From Conflict To Fusion: An Analysis Of Ang Lee’s Intercultural Personhood Reflected In His Films

With the rapid development of globalization and pluralistic cultures,intercultural communication expands on an unprecedented scale, whichsimultaneously deepens conflicts in values that are caused by different culturalbackgrounds. As one of the most effective ways of intercultural communication, filmsincreasingly carry the responsibility of spreading distinctive cultures betweencountries. Ang Lee’s films, which present the phenomenon of conflict and fusionbetween the East and the West by means of inquiring into a series of themes ofhumanity and ethics, bring about mutually beneficial intercultural communication.Based on Geert Hofstede’s cultural value dimensions and Young Yun Kim’stheory of intercultural adaptation, combining with Ang Lee’s life experience, theauthor tries to analyze his four representative films, Pushing Hands, The WeddingBanquet, Crouching Tiger and Hidden Dragon, and Brokeback Mountain. Specially,the author penetrates into essential reasons for the cultural conflict and fusion reflectedin the films by adopting methods of comparison and exemplification, which aims tofind out the formation process of Ang Lee’s intercultural personhood. The researchreveals that the success of Ang Lee’s and his films in the worldwide lies in theformation of his intercultural personhood, which keeps a foothold on native culture, inthe meantime incorporates some admirable and advanced parts of the western cultureinto his films for the sake of the development of humanity. To some extent,intercultural personhood plays an important role not only in exploring the toleranceand acceptance beyond the differences between western and eastern cultures, but alsoin decreasing the cultural conflict and advancing intercultural communication as wellas promoting the Chinese native culture.