Time & Perspective Quote by Ang Lee

Ang Lee is basically diagnosing a particular kind of success: the pleasant, frictionless kind that slides down easy and leaves no bruise. When he says his films were "pretty universally liked", he’s not bragging so much as naming a trap. Art that “can’t really hate” is art that rarely forces the viewer to take a side. It may be elegant, humane, technically assured, even moving in the moment - but it doesn’t provoke the aftertaste that turns a movie into an argument people keep having.

The key verb is “discard.” Lee is talking about cultural disposal, not criticism. A film can be praised, recommended, even awarded, and still be treated as disposable once the next weekend arrives. “You can’t really hate them” implies they never trespassed, never risked ugliness, never asked for complicity. Hate, in his framing, is almost a compliment: it means the work hit a nerve, threatened someone’s self-image, refused to behave.

Context matters: Lee’s career is defined by genre-hopping empathy - costume drama, martial-arts spectacle, suburban repression, queer romance, digital experimentation. That versatility wins admiration, but it can also diffuse the auteur “signature” that fuels obsessive fandoms and backlash cycles. This line reads like an artist pushing against the soft tyranny of consensus. He’s not chasing controversy for its own sake; he’s recognizing that the opposite of hate isn’t love, it’s forgettability.