---
Introduction
Some
(Hollywood) Versions of Enlightenment
JOHN WHALEN-BRIDGE
Buddhism
has been a subject of cinematic attention since film’s
origins,
often signifying exoticism, both in flattering and unflattering
ways. Film as
a form of documentary practice begins in the
late
nineteenth century, and film as a form of public entertainment
has
frequently found Buddhism to be an interesting subject. Franz
Osten and
Himansu Rai created what might be considered the first
“Buddhist
film” in 1925 when they recast Sir Edwin Arnold’s 1861
poetic epic
of the same name into the film Light of Asia.1 This is the
oldest film
that has been screened at International Buddhist Film
Festival
events. In English-language cinema, Buddhist ideals are
sometimes
presented in disguised forms, such as when we find a
Shangri-La
entrusted to ancient Caucasian caretakers in Lost Horizons
(1937). The
Asian wise man with no attachment makes occasional
appearances,
sometimes breaking through into television, as
in the
television show Kung Fu (1972–1975).
Buddhism in
popular culture can be overt in this manner, or it
can be
inferred. For example, critics have argued that Buddhist bodhisattva
ideals find
their way into science fiction fantasies such as the
Jedi Code of
the Star Wars films. The countercultural celebration
of
Asian
difference has been an important motivation; Orientalist fantasy
can also
account for the widespread dissemination of signs and
symbols
originating from Asian philosophical and religious writings
and systems
of practice.
Asian
philosophy and religion has inspired American writers,
mainly poets
and essayists associated with Transcendentalism, and
countercultural
writers of the mid twentieth century, especially the
Beats,
engaged with Asian thought much more thoroughly. In the
1990s, film
seems to have superseded literature as the vehicle for
transcultural
exchange, and we might want to ask why. In part the
issue would
seem to be the declining prestige of literature as a leading
form of
cultural expression. In the twenty-first century, it has
become
surprising to see an American poet or novelist discussed in
the media in
relation to a large national concern such as the 9/11
attacks on
the World Trade Center. We are much more likely to see
a movie
director or an actor commenting on a major event, an effect
of celebrity
worship that Brad Pitt ridiculed when he was asked his
opinion about
Tibet as a geopolitical issue: “Who cares what I think
China should
do [about Tibet]?” he told Time magazine. “I’m
a fucking
actor . . . I’m
a grown man who puts on makeup” (Garner). That
said, actors
such as Richard Gere have used their fame to publicize
Tibet as a
human rights issue, even going so far as to get himself
banned as an
Academy Award presenter after he used the event to
denounce the
Chinese government.2
In addition
to being the spiritual and temporal leader of the
Tibetan
people in exile, the Dalai Lama arose over a ten-year period
to become a
kind of superstar. He was first given a visa to give religious
teachings in
the United States during the Carter administration
in 1979.3 While images of Buddha and
representations of
Buddhist
practices appeared sporadically in European and American
cinema before
World War II, increasing somewhat in the postwar
period as a
result of American military involvement in Asia and the
countercultural
enthusiasms of Beat writers such as Allen Ginsberg,
Jack Kerouac,
Gary Snyder, and others, cinematic representation of
Buddhism increased
dramatically after the Dalai Lama was awarded
the Nobel
Prize for Peace in 1989.4 The decade that followed could
be described
as a cinematic Buddha Boom. The most well-known
cinematic
representations of Buddha or Buddhism have been Little
Buddha
(1994), Kundun (1997), and Seven
Years in Tibet (1997),
and these
films have extended popular knowledge of Buddhism
considerably.5
Whether
Buddhist beliefs (about karma or reincarnation) or
practices
(meditation, especially) have been in the foreground or
in the
background, it is uncontestable that films, even as they have
traded upon
the exoticism of Buddhism in the American imaginaire,
have made
Buddhism far less exotic than it was previously.6
Buddhist
film is
important because it is a marker of the impact of Asian philosophy
and religion
on American culture. It is also important as a
culture
resource, a way to signify within American culture in ways
that are
quite distinct from what had previously been expressed. This
volume brings
together mostly thematic approaches to Buddhist
film, and the
focus is overwhelmingly on feature-length “fictional”
films. Why
focus only on feature-length films? This volume is the
first of its
sort, and the essays in it are responses to a call for original
essays on the
topic. There is much to be studied in the area of documentary
expression.
The phrase “Buddhist film” will make us think
of
celebrities such as Brad Pitt and Keanu Reeves. This is highly significant
(and weird),
but it is a first association and, hopefully, not
the
conclusion. These films have established the notion of “Buddhist
film” in
various strands of academic and nonacademic discourse,
a notion that
has been granted a degree of reification by the world
phenomenon of
the “Buddhist film festival.”7
Since 2003,
there have been more than two dozen well-publicized,
international
Buddhist film festivals, which would suggest that
there is such
a thing as a “Buddhist film.” The films shown in those
festivals are
from many countries. Some are nonscripted documentaries,
some are
full-length feature films meant for a wider distribution,
and the
festivals have also presented television show episodes
and other
manner of evidence that Buddhist ideas and images
have been
making their way into American and European societies
through
visual media. This volume—the first book-length collection
on Buddhism
and film—focuses mainly on American feature-length
movies
intended for wide distribution.
There are two
distinct kinds of Buddhist films: those that are
about
Buddhism and those that aren’t. Some Buddhist films represent
Buddhism,
meaning the actual Buddha, important Buddhist figures,
ordinary
people who are Buddhists, and so forth. But about
half of the
essays discuss movies structured around themes that resonate
with Buddhist
concerns, even though the films do not directly
treat ideas,
characters, or settings that are typically associated with
those
concerns. Some of the films that deal directly with Buddhism
as a
worldview that are treated in detail include Heaven and Earth
(1993), Seven Years in Tibet (1997),
Kundun (1997), and The
Cup
(1999).8 These films, we note, are all about
persons or populations
who are
understood as victims of historical processes. Ly Le Hayslip’s
autobiographical
works about the turmoil she experienced as a result
of war in
Vietnam are the textual basis for the third film of Oliver
Stone’s
Vietnam trilogy. The two Tibet films released in 1997 mark
the ascent of
the Dalai Lama within the American imagination. First
given
permission to visit America in 1979, he won a Nobel Prize
for peace ten
years later and a Congressional Medal in 2007. Khyentse
Norbu’s The
Cup is noteworthy in not constructing
Buddhists
as victims,
even though the film recognizes colonial domination by
the People’s
Republic of China in several key scenes. The Americanmade
films center
on Buddhism as a locus of innocence and, therefore,
powerlessness.
Cultural interpreters become suspicious when
the most
direct representations of an identity directly feed into a flattering
form of
self-understanding, for example, the moral critic, if
not the
savior.
There has
been much discussion of Eurocentrism and of Western
(as it were)
ideas and images achieving a kind of semiotic colonization
within Asian
societies. If one wanted to enquire as to how
specifically
Asian cultural practices and expressive traditions have
fared at
making the trip the other way, one could look at phenomena
such as Asian
martial arts, forms of self-cultivation such as meditation
and yoga, and
religious systems such as Buddhism. The list is
not complete,
but if one wanted to consider the cultural expressions
through which
Buddhism enters the American imaginaire, the three
main avenues
would appear to be the literary imagination, popular
film, and of
course books (and, more recently, DVDs and downloads)
concerned
with directly teaching methods and approaches
to Buddhist
meditation. Which films have been the most significant
direct
representations of Buddhism, for American audiences? The
films treated
at length in this volume are of central importance.
Groundhog
Day is perhaps the best example of a “non-Buddhist
Buddhist
movie.” All schools of Buddhism maintain that in order to
be free from
the cycle of suffering (samsara), beings must first give
up all forms
of craving or attachment. Phil Connors either learns
this lesson
in one day or ten thousand days, depending on how you
look at it. Groundhog
Day offers the scenario in which one character
is trapped
within a single day, one that repeats itself endlessly,
albeit with
the possibility of change and learning. This magic-realist
framework can
be understood quite well in terms of a Buddhist
understanding
of samsara (the notion that beings are trapped in a
cycle of
repetition because of ignorance) and karma (the notion that
our problems
are caused by past actions and that we must eliminate
causes if we
do not want to repeat results). The notions of samsara
and karma,
when put together, are problems that require some form
of
purification, either by meditation or good works of the sort that
bring beings
to modify their reactive behaviors. Phil is initially arrogant
and has
contempt for others, but he is able to gradually modify
himself until
the conditions for happiness—and escape from the
punishing
cycle—arise.
Just as Freud
ranges through an analytically comprehensive set
of reactions
to human suffering in the opening pages of Civilization
and
Its Discontents, the film Groundhog
Day explores Phil’s range of
responses to
his own cycle-bound condition. Initially, he feels horrified
by the
discovery that he is trapped within the American holiday
known as
Groundhog Day, doomed to wake up to the Sonny and
Cher song “I
Got You, Babe” for the rest of his (endless?) existence.
This horror
gives way to suicidal despair, until Phil turns a corner and
experiences
his godlike phase, a period of the film in which he uses
his general
foreknowledge to advantage. Buddhism has a concept
known as the
Six Realms of Existence that can be considered either a
literal
division of existence or a set of psychological dispositions. The
lower realms
are the Hell, Animal, and Hungry Ghost realms. The
upper realms
are those of the Gods, Demigods, and Humans. It is a
mistake,
however, to think the God realm is the ideal position, since
gods indulge
to the point at which they fall into lower realms—as is
the case with
Phil. His indulgence leads to suicidal despair.
In the last
third of the film, Phil has become bored with indulgence
and sets out
on a path of self-cultivation. Before the movie is
over, he has
saved lives, helped old ladies, repeatedly caught a child
who falls
from a tree (but who never thanks him!),
and he has mastered
playing the
piano and speaking French. It is interesting that he
attempts
repeatedly to save the old man and that he catches the child
who falls
from the tree. We can see that learning the piano could be a
stay against
boredom, but his altruistic acts are less easily explained.
The film
never mentions that he may be purifying himself, but it
is only when
he is completely free of his most acquisitive urge—to
capture Rita’s
body and then her heart—that he escapes the cycle. He
suffers
because of various kinds of greed. When he overcomes the
desires that
cause suffering, suffering ceases.
Then there
are the “Buddhist films” that do not represent
Buddhism,
either
directly or figuratively. If we look, we will find them
mentioned in
Buddhist blogs, and they sometimes have appeared
in Buddhist
film festivals. Often, this is because a central thematic
concern of
the film resonates quite strongly with a central thematic
concern of
Buddhism itself, whether or not one would want to argue
for a direct
influence. One important theme in many strands of Buddhist
belief is
signified by the word that comes from the Tibetan tradition,
“bardo.” A
bardo is any limbo-like intermediary period, but it
is used most
often to refer to the state that, some Buddhists believe,
occurs
between an individual’s death and some form of future incarnation.
9
Another key thematic idea predominant within Buddhism
and that has
inspired American filmmakers is the notion that our
self-understanding—and
perhaps even our experience of all phenomena—
is inflected
at all levels by delusion. Essays in this volume
focusing on
delusory experience and between-life and midlife
bardos
include Lost in Translation (2003), American
Beauty (1999),
Donnie
Darko (2001), and Fight Club (1999).
None of these films is
directly
concerned with Buddhism in the manner of the previously
mentioned
films. On the one hand, the films can be seen as ways in
which
something alien is translated into more familiar terms. Also,
the films can
be seen as essential statements about “how we are” that
are then
subject to Buddhist-inspired modes of interpretation, such
as when one
author develops the concept of samsara by using the
more familiar
term “desperation” and locating it within the film It’s
a
Wonderful
Life (1946).
Part 1,
Representation and Intention, collects essays on the most
well-known
American movies that have directly represented Buddhism.
This section
begins with “Buddhism and Authenticity in Oliver
Stone’s Heaven
and Earth,” by Hanh Ngoc Nguyen and R. C. Lutz,
an essay that
takes issue with the initial negative reception met by
Stone’s 1993
film. In particular, Hanh and Lutz develop a response to
Julia Foulkes’s
complaint that Stone and Le Ly Hayslip (author of the
book on which
the movie is based) have grossly misrepresented Buddhism
and
refashioned the religion to make it more palatable for a
Western
audience. Hanh and Lutz argue that this is not the case, but,
rather, that
Stone has successfully represented a rich mixture of folk
and Buddhist
elements that has been expressed in Hayslip’s nonfictional
narratives
and in other representations of Vietnamese religion.
In chapter 2
Eve Mullen’s “Buddhism, Children, and the Childlike
in American
Buddhist Films” looks at how filmmakers in the
West have
appropriated Buddhism, considering films such as Little
Buddha
(1993), Seven Years in Tibet (1997),
and Kundun (1997) in
relation to
what Donald Lopez calls “New Age Orientalism,” a mode
of
imagination in which American rescuers save helpless Asians from
Asian
villains. The first section contains several essays that represent
Buddhism
directly but always within the key of Otherness, as we see
again in
chapter 3. In “Consuming Tibet: Imperial Romance and the
Wretched of
the Holy Plateau,” Jiayan Mi and Jason C. Toncic discuss
idealistic
visions of Tibet before the Chinese invasions of the 1950s,
exploring the
Orientalist predecessors to the “Buddha Boom” films
of the 1990s
by drawing on cultural expressions from a half-century
before. James
Hilton’s Lost Horizon, travel writer Sven Hedin’s novels,
and Frank
Capra’s cinematic recasting of the Hilton novel are the
examples
considered. Through a study of the imperialist attitudes
present in
these representations, and drawing on Edward Said’s critique
on
Orientalism and W. J. T. Mitchell’s ideology of the imperial
landscape, Mi
and Toncic show that these texts misrepresent and distort
Tibet through
its modes of conquest. During the Cold War and
through the
1990s, American audiences have rallied around Tibet—
perhaps it
was the only issue about which the extremely conservative
senator Jesse
Helms and the entirely countercultural poet Allen
Ginsberg
agreed.
Chapter 4,
Felicia Chan’s “Politics into Aesthetics: Cultural
Translation
in Kundun, Seven Years in Tibet,
and The Cup” offers a
comparative
analysis of films by Martin Scorsese, Jean-Jacques Annaud,
and in
relation to the problem of Orientalism, considering various
successes and
failures of these films to adequately address the
problem of a
dialectally reductive way of presenting the (Western)
self in
relation to a Buddhist (and therefore “Eastern”) other. Chan
hopefully
considers the possibilities of Buddhist cinema in the larger
sense,
perhaps looking forward to a nondualist aesthetic that does
not so
regularly fall into exoticization.
Part 2,
Allegories of Shadow and Light, concerns films that may
or may not be
informed by a Buddhist intention, but the author
makes the
case with regard to each of these films that a Buddhistinformed
reading is a
highly rewarding approach. In Tibetan Buddhism
as
popularized by books such as The Tibetan Book of the Dead
the concept
of the bardo, the space between one life and the next, is
a central
concept. We could say that many of these films occupy a
semiotic “bardo”
space between the films that are intentionally Buddhist
(both in
terms of representation and thematic/philosophical
emphasis) and
films that are not about Buddhism but that can be
usefully
understood from a “Buddhistic” point of view.
Chapter 5 is “Momentarily
Lost: Finding the Moment in Lost in
Translation,”
by Jennifer L. McMahon and B. Steve Csaki, and it provides
a close
reading of Sofia Coppola’s Lost in Translation (2003)
in relation
to Buddhist concepts of momentariness and selflessness.
Rather than
consider persons as bodies that contain impermanent
selves or
souls, Buddhist psychology understands “self ” to be a side
effect of
numerous conditions that shift from moment to moment.
The film
concerns two characters who are momentarily lost and
caught in an
instance of psychological bardo. “Momentarily Lost”
traces the
film’s consideration of suffering and lostness in a generously
nonjudgmental
manner, which McMahon and Csaki compare
to the
suspense of judgment that is a key feature of mindfulness
meditation
techniques.
If Nguyen and
Lutz have argued for the (artistically if not financially)
successful
crossing of Buddhism from Vietnamese into American
culture, in
chapter 6 Harper and Anderson consider the ways
in which
American cultural co-optation and assimilation have produced
a rather
unusual kind of Buddhist discourse. In “Dying to
Be Free: The
Emergence of ‘American Militant Buddhism’ in Popular
Culture,”
David A. Harper and Richard C. Anderson discuss the
notion of
redemptive violence as shown in American movies and
popular
culture that characterizes “American Militant Buddhism.”
The authors
explore the ways in which American popular culture
has adopted
and appropriated Buddhism and reworked them to fit
into the
American mythos—the Manifest Destiny and the American
Dream in such
movies as the The Matrix (1999),
Fight Club (1999),
and The Last
Samurai (2003), as well as the popular rock
band Rage
Against the
Machine. Using the term “American Militant Buddhism,”
Harper and
Anderson explore the effects and consequences of reinforcing
or
legitimizing the right to spread liberation by employing
violence.
The next “bardo
film” concerns not the individual per se but the
culture at a
moment of transformative impasse. In “Buddhism, Our
Desperation,
and American Cinema,” Karsten J. Struhl uses films
that are not
thematically connected with Buddhism in chapter 7 to
explore the
relation between desires, cravings, and meaningful existence
faced by the
individual within a materialist and consumerist
society.
Through Wall Street (1987), Annie
Hall (1977), Leaving Las
Vegas
(1995), and It’s a Wonderful Life (1946),
Struhl looks at a number
of cravings
from money, status, love, alcohol, and suicide through
a Buddhist
perspective in order to reveal how these cravings imply
a deeper
existential problem of the illusion of the self and contribute
to growing
Buddhist film criticism. Chapter 8 is “Christian Allegory,
Buddhism, and
Bardo in Richard Kelly’s Donnie Darko,”
Devin
Harner’s
exploration of a syncretic imagination of the bardo state in
Richard Kelly’s
Donnie Darko (2001). Harner posits that the cyclical
open-endedness
of Donnie Darko is a deliberate philosophical and
theological
ambiguity fostered by Kelly, a form of cultural translation
that brings
concepts such as the bardo across cultural borders.
In the ninth
chapter, “‘Beautiful Necessities’: American Beauty
and the Idea
of Freedom,” David L. Smith analyzes American Beauty
(1999), a
film portraying the bardo between lives. Contrary to our
expectation
that death and the various social and psychological conditions
of our lives
are radically limiting factors, the film explores
the ways in
which the postmortem standpoint from which the film
is narrated
opens up a space of appreciation and a path to freedom
rather than the
more typical notion that the moment of death begins
a process of
judgment and constraint.
As Gary Gach
notes in his afterword, “On Being Luminous,”
film appears
to be a natural allegory for Buddhism—it projects, quite
unsubstantially,
a series of images that connect us to a real world we
believe in
more if we look at it less carefully. As soon as the projector
slows down,
the individual frames appear, and the narrative continuity
is revealed
to be a working fiction. This breakdown of reality
into causes and
conditions—or, in the language of film, into sounds,
shadows, and
wishes—can appear at times to be a tragedy, while
other times
it is presented as the way to freedom. In films as different
as The
Cup, Groundhog Day,
and The Matrix, it can be both.
This book and
the rest of the series Buddhism and American Culture
would not
have been possible without the work of my coeditor,
Gary
Storhoff, who passed away on November 7, 2011. About a year
earlier, Gary
wrote to a few friends to say that his recent medical
check-up
revealed that the pain he had been calling “an old sports
injury” was
in fact stage-four cancer of a sort that the doctors did not
expect to
beat. As always, Gary was a living lesson in graciousness.
Faced with
people who said things like “I’m glad I got cancer because
it made me
appreciate life,” Gary came back quickly with “I’m not
happy this
has happened, but I did the right things and I’ve had a
good run.” I
worked with Gary on this project for over ten years, and
it was always
a pleasure to find the balance. He is greatly missed, and
this volume
is dedicated to his memory. May all sentient beings have
the good
fortune to meet truly fine individuals like Gary.
Notes
1. In the
case of the Osten and Rai film, “Buddhist film” designates
a film that
is in some sense a proponent, rather than one that
includes
Buddhism as a mere reference point. Whereas the 1925
film offered
an explanation of Buddhism, an earlier mention of
Buddha in
American cinema, perhaps the first, occurred in the
1918 film The
Soul of Buddha (which, according to a webpage
specializing
in information about silent films, is now considered
lost:
http://www.silentera.com/PSFL/data/S/SoulOfBuddha1918.
html). This
silent film, which featured one of cinema’s first sex
symbols,
actress Theda Bara, asserts in its title that Buddha had
a soul and so
shows little or no knowledge of actual Buddhism.
Why does the
film mention Buddha at all? Buddhism would
appear to
function in this case as a mere backdrop. A few years
later another
silent film would advertise Buddhism: The Silver
Buddha
(1923) was a crime drama centered on the famous Orientalist
character Dr.
Fu Manchu. Once again, a Buddhist object
directs the
viewer’s attention to things exotic and strange. In the
following
decade Buddha showed up in yet another crime drama,
starring Lon
Chaney Jr. and variously titled The Secret of Buddha
and A
Scream in the Night (1935). Turner Movie Classics webpage
has
information: http://www.tcm.com/tcmdb/title/561646/
Scream-in-the-Night/,
accessed 1 November 2012. The film,
which appears
to be set in the Middle East but which turns on
the theft of
jewels known as the “Tears of Buddha,” can be seen
on YouTube:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rGt2MD0drc0,
accessed 1
November 1012.
2. When I
interviewed Mr. Penpa Tsering, the speaker of the house
of the
Tibetan government-in-exile’s parliament, about “soft
power,” I
asked about American celebrities who had been helpful
to the
Tibetan cause. He said that Richard Gere was more helpful
than all the
others combined. Personal communication, 20
November
2012.
3. The Dalai
Lama visited the United States between September 3
and October
21, 1979. http://www.dalailama.com/biography/
travels/1959–1979,
accessed 1 November 2012. Tenzin Tethong,
who is
president of the Dalai Lama Foundation, helped organize
the Tibetan
leader’s first visit to the United States in 1979, working
with
Congressman Charlie Rose. As the United States had
recently
regularized relations with the PRC, this event required
extensive
diplomatic negotiations. See LeFevre, 2013, n.p.
4. Before the
1990s, literature was the most important conduit of
Buddhist
imagery and theme from Asia into the American imagination.
Jack Kerouac’s
roman à clef about Beat generation Buddhists,
The
Dharma Bums, Allen Ginsberg’s Vajrayana-inspired
poetry such
as “Wichita Vortex Sutra,” and Gary Snyder’s entire
oeuvre—especially
his 1986 masterpiece Mountains and Rivers
without
End—all helped increase America’s “cultural literacy”
such that
words like “karma” and “dharma” are no longer foreign
words.
5. Martial
arts films have often had a meditation component, usually
occurring in
the period when the broken hero (Steven Seagal,
Jean-Claude
Van Damme, etc.) has been recovering both
physically
and mentally. After meditating a long time, usually
under the
supervision of a mentor and while also kicking his
way through
several banana trees, the hero can then proceed to
kill the
people who killed the hero’s sister or wife or brother or
girlfriend or
whomever.
6. Transcendentalist
flirtations with Asian religion and philosophy
flavor the
work of Emerson, Thoreau, and Whitman and modernist
writers,
inspired by the haiku (or hokku, as it was
called
[Higginson
1985: 20]). Three land wars in Asia and an impressive
body of belletristic
literature are important precursors to
Hollywood’s
embrace of Buddhist signs and symbols. Future
cultural
historians will have to decide when, if ever, Buddhism
ceased to be “exotic.”
7. See “What
Is a Buddhist Film?” Contemporary Buddhism (May
2014), for a
full discussion of the phenomenon of the Buddhist
film festival
as a global event. I have borrowed some passages
from that
article.
8. The last
film is by the Bhutanese director who mainly resides in
India named
Khyentse Norbu—and who is at least as well known
as an
internationally famous Buddhist teacher under the name
Dzongsar
Jamyang Khyentse Rinpoche. Although the director is
by no means
American, the films just mentioned must invariably
be discussed
together for reasons that become clear in the essays.
9. “Reincarnation”
can indicate a one-to-one correspondence
between the
person who died and the person who is born into
a new life,
but Buddhism denies that there is an immutable soul
that is
transferred from body to body. Often, the term “rebirth”
is used to
signify a continuity between lives that is not understood
as the
repetition of the same personality or soul within a
new body.
© 2014 State University of New York Press, Albany
---
Original Source - https://www.google.ca/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=3&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0ahUKEwi7w7Kblp_XAhVI0GMKHS6WBmwQFgjyATAC&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.sunypress.edu%2Fpdf%2F63048.pdf&usg=AOvVaw2DQO3GZ1ToEgYVnRdkRYzx
