Date: Wed, 24 Jan 2001 12:54:47 -0700
From: "gary patrick norris" <ngary2-AT-qwest.net>
Subject: Re: lost dawg


>Is this inciteful...?
>
>I saw Crouching Tiger last week and I have to go against the crowd on this
>one - I was less than moved. I think the subtitles were a marketing ploy to
>get us to think we were going to see some exotic/esoteric flick. My sense
>was that Crouching Tiger was made for a Western audience. That in itself
>depreciates the cultural possibilities. (More criticisim: the acting was
>well-performed but predictable; the ending was too abrupt - even seemed a
>bit David Carradine-ish; if the filmmaker had just let us see the wires I
>might have enjoyed this more as an outlandish b-flick; etc., etc.) So where
>does the theory come in to play here? Anyone...?
>
>Michael


Crouching Tiger participates in a specific genre of film, filmmamking 
and storytelling.  The theory comes into play the moment the critic 
(you) is willing to deal with the decisions that were made in making 
the film.  You can't theorize in a vacuum.  If you have watched many 
ASIAN martial arts FANTASY films, Crouching Tiger fulfills (and 
outperforms at times) the group.

Ang Lee is very aware of the "flaws" that you mention.  Crouching 
Tiger has no B-film aspirations.

The theory comes in when you are willing to ask questions like "how 
is the hero/heroine portrayed in this film as compared to this or 
that genre?"

Crouching Tiger is not Western fare storytelling.  There is a whole 
different semiotic code to this film.

This idea that the subtitles are a marketing ploy for western 
audiences is nutty criticism.  What do you mean?  Crouching tiger is 
an exotic film, by definition.  It is fantasy.  And it is "from 
another world."  In this sense, it is for everybody.

Why the conflating of the terms "exotic" and "esoteric"?  Last time I 
checked exotic meant "from another world" and esoteric meant "made to 
be understood by only a few."  Now, only a certain type of film fan 
will love Crouching Tiger, but it does have all the elements of the 
love story and the epic, just to mention two narrative techniques, 
that are universally understood by all audiences.  Once again, the 
semiotic code, the symbolism developed, is slightly different. 
Things might appear strange at times.  But that is because the story 
is literally from another world and its director allows it 
sovereignty.  Imagine if this film had been cluttered by Western 
mechanism of filmmaking like the product placement and the obligatory 
obvious climax.  What an awful, predictable movie Crouching Tiger 
would be.  Instead, it's action is unpredictable.  Certainly, the 
dialogue is predictable.  But the characters are symbols; they are 
stock characters that symbolize specific roles.  They are entirely 
NOT AT ALL self-reflexive.

Your sense that Lee made the film FOR western audiences is really an 
unjustifiable argument.

To be honest I enjoyed the spectacle and ignored the frail storyline. 
Yet I knew what to expect before I walked into the theatre.


Some "critics" just like to criticize anything colored with a populist brush.


Some of us have come to the realization that HONG KONG film is not 
all Woo shoot 'em ups and Chan chop-socky.  The Bride with the White 
Hair series, the Chinese Ghost Story, the Tai Chi Master series (just 
to name three) are good examples of what Crouching Tiger is going 
after in style.  For crying out loud, half of Tai Chi Master is 
literally "in the air."  Sometimes the title of the film is the 
storyline.  These films are made for endulging in fantastic 
spectacle, they transcend bullshit political pandering structure. 
They are all action, uncanny at times, but always strangely human.

What I love about "Western Audiences" is their  unwillingness to 
understand a narrative unless it follows pseudo-Aristotlean 
structure.  Your claim that Crouching Tiger ends abruptly is strictly 
personal criticism.  So what?  You ask, "where does theory come into 
play here"?  RIGHT NOW:

THEORY OF SEEING
THEORY OF AUDIENCE REACTION
THOERY OF NARRATIVE STRUCTURE
THEORY OF PERSONAL PSYCHOLOGY
THEORY OF THE POLITICS OF CINEMA

criticism isn't "I liked this 'cause" or "I didn't like this 'cause."
Fuck Ebert.  Criticism is a method of discovering something new about 
something we are familiar with.  It is a search for answers that 
develops its own unique dialectic that can be learned and unlearned, 
practiced or ignored.  This practice begins with theory and ends with 
the auteur (author).  The critique>>>The Theory>>>The practice...

you participate in this process...it does not belong to you...


gary norris



-- 
Nothing (not even God) now disappears by coming to an end, by dying.
Instead, things disappear through proliferation or contamination, by
becoming saturated or transparent, because of extenuation or
extermination, or as a result of the epidemic of simulation, as a result
of their transfer into the secondary existence of simulation. Rather
than a mortal mode of disappearance, then, a fractal mode of dispersal.
	Jean Baudrillard, TRANSPARENCY OF EVIL.


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