REVIEW: THE JOY LUCK CLUB
TANAKA Tomoyuki
A film review by TANAKA Tomoyuki
Copyright 1995 TANAKA Tomoyuki
Hollywood Pictures, 1993.
An Oliver Stone production.
Based on the novel by Amy Tan.
Screenplay by Amy Tan and Ronald Bass.
Directed by Wayne Wang.
139 minutes.
(Abstract)
The film THE JOY LUCK CLUB is an elaborate melodrama that
uniformly received good reviews. As an Asian male living in
the USA, I add the following observations.
(1) No yellowfaces: Asian actors are playing Asian roles.
(2) American stereotype: Asia is sexist, cruel, strange,
exotic, and inscrutable.
(3) Stereotypes: Asian males are bad; white males are good.
(4) Comments on the plot of reunion between the mother and
children deserted in China.
(5) "Feminist" film or "Asian American experience" film?
(0) Introduction
After watching the film THE JOY LUCK CLUB recently, I read some
movie reviews, including the two stored in the
<rec.arts.movies.reviews> FTP site.
<ftp://ftp.uu.net/ftp/ftp.uu.net/usenet/rec.arts.movies.reviews>
(See also <http://www.msstate.edu/Movies>.)
The reviews are almost all positive. Newsweek (Sept 27, 1993)
called it "a four-hankie classic". Time (Sept 13, 1993),
Variety and other magazines hailed it similarly.
The film is highly objectionable from an Asian viewpoint (as I
describe below), but otherwise-acute reviewers seemed to have
been misled by the Asian-American staff and cast. The
reviewers turned off their discerning minds: "Well, if all
these Asian Americans made the film, it must be proper
(politically correct)." This is similar to what happened with
THE PIANO: many people naively assumed that a film directed by
a female must be proper (PC) from the feminist viewpoint. This
kind of assumption is very dangerous; why do you think
conservatives enlist black polemicists to criticize affirmative
action, civil rights movement, etc.? The name of the producer
should have been enough warning; it is Oliver Stone, who showed
his racial prejudice by depicting Asians as subhuman "gooks" in
PLATOON (1988).
Of the movie reviews I looked at, only one had anything
critical to say: one by Richard Grenier in "Commentary"
(May 1994).
"[...] truly stunning mediocrity. The most recent
example is THE JOY LUCK CLUB [...]."
"Millions have been shallowly moved. Millions have
been left teary-eyed."
(1) No yellowfaces: Asian actors are playing Asian roles.
Of course, there is one thing that is wonderful about the
film. Breaking the American tradition of yellowface acting
(the TV show "Kung Fu" and the Broadway musical "Miss Saigon"),
Asian actors are playing Asian roles.
Richard Grenier in "Commentary" (May 1994):
"In THE JOY LUCK CLUB more white Americans have seen
more Asian-Americans in a movie than at any time since
MGM's 1937 version of Pearl Buck's THE GOOD EARTH,
starring Luise Rainer and Paul Muni. Only this time,
the characters are played by real Asians. So I suppose
that whatever else one may say of it, THE JOY LUCK CLUB
is a historic event of a sort."
*No* *more* *yellowface* --- there are other welcome signs of
this new trend: the excellent film THE WEDDING BANQUET (1994)
and the TV series "All American Girl" (1994-).
(2) Stereotype: Asia is sexist, cruel, strange, exotic, and inscrutable.
American media and academia have consistently portrayed Asia
(China and Japan) as sexist, cruel, strange, exotic, ...
completely different from Americans and therefore inscrutable.
(See Tanaka, "American misconceptions about Japan FAQ"
Usenet FAQ file (v1, 1900 lines), 1995. It is in my
archive (WWW) site. Use Lynx (as
"lynx http://bronze.ucs.indiana.edu/~tanaka"),
Mosaic, etc.)
One way this notion of "completely different" is reinforced is
through TV shows such as "Kung Fu". This popular TV show has
been spreading the following message to Americans, young and
old, for decades:
Chinese (and all other Asians) are completely different
from Americans and inscrutable, that Asians operate
under some kind of weird, exotic "Oriental logic"
(symbolized by the cheap, fortune-cookie riddles used
in the show) that reasonable, civilized Westerners can
NEVER hope to understand.
In THE JOY LUCK CLUB we find a massive effort to reinforce
these negative stereotypes.
--- Sexism: Women are treated badly. A man with multiple
wives. A man with mistresses. A man rapes a woman,
who then is rejected by her family and has nowhere to
go but to the man who raped her.
--- Poverty: A poor mother is forced to sell her daughter to a
wealthy family.
--- Cruelty: Baby killing and baby desertion.
--- Strange, exotic, inscrutable: A mother kills herself by
eating opium to "give her daughter a strong spirit".
By emphasizing these old aspects of Chinese society that
changed rapidly and virtually non-existent today, THE JOY LUCK
CLUB tries to convey the following message:
China is an awful, terrible place, from where lucky
women escape to the wonderful U.S.A.
Recently I also watched M. BUTTERFLY (1994, screenplay by David
Henry Hwang, directed by David Cronenberg). It was very good.
Even though the depiction of China and Chinese was somewhat
negative, it was nothing like THE JOY LUCK CLUB. The film
started in "Beijing, 1964". Denoting the setting (time and
place) was something THE JOY LUCK CLUB never did. Denoting the
setting does two things:
1. It encourages the storyteller to do research on the setting,
resulting in a more realistic story.
2. It orients the audience, and helps them see things in
perspective. For example, if a scene was set in "Shandong,
1955", the viewers are reminded this is 40 years ago, not
today, that things were quite different 40 years ago.
American viewers can remind themselves that in the same year
in Mississippi a 14-year old black boy said "Bye baby." to a
white woman, which enraged the whole town, and the woman's
husband and his half-brother beat and shot the boy to
death. The killers were found "not guilty" by an all-white
jury.
THE JOY LUCK CLUB, by leaving the settings of stories in China
obscure, succeeds in giving a vague and negative (and therefore
insidiously negative) impressions of China.
I could not find a single article in which this aspect of the
film (or the original novel) was pointed out. I can see why.
compared to the usual American media coverage of China (like
the reports of "human rights violations"), the depiction in
this film is not much worse. I wonder if Amy Tan was more
influenced by the TV show "Kung Fu" than by her Chinese
background. When I visited China (Beijing) last summer, the
impressions I got were completely different from those from the
American media (including THE JOY LUCK CLUB). There I saw a
country with bustling economy; honest, industrious people;
meeting of East and West, of communism and capitalism ---
nothing was "exotic" or "inscrutable".
(3) Stereotypes: Asian males are bad; white males are good.
The main characters of the film are the four daughters and the
four mothers (and their mothers). Naturally, men are in the
background. Even so, I felt that there was a clear effort to
exclude Asian males from the foreground. For example, the
mothers all had Asian American husbands in the USA, but only
one of them say anything meaningful (June's father).
Of the men who have relatively significant roles, we find a
clear pattern.
(3.1) White males are both good.
--- Rich: the blond guy who can't use chopsticks well, depicted as
a lovable character.
--- Ted: the rich guy who inherits a publishing business.
In the middle, he is insensitive to Rose and cheats on her, but
they reconcile and stay married. In the end, he's a good guy
and a part of the happy gathering.
(3.2) Asian males are all bad, whether in China or in the USA.
--- Wu Tsing: the middle-aged Chinese man who rapes An Mei's mother
and makes her one of his wives.
--- Lin Xiao: the good-looking, young Chinese guy, who marries Ying
Ying (Lena's mother) in China. At first he seemed a romantic
good guy, dancing well and all. But he returns home with a
mistress and tells her, pointing to his wife, "She is a whore,
just like you." He also throws Ying Ying on the floor.
--- Harold (played by Michael Paul Chan): the Chinese American guy
who was married to Lena. The clueless jerk who insists on
splitting the household expenses equally even though he makes
seven times as much.
(3.3) Other, minor roles
--- The good Asian American guy at the party: tall and handsome,
with long hair. Lena leaves Harold and later is dating or
married to this guy. He doesn't have a name in the film, and
he says only three lines.
--- June's father, who briefs June before she leaves for China.
with gray hair, he is a wise, asexual, sage.
--- Waverly's father. The only thing he said was "Sit down. Eat."
--- The Chinese boy (about 10 or 13 years old) from a rich family
who marries Lindo (Waverly's mother). stupid and boorish.
--- White female (Ted's mother) who makes some brief, racist
comments to Rose.
(3.4) Summary
Never before in a single film have I seen such a clear
categorization:
--- Asian females are beautiful and good.
--- Asian males are sexist and bad.
--- White males are good.
See "Section (3) pervasive media bias" in
Tanaka, "disparity in Asian/white interracial dating FAQ"
Usenet FAQ file (v6, 1200 lines), 1994. It is in my archive
(WWW) site. Use Lynx (as
"lynx http://bronze.ucs.indiana.edu/~tanaka"), Mosaic, etc.
(4) Comments on the plot of reunion between the mother and
children deserted in China.
Many people were moved by the ending: meeting of June and her
half-sisters in China. I wonder if such things really happened
(a Chinese mother deserting her child (or children) in China,
then coming to the USA), or Amy Tan got the idea from the
Japanese version, described below.
(4.1) Tyuugoku-zanryuu-koji (China-deserted-orphans)
(Source: "shouwa. vol 17". koudansha. 1990)
At the time of Russian declaration of war on Japan on August 9,
1945 (which led to Japan's surrender), there were about 2.2
million Japanese settlers in north-eastern China (Manchuria)
where Japan has invaded and colonized. The Russian troops
advanced swiftly to this region, and Japanese soldiers (0.6
million) and civilians (1.6 million) tried to return to Japan
in a panic. The Russian troops were merciless toward the
Japanese (rape and murder of civilians, forced labor camps),
and in the end about 1.3 million returned to Japan alive. It
is possible that as many as 10,000 children may have been
deserted in China (as in THE JOY LUCK CLUB).
Since 1981 Japanese and Chinese governments have been working
together to support reunion of such people. As of November
1989, 2,272 such "orphans" have been identified, of which 1,680
have visited Japan, and 1,201 have discovered who their
(Japanese) parents were. 1,145 people have immigrated to
Japan.
(4.2) Tanaka's comments
Stories of these reunions are moving, and real stories have
much more effect on me than fictitious ones. I don't find
anything moving about such a made-up story, presented with many
other made-up stories in a film designed to perpetuate
anti-Asian prejudice.
(5) "Feminist" film or "Asian American experience" film?
A few people commented on Usenet:
Because THE JOY LUCK CLUB is a "feminist" film with a
powerfully feminine starting point, you can't expect an
objective outlook on men.
(5.1) Stacy Ferguson <sfer...@midway.uchicago.edu> has written an
excellent Usenet article questioning that "powerfully feminine
starting point". She argues that the film shows emotionally
disturbed Asian mothers raising insecure daughters, and is not
a good reflection of Asian women.
(5.2) A "feminist theme" film becomes weaker if it is flawed in other
ways, such as by including racial stereotyping. We (Steve Wei
<SCW...@psuvm.psu.edu>, etc) argue that this is the case in THE
JOY LUCK CLUB.
In THELMA AND LOUISE (1991) men are all depicted negatively
(stupid or otherwise inadequate), but it's ok because it's a
"feminist film" --- for almost the first time in a Hollywood
film, we are seeing two women who think and act according to
their will. Naturally, men would be in the background, and
some men would be portrayed as enemies, because one of the
film's themes is "women are finally fighting back."
But what if THELMA AND LOUISE had some black men in it, and
they were all bad (rapists, drug addicts, ..., stupid, lazy,
and inferior), while the good guys were all white? What if the
film showed all Asian men as bad, and all white men as good?
That would certainly have distracted audience from the central
feminist themes, and made the film's impact much weaker.
To me, this is exactly what happened with THE JOY LUCK CLUB:
it was well done in showing the struggles of the three
generations of women, but prejudices against Asia and Asian men
were so glaring that they overshadowed the good qualities.
(6) Conclusion
THE JOY LUCK CLUB succeeds as what it is intended to be: an
elaborate, manipulative melodrama.
I can't fully evaluate the realism of the Chinese aspects of
the film (the language spoken, cultural and historical
accuracy). But when I see American films such as GUNG-HO
(1986) and RISING SUN (1993), I am appalled by the sloppiness
in presentation of the Japanese aspects: Japanese spoken are
mostly fake, and the background facts are all twisted.
Whatever the accuracy of the Chinese aspects of THE JOY LUCK
CLUB may be, it is clear what kind of prejudice has influenced
in making of the film and what kind of prejudice it will help
perpetuate. I felt more concerned with THE JOY LUCK CLUB than
these other films because the prejudice in the film seemed to
be largely overlooked; whereas films such as RISING SUN and BIG
TROUBLE IN LITTLE CHINA (1986) were recognized as what they
were, and ignited protests from the Asian American community,
many are deceived by THE JOY LUCK CLUB, even calling it a
"classic", "artistic", etc. Indeed, it is because THE JOY LUCK
CLUB is a fine film that it is also dangerous; the finest
propaganda films have always been artistic rather than blatant
(consider Leni Riefenstahl).
The greatest long-term significance of the THE JOY LUCK CLUB
may be the following: Together with films like GUNG-HO, RISING
SUN, and BIG TROUBLE IN LITTLE CHINA, THE JOY LUCK CLUB
represents the persistent, anti-Asian prejudice in the USA in
the 1980s and 1990s. This prejudice can be sometimes innocuous
and sometimes deadly (WHO KILLED VINCENT CHIN? (1989)).
There is another possibility. THE JOY LUCK CLUB is the most
successful film to date of the films that have focused on Asian
Americans. Years from now, we may see it as a significant step
in the progress in affirmation of diversity.
;;; (Mr.) TANAKA Tomoyuki (Tanaka is my family name.)
;;; mailing address: TANAKA Tomoyuki
;;; Eigenmann Hall 393
;;; Bloomington, IN 47406, USA
;;; Tanaka's archive site: http://bronze.ucs.indiana.edu/~tanaka
;;; e-mail address: <tan...@indiana.edu>