Movie Essay

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Hello, Austin. We’re so glad to hear from you! We’ve already read your reply and you said that you want to learn some about feminism or individualism around this time, so we have something to say in this reply to your question. First, actually, there was feminism at that time (around 1980s) but this movie didn’t reflect it. In 1980s, China was facing the early reform after the Cultural Revolution--the equivalent of a huge turning point for Chinese culture--all kinds of thoughts emerged and various forms of art broke out like hurricane. Hence, like what’s shown in the movie, many artists’ pursuits and new thoughts were not approved and appreciated by the society at that time, especially in small cities like Heyang city ( It’s not a real city in fact and its background was in Henan Province), which barely became stumbling blocks and failure factors for these young dream chasers. Also, the feminism was most popular in the open-minded cities like Shanghai and Nanjing and was not included within cities around Henan Province. As a result, feminism was not shown in this movie. Second, individualism is the core concept of the bourgeois world which is not popular in China because China is a socialist country and puts collectivism in the first place.
Hope these helped!
Xu Xinyue
Tang Zirui

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Xu Xinyue and Tang Zirui: I'm glad you found my advice valid and helpful. In terms of the connections, in the first paragraph you stated "This essay is going to state the main plot in these two movies, and compare their aspects of social backgrounds, narrative techniques, images of characters, symbols and themes." Throughout your essay you stated the aspects and gave quotes as evidence for your findings. But as a reader, it felt like each paragraph (aspect) was a separate analysis. It felt like the paper was just stating the different aspects in the book instead of connecting all the aspects together. What are the purposes of having these aspects? How does having a certain social background impact the character image? Did narrative techniques impact the overarching theme? These are such questions you could ask and answer.

Hello Austin! We are glad to hear from you across the ocean! Three questions you mentioned are really helpful for us to connect aspects in our essay well! Now we know that we shouldn't simply write different aspects to analyze movies, instead we should put our purposes in the first place and use aspects we wrote in the essay to connect with the theme. Besides, we know that we have mentioned some aspects that may not be necessary in our essay and we also think that they are needless, so we will delete them in our revision! Thank you for your constructive suggestions! This is the best reply that I have never got!
Best wishes!
Xu Xinyue & Tang Zirui

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Hello, Austin, we are very happy to receive your reply again and be able to communicate with you on the other side of the ocean. First of all, we feel honored that you can approve our proposal. We agree with what you said about the number of words in film reviews. Indeed, the number of words in film reviews can be many or few. However, what we want to express is that this time the film review mainly compares the two films, so we suggest that you should control the length of the separate comments on the two films, which can make your article look more reasonable as a whole. Then, we also gave serious consideration to your suggestion again. You're right. We should emphasize from the beginning that the theme of our article is to analyze the two films from feminism, so as to make the theme of our article more prominent and distinct. At the same time, we think you can also find common ground between the two films to make a comparison so as to deepen your understanding of the two films.
This is all. We thank you very much for your reading and wish you good luck.
Xie Ting, Xiao Junqi

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Final Essay

The two movies, “Mona Lisa Smile” and “And the Spring Comes”, depict two different languages and two different cultures, yet, they both follow the same critique on old conservative values. “Mona Lisa Smile” looks at the conservative ideology toward woman and its shift to liberal. “And the Spring Comes” looks at the conservative ideology of being “normal”. In another words, it critiques the normality of normal and encourages individualism.

“Mona Lisa Smile” takes the role of a critic on conservative ideology toward woman. Not only does it make the conservative ideology seem laughable, but it also embraces the liberal feminist ideology of the time by using the character Kathrine Watson as the main protagonist rhetor. The setting focuses on a small college and Kathrine’s art history class in particular. Kathrine preaches to her students that there is more to life than marrying a wealthy young man and tries to teach them more than what is in their textbook. Her ideology is new and controversial. Betty, a student of Kathrine’s, in particular challenges her teachings and writes an editorial critiquing Kathrine’s liberal viewpoint.
Throughout the movie, we see the journey of her students throughout their college experience and their dealings with the conservative female viewpoint. The conservative viewpoint can be described as the female mostly having a role in the household as the caretaker, mother, and wife of her family. The liberal viewpoint describes the female having the same role as the male, to be successful and happy in life. This means a female should be able to strive to be successful in a profession without the need to be married. The audience sees the pressures from society along with pressures from the family to marry young and to a rich man so that particular woman has a luxurious life. In one particular scene, we see Kathrine getting hit-on at a wedding. The entire scene focuses on the gossip from the others at the wedding about the man flirting with someone the likes of Kathrine, already assuming Kathrine would flirt back. As a young woman, it is assumed that Kathrine would be into this attractive and wealthy man. Yet, as if unexpected, she disregards his flirt and he goes on to dance with someone else. This reflects back on the liberal viewpoint that a woman does not need a man and a woman does not have a responsibility to flirt back to a rich man. Also, throughout the movie, after every students’ situation, we see the downfall of the conservative ideology through the events that unfold. This is done as the mechanism to convey the producers’ message. We see the character, Charlie, turn down his parents’ arranged marriage offer and go off on his own journey with a different woman. This in itself is controversial since arranged marriages were typical and it was often an insult to the parents to turn down such an offer. In the end, we see the editorial student divorce from her husband and apologize to Kathrine. This was the signaling that progressive liberal feminism had won the fight against conservative feminism in the movie.

“And the Spring Comes” details Wang Cailing in her pursuit toward her dream of being an artist and the setbacks she had to face. The movie critiques conservative culture by showing the characters struggles in not fitting into conservative ideals and the impact it has on their lives. The social background during this time period saw the rise of non-mainstream art forms and the decline in traditional Confucius ideology. These art forms were traditional rejected, but change started appearing during the 1980s, albeit society was still reluctant. This was shown in one scene in which two influential characters, Wang Cailing and Hu Jinquan, discuss what is considered “normal”. Hu starts the conversation off by saying “don’t you know I’m one of the dangerous in town”. Wang replies, “that is because you are the most courageous of them all”. These lines explore how society looks at people who are different and how they feel about them. She calls him courageous because no one would come out the way he did if they knew the social repercussions that are therefore put against them, yet, he did. He then goes on to say, “I am the source of deep confusion people feel about themselves”, turning the situation into not his problem, but society’s problem. Wang looks concerned and saddened throughout this conversation, but he remains smiling, as if he has accepted society’s response to his difference and she has just started to understand. The movie effectively embraces the liberal ideology of individuality when the woman says, “knowing you gives me the courage to stay in this city”, finally putting a positive spin on the man’s individuality. However, the positive spin is a façade for her own struggles. She realizes that she, like Hu, are outcasts and people will always see her as one. Wang sees Hu’s struggles with his own pursuit of his dreams, and, therefore, Wang absorbs that mentality for her own dreams. Ultimately, his struggles convince her to stay in the city and not fight for her dream. In the end, Wang finds solace in not pursuing her dream while Hu still struggles to live his dream.

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Reflection

My expectations were for us to be more like pen-pals in a traditional sense: writing letters back and forth through mail. While I don’t know if this was the initial plan, I did enjoy the forum correspondence with the Chinese students. I thought we would have more personal interaction along with the scholarly interaction, however, the scholarly interaction allowed me to see an assignment written through a different lens. I also liked that my essay was critiqued by Chinese students because their comments gave me many tips and different advice than my fellow classmates have given to me. One thing that struck me the most was their advice that was given from a different perspective such as introducing the social background in China and detailing the complexities of “And the Spring Comes”. This helped me greatly improve my essay. Two other things that were interesting was there use of aspects that are less utilized in American rhetoric classes and how they wrote more about “And the Spring Comes” and we wrote more about “Mona Lisa Smile”. I noted aspects like social background, narration choice, and character development that I have rarely used in rhetoric classes. I believe we should use these more. In terms of editing, I incorporated a lot of what they discussed. I added more about “And the Spring Comes” and I tried to detail the character development in terms of the social background. I did not, however, adjust the length of the paper due to my personal preference of including all the relevant details and evidence. Three adjectives to describe this experience is educational, interesting, and unique. It is not an everyday thing to be able to listen and discuss ideas with people halfway across the world. I think this assignment should be in every class, so we gain a better appreciation for the different cultures around us.

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Final Essay

The two movies, “Mona Lisa Smile” and “And the Spring Comes”, depict two different languages and two different cultures, yet, they both follow the same critique on old conservative values. “Mona Lisa Smile” looks at the conservative ideology toward woman and its shift to liberal. “And the Spring Comes” looks at the conservative ideology of being “normal”. In another words, it critiques the normality of normal and encourages individualism.

“Mona Lisa Smile” takes the role of a critic on conservative ideology toward woman. Not only does it make the conservative ideology seem laughable, but it also embraces the liberal feminist ideology of the time by using the character Kathrine Watson as the main protagonist rhetor. The setting focuses on a small college and Kathrine’s art history class in particular. Kathrine preaches to her students that there is more to life than marrying a wealthy young man and tries to teach them more than what is in their textbook. Her ideology is new and controversial. Betty, a student of Kathrine’s, in particular challenges her teachings and writes an editorial critiquing Kathrine’s liberal viewpoint.
Throughout the movie, we see the journey of her students throughout their college experience and their dealings with the conservative female viewpoint. The conservative viewpoint can be described as the female mostly having a role in the household as the caretaker, mother, and wife of her family. The liberal viewpoint describes the female having the same role as the male, to be successful and happy in life. This means a female should be able to strive to be successful in a profession without the need to be married. The audience sees the pressures from society along with pressures from the family to marry young and to a rich man so that particular woman has a luxurious life. In one particular scene, we see Kathrine getting hit-on at a wedding. The entire scene focuses on the gossip from the others at the wedding about the man flirting with someone the likes of Kathrine, already assuming Kathrine would flirt back. As a young woman, it is assumed that Kathrine would be into this attractive and wealthy man. Yet, as if unexpected, she disregards his flirt and he goes on to dance with someone else. This reflects back on the liberal viewpoint that a woman does not need a man and a woman does not have a responsibility to flirt back to a rich man. Also, throughout the movie, after every students’ situation, we see the downfall of the conservative ideology through the events that unfold. This is done as the mechanism to convey the producers’ message. We see the character, Charlie, turn down his parents’ arranged marriage offer and go off on his own journey with a different woman. This in itself is controversial since arranged marriages were typical and it was often an insult to the parents to turn down such an offer. In the end, we see the editorial student divorce from her husband and apologize to Kathrine. This was the signaling that progressive liberal feminism had won the fight against conservative feminism in the movie.

“And the Spring Comes” details Wang Cailing in her pursuit toward her dream of being an artist and the setbacks she had to face. The movie critiques conservative culture by showing the characters struggles in not fitting into conservative ideals and the impact it has on their lives. The social background during this time period saw the rise of non-mainstream art forms and the decline in traditional Confucius ideology. These art forms were traditional rejected, but change started appearing during the 1980s, albeit society was still reluctant. This was shown in one scene in which two influential characters, Wang Cailing and Hu Jinquan, discuss what is considered “normal”. Hu starts the conversation off by saying “don’t you know I’m one of the dangerous in town”. Wang replies, “that is because you are the most courageous of them all”. These lines explore how society looks at people who are different and how they feel about them. She calls him courageous because no one would come out the way he did if they knew the social repercussions that are therefore put against them, yet, he did. He then goes on to say, “I am the source of deep confusion people feel about themselves”, turning the situation into not his problem, but society’s problem. Wang looks concerned and saddened throughout this conversation, but he remains smiling, as if he has accepted society’s response to his difference and she has just started to understand. The movie effectively embraces the liberal ideology of individuality when the woman says, “knowing you gives me the courage to stay in this city”, finally putting a positive spin on the man’s individuality. However, the positive spin is a façade for her own struggles. She realizes that she, like Hu, are outcasts and people will always see her as one. Wang sees Hu’s struggles with his own pursuit of his dreams, and, therefore, Wang absorbs that mentality for her own dreams. Ultimately, his struggles convince her to stay in the city and not fight for her dream. In the end, Wang finds solace in not pursuing her dream while Hu still struggles to live his dream.

Hi Austin! We are glad to see your final essay on this forum after two weeks of across-ocean communication. We are glad that you made great progress on understanding and analyzing "And the Spring Comes". You must spend much time on watching this Chinese film and understand it, especially on aspects of our history, and social and cultural background. We really feel happy about your great efforts and progress, and we also feel good about our suggestions are helpful. Thank you for your helping us on our essay revision and letting us know that you completely understand this movie! It's a grear honor for us to interact with you and learn so much knowledge from you! We really cherish this great chance!
Wish you happy every day!
Xu Xinyue&Tang Zirui

[2057230076]

Reflection

My expectations were for us to be more like pen-pals in a traditional sense: writing letters back and forth through mail. While I don’t know if this was the initial plan, I did enjoy the forum correspondence with the Chinese students. I thought we would have more personal interaction along with the scholarly interaction, however, the scholarly interaction allowed me to see an assignment written through a different lens. I also liked that my essay was critiqued by Chinese students because their comments gave me many tips and different advice than my fellow classmates have given to me. One thing that struck me the most was their advice that was given from a different perspective such as introducing the social background in China and detailing the complexities of “And the Spring Comes”. This helped me greatly improve my essay. Two other things that were interesting was there use of aspects that are less utilized in American rhetoric classes and how they wrote more about “And the Spring Comes” and we wrote more about “Mona Lisa Smile”. I noted aspects like social background, narration choice, and character development that I have rarely used in rhetoric classes. I believe we should use these more. In terms of editing, I incorporated a lot of what they discussed. I added more about “And the Spring Comes” and I tried to detail the character development in terms of the social background. I did not, however, adjust the length of the paper due to my personal preference of including all the relevant details and evidence. Three adjectives to describe this experience is educational, interesting, and unique. It is not an everyday thing to be able to listen and discuss ideas with people halfway across the world. I think this assignment should be in every class, so we gain a better appreciation for the different cultures around us.

Hello Austin! We are happy to see your reflection! We think that this activity is quite a good interaction for both students studying in China and U.S.. During this two weeks, you pointed our our mistakes and taught us how to connect our aspects logically. We appreciate your constructive suggestions and your frank manner! Now we know how to do well on aspects that we didn't do well at first and we also know how to check our essay objectivelly! In the future, we will try our best to make progroess on our wording use and logical thinking. Besides, we are very glad to communicate with you because when you asked us something like feminism, individulism in China, we know something about it but our knowledge is not sufficient to respond you, which enabled us to search much more information about them and then we learned a lot and then we were able to tell you what we know to help you understand And the Spring Comes. Thank you for your questions, your interaction and your consturctive suggestions we've never seen before that fundamentally helped us revise our final essay!
Best wishes!
Xu Xinyue&Tang Zirui