Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon

Ang Lee’s award winning film Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon exemplifies the paradox mentioned by both Liu Kang and Shih between China’s attempt to integrate itself into the world as well as its struggle to create an identity for itself (3). This paradox is conveyed through the internal difficulties experienced by the main characters. Each of the main characters displays an inner struggle of choosing what they truly desire and completing their duties to society or conforming to what society “requires” them to do. Like the characters’ inner struggle, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon reflects the true desire of China make themselves a unique part of the world, while also conforming to what is “acceptable.”

At the beginning of the film, the audience is introduced to the characters Li Mu Bai and Yu Shu Lien. Their secret love is revealed when Yu Shu Lien delivers Mu Bai’s green destiny sword to Sir Te. Sir Te advises Shu Lien to open her heart and to allow herself to love Mu Bai. Later on in the film, Shu Lien describes her hardship to Jen, the daughter of an important political figure. The audience finds out that Shu Lien is, in fact, deeply in love with Mu Bai, but prevents herself from developing that relationship as to not disrespect her dead fiancé, who was also good friends with My Bai. Shu Lien puts aside her true desires to do what is socially correct. In this case, not betraying her dead fiancé’s memory by starting a relationship with his good friend. Similarly, Li Mu Bai also puts aside his true feelings for Shu Lien in order fight his enemy and avenge his master. By choosing to exact revenge, Mu Bai does his duty for society by killing the dangerous murderer, Jade Fox. Both individuals choose society over the individual.

The third main character is also portrayed as being influenced by society. The political figures daughter, Jen Yu, is shown to be in love with a barbarian named Lo. However, in the end she leaves because of the differences in social status and Jen’s fear of hurting her father’s reputation. Jen completely ignores the true love that exists between herself and Lo in order to maintain her own as well as her family’s reputation.

These two relationships convey the tension between choosing what the individual wants and what the rest of society wants. In the same way, Ang Lee proposes this struggle in his film. Despite the different accents of the actors who speak different dialects and the different backgrounds of the actors, Ang Lee homogenizes the different Asian cultures under the category of Chinese. Ang Lee is able to claim that this blend of different backgrounds as the Chinese mainly because of the martial arts aspect of the movie. But why is martial arts something that is automatically associated with “Chinese” culture? This automatic association occurs, essentially, because of social conditioning and stereotyping. Many previous films that incorporated martial arts were categorized as “Chinese” culture, so everything thereafter, including Crouching Tiger was considered to convey “Chinese” culture. Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon was popularized when the film reached the United States. In the U.S., those unfamiliar with the different Asian countries and their separate identities could only rely on the acting and the subtitles to judge the movie. Of course the sensational martial arts and the passionate love stories would capture the interest of people.

In this sense, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon work to integrate itself into the global media, while trying to create its identity by using martial arts as its differentiating factor. Also, it seems as if Ang Lee was trying to create a united “Chinese culture” by blending the different backgrounds and presenting it as a single culture. This portrays the way in which China tries to claim as many entities as it can.

In effect, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon presents the continual struggle China has both internally and externally. On the one hand it is trying to work through the Chinese identity by incorporating, what I would consider different Asian cultures, and on the other hand trying to find China’s place in the world.