Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon

[james_davis_nicoll]

SF or fantasy? Why?

Comments

[viktor-haag.livejournal.com]

One should point out that non-western cultures trying to fit western genres into their non-western genre boxes amounts to the same thing. Doesn't stop everyone from gleefully attempting to co-opt other cultures' modes of artistic expression, much, does it?

(And I've heard that Star Wars was heavily heavily influenced on Lucas' exposure to Kurosawa's films, not the least of which was Hidden Fortress, and of course Kurosawa's films were heavily heavily influenced by his exposure to western noir literature and movies, not the least of which was Seven Samurai, so....)

[(Anonymous)]

Co-opting is fun. So is playing with tropes.

But trying to shoehorn the world's creative output into a small number of contemporary western genre boxes is silly. Look at the average record shop, that groups everything from traditional Celtic harp to Chinese hip-hop as "World", yet splits modern American music into fractally-divided sub genres.

[viktor-haag.livejournal.com]

Sure. I agree.