Seeking Identities Across the Worlds---A Critical Analysis of Ang Lee’s Film The Wedding Banquet

Abstract

Up till the present, most researches on Ang Lee’s films focused on cultural difference and cultural clash in the area of cultural studies. The identity problems facing by the Asian diasporas are neglected by past researchers. Based on the exploration of cultural identity from the perspective of diaspora in cross-cultural world, this paper picks up the Chinese English film The Wedding Banquet as an exemplification to interpret cultural identity politics of the immigrants in America. In the film The Wedding Banquet, the protagonists' identities are fragmented as the coming of the joyous parents comes from Taiwan for the wedding. This exploration of identity can help us to understand the exilic essence of the immigrants’ identity. For the immigrants, identity is always floating and travelling, without a final destination, except some temporary location. The happy ending of the film could be viewed as the “hybridization” of cultural recognition and as the ultimate solution to the identity problem and the Chinese-American cultural confrontation.