Heroes in Hollywood Cinema: an Examination of “Da Yin Xi Sheng, Da Xiang Wu Xing” Concepts in Daoism

DOI

10.2991/978-2-38476-400-6_34How to use a DOI?

Keywords

Daoism; Chinese culture; Heroism; Zhuangzi; Film study

Abstract

In popular culture there are Western heroes and Eastern heroes. The differentiation between them is not identified on color, ethnicity, physique, or appearance, nor does it pertain to the pejorative discourses of ‘Western hegemonic culture’ and ‘Orientalism.’ Regardless of nations, heroes frequently exemplify Daoist concepts such as ‘powerful sound is silent, powerful form is formless’. In this paper, the author argues that the characters in the Hollywood film Avatar: The Way of Water embody the archetype of a Xia, carrying out the duties and behaviors typical of this archetype, which aligns with the ‘Da Yin Xi Sheng, Da Xiang Wu Xing’ concepts of Daoism.

Copyright

© 2025 The Author(s)

Open Access

Open Access This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/), which permits any noncommercial use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license and indicate if changes were made.

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TY  - CONF
AU  - Jun Cui
AU  - Mark Qin
AU  - Wei Chang
PY  - 2025
DA  - 2025/05/15
TI  - Heroes in Hollywood Cinema: an Examination of “Da Yin Xi Sheng, Da Xiang Wu Xing” Concepts in Daoism
BT  - Proceedings of the 2nd International Conference on Educational Development and Social Sciences (EDSS 2025)
PB  - Atlantis Press
SP  - 277
EP  - 283
SN  - 2352-5398
UR  - https://doi.org/10.2991/978-2-38476-400-6_34
DO  - 10.2991/978-2-38476-400-6_34
ID  - Cui2025
ER  -