Joy Luck Club the Review With American Culture Study

Joy Luck Club and American Culture

Section One (1-2 paragraph summary). Introduce and summarize the main plot of the movie. Describe the main story and characters involved. To do this in 1-2 paragraphs, you will need to be brief and focus on the main events in the movie.

The Joy Luck Club (1993) was based on Amy Tan's 1989 novel and deals with issues of culture, assimilation and generation conflicts between a group of four Chinese mothers and their Americanized daughters. All four women in the club had emigrated from China to the U.S. after World War II, and met after church to play Chinese mahjong every week. In reality, they had little joy or luck, and no expectations, only the hope that their children would have better lives than theirs. An-mei Hsu and her daughter Rose were often in conflict over her American husband Ted Jordan, who was wealthy, and the fact that she regarded Rose as too weak and passive. Lindo Jong has a daughter named Waverly, who was a childhood chess prodigy until she and her mother had an argument, and then she lost the power to play. Lindo also dislikes her American boyfriend Rich, but regards Waverly as superficially successful. Suyuan Woo, the mother of June, was the founder of the club and after her daughter's death she took her place, playing with her three older 'aunties'. Ying-ying St. Clair, married to an American named Clifford, is also very passive and inert, as is her daughter Lena.

The four daughters are completely American by Asian standards, speak perfect English and have assimilated into Western culture. None of them have even been to China, although June flies there to meet the twin daughters who had become separated from her during the war. All the parents in this film operate according to Confucian values, which are authoritarian, hierarchical and paternalistic, although the Americanized children often find them incomprehensible. China has never been a democracy in the Western sense, and women there were definitely not equal to men while children were required to honor, respect and obey their parents. Women's function in life was domestic, to take care of the cooking, cleaning, child care and domestic tasks while men worked outside. Individualism and independence were not prized as in the U.S. But regarded as selfishness and purely negative qualities. In the U.S., however, most "believe that they must be self-reliant in order to keep their freedom," while in China no one had any freedom to lose (Datesman, p. 30).

Section two (1-2 paragraph application): Discuss the themes shown or explored in the movie in relation to what you have read or studied/will read or study in class before your midterm exam. For example, maybe the movie has characters of mixed races like the 'Tiger Woods effect' or it shows cultural pluralism as people from many races or religions must work together or overcome some of their differences. These are ideas you studied in chapter 1 of American Ways. Be sure to consider the 6 basic values in Chapter 2: individual freedom and self-reliance, equality of opportunity and competition, and material wealth and hard work. However, any topic you have studied, talked about, or read about or you will study, talk about, or read about before your midterm exam could be used in this section. Discuss at least 3 themes seen in the movie, but include more if possible.

Confucian values are in direct contrast with those of America and the West, and this comes out in virtually every scene. Even though the older women are Christians and had been subject to some Western influences in China, their core values are not individualism, personal success, pluralism and equality of opportunity, as in the United States. For example, when Rose married Ted Jordan, over the objections of his racist parents, she found herself slipping into the role of a dutiful Confucian wife, concentrating only on cooking, cleaning and obeying her husband in all matters, until he finally became bored with her and started having an affair. Individualism and freedom have been core American values since 1776 at least, but this has never been the case in China (Datesman, 2005, p. 29). Even though Rose was Americanized, she knew no other way to be a wife than her mother's example. "I like being tragic," she says to her mother after their divorce, "I learned it from you', while her mother accused her of acting no better than a beggar with Ted. Waverly lives with a white boyfriend who her mother Lindo despises and distrusts, and subtly mocks. If America today is a country that values diversity and pluralism, these have never been present in China, which places more emphasis on uniformity (Datesman, p. 28). Even when Rich tries to show good manners at dinner, he never quite gets it right. In Confucian culture, humility is highly valued, not boasting, so he should have learned to praise her cooking when she always insisted that it was of poor quality. Yet when Waverly was a young girl and got her picture in a magazine as a child genius chess player, her mother showed to everyone in the street and mentioned that she had taught her the strategy of the game -- and strategy is very highly valued in Confucian culture. Little Waverly became angry and shouted "if you want to show off, why don't you learn to play chess?" This was a grave insult, humiliation and loss of public face for her mother, who never mentioned chess again. Even when Waverly attempted to play the game later, she found that she had lost all her talent and "could feel myself becoming so ordinary." At the Joy Luck Club, Lindo comments disparagingly one day that "American girls have no strategy."

America has the self-mage of being an open, tolerant, democratic society what promises equal opportunity for all and welcomes immigrants. It also values self-reliance, individualism and hard work, and the American Dream idea of being about to move into the middle class. Of course, the historical reality has been very different since blacks, Hispanics, Asians and Native Americans hardly had equal rights or opportunities for most of American history. Indeed, Asians and other 'non-Nordic' immigrants were excluded from, the country by laws like the Oriental Exclusion Act of 1883 and the National Origins Act of 1924. All the mothers and daughters in the film have certainly experienced racism and discrimination, even though it is usually downplayed in mass market movies like these. Unlike China, though, the U.S. is a society of immigrants and only 11% of Americans could even imagine living elsewhere (Datesman, p. 33). Americans do tend to believe that with hard work they can enter the middle class, and the Asian women portrayed in this film have indeed worked hard all their lives, and at least have hopes that their daughters will end up doing even better. Hard work, duty and diligence are also a very important part of the Confucian culture that produced them, even though it most definitely does not value individualism, equal opportunity or self-reliance like American culture. According to public opinion polls, most Americans still believe that "each individual should have an equal chance for success," although obviously they realize that some are born with inherited wealth and power, or that others are held back by color, age or ethnicity (Datesman 31).