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The Joy Luck Club Film

Uploaded by wendimill on Nov 03, 2011

This essay examines the film version of The Joy Luck Club with particular attention to the relationship between Rose and her mother, An-Mei.

I Introduction

The book The Joy Luck Club was the basis for the movie of the same name. It has a dense, literate script that follows the novel very closely. This isn’t particularly surprising, since Amy Tan helped write the screenplay. Although it was a successful film, it drew a lot of criticism from the Asian community, which objected to its stereotypical portrayal of Chinese women as “China dolls” and Chinese men as either gangsters, rapists or dolts. In fact, the men play little real part in the film at all, which is not surprising, since it is really a film about eight women, four mothers and their grown daughters, and their relationships. The men really don’t register as characters at all; at least in this film, they are defined by their relationships with the women.
Each of the mothers was raised in China while each of their daughters was born and raised in America, so the movie examines not only the generational gap and the dynamics of the mother-daughter relationship, but also the culture clash between the two nations.


II The An-Mei/Rose Relationship

All the mother-daughter relationships are at least partially adversarial; some of the pairs are much more embattled than others. An-Mei and Rose seem to be the closest of them, because of An-Mei’s relationship with her mother, Rose’s grandmother.
The stories set in China are horrific. An-Mei’s mother was raped, but no one believed her story and her own parents threw her out, forcing her to take shelter with her rapist and become his fourth wife. She was keenly aware of her “shame” and her lowly place in the man’s household.
But she was also the only one of her mother’s children to make a blood soup for her mother (Rose’s great-grandmother) when the old woman was dying: only the most “dutiful daughter” performed this ritual. Obviously, then, strong mother-daughter connections run in this family.
An-Mei left her grandparent’s house and went back to live with her mother because she loved her. This final action shamed An-Mei’s mother even further because An-Mei clearly saw what her mother had become; she committed suicide, telling An-Mei that she was giving up her “weak spirit” to strengthen An-Mei’s own. ...

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Uploaded by:   wendimill

Date:   11/03/2011

Category:   Literature

Length:   4 pages (871 words)

Views:   2812

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