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Online Forum 2

1) When watching films like Tampopo, Eat Drink Man Woman, and Chungking Express we are reminded of the saying “we are what we eat.” We also realize that, in the present age of overeating and ill-health, the saying should be modified as “we are more than, and less than, what we eat”--for instance, soda drinks keep us more awake but less healthy, while fast foods make us less exposed to hunger but more to overweight. That’s exactly why we’re studying these two films about traditional and common diets thriving in the global context because they sharply reveal the correlation between our diets, our visceral anatomy and the deep impact on our cultures. It is also about the ambivalence we share towards cultural stereotypes in food customs—instead of being reduced to static and unchanging types, we’re apt to see that there is tension, conflict and reinvention in their turning modern if we observe closely how the Asian directors attempt to depict this fluid process. In what ways do you feel the directors handle the conflictual and dynamic nature of this process well? Give one or two instances to prove your case.

2) The blending of diegetic and non-diegetic elements in film narration is one area where the Asian directors devote innovative energy to creating fresh and powerful impressions in connection to their cultures. Their resorting to cultural and religious heritages serves to link up the world of the living with that of the imaginary, and create cross-fertilizing action, imagery and characterization while telling two or more stories concurrently. A case in point is Chang-dong Lee’s use of the fragments of the broken mirror’s reflection on the room ceiling and their

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morphing into dancing butterflies through Gong-ju’s mind’s eye to impact on the audience as to how, despite her deformed body, she brings to the fore the robust, wholesome, and irrepressible inner urge for physical intimacy and mindful companionship. Choose one or two examples from Chungking Express, Oasis, or Suzhou River to illustrate how such responses are created.

3) As the saying goes, “blood is thicker than water.” In terms of cultural differences, we notice that there is more focus on familial values in the films we have studied more recently. Family ties are pivotal not only in pushing the plot forward, but in complicating the development of the storyline. In Eat Drink Man Woman, Chia- Chien, the middle daughter, begins as a most slick airline executive, becomes the least concerned about premarital sex, and grows to be the most anxious of all three siblings to leave her aging father and their traditional home, yet she ends up being the one daughter to keep possession of her father’s old house, reinvents her precocious cooking skills and eventually helps her Father restore his sensory functions to their former glories. Choose one example from Ju Dou or Eat Drink Man Woman to prove or disprove as you see fit and reason your viewpoints.

*These three topics are Part I of OLF 2; topics for Part II of OLF 2 will be posted in a week or two and they will be due on a much later date.