The film, The Joy Luck Club, based on Amy Tan’s novel, portrays the story of four women and their daughters who eventually migrate from China to America. The story goes on to delve deep into how they are dissociated from their origins. These women live in a culture and time that is vastly different from the one in which they were themselves brought up.
The four older ladies meet once a week to play mahjong and they name their group as the ‘Joy Luck Club’. During the meeting they talk about stories of their respective families and grandchildren. They all have traversed a long way in their lives from pre-revolutionary China to the comfort and coziness of their households in San Francisco.
The narrator, Jing-mei, is the daughter of Suyuan. After her mother’s demise, she visits China and meets her two half-sisters for the first time. The film portrays the stories and secrets of the four older ladies in a series of flashbacks. The film moves between the times past and the present.
Back in America, one of the older women gets married to an affluent man to become his fourth wife. She gives birth to her male child who is taken away by the second wife. The dissociated mothers find it onerous to cope up with the native culture of America. They find it difficult to comprehend their daughters’ actions. Somewhere down the line, these stories about the Chinese and Chinese-American characters are attributed with universality. The stories express how the hopes nurtured by a generation can be seen as restraints or inspirations for the next generation.
Some of them marry whites whose table manners are found to be unpleasant. These daughters also move out of the old homes to find more modern places to live in. one of the older women is seen to criticize her daughter all the time being unable to cognize congruously with her daughter. In a bid to find solutions to the problems in career and marriage, the daughters trace back to their relationships with the older generations. As the story progresses, the mothers too find it difficult to offer solutions to their wards and are thus irrevocably altered by their experiences.
Lindo comprehends her metamorphosis owing to the influence of the American culture. Ying-ying is hit by the realization that her own example has been followed by Lena in her tying the knot with Harold Livotny. An-mei had intended to teach lessons of faith and hope to Rose, in which she had not succeeded. Suyuan’s story represents the odds of mother-daughter relationship across generational and cultural gaps. Jing-mei’s journey to China symbolizes the reconciliation of the two lives of Suyuan, the two cultures and the mother-daughter bond. This journey also imbibes hope in the tender hearts of the others that even they can reconcile between their oppositions of the past and the present, between cultures and generations.
The major theme is the failure of an individual to perceive one’s culture and heritage owing to immigration to a foreign land. In spite of the innumerable hardship the mothers have faced back in China, they all love their native land. They endeavor to indoctrinate the Chinese customs and traditions in their daughters who are rather inclined to minimize their cultural roots to China and imbibe the American culture instead. We are desirous of looking like and being accepted as Americans. In the course of the film, the daughters realize the importance of their native culture and heritage and start to appreciate them.
The four mothers want their daughters to explore the array of opportunities that America offers them. But, at the same time they believe that the daughters should exemplify Chinese heritage and values. They realize that their daughters’ lives have been devoid of struggles and hardships, in contrast to themselves who had to face the plight of being the first generation immigrants to America. On hearing the stories of their sufferings, the daughters are inspired and begin to appreciate their mother’s undaunted spirits and the richness of Chinese culture. The daughters embrace their past and thus become complete as individuals.
The relationships and travels of these Chinese immigrants get transcended as symbolic of Asian-American immigrants. The diasporic existence has enormous effects on the cultural identity of the immigrants. While the first generation immigrants endeavor to hold on to their native customs and heritage, the next generations get loosened from their roots with time. They face a struggle for developing their identity in congruity to the land of immigration. In this pursuit, they are dissociated from their past and their lineage, being left in a plane of deficient personal identity. With time their identity creation meets with failure and they are left with the only path to trace back to their cultural roots reaching the heritage of their native lands. Thus, they finally succeed in developing an identity. Their journey of finding their identity can be said to be analogous to Eric Erikson’s theory of psycho-social development. It is as if a individual is tracing his or her way to identity formation braving the odds after being dislocated from his homeland. These Asian-American immigrants are taken to be the Model Minorities.
They are stereotyped and gauged by Americans through the looking glass of ‘Orientalism’. As Edward W. Said puts in his book Orientalism, the orient is the mirror-image of what is inferior to the West. The oriental is seen as someone who is weak and incompetent. Thus, this is also the tell-tale sign of the innate patriarchal nature of the Western society. This notion of the oriental is a generalization which transcends innumerable cultural boundaries.
Latent orientalism views the immigrant as backward and passive. It is further believed that the immigrant has a tendency toward despotism and shuns progress. The progress and values get judged in comparison to the West. Oriental theorists have always traversed toward a common goal of identifying the prototypical orient irrespective of the myriad cultures and nations that distinguish the Asian population. The field of study has always aimed to depict a single ‘Orient’ to simplify the process of studying the population taking a cohesive whole. It is further believed that the weak orient awaits Western domination.
Orientalism essentially has the paramount dogma which degrades the person of Asian ethnic origin. The orient is robbed of a voice of one’s own and thus is rendered a state of identity crisis. As such, the immigrant is left to search for an identity which would be appreciated and accepted by the Western society. This leads to the avoidance of one’s native culture and heritage as under the influence of this strong stereotype, the Asian also starts to believe that the practice and propagation of one’s native culture and values would be positioning that individual in an inferior position in the society.
Language is at the helm of carrying forward a particular culture. It is through the use of language that one perceives himself and his place in the world. Language thus can be termed as the inseparable characteristic of a community with a specific character, history and character. Among the immigrants, the dissociation from the native language can be noticed. Such examples are aptly portrayed in the film too. The characters in the film are seen to search an American identity.
However, it is through the realization of one’s cultural roots that one may attain the true identity. This requires tracing back one’s heritage, language and customs. As such, the individual may finally comprehend his or her position in the postmodern fragmented plane of harsh reality. The film, The Joy Luck Club, meshes these elements perfectly to portray the journey of such dislocated individuals to find themselves, linking their present with the past putting up resistance to prejudices and discrimination that constantly aim to deter their spirit and rob them off their heritage and history.
Works Cited
Chris, Hicks. Film Review: The Joy Luck Club. Desert News, October, 1993. Web. 11 April.
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Ebert, Robert. The Joy Luck Club. Rogerebert.com, September, 1993. Web. 11 April. 2013.
Feagin, Joe R., and Clairece Booher R. Feagin. Racial and Ethnic Relations. 2010. Print.
Said, Edward. Orientalism. New York: Random House, Inc., 1979. Print.
“The Joy Luck Club.” Anthonysfilmreview.com, n.d. Web. 11 April. 2013.
