Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon Martial Arts Version of Sense and Sensibility
| PERSUASIONS NO. 22 (2000) | Pages seven-12 |
 | Bulletin from the President: Code Discussion Jane Austen, or How a Chinese Movie nearly Martial Arts Teaches Life Arts |
| Joan Klingel Ray Joan Klingel Ray (email: jray@uccs.edu) is Professor of English and President�due south Pedagogy Scholar at the University of Colorado, Colorado Springs and President of the North American Friends of Chawton House Library. She served equally President of JASNA from 2000 to 2006. |
North othing proves universal fame more readily than having one�south proper noun tossed about as a code. While Majorie Garber spoke most the marketing and marketability of Jane Austen in her Annual General Meeting (AGM) presentation, �The Jane Austen Syndrome,�one I find the public�s transforming Austen�s name into a lawmaking word�equally in managing director Ang Lee�southward describing his new film, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, as �Jane Austen meets Bruce Lee,�2 �fifty-fifty more hitting than seeing Austen�s confront on a tea mug. For past using Austen�s name equally a kind of cultural autograph, a lawmaking that immediately telegraphs sure values and meanings, we are maxim that Austen�s writings are part of a popular cultural cognition that nosotros expect most persons to recognize, whether or not they are JASNA members.
����������� In Ang Lee�s remarks, the Bruce Lee reference is clear: Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon is a martial arts flick, the type of picture show for which Bruce Lee was famous. What, and so, is the Jane Austen part of his comment meant to suggest? Other than that the martial arts are performed with �taste and execution� (picture Jane Fairfax brandishing a saber rather than playing the pianoforte), what is the meaning of the code word Jane Austen? Elegance? (Aye, fifty-fifty the fight scenes had a balletic elegance most them.) Manners and decorum? (The Chinese globe nosotros run across in the flick is, more often than not, very polite, operating co-ordinate to established protocols.)
����������� Immediately after quoting Ang Lee, Anthony Lane, moving-picture show critic for The New Yorker, just says: �[U]nless you are literally expecting Mr. Knightley to boot Mr. Elton in the head, the judgment stands.� While I think Mr. Knightley is more than probable to kick Frank Churchill in the caput, I find it provocative that Lane selects ii characters from Emma rather than from Sense and Sensibility (maybe Colonel Brandon kicking Willoughby in the head in the off-stage duel?), with which Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon shares a managing director: Ang Lee directed Emma Thompson�south screenplay of the 1995 film. Of course, like Emma, Ang Lee�south newest film tells a story of control and ability. Just I find it even more curious that Lane chooses male characters, Mr. Knightley and Mr. Elton, to close off his word of the Jane Austen connexion, rather than asking us to imagine Emma boot Augusta Elton in the head, or (given Ang Lee�s directing Sense and Sensibility) Elinor kicking Lucy correct above �her sharp picayune eyes� just after Lucy asks Elinor if she is upset by what she has learned from Lucy near the latter�southward underground engagement to Edward (S&S, II, 2). Every bit a devoted Austenite, I would like to suggest to my boyfriend devoted Austenites some ways to interpret fully the code that uses the words �Jane Austen� as a fashion of illuminating Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon.
����������� Like Austen�due south fictional world, the motion picture deals with �3 or 4 Families in a Country Village��in this case, erstwhile during the Ch�ing dynasty (1644-1912).3 Granted, in the film, the country village extends from the remote countryside all the manner to Peking. But nosotros are non concerned with the Chinese earth at-large: this is not your large epic moving-picture show whatsoever more than than Wickham and his fellow Redcoats in Pride and Prejudice are nigh to turn that book into a Regency War and Peace. Rather, our focus is on the occupants of the large house in the state, Shu Lien and Li Mu Bai, who share the house with a kind of self-fabricated family of warriors; on the occupants of the Governor�s house in Peking, including Jen and her maid, who is the disguised criminal Jade Play tricks, the nemesis of Shu Lien and Li Mu Bai; and on the sword, Green Destiny, which occupies, on-and-off, the firm of Sir Te, also in Peking.
����������� Simply as Jane Austen is conscientious to delineate the psychology of her major characters so that we understand their emotional motivations to undertake concrete action, so as well, this pic focuses on the psychology of its major characters: Li Mu Bai�due south feelings of �endless sorrow� even as he trained to become the champion martial arts warrior and thus owner of Green Destiny, which he decides to requite to Sir Te precisely because of this sorrow; Shu Lien�s unspoken all the same unshakable love for Mu Bai, which she stoically represses because of her equally fervent loyalty to the warrior code she shares with him; and Jen, a immature adult female who writhes nether the stifling restrictions of her social part, thus making her a malleable weapon for the manipulative Jade Fox, who volition use her to wreak vengeance against Mu Bai. (And you thought Emma Woodhouse was also decision-making!)
����������� While Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon is in no mode a parody, false, or �rip-off� of Sense and Sensibility (or whatever other Austen novel, for that matter), the Chinese picture gives primary emphasis in its plot to the choices that the female characters make, as do Austen�s plots. Yes, Li Mu Bai and his phallic Greenish Destiny sword prompt Shu Lien and Jen to make their choices. But the primary choices are primarily made past women. And the choices they make keep the moving picture-narrative propelling forwards. Furthermore, the women are not without suffering, a familiar situation for many an Austen heroine. Shu Lin chooses to hibernate her deep love for Mu Bai because she adheres to the warriors� lawmaking, only every bit Elinor hides hers for Edward because she adheres to social decorum. Jen is secretly in dear with Lo, a barbarian bandit who lives in a desert cave in People's republic of china�southward wild due west and with whom she institute truthful love and passion during the fourth dimension she lived with him subsequently he attacked her father�s caravan. Merely Jen chooses to go back home with her male parent�s army when they rescue her; thus, now, she faces the dismal prospect of a marriage to a fellow aristocrat�a marriage that goes confronting all of her inherent sensibilities.
����������� Similar Elinor, who always exerts, at bully emotional price, complete self-control around the passive aggressive Lucy, Shu Lien is baited in passive ambitious ways by the younger Jen, who is at present back in Peking�having returned to the city with her male parent�southward army. Jen, awaiting the inflow of her noble but undesirable husband-to-be, is interested in Shu Lien�s connection with Mu Bai non for romantic conquest, but considering, equally Jade Fox�south tool, she has been cunningly trained to execute the criminal�due south vendetta against Mu Bai by stealing Dark-green Destiny and killing him. For example, to try to lure information out of Shu Lien and proceeds her trust, Jen openly admires her and then offers to write her proper name in beautiful Chinese characters.
����������� Indeed, in playing her role as the dutiful aristocratic girl, Jen is frequently shown doing delicate calligraphy, the photographic camera focused on the brush or b_ in her mitt. Each time I saw this prototype, I was reminded of Austen�s famous epistolary comment about her own writing: �the picayune bit (two Inches wide) of Ivory on which I piece of work with so fine a Brush, every bit produces lilliputian effect after much labour� (16 December 1816).4 Park Honan interprets Austen�s remark in terms of her �reducing herself to a weak Chinese miniaturist. . . .�five But just equally Jen�due south calligraphy is a feint to cover her martial arms expertise and fearlessness, so likewise, Austen�s minor comment, I believe, ironically (irony being a kind of feint) reminds united states of america that painting skillfully in miniature is no chore for the �weak.� Rather, it requires supreme skill in picture rendition, as well as a very strong and steady hand and arm.
����������� A painter of miniatures has only a minor infinite�say, only big enough to show three or 4 families in a country hamlet being somehow involved in each other�s lives�to nowadays everything she desires. Only the express physical space of 2 inches of ivory can convey great depth and intensity�when painted upon, that is, with a fine brush held in the deft paw of a creative and insightful artist, a genius of her arts and crafts. Austen painted with far greater consequence, depth, and range than she is ready to admit to her nephew. Later on all, while we readers are charmed past the courtship stories of Austen�s novels, the books also deal with topics ranging from slavery and child abuse (Antigua and Fanny Price in MP) to illicit sexuality (Lydia in P&P, Maria and Henry in MP, Eliza and her daughter in Southward&South), from the pains of binding social decorum (Elinor in S&S) to the bounding main of changes in English society that are on the horizon (all of P).��������
����������� I have ever felt the phrase �sense and sensibility� is the key to reading Austen, whichever of her novels we selection up. Whether we remember of the experiences of Elizabeth Bennet and Darcy, or Emma Woodhouse, or the inhabitants of Mansfield Park, Northanger Abbey, Kellynch Hall, or Barton Cottage, we will not miss Austen�southward point if we think the characters� greatest lesson is to learn to deport and care for others with a balance of sense and sensibility. This is what the code �Jane Austen� telegraphs to me.
����������� At the hazard of going out on a limb hither�though my going out on a limb is probably quite apropos, given that the near visually mesmerizing martial arts scene in Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon occurs when Mu Bai and Jen cling to swaying, leafy tree trunks while engaging in ferocious swordplay�I suggest that Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon is Ang Lee�due south gloss on Sense and Sensibility, which is implied past the very title of the Chinese film.
����������� In Chinese civilization, the tiger and the dragon are the two great forces of the universe: the tiger represents soldierly sense and backbone and magisterial dignity, while the dragon represents the sensibilites of rule, with the dragon beingness the symbol of the Chinese throne (cf., the Japanese throne is represented by the chrysanthemum). The crouching tiger is tense and taut, set to act, but sensibly biding its fourth dimension until the right moment occurs. The dragon, according the Chinese legend, is the most powerful animal. It is literally subconscious because information technology dwells underground. But the dragon needs to reemerge to land periodically to refresh its thirst and bathe in the waters on the world�s surface in social club to live: its sensibilities need refreshing.6
����������� Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon or �Jane Austen meets Bruce Lee� is a martial arts film that conveys the importance of the requisite rest of sense and sensibility in ane�s life. Because Shu Lin represses her dear for Mu Bai and exercises, at to the lowest degree in warrior terms, commendable common sense in matters of the heart, she keeps her sensibility likewise rigidly under control and suffers greatly. Because Jen�s aloof position in club requires her to exist engaged to a man she does non love, and because in this and other means, she feels the rigid restrictions of her societal and familial role, her sensibilities are chafing to exist released. Her situation thus makes her a perfect musical instrument for the nefariously manipulative Jade Fox, who teaches the beautiful Jen to disguise herself every bit a homo and fight with the ferocity of a great warrior, thus releasing those pent-upwards sensibilities. (No wonder her true love turns out to be Lo, the brigand of the wild w).
����������� When Shu Lin and Jen engage in martial arts combat, neither wins: neither sense nor sensibility is victorious. Rather, equally in Austen, sense and sensibility must exist in residual�which, yous may call up, is visually represented by placing Marianne and Elinor on opposite ends of a seesaw at the opening of the 1985 BBC-television version of Sense and Sensibility. This is, for me, code word Jane Austen and, really, a wonderful way of living one�s life at its about rhythmically affable.
NOTES
1. � Julia Park Rodrigues, �Austen and Boston: A Perfect Pairing,� JASNA News, xvi (Wintertime 2000), 6. �The Jane Austen Syndrome� is a chapter in Garber�s Quotation Marks (NY: Routledge), 2003.
2.� Ang Lee is quoted by Anthony Lane in his review, �Come Fly With Me: Ang Lee�southward Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon,� The New Yorker, Dec. 11, 2000, 129-31.
3.� Jane Austen to Anna Austen, 9-eighteen September 1814, in Jane Austen�due south Messages , ed. Deirdre Le Faye (Oxford and New York: OUP, 1995).
four.� Austen, of course, was responding to her teenage nephew, James Edward, doing an aunt'due south best to make him feel practiced about his novel writing in light of her ain. When you lot visit Jane Austen�s business firm in Chawton, yous will see in a display instance some pieces of very thin ivory, nigh one-inch wide and 3-4 inches long, held together past a ribbon. The ivory pieces were used as pocket notepads, wherein i could jot in pencil a memorandum on the ivory and so wipe it clean to re-use information technology. See Jane Austen�s Letters , 323.
v.� Park Honan, Jane Austen: Her Life (New York: Fawcett Columbine, 1987), 354.
vi.� C.A.S. Williams, Chinese Symbolism and Art Motifs, third rev. ed. (Edison, NJ: Castle Books, 1974), 132-41, 398-400 passim. It is besides interesting to annotation that in Chinese cosmography, the Yin and Yang, which are the negative and positive principles of universal life, are symbolized, respectively, by the Tiger and the Dragon (458). I thank Judith East. Price, my friend and colleague from the History Section at the Academy of Colorado at Colorado Springs, for her sharing with me her extensive knowledge of Chinese legends and symbols.
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