Buddhism Goes to the Movies

Introduction to Buddhist Thought and Practice

Ronald Green

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• eBook ISBN: 9781135019938
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Buddhism

Buddhism Goes to the Movies: Introduction to Buddhist Thought and Practice explains the basics of Buddhist philosophy and practice through a number of dramatic films from around the world. This book introduces readers in a dynamic way to the major traditions of Buddhism: the Therav?da, and various interrelated Mah?y?na divisions including Zen, Pure Land and Tantric Buddhism. Students can use Ronald Green's book to gain insights into classic Buddhist themes, including Buddhist awakening, the importance of the theory of dependent origination, the notion of no-self, and Buddhist ideas about life, death and why we are here. Contemporary developments are also explored, including the Socially Engaged Buddhism demonstrated by such figures as the Dalai Lama, Thich Nhat Hanh, Aung San Suu Kyi, and other Buddhist activists. Finally, comparisons between filmic expressions of Buddhism and more traditional artistic expressions of Buddhism—such as mandala drawings—are also drawn.

An important addition to any introduction to Buddhist philosophy and practice, Buddhism Goes to the Movies is an excellent way to bring Buddhist thought, history, and activity to the uninitiated and interested reader.

1
Early Representations

Broken Blossoms and Lost Horizon

Since the Middle Ages, some European writers have used “the East” or “the Orient” to revolt against rationalism. Their stories tell of adventurers in search of magical knowledge no longer found in Europe. Asian religions came to be used as philosophies of unity against what writers viewed as the fragmentation of existence produced by science and technology. Nineteenth-century Europe saw a renewed interest in this. William Butler Yeats and others used mystical images of Asia in reaction against positivism. In America, before the Civil War, the works of Henry David Thoreau and Ralph Waldo Emerson show Buddhist influence. Thoreau made the first translation of part of the Lotus Sūtra into English and was clearly interested in Buddhism. A few decades later, Asian religions were introduced to larger audiences in America under the sponsorship of various international-oriented groups interested in representing religions in certain ways. In 1875, the Theosophical Society was founded in New York City to promote their beliefs in spirituality largely pieced together from Asian traditions including Buddhism. It was founded by Helena Blavatsky and Henry Steel Olcott among others. Madame Blavatsky was a Russian psychic who had immigrated to America. Henry Steel Olcott was a US military colonel interested in mysticism. The two moved to India where Colonel Olcott became possibly the first American convert to Buddhism. He went on to become a hero in Sri Lanka’s struggle for independence from Britain by defending Buddhism against strong attacks from Christian missionaries. Today there is a major street named after him in Colombo, Sri Lanka.

In 1893, the World’s Parliament of Religions took place in Chicago. At the time, Swami Vivekananda impressed crowds by speaking about philosophical issues related to Hinduism. Japanese Buddhists and representatives of other Asian religions, funded in part by Colonel Olcott, also made impressions on those attending as reported in news media. These events of the 1870s–1880s led to curiosity and study, spurring what is seen today as a worldwide revival of Buddhism in the early twentieth century. At that time, the content of films began to change from simple projections of scenery, rightly called “motion pictures,” to edited story narrations. An impact of the spread of limited information on Buddhism can be seen in a number of films shown over the next few decades. These films in turn likely influenced public opinion about Asian religions, spanning new writings and more films. Asian Buddhists in this period were typically portrayed in films by non-Asian actors and based on stereotypes. Likewise, Buddhist ideas and practices were typically molded to further the plot of the film in disregard for historical accuracy. Similar misrepresentations in novels and nonfiction have been described as examples of “orientalism,” an expression analogous to racism.

A silent film called Buddha was made in America by an unknown director and cast in 1913. It was shown as half of a “split-reel,” a silent film term meaning two short films on one real. It played together with A Little Hero, a comedy.¹ This may have been the first film made about Buddhism, although this is not certain. A few years later, The Soul of Buddha was made based not on Buddhism but sensationalized representations of a temple dancer popular in news stories. In 1917, a Dutch exotic dancer with the Indonesian stage name Mata Hari was put to death by a firing squad in Paris for allegedly selling secrets to Germany during World War I. She studied Indonesian dance and married a Dutch army officer. Affairs and scandals surrounding her life and death were popular themes in news and tabloids. The Soul of Buddha is a 1918 silent film that is currently considered lost. It was directed by J. Gordon Edwards (1867–1925), a Canadian-born director, producer, and a writer. The film starred Theda Bara, who allegedly wrote the story and starred in it as a dancing Buddhist priestess.² The story follows a Javanese girl Bava, whose name is obviously close to the actress’s name Bara. Bava’s mother, fearing for the chastity of her flirtatious daughter, sends her to a Buddhist temple so that she might dedicate herself to sacred dance.

However, Bava runs away with a British officer stationed in Java, and then moves with him to Scotland. The temple priest vows to kill her for her betrayal of Buddhism. The couple bears a child and the priest kills the baby. Later, Bava visits a cabaret and the desire to dance is renewed in her. Seeing her dance, a theatrical company offers her a contract. Now in her new life, Bava has an affair. When her husband learns of this he kills himself in her dressing room. In order to receive guests without interruptions, the cool-hearted Bava hides his body and then goes to dance. On stage, one of the Buddha statues seems to come to life and kills her with a knife. The statue turns out to be the Buddhist priest in disguise. About this film, a New York Times reviewer wrote, “None of this made much sense, but Bara melodramas were never strong on character motivation or logic. The Soul of a Buddha was filmed in the dead of winter at Fort Lee, New Jersey, a paper mache temple and the palisades standing in—uneasily—for tropical Java.”³ The association with Mata Hari must have seemed perfect for Theda Bara, who built a screen image of herself as a classic femme fatale, the seductive and dangerous female.

FIGURE 1.1 Theda Bara in The Soul of Buddha, 1918

In India, there is a tradition of offering dancing women to the deity of a Hindu temple. These women are known as devadasi, a Sanskrit term meaning “female servant of a deity.” Devadasi are sometimes degraded to prostitution at temples. This is not a part of Buddhism and the tradition may have arisen as a sentence to former Buddhist nuns at the time of the fall of Buddhism in India during the sixth century ce.⁴ There are also children temple dancers in Bali, Indonesia. Today, such a film would likely meet with protests by people offended by the misrepresentation of Buddhism as an evil, cult-like religion.

In 1919, the renowned film director D.W. Griffith (1875–1948) represented Buddhism in a more positive light. His protagonist in Broken Blossoms is a Buddhist who has come to England from China to spread the Dharma. The sentiment expressed in the film is that although English speakers at the time looked upon Asia as barbaric, in face of World War I this should be reassessed. A similar idea had been stated on the third day of the 1893 World’s Parliament of Religions in Chicago when Japanese Buddhists spoke. Hirai Kinza (1859–1916), a lay delegate and Confucian scholar, took up the issue of how Asians were being treated in America, for example, they were not being allowed to attend school in San Francisco. He asked what should be thought of American Christianity “when there are men who go in procession hoisting lanterns marked ‘Japs must go’? If such be Christian ethics, we are perfectly satisfied to be heathen.” “Loud applause followed many of his declarations,” reported the Chicago Herald, “which grew as the delegates were exposed to a thousand cries of ‘Shame!’ as he pointed out the wrongs which his countrymen had suffered through the practices of false Christianity.”⁵

D.W. Griffith is considered among the pioneers of the film industry, perhaps the most influential directors of the early era. He is known to have developed such cinematic devices as the close-up shot to convey the psychological state of a character. Griffith’s films often present certain archetypes, likely related to his own experiences and beliefs. Among these is the poor country boy struggling to survive in the harsh city. This reappears in his films as a retelling of his own story not tied to any time or country. His second archetype is the defenseless girl, a symbol of purity in the world plagued with evil. In the cold city, the wayward boy is only warmed by romantic love for the pure girl. His films also depict an ideal view of lone struggles against overwhelming injustice. These themes form the basis of Broken Blossoms (D.W. Griffith, USA, 1919).

Broken Blossoms begins with the male protagonist in a Buddhist temple in China. The intertitles, text displayed between scenes, only refer to him as “Yellow Man,” although the part is played by American actor Richard Barthelmess. While the depictions of Buddhism in the Chinese temple are limited, there is a clear attempt at accuracy, in contrast to The Soul of Buddha. In the temple, a Buddhist is shown using prayer beads. Others bow before an altar. A master in the temple gives Yellow Man advice about taking “the lessons of the gentle Buddha” to “the barbarous Anglo-Saxons, sons of turmoil and strife.” Once in England, however, he soon loses his naïve idealism about this task as he struggles with the realities of harsh city life. He becomes a shopkeeper in a depressed part of town and seems to find some consolation for his disappointment in opium dens. Meanwhile, a teenager named Lucy wanders through the streets after being abused by her father, a boisterous and often drunken boxer. Yellow Man sees her searching for tinfoil to sell for flowers and immediately recognizes a spark of human purity in her. When a man called Evil Eyes attempts to take advantage of the impoverished child, Yellow Man prevents it. Two Christians with religious pamphlets also come to the district. One tells Yellow Man, “My brother leaves for China tomorrow to convert heathens.” The perception that Asians are heathens is clearly contrasted with Yellow Man’s humanity and the boxer’s brutality. However, there is a subtle message that the Christians’ naïve arrogance is the same as that formerly displayed by Yellow Man in his idealism about Buddhist missionary work. That is, rather than nationality and wealth, it is something more basic to humanity that makes a person good. Likewise, religion does not make a person holy, love does.

Later, after Lucy is again brutalized by her drunken father, she limps out of the house and down the street, incidentally falling unconscious into the doorway of Yellow Man’s store. He takes her upstairs so that she might recover, watching over her closely. At first we are unsure of his intent towards the helpless girl, especially knowing he has smoked opium. He draws slowly near her for a closer look (see Figure 1.2). We see extreme close-ups of his squinting eyes and her fearful ones. Then we are told through the intertitles, “his love remains a pure and holy thing.” The titles also say the room is “prepared as for a princess” and he gives her “a magical robe treasured from an olden day.” He sits in front of a Buddhist shrine in the room. A striking contrast is made between the room’s delicate decorations and the dilapidated environment of the streets and Lucy’s house, analogous to their purity compared to the corruption of the outside world. The simple kindness of each seems to transform the other into greater people. Yellow Man has found the principles he has lost in the city and Lucy has gained the flowers she sought. He fondly calls her White Blossom; clearly both have bloomed.

FIGURE 1.2 Lillian Gish (as Lucy) and Richard Barthelmess (as Yellow Man) in Broken Blossoms

Tragically their happiness is short lived. Lucy’s father is informed by a shop patron that his daughter is living with a foreigner. Enraged, the father goes to the shop while Yellow Man is out. He yells at his daughter, “You! With a dirty Chink?” He rips the robe and destroys a chair as she runs out into the river mist. Her father catches her outside and drags her home. Yellow Man returns to the shop to find the robe discarded. He falls to the floor in anguish and learns from the gloating Evil Eyes what has happened. Yellow Man grabs a gun and heads outside into the river mist. The foggy black and white scene partially concealing the man with the gun foreshadows what will later be classic images in film noir.

In a memorable scene in cinematic history, at home Lucy locks herself in a closet, which her father proceeds to break through with an axe. He pulls Lucy through the splintered door and beats her fatally. Viewers, upon first seeing this, reported becoming nauseated and physically ill.⁶ She dies on her bed just as Yellow Man enters her room through a window. When her father sees him he raises the axe but Yellow Man shoots him repeatedly. We see a man informing the police of the development. The police officers have been reading the news of war, remarking, “Better than last week—Only forty thousand casualties.” This again points to the barbarism of Europe. Yellow Man carries Lucy’s body to his room, puts flowers on her and lights incense at the Buddhist shrine. He raises a Buddhist scripture to his head in an authentic fashion, and rings a bell. He then kills himself. The final scene shows the Buddhist temple in China. Buddhists ring the temple bell and more ships sail between Europe and Asia. Part of the message seems to be that relationships of purity and love among individuals are not allowed to develop because social prejudices based on religion and nationality.

In 1923, Indian director Dadasaheb Phalke made a documentary called Buddha Dev (Lord Buddha). In 1925, another silent film dramatizing the life of the Buddha was released, The L...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• CONTENTS
• List of Figures
• Preface
• Introduction
• 1 Early Representations: Broken Blossoms and Lost Horizon
• 2 The Four Noble Truths: Fight Club
• 3 Buddhist Awakening: Waking Life
• 4 Dependent Origination: I Heart Huckabees
• 5 Korean Seon Buddhism: Why Has Bodhi-Dharma Left for the East?
• 6 Theravāda Buddhism, Socially Engaged Buddhism: The Burmese Harp
• 7 Tibetan Buddhism: The Cup
• 8 Japanese Shin Buddhism: Departures
• 9 The Buddhist Order of Nuns: Windhorse
• 10 Thai Buddhism in Horror Films: Nang Nak and Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives
• Glossary
• Selected List of Films with Buddhist Content
• Bibliography
• Index