Globalization and hybridization in cultural production : a tale of two films

The concept of hybridization falls short of acknowledging structural inequalities, and has allegedly become a neocolonial discourse that is complicit with transnational capitalism. In 2001, a Chinese-language martial arts film became the highest grossing foreign-language film in the history of Hollywood. This chapter argues that globalization and hybridization have become ever more intertwined and multivalent, and are far from being a one-way flow of capital, talent and ideas. Compatibility of rank and social hierarchy was probably the main consideration for all marriages in feudal China. The multi-layered writing comprises the work of Chinese-language scriptwriters Wang Hui-ling and Tsai Kuo-jong, Ang Lee’s own translation, James Schamus’s rewrite and overwrite, and Lee’s rewrite, and colloquial expressions, literary language, classical, provincial and Western and Chinese language.