Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon Became

¶ … Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" became the biggest foreign-language film ever at the American box office (even topping Roberto Benigni's "Life Is Beautiful"). It won ten Oscar nominations, including best foreign picture and best picture and earned $200 million worldwide. The genre of martial arts is well-known in the United States and has a considerable following. However, "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" appealed to larger audiences because of the fantasy element integrated with fight scenes, graceful martial arts, feminism, mixture of Eastern and Western philosophy, and special effects. However, while the Americans lavish praise on the film, Chinese critics see the plot as hackneyed with stereotyped characters. Literature on the topic of this film and others of a similar genre provide insight into the impact on Western viewers regarding views on Chinese culture.

Zhang (2005, pg. 263) notes how "Chinese folklore has played a key role in reconstructing or reinforcing stereotypes toward Chinese culture and people since the 1980s, which is particularly apparent through those films popular in the West." To Sharon Sherman (1998) folkloric film's fundamental goal is to document humans or mirror their own lives, whether from the point-of-view of the filmmaker, producer, editor, or viewers. Zhang (pg. 264) defines filmic folklore, as "an imagined folklore that exists only in films, and is a folklore or folklore-like performance that is represented, created, or hybridized in fictional film." The films with folklore elements appear like memories, fantasies or dreams that represent a folklore that the viewers think is theirs, but one with which they cannot interact.

Similarly, Lueng (2001, pg. 42) states that "Crouching Tiger" contains many pleases audiences with "a timeless tale of self-fulfillment and unfulfilled longing; a haunting original score; spectacular fighting sequences that effectively combine pith with grace, and numerous beautiful scenic shots of China's ancient relics and mountainous landscapes." "Crouching Tiger" in large degree is due to the juxtaposition of Eastern and Western knowledge, wisdom, and tradition. Leung also stresses the unreal quality of the film as he quotes director Ang Lee as saying "The film is a kind of dream of China, a China that probably never existed, except in my childhood fantasies in Taiwan"

Katz (2006) notes from a psychoanalytic view that when movie-goers are thrilled by imagery portraying transcendence, they are drawn into a world of imagination more often inhabited only in dreams of flying. The drive toward free and expansive movement that such dreams portray does not require explanation in terms of symbolic links to other aims, but it is a basic aim, in itself, integral to ego development. The developing child could not begin to organize perception, intention, and a coherent sense of self without this drive to move.

Klein (2004, pg. 19) emphasizes the mixture of different cultures and its impact on critics: "The simultaneously global and local nature of 'Crouching Tiger' has led many viewers to grapple with the film's national-cultural identity. Some tried to wish this complexity away by identifying the film in singular terms as a Chinese, Hong Kong, Taiwanese, or even Hollywood movie."

In Klein's article (2005, pg. 20), she quotes the critics' negative regarding the lack of authenticity. Derek Elley, who reviews Asian films for Variety emphasized the film's global identity and saw the film via a model of cultural imperialism, dismissing it as "cleverly packaged chop suey... designed primarily to appeal to a general Western clientele." Elley condemned the film as culturally inauthentic, arguing that its Asianness was fatally corrupted by its use of Western cinematic conventions. He slammed Lee as a cultural chameleon and international filmmaker who just happens to be from Taiwan but does not belong in the canon of Asian filmmakers. In Elley's eyes, "Crouching Tiger" embodied Hollywood's colonization of the martial arts genre and its power to render invisible the true Chinese artistry of earlier directors such as King Hu of Hong Kong. This charge of inauthenticity was echoed by genre specialists who complained about the actors' lack of real martial arts skill, academics who questioned the historical accuracy of the costumes and setting, and native-Mandarin speakers who winced at some of the actors' pronunciation and errors in subtitles. These linguistic problems troubled Mandarin speakers worldwide, many who had the perception that this was not a "real" Chinese movie.

On the other hand, there are those who laud the interculturalism and new world approach to the film. Prashad (2003, pg.80) decries scholars who believe they are obligated to criticize the diversity model of multiculturalism and replace it with the antiracist one of polyculturalism. Prashad emphasizes that culture cannot be bounded and people be asked to respect "culture" as if it existed without history and complexity. Social interaction and struggle produce cultural worlds, which are in constant, fraught, formation and linked in myriad ways. "It is from these linkages that we hope our politics will be energized," he argues.

The Third World may be in distress where the will of the national liberation movements has put the tendency to anti-imperialism in crisis, and the Third World within the United States where the dynamic of the color-blind and of the desire to make small, individual gains over social transformation has overrun society." History is made in struggle, and our enchanted memory of the past perhaps helps our fights over social justice today and makes it possible to move into a fresh tomorrow.

Zhu (2002) went one step further to determine the impact of the film on the viewers. She, too, notes the conflict between the critics on how they viewed the film and its authenticity, or lack there of. She notes that the American critics lavished praise on its feminist theme, but the Chinese critics see the plot as hackneyed with stereotyped characters. The American critics believe the females represent the conflict between traditional and modern values, yet the Chinese critics either see these women solely as entertainment or equate their struggles that exist with everyone between personal desire and social obligations. Zhu questioned, "To what extent are these professional film critics' responses expert ones? What factors influence their opinions? How do the Chinese and American audiences view the film? How do their views resemble or differ from those of experts?"

Zhu (2002) asked two groups of Harvard University graduate to fill out a questionnaire. One group consisted of twenty American students without a background in China; the other consisted of twenty Chinese students who had been in the U.S. For less than one year. All saw the film within one year. Her questions included, What do you think of the three major female characters? Which one do you like most? Does their experience have relevance to real life situations, or do you see the characters more in terms of fantasy? Is there a message? How would you define the key points in the story? What do you think to be the theme of the film? Do you think of the film in terms of feminism or not? The responses of each group were summarized and examined against the views of film critics and the director.

A similar difference existed between the American and Chinese subjects' thoughts on the film (Zhu, 2002). The American subjects liked the film, whereas the Chinese subjects did not. Like the critics, they referred back to the original novel and its cultural purpose and thus their expectations for the film. Those reading the book deplored the characters' lackluster portrayal. They argued that female characters are abundant in many Chinese popular novels and films and are no deeper than the female heroines in other martial arts films in her struggle for freedom and equality. In addition, Jen's character development is curtailed.

The original novel relates the story of Jen from her birth to natural death over a 60-year period. The film's two-year framework does not allow the character to evolve believably from a gentle and obedient daughter of a minister, to an ambitious and willful thief, to a desperate person who finally commits suicide. This, say the students and film critics, adds to the film's failure to elicit audience's various sentiments toward the vicissitudes of life, a highly prized aesthetic experience in Chinese culture.