Title of paper: Tolerance/Intolerance and Dilemma of the Self in Edward

Yang's film <<A Confucian Confusion>>

 

Presenter: Kwok-kan Tam

 

Abstract:

        Tolerance is considered not only a virtue in traditional Chinese

morality, it is also a way to define the self. However, since the advocay

for individualism in the May 4th, tolerance has been seen as conformity and

even hypocrisy. The May 4th writers, such as Lu Xun, Mao Dun and Ba Jin, are

all in favour of a new morality that will define a person as an individual.

In their writings, the self is represented as a lonely iconoclastic fighter

against the evils of tradition. The self is thus portrayed as an individual

in opposition to social institutions. This opposition between the self and

society has been the framework many writers use in their representation of

the modern Chinese self.

        In the 1930s, there were writers who explored new means of

representing the inner complexities of the modern Chinese self, such as in

the fiction of "new sensation," in which tolerance and intolerance is a

theme examined under a new framework. Edward Yang's film <<A Confucian

Confusion>> is a continuation of this framework for understanding

contemporary Chinese life, especially in Taipei. In Yang's framework, the

problems that are central to contemporary Chinese culture are not those

imposed upon the self by society or by tradition, but those that are within

the self. While Yang examines the role Confucianism plays in the life of

contemporary Taipei, there is an inward turn in his treatment of the Chinese

self. The four major characters in the film are presented as selves, who are

in the dilemma between living up to the expectation of social and

traditional values and being true to their inner feelings, between tolerance

and intolerance.