Cultural Distinctions of Chinese and American Families—Analysis of the Movies Pushing Hands & Everybody’s Fine

Abstract

The movies Pushing Hands directed by the world-famous Chinese-American director Ang Lee and Everybody’s Fine by Kirk Jones are both outstanding movies about family life between the young and the old generation. This essay focuses on comparing two different kinds of old age life based on two movies with strong cultural typicality, from which derive the families’ cultural distinctions study therefrom obtain causes and effects. With import of two movies, the essay set its breakthrough point at family relationship which leads to cultural distinctions analysis. The essay is parted family value, relations between family members, attitudes towards education and their interactions. Still, the essay analyses factors which could have an influence on family culture formation and consequently set a clue for the main causes and effects of family and society cultural mutual influence research between China and America.

Key words: movie; Chinese and American families; cultural distinctions; education; social background

Chapter 1 Introduction

As one of the most ancient countries in the world, China has an enormously long history of over 5000 years, while America, a newly born nation has already become a superpower. Though they are hundreds of thousands miles away from each other, due to the trend of globalization and stream of mutual communication, these two powers are linked tightly together ever since.

Despite all the mutual intercommunions on very wide range of fields in common, there are lots of differences between China and US, one of which is family culture.

Macroscopically, in human context, a family is a group of people affiliated by consanguinity, affinity, or co-residence. As a unit of socialization, family is the object of analysis for sociologists, so is for this essay. The narrowed meaning of family is a group consists of mother, father and their children, which serves as my object of analysis. Culture is defined in the Webster Dictionary as "A particular form of civilization, especially the beliefs, customs, arts, and institutions as a society at a given time."

So family culture is a family forms itself with reference to regulations, roles, status, habits, costumes, beliefs, and other areas in a unique way. The regional culture such as racial or ethical aspect in which a family lives may have a strong influence on family culture. Regarding China and the US, historical backgrounds and contemporary cultural diversifications should also be taken into account.

In this article, I put emphasis on the differences of family culture between these two countries based on two typical movies named Pushing Hands and Everybody’s Fine. In these two movies, they all depicted with family life between young and old generation, which reflected different understandings and attitudes about life on many aspects such as family member relationship, children’s education and the value of life.

The reason that I chose these two movies to study rather than others is Pushing Hands is a perfect platform which displays not only American local life but also gives us many aspects to review the Chinese characters within, an old fashioned Chinese father immigrated to America to live with his son who married a native American wife, which buries lots of cultural conflicts and contact. The movie Everybody’s Fine is such a film that telling stories about typical American old age life in the young generation atmosphere, children have all grown up and have their own life, leaving a widowed old man trying to keep in touch with his children. More importantly, these two movies have a common element, which is family culture; they well combined different families with different culture, though maybe not intended. Therefore, I favored these two movies.

To consult film comparative study is not only a good way to explore deep into the gap between China and America in a subtle way but also can summarize similarities due to its concise illustration with substantial information.

Pushing Hands is a film directed by Ang Lee released in 1992 and this is his first feature film. Everybody’s Fine has two versions, from which I cited the one directed by Kirk Jones, who received critical praise and won awards in the US and Europe awards.

There were antecedent analysis on movie from cultural perspective; however, they were just based on one film Pushing Hands, no analysis had been done with these two films which I cited. All the illustrations and conclusion are ground on personal point of view, ready- made materials from a great variety of books and references are essential complements for my essay.