Cultural Identity And Construction For Characters In Ang Lee’s Films

As an artistic transnational language, film plays an important role in cross nationalcultural exchanges. As a world famous Chinese American director, Ang Lee inevitablyinterprets the cultural identity through characters created in his films from multiplepoints, especially from the view of Chinese Americans.Using Ang Lee s representative works The Family Trilogy as text, Stuart Hall sconception of fluid cultural identity and postcolonial theories as guidance, thisdissertation discusses Ang Lee s effort in exploring the recognition and reconstructionof the cultural identity for contemporary Chinese Americans in the American societyas a group of ethnic minorities. It points out that cultural identity is fluid in naturerather than a fixed essence. Chinese Americans should respect their native culturalheritage and try to mix the two cultures through of dialogue and communication whenassimilating into their new American culture.This thesis consists of four chapters. Chapter One introduces Ang Lee as well ashis cultural identity background. After a brief review of current research on Ang Lee sfilms, it puts forward the theme of this thesis.Chapter Two analyzes Stuart Hall s conception of fluid cultural identity, whichlaid the framework of my thesis. By combining Edward T Hall s high-context andlow-context with film script, I analyze the differences between Chinese and Americanculture from the outer material level to the deepest ideological level.The following chapter focuses on the process of self-seeking and alienatingtowards traditional Chinese culture of contemporary Chinese Americans displayed inAng Lee s films. By analyzing the image of Family, the crisis of culture identity forChinese Americans is explored.The last chapter reveals that as a group of marginalized people in the UnitedStates, Chinese Americans have made great efforts in pursuing self-recognition andcultural identity reconstruction.