Ang Lee at Harvard

People tend to have two kinds of dreams. One is more realistic; the other, dreamy dreams, unlikely achievable in their lifetime. Randy Pausch, in his last lecture, talked about his childhood dreams, most of them were achievable, and he almost checked off the whole list. Almost. Because he did have dreams like becoming a NFL player, a hard one for a university professor. That is a dreamy dream. 

If switching career is my realistic dream, what is my dreamy dream? Probably a film director. A director who can master all kinds of genres, producing films from all corners of the world with a strong independent, creative spirit. Of course, I desire recognition, fame, and box office as well. So I would image that I am a mix of Darren Aronofsky, David Lynch, Hayao Miyazaki, and … Ang Lee. 

If I have to choose one in that dreamland to emulate, Ang Lee is probably my best candidate. I have seen almost all his movies, except a couple of early ones, and often amazed by his extremely diverse cinematography. It is even more amazing for his capacity to interpret Western culture (Sense & Sensibility, Ice Storm, Ride with the Devil) perfectly as an outsider. We don't see this sort of artistic and commercial success duplicated in academic world. Not at all. Can I even think of one scholar, who is from a non-Western background, produce groundbreaking scholarship on Western subject matters? No. The power dynamics is manifest in Western academics: Many Western scholars are great Orientalists, although that term is not used anymore after Edward Said's Orentalism, but not vice versa. If in the era of post-colonialism and post-modernsim, the West do not perceive the non-West as culturally inferior, they might still consider they are historiographically superior. In this sense, Ang Lee's success is almost a miracle. After all, the world of film-making is different from academic world, where language still matters tremendously. Maybe the visual is a more universal, powerful, and communicable language that made Ang Lee the single person who successfully worked against this power dynamics.

Too much on academic jargons. Back to the main topic. Ang Lee, together with his long-time partner James Schamus, came to Harvard to participate in a panel discussion about his films and his film-making experiences. It was an event that aimed to foster conversation between academics and artists. It was a nice attempt, though it is a bit awkward to see scholars offered their interpretations of Ang Lee's films, sometimes closely related to his personal experiences, right in front of the director. Of course Ang Lee was gracious, unassuming, and humble, and agreed with all these interpretations. But he also said something that manifested a clear distinction between a scholar and an artist: the former always analyzes, while the latter does what they feel right. Ang made movies out of his artistic instincts, not out of preoccupied analytical thoughts. In this sense, the philosopher-turned-director Terrence Malick is an exception, but even there we don't know how he produced a film since he rarely talks in public. Ang did say something deeper: We all live in pretense, underneath which hide our deeper, more complex, even disturbing, feelings that we cannot or don't want to explore. Film is one of the most powerful pretenses that allows us to explore our deeper feelings - often unpleasant, and a deeper understanding of ourselves. Making films, for Ang, is self-discovery. The topics and cultural backgrounds of his films are remarkably diverse, but they all connect to this discovery process, a process that resonates with all humanities. To use the cliché, we only understand the world by understanding ourselves. In this sense, the diversity of Ang's cinematography reveals the unfixedness of his own character: Always curious to explore new domains and never settled in one place. Underneath his docile façade lies a rebellious and free spirit.

Probably I will never be a film director, considering the dichotomous mindsets between an artist and a scholar. But Ang Lee's case is inspiring. Similar to Ang's experiences, I am also living between two cultures, and aspire to "step on the cultures of both China and West; wholeheartedly produce works with universal value." (兩腳踏中西文化，一心評宇宙文章 from 林語堂). How to make it work is a far more difficult question. How to balance between two cultural values? How to negotiate with my own tradition? Sometimes I consider myself a person who "travels with my root." (pilfered from Mu Xin 木心) I like that spirit because it nicely merges my individual spirit with my cultural identity. I don't believe in absolute freedom, because absolute freedom means absolute nothingness like what the movie Gravity portrays. Attachment is a fundamental aspect of humanity. What I desire is a "restrained freedom," conditioned by human relationship (family, friends, society). We may say Ang Lee is a genius, but he humbly attributed his success to team work, a spirit undoubtedly cultivated by him and his cultural background. Ang Lee's experiences best showed this: an individual, idiosyncratic indulgence of curiosity and pursuit of self-discovery can only be achieved and sustained by an effective collective support from others. A genius knows how to make the two mutually nourishing. This is no less true for academic success.