The film The Joy Luck Club was shot by an American director of Chinese origin. The work tells about the Chinese, their lives, and the country’s problems that have become their new homeland. Eight Chinese women who emigrated to the States a long time ago recall their childhood, life in China before emigration. They all had a hard time, and each had her destiny. The story is told on behalf of the main character, whose mother died. The film was called The Joy Luck Club because each of the eight women experienced many difficulties that turned the course of their lives, but now they cannot look back and call themselves happy. The director’s goal was to demonstrate to the audience the difficult lives of women who were influenced by men.
There are a lot of heroes in the film since the basis of the film is eight women, and the life of each of them is a separate line. Even though all women have experienced difficult times, they can still be called the work’s protagonists. Four mothers want their daughters not to go through the difficulties they once experienced, and four daughters want to be the best for their mothers and live a happy family life. Each of the heroines meets negative characters on her way, who become antagonists of the film.
The film tells about the immigration of Chinese women to America and the life of their daughters of American women of Chinese descent. Already middle-aged Chinese women who have firmly settled in their new homeland still honor traditions, as if they had not left China. None of the girls of the new generation had a successful life the first time. They had to make mistakes many times before they realized that Mom was right.
Rarely do people leave their homes on a whim or because of youthful maximalism. Moreover, such selfishness is not peculiar to the Chinese. A wave of emigration swept through China when salvation from the madness of war was seen only across the ocean. Having lost their home, relatives, and friends, people did not lose hope of recreating their family on a new earth. Some even had to leave their children on the dusty side of the road in the hope of moving forward and getting to a bright future. The worldview of the first generation of migrants, who had an authentic Chinese childhood and a Chinese education, is very different. The new generation looks at them with a grin. They do not have that flair for the signs of fate that their mothers easily read.
The film highlights two places in which the action takes place. In 1949, women immigrated to San Francisco to start a new life. In order to show how difficult the past of Chinese women was, the directors make flashbacks to the past that happened in China. In scenes about the past, the culture of China and its traditions are revealed in the most detail. Each story is unique and demonstrates the strength of each woman’s spirit.
War, illness, jealousy, hatred led to certain decisions that the heroines of the filmmakers. Sometimes, these decisions are complex and incorrect, but the heroines are still forced to change their lives. For example, Ying Ying was forced to drown her baby, which was her husband’s happiness, whom she sincerely hated. Later, she regrets the act, is in bouts of depression, and grieves for her child (The Joy Luck Club, 1:00:00 – 1:03:00). Ying Ying is the protagonist in this family since she loves her husband and worries about their family. The husband, in turn, is the antagonist since he does not appreciate the family connection and openly cheats on his wife with other women.
The illness that overtook June’s mother forces her to leave her infant children. At the beginning of the film, this situation is presented as a simple unwillingness of June’s mother to take on the burden of caring for children at a difficult time. Still, later June’s father reveals the truth to her. It turns out that the mother falls ill while her village is being captured by enemies and is afraid that if she dies, her children will be considered a misfortune and no one will take responsibility for their salvation (The Joy Luck Club, 2:04:20-2:08:40). This situation reverses the viewer’s opinion about June’s mother because her act is tough since she is forced to abandon her beloved children to the mercy of fate in the name of their salvation.
In this film, various dark sides of people are demonstrated; for example, sexism and inequality are most clearly shown in the situation with Ying Ying, when her husband treated any woman as something base and worthless. Moreover, the power of power is demonstrated by the example of Yuan Mei’s mother, who was forced to give her son to her husband’s second wife by her coercion and higher position. American culture is also highlighted in this film as a culture of a separate budget. Lena’s example shows that she is unhappy in her marriage since her husband is always counting which of them buys what for the family, and the post-season calculations have already tired the heroine.
This film is quite profound, demonstrating the problematic life of women in China. Undoubtedly, they can draw certain conclusions from all situations and change their lives for the better, which allows each viewer to think about their own life. Having studied in detail all aspects of their family situation, people will be able to act as boldly as the film’s heroines did at the time.
The most striking insight of this film was the duality of relations between men and women. Men are shown as overbearing, rude, polygamous people. The wife has become soft and accommodating, which means she is no longer suitable for a particular man. A woman is forced to share expenses with her husband and buy for him what she does not need at all. A similar archetype is inherent in some modern men, but still, time is changing, and now men and women are increasingly becoming equal.
The picture is complex and multifaceted since all the characters are diverse and have their own story that is almost nothing like the previous one. They are still united by male dominance and dominance over fragile women who want to be happy and have a family. Probably, the past was characterized precisely by this paradigm of the power of a man over a woman. In the end, the authors and directors show that the women found what they were looking for. Someone found the perfect man, someone saved their marriage and family, even for the sake of children, and June found her sisters to meet whom she could not even count on before.
Reference
Wang, W. (1993). The Joy Luck Club. [Film]. Hollywood Pictures.