Orientalism in The Joy Luck Club

In this paper, we’ll be looking at the ways the movie, The Joy Luck Club, perpetuates the old tenets of Orientalism. At first, one might think many Asians worldwide would embrace this movie, finally one of the few films that represents the Asian American population and culture, but under a closer lens, you’ll soon discover how Amy Tan in her novel and subsequent screenplay panders to the white audience, taking on an obsequious, ass-kissing stance. Perhaps Tan bows down to white Americans simply to be on the best-seller list, but by making a quick buck, she only makes a fool of herself, discoloring and besmirching the Chinese race, so often confused with other Asian races.

Before getting to the text, a most insidious blunder is mixing Japanese, Malay, and Vietnamese actors in with Chinese and Chinese-American actors. This perpetuates the horrible and erroneous notion that all Asians are the same and look alike. China has always been a country to stand on its own with an identity like no other. To do justice to the Chinese race would be to first and foremost use only Chinese actors—there are so many to choose from, thousands willing to fit the part. I don’t understand why production would ever need to outsource. This is not Memoirs of a Geisha.

Now let’s examine the text and the Orientalist implications simmering under the surface. Number one, even though the movie flip-flops between 1960’s-1980’s San Francisco/Oakland and 1920’s-1950’s China, the backdrop of China is shrouded in mist and clouds, bespeckled with dirt roads, sharp, tall mountains, and swirling with shabby-looking peasants. China has this supernatural, ancient, cob-webbed aura—a mystical, inscrutable, backwards land that one might like to explore and colonize. Even at the end of the movie when June reunites with her two long forgotten twin sisters, China still looks like a country in shambles with no technology or modern advancements, exemplified by the fact that June arrives by boat. It appears that Shanghai didn’t have an airport in the late 1980’s.

It is this separation of East and West that is most deplorable. The East is portrayed as a land of oppression, antiquity, savagery, superstition, ignorance, and misogyny. If a Chinese woman is fortunate, she’ll be able to leave this land of bitter misery and burden and filtrate through the golden gates of America—the land of promise, opportunity, prosperity, good fortune, and enlightenment.

In Suyuan’s thematic story to June, she speaks of a duck that becomes a swan and is “too beautiful to eat.” What an outrage! Here, Tan is reaffirming the stereotype that Asians love to eat birds along with dogs, as if small pets are always on the Chinese menu. This is a cheap shot, its only foundation being the kind of racist and imperialist bullshit Tan should rally against.

Suyuan’s story goes on to say, “[In America] 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. And over there, she will always be too full to swallow any sorrow.” This implicates that in China, women are valued only by the tyrants they marry, are undeserving of respect, have no education or knowledge of the most essential language, English, and must always swallow their emotions, suffering greatly in silence and sorrow. This perpetuates the stereotype that a beautiful Chinese woman must always suffer in humility, obscurity, worthlessness, and submission.

There is a huge cultural and linguistic chasm between the mothers and daughters. The mother is the so-called “(m)other.” The four mothers—Suyuan, Lindo, Ying-Ying, and An-Mei—represent the East while the four daughters—June, Waverly, Lena, and Rose—represent the West. The daughters are ashamed of and/or baffled by their mothers, because they think that just because they are American and their mothers originate from a country on the other side of the world, they are not on the same page. In the end, though, to finish on a happy note, the daughters come to understand and respect their mothers. But throughout the movie, we see plenty of tension.

When Suyuan tries to make nine-year-old June play the piano, June pipes, “I’m not your slave. This isn’t China!” Adult June narrates, “There were so many things about my mother I never understood.” Waverly is extremely critical of her mother’s hair, prepping for her wedding. Waverly tells the hairdresser, dismissing her mother’s presence, “God forbid she’d pay to have anything professionally done.” Her mother eventually begs the question, “Why does my daughter think she’s translating English for me?” Bitter Rose tells her mother, “I like being tragic, Ma. I learned it from you.”

Number two, and probably the most egregious blunder in the text is the misrepresentation of Chinese men (as opposed to white men) and Chinese women. In the movie, all the Chinese male characters are undesirable in some way. Chinese men are portrayed as sexist, cruel, effeminate, weak, and shameless. Wu Tsing rapes An-Mei’s mother and takes her as Fourth Wife, perpetuating the myth that Chinese men are horny, dirty, and take many concubines. When young An-Mei is sleeping with her mother, Wu Tsing comes to have sex and suggests that An-Mei watch her mother and him get it on, showing that Chinese men have no regard for children. Lin Xiao is referred to as “the bad man in China” who wildly cheats on and abuses beautiful Ying-Ying, at one point throwing her to the floor. Harold, Lena’s husband, is viewed as a calculative cheapskate who splits the household expenses, but pays himself 7 ½ times more than Lena in his firm. June’s father is the asexual, Uncle Tom character, who is willing to please and bow down to anything or anyone. Old Chong, June’s piano teacher, is literally a buffoon, a hearing-impaired, brain-impaired moron who doesn’t know his ass from his elbow. Tyan-yu, Lindo’s first husband, is a comical, boorish, fat boy who plays with germy critters. Most subtle but noteworthy is the Chinese man on the roadside who ignores dysenteric Suyuan’s pleas for help as she struggles to escape war-torn China, depicting Chinese men as uncaring, heartless, and uncharitable. The last example is the mockery of old feeble Chinese men at Suyuan’s last Chinese New Year party—sleeping at the dining table with their mouths open as if they were dead or trying to catch flies.

The two white men are great and wonderful in the movie and redeem themselves for any transgressions they might have unwittingly made. Rich, Waverly’s husband, is the blond, handsome, affable, wealthy, good-natured man whose only flaws are his inability to use chopsticks efficiently and his unawareness of Chinese etiquette. He buys Waverly a beautiful fur coat and is considered by her, “the love of my life, who treated me like I was perfect.” Ted, Rose’s husband, is this stunningly gorgeous successful well-bred heir, who courageously defends Rose in front of his racist mother, tries to reconcile the marriage by imploring Rose to have an opinion and fight for herself, who is not to blame for cheating on Rose (it’s all her fault), and who in the end reconciles his marriage with Rose as the good guy.

The Chinese/Chinese-American women are portrayed unjustly too. All four mothers and four daughters are or were at some time China dolls. The majority of the women are portrayed as disturbed, insecure, weak, indecisive, and submissive. If they are not sweet and meek, they are Dragon Ladies like Huang Tai Tai, Second Wife, and Waverly. All this does is romanticize the East and pander to sexually perverse American men who have Asian fetishes. Few men who faun over foreign, exotic women want them strong and assertive. What does Oliver Stone have to say about this?

June, the main character, is too inconvincingly sweet, agreeable, and passive. We don’t see any passion, resistance, or fight in her, not even when her mother takes Waverly’s side and embarrasses her at the dinner table. Not to mention that she and Auntie Lindo don’t have the backbone to tell June’s twin sisters their mother is dead. We see more spunk in June as a nine-year-old than as a thirty-something-year-old woman, as if growing up Chinese female depletes the spirit. Lena can’t stand up to Harold without her mother’s relentless prompting and inference. Rose has no voice and can’t make decisions in her marriage to Ted until she hears her mother’s epic story. Ying-Ying is a shell of a woman after enduring an abusive husband and the drowning of her son. An-Mei’s mother doesn’t stand up for herself after she was raped—she just accepts her fate and ultimately kills herself, allegedly to give her daughter a stronger spirit, but in practical terms, to escape the hardships of living.

The third display of Orientalism in this text is the depiction of Chinese people as being more narrow-minded and racist than white America, when in reality, the Chinese are some of the least antagonistic, most embracing, tolerant people. Ironically enough, the Chinese can at times be harsher and more judgmental of each other, imploding within the race, because they’ve been brainwashed by the West that they’re physically less attractive, less important, less marketable, less educated, less likable, and more barbaric, superstitious, and ignorant.

Because of racism, Orientalist ideals, and the constant brainwashing by the media of what is beautiful and alluring, many young Asian-American women look down on themselves and develop self-esteem issues and identity crises while Asian men battle society’s castration and emasculation and feelings of sexual inadequacy. Because of Orientalism and books and movies like these, Asians are at odds with themselves and try their hardest to escape their roots.

Treacherous one step further, Tan downplays white racism towards Asians. For example, Ted stands up to his racist mother at a family regale, stating, “This is the first time in my life I am ashamed of you . . . I’m sorry, Mom, you made a fuckin’ asshole out of yourself in front of the woman I love.” Honestly, when has this scene ever played out in real life? No white male is going to put his exotic girlfriend before his mother, the woman that gave birth to him and reared him from day one.

Tan is showing that white Americans are very liberal and will more than often stand up for what is right, even if it means sacrificing. Whites judge people by character rather than by race or ethnicity. In Tan’s view, whites are open-minded, scrupulous people whereas Asians are staunch discriminators. Even more dreadful and bogus is the display of anti-Semitism by Auntie Lindo. At the mahjong table, she tells June, “Jewish mahjong not the same thing, entirely different. Now Chinese mahjong very tricky . . . And if nobody play well, then the game is just like Jewish mahjong. No strategy. You American girls—Chinese, Jewish, what’s the difference?” This is appalling. Lindo is obviously slighting both the Jewish and Chinese-American demographic. She says this humorously, but she said it which means she thought it which means she believes it.

Lindo is repeatedly quite the racist bozo. She is very prejudiced towards Rich, insulting his expensive fur coat gift to Waverly and commenting to her daughter that he has “so many spots on his face,” as if that determines a man’s worth. Even at the dinner table, she has this uppity air about her, at one time sarcastically commenting, “He has good appetite,” when he takes too much shrimp. If Tan is not showing how obsequious Chinese people are, then she is underscoring how close-minded and prejudiced they are.

The final atrocious display of Chinese racism is the subliminal message the movie leaves you with—that Chinese moms tell their daughters to only marry Chinese or white men. We never see any hookups between a Chinese person and a dark-complexioned person. This white/Asian pairing is becoming very cliché. Tan is just furthering the fallacy that Asian women go gaga over white men or settle for Chinese men to appease their tyrannical, bigoted mothers.

The fourth adherence to Orientalism in the movie is that Chinese mothers don’t care about the welfare of their children (mostly daughters). Lindo’s mother sells her to a rich family when she is only four. Waverly marries a Chinese man and has a beautiful daughter with him simply to gratify her mother. Ying-Ying drowns her baby son to get even with her husband. An-Mei’s grandmother rejects An-Mei’s mother, not believing she was raped. An-Mei’s mother kills herself, not considering that her daughter will grow up motherless and at the mercy of Wu Tsing and Second Wife. Rose gets pregnant to hold on to her marriage. Suyuan abandons her baby twin girls on the roadside in pandemonious China to save herself, knowing baby girls are unworthy of saving. And Suyuan and Lindo both want to succeed vicariously through their daughter’s achievements, pushing the poor girls against their will, one to play the piano, the other to excel in chess.

The fifth display of Orientalism in the movie is that Asian women have to die or be in tremendous pain in order to contribute something to themselves and/or society. An-Mei’s mother cuts her arm and puts her blood in a soup bowl as an act of beseeching her dying mother’s forgiveness. An-Mei’s mother commits suicide by swallowing opium-filled rice balls with the delusion that through dying, she will give her daughter a stronger spirit. Suyuan dies so that June can take her place (at the mahjong table, the East corner where things begin) and for the first time, assume an identity and gain a sense of purpose.

All throughout the movie, these poor China Dolls are suffering and conquering their pain. They never seem happy, always conflicted. It is only in the end, when Tan wraps things up at the two-hour mark that past wrongs are forgotten, all is well, and life is beautiful for the mothers and daughters of the Joy Luck Club.

The sixth and last point of contention is that Tan perpetuates the myth that Asians are superstitious and idiosyncratic. Lindo is able to fool the whole household that she must escape this travesty of a marriage and get a plane ticket out. She tells them about the rage of the ancestors, the cycle of destruction, and the three signs. Huang Tai Tai, the matriarch of the household, falls for this, and castigates the Matchmaker, who in turn replies, “Mistakes happen in heaven.” Because of the ignorance of old school Chinese matrons, Lindo becomes a free woman. Ying-Ying states that she is waiting in the shadows like a tiger, ready to cut her daughter’s spirit loose. In believing this, she helps Lena escape a dysfunctional marriage as if all problems can be mended via mythical stories. At An-Mei’s mother’s funeral, An-Mei convinces Second Wife that her mother’s ghost will come back to settle scores, to which Second Wife’s hair turns white and Wu Tsing honors An-Mei and her brother as his First children. And of course, the movie keeps revisiting June’s story about the duck and the single swan feather as if her mother’s coming to America is based on a mythical story, as if all life events can be written with a keen imagination.

This blending of fact, fiction, and superstition compromises the integrity and cogency of Tan’s words. The history and stories become surreal in places. Worst of all, the Chinese-American experience and notions of China become surreal to the point that Orientalism can find its way in. A true China is far more complex and not always a pretty picture, but if one were to be a Chinese writer equipped to represent her Chinese heritage, she should base it on more than just assumptions, myths, and the whimsical. She must be true to the billions of Chinese and Asian people she gives voice to, the beautiful people who depend on her for the ultimate expression and overdue reverence.

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