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Mothers and Daughters: Representations of Generational Difference and Conflict in Chinese-American Filial Relationships in Wayne Wang's Dim Sum and The Joy Luck Club Tina Butler, mongabay.com May 8, 2005 Looking generally at Asian American film, there are a few emergent conventions and similarities. Luis Francia asserts in his essay "Asian Cinema and Asian American Cinema: Separated by a Common Language?" [In] Asian American films, questions of cultural and personal identity loom large…‘the primary impulse appears still to be a pedagogical one, coming to be instructive of Asian American life, rather than to be descriptive of it.' Often the development of the theme is set against the conflicts that ensue when the traditions of two societies impinge upon an individual's life. (104) In these two films, this is exactly the case. Each American-born daughter struggles with her duality, at once a loyal daughter, and simultaneously, an independent spirit. As a filmmaker, Wang's own personal history largely inflects the stories he tells. His ability to explore freely the cultural values of both Taiwan and America stems from his rootlessness. Wang tells Film Comment in an interview, "Because of the complete avoidance of talking about China, and having grown up in a British Colony, and my parents being very pro-American, I grew up with no sense of identification with a country" (Allen 159). He continues, "My father would say, ‘In America the oranges are bigger.' The dream, the myth was so powerful. I was already half-American even before I ever set foot here" (Levy 327). It is this nebulous national and cultural background that enables or prompts Wang to reconcile this confusion through his films that explore issues of identity, history and conflict between those born in China and those born in the United States that share the same heritage. The director was born in Hong Kong and educated at the California College of Arts and Crafts. Wang's first name originated from his parents watching one of John Wayne's films. He came to the US at eighteen and graduated with a Masters in Film and Television Studies in 1973 (Sakamoto 73). With this mixed and multi-dimensional heritage, Wang's films reflect a rich, hybrid-like sensibility. He established himself in the 1980s with incisive portraits of Chinese-American life, with an emphasis on cross-cultural and generational issues. Emanuel Levy in Cinema of Outsiders: The Rise of American Independent Film refers to him as a "gentle satirist" (326). Wang's debut film, Chan is Missing (1981), is an examination of Asian stereotypes, which explores issues of assimilation and identity as well as the political schism between Taiwan and China. Immediately, the audience sees an agenda in which clashes of social values and references from multiple cultures are consciously being played out. Wang uses irony and a comic playfulness to bring out a serious central core. These issues are examined further in Dim Sum, Eat a Bowl of Tea and The Joy Luck Club. Wang's families presented onscreen characteristically sit and talk about their concerns, but their problems continue to persist. His characters try to make sense of their lives and resolve their conflicts without being crushed by the powerful emotional and culturally determined issues and forces enveloping them. Dim Sum explores "both specific conflicts of the Chinese American experience and the no-win situations common to all families" (Sakamoto 71). Dim Sum is made up of subsidiary events, without the support of a strong central story. There are few dramatic elements, just subtle hints and wistful regrets, and human miseries are gently presented and gently accepted as integral parts of life. This construction seems to mirror the films' characters' sense of indecision and indistinctiveness. Mrs. Tam is torn between her desire for her daughter to marry and have children and to keep her for herself so she has someone to care for her as she grows older. The characters in Dim Sum exist in this kind of anchor-less paralysis of deliberate action; similarly, the film is more meandering than driven. Dim Sum focuses on one such relationship. Geraldine and Mrs. Tam have the most traditional characterizations and representations. Mrs. Tam fears being alone in her old age. She is eager and anxious for her daughter to marry and she refuses the proposal of marriage from her worthy and ideal brother-in-law because of her loyalty to her long dead husband. She claims her capacity to be independent, yet at the same time, yearns for her daughter's proximity and care. The fact that Mrs. Tam and Geraldine are mother and daughter (Levy 331) in real life enhances, intensifies and authenticates their generational interactions and exchange. Their relationship onscreen becomes more sincere and honest because it is true. Laureen Chew, the woman who plays Geraldine, had her film debut in Chan is Missing (Esaki 36). She had never acted prior to that film and her unguarded, unaffected and unguided performance possesses a quality of sincerity and freshness that is retained in Dim Sum. She seems natural and without pretense, with an innate character of vitality. Geraldine is torn between her desire for a life with Richard and her feelings of attachment to her mother. She wants to live her own life and yet she does not want to abandon her mother. Mrs. Tam vacillates between pushing her away and pulling her back. Mrs. Tam implores Geraldine to get married, saying "Put my mind at ease. I'll know that my responsibility to you is over." Her daughter responds, "I don't know who's going to take care of you. I don't want you to be alone." Mrs. Tam advises her, "Now your life comes first." "Mrs. Tam, a Jewish mother by temperament, says she wants to see Geraldine married, but whenever Geraldine tries to make the break, she beings to fret about her loneliness" (Levy 328). It seems as though Mrs. Tam regards Geraldine as her last chance for the preservation and continuation of Chinese familial tradition. Her other daughter is already married, to a black man. This seems to be somewhat of an uncomfortable issue for Mrs. Tam. As she strokes the head of her granddaughter, she says that the girl's hair is messy and needs to be brushed. Geraldine interjects with, "It's not messy, Mom. It's curly." The generational representations are not static and uniform however. Both mother and daughter alike exhibit flexibility, adaptability and eventual willingness to change. Mrs. Tam is eager to renounce her Chinese identity or at least citizenship for the sake of becoming an American, specifically and yet ironically, so she will be an American when she visits her ‘homeland.' Geraldine is critical of this seemingly rash decision, noting, "You've been here forty years; now you're rushing to become an American!?" Uncle Tam playfully comments on Mrs. Tam's true roots and leanings, despite of her nationalistic ambition. "You can take a girl out of Chinatown but you can't take Chinatown out of a girl," he jokes. Uncle Tam and Geraldine exhibit a sense of loyalty in attempting to preserve tradition to a degree, but end in failure as their American predispositions shine through. While Mrs. Tam is in China reclaiming her history and saying goodbye, Uncle Tam and Geraldine try to prepare an authentic Chinese meal. After they ruin the dinner mid-preparation, the two eschew the mess and make their way to McDonalds for Big Macs. Similar themes are addressed in Wang's later film, The Joy Luck Club; this time through the relationships of four mothers and daughters. The film is about the generation gap between Chinese mothers and their American daughters and subsequent conflicts and issues of cultural assimilation. Due to the wider spectrum in The Joy Luck Club, there is a more diverse presentation of relationships. The Chinese-American immigrant mothers are bound by their histories and innate sense of loyalty to tradition. Their American born daughters are bound by their sense of simultaneous entrapment by and indebtedness to their mothers. The older generation stresses the importance to adhering to the old ways by marrying and producing grandchildren as well as care for them in their old age. These contradictory expectations and visions of these women for their daughters is problematic yet understandable given the historical context of their lives. An-mei, Lindo, Ying Ying and Suyuan's lives are chronicled in flashbacks. Their young adult life experiences are significantly more intense and formative than anything their daughters have yet to face. Dysentery, rape, war, domestic violence—June, Waverly, Rose and Lena have never known such trauma. The experience of Mrs. Tam, in Dim Sum, is less clear, but the differences between her and her daughter must be grounded in some kind of disparity in experience. The older generation has learned from their mistakes; the younger generation is still making them. In abbreviated ways, the daughters begin to experience the trials of their mothers, but they have the older generation's knowledge and insight to help inform and determine their behavior and actions. The older and younger generations come from extremely divergent backgrounds and circumstances. The issues, challenges, standards and expectations faced by the mothers in their young, developing lives are almost opposite of those of their daughters. Women like Ying Ying and An-mei were concerned with betrothals, the pressures of bearing children (preferably boys), and being responsible for their aging relatives. The daughters, like Geraldine and Waverly feel pressure from their own mothers, but it comes across as suggestion and in the form of subtle guilt tripping as opposed to duty and force. The mothers want to be cared for in their old age, have security in their well being, as well as in the knowledge that their daughters will live traditionally—marry and have a family—but also be happy in their own lives. These multiple expectations are unrealistic in their opposition, but at the end of each film, some kind of compromise seems to be formed and met. In the film, it is stated that the group of women who called themselves The Joy Luck Club was not really about those two things. The club was more about hope—hope that their daughters would live better lives than their own. This feeling is strong. Their daughters are ignorant of the hopes and dreams of they brought to this country. The mothers make the distinction that there are two kinds of daughters: the obedient type and the type that follows her own mind. The mothers are conflicted about which kind of daughter they want. They want to spare their children the kind of suffering they experienced, but at the same time, they want daughters who will be respectful. This contradiction manifests as a generational rift at numerous points and occasions in the film in all of the mother-daughter relationships. In one flashback scene, the audience witnesses a heated exchange between a very young June and her mother. After an abysmal performance at a piano recital, June decides she will never play again. When Suyan finds out her plans and implores her to play, June explodes and reveals much about the generational, historical and experiential chasms between them, "I'm not your slave! This isn't China! You can't make me!" June is speaking about something of which she knows very little, but there is a bit of sad truth in her words. "Make" has a double meaning in this context. Literally, June means that her mother cannot force her to play the piano. Looking deeper however, she seems to say that Suyan may not completely form who she is either. June is asserting that she is her own person. Likewise, Waverly's mother, Lindo, was aggressively supportive of her daughter as a child, living vicariously through her achievements. Waverly's own frustration with this cycle builds until she lashes out at her mother in a similar manner. In The Joy Luck Club, the differences between generations can be subtle and overt, and minor and epic in proportion. Little things like mother and daughter bickering about whether or not to put Chinese cabbage in the salad mingle with larger issues of self-respect and arguing over a daughter's stubbornness to remain in an abusive relationship. Despite their espoused loyalty to tradition and attempts to push it on their daughters, all of the mothers in the films present a formidable degree of strength, ingenuity and spunk. Battling dysentery and starvation in a time of war and certain of her own imminent death, Suyan leaves her twin daughters at the side of the road with every object of value she has to open the possibility for a future. The experiences of the Chinese-born mothers in their early lives inflect and impact their rearing of their children. While they try to impress upon their daughters many of the traditional Chinese values, they allow their girls the privilege and gift of independent thought and action. In China, as An-Mei relates to her daughter Rose, "I was taught to desire nothing, to swallow other people's misery and to eat my own bitterness." Rose, married to a Caucasian-American, suffers in her relationship with her husband when she, following her mother's example, acts as an obedient wife who does not know her worth and never speaks for herself. An-Mei illuminates the unacceptable quality of her relationship and pushes her to take charge of her life and situation. This American-born generation lacks this blind and insidious obedience to unfair and unrealistic expectations. Instead of being indoctrinated to always and unquestionably accept and never to question, these women, while retaining some loyalty to their family and history, look past obligation and guilt for their own self-preservation and largely refuse to accept submissive circumstances. When they do fail to recognize their own constriction, their mothers' aid them in realizing their situation and prompt them to change and ultimately progress their lives, such as is the case with Ying Ying and Lena. Lena's husband Arnold is obsessive to a grotesque degree, demanding that every single household expenditure be recorded and evenly split between the two of them. This extreme emphasis on financial issues traps Lena in an obsessively confined and restricted existence. Ying Ying recognizes the deep-seated problems in this arrangement and relates her own experience to help her daughter to see that she must take responsibility for herself and stand up to her domineering husband. She herself was betrothed and married to a boy, literally. He was at least five years her junior. Ying Ying, using her cunning ingenuity and intelligence, escapes the ludicrous union before it crushes her spirit. She refused to be dominated by tradition and seeks to give her daughter the same opportunity before it is too late. These two juxtaposed yet linked marital relationships illustrate that regardless of the time period, the institution of marriage can manifest and function as a prison. Rose's mother tries to reveal and share this lesson with her so she can avoid the unhappiness she experienced in her own young life. Likewise, Lindo, one of the four mothers, was matched to her husband when she was only six, and married him when she was fifteen. Beyond the world of marriage, the film also confronts issues of loss and what becomes of a daughter without her mother. In her mother's absence, June assumes her place and acts as a bridge between generations. She now takes her mother's chair at the mah jhong table with Suyan's friends. When the older women begin to converse rapidly in their native language, June admonishes them, "No talking in Chinese! How do I know you're not cheating?" June recognizes that she is not a perfect replacement for her mother and comes to compensate for this lack in a brave display of loyalty and respect for her mother and the institution of her family. Both films include a journey to the homeland. The journey, in both literal and symbolic terms, functions as a kind of reconciliation. Each is performed by a member of different generations and yet each seems to accomplish the same end. For young June, her trip is one of reconciliation. It is a journey intended for her mother to take, but Suyan dies before completing this task. Her daughter must take her place and fill that role. As her involuntary and unexpected replacement, June is thrust haphazardly into confronting the past and addressing her family history. By substituting for her mother, June continues and extends the familial legacy and assumes the proper behavior for a traditional good Chinese daughter. Her half-sisters, even by their separation from June's previous life become a part of her, because they are linked inextricably to her identity. Ultimately, June is successful in her endeavor. She is able to make the trip, able to tell her sisters the truth about their mother's death and able to revive and strengthen her family bonds. She accepts responsibility and acts with appropriate loyalty. Geraldine's mother, like June, makes her own trip to China. While significantly less chronicled in Dim Sum, her journey is no less important. Mrs. Tam wants to go to China to pay her last respects to the homeland. She believes she must do this. The audience sees her departure and return and bears witness to a woman revived. She left for China with a curse and comes back with a blessing—a second chance at living and a refreshed outlook, open mind and relaxed expectations for her daughter. The journey seems to possess a quality of renewal as well. With this transformation, Geraldine does not have to assume her mother's role. Instead, Mrs. Tam is able to reconcile her past before it is too late and transfers this relief and renewal to her own daughter. Mrs. Tam's actualization of self inspires Geraldine to examine and make decisions about her own life, her desires for the future. Ironically, before paying her respect to the Homeland, Mrs. Tam is insistent that she gains American citizenship and visit China as an American. There appears to be a conflict of identity and loyalty. Probably for comedic effect, while seeking citizenship, Mrs. Tam prefers to answer the immigration questions in Cantonese (Levy 331). Mrs. Tam clings to her Chinese heritage while at the same time trying to relinquish it. Geraldine almost always speaks to her mother in English and Mrs. Tam almost always answers her in Cantonese. There seems to be an unacknowledged yet spoken competition. Returning to her studying habits, further, she pretends not to know or hear, (it is unclear in the scene) the simplest of questions like, "Who was the first President of the United States?" The audience begins to doubt her intent with and commitment to this process of legal assimilation. Works Cited Allen, Michael. Contemporary US Cinema. Pearson Education Limited: London, 2003. Esaki, John. "Back to Real: Asian American Filmmaking." Moving the Image: Independent Asian Pacific American Media Arts. Russell Leong, ed. UCLA Asian American Studies Center and Visual Communications, Southern California Asian American Studies Central, Inc: Los Angeles, 1991. Francia, Luis H. "Asian Cinema and Asian American Cinema: Separated by a Common Language?" Moving the Image: Independent Asian Pacific American Media Arts. Russell Leong, ed. UCLA Asian American Studies Center and Visual Communications, Southern California Asian American Studies Central, Inc: Los Angeles, 1991. Levy, Emanuel. Cinema of Outsiders: The Rise of American Independent Film. New York U Press: New York, 1999. Sakamoto, Janice. "‘Of Life and Perversity': Wayne Wang Speaks." Moving the Image: Independent Asian Pacific American Media Arts. Russell Leong, ed. UCLA Asian American Studies Center and Visual Communications, Southern California Asian American Studies Central, Inc: Los Angeles, 1991. Tajima, Renee. "Moving the Image: Asian American Independent Filmmaking 1970-1990." Moving the Image: Independent Asian Pacific American Media Arts. Russell Leong, ed. UCLA Asian American Studies Center and Visual Communications, Southern California Asian American Studies Central, Inc: Los Angeles, 1991. Tan, Amy. The Joy Luck Club. 1989 Dim Sum, US, Wayne Wang, 1985 The Joy Luck Club, US, Wayne Wang, 1993 News index | RSS | Add to MyYahoo! Advertisements: Organic Apparel from Patagonia | Insect-repelling clothing |
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