jiang hu during the Qing dynasty; second, the main theme of the film is about the tension between Chinese Taoism and Confucian sense; third, all of the actors and even the director Ang Lee, are ethnic Chinese; fourth, the film was shooting in a lot of typical and beautiful landscape in mainland China, including west, north and south China; fifth, the film was narrated in Mandarin. “In its visual and narrative content, Crouching Tiger comes across as a resolutely “local” film- that is, a product of China’s unique history, culture, values, and aesthetic traditions.”(p.18, Christina Klein) I think this quote is a good conclusion for those evidences. Although the author also gives the different critiques from Elley, I think the author was convincing that this film is a transitional “diasporic cinema”.
ReplyDeleteJin Yong Phenomenon starts with telling difference between the film Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon and Jin Yong’s martial novels. The author posed a question that “why did Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon put many an audience member in Shanghai to sleep when it was shown in China?” (p.2, Huss and Liu) First, I want to answer this question in my own views, I watched the Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon when I was in high school, and I stopped watching it in midway on playing. I couldn’t remember any plots about this film except for the pictures on its theme song, but I can tell you about most of Jin Yong’s martial stories clearly, and I think most Chinese young people like my age have same situation. In the reading, the author compares with Ang Lee’s jiang hu and Jin Yong’s jiang hu, and gives examples about it. Jin Yong’s description of jianghu: “not the bamboo forest of the Wu Dang Viewers saw upon the screen- brought Chinese from politically, geographically, and culturally diverse places together to worship the telltale remnants of traditional Chinese culture.” (p.2, Huss and Liu) I think this sentence interest me most in this essay, because it is a good explanation to why is Jin Yong so popular in China.
I think you are right, in this film, the actors use Mandarin, from this point, we know that this is a local film.
DeleteChristina Klein proposes a reading of Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon as a work of "diasporic cinema" in the first essay. While the film appears entirely Chinese, there are many influences from the different cultural domains. The author demonstrates how the film uses its first universe chinese base. The film covers many locations in China. Also, many of the actors are famous Chinese stars. The dialogue is exclusively in mandarin. But while all of this chineseness makes the film seem authentic, there are many foreign influences. Klein states, “Crouching Tiger's production, in contrast, was astoundingly global” (p19). The producer of the film, American James Schamus, is from the third cultural universe. He wrote much of the screenplay in English. Also, much of the financing and promotion followed Hollywood practices. Production of Crouching Tiger involved five different companies in five countries. Plus, we can place Ang Lee in the second cultural realm, because he lives New York and works using a Taiwanese company. I agree with the authors conclusion that Crouching Tiger can be read as a diasporic work in that it is materially grounded in multiple physical locations, has multiple aesthetic affiliations, and fails to map neatly onto
ReplyDeletea single nation-state in its mass appeal.
The second essay on the Jin Yong Phenomenon argues that Crouching Tiger and other Yong novels embody traditional fiction other than the martial arts genre. The author states the fact that “the martial arts novel has always been considered a marginal member of chinese literature” (p2). The author mentions the Literati of the May Fourth movement pushed away from such base fiction and changed Chinese literature in favor of a European tradition. But the success of Jin Yong’s stories are examples of mass popular culture moving against the opinion of the elites. The author states, “the success of Jin Yong’s novels in the later half of the century has greatly challenged the traditional (elite) view of ‘obsolete’ native literary tradition” (p8). The martial arts genre is then a revival of native literature like mandarin ducks. The author also mentions that in the cultural space of Hong Kong, the martial arts novels might have emerged in resistance to colonization. The authentic martial arts tradition could have been another outlet for popular culture to flourish against an imposed foreign culture (p10).
I like your citation from page 8.
DeleteI like how you explained Jin Yong's influence as a cultural movement and how it continues to be successful because his work challenges the mindset of the "elite" in terms of how the martial arts genre should be viewed.
DeleteI liked the points you made about Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon being a diasporic film.
DeleteI think that the movie crouching tiger hidden dragon is indeed a work of diasporic cinema, and I think that the author was also convincing in making this argument. I was previously unaware of the intense level of cultural differences between the different diasporic communities, however this essay helped enlighten me about this issue. One major cultural schism that I didn't know about before was how in hong kong there was never one unified hong kong movie making industry, rather it was divided by dialect. With mandarin being the previous dominating presence in the hong kong film industry and it eventually being supplanted by the cantonese movie industry.
ReplyDelete"Significantly, Hong Kong's Mandarin-language films are themselves best understood in diasporic terms. Filmmaking in Hong Kong has historically been organized into two parallel industries, one making films in the mainland Mandarin language and the other in the local Cantonese dialect" (page 24)
I think what interested me the most in the second piece was the concept of ouhua and also its opposite in the form of anti-europeanized writing.
"interestingly, the success of jinyongs novels in the later half of the century has greatly challenged the traditional view of the obselete native literary tradition; more importantly, Jin's success urges us to reexamine the influence of western-influenced modern discourse in modern chinese literary history."
Although there is one problem with this writing, which is that I frequently found the explanation provided of the concepts being discussed rather ambiguous and hard to follow. However I think I generally got the gist of what anti-europeanized writing is, I think it is supposed to be a more generalized shift away from notions and ideas carrying the weight of "western hegemony", towards more indigenous, uniquely chinese ways of expression. While reading this I also began to wonder if this mindset also expresses itself in on a more technical and mundane level as well. For example, modernized chinese language makes sense of western punctuation and text orientation. (IE modern chinese is horizontal and read from left to right while traditional chinese was written in vertical columns and intended to be read from right to left.) While outwardly, this appears to be an insignificant change, I can't help but wonder if perhaps the way in which you read things or the order in which you read things may actually change the way in which you interpret and understand things.
It is interesting how you described the cultural difference in how we read things may change our perception of what is being read. If a Westerner who is fluent in Chinese who is able to read vertical columns gain a different perspective as if read in Horizontal English columns brings an interesting thought to this weeks discussion.
DeleteThe author was convincing in his argument that Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon was a diasporic film. He says that the making of this moving is symbolic of Lee coming back to his homeland and returning to his roots, the definition of diaspora. Lee had only visited the mainland once, and incorporated a wholistic ideal of Chinese culture into the film instead of a very “northern” or “southern” style that would be typical of mainland directors. The production of the film included many players from different rings of Chinese diaspora. There were some mainland mandarin speaking actors, Cantonese speaking Hong Kong natives, and many people who were born and raised outside of China in the third ring such as Yo-Yo Ma. The movie was even produced with the help of the Japanese company Sony. The author uses a movie he had seen to illustrate the contrast between the diasporic vision of China and the modern China, saying that the diaspora’s vision is cloaked in traditional robes, while the modern China wears a miniskirt pg. 37.
ReplyDeleteI thought it was very interesting that literature that clung to the old Chinese tradition of writing was not considered real literature by the literati after the May Fourth movement. The only type of writing that was considered literature was writing for revolutionary purposes and the beauty in crafting the language itself disappeared pg. 8. Jin Yong kept to writing in an anti-Europeanized language and using Chinese literary traditions. This goes along with the dichotomy between lowbrow writing and literati literature that we have been discussing in class. I also found Rey Chow’s interpretation of Jin Yong’s novels very interesting. She said that ignoring the current cultural state of the state and writing nostalgic traditional stories leads to disillusionment and makes “the Chinese identity inauthentic.” Pg. 11.
I agree with your point of view, the film is not the true sense of the "northern" or "southern" style, director‘s purpose is to convey an entire culture.
DeleteI think I understand your point, and I agree with it. I believe in the important of consistency and awareness, thus I think that it is important to take modern cultural considerations into account when rendering tales of the past.
DeleteI liked the points you made about Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon being a diasporic film. You mentioned that Lee had only visited the mainland once, and incorporated ''a wholistic ideal of Chinese culture into the film''.
DeleteIn the article "Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon", the author introduces the film directed by Ang Lee. The author proposes a reading of Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon as a work of "diasporic cinema" in the first article. in fact, when we read to the end of the article, we can find some evidence to prove it,” a work of diasporic cinema ". First of all, we know that this film is by a Chinese director, the actors are Chinese. In this movie, it not only is broad and profound Chinese Wushu, the traditional culture of Chinese was displayed. This movie is different from other martial arts film, in this film; we're not sure who the true hero is. The director in the movie, with emphasis on the concept of "Jiang Hu", and the language and expressions of each character deeply. We can see China ancient city scene and landscape features in the film. We also know, the film is produced by different companies in many countries. At page 19, it shows “Crouching Tiger’s production, in contrast, was astoundingly global.” From this point we can see that, the making of this film is strong.
ReplyDeleteWe know that Ang Lee was born in Taiwan, and he had lived for a time in the USA. In fact, I think, a personal’s understanding of a thing based on the time of his contact for this thing. In Ang Lee's film had into the western thoughts, compared to Jin Yong, Ang Lee was not focus on martial arts creation. The reason so many people like the works of Jin Yong: he knew what the old martial arts. Jin Yong knows that more people like what kind of martial arts works. We can find the answer in this paper. At page 9, it shows “Jin Yong’s writings responded to a specific and unprecedented historical situation in which the colonial and the global overlapped.”
I think your second paragraph is very great, how Ang Li and Jin Yong focus on different things.
DeleteI agree with the fact that "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" is a very different compared to other Chinese films. Ann Lee's use of both Chinese and American elements made the movie very unique and completely one of a kind.
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ReplyDeleteKungfu is one of the most important thing that represents China. back in the time, when Bruce Lee came to American, he shocked the US. that is when Chinese Kungfu became famous around the world. There is an intersting thing that I found after I came here, most American i know here that are into Chinese Kungfu films has watched more older Chinese films than I have ever did. For example, I honestly have never seen one of Bruce Lee's films. Jackie Chan and Jet Li have also done a great job on it.
ReplyDeleteI have never watched the movie"Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon", only some clips of it. but I have read a lot of Jin Yong's work. I really liked it. First of all, he used older version of Chinese in the book, it just make you really into the different scenes in the stories. also, as a Chinese, here I mean he was born in China, and raised in China. Not like the director of "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon", Ann Li. He has lived in the US for a long time, so in his work, it combined the Chinese mind and the US mind in there, Im not saying its not good, I mean I think Jin Yong's work is more "traditional".
Also, Dr. Luo mentioned in class that some of the actors in 'Crouching Tigers, Hidden Dragon' are not raised in China, so their oral language is not that great, so sometime they cannot express the feeling and the emotions really well. and I think that is the reason why this film is not as big as films like "heros". And it is not as big as Jin Yong's work.
thats a good perspective on why jin yong had a different understanding of those kinds of stories compared to ang lee. I think to most non-chinese people, we just think of ang lee as being chinese, when in actuality his identity is more complex than that, thus making it difficult for us to understand that ang lee's cultural output will naturally be different than a chinese person who grew up in china.
DeleteI also like Jin Yong's work, because I think he really wrote about martial works and Wu Xia novels while Ang Lee more likely to show the art of martial works, and Ang Lee's martial work are more commercial.
DeleteI agree with you when you say that kungfu is one of the most significant aspects of China. I also agree with you when you say that Ann Li used both his Chinese and US mind to create the film, "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon."
DeleteThe film, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon is described as a “diasporic cinema” because the author describes Lee’s participation in this film as a “homecoming of sorts” (page 24). This is described as being the Chineseness of mainland China. Lee wanted to bring his skills in martial arts as a representation of his experience when he visited mainland China. He being “Taiwanese” further presents this as a “diasporic cinema” because we have a non-mainland of China embodying the culture of China through martial arts. I believe another aspect that shows this is a diasporic cinema is due to the introduction of wu xia. This term means sword play martial arts where masters of different weaponry fight one another. Wu xia is considered to be more choreographed to show beauty and fluidity in martial arts films. It is this change from traditional films because it takes elements of traditional Chinese martial arts and makes it appeal to a Western audience. It was described in class as a “musical break” from the plot.
ReplyDeleteI really enjoyed the points of the Jin Yong Phenomenon because it is telling readers that martial arts film after the 90’s have seen more success is because the story-telling of martial arts in a diasporic sense and how it is being presented in films is becoming broader. This explains why the Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon had such success in the West because there is a lesser appeal to Traditional Chinese Martial Arts and more focus on a local representation because it had Taiwanese actors, production from Hong Kong, and the presentation of locations in eastern, western, southern, and northern, China. What interests me most is how diasporic viewers of the New Literature of Chinese Martial Arts Films are more concerned with the level of martial arts and not necessarily the plot of the film. It is easy to lose what is happening with the story when beautifully choreographed fight scenes that appeal to the Western eyes.
I agree with you that another aspect that shows this is a diasporic cinema is due to the introduction of Wu Xia. When I read this short essay, I didn't consider this is a reason for "diasporic cinema".
DeleteI believe the author was convincing in demonstrating how “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon” could be considered a diasporic film. The author mentioned how Lee was influenced by both Chinese culture and Hollywood helped shape the film (pg1). The movie was filmed in mainland China and “offers stunning visas of mainland China”. The film’s actors/actresses were also “ethnic Chinese and several are major stars in East Asia”. Besides having been filmed in China, and produced in Mandarin, the film can’t really be considered a “Chinese” film. The author mentioned “Production of Crouching Tiger involved five different companies in five countries” (pg 3). There were many Chinese elements that inspired the work of the director, but he also got inspiration from Western “elements” as well. This is shown in the following quote; “Lee saw the Chinese element as the Lego pieces of the martial arts genre—the characters, the narrative, the setting, the active—while the Western element consisted of putting these pieces together in a way that fully developed narrative and psychologically complex characters.” (pg 15)
ReplyDeleteWhat I found most interesting in ''The Jin Yong Phenomenon'' was the suggestion that martial arts were a form of resistance against foreign influence; ''One may assume that this special genre emerged in Hong Kong simply in resistance to colonial discourse.'' (pg 9) I also found it interesting that martial arts were considered a way to hold onto their Chinese identity; which is shown in the quote ''the martial arts genre belongs to the Chinese native literary tradition, a tradition which inevitably appears as an authentic space for Chinese identity in the colonial context'' (pg 9). All of this reminded me about the earlier reading material that we had discussed. This is the same as the four Chinese folk tales, when we trace back the source on historical records. What we believed to be part of traditional Chinese culture passed on by generation to generation turned out to be mostly invented in modern China. I think that martial arts were made to present a better picture of China, and Chinese culture; the same way that older Chinese stories such as ''White Snake'' were re-written to appeal to a larger audience and show a better side of ancient China. I think the following quote is a good example; ''the fictional imagination of a masculinized martial arts metaphorically satisfied Chinese readers' dreams of a strong and independent nation.''(pg 9).
While reading the Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon film article, I noticed the beautiful style that Ang Lee intended for the audiences. His use of martial arts and the way he incorporated different elements from his hometown and mainland China into the story were done quite well. I really liked this quote from the article, "In addition to its critical and financial success, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon
ReplyDeleteis significant for the way it displays the simultaneously localizing and globalizing
tendencies of mass culture today" It really emphasizes the amount of detail that was put into the films aesthetic and martial arts elements. It really kept the importance and significance of martial arts throughout the film.