Globalization from below: Diaspora’s Global Production of Kunfu Films

Many people think that global and local are opposite terms. But it is no longer true in today’s society. “Globalization from below”, proposed by Brecher et al. (1993), perfectly captures the dilemmas of those who at the same time resist and use hegemonizing technologies and communications. This “constitutive entanglement” between global and local, as Clifford (1994) argued, is “the characteristic of modern diaspora networks”.

I think Clifford is absolutely right if we look at the global productions of diasporas’ national dreams. For example, Hollywood Martial Arts films directed by Chinese Diasporas, perfectly displays the intertwinement between local and global. The most typical one that comes to my mind, is Ang Lee's martial arts melodrama Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, which thrilled audiences from Mainland China to the US.

In its visual and narrative content, the film comes across as resolutely Chinese local. Based on a Chinese novel and featuring ethnic Chinese actors, it offers sweeping vistas of mainland China and brings the Qing dynasty era to life through sumptuously detailed settings, costumes, and decor. The director, US-based diaspora Ang Lee, always cherishes a Chinese dream. Lee’s parents fled the communist revolution on the mainland in the 1940s and moved to Taiwan, where Lee was born. In 1978 he left Taiwan for the US, where he studied theater and film, started a family, and began making movies. By the time he made Crouching Tiger, Lee had lived in the US for almost as long as he had lived in Taiwan. At the same time, he maintained significant legal, economic, and cultural ties to Taiwan, including that of citizenship.

Due to his own experience, Lee’s Chinese dream is a “distinct version of modern, transnational, intercultural experience” (Clifford). He has never lived in China and did not really know China. He grew up with a sense of connection to the mainland, through “my parents, my education and those kung fu movies.” (see interview). Thus, Crouching Tiger should be seen as an evocation of an imagined China that exists in the minds of the overseas Chinese. Lee says, “I am looking for that old cultural, historical, abstract China – the big dream of China that probably never existed.”

However, that is exactly what I am worried about. For those diasporas, it is very hard to capture the pure homeland without any stigmas of globalization, because they have to experience the "selective adaptation” (Clifford) to immerse themselves to the new environments. Ang Lee earned his Bachelor and Master of Arts in the US, inevitably acquired the Hollywood ways to maximize profits and global attentions. Indeed, the Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon's production was astoundingly global. As an international co-production between companies in four regions, this film is a worldwide cinematic phenomenon: it grossed over $200 million worldwide and became the most successful foreign-language film in US history.

Following the trend lead by the Diasporas, the spread of Chinese dream goes hand in hand with popularization of Hollywood’s production mode. It more or less triggers the fad of Kunfu films produced by Chinese local directors as a means to earn global reputation (e.g. Hero, by Yimou Zhang). By this time, Kunfu film is no longer a form of self-expression to most Chinese; rather, it is only a method to cater the tastes of global audiences so as to make more money (Hero does present some Chinese elements, but only to the extent that western audiences could relate to). From my perspective, that is exactly how "globalization from below" functions in cultural industries. As we can see from the case of the Kungfu film made by diasporic dirctors, even the most national form of expression is inevitably tainted by the brush of globalization.