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Sino-US English Teaching, ISSN 1539-8072 January 2012, Vol. 9, No. 1, 878-885 An Intercultural Interpretation of Kung Fu Panda—From the Perspective of Transculturation BU Xiao-yan Ningbo Institute of Technology, Zhejiang University, Ningbo, China With the tide of globalization, different cultures are clashing, interacting, and merging more frequently. Transculturation expresses an effective way to introduce various cultures to the outside. By analyzing the interaction of cultural globalization and cultural localization in the movie Kung Fu Panda (2008), the paper illustrates the transculturating process of two cultures. Furthermore, the paper also points out that transculturation, differing from cultural assimilation and cultural imperialism, can enhance the equal communications of different cultures and improve the cultural comprehension, which is important in intercultural communication. Keywords: transculturation, Kung Fu Panda, intercultural communication, globalization, localization Introduction With the new development of technology of information and communication, different nations and different cultures make more frequent contact with one another in this global village. Simultaneously, increasing cultural frictions and misunderstandings never stop impeding those international and intercultural communications, especially between the east and the west. Finding effective ways to introduce various cultures to the outside as well as to smooth the cultural exchanges becomes an urgent need to the whole world. On the way of exploring, more and more phenomena of transculturation occur, generating many widely-accepted cultural products, such as American movie Mulan (1998), Japanese anime Only Yesterday (1991), and Chinese opera Turandot (2009) (LIU, 2001; YANG, 2009). It seems transculturation has been an effective way of intercultural communications and can contribute to diffusing regional cultures globally. Considering it has high box office and both American and Chinese elements, the animated movie Kung Fu Panda (2008) is logically taken as a typical example to study transculturation. It is interesting to see its keywords—Kung Fu and Panda—demonstrate that the movie is deeply rooted in Chinese culture while it is produced by an American animation company—Dreamworks. However, once screened in June, 2008, the film gained great popularity around the world, including with both American and Chinese audience. According to the statistics of Box Office Mojo (2008), the worldwide box office of Kung Fu Panda reached $631,744,560, with the domestic total gross $215,434,591. In Mainland China, it was also quite well received with the box office of 186,000,000 RMB, becoming the best-sale imported film in 2008 (LIU, 2009). Thus, the study attempts to interpret the transculturating process of Kung Fu Panda and to explore the successful way of transculturating a culture to the globe. BU Xiao-yan, lecturer, Ningbo Institute of Technology, Zhejiang University. DAVID PUBLISHINGD
AN INTERCULTURAL INTERPRETATION OF KUNG FU PANDA879The Notion of Transculturation The Definitions of Transculturation The term “transculturation” was put forward by a Cuban anthropologist Fenando Oritiz in the 1940s, which refers to the integration and convergence of different cultures (Oritiz, 1995). Later, several scholars studied this topic and gave more detailed explanations. Taylor (1991) indicated the term describes the transformative process in which a society’s culture is imposed by foreign materials and a new and original cultural production is created due to the fusion of the local and the foreign. Lull (2000) illustrated transculturation as “a process whereby cultural forms literally move through time and space where they interact with other cultural forms and settings, influence each other, produce new forms, and change the cultural settings” (p. 242). To be more specific, Lull (2000) pointed out transculturation results in cultural hybrids and emphasizes the effect of indigenization on the process of transculturation. Chan (2001) generalized transculturation is “the process by which a culture is transformed by another for self-aggrandisement” (p. 106). And Chan (2002) made a supplement in another article that cultural globalization and cultural localization are two dynamic forms of transculturation, in which cultures are not physically mixed but chemically hybridized. Synthetically, here the author assumes transculturation means the process by which one culture is absorbed, transformed, fused, and renewed by another culture or other cultures, which creates new cultural hybrids. It is an evolving process that involves cultural globalization and cultural localization. They are like the two sides of a coin, interacting with and complementing each other. Cultural Globalization and Cultural Localization In the context of transculturation, according to LIU (2001), cultural globalization implies the process in which a regional culture is accepted by the globe after being processed and transformed. And cultural localization indicates the process in which the content or form of a foreign culture is learned, renewed, and transformed by the regional culture (LIU, 2001). To be more specific, the author attempts to illustrate the flow by the following diagram (see Figure 1): Figure 1. The flow of transculturation. Hence, cultural globalization and cultural localization are cooperating to produce a new cultural hybrid. Neither side overwhelms the other. More importantly, both the dominant culture and the subordinate culture can play the main role in the two processes (Chan, 2002). A regional culture processed and transformed by a foreign culturelearning from, renewing and transforming a foreign culture(produce) A cultural hybrid cultural globalization cultural localization Transculturation