Without a doubt, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (Wohu canglong, dir. Ang Lee, 2000,
hereafter CTHD) is one of the most noteworthy films of the beginning of the 21st century, not
only in Taiwan cinema but also in Chinese-language cinemas as a whole. Apart from its critical reputation, the film’s commercial triumph in the global film market was
unprecedented for Chinese-language films. Thus its production process and its content both became the focus of discourses on the film. The film also became, to some extent, a model for the development of Chinese-language cinema in the new millennium. CTHD was initially conceptualised by Taiwanese film talents; however, its production was primarily carried out by filmmakers outside of Taiwan. Still, the director Ang Lee’s Taiwanese background allows the film to be regarded as an example of Taiwan cinema and treated as a guopian, “national film” or domestic film, by the government of Taiwan and Taiwanese spectators, who could take pride in the director and his achievement in the international domain, even though on the practical level the involvement of Taiwanese filmmakers in the project was relatively limited. In Taiwan, both CTHD and Ang Lee were regarded as national icons that strengthened
national identity, and the international success of the film undeniably contributed to the consumption and reception of CTHD in Taiwan.
CTHD can be viewed not only as an object of national honour for Taiwan but also as one of the strategies of film production employed by Taiwanese filmmakers in response to the changing conditions of the globalising world. The film was produced by pooling
resources from various countries and achieved commercial success in several major markets. The case showed local filmmakers a possible way of making high-budget, high-quality films
70 capable of competing with their Hollywood rivals, capitalising on the transnational nature of production and consumption of films. The international success of CTHD, a quintessentially Chinese genre movie, is closely related to its production strategy, which was tailored to the taste of international as well as local spectators. Lee, a Taiwanese and diasporic Chinese filmmaker, transformed a local/regional cultural text into a global-friendly, or to be more precise, Western-friendly product, thereby allowing it to circulate more widely. That is, the development of the project reflects the increasing permeability of cultural boundaries and hybridity of cinematic texts. For Taiwan cinema, CTHD is a paradigmatic case of
international filmmaking collaboration targeting the global market. Its commercial success in the global market makes the film a benchmark of international co-production in Chinese- language cinema and represents not the conventional West-to-East cultural flow but rather the reverse; Ang Lee’s wuxia film could be understood as an effort by Oriental cultural goods to enter the Western mainstream market and as a cross-cultural dialogue between East and West in the age of globalisation. This chapter asks how far transnational connections are engaged in Ang Lee’s 2000 box office earner, in order to shed light on the relationship between Taiwan cinema and global cinema, and the influence of this “national film” on the
development of Taiwan cinema in the 21st century.
Diaspora and Diasporic Cinema
In the context of Chinese cinemas, CTHD can be seen as a pioneering transnational co- production aimed at Western as well as Chinese-speaking audiences. This is partly a
consequence of transnational connections in the career of its director Ang Lee. Lee’s complex diasporic status and experiences, it may be claimed, make him adept at making a crossover between Chinese-language and English-language cinemas and between auteur-oriented films
71 and commercial movies. These conditions enable him to produce global-friendly Chinese- language film texts which appeal to the taste of international mainstream audiences.
The term diaspora was initially used in a capitalised form to in particular refer to the exile and dispersion of the Jews and therefore signifies both “the oppression and moral degradation” (Safran, 1991: 83). Nonetheless, the concept has gradually been employed as “[a metaphoric designation] to describe different categories of people—expatriates, expellees, political refugees, alien residents, immigrants and ethnic and racial minorities tout court” (ibid., italics in original) in recent decades. Nevertheless, for William Safran (ibid.: 83-84), the myths of homeland, ethnocommunal consciousness and alienation from the host society could be common features characterising diaspora. Since the idea could be associated with the traumatic dispersal, the displaced experiences and the ethnic, cultural and linguistic minority status, a diaspora is often presumed to be marginalised, victimised, and powerless in terms of a centre-periphery perspective. Consequently, as Aihwa Ong (1999: 13) points out, “the unified moralism attached to subaltern subjects now also clings to diasporan ones, who are invariably assumed to be members of oppressed classes and therefore constitutionally opposed to capitalism and state power.” In this regard, diaspora discourse is implicitly political and critical and is associated with the power structure of the society where the diaspora dwell.
Nevertheless, the term diaspora seems to be used in an increasingly generalised way. According to Kim D. Butler (2001: 192), a scattering with the internal networks between different segments of the ethnic community, some relationship to an actual or imagined homeland, and self-awareness of the group’s identity are three characteristics distinguishing diaspora from other types of migrations. In today’s usage of the term diaspora, the migration of its members is not necessarily compelled or victimised. In fact, it could be voluntary. In addition, the change of the world’s cultural landscape caused by various factors, including the
72 decline of the state’s hegemony and an increase in transnational traffic, in the past few
decades has made diaspora a more flexible concept and widened the scholarship body in this field. Some subjects, such as transnational business movement and flexible status of diasporic communities have come to the attention of academia (Cohen, 2008; Ong, 1999). The term diaspora is used in an even broader sense as transnational flows rapid increase in the globalising process:
[T]he term “diaspora” has increasingly lost its paradigmatic association with exile from home and the myth of return, and has become much more widely and unspecifically used to describe the condition and experience of dispersion as such, which does not necessarily involve trauma and marginalization but also may entail empowerment, enrichment, and expansion. (Ien Ang, 2005: 83)
In general, the emphasis of scholarship on diaspora can be described as “on discursive and representational practices, (and) on how an individual or a whole community—be it in a literary text or in the world—feels about itself and ‘represents’ itself to itself and others.” (Tölölyan, 1996: 16) Some issues related to subjective experiences, such as the politics of identity and position, the diasporas’ relationship with the homeland and host country, and diasporic consciousness are topics diaspora discourse revolves around.
In terms of the discipline of cinema, diasporic filmmakers’ visual representation of a fragmented diasporic identity, migrants’ rootlessness, and the experience of dispersal has become a critical concern within academia. Hamid Naficy (2001: 14, 22) considers diasporic cinema a type of “accented cinema” besides exilic cinema and postcolonial ethnic cinema. Those accented filmmakers are the products of the “dual postcolonial displacement and postmodern or late modern scattering” caused by the decolonisation, the religious and ethnic wars, the desire of increased trade and work, or the growth of global economies (ibid.: 10-11). Diasporas are collective, and “the nurturing of a collective memory, often of an idealized homeland, is constitutive of the diasporic identity. This idealization may be state-based, involving love for an existing homeland, or it may be stateless, based on a desire for a
73 homeland yet to come” (Naficy, 2001: 14). As a result, return narratives are common in diasporic filmmakers’ works, and diasporic minority communities’ alienation, displacement, marginality, loneliness, and the ambivalent emotions attached to the diasporic homeland become recurrent motifs in diasporic films. These films speak for specific ethnic
communities rather than mainstream audiences, representing and underlining the specific experiences of these communities, the members of which are usually regarded as the others in host societies. Naficy’s idea conceptualises diasporic filmmaking in terms of a centre-
periphery framework. Diasporic filmmaking could be perceived as the self-articulation of the diasporic filmmakers, who are displaced from the periphery to the centre, or the First World, on the fringes of the centre through their capability of accessing the means of representation. Diasporic cinema can be viewed as an alternative form of cinematic practice and is associated with the peripheral position and cultural struggles of diaspora.
On the other hand, the members of diasporic communities could occupy a privileged position as globalisation progresses, due to their flexible and mobile status. The diaspora could possess greater multilingual ability, multicultural familiarity and sensitivity to the surrounding currents owing to their diasporic status and experiences and minority position; these advantages enable them to play a more flexible and favourable role in transnational networks and cross-border activities in the age of globalisation. As Naficy argues, “the power of these border shifters comes from their situationist existence, their familiarity with the cultural and legal codes of interacting cultures, and the way in which they manipulate identity and the asymmetrical power situations in which they find themselves” (2001: 32). In the age of globalisation, diasporas’ multiple and ambiguous identities and transnational dispersal could place them “in a better position to act as a bridge between the particular and the
universal” (Cohen, 2008: 148). It could also enable themto act as interlocutor in transnational
74 and its concomitant counter-tendency towards some features, such as the fragmentation and multiplication of identities and the revitalisation of nationalism (ibid.). Robin Cohen (ibid.: 154-155) maintains that various changes related to the technological, institutional and ideological aspects of globalisation process have “disproportionately advantaged” diasporas in a gradually de-territorialised world, inasmuch as they could more flexibly exploit these burgeoning opportunities to their own economic or cultural advantage with their
geographically dispersal, transnational ethnic and economic networks, cross-border abilities and cosmopolitan character.
The flexibility of diaspora is also stressed by Ong. She claims that “flexible citizenship”, referring to “the cultural logics of capitalist accumulation, travel, and displacement that induce subjects to respond fluidly and opportunistically to changing political-economic conditions” (1999: 6), has been developed as a strategy to help diasporic Chinese accumulate transnational capital and power. Flexible citizenship could be viewed as a strategy of
transnationalisation, localisation and mobile re-location, facilitating shifters’ positioning, negotiation and cultural acceptance in different sites and marketplaces. The idea indicates that the mobility, dispersal and multilingual capability of diaspora allow these mobile players to flexibly choose and change their advantageous sites for cultural or economic production. The transnational supportive networks they establish and transnational tangible and intangible wealth they amass could strengthen the diaspora’s position in the transnational and regional economic and social systems within the globalisation process. Although diasporic players’ accumulation of transnational capital and the flexibility are to some extent bound by social class and political and economic structure, the idea of flexibility and mobility could help delineate and expound the transnational and translingual filmmaking of the diasporic cultural elite, such as Ang Lee.
75 Diaspora has become a contentious term, for an increasing number of cases have come under its umbrella. However, its emphasis on the dispersal and relationship between the migrant and the homeland, either actual or imagined, makes this term still relevant to the case study of CTHD. Although the text of CTHD has nothing to do with traumatic event or
migrants’ displacement or return journey, Lee’s making of wuxia film and the transnational co-production process can be linked with diasporic homecoming, transnational network of diasporic Chinese and accumulation of transnational capital. Besides, Lee’s Chinese-
language filmmaking is always associated with both individual and collective experience of dispersal. Thus, the thesis will see CTHD as a film made by a diasporic director rather than simply a migrant director.
Transnational Connections in Ang Lee’s Career and His Cultural Translation
As a Chinese immigrant’s son born in Taiwan and a Taiwanese national residing in the United States, Ang Lee’s diasporic status is manifold. His complex diasporic experiences have not only facilitated his ability to make a crossover between Chinese-language and English-language cinemas but also allowed transnational connections to be embedded in his filmmaking trajectory, film texts and production mode. On the one hand, Lee is regarded as being second-generation of a Chinese diaspora born and raised in Taiwan, since his father emigrated to Taiwan with a flood of refugees as the defeat of the Kuomintang (KMT, aka Nationalist Party) army in the late 1940s. On the island, not only did the KMT regime’s “resinicisation” of Taiwan further restore and strengthen the cultural link between Taiwan and Chineseness, but the Taiwanese government’s official claim to be the real inheritor and protector of Chinese culture encouraged the promotion of mainland Chinese culture and Chinese identity in Taiwan. In this context, Lee’s works are rooted in Chinese cultural heritage, and his concern about the ideological contesting of Confucian doctrines and
76 patriarchal order can be discerned in his exploration of filial piety and familial relationships of contemporary diasporic Chinese society in his “Father-Knows-Best” trilogy, namely Pushing Hands (Tuishou, 1991), The Wedding Banquet (Xiyan, 1993) and Eat Drink Man Woman (Yinshi nannü, 1994, hereafter EDMW).
Besides, Lee’s transnational connection with America has fundamentally contributed to his translingual career and the development of his transnational co-production approach. Lee received his formal theatre and filmmaking education at the University of Illinois and New York University (Chang, J., 2002: 42-47); later basing himself in New York to build his career, forging a strong and long-time partnership with American colleagues, in particular those at Good Machine International (GMI), a New York-based firm good at producing and marketing independent films. Since his directorial debut Pushing Hands, Lee has worked closely with James Schamus, an American film producer, screenwriter and co-founder of GMI. In 1990, Lee won not only the top two prizes at the Excellent Film Screenplay Award from Taiwan’s Government Information Office (GIO) for his two screenplays, Pushing Hands and The Wedding Banquet, but also the support of Hsu Li-kong, the then Vice General Manager of the Central Motion Picture Corporation (CMPC) in Taiwan, for his filmmaking (ibid.: 68-70). After CMPC gave him US$480,000 to produce Pushing Hands (ibid.: 78), Lee collaborated with Schamus and GMI to make the film in New York. The critical and
commercial success of the film in Taiwan in 1991 earned him national fame and furthered his career. Instead of portraying nativist themes, Pushing Hands and The Wedding Banquet are based on his diasporic experience and were filmed in New York; both of them, together with EDMW, backed by CMPC, produced through Taiwanese–American co-production and promoted through the international film festival circuit. Hence diasporic status has enabled transnational connections to be embedded in Lee’s film content and filmmaking. The
77 connections with the international cultural economy, and follow a career trajectory distinct from his Taiwanese counterparts.
The ‘“Father-Knows-Best” trilogy offers less local colour and native sentiment in relation to his Taiwanese contemporaries’ films in general, notwithstanding that the trilogy is still to a certain extent related to life experiences of Taiwanese people. Song Hwee Lim (2012: 131) points out that, unlike most Taiwan New Cinema (TNC) directors, Lee deals with
diasporic experience outside Taiwan in his early works instead of the society, history and modernity of Taiwan. The “Father-Knows-Best” trilogy could be read as Lee’s representation of the diasporic experiences of contemporary ethnic Chinese and his double displacement, including that from mainland China to Taiwan and from Taiwan to the United States (ibid.: 132). Lee acknowledges that the question of identity has always troubled him:
People like me, second-generation mainlanders from Taiwan, are a rare breed . . . Although in the back of my mind I consider myself a genuine Chinese, I think I still have a problem with identity. But we [Taiwanese from the mainland] are drifting away,
and I don’t know who this “identity” belongs to in the end.17 (Berry, 2005: 331-332)
In this sense, the “Father-Knows-Best” trilogy can be understood as both Lee’s reflection of displacement and alienation of Chinese diaspora in America and Taiwan and his
reconsideration of the negotiation between modernity, Western values, tradition, Confucian ethics, and Chinese patriarchy through immigrant themes.
Lee can be regarded as the only Taiwanese auteur most of whose works have succeeded in both local and foreign film markets. Since he takes into account spectators’ taste in the process of film development, his films are relatively easy to digest for viewers, compared to those of his Taiwanese counterparts, such as Hou Hsiao-hsien and Tsai Ming-liang. As for
17 Apart from Taiwanese abronigies, Han Chinese people constitute nearly 98% of the population of Taiwan according to the Ministry of the Interior (2013b). Taiwan’s Han Chinese people could be roughly divided into three ethnic groups: the Hoklo, the Hakka and mainlanders. Taiwanese Hoklo and Hakka are the so-called native Taiwanese (bensheng ren), for their ancestors immigrated to Taiwan before the Japanese colonial period. Mainlander (waisheng ren) refers to people moving to Taiwan from the mainland after the mid-1940s and their descendants.
78 the local film market, although diasporic identity and displacement are not collective
experiences for the Taiwanese and not all the critical and commercial performance of films of “Father-Knows-Best” trilogy came up to Lee’s expectations, all of them were among the top five films from Taiwan at the Taipei box office in each year (Chinese Taipei Film Archive, 1993: 152-157; Chen, 1995: 111). Whilst tackling some sensitive themes in ethnic Chinese society, such as homosexuality and patriarchy, in these films, Lee handled them with a more cautious and lighter touch. Lee’s reconsideration of traditional patriarchy is to remind Chinese-speaking viewers that Chinese traditions can be flexible and adaptable rather than fixed and unchanging, and his humorous and dramatic narrative and some untypical and unconventional plots capture their attention. These conditions helped them to entertain mainstream audiences and to interest emerging identity communities in Taiwan in the early 1990s.
Moreover, the popularity of Lee’s Chinese-language films can be attributed to Lee’s flexible filmmaking. Ong (1999: 6) asserts that flexible citizenship allows diaspora to be more capable of responding to changing political and economic conditions and of grasping economic opportunities. Drawing on Ong’s idea, Shu-mei Shih (2007: 59-60) claims that diasporic director Ang Lee adopts in his filmmaking a strategy of flexibility and
translatability, so that the local culture is flexibly encoded and translated into a form which can be readily decoded and consumed by Western viewers. On the one hand, the popularity of Lee’s films in Taiwan can be owed to nationalism, apart from factors mentioned above. The commercial success of the “Father-Knows-Best” trilogy in Taiwan partly indicated the desire of the Taiwanese to be accepted by global society. Since the 1980s, the increasing