ABSTRACT
The success Ang Lee has in Asia and the Western world raises the question to whether Lee simply obtains an instinctive sureness to please regionally and culturally distinct audiences or whether a specific cultural message can be de-constructed in his movies. Within the framework of cultural, postcolonial and globalisation studies, global ‘Hollywood’ mainstream and local cultural identities are often regarded as fundamentally contradictory. As a result of power relations, local practices and values are by default deformed, exoticised or lost when shifted into a global environment. This is not a meaningful assumption in the case of Ang Lee. Instead, the chapter argues that due to its fundamental structure of desire, exoticism simultaneously opens a gateway for sublime messages. Lee operates with an understanding of common values focusing on notions of family and the mentality of the individual. In shifting the principle contradiction from global vs. local to private cum mental vs. public cum political he inscribes Chinese or rather Taiwanese values into Western and global culture through practices of de- and re-culturing.
