MovieChat Forums > Ping guo (2008) Discussion > Cultural differences in judging this mov...

Cultural differences in judging this movie

posted 15 years ago by dwarol
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I didn't think that much of this movie, but it did leave me considering how movies are always made in the context of their culture. To Americans, I don't think there was anything really new or groundbreaking. But is that true for the average Chinese? For example,

1. How do the actions of the boss and the husband compare with the traditional views of a good husband in China? I'm sure both cultures see them as jerks, but how are husbands in modern China supposed to treat their wives? In rural China, women are still treated as chattel, and the actions of the two men may not have been considered that bad. In fact, the independence of their wives may have been the exception.

2. How does China's still intact "one child per family" rule affect the actions of the characters in this movie? As I understand it, this has put a high premium on children in China. The boss and his wife apparently never had even their one child. Are there subtle motivations for the boss' actions that a Chinese viewer would implicitly understand that are lost on Americans?

3. In a nation of over 1 billion people, I often wonder if the average Chinese feels like a cog in the wheel. They are also only one generation or less away a poverty and hunger that dwarfs anything in America (indeed, it's still a reality in rural China). Americans are brought up to believe that each of us is special, and most take a middle-class life for granted. But in the hustle to get ahead in China, how much does fear of returning the deprivations of the past motivate the average Chinese? Is the average Chinese more sympathetic to actions of the boss and the husband because of this?

4. As I understand it, there are almost two worlds in China. Life in the cities and in rural China are vastly different. In rural China, women still go through arranged marriages, while in the cities women often have the controlling power in relationships (for one thing, men outnumber women due to the "one child per family" law and selective abortion -- in the movie remember the boss' obvious desire for a boy). This movie is clearly made for the urban Chinese, but I wonder how someone in rural China would view it.

5. Clearly the movie is making a big statement about the corrupting influence of wealth in today's China (the greatest symbol in the movie being the Benz). Its pursuit destroys families and people (the murder of Liu Pingguo's friend being the best example). That's a common theme in America, but I wonder if there are hidden statements comparing this with life under Mao that Chinese would recognize. This is not to say that Mao's communism was "good" or "bad", just that many people in China have seen two vastly different economic and social systems in their lives and they must be suffering from emotional and social whiplash. This is generational -- in the movie the boss and his wife probably remember life under Mao while the younger couple probably do not.

I wonder if this movie is a kind of Chinese "Guess Who's Coming to Dinner", trying to break ground in liberalizing attitudes and showing the world as it really is. Ultimately it needs to be viewed in the proper social context, and in that context it might one day be seen as groundbreaking but also overly dramatic and not the best example of the movie-making art. But as someone who knows little about China, I have no way of judging this.

[–] wormite 15 years ago

I like the fact that you have put some really nice thoughts there to understand the movie, and particularly you are thinking with the culture background in mind.
To answer your questions:
1. Although Chinese govnt advocates the men/women equality proactively, but you can imagine that a country having women inferior to men for 5000 years won't change so easily. Something rooting deep in the culture suggests that people don't like to go to court or even talk publicly about the husband beating wife, which gives a silent permission to this kind of behavior. The authority of man in the family we call it is so important, but it is much better in cities than in rural areas, differs with education level too.
2. As the boss is acting with having an accent from Hong Kong/Tai Wan, I think his role won't even have this one child policy problem. But you can see the corner of iceberg there. After knowing that the child is his, An kun was happy, then he slowed down, turned back and made the doctor change the report, why? This is a situation created by the one child policy, people having received the better education, abiding by the law almost always have no child or one child, and they have rich resource for raising a person with good education etc. People like An kun, leading a poor life, who probably wants more than one child, ends up not being able to give their children a better life, and sometimes they try to break the law to have more than 2. The result? the already scarce education resources are wasted. And people like An kun realized that they can't even afford to have a child, try to send their own children to rich families for adoption etc.
3. What can I say, your deduction is so correct there. As a Chinese, I understand, though not agree with the men characters' behavior. They are also to some extend, victims of our culture. Or, in a Chinese way of thinking, a necessitated little sacrifice for the general good of whole race. The Chinese people find it more important to live as someone NOT SPECIAL in the society, because you will have a hard time surviving as a special one. We use this kind of morality to keep people in the line. Otherwise you'll see a chaotic China. China is kept in peace by sacrificing some of personal freedoms. Do not think that I dislike this, actually it is the best path for the current China.
4. I can't help with this, I grew up in Beijing and stayed there for 24 years, before I came here.
5.Since I'm the younger generation, the only memory I have is vague impression of not having enough supply of food. But I want to make this statement, being a society having rich or poor resources, being modern China or Mao's China, it doesn't matter, you always get the superior ones and inferior ones. Just different standards for different times. Mao's society had its ruling class too. Now we still have a special ruling class out there, but what would be so different between Chinese culture and US culture is the fact that this difference between root class and elite is huge in China, while relatively small in US. People in China literally worships the elites and regard everything they say as correct. Again, you can't say it's bad, maybe one day, US will try to even learn this from China, because it's been proven, at least for the 2000 years before 1840, to promote the efficiency of the society.