“Life-Exchange Talisman” and “Unconditional Blessing”: Animated Reflections on Chinese and Western Family Education Values
Abstract
In the process of the booming of the world's animation film industry, animation has evolved from being a media of entertainment reception into a significant tool providing expression of transmission of cultural values and social ideologies. Animation products of other nations tend to incorporate profound cultural logics and educational ethical principles into character setting, plot design, and depiction of kinship between family members. This research adopts Ne Zha and Coco as first-class subjects of analysis and comments on the discrepancy between the expression of “love” in the field of family education within Chinese and Western cultures respectively. This research holds that the educational model of Ne Zha that parents devote all for children with family pride as the central concept stems from Confucian notions of “filial piety” and the concept of “a shared destiny of the family.” While Coco exhibits the strength of Western civilization of pursuing individualism and placing importance on respecting personal freedom and development of interest and highlights the function of the family in terms of “guidance,” rather than “regulation.” A single educational model fails to adapt itself fully to diverse requirements of civilization subjects' development. Respect and activation of Chinese and western philosophies of family education as complementarity shall be acknowledged: East Asia shall allow more veneration of one's independence and the West shall absorb the ancient Chinese civilization's cultural feeding of co-responsibility and kinship bonds and so on.
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