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.