Methods of Maintaining Power

Methods of Maintaining Power

                Before I even start, I need to make it clear that I am going to approach the question, ‘How do those in power stay in power? ‘ in as unbiased of a way as I possibly can. I know that it is impossible for anyone to completely remove his own bias, but I will do my best to do so. Thus I am going to focus on how power structures are maintained and not talk about the actual issues that these systems create. And although there are plenty of historical examples, I will again avoid them. Luckily, the films we viewed this semester are good examples of numerous strategies of maintaining power and preventing change. Specifically, I will be focusing on the films The Big Boss, Raise the Red Lantern, Ikiru, and Mononoke Hime.

                Part of the problem of talking about things like power is that the language necessary to do so is incredibly problematic. To begin, much rhetoric on topics of power and freedom are filled with buzz words and loaded language. And, to make things worse, most people don’t even have the same definition, conception, or understanding of the words used in conversations on power (or on any serious topic, for that matter).

 The complexity of the world we live in makes it difficult to give a singular definition to anything, and power is no exception. The explanation I am about to give is just that: an explanation. There are more than one type of power, but my explanation should be good enough for the purposes of this essay. Power, generally speaking, is derived from freedom. Freedom is another one of those words that has many definitions and interpretations. Although I don’t agree with a lot of what he said, I will borrow from Anti-Dühring Fredrick Engels’s definition of freedom : “Freedom does not consist in any dreamt-of independence from natural laws, but in the knowledge of these laws, and in the possibility this gives of systematically making them work towards definite ends.” In other words, if you understand the environment you are in and you how you can use this understanding of the world to change said environment, you have freedom. Power is acting on this freedom and actually changing the world you are a part of. Everyone has power. But, some people have more power than others by limiting the freedom of others. By controlling or manipulating other people to your own ends instead of theirs, power can be gained and then kept.

In sum, power is utilizing your own freedom to change your environment. Power becomes a negative force when it is utilized to abolish or limit the freedom of others for the expansion of freedom (and thus a potential expansion of power) of the self.

This is not to say that power cannot to be used for mutual benefit. It can. When in numbers, the power of each individual stacks to create a larger power. Co-operation is the key to change. Communities and societies are just that: groups of co-operating individuals bringing about change. Sometimes, when those with more power abuse said power at the detriment of the rest of the community, the community’s collective power can be utilized to bring about change that is beneficial to the whole. However, this seizure of power is sometimes not favored by those at the top of the power structure. Thus, in order to protect their power and status, those in power often work to stop unauthorized co-operation.

This leads us back to our original question. How does one remain in power once they have power? Fear. Fear is an incredibly powerful motivator. We have all done ridiculous things out of fear. While what a person is afraid of is entirely unique to that person, that is not to say there is not a deeper cause of our fears that can be exploited.

In The Big Boss, Hsiao Mi, AKA “The Big Boss”, does just that. The Big Boss demonstrates a very simple technique that can be used in the preservation of power. He hurts people. But, that isn’t really what he is doing. He’s doing more than just hurting people - he is getting them to fear him. Most humans don’t just fear pain, they hate it. We go to great lengths to avoid it. Pain is a reminder of our mortality; it reminds us that we are going to die. So, when The Big Boss orders violence on others, he is invoking the fear of death. When The Big Boss shows off how much of a better fighter he is, he isn’t showing off how manly he is, or how great he is, or how fearless he is. No, The Big Boss is merely reminding everyone that he can kill them if he wants to. They live because he lets them live.

In one scene, we see The Big Boss shoots what appears to be either a hot ember or a dart into the breast of a young woman. And, the prostitute that spends the night with Cheng Chao-an, Bruce Lee’s character, explains that The Big Boss shoots the girls that stay with him when they do something ‘wrong’. Her naked breast was covered in black, circular scars. This wasn’t a show of power. The Big Boss was training these women like they were dogs. By using small amounts of pain, or even just the fear of that pain, The Big Boss maintained control over these women to a startling degree. He scarred them to remind them who is in charge, who they are subservient to.

                Of course, exploiting the fear of pain and death is not the only tactic that The Big Boss utilized throughout the course of the film. At one point, the workers of the ice factory decide to strike. So, the order went out to the boss’s thugs to break up this newly formed union. But, thanks to the determination of the workers and Cheng Chao-an’s fists, their pseudo-union survives, and Cheng becomes their unofficial leader. Violence has apparently failed for The Big Boss.

                So, the Big Boss gives in. But only a tiny bit. He doesn’t actually attempt to meet the worker’s demands. Instead he does two things. First, he offers piecemeal agreements to the workers. This action not only makes the workers feel like he is on their side, but it also take the wind out of their sails. With no one to be angry at, and a slight feeling of accomplishment of having gotten something done (even though it wasn’t at all close to what they were hoping would get done), the union weakens. Union organization slows.

                The second action that The Big Boss takes is to promote Cheng. On the outside, this appears like a great thing for the workers. Now, they have a person on the inside! They have someone to stand up for them in the closed door meetings they aren’t allowed into. But, that is not the reality. Instead, Cheng becomes the scapegoat for all the problems that the workers now face. If something doesn’t get done, it gets blamed on Cheng. He is, after all, their leader. But, how can Cheng represent the workers properly if he is no longer a worker? How can he be trusted by his former co-workers, now his underlings? This creates infighting. Co-operation stops. Their power dissipates. The union fails. Change is prevented. The power structure remains relatively unchanged for at least a little bit longer.

                Although The Big Boss showed how effective promoting leaders can be for breaking up co-operating groups, it has nothing on Raise the Red Lantern. Master Chen demonstrated to a chilling degree how privileges can separate communities. In Raise the Red Lantern there were numerous groups of people living, working, and interacting in the same space. However, there was a clearly defined hierarchy that is visible throughout the entire movie. On the bottom there are the maids, then the personal maids to the concubines, then the male workers who were most commonly seen lighting the lanterns, then the concubines, then the female children of the concubines, then the male children, and finally Master Chen himself. Each step up the ladder grants more and more privilege, until you get to Master Chen, the one with real, almost absolute power.

                Now, what makes this difficult is that, again, if ANY of the groups had united and stood their ground, the whole plot would have ground to a halt and real change would have been possible. But, this was not the case. Instead, each group competed within itself in the hope of achieving more power. Yan’er was probably not the only maid that was jealous of the concubines. It wouldn’t be a stretch to imagine even the older maids to have been in Yan’er’s shoes when they were younger. They all worked hard so they could keep their jobs at the compound. But, they also dreamt of the lavish lifestyle the concubines had. Although there wasn’t much focus on the male workers, there is no way they weren’t jealous of the Master’s four wives and massive wealth. This might be a difficult concept for some people, but not having to work is a privilege. Leisure was the symbolic red lantern for the servants of the compound.

                The concubines, on the other hand, fought not for leisure, but for control over their own lives. The women quarreled to see who could get the red lantern each night. Then, they would get special privileges, like being able to pick the next day’s meal, foot massages, and a night with the Master. Although it is tempting to say that the concubines had power in that they were able to pick their meals from time to time, they weren’t the ones who were making the ultimate decision. When it comes down to it, none of the concubines had any real control over who the Master spent the night with. Master Chen did. And, when he made that decision, it was he who had made the decision on which concubine got to pick the meal. In this context, it isn’t power because the wives have no ultimate say in anything. All they had were privileges that were formed by the hierarchy they were participating in.

                This hierarchy also did more than just create divisions between the different groups: it also prevented positive relationships from developing between these groups. If, like I had mentioned earlier, the groups had stopped chasing privileges, started co-operating, and more directly gone after what they wanted (an easier life for the workers, and autonomy for the concubines and children) massive change would have been possible. Hierarchy and authority prevents this sort of co-operation, as hierarchy and authority are unidirectional by nature. The people higher up don’t co-operate with those below; they tell those below them what to do. It is a privilege gained from being higher up in the ladder. Those below have to do what they are told or they risk the consequences. There is no compromise. There is following orders or disobeying orders. And, the bigger and more complex the hierarchy gets, these problems grow and become more complex as well.

                There is no hierarchy more complex than bureaucracy. Ikiru is a beautiful example of what a bureaucracy is and how it functions (or doesn’t function). Ikiru shows many of the problems that are found in Raise the Red Lantern. Each bureaucrat is in pursuit of a higher rank. With each promotion comes a multitude of small privileges: more money, a fancier title, a better seat, a private desk. Eventually, if one were to work their way to the top, they might even get an office! The pursuit of a career in such a fashion splits up those who are of the same title, as they are competing with each other for the next promotion.

                Ikiru also captures what makes bureaucracy such a good tool for maintaining power: bureaucracy’s is incapable of doing anything other than maintaining the status quo. With so many rules and loopholes to go along with the endless paperwork and the insufferable number of departments being ‘involved’ in even the smallest of projects, like building a park, it is impossible to really know how it works, especially with how strictly these rules are reinforced and followed. Sure, Watanabe got a park built, but it took him almost six months of non-stop effort. Not to mention, Watanabe knew what he was doing, knew what had to be done, and was entirely willing to risk his career on such a venture. As the ending of the film showed, very few others hold this same mentality.

                If Ikiru wasn’t capable of showing how difficult it is for a bureaucracy to change, consider this: Ikiru was based off of the novella The Death of Ivan Ilyich by Leo Tolstoy. The book was first published in 1886, 66 years before Ikiru came out. It has been 61 years since Ikiru came out. Despite the story being that old, it is still extremely relevant to the world we live in. If that isn’t a testament to the unchanging nature of bureaucracy, then I don’t know what would be.

                Although hierarchy, bureaucracy, violence, fear, and the sectionalization of existing/potential communities have shown themselves to be effective in maintaining power structure, Mononoke Hime offers a radically different approach that is far less invasive in a physical sense as the above mentioned methods; it is perhaps far more invasive in a mental sense. Basically, what makes Mononoke Hime so different is that it isn’t representative of a system of control. Mononoke Hime is a system of control.

                Now, this is not to say that Mononoke Hime is propaganda, brainwashing, or something of that ilk. The film is a cultural reflection of the society we live in. Its themes are very much pro-power. It is pro-capitalism. It is pro-consumerist. It glorifies violence. It supports the conception of society not being possible without leaders. It is pro-industrialism.  Etc. As a reflection of the culture we live in, the film teaches and/or reinforces the values and priorities of our society, both good and bad. However, by normalizing these ideas and values to members of a society (particularly the young, but it can really happen to anyone) it prevents people from asking key questions about the way the world is set up, how it functions, and if our society needs to change. The more these questions are kept from the front of the minds of the members of a society, the more people consent to the world they live in. So although Mononoke Hime is not propaganda, it acts as though it was a piece of propaganda, and is thus a potential barrier to change.

                Each of the films we’ve watched in class are telling examples of how power functions and how it maintains itself. The examples I have brought up are not the end all be all of how power operates in the world we live in. But, I will say there is a pattern of sorts in the world we live in. There is no such thing as a simple power relationship. Each case is unique and infinitely complex. Each conflict has numerous different systems of power at play, and each conflict has numerous methods of control and power preservation. Some I have pointed out to you in this essay. Most I have not. But, if nothing else, exploitation and oppression demand hierarchies. Hierarchies are inherently unequal, and inequality is the breeding ground for all sorts of tragedies.

                But, don’t take my word for it. Look into this yourself. Think about it. Be observant and witness the power structures all around you. Watch them as they maintain themselves. Watch the schools you attend, the companies and corporations you support, and your own government as they all engage in various methods of maintaining their own power. Watch all over the world as it suffers from those with power who are desperate for more power and from those who are fighting tooth and nail from slipping away. This isn’t the cinema. This isn’t a game. People are dying.

                Unequal power affects every level of society. It affects your friends, your family, and your future kids if nothing changes. It even affects you. I guarantee it.

Balance in Mise-en-scene

Balance in Mise-en-scene

Introduction

                Balance – Noun - A state of equilibrium or equipoise; equal distribution of weight, amount, etc.; something used to produce equilibrium; counterpoise; mental steadiness or emotional stability; habit of calm behavior, judgment, etc.

                The word ‘balance’ is one that is found frequently in Eastern Asian philosophy and religion, and the general idea has been westernized and capitalized upon through the mass proliferation of images such as the Yin-Yang symbol. However, using these symbols allows for a certain visual understanding of balance that cannot be easily explained with words. This visual balance can be used to communicate messages of non-visual balance, like one of mental, emotional, or spiritual balance or stability. Balance invokes a sense of seriousness when being faced by a person, and achieving a sense of visual balance can be used with much effect by an artist. The films Ikiru and Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter… And Spring (which from now on will be referred to as SSFWAS) use cinematographic balance as a tool to convey underlying feelings and perhaps even meaning. This blossay will attempt to explain my conception of visual balance and explore how the mise-en-scene of each film utilizes visual balance in different ways by looking at how each film’s storyline is organized, and then discussing the use of visual balance of each film and its specific parts.

Visual Balance

                The easiest way to understand visual balance is of course through images. However, due to my general inability with computers, I was stuck with making a rough grid in MS Paint and drawing circles on it. So, use your imagination and pretend that the grid is overlaying the movie screen and that the circles are actually onscreen objects. Also, use your imagination to pretend that the grid and circles are actually perfect and not drawn on MS Paint by someone with absolutely no experience with MS Paint.

                The most basic form of balance (it should be noted that I could very well be talking about something that is named something else in films studies that I am unaware of) is simple symmetry. A head on shot of a character’s face is perhaps the most basic example of a balanced shot. Additionally, two different objects can also have visual balance as long as they are placed in a symmetrical fashion. For instance, a shot from the side of two people facing each other and talking or a straight on shot of two people sitting side by side, has a very simple symmetry, and is thus balanced in an obvious and straightforward way.

Fig. 1

If the symmetry demonstrated by fig. 1 is simply rotated by 45 degrees, a slightly less obvious form of balance is shown. This is a shot that isn’t used frequently, but an example of an aerial shot of two martial arts masters poised to fight comes to mind (for whatever reason).

Fig. 2

If you continue to rotate the circles from Fig. 2 by another 45 degrees you get another rare shot. A wonderful example of this is the shot from Yellow Earth of Gu Qing with the sun directly above him.

Fig.3

It should be noted that symmetry doesn’t need to be found in multiple directions, one is often enough. For instance, a ground level shot of two martial arts masters poised to fight can be a balanced shot regardless of how much sky is shown.

Fig. 4

Of course, symmetry is based on the perspective of the viewer, or in the case of film, the perspective that the camera takes on. This leads to situations where the symmetry in a shot seems to not be there, but nonetheless there is a definite balance in the shot. Imagining on screen objects as circles helps make this balance more apparent and allows for symmetry to be more easily seen. An over the shoulder shot of another character (usually during dialogue) is a common shot of this kind of visual balance.

Fig. 5

Another way to visualize perspective visual balance is to imagine the Yin-Yang symbol. Then, turn the white and black dots into floating orbs. If these two orbs retain the same spatial relationship with each other, they will be balanced no matter what angle you look at them. This would of course be super easy to understand if a 3D model was made that you could rotate yourself, but hopefully the following slight alteration of Fig. 5 will help make this idea more clear.

Fig. 6

If the circles from Fig. 5 switch positions, a visual balance that is frequently found in landscape shots becomes apparent. If this is difficult to imagine, try picturing a small house at the bottom of a mountain.

Fig.7

Now, things get more complicated when more objects get added to the screen, but for the sake of space, I am hoping that you have enough of a grasp of what I am trying to say to understand the rest of this blossay. Just remember that symmetry is the easiest way to know that there is some form of visual balance at play.

Formatting

Although obvious in SSFWAS, both films utilize a fairly straightforward play structure. Each film has within itself fairly obvious acts, and in each act there are numerous scenes. For SSFWAS, again, how this is done is obvious. There is an act for each season, and then a final act that is also set in spring. Ikiru, however, is a little more subtle in that it didn’t announce each act. But, there are still four definitive sections to the film that can be called acts. The first act is the introduction where we learn who Watanabe is and about his life. The second act is the party scenes right after Watanabe meets the writer. The third act is the scenes of Watanabe and Toyo, and the fourth act is comprised mostly Watanabe’s funeral.

The act structure of these films is important because each film utilizes visual balance alongside these acts in unique ways. Ikiru uses balance in a very binary fashion; each act is composed mostly of balanced or unbalanced shots. SSFWAS is more subtle and inconsistent, but relies on a general trend that follows the acts while the movie progresses. I will get in more detail below, but will avoid delving too much into meaning until later in the paper.

Ikiru

Introductory Scenes

                This act starts off balanced, and remains balanced for the most part. Certain scenes that are extremely serious, namely the scene of Watanabe and the Dr. talking about how he does/doesn’t have stomach cancer, or when Watanabe describes his current condition to the writer.  Interestingly enough, the only scene that is obviously unbalanced during this act is the first car scene of the film. The shots of this scene are unbalanced and chaotic, a startling change given its juxtaposition with the rest of the act. It is also worth noting that the final scene of this act, when the writer kicks away the dog while leaving the bar, is unbalanced.

Party Scenes

                The party scenes, as one would imagine they should be, are chaotic and unbalanced. This is especially true during the scene in which Watanabe sings “Gondola no Uta”. The swaying of the beads and the disjointed slow motion scattering of the couples moving away from Watanabe is chilling. It is a profoundly uncomfortable scene that is multiplied by its lack of visual balance. However, the end of this scene is a balanced, head on shot of Watanabe, which really brings home the sincerity, seriousness, and the importance of the scene. This act also has the second car scene of the film, which is similar to the first in its lack of balance and its chaotic-ness. The act ends with an unbalanced shot of Watanabe, the writer, and two girls in a taxi. The girls are singing slightly off pitch, ending the act as uncomfortably as it started.

Toyo Scenes

                When Watanabe meets up with Toyo, the young woman he knew from his job, the shots return to the balanced feel of the first act. Toyo acts as a balancing agent to Watanabe, and as the he gets calmer in the storyline, the mise-en-scene mirrors that feeling. For instance, there is a scene that Toyo runs into a street and almost gets hit by two busses. Unlike the first two car scenes, this scene is very balanced. The ending scene is interesting in that it is both balanced and unbalanced at the same time. As Watanabe and Toyo are talking in the booth of what seems to be a café, there is a birthday party going on behind them. On the surface, there are the calming effects of Toyo, but underneath of that calm, there is still a lack of balance, represented by the birthday party. After Watanabe decides he is going to get something done at city hall, the birthday party becomes organized as they line up to sing happy birthday. Toyo, however, is left alone, creating an unbalanced shot in front of a balanced one.

Funeral Scenes

                The funeral scenes start off very balanced, with the attendees of the funeral lined on both sides of the room. However, as points of confusion, conflict, and debate are brought up, the room becomes progressively less and less balanced until the room is a piled of drunken, crying bureaucrats. The flashbacks of Watanabe, on the other hand, are balanced. There are two flashbacks, specifically the scenes with the Deputy Mayor and the thugs, that start off very unbalanced but become balanced when Watanabe refuses to be intimidated.

Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter… And Spring

Spring

                SSFWAS is different from Ikiru in that it is not as consistent in its use of balance, so the claims I make about SSFWAS are far more general. In Spring, the scenery is balanced, but the characters are not always balanced with the scenery or with the other characters.  While the child monk is torturing the animals by tying rocks to them, the struggling of the animals are shot in a visually unbalanced way. The child monk varies between balanced and unbalanced shots, but there are some shots that would be unbalanced if it were not for the looming figure of the Master behind the child. When the boy has a rock tied on his back, the shots are slightly unbalanced. Oddly enough though, the images of the dead fish and snake are all very balanced.

Summer

                In the beginning of Summer, the shots are almost always just slightly off from being balanced. But, the interactions between the girl and the boy monk are always unbalanced, and as the act progresses this unbalance becomes more and more obvious. The master, on the other hand (and this is also evident in Spring), is almost always shot in a balanced manner. At the end of this act, the suffering, weeping, and departure of the teenage monk is very unbalanced. Not only is the scenery and his relationship to it unbalanced, but his posture is as well.

Fall

                Although this act is overall very unbalanced visually, Fall opens with the master and his cat, both being shot in an incredibly balanced manner. Although not entirely unique to Fall, scenes that start out unbalanced end balanced become more common in this act. When the child monk returns as an adult, he and his surroundings are balanced, but his posture isn’t. However, when the man and the Master are together, the Master visually balances the man out. The unbalanced-ness of this act culminates in the scene that the Master beats the man and the scene after when the man is tied up in the monastery. These scenes are the peak of the visual imbalance of the movie. Even the Master isn’t balanced while he beats his former student. While the man begins to carve the floor of the floating temple’s deck, things get slightly less unbalanced and this continues as he progresses in his task. Although there is a moment of visual balance when one of the detectives place a coat on the sleeping man, things become immediately unbalanced again right after.  Even the shots of the master are unbalanced, to a certain degree. The final shots of the Master and his suicide are very balanced. But, the characters that are written on the pieces of paper that get pasted to his eyes and mouth are not balanced in their composition. They are not symmetric and therefore make the scene feel unbalanced even when it technically isn’t.

Winter

                While still slightly unbalanced, the nature and scenery of Winter is more balanced than in Fall. After the man, now fully grown, finds the book of martial arts and begins to train, he begins to become more and more balanced. After the lady comes with her child, he begins to take on the role of his former master, often balancing the scene out. But, when the man ties the grinding stone to his waist and starts to drag it up the mountain, he is perpetually unbalanced throughout the entire sequence. Although the man is incredibly unbalanced, the scenery around him is relatively balanced. When the man reaches the summit, the first real and obvious visual balance for most of the movie occurs instantaneously. If the beating scene is the peak of this movies unbalance, this scene is the peak of SSFWAS’s balance.

…And Spring

                The last act of SSFWAS continues with the feeling of balance and calm that occurs at the end of Winter. At least this is the case until the new child monk begins to torture the animals. This generally fits the same feeling of the first act except that there is no Master to balance out the child as he stuffs rocks into the mouths of animals. The movie ends with a balanced shot of the Buddha statue looking over the valley.

Conclusions

                In both films, visual balance and unbalance play a definite role in how the film is interpreted by the audience. Balance is something that we pick up on even if we are not consciously aware of its influence on us. This unconscious awareness of balance is also why I am unsure if Kurosawa (director of Ikiru) or Kim Ki-duk (director of SSFWAS) were aware of their use of it in their films. Ikiru, as I have already mentioned, utilizes balance in an almost binary way. The deliberate feel of the film, as well as the well-known genius of Kurosawa, makes me think that there is a very specific meaning or purpose behind the balance of the film. SSFWAS, on the other hand, is less consistent in its shots but still maintains an overall arc in the frequency of different kinds of visual balanced shots that matches up with the overall arc of the storyline. This points to Kim Ki-duk’s awareness of balance, but it does not definitively prove anything. It could easily be accidental or a consequence of Kim Ki-duk attempting to achieve certain feelings in the film that manifest themselves in balanced and unbalanced shots.

                When it comes to the meaning of visual balance in the mise-en-scene in each film, it is hard for me to say without positively knowing if the balance was purposeful or without doing further research on each film. However, thinking about the balance in each film brings up questions to be asked of each film. As we ask these questions, we can meditate on the concept of balance ourselves, and perhaps bring some more balance into our own lives.

Robert Ebert

This is how I feel about a lot of things, but Robert Ebert really summed it up in a way incredibly relevant to this class.

http://colorlines.com/archives/2013/04/roger_ebert_to_white_heckler_dont_tell_asian-american_directors_how_to_represent_their_people.html

Eat Drink Man Woman

FOREWORD

Before I begin, I would like to thank my friend Nic Sanderson for helping me with this blossay. This is actually my second final draft (the first one really sucked) and Nic is one of the reasons this one turned out okay. He watched the film with me and helped point out details I have missed, and our discussions on the film helped me more fully develop my ideas and theories about the film. Although this blossay is mine, the ideas cannot be said to be completely mine as his input was invaluable. Thank you, Nic. You were a huge help.

THE PLOT

                Ang Lee’s film Eat Drink Man Woman is a beautiful film focusing on the personal and professional lives of an old widowed chef and his three daughters. The chef, known as Chu, lives with his three daughters in the Taiwanese city of Taipei. Once a week, Chef Chu lovingly cooks a large traditional Chinese dinner for his daughters to share with him. Despite losing much of his sense of taste due to old age, he pours his love for his daughters into each meal. He begins to cook lunches for Shan-shan, the young daughter of the Jin-Rong, a close family friend. Jin-Rong’s mother returns from America to help Jin-Rong through her divorce, and it appears that Chu and the mother have a bit of a romance. However, it is revealed that Chu and Jin-Rong have had a secret romance for quite some time and that they are planning on getting married.

Chu’s eldest daughter, Jia-Jen, is a chemistry teacher who has never truly recovered from getting her heart broken in college. She is a Christian woman, which is fairly rare in Taiwan, and harshly reprimands a student for having a love not in class. Afterwards, she receives a series of anonymous love notes that she suspects who is the new volleyball coach. She slowly falls in love with him, but finds out that it was not the coach that had written the notes, but a group of students getting revenge against her. When the coach goes to console her, she kisses him, and the two get married to each other quite suddenly.

Chu’s second oldest daughter, Jia-Chien, is a very successful airline executive. At the beginning of the film she is involved in a casual sexual relationship with her former boyfriend, Raymond. Raymond had helped her find a new apartment so she could move out of her father’s house. Jia-Chien and Chu have a complex relationship, and the two are constantly in conflict. This is largely due to Jia-Chien’s love of traditional cooking. She had wanted to become a chef, a male-dominated career path, and follow in her father’s footsteps. Chu refused to allow her to do this, and instead made her go to business school so she could “learn something useful.” Unfortunately, the apartment she had bought was a scam, and the apartment complex was never finished. At her job, she meets a handsome young man named Li Kai. Li Kai and Jia-Chien develop a bit of a romance as sexual tension between the two rises. This coincides with Jia-Chien being offered a promotion that would require her to move to Berlin. While she is being faced with such a life-changing decision, she realizes that Li Kai is the name of the man who broke he older sister’s heart in college. The realization comes right before the two are about to have sex. Li Kai explains that he never even met Jia-Jen, but that he was dating her best friend in college. This comes as a huge shock to Jia-Chien, but she decides to not become Li Kai’s lover anyway. In the end, she is the only one that stays single. She lives alone in her father’s house, and takes over the duty of cooking the traditional Sunday dinner.

Chu’s youngest daughter, Jia-Ning, is a twenty year old student who works part time as a cashier at a fast food restaurant. A friend of hers from work is dating a young artist and existentialist. However, she treats him poorly, and constantly blows him off and stands him up. Jia-Ning befriends him, and they develop feelings for each other. They act upon their feelings, which results in Jia-Ning becoming pregnant with his child. She announces this at Sunday dinner, and then promptly moves in with him.

Feminism

                With so many female roles, an immediate question that comes to minds is if a man can ever be truly equipped to represent a feminist movie. Specifically, did Ang Lee challenge gender roles and create strong female characters (in a feminist sense) in this film? It is a tough question; one that I did not come to a final conclusion on. However, there are numerous aspects of the movie that are at least problematic from a feminist viewpoint.

                Marriage is a recurring theme in Chinese film (at least in the films we have seen this semester) and Eat Drink Man Woman is no exception. Nearly all of the female to female interactions that involve a non-family member involve a discussion on marriage or the conversation somehow fixates on a man. Even the interactions between the sisters focus on males. They are either focusing on each other’s relationships (or lack thereof), their father’s relationships (or lack thereof), or their father’s health and well-being. It is rare for them to talk about movie out, and when they do it is usually in the context of their father and how it affects him, not each other.

                In fact, the women in the movie are largely identified and defined by their relation to men. To begin, the three sisters are all Chu’s daughters, and that is how they are mostly thought of; as daughters, not sisters or individuals.  Each of them is then further defined by the men in their life that is not their father. Jia-Chien is involved with Raymond and then Li Kai. Both of these men are rebellious and disregard or disrespect the authority of patriarchal figures. However, they are still entirely patriarchal in the way they view and treat women, or how they view themselves in relation to others. In short, their dominance over other makes them patriarchs themselves, and Jia-Chen’s relationship to them prevents her from ever seeming independent. Jia-Jen is similar in how she is defined by her fascination and eventual marriage with the volleyball coach. Jia-Ning has almost no individual story line that isn’t somehow relating to her lover. At some points of the film, the women are identified by their current lack of a relationship with men. For instance, Jin-Rong is known as the woman that is going through the divorce. The film does not elaborate on her much until she is then revealed to be Chu’s lover. Jia-Chien is known as the broken hearted teacher that will likely never marry. Meanwhile, Chu and his colleague and best friend Old Wen are defined in ways that are not dependent on others. They are seen and portrayed as individuals.

                Jia-Chien definitely seems as though she is capable of being viewed as just an individual, but on closer examination she seems less and less like a strong female character. She is completely defined by her patriarchal society. Instead of becoming a chef like she wanted, she was banned from the kitchen and sent to business school. After school, she still can’t escape the patriarchal hierarchy that has rule over her life. At her job, she is looked down due to her female status. She is promoted, not because of her hard work, but because the other men weren’t good enough. As her boss put it, “All the men I have sent over are idiots. You’ll have to do,” At all of the low points in her storyline, she seeks comfort in a patriarchal figure, specifically Raymond. At the end of the film, it seems as though she has finally achieved a sense of individuality. However, it is unclear if that is actually the destiny she chose, or if that was forced onto her by the actions of others. After all, it is Raymond who leaves her, not the other way around. Li Kai is the one that says that they should remain good friends. She didn’t decide to live alone as much as her family left her alone in their old house. This all happens after she decided to not take the Berlin job so she can stay with her father, not for herself.

                Jia-Jen is the other character where her relation to patriarchy seems far more obvious. At the beginning, she has no relationship to other men. In fact, she is content to simply take care of her father until he dies. She essentially wants to take up a non-sexual wife role to Chu. At one point, Jia-Chien and Jia-Jen have a conversation on how Jia-Chien thinks Jia-Jen’s only hope to ‘escape’ from this life is to find a man to marry. Although this conversation is already problematic in and of itself, it is made worse by Jia-Jen then undergoing a radical life change for a man, getting married, and then leaving. She claims she wouldn’t want to be “loved for her voice” at the beginning. She didn’t want her relationships with other to be superficial. Yet, she radically changes her appearance so she can become involved with the volleyball coach. As she falls in love with the volleyball coach, she stops listening to choral music, and instead focuses of the coach. She isn’t ‘gaining’ a relationship with a man, but actually, she is replacing another man, Jesus, with the coach. In fact, earlier in the movie, Old Wen jokes that Jia-Jen has the perfect ‘boy-friend’, Jesus. And, just like Jia-Jen, at her lowest point in her storyline, when she finds out the letters are a prank by some students, she turns not to her family but to the coach, a man, for comfort, and kisses him.

Patriarchy

                The way Ang Lee portrays patriarchy in Eat Drink Man Woman is also problematic in the way it reinforces certain notions of how a patriarchal figure, specifically the father, is supposed to act. Chu is in many ways a stereotypical patriarch. He is distant in many ways, mildly authoritarian, and has difficulty showing his love for others. His main way of showing affection is cooking. Chu tells Old Wen at one point, “I cook with my feelings, not my taste.” He pours his heart and soul into each Sunday dinner. It is his way of showing his love for his daughters. But, he never explicitly indicates that to his daughters, which leads to them not appreciating the Sunday dinner and feeling at times as though he is unexpressive to them. Interestingly enough, there aren’t any scenes in the movie that he shows love and affection for Jin-Rong. Instead, all of his affection is sent through Jin-Rong’s daughter in the form of cooked lunches.  It could even be that Chu is at heart a father, and can’t give that up. Or, perhaps being a father is the only way he remembers how to love. Even when he announces to the family that he is to move in with Jin-Rong, he first takes several shots of alcohol, and even then he announces it like he is reading an official report.

                Chu does show love in another way that is a more traditional form of patriarchal love. He uses his authority and power to fall back into a disciplinary role that is for the ‘good of the family’. The most obvious example of this is when he bans Jia-Chien from becoming a chef so she can ‘learn something useful’. It may seem like he was merely being cruel by forcing his daughter to go to business school, but to Chu he was fulfilling his duty as the patriarch of the family by looking out for the best interests of his daughter. Or more accurately, he was fulfilling his duty as the patriarch of the family by looking out for the best interest of his daughter according to him. There is another moment when he is waking up his daughters that he expresses love to one of his daughters, but he does this while she is asleep. Then, he wakes her up by yelling.

                One scene that really exemplifies the status of the father is the first dinner scene. The first full shot of the whole family is taken from the point of view of the patriarch with the three daughters sitting at the table across and diagonal from him. Then, when he leaves mid-way through that first dinner, the same shot occurs, but with him absent. The dinner falls apart quickly without him there. I must say, I give a lot of credit to Ang Lee to so easily show that Chu is the keystone of the family in just a single short scene.

Content and Form

                Before I wrap things up, I want to touch on how much Eat Drink Man Woman reminded me of Ozu. Ang Lee does an excellent job of capturing very average moments in the lives of Chu’s family, and he does it with such precision it’s astounding. Although the scenes that are conversational in nature have no specific form in their composition, the everyday tasks are shot in what seems to be a very specific fashion. These scenes of the more boring aspects of life, like doing the laundry, riding the bus, or getting a massage, are shot with a fixed camera that doesn’t move. The angles are always very specific, focusing not on the character(s), but on the action itself.

                Perhaps the best example of this type of shot is found whenever someone is cooking. The camera is fixed, occasionally moving with the hands as the chef works with a precision that rivals that of the camera work. To Chu and Jia-Chien, cooking is a form of meditation. As they do what comes naturally to them, they reflect on their life, unwind, and express themselves. This sort of meditation is passed onto the audience as it is captivated by the pure repetition and precision of his movements. Anytime a shot like this occurs, it allows the viewer a moment to catch their breath and reflect what is happening in the movie. In this sense, these scenes are very much like an Ozu film.

                The meticulousness of these scenes also indicates another aspect of life that Ang Lee may have been trying to get at. By treating these scenes with the same, if not more, care as plot driven scenes, Ang Lee is saying that what a person does is just as important, if not more, as what a person says, and who a person is associated with. These tasks, although monotonous, are just as much a part of life as anything else.

Conclusion

                Although this movie has some issues with patriarchy and feminism, what movie doesn’t? Eat Drink Man Woman is an excellent film. The cinematography is fantastic, the plot and character development is very well done, and the cooking scenes are really, really cool. It makes your mouth water at times. I would recommend this to anyone who likes Ang Lee’s other films, as it has many similar themes and stylistic choices. I would also recommend this film to anyone who is a fan of Chinese cuisine (seriously, it’s not fair how good those meals look) or anyone who likes dramas. In the film, Old Wen asks Chu, “Eat, drink, man, woman… Is there more to life?” I think that Ang Lee’s film Eat Drink Man Woman shows with ease that there is in fact much, much more.

Call me Kafka, but this blossay is absurd.

Fallen Angels as Existential Expression and Absurd Art

Now before I start blowing your mind, I want to offer a few suggestions. If you get lost or confused about what I am discussing, I would suggest a quick peruse of the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy’s article on existentialism and their article on existential aesthetics (I’ll link them below). The article on existential ethics is my main source for this paper (other than the movie of course!) so anytime it seems like something needs to be cited that isn’t, consider this paragraph the honorary citation.

With that out of the way, allow me to dive right into things.

Fallen Angels is one of those movies that make me wonder why they aren’t a million more movies just like it. The cinematography is astounding, the editing is beautifully disorienting, its soundtrack is perfect, and the acting is absolutely phenomenal. Of course, my favorite aspect of Fallen Angels is also exactly why there aren’t more films like it; its existential and absurd nature. Audiences tend to react to Kafkaesque things negatively, and although a negative reaction may be the desired reaction of the artist, it doesn’t always make people want to spend a bunch of money. Thus, existential films would likely remain low on the priority list of production companies.

But I digress. As interesting as it would be to analyze why films like Fallen Angels are not more common, it is not the purpose of this blossay, and I am certainly not an economist. What I aim to achieve with this blossay is to articulate what makes Fallen Angels existential and absurd art.

According to existentialism, human beings exist in a way that is different from other living beings. Not only does the human being exist, but he or she is aware of this fact. Furthermore, he or she is can also choose how he or she will use this existence or being, and thus how their being relates to the universe. Existentialism can be used to explain freedom as a how a being chooses to actively engage in the external world. Twentieth century thinkers in existentialism assert that freedom allows for the ability to reveal features of the existent world, at least under ideal conditions. Because artistic expression and creation is an example of free human activity, and that it allows for the being to explore and express the surrounding universe and its fundamental features, artistic creation can be in and of itself existentialist. This is especially true when the artist is devoting his creations to expressing the absurdity and despair found in the human condition.

Film, being a part of the larger umbrella of ‘art’, allows this same pursuit of existential themes as shown by the various playwrights and novelists of the twentieth century. However, the creation of film (and all art) is in ways inherently a demonstration of existential themes as well. Albert Camus wrote in The Myth of Sisyphus (in the section titled “Absurd Creation”), “There is not mystery in human creation. Will performs this miracle.” The mere action of deciding to create at all, regardless of what its final form is (or even if the creation is unsuccessful at manifesting itself in a tangible form) is fundamentally existentialist. The being decides that their active engagement with universe at that moment is going to be creation (or the attempt of creation) of a film, or music, or a novel, or whatever! By using their will freely, and by using this will to engage in the world in some manner, existentialism comes into play.

On a less general level, film can also be a wonderful tool for revelatory communication. For example, when done correctly, art can reveal certain significant features of the world, such as man’s (and woman’s!) relationship and place in the universe. How effectively an art form or artistic creation does this, how well it communicates in a revelatory fashion, is how twentieth century existentialists, such as Sartre and de Beauvoir, judged said art form or artistic creation. To quote the SEP entry that I linked below, “…every aesthetic ordering of the world brings with it a conception of human freedom and suggests ways to use it.” To existentialists, there is no meaningful difference between philosophical and artistic creation. Both are extremely capable of revealing human freedom, responsibility, and despair.

Fallen Angels does this revelatory communication phenomenally through its central narratives, its development of the main characters, and through the aesthetic cinematic choices. The movie follows three separate storylines (which I will not go over in this essay, as I assume you are familiar with them). Granted, they are related, and even overlap and interact, but they are never really the same story. The movie switches perspective over and over, following only one character’s perspective at a time. Even when two main characters are in the same scene the perspective remains on only one. The intense focus on singular characters desperately attempting to achieve satisfying human connection and relationships instead of any real focus on the already existing relationships between the characters creates a sense of individualism and isolation that is very familiar to those well versed in existentialism.

With the storylines focusing on the lack of relationships to other humans, the characters show this isolation in different ways. Ho Chi Moo is isolated from others by his literal inability to communicate. Even his monologues are in Mandarin instead of Cantonese. Charlie uses him as an emotional tool, somebody that she can cry on, instead of ever treating him like a human. Ho Chi Moo becomes a means, not and ends in and of himself. He thus becomes alienated from himself, if I may borrow from Marxist rhetoric and theory. Ho Chi Moo is existential in his infinite isolation, from others in communication, from society by language (assuming that we can read into him speaking Mandarin), and from himself through modern day alienation.

              Wong Chi-Ming’s partner (I’ll get to Wong Chi-Ming in a little bit) reveals a different form of isolation and despair. She is hopelessly obsessed with a person she never interacts with face to face. Or, maybe more accurately, she is taking somebody who exists, and creating a persona around him that fulfills (or would fulfill) all of her desires and needs. She is externalizing herself by projecting attractive qualities onto him, alienating herself from herself. (Again, this is a Marxist concept, but that’s okay. Marxist themes are hidden all over in the underpinnings of existentialism, as both deal with the flaws of modern society, and the main thinkers of existentialism, Sartre and Camus, were both socialists.) When she has Wong Chi-Ming killed, she was committing metaphysical suicide.

Wong Chi-Ming fills a role that is especially interesting. He has no real relationships, not even coming close to one with Blondie (who I am not actually convinced is a real person. I think she is actually just an invented personification of Western-influenced desires, but that’s neither here nor there. Perhaps a blog post on that in the future?) whom he just uses for hedonistic pleasures. His reasoning for being an assassin was that he was lazy. He doesn’t like to make his own decisions or choices, so he has a partner to do that for him. SEP put it perfectly in their article. “On the existentialists’ outlook, the only positive feature of “human reality,” strictly speaking, is responsibility towards others and towards oneself… Many human beings refuse the burden and flee from their ontological responsibility by accepting pre-given roles.” Running from his own agency, he became an empty shell of a man. He may not be alone or despairing like the other characters, but he is not happy. He is flat. He is essence-less. He is nothing.

The way the movie was constructed was also very existential. It communicated the isolation of the characters in very subtle ways that would be subconsciously noticed by the audience. Although there are numerous examples of this, there are a few particular shots that are mimicked throughout the film that show this exceptionally well that I wish to touch on. The first shot is a head on shot, often with a wide fish-eye lens, usually at a medium to close-up perspective. One character is looking straightforward, usually at nothing in particular, positioned on the right or left side of the screen. Over the character’s shoulder is either some sort of action or event that is going on at the same time, or another character. The one character will (almost) never look at the second character (there is also very little back and forth conversation. Most of it is one-sided). The shot helps set a tone of apathy and isolation towards others and their surroundings, as well as just a general inability to make human connections.

The second shot happens far less frequently, but is still very interesting. The shot shows how subtle decisions can have a larger effect on the totality of the movie. The shot is most obvious during the scenes in which Ho Chi-Ming’s partner masturbates on his bed. It shows her isolation and utter aloneness. That scene takes a more complex meaning if you notice when the same camera angle is repeated later in the film. When Ho Chi-Ming is in his apartment for the first time in the film, he is laying in his bed in a similar position, smoking a cigarette, watching TV. It is only then that it becomes apparent that in the masturbation scenes, the TV is on in the background and she is similarly smoking a cigarette (cigarettes are actually a major commonality in the film that I wish to give more thought to. Again, perhaps another blog post is in order). It gives both scenes a feeling of not just isolation, but also of boredom. It makes it seem like they were on that bed, because they simply had nothing better to do

Finally, the use of the extremely wide fish-eye lens added a very unique feeling to a movie. As the camera focused in on a character, that character seemed very close to the viewer. It was almost as if the character is being pressed up against the audience. It makes it hard to take your vision off the character to see what else is going on in the scene. The rest of the screen that wasn’t being filled with the character seemed very far away. This added a weird feeling of a second character being 10 feet away from the central character even though in “real life” the second character might be only a few feet away. It added a very isolating and surreal quality to the film and showed how a physical closeness to someone wasn’t enough to allow for a human connection to be made. The isolation of the characters in the film is not a physical one; it is a mental or metaphysical isolation.

Of course, my interpretation of Fallen Angels could very well be entirely different from you even though we both experienced the same film. This is unsurprising. To quote the SEP entry, “Many existentialists insist that the ways in which human consciousness ‘intends’ the world (that is, imposes a certain order and regularity in external phenomena) is intrinsically dependent on the values the person has set for herself. A mountain climber views a mountain in a way radically different from an intellectual who has devoted his or her life to books… In other words, behind every perception there is a value influencing the perception in advance and thus ultimately determining its precise content,” But, that is okay. What really makes Fallen Angels so cool is its Kafkaesque nature. So, although I have a drastically different background from you, and possibly had a very different conclusion on the content of the movie, we still had the same rudimentary experience. By using fast, frantic cuts, random black and white scenes, strange music, extreme close-ups, tilted frames, and more (I could literally go on and on) the audience was immersed in a relatable experience. We may have viewed the same mountain and gotten different interpretations of it, but we all had to climb it and we all got tired. This tiring, almost hopeless experience is what makes Fallen Angels a work of absurd art.

According to Camus, “the ‘absurd’ mainly designates this resistance of the world to our endeavors. Whilst we crave for sense and harmony, the world has nothing to offer but chaos and a random play of blind forces. All our efforts to impose order and sense upon a world that can ultimately accommodate neither are therefore doomed to fail. The absurd, then, denominates both the most fundamental state of the world and the absurdity of human attempts at overcoming this basic fact,” Camus talks about absurd art at great length in the final two sections of his book The Myth of Sisyphus (I’m sure you can find a free PDF of it online). The basic concept of absurd art is that the work of art causes you to experience the absurd on a more tangible, miniature level. Ideally, the work of art is entirely and utterly hopeless. There is nothing within the piece itself to make the audience want to continue onward, so anything that incites a person to continue with the piece is being projected onto it by that same person. In other words, the motivation for finishing the piece is not inherent to the work of art. The motivation is being brought in by the piece’s participants.

Although Camus doesn’t give any examples of purely absurd artworks, in fact he isn’t convinced that they are even completely possible to create; he does cite Kafka as being the closest thing to an absurd artist. He says that the only reason why Kafka’s writings aren’t truly absurd is because there is always a tiny bit of hope in them. To anyone who has read (or tried to read) Kafka’s book The Trial, that statement is hilarious. By extension, any work of art that can be described as Kafkaesque is, at least a little bit, an absurd work of art. ‘Kafkaesque’ is defined by dictionary.com as ‘marked by senseless, disorienting, often menacing complexity’. His pieces are frustrating, depressing, confusing, and disturbing in ways that one typically would not be disturbed. The experience of watching Fallen Angels is all of those things, and thus, Fallen Angels can be described as an absurd piece of art.

The examination of the whole is where real meaning is found, at least to existentialists. So, even if you disagree with some of my more specific claims, I ask that you think about what I am saying in this blossay overall, and about how you feel about Fallen Angels as a whole. Try not to get caught up over specific grievances because, as Sartre put it, “The hundred thousand words aligned in a book can be read one by one without the meaning of the book emerging; meaning is not the sum of the words, but its organic totality.”

Leaning to the Left (but only kinda looking left)

To begin, I want to raise a question. Why is it that any time an anti-capitalist, anti-corporation, or anti-consumerist theme is being discussed, that it immediately gets referred to as ‘Marxist’? There are numerous ways of approaching of approaching such an issue, and many are not even remotely Marxist; environmentalism, conservationism, syndicalism, and anarchism all come to mind. Yet, Marx is resurrected from the grave once again for whatever reason, even though his ideas no longer full describe the type of capitalism today (Marx lived and wrote of the forming industrial capitalism of the 1800’s, whereas we live in a combination of corporate, financial, global and cultural capitalism, all of which have very unique features that Marx did not even begin to guess at.) Even the use of “bourgeois” is awkward, as it implies a dichotomy of classes, the upper-class (capitalist) and the lower-class (worker or proletariat). But, our society has a thriving middle class that is a mixture of capitalist businessmen and skilled workers. So, by referring to the bourgeois, the corresponding view is skewed with such bias that misses the bigger problems in today’s society is nearly inevitable. At best, you can receive a partial answer or interpretation by using the outdated Marxist lens to examine an issue. Really, all I want is for these authors to take their time in analyzing potentially leftist, progressive, or extremist concepts and themes. By not doing so, they are not only jumping to (usually) false conclusions, but also making it difficult for me to take them too seriously.

Take, for instance, Phillipa Gates’s article “The Man’s Film: Woo and the Pleasures of Male Melodrama”. Gates asserts, “That through moments of excess a ‘reading against the grain’ of the [film’s] text is possible, a reading that will reveal meanings opposite to those that are apparent at the surface of the text…these oppositional meanings are Marxist and/or feminist in reaction against the capitalist and/or patriarchal agenda of Western film and society.” (Gates, page 61).  However, Gates lines out an argument that Woo’s films are not feminist in this way. “The emphasis of the contradictions exposed in the films of the women’s genres are usually concerned with gender, family, and the role of women in a patriarchal society, whereas the contradictions exposed in Woo’s films are those which exist between society and the masculinity of the hero. In each film there is a juxtaposition of the apparent hypermasculinity at the surface of the text and the suggestions of vulnerability, emasculation, and homoeroticism revealed through moments of melodramatic excess.” (Gates, page 62) Without delving into whether or not I think that this “reading against the grain” methodology is legitimate or effective for displaying progressive ideals, I feel it is necessary to point out how a more careful examination of feminism in its present day form makes this argument a moot point. By examining masculinity and gender roles and then supposedly asserting a counter theme to what is currently found in society, you are still working within a feministic frame. Modern day feminism is all about fighting gender roles and showing how masculinity and femininity is an illusionary social construct that not only makes no sense, but is also detrimental to those who force themselves into these perceived gender paradigms. It may not be as overt and obvious to the viewer as feminist, but it is. Woo is indirectly a feminist film maker by showing how men can and must be feminine.

                Lisa Oldham Stores and Michael Hoover’s article “Whose Better Tomorrow” made a similar, yet still very different mistake by not thoroughly examining progressive concepts. They set up a basic framework of anti-capitalism themes that can be found in Woo’s films. However, Stores and Hoover don’t fully delve into the theme. Instead, they leave it at quoting Marx a few times after making parallel comparisons between movie characters and various capitalistic roles. As they said on pages 45 and 46, “Shing will be the vampire-capitalist, who ‘only lives by sucking living labour, and lives the more, the more labor it sucks.’ Ho and Mark represent loyal employees, the physical labor part of the operation, but also set apart from other triads.” If this was examined further, it would be apparent that roles found in capitalism is not so simple, and that the roles laid out here (and the roles that could potentially be derived by a closer examination of the film and of society) are not close to Marxism or many traditionally examined alternative economic theories. Although the film could easily be seen as a literal example of the corruption power of money and power (a viewpoint that is not necessarily anti-capitalist) or as a metaphor for the unseen violence inherent in capitalism and capitalist societies, the film could just as easily be viewed as the glorification of violence and capitalism. Without fully examining what kind of power relationships and capitalist assertions are being  made on a much more complex, theoretical level, it is difficult to know what the movie is arguing, if it is successfully arguing that message or theme,  and it the message or theme is really applicable in modern society, or if it is grossly outdated and flawed.

A Response That Accidentally Turned into a Blossay

First off, allow me to offer my apologies for the lateness of this response. The reading “Bruce Lee’s Fictional Models of Masculinity” by Jachinson W. Chan was dense and thought provoking and it has taken some time for me to figure out how to appropriately respond to it. Masculinity and femininity are difficult subjects to approach, and one must be incredibly careful when discussing them, as are people are quick to jump to conclusion and be unnecessarily offended.

                To me, the most pressing matter in Chan’s article is introduced in the title itself. Bruce Lee’s version of masculinity is derived not from Bruce Lee himself, but his fictional characters. This is problematic for a few reasons. To begin, it implies that individuals are gathering their own information on what it means to be a man or to be masculine not from the real world, but from fictional, non-existent characters. It seems foolish to look to something that is not real for something so important (or at least seemingly so) to the self. Yet, that is entirely the case, and not just for Asian American men looking for a way to be masculine in American culture. It is true for teenage girls of all races. It is true for parents looking for answers on how to raise their kids. It is true for young couples trying to figure out how to form a healthy and functioning relationship, and how and when to end that relationship. All of these demographics (for the most part) seek out answers through the media, which is not only fictional, but rarely mirrors how the real world actually functions. There is actually a great study on how individuals have higher expectations of relationships after watching a romance movie or even a romantic comedy. As a result, relationships of these individuals tend to be shorter and less satisfying, and are more likely to believe that their significant other should be able to ‘read their mind’ and ‘just know what they want’. The point is, I don’t think that it is a good idea AT ALL for Asian American men (ar anyone for that matter) to be seeking out a place in American culture by looking for role models in fictional medium.

                Second, fictional characters are, at best, one-dimensional caricatures of real life demographics, and at worst, completely detached from reality. The implicit narrowness of fictional characters prevents individuals from ever being able understand a character on a deeper level without investing personal experience or other outside assumptions into the movie. It doesn't matter how well developed a character’s past is, it is still sparse in comparison to a real human being. The same can be said of a character’s motivations and emotions. Take, for instance, when we were looking at the screenshot of Chiao Mei in Thursday’s class. The interpretation of her gaze by the class varied, but that is exactly the point. Each person was bringing in outside factors while analyzing her face. Even while moving around the room, the impression of Chiao Mei changed. Personally, when I looked at Chiao Mei, I saw an empty person; a flat character that can be filled with whatever I wanted her to be. I could see the potential of each suggestion, whether the suggestion was that her gaze was lustful, studying, or amusement. No one interpretation is less valid than and other interpretation. So, how is that problematic? The problem is that when a person is looking at a one-dimensional character for answers like what masculinity is, they are coming up with a perverted and diluted version of what they themselves would answer if they would seriously reflect on the question on their own.

                The biggest issue I have with Chan’s article, and to a larger extent society, is the underlying assumption that masculinity must be intertwined with violence in some way for it to be culturally acceptable, and that homosexuality and masculinity cannot mix. I actually don’t know where to begin with how absolutely ridiculous that is. I have no interest in power or violence. Does that mean I  cannot be a man? And if I embrace violence and power, I may become a better man, but I would be a far worse human. How can we as a society progress if we are continually obsessed with forcing ourselves into the dichotomy of masculine or feminine? It is little wonder that the world is such a mess with every biological male vehemently pursuing the abstract concept of masculinity via the roads of power and violence. It is my belief that the focus of the individual should not be to become a better “man” or a better “woman”, but that the focus should instead be on becoming a better human being.