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EAST-WEST FILM JOURNAL VOLUME 4· NUMBER 1 SPECIAL ISSUE ON THE FAMILY AND CINEMA Editor's Note I Families, Film Genres, and Technological Environments 6 ANDREW ROSS Sons at the Brink of Manhood: Utopian Moments in Male Subjectivity 27 BILL NICHOLS The Role of Marriage in the Films of Yasujiro Ozu 44 KATHE GEIST Family, Education, and Postmodern Society: Yoshimitsu Morita's The Family Game 53 KEIKO I. McDONALD Was Tolstoy Right? Family Life and the Philippine Cinema ROBERT SILBERMAN Symbolic Representation and Symbolic Violence: Chinese Family Melodrama of the Early I980s 79 MA NING Fate and the Family Sedan II3 MEAGHAN MORRIS Domestic Scenes I35 PATRICIA MELLEN CAMP Book Review I68 DECEMBER 1989 The East-West Center is a public, nonprofit educational institution with an international board of governors. Some 2,000 research fellows, grad­ uate students, and professionals in business and government each year work with the Center's international staff in cooperative study, training, and research. They examine major issues related to population, resources and development, the environment, culture, and communication in Asia, the Pacific, and the United States. The Center was established in 1960 by the United States Congress, which provides principal funding. Support also comes from more than twenty Asian and Pacific governments, as well as private agencies and corporations. Editor's Note T HE CELEBRATED dramatist Eugene O'Neill once said that all drama takes place within the family. This is absolutely right; we can even expand this claim to include all forms of narrative. Fairy tales, ballads, the Bible, epics, the works of Sophocles and Shakespeare, soap operas, and the nov­ els of Tolstoy and Dickens in one way or another deal with the problems, tensions, and privations associated with the family. Film is no exception. The family presents us with a microcosm of the joys and sorrows, hopes and anxieties, triumphs and defeats typical of the world at large. This makes it a convenient domain for focused scholarly and artistic explora­ tion. The family is one of the oldest of human institutions; it is also consid­ ered to be the smallest unit of men and women that has a palpable impact on society and state. Religionists see it as representing the will of God; economists study it as an economic unit; anthropologists investigate it as a human institution vitally connected with issues ranging from kinship to land tenure; psychologists examine the interpersonal conflicts generated by the dynamics of family members as well as the positive environment it can provide. Diverse scholars studying family are apt to emphasize differ­ ent aspects and foci depending on their theoretical predilections and aca­ demic vantage points. The general point, however, is that the family fur­ nishes us with a wonderful institution through which to study man and society by examining the various contradictory forces to which it is sub­ jected. The family is seen as a haven from the cruelties of the outer world, a place of education and socialization, inculcation of norms and values, love and harmony, security, and a place where basic interpersonal requi- I 2 EDITOR'S NOTE sites are met. On the other hand, the family is also seen as a highly charged emotional milieu in which latent brutalities and cruelties come into play, a place where human freedom and spontaneity are curbed and human personality is warped. Edmund Leach, in his controversial Reith Lectures of I967, maintained that far from being the basis of the good society, the family, with its narrow privacy and tawdry secrets, is the source of all our discontents. These contradictory perceptions and their consequences naturally hold a great fascination for scholars as well as novelists, dramatists, and filmmakers. As Anthony Giddens says, the study of the family used to seem one of the dullest endeavors. Now it appears as one of the most provocative and interesting. Family is also important in understanding a culture because it is vitally connected with history and tradition. The concept of the family opens a wonderful window onto our understanding of Confucianism, for exam­ ple. In the eyes of the Confucians, with their overriding emphasis on fam­ ily solidarity, the family provides a person with the most productive atmo­ sphere in which growth can take place. The father-son relationship is perceived to be a defining feature of the human society. The idea of self­ cultivation, which is central to Confucian thought, can best be realized within the context of the family, and the family is vitally connected to the state. The emperor is the father of the people. This applies to many other cultures as well. As a consequence of the forces of modernization, the family as an insti­ tution is undergoing a rapid transformation in most parts of the world. There are those who would argue, armed with aggregate social data of various kinds, that the family as an institution is in a state of crisis. High divorce rates, married women entering the labor market in ever-growing numbers, low birth rates and the decline of family size, generational con­ flicts, and more children living with single parents all point to the magni­ tude of this crisis. Christopher Lasch, the well-known historian, has expressed the view that while the family once provided a haven of love and decency in a heartless world, it does not do so any more. External forces such as adver­ tising, the media, and family professionals have invaded the family and robbed it of its function and authority. As he goes on to point out, corpo­ rate capitalism, with its emphasis on insatiable consumption, has contrib­ uted to the creation of a "culture of narcissism" where caring for others has all but ceased to be an informing social value. EDITOR'S NOTE 3 The rise of modern feminism has dramatically challenged the presuppo­ sitions of the family. Feminists have contended that women were confined to a shadowy existence, their identity denied, their existence marginal­ ized. Attacking the self-abnegating wife and mother, women were encour­ aged to redefine their existence in accordance with their own aspirations, to go out of the household to the world of work, which has remained largely the preserve of the male. The feminist movement, which is by no means monolithic, ushered in a new consciousness and gave greater voice to women, thereby urging a reevaluation of the concept of the family. Against this background we need to examine the complex relationship between family and cinema, paying particular attention to the cinematic representation of family. Filmmakers, in both the East and West, have found the institution of the family to be an excellent subject for cinematic exploration. Of them, Yasujiro Ozu perhaps deserves most attention. Ozu was preoccupied by one theme - the family and its decline. In his more than fifty films, Ozu explored through a limited number of characters in a limited number of situations the emotional attachments, mutual depen­ dencies, selfhood, and freedoms associated with family life. In his early films, Yasujiro Ozu was primarily interested in portraying the social forces that influence family life and the ensuing derelictions and anxieties. In his later films, he expended his creative energies in seeking to uncover the inner dynamics that govern interactions within the crucible of the family. A dimension of family life that stirred his deepest imagination is the con­ flict between generations, as is evidenced by films like Tokyo Story and The Only Son. During the last two decades or so film theory and cultural studies have made rapid strides, with feminist theory making a distinctive contribu­ tion. The net result of this has been a fundamental rethinking of the repre­ sentation of the family in cinema. Feminist scholars have pointed out how stereotypical images of women have denied them their identity, how femi­ ninity is constructed in films, how patriarchal social relations tend to marginalize women, how male hegemony needs to be counteracted by feminist interventions. As much of the representation of women takes place within the context of the family, the implications of this mode of thinking for the cinematic representation of the family are enormous. Using the notion of gender as sexual difference, feminist theorists have criticized the existing notions of representation, urged the rereading of cultural images and narratives, and challenged entrenched conceptualiza- 4 EDITOR'S NOTE tions of textuality, subjectivity, spectatorship. All these aspects are vitally concerned with the representation of the family in films. Family continues to be one of the most important subjects for filmic representation in both the East and the West. With the increasing focus on questions of textuality, negotiating of meaning, construction of subjectiv­ ity, difference of spectatorship, and deconstructive readings, the filmic representation of family has become all the more significant. Hence, our decision to devote a special issue to this topic is only natu­ ral. The opening essay by Andrew Ross, "Families, Film Genres, and Technological Environments," looks at the decline of the family in the United States and standardized depictions of the nuclear family model as served up by the media. It is a perceptive exploration into the ideology of families in the United States. In the second essay, Bill Nichols discusses utopian moments in male subjectivity. His essay acquires a deeper meaning when considered in the light of modern feminist theorizations of cinema. Nichols invites us to ponder the question given the persuasive and inescapable presence of sex­ ual difference: How can we best subvert the male and female subjectivity in cinema? In the third essay, Kathe Geist explores the role of marriage in Ozu's films. She shows how for Ozu marriage is "a station on the life cycle's journey" and how the institution of marriage contains a cosmic signifi­ cance.

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