The Cinema of Ang Lee: The other side of the screen

NO DIRECTOR OF modern film seems to contribute more to the debate on globalization, in the sense of blurring the distinctions between cultural identities and plumbing their interrelationships, than does Ang Lee. His own path to worldwide recognition has been a crossing of boundaries. As was detailed in this volume’s introduction, Lee left Taiwan in 1978 and relocated to the United States, where he completed a Masters of Fine Arts in Directing at New York University. His directorial focus shifted back and forth between his homeland and his adopted home in his earliest films, as he directed a series of critically-acclaimed independent dramas—these include two films shot in America (Pushing Hands and The Wedding Banquet), and one Taiwan-made coproduction, Eat Drink Man Woman. He followed this success with three English-language literary adaptations, Sense and Sensibility, The Ice Storm, and Ride with the Devil. Having completed a “trilogy” of Chinese-language films, and a “trilogy” of English-language films, he then completed the pan-Chinese epic Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon before returning to English-language adaptations Hulk and Brokeback Mountain. Most recently, he returned to China with Lust/Caution, and then to English-language cinema again (America, Canada, and India) with his latest works, Taking Woodstock and Life of Pi. Within this multinational and multilingual career achievement, Lee’s Eat Drink Man Woman is his work that most reflects the forces of globalization. In the imagination of the artist, however, the cultural entities of the West and the East have been metamorphosed and blurred, and traditional attitudes called into question. As such images of a young male student pondering Dostoevsky and female college students working at fast-food restaurants in cosmopolitan Taipei indicate, globalization is a trend that cannot be resisted. And yet, through this dialectic of shifting interrelationships of cultural identities, an opportunity arises for Ang Lee to uniquely display Chinese culture (or a hybridization of Chinese culture) in a way which in many respects serves as an enlightenment. While his work appeals to consumer culture, it also signals the more traditional grand narrative, demonstrating that people living in the new millennium have developed a unique sensibility to deal with the contradictions of their age.

The most striking example of the transference of symbols between East and West is in Eat Drink Man Woman, whose title alone impresses “otherness” for the native English speaker. A direct translation of a common Chinese idiom, the title in English conjures up pidgin grammar, thus suggesting a whole history of Asian “otherness” in a Western setting. (The English words from the roughly translated Chinese proverb “eat drink man woman” served as a working title for the script, penciled in for the crew and actors to work with—the problem of setting up a formal title was left until after the filming, when it was suggested that the working title be left as is.)1 The suggestion of binary opposition in the title also calls to mind the East/West dialectic. The title implies larger themes that the narrative of the movie will explore, e.g., the difference between male and female, yet it suggests an interdependence, such as that between eating and drinking. In the two pairs of the four-word idiom, “Eat Drink Man Woman,” the larger motifs of food and sex, the fundamental components of all human life, are implied in a neat shorthand of translated Chinese, and are universally recognized to be transcendent of any cultural boundary or border. Thus, the title of the film itself is a sign of the globalized, territorially nonspecific themes within. A final twist on the meaning of the title is given when the proverb—“Eat drink man woman” (or in Chinese “yinshi nannü”)—usually employed to describe the bare necessities of sustaining life, is given an ironic reading when pronounced by the main character in the film to illustrate that even life’s simplest elements have a way of becoming complicated.

As the film opens, the viewer is treated to the sights and sounds of all manner of traditional Chinese gourmet cooking, which presumably involves the use of certain tools, cooking techniques, and animal organs not found in the Western kitchen. This may provide a shock or at least pleasurable voyeurism for the Western viewer. However, this is set against later semiotic signals that suggest the power and the reach of globalization—specifically, the appearance of the Western fast-food chain in which the two teenage friends work in Taipei with all of its Western accoutrements such as the uniforms, burgers, shakes, fries, etc. This may also prove to be a shock for some Western viewers unused to seeing Asian faces in the uniforms of American franchises. Food in the film is emblematic, infused with significance, and an intergenerational means of communication. “We communicate through food,” is a line spoken by the middle daughter of the family, Jia-Chien (Chien-Lien Wu) and in the film food truly serves as a linguistic signifier. This is further emphasized by the father’s, Mr. Chu’s, disability in the film—although a gourmand and master chef, he loses his sense of taste, and this becomes a major theme in the narrative. When this sense of taste is restored at the end of the film—while he shares a meal cooked by his middle daughter—it serves as a fitting denouement to demonstrate that communication and understanding has been restored. “Daughter,” he says; “Father,” she replies to him.

Eat Drink Man Woman shares striking similarities with European and American film classics as well. For example, the Franco-Italian coproduction by noted auteur Marco Ferreri, La Grande Bouffe (Blow-Out, 1973), a satire of Western decadence, shares similarities with Eat Drink Man Woman in the usage of food and sex, as well as art-house filming techniques. Confined to the single set of a decaying town mansion, this film treats the theme of Western excess—food, sex, self-pity—while alluding to the high arts of philosophy, art history, and literature. The filming technique pairs long takes of darkly-lit static shots that are dense with detail alongside extreme close-ups that are pitilessly revealing. La Grande Bouffe was a milestone in Western cinema at the time of its release because of its depiction of debauched sex and gluttonous eating, which scandalized American viewers. On a milder scale, Eat Drink Man Woman raised eyebrows in the highly conservative atmosphere of Taiwan when it was first released in the early 1990s. Other Western “food films” comparable to Eat Drink Man Woman include Denmark’s Babettes gjestebud (Babette’s Feast, 1987) and Mexico’s Como agua para chocolate (Like Water for Chocolate, 1992), which both artfully use food to raise the level of sensuality and depict the art of seduction by gastronomical pleasures.

It is interesting to consider that the criticism leveled against Eat Drink Man Woman in the United States centered on how the film was not easily classified as a comedy or a drama. Andrew Tudor notes: “The crucial factors which distinguish a genre are not only characteristics inherent in the films themselves; they also depend on the particular culture within which we are operating.”5 However, criticism of the film from its home country, Taiwan, centered on how the drama itself was too “Westernized” and that such “exaggerated” events could never take place in the conservative Chinese cultural environment of early 1990s Taiwan. Clearly, this made the film less popular with its Chinese audience in Taiwan. Ti Wei compares the revenues in the United States and Taiwan and finds that while the success of Eat Drink Man Woman surpassed The Wedding Banquet in America, in Taipei, Eat Drink Man Woman earned only NT$50 million, less than half of the NT$120 million earned by The Wedding Banquet. Taiwanese viewers also criticized the film’s unrealistic depiction of contemporary Taipei.⁶ Ang Lee expressed his own cultural confusion over the film as he received criticism for its portrayal of Taiwan culture. “I was confused. I did not know how the film would look … I couldn’t taste it. … I couldn’t even smell it.”⁷ Sheng-mei Ma has recognized this film’s penchant for making Chinese culture an object of Western gaze, an observation he applies to the entire Father-Knows-Best trilogy: “The trilogy reveals an increasing propensity toward exotic travel in search of the Other rather than nostalgic lamentation over loss of the Self.”⁸

This criticism reflects the argument of James Clifford (1992) in confronting global identity. Clifford puts emphasis on the dislocation of culture, that culture has become deterritorialized and diasporic. Arjun Appadurai builds on Clifford’s view by demonstrating that deterritorialization “creates new markets for film companies, art impresarios, and travel agencies, which thrive on the need of the deterritorialized population for contact with its homeland.”⁹ The members of diasporas thus may imagine or fashion new post-national identities, making and remaking themselves in response to new localities, social and political pressures, and transnational cultural discourses.¹⁰

It is because the Real itself offers no support for a direct symbolization of it—because every symbolization is in the last resort contingent—that the only way the experience of a given historic reality can achieve its unity is through the agency of a signifier, through reference to a “pure” signifier. It is not the real object which guarantees as the point of reference the unity and identity of a certain ideological experience—on the contrary, it is the reference to a “pure” signifier which gives unity and identity to our experience of historical reality itself. Historical reality is of course always symbolized; the way we experience it is always mediated through different modes of symbolization: all Lacan adds to this phenomenological common wisdom is the fact that the unity of a given “experience of meaning,” itself the horizon of an ideological field of meaning, is supported by some “pure,” meaningless, “signifier without the signified.”¹¹

Eat Drink Man Woman takes as its premise the intergenerational conflict and alienation caused by the forces of globalization and Westernization in the modernizing capital city, Taipei. Semiotic shorthand is used to contrast Chinese traditional conceptualization and thought: neat rows of utensils, endless jars of sauces, the dimly-lit interior of the home, the sounds of chopping, frying, fileting. These are put in blunt contrast with the impersonal high-rises that fill the city; the encroachment of contemporary steel-and-glass architecture upon the sprawling Japanese-style traditional homes (the home owned by the father in the film, although located within a congested area of the city, includes a yard to raise chickens).12 The father has lost his taste—possibly because he cannot find flavor or pleasure in the conflict between traditional and modern. What is valued by him does not seem to be valued by the younger generation, and as he goes through the Sunday-night dinner ritual week after week, he has lost his taste for it. At the end of the film the father has moved from the old family home into a new place, and the camera framing his new wife Jin-Rong’s (Sylvia Chang) enlarged belly promises a second start for him. The apartment where he has relocated has a modern and up-to-date feel—decorated in a cool, minimalist aesthetic—which seems to show he has adapted and come to terms with modernizing his lifestyle. The evidence of Jia-Chien’s attempt to purchase one of the newly-developed properties in the city, and its subsequent condemnation for being on a polluted site—causing her to lose her savings in the investment—points to the necessity for her to adapt as well. This plot development points Jia-Chien toward her destiny: she will continue to live in her father’s home, and give up her position in the airline. She trades wealth, status, and power lunches for her own cherished desire—cooking, like her father. The irony is that although Jia-Chien pushed herself to join the globalized society in order to please and support her family, ultimately she finds that she must let all of that go and be true to herself. She must do what comes naturally for her, which is to enjoy her skill in traditional Chinese cooking.

The film is thus brought to the most conventional of conclusions, that of returning to roots or basic nature. For only when Jia-Chien is living this new lifestyle does her father’s “sense of taste” return. He had pushed her to move beyond her roots, to escape the limitations of the kitchen. He had wanted her to have a better lifestyle than he had; she simply wanted the lifestyle they were already living. The hint of this need for reevaluation and a return to roots comes during an earlier conversation with her ex-lover Raymond (Lester Chit-Man Chan), in which Jia-Chien tries to share her heart and tell him about the true happiness she experienced in the kitchen as a child. She describes her father’s tradition of baking her bracelets made from dough and letting her play after school in his restaurant’s big kitchen. She says the telling line, “I don’t have any childhood memories unless I cook them into existence.” Raymond responds, “I can’t remember a thing from my childhood,” signifying his lack of emotional depth and lack of a significant connection with food; he then unwittingly crushes Jia-Chien’s enthusiasm by picking up a ring of calamari from the dish and slipping it on her finger in a teasing manner. When she quickly pulls her hand away, horrified that he has not taken her seriously, he then holds the squid ring up to his ear, and says suggestively, “How about nibbling on my earring?” Jia-Chien is offended; she takes the ring from him and puts it back in the dish. Raymond looks on, confused and slightly annoyed. The use of food as a dramatic device comes through clearly in this scene where Jia-Chien, nostalgic for the past, feels connected to it through food. The shifty and uncomprehending response from Raymond reveals his inappropriateness as a guest at her table, and highlights the need for Jia-Chien to sever ties with him and return to her roots.

The combination of this kind of stimulation of the physical appetite in juxtaposition with the other vibrant element of the story—sexuality—is truly potent. This being an early 1990s Taiwanese film, the sexuality portrayed on the screen will be conservative by Western standards, and artfully hidden instead of thrust in the limelight. However, the contrast of the liberality and excess of the food preparation becomes sensually fulfilling in its stead. One of the amusing aspects of the English-language advertising for this film is that the promotional material seems to promise a “sexy” movie; the cover design shows three young women lying on their backs next to plates filled with appetizing food, while a line from New York Newsday promises: “It’s hard to tell where sex stops and food begins … Electric!”14 However, in the film itself the lovers all remain completely clothed onscreen, and no sex is shown. All five of the couplings that take place during the film are presented with an absolute minimum of actual physical contact. In the conservative Taiwan of the early 1990s, this is true to behavioral codes where men and women do not hold hands or kiss in public; with no homoerotic overtones, men frequently put their arms around other men in public, or girls hold hands/link arms with other girls. The scene in which the oldest sister vamps herself up after thinking she has received a love letter from an admirer is perhaps the most smoldering image in the movie, and even then she is wearing a turtleneck sweater. Another potentially erotic scene, where Li Kai and Jia-Chien begin to kiss in the office, is made less sexy by Jia-Chien’s high-necked office blouse. These conservative treatments of sexuality can be contrasted with the searing sensuality of Zhang Ziyi in Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, when she is a prisoner of the bandit/lover in the desert cave and must take a bath in front of him, or in the scene where she approaches Mu Bai (Chow Yun-Fat) in a wet costume with the come-hither line: “Is it the sword you want, or me?” This unusual line, unorthodox to common Chinese patriarchal codes of authority and sexuality, will be discussed in depth in the chapter on Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon.

The conservatism of sexual display in Eat Drink Man Woman can be compared to the lack of eroticism in The Wedding Banquet, which despite the highly-charged sexual subject matter (gay love, a marriage and wedding night sexual coupling) did not contain any overtly sexual scenes. The two physical encounters between the male characters were a quiet and tender kiss, and an unconsummated playful romp while running up a stairway. On the other hand, the scene with May Chin, as Wei Wei, in the overheating apartment where she mops the sweat off her neck with a damp rag is one of the most voyeuristic in the movie, as is the later scene in the bedroom where she uses a fan to dry herself as she stands in a sheer nightgown talking to her husband (in addition, she emerges naked from the shower in a short previous scene); the irony is that because he is homosexual, these very erotic sights are meaningless to him; he has no response to heterosexual signifiers.

Another significant aspect of Eat Drink Man Woman is that so much of the narrative takes place in or around a school environment; this resonates with Ang Lee’s personal experience growing up under the strict training of his father with the Confucian emphasis on education. Because so much of Ang Lee’s childhood was spent at school, it was easy for him to recapture the familiar atmosphere. The school where the eldest sister teaches is a typical all-male high school in Taipei. This film clearly challenges the ideal Chinese image of education—that of young men devoting themselves to Confucian classics and to advanced learning. Instead, the realistic view of school life in Eat Drink Man Woman demonstrates that school, for the average Chinese male student, is just a prison to be tolerated and endured; the few pleasures it affords are writing notes and tossing paper airplanes—the rest is just a bleak existence. The reality hits hard that schools all over the world face the battle of wills between teachers and sullen teenagers who would like to be just about anywhere else but in a classroom. In presenting the drab colors of the school uniform, the institutionalized greenish hue of fluorescent lighting, the aging teachers in the faculty lounge drinking tea and reading newspapers, and the sweaty teenage angst-filled existence, Ang Lee documents the stagnation and torpor of this environment that corresponds with his personal experience.

The scene where Jia-Chien and Li Kai, who have begun a flirtatious relationship at work, go shopping together at a large, brightly-lit “Toys R Us”-style department store, is a good example of the challenges posed by postmodern, globalized culture. Li Kai has asked Jia-Chien to help him choose a toy to send to his young son, who lives in America with his mother. He specifically would like to find “something Chinese”—a toy that will represent traditional Chinese culture rather than the mass-produced plastic items that line the shelves. As they wend their way through the aisles, the items all seem to look more and more identical and soulless. The exported Western iconic figures and Disney toys that fill the shelves in such abundance cannot satisfy Li Kai, who longs for a toy that carries actual cultural significance. The whole effect is extremely alienating, as the two have this conversation:

The screenplay for Eat Drink Man Woman is credited to Ang Lee, Wang Huiling, and James Schamus. Ang Lee has pointed out that Schamus was responsible for several key plot elements and narrative twists, including the critical device of the father’s loss and regaining of his “sense of taste,” which was entirely Schamus’ idea. In addition, Schamus suggested that since in the first two films of the trilogy the children disappointed the father, in Eat Drink Man Woman, the father should disappoint the children. Therefore, the father figure in Eat Drink Man Woman is stripped of much of his patriarchal reserve and becomes a weaker figure with a more human side, i.e., giving weight to his own desires and pursuing a romantic relationship.¹⁹

In Ang Lee’s three earliest films, Pushing Hands, The Wedding Banquet, and Eat Drink Man Woman, the themes of globalization and cultural identity are explored with depth and humor. The language barrier acts as a palpable force of conflict in Pushing Hands, while in The Wedding Banquet, each character is forced to grow and change when facing a new, disorienting worldview. In Eat Drink Man Woman, Ang Lee’s ideas on the impact of globalization are expressed with a new level of subtlety and sophistication. Each of his early films challenges the viewer to examine the effects of globalization and the daunting difficulties imposed by language barriers; they underscore the significance of the simple things in life (i.e., “eat” “drink” “man” and “woman”) in an increasingly impersonal and globalized world.

Li Kai:	I always wanted to find something Chinese for him. He has plenty of these already.
Jia-Chien:	He’s interested in Chinese culture?
Li Kai:	I wish. I can’t believe that in a few [short] years, my son is growing up to be an American. Sometimes I look at him and wonder if he’s actually my son. He was raised in America, and his mother doesn’t mind.
Jia-Chien:	His mother? How does she feel about you being away all the time?
Li Kai:	She’s glad I’m not around. I think the only reason we’re not divorced is that we’re both too busy. That sounds so cynical, doesn’t it?
Jia-Chien:	I’m just as cynical when it comes to my personal life.

Jia-Chien:	This looks Chinese.
Li Kai:	That’s [Barney]. You have no idea how much I suffered from those [TV] shows. Wanna hear the theme? “I love you, you love me …”
Jia-Chien:	Please don’t [sing it].
Li Kai:	What the hell. I’ll just buy this one. He’ll like it.