The Movies Analysis: “Pushing Hands” and “Eat Drink Man Woman”

The world of young and old generations collapse as they clash; each generation has a unique view on life. The clash of generations and the problems among different age groups are depicted in the movies of Ang Lee Pushing Hands and Eat Drink Man Woman. However, the films not only portray the clash of generations, they also show the influence of globalization and hybridization on the modern world and the people; the impact on the products delivered by artists is also presented. Via the movies, the viewers see how traditional values change. Moreover, the movies unify different cultural perspectives and try to create a new type of characters that would appeal to diverse audiences. Using rebellious characters, the director shows the viewers how globalized the world has become as people from different civilizations change and adapt. Thus, the movies make the viewers from different cultures understand the challenges connected to the transformation of the world and relate them to their life.

Eat Drink Man Woman tells the story about young daughters, who wanted to behave and live differently from the way of life imposed by their family. The characters rebel and change thanks to the encounters with different men by exploring their strong personalities. Throughout the movie, the viewers see how the girls transform and change their family as their personality changes. In the end, the movie has a very surprising ending, which reveals the meaning of the changes and transformations.

The movie Pushing Hands presents the changes happening in an old person, who was taken away from the traditional culture he belonged to a new reality he needed to adapt to. Although the main character is not excited about a different culture and is reluctant to accept the new environment at the beginning of the movie, eventually he gains a deeper understanding of a new reality and recognizes the necessity to become a more open-minded and tolerant person in order to embrace new culture.

Both the stories demonstrate the process of change of personality; the movies display the differences in the ways generations perceive the environment, culture, and reality. The audience sees how the young rebel against the old, and how both the parties oppose to one another. However, it is important to recognize the fact that both the films are about globalized and hybridized cultures and the ways people gain understanding and relate to them. According to Georgette Wang and Emilie Yueh-yu Yeh, “cultures often generate new forms and make new connections with one another” as a result of hybridization. The researchers used another movie by Ang Lee as an example, but the analyzed films also fit into the category. The movies not only show rebellious and misunderstood generations, they also present the way people begin to accept global cultural peculiarities that slowly penetrate into their cultures by transforming the societies.

In fact, the characters of the movie Eat Drink Man Woman not only follow the Western way of living, but they also act in a way they feel right, and accept it to be a part of their own culture. From the side of the daughters, the behavior and communication with the father serves not only as a form of protest, but also as a rational way of living in accordance with the culture, they grew up in. Thus, it is important to stress the fact that the girls did not grow up in the culture they are defending. Such a behavior is not a product of the media or globalized trends, but rather it is a product of the living environment that became a part of hybridization phenomenon, developed new features and spread them among the young people. The youth accepts independence and new gender roles as a normal way of living. In fact, the norms did not become purely Western as they transformed from the traditional culture. Thus, the norms of living represented the mixture of the Western and traditional culture. The father, one of the central characters of the movie, is not a part of hybridization, young people are affected by; the father lives in accordance with the rules of the traditional culture that was not transformed by globalization and hybridization. Therefore, the movie presents not only the conflict of generations or communication problems, but it also shows the clash of cultural relations, when the traditional culture meets the hybridized one and resists to accept the changes.

The other perspective on the issue is presented by the movie Pushing Hands. While the movie Eat Drink Man Woman tells the story about acceptance and change within one culture, Pushing Hands demonstrates individual relations and hybridized worldview that emerge in a new environment. The audience observes an old man, who w grew in a particular culture. The character accepted the culture as a norm, which dictated the rules and influenced the decisions; but the character has to live in another culture due to the transformations of the world, where the beliefs and ideas are different from the traditional culture. In this situation, the audience sees a man, who was protecting his culture for the entire life. However, the man was unconsciously accepting only the traditional culture without regarding the peculiarities of other cultures. When the character needed to live in a new culture, he was shocked as he did not develop any particular relations with other civilizations and could not relate to different systems of beliefs. As a result, the audiences observe how a globalized culture, which affects many other cultures in the world, meets the person, who has been trying to resist to cultural transformations. As the man is gradually accepting the new reality, the viewers experience the hybridization process through the eyes of one man, who adapted to it.

Thus, the movie is about forming new bonds and relations with a different culture by accepting the changes and transformations that are similar to the concepts proposed by Wang and Yueh-yu Yeh. The movie demonstrates the change and the connections formed between different cultures; the characters show that everyone is affected by the phenomena of transformation. Thus, the fact that the audiences in different parts of the world understand the movie well and are able to relate to the stories and the personalities portrayed by the movie shows that globalization and hybridization influence different societies despite the level of their closed nature or conservatism. The same fact applies to the film Eat Drink Man Woman, which was rated high by the critics and international audiences that demonstrates that the people of the world can relate to the issues communicated by the movie.

The hybridization is present in both the movies as a form of presenting the source of communication problems and generation issues. The movies communicate the issues related to the fact that people grew up in different cultures and different versions of the same culture. In fact, this is the reason some characters created relations and adapted to changes more easily than other people did. It is interesting that both the films focus on the same issue, but look at the issues from different angles. In such a way, the audience perceives the problem from a broad worldview. Moreover, the viewers can feel what it is like to be a part of hybridized culture as they also belong to it and can understand the feelings of young girls. However, the people also see the difficulties connected to accepting the changes and turning them into something meaningful for the personal culture. The audience can experience the challenges while analyzing the behavior of the main character in the movie Pushing Hands. The character embraces the new culture, but he does it his way by creating connections. In fact, the character not only transforms his personality, but also changes the surrounding culture by creating the type of hybrid he can relate to in a way the audiences relate to the scenes they see on the screen.

Therefore, two movies do not present the viewers with an issue of parents/children fighting, but they present the issue of the cultures that affect the people and change their personal perception of the environment. Thus, the reality the audience lives in already represents the product of globalized perceptions and changes the characters experience in relation to new encounters. When analyzing Pushing Hands, it was interesting to see the similarities with the movie Eat Drink Man Woman. However, it was also useful to explore a different perspective on the issue communicated by the movie. That is why the review, analysis, and comparison of two movies can help the audience to explore the issue of hybridization from a deeper and more meaningful approach; the audience can also see the similarities between the works and the reasons for relating the films to the present time.

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