When I realized that most of my Asian female friends (and even my dad) have seen the Korean movie "My Sassy Girl," I immediately, albeit subconsciously, labelled myself as 1) overly white-washed and/or 2) not girly enough. But how exactly is the spectrum of Westernization to Asian-ization defined, if a spectrum exists at all? And with what calibration am I measuring the degree of "girliness," assuming it does indeed hold a rational value? (yes, lame pun intended there)

I am reminded of Bollywood movie nights with friends of various ethnicities in the recent past. Jane's note today further inspired me to explore our cultural ideals and identities through the lens of romance stories.

In the U.S. and Canada, we live in a melting pot of cultures (though the degree of mixing and heterogeneity is a topic deserving its own separate discussion). By nature or nurture, we are inclined to identify cultural stereotypes and impose categorical labels without prompting. I attribute it more to nurture - a trained sense of awareness, let's say. As far as I know, I am perceived as an innocent, reserved Asian girl who has not had sufficient life experience to mature into a woman. I'm okay with that perception - it's not too far from how I see and what I know of myself. Occasionally with close friends, I (half-)jokingly make some jaw-dropping comment to remind them that although I am innocent, I am "not that naive." Deep down I am idealistic; the sarcasm and humour are simply my connections to reality - they help me relieve the internal conflict and external tension between the wishful and the factual.

When I catch "The Sound of Music" on ABC Family, I am reminded of the charm of old-fashioned romance. When a room of 20-something female medical students exclaim "Awww" and "Ohhh" at the joining of two hands in a 90's Bollywood film, I smile at the knowledge that I am not alone. When I belt out "A Whole New World" at karaoke, I, admittedly, am actually believing in the Disney-like possibilities in real life. However, when the protagonist gave in to his girlfriend's demand and walked in her white stilettos in "My Sassy Girl," I was less than amused. Because it's ridiculously unrealistic, I scoffed. Guys are not like that in real life; if they were such pushovers, I'd be much more inclined to psycho-analyze them than to find them attractive.

A few touching moments appealed to my inner romantic. But for the most part, "My Sassy Girl" clashed with my external perceptions: I found the scenarios so far-fetched that whatever beautiful ideals they portrayed were overwhelmingly outweighed by the outrageous personalities - personalities unjustified even by the retrospective ending of the film. Later I calmed down and asked myself: why was I trying to justify anything, why did the fiction vs. reality clash bring about such a strong sense of aversion to the film?

Somewhere in there, the plot crossed the line between a romantic comedy and a farce. It is a line of psychological and emotional thresholds. I love films that strike a fine balance between grounding in reality and attaining the ideals – a balance that I imagine is differentially tuned to every individual’s personal taste.

Interestingly, as a "Lord of the Rings" fan, there is one aspect of the film that I wish was based more in the fantastical world than in our 21st century “reality.” That is the relationship between Aragorn and Arwen. It is fine for the director to expand on the romance outlined in the appendix, but he could have delivered it with much more mystical quality, rather than a few Hollywood-style scenes of intimacy and sensuality, particularly in the second and third films. There is something profoundly palatable about subtlety: what is implied is sufficiently sweet to tease our senses without saturating them. I oftentimes wish that movies nowadays could be made less explicit and graphic. The blatant views leave nothing to the imagination: they feed into the cravings that they created in the first place. Certainly, it might satisfy some momentary desire, but in the long term, it only leaves the audience wanting more because we've been rendered more emotionally and psychologically empty without the constant stimuli.

This view of mine could simply be attributed to my Asian/conservative upbringing. To apply Shannon’s analysis, the phenomenon in modern mass media seems to be the product of cultural evolution that took a drastic turn with the sexual revolution in the 1960’s in North America. A reminiscent revamping of values and ideals may be occurring in Asia in the present decade. Except this current evolutionary process across the Pacific is biased by external influences, not the least of which is the adoption of current western concepts, i.e., the products which have emerged in the west but have yet to be created in the east.

A time-warped feedback loop with the additional dimension of culture?