Screening Report 5: Taiwan: The Wedding Banquet

1) Relate what was discussed in class or the text to the screening.

            The film The Wedding Banquet was directed by Ang Lee and was released in 1993. Ang Lee is a famous Taiwanese director who was nominated for two Oscars and won an Oscar for Best Director twice. His film joins Taiwanese cinema and continues to show personal conflicts with morals values like in the early Taiwanese films. The Wedding Banquet is about a gay man who must stage a marriage so his friend can get her green card and for his parents to stop pressuring him to marry. It is a moral dilemma because his relationship with his boyfriend is at risk due to the fake marriage and he must continue lying to his parents. The film also uses long takes like Yang Dechang’s style during several dinner scenes in the movie.  

2)  Find a related article and summarize the content.  (on the film, director, studio, actor/actress, artistic content, etc.) You can use the library or the internet.  Cite the article and copy the link to your journal entry. Summarize in your own words the related article but do not plagiarize any content.  Make sure your link is a true hyperlink that will connect to the article you are referencing.

            A movie review from the New York Times discusses the film’s plot and the strengths that shine on screen. It discusses at length the inner struggles of the main characters, Wai Tang, and Wei Wei, and how they feel torn between the different sides of themselves. Wai Tang lives as a workaholic but also follows his heritage’s traditions. Maintaining the two parts of himself become a struggle when his family arrives. Wei Wei also struggles with wanting to be a carefree artist but also finds an odd fulfillment from the wedding ceremony. The review also touches on the merging of Taiwan and China being represented in Wei Wei and Wai Tang, which adds to the film’s comedy due to the shaky relationship Taiwan has with China. The Wedding Banquet starts as a comedy but turns into a drama once Wei Wei becomes pregnant, however the film has a solid ending where every character learns something new.

3) Apply the article to the film screened in class.   How did the article support or change the way you thought about the film, director, content, etc.?

            The article discusses inner conflicts within the main characters, which was a recurring theme in early Taiwanese before the New Wave happened in Taiwan. The character’s inner conflict adds drama and makes the characters feel realistic, their actions are believable even when situation becomes more troubling. The conflict helps to understand the characters’ motivations to carry out the wedding. If Wei Wei wants to stay in the country to be a painter she has marry a man from a traditional family. Wai Tang wants to be with Simon but he still wants to please his parents. This changed the way I saw the film because I felt more invested in the characters and I cared about what would happen to them in the end.

4) Write a critical analysis of the film, including your personal opinion, formed as a result of the screening, class discussions, text material and the article.  I am less interested in whether you liked or disliked a film, (although that can be part of this) than I am in your understanding of its place in film history or the contributions of the director.

            The Wedding Banquet strength comes from showing the struggle of pleasing family, being true to yourself, and accepting your culture. The reason why this film become so popular is due it finding comedy within these troubling scenarios. It is hard to make your parents happy when you are unsure if they will accept you for who you really are, so the film pushes a gay man to marry a Chinese girl and have an over the top wedding. The film has fun trying to make Wai Tang appear as heterosexual as possible, such as redecorating his apartment to hide any signs of his homosexuality. However, he can never deny his true self because he was still gay and no amount of hiding could change that about him. Wei Wei also accepts a part of her own culture because she was comfortable being an independent woman who is implied to be distant from her family. But as the movie continues she finds herself enjoying the wedding traditions and craving a parental bond which she missed.

            The film also shows the mixing of two cultures, Asian and American. This is best shown with Wai Tang’s parents. His mother dresses traditional and acts like a proper wife, she also wants her son to have a traditional wedding. She also struggles with accepting her son’s homosexuality. His father however is the opposite, he dresses in jeans and regular shirts and smokes cigarettes like an American. He also does not seem bothered by the rushed City Hall wedding and accepts his son’s lover easier than his wife.  He has no issue with his son adopting an American lifestyle, and accepts the merging of the two cultures.

References

Holden, S. (1993, August 4). Review/Film; A Union of Convenience Across a Cultural Divide. Retrieved from http://www.nytimes.com/movie/review?res=9F0CEFDB1431F937A3575BC0A965958260

CHECKLIST FOR PLAGIARISM 

1) (  X) I have not handed in this assignment for any other class.

2) (  X) If I reused any information from other papers I have written for other classes, I clearly explain that in the paper.

3) (X  ) If I used any passages word for word, I put quotations around those words, or used indentation and citation within the text.

4) (X  ) I have not padded the bibliography. I have used all sources cited in the bibliography in the text of the paper.

5) ( X ) I have cited in the bibliography only the pages I personally read.

6) (X  ) I have used direct quotations only in cases where it could not be stated in another way. I cited the source within the paper and in the bibliography.

7) ( X ) I did not so over-use direct quotations that the paper lacks interpretation or originality.

8) ( X ) I checked yes on steps 1-7 and therefore have been fully transparent about the research and ideas used in my paper.

Name: _____Melanie Flores_________________________________  Date: ________4/3/17____________________