Although the Bride's marital aspirations might suggest that she holds a conservative sensibility, this is far from the case and she is ultimately more aggressive than Jen. While Jen also exhibits physical prowess, her sacrificial gesture at the film's conclusion signifies how she maintains a strong reverence for the Confucian moral code, assimilating her within the wuxia genre. Physically, the Bride resembles a dominatrix; she is taller than many of the characters and fights in a relentlessly savage manner (even going so far as to bite her adversary in one scene.) in contrast, Jen is more diminutive and her face and eyes are softer and less predatory. Where the Bride looks much more imposing than an average person, Jen has an average size that is not dissimilar from the other characters. Indeed, she is very much an everyman character thrust into a mythical world, assimilating her within the wuxia tradition. Further, although there are numerous violent scenes in Crouching Tiger, the soft musical score represents a distancing technique that separates one from the violence, allowing the viewer to watch the scenes with an intact awareness of the Confucian moral code. In contrast, in Kill Bill, the fight scenes are bloody and Tarantino magnifies the gruesome details through close-ups and slow motion. The projected brutality of Kill Bill assimilates the film within Hollywood genres...
Through enduring protracted battling scenes, Jen and the Bride are each female swashbucklers and the box office success of both films suggests that they hold the mass appeal characteristic of the serial protagonist. Ultimately, however, Crouching Tiger is a more conservative film than Kill Bill because Jen submits to the conventions of Confucian morality by sacrificing her life at the end of the film through jumping off the mountain. In contrast, Kill Bill concludes with a victorious, unrepentant image of the Bride watching cartoons with her estranged daughter. Although it could be argued that she ends the film unhappy because she is never able to reclaim her husband, she accomplishes the goals that are established early in the film. The portrayals of Jen and the Bride are therefore similar in that each is a determined warrior. However, the two characters differ in that Jen ultimately submits to the governing conventions of her culture while the Bride withholds her subversiveness.
Female Agency in Short Stories There are numerous points of similarity between Eileen Chang's "Shame, Amah!" and Wang Anyi's "Granny". Both stories depict the lives of Chinese domestic workers. Moreover, each tale is set during the same time period -- the years surrounding the Second World War. Furthermore, both of the authors are Chinese and display a marked affinity for the intimate details surrounding Chinese culture, which factors prominently in each
culture of humankind and its history, for as the saying goes, "the more we are different, the more we are the same." The Tang Dynasty in China occurred hundreds of years ago, yet some of the issues from that time remain as pertinent today as they did in the past. The poets of this period truly exemplify this continuation through time. When reading the works of the most well-known
Poetry and Politics in 1079: The Crow Terrace Poetry Case of SU Shih Charles Hartman in his article on the political fallout of the poetry of SU Shih acknowledges that all societies practice censorship in some degree and in some form. Western society has a history of confiscating, banning, destroying, controlling the distribution and punishing authors and individuals for the creation and possession of written texts that are deemed morally or
In the course of the Cultural Revolution, the communist leader Mao Zedong proclaimed particular cultural requirements for both art and writings in China. This was a period that was filled with violence and harsh realisms for the people within the society. Authors such as Bei Dao, Gu Cheng and Yu Hua can be considered to be misty poets, whose works endeavored to shift from an inactive response to active formation.
Chinese Cultural Revolution in Literature There are a number of stark images found in the works of literature reviewed by Dao, Cheng, and Hua in this assignment. Specifically, this paper details the imagery evinced in Bei Dao's "Resume," Gu Cheng's "Curriculum Vitae," and Yu Hua's "On the Road at Eighteen." That imagery and those works in general are thinly veiled allusions to the Chinese Cultural Revolution, which took places in the
Chinese Civilization China during the Tang dynasty was a period of beauty and regality among the Chinese citizenry. One of the art forms which took on new importance during the era was in writing. Literature both in the form of stories and poetry became artistic and beautiful. Those who could write best were elevated themselves to the pantheon of artists. This attitude about the importance of writing is visible in some
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