新编跨文化交际期末复习资料

跨文化交际考试资料

Information about cultures in the world and communication between cultures can be obtained from various sources. The following is a list of some films that can be watched in the process of learning intercultural communication. By watching and discussing films like these, we can expect to increase our knowledge about different cultures and to become more aware of the possible intercultural problems and conflicts in beliefs, values, norms, and social customs and practices.

However, there is something that we have to always keep in mind, that is, these films, like the cases presented in our textbook, cannot be perfect representations of the cultures and intercultural communication. While much of what is portrayed in these films may be typical of a majority of members of the cultures concerned, some may be common only to a small number of people, and some may just be the characteristics of the individuals in the films.

Eat, Drink, Man, Woman 饮食男女

It is a delicious examination of the relationship between aging Chinese master chef Tao Chu and his three attractive daughters: the oldest, Jia-Jen, is a school teacher in her late twenties; the middle daughter, Jia-Chen, is a thriving corporate airline executive whose career comes before all else; and the youngest, Jia-Ning, is a twenty year old romantic who works at a Wendy's fast food joint.

Master chef Chu is a long-time widower who lovingly cooks large Sunday dinners for his three

166

daughters, who view the meals as too traditional. Secretly, however, successful airline executive

Jia-Chen loves traditional cooking and would like to be a chef like her father, if women were permitted to do so. Her older sister Jia-Jen is unmarried and cynical about men, but she becomes attracted to a volleyball coach and eventually pursues him vigorously. The youngest daughter,

Jia-Ning, is a college student who becomes pregnant from her frequent sexual escapades.

Life in the house revolves around the ritual of an elaborate dinner each Sunday, and the love lives of all the family members. As the film progresses, the personal relationships between the daughters and their significant others change unexpectedly.

The film features numerous scenes displaying the technique and artistry of gourmet Chinese cooking. Since the family members have difficulty expressing their love for one another, the intricate preparation of banquet quality dishes for their Sunday dinners serves as a surrogate for the spoken expression of their familial feelings. It seems that the things children need to hear most are often the things that parents find hardest to say, and vice versa. When that happens, people resort to ritual. For the Chu family, the ritual is the Sunday dinner. At each dinner the family comes together and then something happens that pushes them farther apart. The problems faced by the Chu family may happen all around the world, and the difficulty of communicating across the generation gap is something almost everyone has experienced at one time or another.

Pushing Hands 推手

The film illustrates the conflicts between western and eastern cultures and their enormous differences. Through the life-touching story and detailed descriptions of the characters, the themes and philosophies behind this movie are simply depicted.

The story is about Mr. Old Chu, an elderly Chinese tai chi chuan teacher and grandfather who emigrates from Beijing to live with his son, American daughter-in-law, and grandson in a New York City suburb. The grandfather is increasingly distanced from the family as a "fish out of water" in American culture. The film shows the contrast between traditional Chinese ideas of Confucian relationships within a family and the much more informal Western emphasis on the individual. The friction in the family caused by these differing expectations eventually leads to the grandfather moving out of the family home (something very alien to traditional expectations), and in the process he learns lessons (some comical, some poignant) about how he must adapt to his new surroundings before he comes to terms with his new life.

The title of the film refers to the pushing hands training that is part of the grandfather's tai chi routine. Pushing hands is a two person training which teaches tai chi students to yield in the face of brute force. Tai chi chuan teachers were persecuted the Cultural Revolution, and the grandfather's family was broken up as a result. He sent his son to the West several years earlier and when he could he came to live with his family with the expectation of picking up where they left off, but he was unprepared for the very different atmosphere of the West. "Pushing Hands" thereby alludes to the process of adaptation to culture shock felt by a traditional teacher in moving to the United States.

167

Crash 撞车

The film depicts several characters living in Los Angeles, California, during a 36-hour period and brings them together through car collisions, shootings, and carjacking.

Several stories interweave during two days in Los Angeles, California, involving a number of inter-related characters, a police detective with a drugged out mother and a thieving younger brother, two car thieves who are constantly theorizing on society and race, the white district attorney and his irritated and pampered wife, a racist white veteran cop (caring for a sick father at home) who disgusts his more idealistic younger partner, a successful Hollywood director and his wife who must deal with the racist cop, a Persian-immigrant father who buys a gun to protect his shop, a Hispanic locksmith and his young daughter who is afraid of bullets, and more. Through these characters' interactions, the film seeks to depict and examine racial tension, and the distance between strangers in general.

The principle subject matter is racism and its manifestations, and how it is often as much the result of social conditioning and anger as of hatred and intolerance. In addition to the usual

white-on-black manifestation of discrimination, we are confronted with black-on-Latino,

Latino-on-Asian, white-on-Middle Eastern, and others. Wherever cultural differences exist, there is room for tension. However, by depicting bigoted characters as otherwise caring individuals, Crash asks us to consider the causes of racism as much as to examine its effects.

The Joy Luck Club 喜福会

This is a film about the relationships between Chinese-American women and their Chinese mothers. It is based on the novel of the same name by Amy Tan. Four older women, all Chinese immigrants living in San Francisco, meet regularly to play mah-jong, eat, and tell stories. Each of these women have adult Chinese-American daughters. The film reveals the hidden pasts of the older women and explores cultural conflict and the relationships between mothers and daughters.

After her mother's death, June is asked to take her place in a mahjong club. The three other members, like her mother, were all born in China. When June learns that she has two half sisters in China, she plans a trip to meet them. With this catalyst, the women begin to tell stories, not just about their own mothers and their lives back in China, but also about their often strained relationships with their Americanized daughters. The flashbacks to China are dramatic, and the stories are heartbreaking. Through a series of such flashbacks, four young Chinese women born in America and their respective mothers all born in China before the 1949 revolution, explore their past. This search helps them understand their difficult mother/daughter relationship with one another. As the film progresses, June learns about a culture that is supposedly her own but that she can touch only through the commonality of the mother-daughter bond. When June finally travels to China and helps her half-sisters to know a mother they cannot remember, she forges two other mother-daughter bonds as well. Her journey represents a reconciliation between her mother‘s two lives, between two cultures, and between mother and daughter. In addition, the journey brings hope to the other members of the Joy Luck Club that they too can reconcile the oppositions in their lives between past and present, between cultures, and between generations.

168

Since the film is structured as a series of vignettes told from the perspectives of the different women, there are multiple points of view. However, all these seem to be always connected by the universal desire for one generation of women to pass on their hopes for a better life to their daughters. In short, this film is very good at portraying the intergenerational and/or intercultural conflict between people who are caught between two cultures.

A Passage to India 印度之行

The film is set in the 1920s during the period of growing influence of the the Indian independence movement in the British Raj. It is a largely successful and entertaining adaptation of E. M. Forster's novel of cultural dissonance and colonial oppression in British-ruled India.

Mrs. Moore has travelled from England to India with Adela Quested to visit her son Ronny, who is the local magistrate in the provincial town of Chandrapore and to whom Adela is engaged to be married. Both Mrs. Moore and Adela wish to see something of the ―real India‖, a notion that strikes the colonialists who have successfully segregated themselves from their subjects as somewhat quaint. Ronny himself considers the notion a little dangerous, in fact. But Mrs. Moore and Adela find an ally in local schoolmaster Dr. Fielding, who has good relations with many of the natives, including the Moslem Dr. Aziz and the Hindu mystic Professor Godbole. Aziz is so struck by Mrs. Moore's openness and kindness when he first encounters her one night alone in the local mosque, that he is willing to arrange for an expedition to take the two ladies to the nearby Marabar caves.

The outing goes reasonably well until the two women begin exploring the caves with Aziz and his sizable entourage. Mrs. Moore experiences a strong fear of being in a small enclosed space that forces her to return to the open air. She encourages Adela and Aziz to continue their exploration but suggests they bring only one guide. The three set off for a series of caves far removed from the rest of the group, and before entering Aziz steps aside to smoke a cigarette. He returns to find Adela has disappeared; shortly after he sees her running headlong down the hill, bloody and disheveled. Upon their return to town, Aziz is jailed to await trial for attempted rape, and an uproar ensues between the Indians and the colonialists. When Mrs. Moore makes it clear she firmly believes in Aziz's innocence and will not testify against him, it is decided she should return to England. She then suffers a heart attack during the voyage and is buried at sea.

In the subsequent trial, Adela has a change of heart and clears Aziz in open court. Later, she breaks off her engagement and leaves India, while Dr. Aziz abandons his Western attire, wears traditional dress, and withdraws completely from Anglo-Indian society, opening a clinic in Northern India near the Himalayas. Although he remains angry and bitter for years, he eventually writes to Adela to convey his thanks and forgiveness.

My Big Fat Greek Wedding 我的盛大希腊婚礼

The film is centered on Fotoula Toula Portokalos, a Greek-American woman, who falls in love with a WASP, Ian Miller. The movie also examines the protagonist‘s relationship with her family,

169

with their cultural heritage and value system, which is sometimes rocky but ends with mutual

appreciation.

Toula Portokalos is 30, Greek, living with her parents and

brother in a Chicago Greek

community and working in her family's restaurant, Dancing Zorba's. All her father Gus wants is for

her to get married to a nice Greek boy. But Toula is looking for more in life. Her mother convinces

Gus to let her take some computer classes at college (making him think it's his idea). With those

classes under her belt, she then takes over her aunt's travel agency (again making her father think it's

his idea). She meets Ian Miller, a high school English teacher, WASP, and they date secretly for a

while before her family finds out. Her father does not accept the wedding of his daughter with a

non-Greek man. Ian politely asks permission to continue seeing her, but Gus stubbornly refuses.

Toula and Ian still manage to visit his apartment, where their relationship becomes more intimate.

Toula meets Ian's upper-middle class, WASP parents for the first time, who are as reserved as her

family is demonstrati ve. Ian proposes, she accepts, and Gus is ultimately forced to accept their

relationship. Ian readily agrees to convert to the Greek Orthodox faith in order to be worthy of Toula,

and is baptized in traditional fashion.

As the year passes, the wedding planning hits snag after snag as Toula's relatives "helpfully"

interfere. Toula is horrified to learn that her parents invited the entire family to a "quiet" dinner, and

the Millers, unused to such cultural fervor, are woefully overwhelmed. The traditional wedding itself

is quiet, dignified, and goes without a hitch. Everyone goes to the reception, and the Millers begin to

enjoy the Greek partying lifestyle. Gus has learned to accept Ian; Ian has learned to accept Toula's

huge family, and Toula herself has learned to accept herself by coming to terms with her heritage and

her cultural identity.