As I read through the section on postcolonial theory, I kept thinking about a discussion we had in my class last month while studying the events leading up to the American Revolutionary War. We were discussing the reasons for colonialism and empire building and the idea of mercantilism. Mercantilism is the idea that colonies exist to serve the Mother Country; more specifically that they provide raw materials that the Mother Country can turn into manufactured goods. These goods are then sold back to the colonies at a high price. I couldn't help thinking that Orientalism and Othering are examples of a sort of cultural mercantilism in which the invading empire selects certain raw materials from a native culture to exploit and use them in manufacturing their own products. Using "Chosen" as an example, we have Ang Lee-- a Chinese native and China is very much the "Colonizer" in Tibet-- taking Tibetan customs and religion and using them to manufacture a commercial for a German car company.

"Chosen" relies on a variety of Asian stereotypes in its execution. The strong but silent monks, the child prophet, the sense of the exotic and inexplicable, even the stereotypical double agent who's been corrupted by Western culture--he's wearing shoes inside and not just any shoes, cowboy boots! To be fair, the film also deals in Western stereotypes of the strong but silent action hero variety who steps in to save the day. Lee may well be attempting to demonstrate his cultural polyvalency by highlighting elements from two disparate cultures but is relying on cultural stereotyping really a celebration or recognition of the ways in which the colonizer and the colonized impact one another?

Looking at the three stages of postcolonial literature--adopt, adapt, and adept-- I would argue that Chosen fits within the adopt phase of postcolonial theory. The film follows the codes of Western advertising while also employing a very traditional Western narrative structure, the Tibetan representations seem to be there to add a sort of exoticism to embellish the whole thing. Even the music is mostly Western sounding with the exception of a few parts where it sounds like they are using a traditional Asian instrument to add a sense of the mysterious other.

Of course to take this all in a completely different direction, it could be that Ang Lee is just an adept postmodern artist who is employing a subtle form of parody to poke at Western stereotypes of Asian culture. Perhaps he sees humor in the combination of high brow artistic film directors being asked to use their craft for that most low brow of purposes--commercial advertising.