bianji@xiaoyuanyingyu.com
【Abstract】In this paper, I am going to analyze the conflicts and problems that are shown in Ang Lee’s film Pushing Hands from the perspective of intercultural communication. This film reveals that there may be not perfect equality between cultures; however, there is great possibility that the two cultures develop from conflicts to fusion with self-adjustment and more mutual understanding between cultures.
【Key words】intercultural; conflicts; fusion
1. An Introduction of the Film
The film Pushing Hands tells the stories in the families,, between the traditional old parents and their westernized offspring. It is about an elderly Chinese man, Mr. Chu, a conservative Chinese from Beijing immigrating to the united state, after his retirement to live with his son, American daughter-in-law Martha, and grandson in New York. However, because of the deep language and cultural gap, both he and Martha were unwilling to learn other’s native language and accept their respective life style; some frictions were gradually emerged between them during his stay in America. Moreover, it has explored deeply the issues of intercultural and generational conflicts, which become the backbone of the film works.
2. Inevitable Cultural Conflicts When the East Meets the West
2.1 The Conflicts in Material Cultures
When people from different cultural backgrounds come across and communicate, their differences are obvious and easily cause conflicts between family members. In the film “Pushing Hands”, Martha, the white daughter-in-law became bad tempered for the smallness of the house, especially when the old Mr. Chu’s coming to live in disturbs her regular pace of life. So her friend, a real estate baron’s visit seemed to bring a perfect solution.
It is not hard to see that the real problem for Martha is completely not the old Mr. Chu’s unexpected coming which looks like making her life so bad even like a mess; on the contrary, it is just that she is not ready enough to share a place, or in other words, just the same work room with an old man. So nothing is better than a new and bigger house. However, from the dialogue, we know the old Mr. Chu’s son Alex opposes to this idea. Why? The apparent reason is the short of money. But in fact as the dialogue goes, we get to know one of the main reasons is not the lack of money. And we can see that from Alex’s negative comments on Linda. “From Maoist revolutionary to real estate baron, if there is one thing worse than a communist, it is an ex-communist who has become a capitalist. She is not doing us a big favor, but trying to sell us a house again.” So the thing that really matters is that, in a Chinese way of thinking, Alex believed that the only difference for his father’s moving in is they need one more bedroom for the old man; the whole place is really big enough for the family to live. To buy a new one is not a necessity, but rather sort of a waste of money and another way of luxury life. This incident makes us realize that even though Alex has lived in the United States for so long, and his life is completely American-styled, something in his mind is still so Chinese, deep and rooted. His American wife’s complaint is truly understandable, but not so reasonable in Alex’s traditional opinion.
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