My Appreciation of the Joy Luck Club
The first time I saw the title of the film, the Joy Luck Club, I thought that it would be a film filed with joy, luck and happiness. However, out of my expectation, in the film, I saw many unpleasant things—conflicts, hardship, disappointment, sorrow, hurt, torture etc. Of course there were some moving parts, and fortunately, it was a happy ending. Anyway, I enjoyed it very much. It made me have a penetrating thinking.
The Joy Luck Club tells about the conflicts between Chinese immigrant mothers and their American-raised daughters and their struggling to understand each other. The film shows us these topics: the misunderstanding of love between the mothers and the daughters, the clash between the generations and cultures, and the struggle for the women to fight for equity. Now I am going to show you my understanding of them, emphasizing on the first topic.
In many cases, we and those we love are easy to hurt each other because of the misunderstanding of love, the conflicts in generations and culture background, or unconsciousness.
Take Jingmei and her mother Suyuan as an example. When Suyuan demands the little Jingmei to play piano, Jingmei shouts to her mother, “You can’t make me!” Even Jingmei cried that she wish she isn’t Suyuan’s daughter and Suyuan isn’t her mother, and that she wishes she were the dead like the babies Suyuan abandoned in China. The sad expression on Suyuan’s face indicates that she is hurt deeply by her daughter’s innocent words.
This reminds me of my similar experience. Once I hurt my mother as Jingmei did. I didn’t mean to hurt her, but those wounding words just slip out of my mouth unconsciously. Often, we hate that why our parents don’t know my feelings, why they like to make us be something and totally unaware that what their children are. While the parents don’t know why all their sacrifices to the children can’t be paid off, even incite hatred. Actually, this is the generation gap that causes...