Home with Kids, a hit sitcom in China, tackled this dilemma with ingenuity. The wife had a previous marriage, so she has a son. The husband has a daughter from a previous marriage and he also has a younger son, who was born in the United States. So, it is still a family of three kids, all born legally.
A family sitcom with one child would be a daunting task for the scriptwriters.
Most people grow up in one culture and have trained themselves to look at things from a certain angle. Their way of thinking and doing things is what makes culture unique.
But to broaden the appeal of a cultural work, it is often necessary to tone down that specificity so that people from other cultures may search and find their own relevancies. That means distilling the complexities and uniqueness to a few broad issues. Hollywood is a master at that. It often dumbs down too much, leaving a few cut-and-dried cliches.
Avatar may not have much depth, but it inadvertently hits a nerve in a country where the bulldozer is a sign of both progress and threat.
By Raymond Zhou
Editor: Feng Hui
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