he film The Wedding Banquet talks about a homosexual Gao Tongwei from Taiwan who lived in the USA and had an American boyfriend Simon had to marry a girl from China to disguise the fact that he was an homosexual and enabled his parents to feel easy and less worried. The marriage was not real and it was just a play or a cheating in exchange that the girl would get the green card. The film has shown the cultural conflicts between different races especially the conflicts between Simon and Gao’s Chinese parents and Gao.
The first conflict is conflicts between individualism and collectivism. It is known that China is under the strong influence of Confucianism and collectivism while the American culture stresses collectivism. In the film, the reason why Gao chose to get married was because his whole family wanted him to inherit the family tradition by having a grandson. Even though Gao loved Simon, he chose to get married. However, when Simon argued with him and considered marriage as personal thing and it should be nothing to do with family.
The other conflicts between Chinese and western culture is shown in the aspects of gifts. It seems that Americans might seldom offer gifts and they might give gifts to their parents on holidays, but in China, the custom of giving gifts is quite common. Usually Chinese will take gifts and give gifts even when they visit others. However, Simon knew and understand Chinese culture, he still offered gifts to Gao’s parents. But he stressed the use of gifts and giving blood pressure which made Gao’s parents unhappy. But after knowing the relationship between Gao and Simon. Gao’s parents still gave a red paper to Simon, which means that they recognize the relationship between Gao and Simon.
Though the film showed a lot about cultural conflicts, they were shown in a funny way and the fake marriage also became comedy in the end.