Ang Lee and Siao Yu as the Face of Taiwanese Identity: Social Sciences Essay

Ang Lee and Siao Yu
as the
Face of Taiwanese Identity
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[date]Introduction
Every person on earth has identification that tells to what group does a person belongs. Different existing systems and communities classify people from birth to the time that person can freely decide whether to change or not. Some of these classifications are religious, cultural, ethnic, racial, social, sexual, generational, and many more that emerge every passing time. These divisions are what makes the world diverse of people. As among the influence of diversity, cultural and racial differences are sometimes the subject of literary works and teachings. Because despite being diverse some dominate and some are mediocre, literature positively encourages diversity. The superior-inferior mindset is what the literary works are trying to challenge. Films, TV shows, books, and other forms of literature use diversity as themes to open the discussion on the existence of other cultures and systems. In this paper let us discuss a movie and a reading material that carries the theme of cultural differences.
A Reading on Ang Lee’s Trilogy
Sheng-mei Ma (1996) has written an analysis on Ang Lee's trilogy (Pushing Hands; Wedding Banquet; Eat Drink Man Woman) and his genre, tragicomedy. The paper emphasizes three subtopics (immigrant nostalgia, exotic/ethnic tour, and global market) that discover Lee's role as a filmmaker in an international scene. Ang Lee is a natural-born Taiwanese who pursued an advanced degree at New York University. His western education has since influenced him to create films that bring the nostalgic feeling of immigrants towards their native home. The paper then discusses Lee's trilogy Pushing Hands, Wedding Banquet, and Eat Drink Man Woman which all depict immigrant life and cultural conflict within immigrant families. As Lee's genre is a tragicomedy, the trilogy all develops the families' misfortunes brought by the western culture mixed with their native (Taiwanese) identity. It is in these conflicts where the nostalgia is incorporated in. Lee wants to make films that make the western the spectator and the non-western feeling the nostalgia and familiarity (Ma, 1996).
Ma's (1996) paper is among those works of literature that takes pride in talking about cultures and creations other than western. The paper's discussion of Lee's work underscores the competence of the works of a...