“The Joy Luck Club”: Film Analysis Essay
Introduction, mother-daughter relationship, the essence of storytelling and tradition, fate and independence, parental sacrifice.
The Joy Luck Club revolves around the story of four Chinese women who migrated to America to look for new life. They all live in San Francisco, and each one of them has a Chinese-American daughter whom they love a lot and wish the best for them. At the movie’s beginning, the four women, Tsai Chin, Kieu Chinh, France Nuyen, and Lisa Lu, sit down in an open place, playing Mahjong while narrating their past stories. The four different stories make the entire movie, considering that it unfolds how they are connected and how their relationship affects their daughters. Since the film is highly feminine, it explains the importance of the mother-daughter relationship, the essence of storytelling and tradition, fate and independence, and parental sacrifice.
The central focus of The Joy Luck Club movie is the multifaceted relationship between daughters and their mothers. When telling their stories, it is clear that there is an inherent bond between the four women and their daughters, despite the cultural and generational problems they encountered over time. For example, when Suyuan, June Woo’s mother, died, the inherent bond between June and her deceased mother encouraged her to understand her mother’s life well. Since her mother migrated to America when June was not born, she did not know much about her mother’s past life (Wang, 1993). However, she finds more about her mother, including her other twin sisters, from her mother’s three friends. While still alive, Suyuan showed her friends the undying love she had for her daughters, and this confession later helped June find her twin sisters, who were left in China during WWII. Although Suyuan left her daughters in china during Japanese inversion to save their lives, her bond with them was always strong, despite the physical distance. This material and emotional sacrifice portray the length that some mothers go to honor the survival of their daughters. Therefore, the movie shows that the connection between mothers and their daughters subsists beyond worldly activities and personal events.
People tell stories to make sense of life and understand the world around them. The movie has four segments of different stories, which helps the viewers understand the lives and cultures of the main characters. We realize that the four women migrated from China to America through each story due to political instabilities. The viewers can understand the importance of adoring other people’s cultures through the stories. For instance, despite being raised in Chinese culture, the four women still value the American culture and would like their daughters to adore them. To justify this statement, Suyuan says, “In America, I will have a daughter just like me. Nevertheless, nobody will say her worth is measured by the loudness of her husband’s belch. Over there, nobody will look down on her because I will make her speak only perfect American English” (Wang, 1993 00:35:46). Therefore, viewers can learn from the movie that adoring other people’s culture is essential, considering that it would open more life opportunities and strengthen personal relationships.
The concept of fate and independence fills the film, considering that the main characters dither between the traditional acceptance of one destiny and the free will to decide their fate in life. When Suyuan died, the Chinese tradition preferred June Woo to take her mother’s place and follow in her footsteps. However, the concept of fate and independence changed all these by making June follow her ways to track her late mother’s history (Bloom, 2009). Unfortunately, through fate, she meets her twin sisters in the Joy Luck Club, of which she could fail to find them suppose she could choose to follow the Chinese cultural restrictions. As a result, fate is a power beyond human beings’ supremacy, controlling what happens to people’s lives.
Parental sacrifice refers to how parents, especially mothers, prioritize their children’s needs at the expense of their own lives. The Joy Luck Club portrays that all the aspects of parental love require some level of sacrifice. It shows that women always sacrifice themselves for the good of their children, which would later strengthen their bonds. For instance, the most significant parental sacrifice in the film is when Suyuan decides to leave her twin daughters in a safe place to be rescued during WWII, the Japanese invasion of China. She narrates that, at that mysterious moment, she was nearly dead due to dysentery, and the only way she could save her babies was by leaving them by the roadside (Bloom, 2009). Therefore, her willingness to prioritize her babies’ lives before her own life guaranteed their rescue.
In conclusion, most parents should view the Joy Luck Club as a positive and instructive film. It highly portrays how parents should handle their children, despite their challenges. It shows the essence of storytelling, considering that June found her mother’s origin through listening to the stories her mother used to tell other women. Furthermore, as the film shows, parental sacrifice and the concept of independence are important to people’s lives. For instance, by sacrificing her life during WWII, Suyuan was able to save the lives of her twin daughters. In addition, by being independent, June, through fate, was able to reunite with her twin sisters in The Joy Luck Club.
Bloom, H. (Ed.). (2009). Amy Tan’s The Joy Luck Club . Infobase Publishing.
Wang, W. (1993). The Joy Luck Club. Buena Vista Pictures.
- Chicago (A-D)
- Chicago (N-B)
IvyPanda. (2023, April 19). "The Joy Luck Club": Film Analysis. https://ivypanda.com/essays/the-joy-luck-club-film-analysis/
""The Joy Luck Club": Film Analysis." IvyPanda , 19 Apr. 2023, ivypanda.com/essays/the-joy-luck-club-film-analysis/.
IvyPanda . (2023) '"The Joy Luck Club": Film Analysis'. 19 April.
IvyPanda . 2023. ""The Joy Luck Club": Film Analysis." April 19, 2023. https://ivypanda.com/essays/the-joy-luck-club-film-analysis/.
1. IvyPanda . ""The Joy Luck Club": Film Analysis." April 19, 2023. https://ivypanda.com/essays/the-joy-luck-club-film-analysis/.
Bibliography
IvyPanda . ""The Joy Luck Club": Film Analysis." April 19, 2023. https://ivypanda.com/essays/the-joy-luck-club-film-analysis/.
- Stories "Girl" by Kincaid vs. "Everyday Use" by Walker
- "The Joy Luck Club" by Wayne Wang
- Plot and Main Idea of “The Joy Luck Club” Film
- “Groundhog Day”: Ability to Love and Love Ability
- Homosexuality and Homophobia in the Movie “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof”
- Racial Identity: Representation in Cinema
- Academy Awards: Central Aspects & Representation in the Media
- "12 Angry Men": Comparison of the Play and the 1997 Movie
IMAGES
COMMENTS
With the publication of her first novel, The Joy Luck Club, in 1988, Amy Tan (born February 19, 1952) became a household name. The book was a tremendous critical and commercial success from the beginning. Before the end of its first year, it had been named a selection for both the Book-of-the-Month Club and the….
The Joy Luck Club is considered a classic text in contemporary Asian American literature, and praised for its nuanced and compassionate characterization of the Chinese immigrant experience and the generational tensions between immigrants and their American-born children. Similar works include Maxine Hong Kingston's The Woman Warrior and Jhumpa Lahiri's The Interpreter of Maladies.
A. Suyuan and Lindo's friendly rivalry. B. Ying-ying's traumas. C. Lindo and Waverly's chess maneuvers. D. Jing-mei's understanding of who she is. V. Conclusion: The narrative technique in ...
Analysis. PDF Cite Share. The Joy Luck Club is not structured like a typical novel. In fact, it is more like a collection of short stories joined together by the thread of the Joy Luck Club woven ...
The success of The Joy Luck Club, according to Sao-Ling Cynthia Wong, is due in part to its "persistent allure of Orientalism." Other literary critics have attributed the author's achievements to ...
Summary. Analysis. Two months after her mother Suyuan passes away, Jing-mei "June" Woo is asked by her father Canning to take over her mother's spot in the Joy Luck Club, a weekly mahjong game night that's been held for nearly forty years, since 1949. Her mother died of a cerebral aneurysm, which her father blames on a very large idea ...
Amy Tan's novel The Joy Luck Club illustrates the experiences of Chinese families, especially the conflict between mothers and daughters. The screen adaption of this literary work also enables the viewers to understand the nature of this conflict. This paper is aimed at comparing and contrasting the novel and its film adaptation.
The first storyteller in the book is June. This corresponds to the position that she assumes at the mah-jongg table, the East wind, which always starts the game. The stories in The Joy Luck Club ...
The Joy Luck Club revolves around the story of four Chinese women who migrated to America to look for new life. They all live in San Francisco, and each one of them has a Chinese-American daughter whom they love a lot and wish the best for them. At the movie's beginning, the four women, Tsai Chin, Kieu Chinh, France Nuyen, and Lisa Lu, sit ...
The Joy Luck Club Summary. The Joy Luck Club is divided into four parts of four stories each, totaling sixteen stories in all; in the beginning of each part, a short parable introduces a common theme, connecting the four stories that follow. Each story is told by one of the seven main characters, and these stories are all woven together into a ...
Essays for The Joy Luck Club. The Joy Luck Club essays are academic essays for citation. These papers were written primarily by students and provide critical analysis of The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan. Spiritual Reassessment and Moral Reconciliation; Mother-Daughter Evolution in The Joy Luck Club; Music as a Motif in The Joy Luck Club
Critical Context. The Joy Luck Club, Amy Tan's first book, is avowedly autobiographical. Like the Chinese American daughters in the book, Tan shunned her own heritage while growing up in San ...
The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan (1989) follows the stories of four Chinese women who immigrate to America and their American-born daughters. This was Tan's first novel, a highly-acclaimed New York Times best-seller and winner of the 1989 California Book Award for Fiction. It was adapted into a film in 1993 and was the first wide American film release with a predominantly Asian American cast.
Student Model. Amy Tan's book The Joy Luck Club explores the relationships between four Chinese American daughters and their often-misunderstood, more traditional Chinese mothers. By sharing quotations from the book, Fawn, the author of this literary analysis, intends to show how, as they grew up, the daughters came to understand, respect ...
Critical Overview. Both critics and the reading public loved The Joy Luck Club from the minute it came off the press in 1989. The book successfully crosses cultures and joins separate generations ...
Cite this essay. Download. Through the novel, The Joy Luck Club, the author Amy Tan conveys the importance of finding joy and luck in the darkest of times. As mentioned in "Feathers From A Thousand Li Away," the four mothers, who experienced their own trials and went through much pain, came together in Kwelin and held parties to try to ...
The second period began with the publication of Amy Tan's The Joy Luck Club in 1989, which heralded the emergence of a large group of Asian American writers who were interested in experimenting ...