Outside and Beyond “The National”: A Case Study of Ang Lee’s Cinema in Hollywood

Li, Joe

Abstract

This article takes perhaps the most successful film- maker of Chinese origin, Ang Lee, out of his Taiwanese context of discussion and investigates the ways that his transnational/global filmmaking intersects with Chinese cultural identities and influences. This further problematizes the concept of national cinema and notions of “the national” as being defined within the boundaries of a nation-state. In the era of globalization, the fixed notions of national are problematic in thinking through cross-cultural communication (which is not unidirectional if it is to be successful). Ang Lee’s films take place in cross-cultural, transnational settings and deal with the themes of Chinese/Taiwanese diaspora, homosexuality, and cultural identity. The analysis of “Chineseness” in Ang Lee’s trans- national/Hollywood cinema help us interpret more productively the interface between global and local, national and transnational.

Citation

Li, J. (2019). Outside and Beyond “The National”: A Case Study of Ang Lee’s Cinema in Hollywood. In Q. Li, & R. Conte (Eds.), Migration & Memory: Arts and Cinemas of The Chinese Diaspora (21-39). Paris: Maison des sciences de l’Homme

• Acceptance Date: Sep 1, 2019
• Online Publication Date: Jan 1, 2020
• Publication Date: Nov 30, 2019
• Deposit Date: Mar 9, 2022
• Pages: 21-39
• Book Title: Migration & Memory: Arts and Cinemas of The Chinese Diaspora
• Chapter Number: 1
• ISBN: 9782593455472
• Keywords: National cinema, Imagined communities, Cultural identity, Chineseness, Transnationalism, Ang Lee
• Public URL: http://researchrepository.napier.ac.uk/Output/2852500