Queer and Asian: Redefining Chinese American Masculinity in The Wedding Banquet (Ang Lee, 1993) and Red Doors (Georgia Lee, 2006)

2013 ◽

Vol 1 (2) ◽

pp. 129-159

Author(s):

Qijun Han

Keyword(s):

Chinese Culture ◽

Chinese American ◽

Family Values ◽

Value Systems ◽

Chinese Family ◽

American Family ◽

Cultural Specificity ◽

Chinese American Families ◽

Wedding Banquet ◽

To Come

Both emphasising dilemmas that have been confronted by the Chinese- American family, Ang Lee’s The Wedding Banquet (1993) and Alice Wu’s Saving Face (2004) highlight the image of homosexuality as incompatible with traditional Chinese family values. Through detailed narrative analyses of these two films with a focus on the structure of the plot, the key characters, and camera work, this article aims to answer the questions of how traditional Chinese culture continues to play into and conflict with the experiences of modern Chinese American families and how each film presents and resolves the tensions arising from a culture in transition. The article argues that the importance of studying the ways in which the protagonists try to come to terms with incompatible value systems, lies in the capacity of film to reveal the complex negotiation between tradition and modernity, as well as the socio-cultural specificity of the conceptions of modernity.

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Seeking Identities Across the Worlds---A Critical Analysis of Ang Lee’s Film The Wedding Banquet

Asian Culture and History ◽

10.5539/ach.v11n2p91 ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 11 (2) ◽

pp. 91

Author(s):

Jiefei Yu

Keyword(s):

Cultural Identity ◽

Identity Politics ◽

Cultural Difference ◽

Identity Problem ◽

Happy Ending ◽

Final Destination ◽

Ang Lee ◽

Wedding Banquet ◽

Cultural World ◽

Identity Problems

Up till the present, most researches on Ang Lee’s films focused on cultural difference and cultural clash in the area of cultural studies. The identity problems facing by the Asian diasporas are neglected by past researchers. Based on the exploration of cultural identity from the perspective of diaspora in cross-cultural world, this paper picks up the Chinese English film The Wedding Banquet as an exemplification to interpret cultural identity politics of the immigrants in America. In the film The Wedding Banquet, the protagonists' identities are fragmented as the coming of the joyous parents comes from Taiwan for the wedding. This exploration of identity can help us to understand the exilic essence of the immigrants’ identity. For the immigrants, identity is always floating and travelling, without a final destination, except some temporary location. The happy ending of the film could be viewed as the “hybridization” of cultural recognition and as the ultimate solution to the identity problem and the Chinese-American cultural confrontation.

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Culinary Comfort

Feasting Our Eyes ◽

10.7312/columbia/9780231172516.003.0005 ◽

2016 ◽

Author(s):

Laura Lindenfeld ◽

Fabio Parasecoli

Keyword(s):

Public Sphere ◽

The Public ◽

Male Characters ◽

Ang Lee ◽

Gender Hierarchies ◽

Wedding Banquet ◽

The Public Sphere ◽

Food Taking ◽

The Relationship

Explores unusual – and often culturally problematic – models of masculinity and their relationship to food, taking into consideration male characters as nurturers and caretakers both in the private and the public sphere. The analysis considers how these films operate in seeming opposition to films that tend to use food unobtrusively to reinforce dominant models of masculinity. Under closer examination, movies such as What’s Eating Gilbert Grape (Lasse Hallström, 1993), Heavy (James Mangold, 1995), Eat Your Heart Out (Percy Adlon, 1997), and later Spanglish (James L. Brooks, 2004) and Sideways (Alexander Payne 2004), reveal that these seemingly different and innovative images reiterate mainstream forms of manhood and thus reinforce gender hierarchies. Ang Lee’s The Wedding Banquet (1993) and Eat Drink Man Woman (Ang Lee, 1994) provide the necessary background to the discussion about the relationship among men, cooking, and masculinity.

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