An Analysis Of American And Taiwanese Value Dimensions In Father Knows Best Trilogy

This thesis aims to discuss the different value dimensions of Taiwanese and American societies in Ang Lee's Father Knows Best Trilogy. In this study, cultural phenomena in the movies are analyzed based on five value dimensions proposed by Dutch psychologist Geert Hofstede. The behaviors of various value dimensions described by Hofstede are compared with the corresponding plots in the three movies, and main findings are summarized as follows. Except some parts of the plots, cultural phenomena related to family context, educational context, working context, and social context in Father Knows Best Trilogy are basically consistent with Hofstede's descriptions of his theory. That is to say, Taiwanese social values are high power distance, high uncertainty avoidance, collectivism, masculinity, and long-term orientation, while American social values are low power distance, low uncertainty avoidance, individualism, masculinity, and short-term orientation. Taiwan's tendency of masculinity shown in the three movies is slightly higher than that of America. There are five reasons that can explain the differences between plots and the theory of value dimensions. The heterogeneity of values, the nonabsoluteness of values, the multiple factors'influences on human behavior, the variability of values and the contradiction of values can cause discrepancies between theory and practice. It is pointed out that Hofstede's research is based on the working context, so his understanding of some values are slightly different from that of Ang Lee, whose movies mainly focus on daily life contexts.