Comments on: Family and Community in Asia (or, do my job for me)

By: Ivy Lim

Ivy Lim — Wed, 07 Mar 2007 06:59:49 +0000

For the theme of “family and community” you could try Zhang Yimou’s The Road Home – about a woman’s determination to bury her deceased husband in the traditional fashion in the village. It’s quite an interesting juxtaposition of modern vs traditional (the son returns from the city) and tells the story in flahsbacks which depicts village life.

Added bonus could be the presence of Ziyi Zhang as the female lead.

Possible book might be Lloyd Eastman’s Family, Fields and Ancestors (1988) in paperback.

By: Jon Fernquest

Jon Fernquest — Sun, 18 Feb 2007 08:34:45 +0000

> I’m thinking of using “family and community” as the theme.

Whoops.

A suggestion that is a little bit more on topic is:

Use those soap operas or romantic comedies (with higher quality acting and storyline.)

Like Toshiba Theatre (c. 1990).

IMHO this is the easiest way to get the essence of a culture’s “family and community”.

By: Jon Fernquest

Jon Fernquest — Sun, 18 Feb 2007 07:08:41 +0000

Kill three birds with one stone and use the Japanese film Rashomon:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rashomon_%28film%29

The three birds being:
1. History (recreating an era accurately)
2. Historiography (problem of reconciling multiple sources)
3. Influence of Asia on West

Interesting tidbits from Wikipedia:

1. In the film Inside the Edges, German filmmaker Werner Herzog said that Rashomon is the closest to “perfect” a film can get.

2. Rashomon plays a central role in Martin Heidegger’s dialogue between a Japanese person and an inquirer. Where the inquirer praises the film early on for being a way into the ‘mysterious’ Japanese world, the Japanese person condemns the film for being too European and dependent on a certain objectifying realism not present in traditional Japanese noh plays.

3. The political scientist Graham Allison claimed to have used Rashomon as a starting point for his magnus opus, Essence of Decision, in which he told the story of the Cuban Missile Crisis from three different theoretical viewpoints (and, as a result, the Crisis is described and explained in three entirely different ways).

For Southeast Asia:

The Movie Suriyothai:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Legend_of_Suriyothai

Being an expert on the Opium Wars, it would be interesting to hear Dr. Baunler’s opinion on Maurice Collis’s historical fiction:

Maurice Collis, Foreign Mud, An account of the Opium War

As far as Burmese fiction and politics is concerned, I would recommend the short stories of Ma Ma Lei, but they haven’t been translated into English yet:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ma_Ma_Lei

This author recreates U Nu era Burma in fiction, like reading Balzac for post-Napoleonic France (c.1830-1840)or Jonathan Spence’s “Death of Woman Wang” for pre-modern provincial China.