An updated winter-term class that focuses on films by Academy Award-winning director Ang Lee will become part of the newly redesigned Asian American studies minor.
“At the time, it was called ‘Culture, Gender and Race in the films of Ang Lee,’ but this time I’m teaching it more from the point of view of Asian Americans,” said Jason Kuo, a professor who teaches courses in art history, archaeology and film studies. The class, now called ‘Transnational Cinema: Ang Lee’ will be “both scholarly and entertaining.”
The 14-day course will examine the majority of Lee’s work. This includes his older films, such as the “Father Knows Best” trilogy, and newer ones like Brokeback Mountain and Life of Pi, which both won multiple Oscars.
Each class will feature a screening of one of the films and a discussion of its different themes and characteristics. The order of the films will be more or less in chronological order, said Kuo.
In this course, students will study Lee’s films and personality as being intertwined with his work as a director, drawing upon auteur theory.
“Auteur theory, it’s been considered one of the major approaches to the study of film,” said Kuo. “It’s like studying a novelist as an artist, but this time it’s a film director as an artist. Personality [and] educational background may have helped determine his cinematic work as a work of art.”
Though his involvement with screenplays is varied and some of his films have been based on adapted material, Lee can “certainly be considered under the approach of auteur theory,” according to Marit Knollmueller, a professor of film studies.
“I, personally, see a greater authorial argument for his Taiwanese work of the early nineties…compared to the efforts he has made with big budgets, often filmed in the West, from Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon onward,” said Knollmueller.
Other directors such as Wong Kar-Wai of Hong Kong, Akira Kurosawa of Japan and Satyajit Ray are other filmmakers who auteurs “working in less mainstream/art house genres,” she added.
Knollmueller also emphasized that auteur theory is only one of many ways to consider a director’s work. “It is legitimate as an approach so far as its limitations are also recognized,” she said.
Due to the prevalence of strong female roles in many of Lee’s films, Kuo believes him to be “almost like a feminist, in a sense.”
“Women’s struggles as well as women’s search for their own way of life is very important,” he added.
Through this class, Kuo hopes students will be able to gain deeper insight into what Lee’s films mean as a collection.
“They can [learn] how directors from foreign countries who settle down in American negotiate the process of becoming an American, while at the same time making a positive use of their background,” he said. “The identity issue is flexible. It calls into question the national and cultural borders.”
If you’re interested in registering, course information can be found on Testudo.
