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Conclusion

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 May 2021

Brian Hu
Affiliation:
San Diego State University
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Summary

In 2001, Ang Lee went onstage at the Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles to collect the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar for Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon, Taiwan's submission to the annual competition. It was a landmark accomplishment for the transnational Chinese film industry, which, as I noted in Chapter 3, had been dreaming of Oscar success for decades. In 2006, Lee returned to the Oscar limelight, winning Best Director for Brokeback Mountain. In his 2006 acceptance speech, Lee thanked “everybody in Taiwan, Hong Kong, China” and closed with gracious words of thanks in Mandarin. Lee had already collected top prizes at the prestigious Venice and Berlin film festivals, but the Best Director Oscar had special resonance for Taiwan, which had never before seen one of its native sons heralded on the world stage on a scale as large as this. More than 38 million watched the broadcast in the United States alone, and surely many Taiwanese households had their TVs tuned to the Oscars to see Lee receive an award that had previously been given to some of the luminaries of world cinema. Unlike his 2001 win, which was awarded in a special category reserved for the foreign, Lee's 2006 Oscar was for, in theory anyway, the best directing accomplishment in the world by anybody, regardless of nation or language. Furthermore, it was for Brokeback Mountain, a film that, on account of its western settings and gay themes, felt as far away as possible from the conservative Taiwan that Lee grew up in, and a testament to Lee's ability to don the costumes of any nation and empathize with the sensibilities of any race or experience. Lee had, with the whole world watching and Hollywood applauding, been accepted as a great director of the world, regardless of background. And in that moment and on that stage, he dared utter the name “Taiwan,” so rarely heard in official diplomatic channels internationally, and dared speak in Mandarin. Lee did it again in 2013, when he won a second Best Director Oscar for Life of Pi, a multi-lingual fantasy set between continents and cultures. “I can't make this movie without the help of Taiwan,” he said onstage, positioning Taiwan as an engine of a cosmopolitan cinema. At these moments of triumph, he reminded the world and his countrymen of his ethnic and national background.

Type
Chapter
Information
Worldly Desires
Cosmopolitanism and Cinema in Hong Kong and Taiwan
, pp. 209 - 222
Publisher: Edinburgh University Press
Print publication year: 2018

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  • Conclusion
  • Brian Hu, San Diego State University
  • Book: Worldly Desires
  • Online publication: 04 May 2021
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  • Conclusion
  • Brian Hu, San Diego State University
  • Book: Worldly Desires
  • Online publication: 04 May 2021
Available formats
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To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

  • Conclusion
  • Brian Hu, San Diego State University
  • Book: Worldly Desires
  • Online publication: 04 May 2021
Available formats
×