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The Meaning of Liberation: From The Joy Luck Club to Face and Saving Face | Partial Answers

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The Meaning of Liberation: From The Joy Luck Club to Face and Saving Face

  • Jin Hengshan

Date Published:

4 Jan, 2019

Abstract:

The film The Joy Luck Club (1993) adapted from Amy Tan’s novel of the same title is considered a classic in the representation of Chinese Americans, especially Chinese American women in the past few decades. In many ways, two other films, Face (2002) and Saving Face (2004), share a similar theme with The Joy Luck Club, in terms of the conflict between mothers and daughters as well as between Chinese culture and American culture. The conflicts are eventually resolved to some degree, to everyone’s satisfaction, to the satisfaction of the Chinese audience in particular. It is important, however, to see the films as a window to American life and society: the theme of liberation presented in the films is to be understood in the context of American topoi, namely, the pursuit of the self and the search for the value of life in a multicultural society. To a large extent, the three films address the American audience rather than the Chinese audience. While they tend towards the promotion of the social status of the Chinese community in America and engage in the representation of the different Chinese cultural features, the films endow the contemporary Chinese Americans with a prominent national identity that is American rather than Chinese.

 

 

February 2019: Hengshan Jin is professor of English and American Studies at the School of Foreign Languages in East China Normal University. He obtained his Ph.D from Peking University in 2004. He is the author of John Updike and Contemporary American Society (2008) and The Rooted Print: The Cold War Mentality and American Literature and Culture (2017). He has also published more than 40 academic articles covering a diverse range of American literature, culture as well as contemporary Chinese literature. He was a Fulbright visiting scholar at Duke University from 2010-2011.

Publisher's Version

Last updated on 04/12/2020