Abstract
This study is oriented to do Chinese cultural discourse analysis via examining two Chinese Wu-Xia (martial arts) movies. Specifically, the study explores the construction of glocalization, cultural hybridization and cultural discourse embedded in the two transnational Chinese martial arts movies, i.e. Ang Lee’s Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000) and Zhang Yimou’s Hero (2002). The film product is an audiovisual representation of a certain of national culture, ideology and society. Chinese martial arts film is this kind of cultural product that embodies Chinese sociocultural and philosophical values. The research aims to explore the connections between filmic discourse, culture and society. A combined analytical framework that integrates glocalization concept, cultural hybridization and cultural discourse approach is constructed. By comparative analysis, the main finding of the study reveals that Ang Lee’s Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000) presents a high degree of cultural globalization and hybridization, while Zhang Yimou’s Hero (2002) has relatively a low degree of cultural globalization and hybridization but embodies a high degree of Chinese locally authoritarian culture. This implies that a successful filmic production with strong national features need to organically hybridize global-local culture in proper when it enters globally cultural competition. On the one hand, it should have locally cultural identity; on the other, it should also show a kind of universally cultural values accepted by other cultures.
Highlights
Globalization has permeated into different national cultures nowadays, localization should not be neglected in that it plays an integral part in the globalization process (Klein, 2004)
The study explores the construction of glocalization, cultural hybridization and cultural discourse embedded in the two transnational Chinese martial arts movies, i.e. Ang Lee’s Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000) and Zhang Yimou’s Hero (2002)
In the context of cultural globalization, transnational Chinese language films present a phenomenon of cultural hybridization
Summary
Globalization has permeated into different national cultures nowadays, localization should not be neglected in that it plays an integral part in the globalization process (Klein, 2004). In Wang and Yeh’s (2005: 175) view, “hybridization is not merely the mixing, blending and synthesizing of different elements that forms a culturally faceless whole” It is a complex and dynamic process of cultural integration. Two iconic Chinese Wu-Xia (martial arts) movies, i.e. Ang Lee’s Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000) and Zhang Yimou’s Hero (2002), are taken as two empirical cases to make a comparative study from the perspectives of glocalization, cultural hybridization and cultural discourse analysis. In the era of globalization, Chinese transnational martial arts film, as a kind of audiovisual cultural products, has to embrace globalization, it has to maintain its “Chineseness”, i.e. the originally oriental elements of China, which is an urgent point need to be examined carefully
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