The Philosophy of Popular Culture

Robert Arp, Adam Barkman, James McRae, Robert Arp, Adam Barkman, James McRae

• Publisher: The University Press of Kentucky
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9780813141695
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Philosophy History & Theory

Ang Lee (b. 1954) has emerged as one of cinema's most versatile, critically acclaimed, and popular directors. Known for his ability to transcend cultural and stylistic boundaries, Lee has built a diverse oeuvre that includes films about culture clashes and globalization ( Eat Drink Man Woman, 1994, and The Wedding Banque t, 1993), a period drama ( Sense and Sensibility, 1995), a martial arts epic ( Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, 2000), a comic book action movie ( Hulk, 2003), and an American western ( Brokeback Mountain, 2005). The Philosophy of Ang Lee draws from both Eastern and Western philosophical traditions to examine the director's works. The first section focuses on Taoist, Confucian, and Buddhist themes in his Chinese-language films, and the second examines Western philosophies in his English-language films; but the volume ultimately explores how Lee negotiates all of these traditions, strategically selecting from each in order to creatively address key issues. With interest in this filmmaker and his work increasing around the release of his 3-D magical adventure The Life of Pi (2012), The Philosophy of Ang Lee serves as a timely investigation of the groundbreaking auteur and the many complex philosophical themes that he explores through the medium of motion pictures.

Part 1

THE EASTERN PHILOSOPHY
OF ANG LEE

CONQUERING THE SELF

Daoism, Confucianism, and the Price of Freedom in Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon

James McRae

Authentic Self-Cultivation

There is a famous Chinese painting entitled The Three Vinegar Tasters that depicts the founders of China’s three great philosophical systems— Confucianism, Buddhism, and Daoism—sampling a vat of vinegar. Confucius and the Buddha find it distasteful, but the Daoist Laozi considers the vinegar to be sweet. Although this image is primarily meant to show the importance of all three traditions for Chinese culture, it is also interpreted as a Daoist critique of the other two systems, particularly Confucianism. Confucius believes that human nature is sour and must be corrected through education, rules, and social norms, but Laozi thinks that human beings are best in their natural state.

Ang Lee’s film, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000), explores the tension between Confucian and Daoist philosophies of self-development.¹ Although both traditions agree on many points, they differ on the role that society should play in the cultivation of an exemplary person. The purpose of this chapter is to explore how the tension between these two traditions drives the conflict and character development in the film. The first section discusses the foundational metaphysical assumptions that are shared by Confucianism and Daoism. The second section compares and contrasts Confucian and Daoist notions of self-cultivation as they are illustrated in the film. The final section argues that freedom from social limitations is essential to authentic self-cultivation, but it comes at a price: every character must make sacrifices to attain liberation. Ultimately, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon illustrates that authentic self-cultivation is a balance between one’s natural freedom and the roles, relationships, and obligations of society.

Chinese Metaphysics: The Correlative Universe and
the Focus–Field Self

Laozi (born ca. 604 BCE) and Confucius (551–479 BCE) were contemporaries during the Zhou dynasty (1122–256 BCE).² Both were scholars and active in political life: Laozi kept the archival records for the court of Zhou, while Confucius briefly served Duke Ding of Lu.³ The classical texts, Shiji and Zhuangzi, both claim that the two scholars met on at least one occasion during which Confucius consulted Laozi about the rites and praised the senior scholar for his wisdom.⁴ Because Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon is set in 1779 CE during the Qing dynasty (1644–1911 CE), the ideas of both Confucianism and Daoism would have become culturally embedded and instantly recognizable to the film’s characters. Although Confucianism and Daoism disagree on many aspects of philosophy, they do share a common cosmology that is taken for granted by all Chinese philosophical systems.

The ancient Chinese ontology of Confucianism and Daoism is fundamentally acosmotic: “They have no concept of cosmos at all, insofar as that notion entails a coherent, single-ordered world that is in any sense enclosed or defined.”⁵ Cosmotic thinking in Western philosophy has been problematic, postulating unhelpful ideas: a belief in an ordering agency, a contrast between reality and appearance, a focus on permanence over the process of becoming, and a preference of reason over sense experience. As acosmotic philosophies, Confucianism and Daoism profess no ordering agency and no contrast between reality and appearance, and they focus on change, the process of becoming, and the validity of sense experience over purely rational thinking.⁶ Ames and Rosemont draw a distinction between the Western notion of relation and the Chinese notion of correlation.⁷ Western epistemology is typically concerned with relationality, in which an independent self observes its environment as a separate entity. Because the individual is separate from the environment, it is necessary for one to have a set of categories through which experience can be organized and interpreted. In the Chinese notion of correlation, the knower and the known are fundamentally related because the knower is part of his or her environment.

Two key terms are used to define the natural environment: tiān and dào. Neither term is clearly defined within Confucian or Daoist philosophies because these traditions emphasize ethics over metaphysics.⁸ Ames and Rosemont choose to translate tiān as “the Inherent Order of the Natural World,” though many scholars also render it as “the heavens” or “heaven.”⁹ Tiān is often used as part of the compound tiānmìng, which refers to the “propensity of circumstances” or the natural tendencies of things. Dào can be translated as “road,” “path,” or “way,” and it holds slightly different meanings for Confucianism and Daoism. Confucius interprets it as the way of self-cultivation, such that “to realize the dao is to experience, to interpret, and to influence the world in such a way as to reinforce and extend the way of life inherited from one’s cultural predecessors.”¹⁰ In Daoism, dào refers to the way of nature; it is the absolute first principle of existence— undifferentiated, whole, and full of infinite possibility. The Daodejing begins with the passage, “The Dao that can be named is not the Dao.” As soon as we start rationally categorizing things, we abstract them from their true, interdependent nature. Taken together, tiān and dào refer to “the movement and patterns of the natural world.”¹¹ In both Daoist and Confucian thought, when the term tiān is used, it refers to the natural world and the interrelation of things within the natural order. In Confucianism, when the term dào is used, it usually refers to the path of cultivation one must follow in order to become an exemplary person.¹² In Daoism, dào refers not only to this process, but also to the natural order of the world as well; dào and tiān are used interchangeably.¹³ This is important because in Daoism, it is only when one brings one’s actions into harmony with the natural world that one can truly be a cultivated person. The Daoist view does not contradict the Confucian view; rather, it has expanded on the Confucian interpretation of tiān by combining it with the concept of dào. Although tiān and dào have slightly different overtones, the two terms are used interchangeably in Daoist literature.¹⁴

Confucianism and Daoism understand the person to be defined by a focus–field relationship with his or her context and the persons within that context. Hall and Ames describe the focus–field self in Chinese culture and philosophy:

Persons are radically situated as persons-in-context, inhering as they do in a world defined by specific social, cultural, and natural conditions. Persons shape and are shaped by the field of things and events in which they reside. . . .This language of focus and field provides us with a way of talking about the continuity and interdependence of the human being and tian presupposed in the Confucian worldview. Tian is the field, the social, cultural, and natural context, and is in some sense greater than the particular person . . . as well as being implicate within and brought into focus by the particular person.¹⁵

Tiān is the context in which all things reside and the background against which all things must define themselves. Self-development in ancient China was understood as the art of contextualization—the art of cultivating the person in relation to his or her environment. Because of the acosmotic structure of the Daoist world, there is no single, great context in which all things are taxonomically organized parts. Rather, the world consists of the “myriad things,” a plethora of particulars that can be understood from a variety of different perspectives. Thus, since the world is made up of “many particular foci that organize the fields about them,” the “art of contextualization involves the production of harmonious correlations of the myriad details . . . that make up the world.”¹⁶ These “myriad details” include the natural world and other persons (both familial and sociopolitical relationships). By harmonizing oneself with one’s context, one is shaped by that context and in turn seeks to shape that context through one’s actions within it.

This understanding of oneness as a function of focus–field relationships is most evident in Daodejing 39:

Of old there were certain things that realized oneness:

The heavens in realizing oneness became clear;

The earth in realizing oneness became stable;

The numinous in realizing oneness became animated;

The river valleys in realizing oneness became full;

The lords and kings in realizing oneness brought proper order to the world.¹⁷

This passage describes the way that all things are defined by their focus–field relationships with their context (dào). All things must understand themselves and cultivate themselves in relation to the dào (natural world). Each thing—the heavens, earth, the numinous, the valleys, and the lords and princes—are truly developed only when they are understood according to their relationship with the oneness of their context. Any attempt to cultivate oneself without this contextualized understanding results in disaster. Thus, it is one’s relationship to the oneness of the dào that brings stability and flourishing to the world.

The characters in the film are fundamentally defined by their relationships with each other and with the natural world. Jade Fox (Cheng Pei-pei) represents the unnatural: she learns Wudan by studying the pictures, but does not understand the underlying principles; she uses Purple Yin poison to kill Li by reversing the natural flow of his blood and vital energy; and she corrupts Jen’s (Ziyi Zhang) character by making her into a criminal (a poisoned dragon). By contrast, Li Mu Bai (Chow Yun-Fat) is a representation of what is natural. He is repeatedly associated with the green bamboo forest, which is a symbol of adaptability to nature: his sword has “green” in its name, he uses a tree branch to parry Jen’s blade in their first fight, and he later uses the green bamboo forest to his advantage in his epic duel with Jen.

Self-Cultivation in Confucianism and Daoism

During his first confrontation with Jen, Li Mu Bai offers a lesson about the true meaning of the martial arts: self-cultivation. “No growth without assistance. No action without reaction. No desire without restraint. Now give yourself up and find yourself again. There is a lesson for you.”¹⁸ Jen clearly has fighting skill, but she lacks the character to control her abilities. Ultimately, martial arts training is dedicated to the cultivation of one’s character, and it is on this point that a tension develops between Daoist and Confucian approaches to self-cultivation. Despite being grounded in the same cosmology, Confucianism and Daoism pursue different goals when it comes to self-cultivation. Confucianism can be classified as a type of humanism because it focuses on people and society as the medium through which self-cultivation takes place: the human community is the primary source of value. Daoism is a type of naturalism in which self-cultivation is modeled on the way of the natural world.¹⁹

SELF-CULTIVATION IN CONFUCIANISM

Confucianism considers the self to be dynamically structured as a function of its relationship to its environment and to other people. There is no permanent, fundamental self that an individual must actualize apart from the influence of society; rather, the self is flexible, constantly changing to meet the demands of its environment to thrive within it.²⁰ Confucius does not care who a person really is ontologically; rather, he is interested in how a person might cultivate him- or herself through the constant flux of a changing world. In the Analects, Confucius argues, “It is the person who broadens the way (dao . . . ), not the way that broadens the person.”²¹ One’s self is not based on some permanent, ontologically fixed being that one must actualize, but rather on one’s act of living appropriately in the world. By cultivating oneself to the highest degree, one brings a richness to the field of which one is a focus. Thus, in cultivating oneself, one broadens the dao. An important aspect of every person’s context is the other persons within that context: “Authoritative persons establish others in seeking to establish themselves and promote others in seeking to get there themselves. Correlating one’s conduct with those near at hand can be said to be the method of becoming an authoritative person.”²² For Confucius, self-cultivation must be accomplished in conjunction with the other people with whom one shares one’s context. Realizing (zhī) oneself is a process of “realizing others” just as understanding authoritative conduct (rén) is a process of “loving others...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Introduction
• Part 1: The Eastern Philosophy of Ang Lee
• Part 2: The Western Philosophy of Ang Lee
• Acknowledgments
• Glossary of Chinese Terms
• List of Contributors
• Index