Structures Of The Joy Luck Club Film And Novel
by
Christopher J. Bradley
(c)2003
Film As Literature
Mr. Gansworth
October 9, 1996
The Joy Luck Club is a written work that has been converted into a film. We have studied the relationships between the book written by Amy Tan and the film directed by Wayne Wang. I intend to describe some of the connections that are made between the book and the film, and their relationships to the structures of the two works.
It seems that the goals of both the film and the book are to effectively portray characters whose experiences are those of the Chinese immigrant families that ventured into the United States during the World War Two era. It is explained in the first chapter of the book, and also during the opening segment of the film, that the Joy Luck Club is composed of a group of four women who play Mah Jong on a regular occassion in order to keep themselves excited about life. It is also explained within these contexts that the founder of the group, who built the organization of these four women has recently died (Tan 5 - 6, Wang).
The book is a collection of stories. The stories are written from the perspectives of the seven different women that are all mentioned during the dinner described in the first chapter of the book. June, the daughter of the woman who has died, appears in each four chapter section of the book to tell both her own story and the story of her mother, Suyuan Woo (Tan 5 - 32).
This written work relies on a myth to form the major thematic statement of each four chapter section. Each myth describes a fictional mother’s relationship to her daughter in a different way. The first talks about a mother’s hopes for her daughter. The second talks about the concerns that a mother would have for her child. The third talks about a mother’s relationship to her married daughter in terms of her interest in eventually having a grandchild. The final myth is about a grandmother speaking to her grandchild, who she believes will influence her mother by keeping her hopeful, and who will also “Teach her to laugh forever” (Tan 3,87,159,239).
The first four chapters are the stories of the original San Fransisco Joy Luck Club members and their lives in China. In the case of Suyuan Woo, the story about the flight to Chung King is not as well developed because it is built from June’s memories of what her mother has told her (Tan 5 - 83).
The second set of stories are about the young lives of the four Joy Luck Club daughters, Waverly, June, Rose, and Lena (Tan 89 - 155).
The third group relates to these daughter’s lives when they are of the age to have been married. In the third group only June is has not been married, but her profession is described in a recollection of a dinner at her mother’s house called Best Quality (Tan 161 - 236).
In the fourth group the mothers conclude their stories of thier experiences with respect to their daughters, and describe additional experiences that they had while living in China. At the end of this section, June has an opportunity with her chapter to describe her visit to China and her reason for bringing the feather from the myth that opens the book to her two recently discovered sisters (Tan 241 - 332).
The motion picture is constructed much differently. It uses one primary structure and three major framing devices to create stories about the eight primary mother and daughter characters. Each structure or framing device enables the director to deal with two of these major characters, one mother and one daughter (Wang).
June is considered the main character, and the large framing device for the entire film is the party given for her the night before her trip to China by the Joy Luck Club. This frame is what I will call the primary structure of the film (Wang).
At the beginning of the party June plays a couple of piano keys which allow Mr. Wang to create a flashback to her childhood recital experience. A conflict between June and her mother over June’s willingness to practice the piano brings out her comment about the babies that she believes have died (Wang).
This leads into a smaller reverse frame that remains a part of this primary structure. It is introduced when Suyann Woo is shown leaving Kweilin for Chung King, the city from which she eventually leaves to arrive in America. This smaller frame creates an interesting circular contrast. The mother is leaving China, and her daughter is returning to discover it (Wang).
Before returning to the party June has a flashback to a church picnic where she is told about her sisters having been discovered by her mother by the Joy Luck Club “aunties.” They lie to her by allowing Lindo to incorrectly translate a letter from China. The letter actually states that the sisters are very happy that their mother will be visiting them, not June. They also tell June that she should be able to tell her sisters about her mother, which very effectively demonstrates their fear that they will not be remembered by their daughters. This flashback has a resolution toward the end of the film when the party concludes and Lindo explains to June that they allowed the twin sisters to believe that their mother was still alive (Wang, Tan 16).
There is a conclusion to Suyann’s frame at the end of the movie, when June and her father have a discussion in Suyuan’s bedroom about what actually happened to her mother in China. The discussion takes place after the party is over and Lindo has left. June is given the feather during the story. June’s father concludes the scene by telling June that Suyuan had “transferred all her hope” to her (Wang).
The final scene which is brought up after a black out, begins with June creating her own words for her interpretation of the myth that she will relate to her sisters. In this scene she is on a boat in China. She completes her journey by meeting with her sisters telling her sisters that their mother is dead (Wang).
The other three major frames reside in the middle of the film, between the beginning and ending of Suyuan’s journey. Each of them was used to describe a mother to daughter or daughter to mother relationship. Each of the daughters that appear within these frames have been married to characters who are for the most part consistant in terms of their behavior with the husband characters created in the book. The husband characters appear primarily in American Translation (Wang, Tan 161 - 236).
The first of these frames opens just after a scene at the Mah Jong table that takes place after the church picnic flashback. The Joy Luck mothers have finished discussing the lie that Ying Ying and An-Mei had allowed Lindo to create. June returns to the table with a dish of peanuts, and Lindo’s story begins. This story is taken from the chapter of the first section of the book, Feathers From a Thousand Li Away, called The Red Candle (Wang, Tan 42 - 63)
At the end of the story taken from The Red Candle, Waverly is introduced by her mother who complains that Waverly’s relationship with her boyfriend Rich caused her to miss a wedding. Waverly is walking through the party, and attention is focussed on her. Waverly begins speaking, and tells the story told in the book in Rules of the Game which appears in the second section called “The Twenty Six Malignant Gates” (Wang, Tan 89 - 103).
After Waverly’s story about chess, and her loss of confidence in her ability there is a shift in scene to Lindo having her hair done in a beauty salon. The beauty Salon serves as the frame that connects two previous stories with an argument that leads to the chapter Four Directions in the third section of the book, “American Translation.” This is convenient because in the film this scene can be referred back to by her mother’s complaint about fancy hairdressers (Wang, Tan 89-103, Tan 182 -205).
The salon appears in the book in the final section called “Queen Mother of the Western Skies” in Lindo’s story Double Face. From the salon, there is one brief flashback to the story that appears in the modified film version of The Red Candle. In that flashback, Lindo’s mother is grooming her hair. This was added to the film version of The Red Candle from Double Face. In the book version of The Red Candle it was not mentioned that Lindo’s mother had groomed her hair (Tan 290 - 291, Wang, Tan 89 - 103).
The flashback is followed by Lindo communicating to her daughter that she actually likes Rich but does not like many of her daughter’s behaviors. Waverly had intended to marry Rich but felt that her mother did not accept him. The flashback was signifigant because it appeared in the film to change Lindo’s perspective on Waverly’s marriage to Rich and the women begin to understand one another (Wang, Tan 89 - 103).
One particular similarity between these two people seemed signifigant to the situation. In The Red Candle Lindo had escaped an arranged marriage. Waverly had escaped her marriage from her high school sweetheart through a divorce (Wang, Tan 89-103, Tan 191 - 192).
The scene at the salon frames the entire experience of the two women’s relationships with one another. It also allowed all four major sections of the book to be represented through a simple visual link with which every person has had an experience. Every person has hair (Wang).
The frame also saves having to create separate scenes that show relatively mundane things. For example, in Four Directions Waverly stays awake all night, and goes to visit her mother who is sleeping on a couch. These two events would have created extra minutes of screen time, and taken away from the two clear life stories that were chosen for this portion of the film (Wang, Tan 199 - 201).
The switch to the second major mother daughter frame within the primary film structure was facilitated by a shift at the dinner table of the Joy Luck party. A comment made by one of the mothers leads Ying Ying to reflect on having murdered her son (Wang).
There are several changes in this section of the film from the book’s Waiting Between the Trees, the second chapter of “Queen Mother of the Western Skies.” In the film, the mother drowns her son. In the book, she creates an abortion situation (Wang, Tan 274 - 287).
Many people that are taking the Film as Literature course agree that the way in which the baby was killed was changed for the purpose of making the film more politically correct. I did not come to this thought myself after having seen the motion picture and read the book. My opinion is that the scene was added to make the film more dramatic (Wang).
I believe that it is possible to study the political nature of a film. However, I think that a study of the ways in which the political climate of nineteen ninety-three made this film different from other films would require an entirely different collection of evidence that is not related in any way to the structure of this work.
After the sequence related to Ying Ying’s first marriage is completed, Ying Ying is not returned to the party, she is shown sitting in her room on an upper floor of her apartment. She seems to be staring into space recalling the horror of having killed her son. Lena brings her a tray with food on it (Wang).
This scene is the only referrence to The Voice from the Wall from The Twenty-Six Malignant Gates that I recall appearing in the film. It does not seem that it is entirely necessary to re-count the whole story from The Voice from the Wall for the film, because Lena’s subdued looking teenage character suggests that she has lived with a mother who has behaved similarly during her entire life (Wang, Tan 104 - 121).
Lena begins speaking at the end of the scene, and the shift to her adult life takes place on the spiral staircase of her own home. Lena is leading her mother up the stairs to show her the new house. When they enter the kitchen the story becomes Rice Husband, the first chapter in American Translation (Tan 161 - 181).
There is also a portion Waiting Between the Trees that is merged into Rice Husband in both the book and the film. This merging in the conclusion of the chapter with a broken vase on the floor of the guest room, and Ying Ying’s reflection on the tigress side of her personality while standing in the fragmented light of venetian blinds connects all three stories (Tan 161 - 181, Tan 274 - 278, Wang).
The Moon Lady, the chapter that concludes “Feathers from a Thousand Li Away” was omitted entirely from this frame. I believe that it was ommitted to avoid showing more than one additional shaping event in Ying Ying’s life. It would have been confusing to an audience to see Ying Ying as three very differently aged people (Tan 64 - 8, Wang).
Ying Ying’s experience as a child in the The Moon Lady did serve to make her a more subdued individual, but it did not fit into the framework associated with the marriage situation presented by Lena’s character. Ying Ying helps her to understand that she is not getting what she wishes out of the marriage. Her decision to intrude on the situation is largely based on her experience in Waiting Between the Trees (Tan 64 - 83, Wang).
The film moves into the third frame by returning to the dinner where Rose is looking for her daughter. Rose finds her daughter with June who is telling her the feather myth from Feathers from a Thousand Li Away (Wang, Tan 3-4).
The myth appeared during the credits at the beginning of the film, but this is the first referrence that June makes to it during the actual film. This referrence helps to anchor June’s presence at the dinner into the film (Tan 3-4, Wang).
After checking on her daughter, Rose seeks out and finds An Mei. An Mei begins to tell her story from Scar, the second chapter of Feathers from a Thousand Li Away (Wang, Tan 33-41)
Again, in this segment, the film does not return to the party after giving the mother’s background story. Instead there is a short scene where An Mei is asking her daughter about making chocolate peanut butter pie at her car outside a small grocery store. She asks Rose to consider her worth to Ted, her husband, becuase she can see that Rose is unhappy (Wang).
This frame has some clearly defined implied action in it. Rose tells the story of how she met Ted. This story is in the located in the third chapter of American Translation. It is called Without Wood. It seems as though she is reflecting on this story while driving to her house (Wang, Tan 206 - 220).
The main difference between the film version of Without Wood and the novel version is clear. Ted has a different career in the novel. He is a plastic surgeon that is sued for malpractice. In my opinion this gives him more justification for his behavior with respect to Rose than the career he has in the film. In the film he is a publisher. Any major stress that may have influenced his argumentative behavior is not directly defined (Wang, Tan 206 - 220).
I have speculated that the reason that his career as a plastic surgeon was not depicted, was that it would involve more detail than would fit into this segment of the film in a reasonable time. In the film, as well as in the novel, the condition of Rose’s house also plays a major role. It is likely that a plastic surgeon would not be doing a great deal of work inside his house (Wang, Tan).
After the account of Without Wood, the film places Rose and An Mei in her house. They are still discussing the chocolate peanut butter pie. An Mei continues to tell her daughter that she should try to see her own worth and make sure that she gets what she deserves out of her marriage to Ted (Wang).
An Mei tells her story to Rose while they are drinking tea. An Mei’s life story continues with the move to her father’s house that is described in Magpies, the first chapter of Queen Mother of the Western Skies (Wang, 241 - 273).
In the book version there was one signifigant difference that I noticed. An Mei’s new father, Wu Tsing, has a fourth concubine (fifth wife) that he brings home with him from his trip. This seems to put a little bit more pressure on An Mei’s mother (Tan 255 - 256).
The film moves back to the tea house with the two characters drinking tea. An Mei hopes that her story will help Rose to see that she needs to observe her own worth before something terrible happens to her. In the book version of Without Wood An Mei’s feelings make a little bit more sense because Rose’s depression is defined by her visits to a psychiatrist and her stories about old Mr. Chou and laying in bed for days at a time (Wang, Tan 207 - 212, Tan 215 - 216).
The next piece of the book that is brought into the film is the final portion of Without Wood from American Translation that describes her refusal to sign Ted’s divorce papers. She includes part of the story from Magpies in a strange statement that she makes to Ted about eating opium and having died sixty years before (Tan 218 - 219, Wang, Tan 269 - 272).
I understood that she may have been practicing some sort of ancestral rite by the inclusion of the statement, but I thought that the scene in the film was presented in a slightly awkward fashion. I liked the description of the scene in the book a little bit better.
The film returns Rose to the party rather than her mother. It is fairly clear that she has sorted out her problems with Ted and that they have not had a divorce. The focus of the motion picture is shifted to June who tells the story described in Best Quality (Wang, Tan 221 - 236).
Best Quality appears as the fourth chapter of “American Translation.” I consider it a part of the primary structure of the film. It is a story that shows June as an adult. The reflection that she makes to a dinner at her mother’s house is of a recent time. Her mother gives her a necklace after the dinner brings up negative feelings between June and Waverly, and tells her why her personality is of the best quality (Tan 221 - 236, Wang).
There is a short scene following Best Quality with all of the characters standing together drinking champagne and having a picture taken at the party. It brings a nice conclusion to the references to the three other frames, and indicates that the party is at its end. The fact that the party is over helps to move June toward thoughts of going to China (Wang).
At this point the primary structure of the film, specifically the part that I described involving resolutions related to Lindo’s lie, Suyuan’s flight, and June’s voyage to China, appears. June is cleaning the house after the party is over and notices that Lindo is waiting to speak to her (Wang).
This is the first time that June realizes that she has been misled about the nature of her sisters’ letter. She asks Lindo to write a letter to her sisters to explain the true nature of the situation to them. Lindo refuses to write the letter in the film because she thinks it is better for June to break the news of her mother’s death to her sisters (Wang).
In the book Lindo refuses to write a letter to June’s sisters in China a different way than in the film. She writes the letter to them in English in the final chapter of “Queen Mother of the Western Skies,” called A Pair of Tickets. In the film Lindo also uses the excuse that June will be flying to China the next day (Tan 311).
I think that the one reason for this change was to help define Lindo’s character as a controlling person. I think that a secondary reason may have been that the dramatic emphasis was better placed on the scene between June and her father (Wang).
June’s father explains the final version of Suyuan’s story to June in both the film and the book. In the final chapter of the book, A Pair of Tickets, he goes to China with June and tells her the story on a train, rather than in his bedroom as he does in the film. The scene with her father is designed to clarify June’s picture of her mother’s Chinese experience (Wang, Tan 324 - 329).
The scene between June and her Father fits conveniently into the frame of the party. All June had to do to open the scene was walk into the bedroom of her house after she was finished cleaning up. At the end of the scene, he sends her to China with her mother’s good intentions in the form of the feather from the first myth (Wang).
I thought that this clarification of Suyuan’s condition during her flight to Chung King made sense. Suyuan and her husband would have had much more time to talk about the exact details and feelings associated with the journey. It also seems that it would have been more likely that he would be patient enough to hear and understand the entire story (Wang).
I think that it would have been interesting to see in this part of the film some pictures of the caves outside the city Kweilin that are mentioned in the book in The Joy Luck Club chapter. It would have given more detail to the method in which the babies were rescued (Tan 8 - 9).
The three framing devices that I have identified include Lena’s apartment scenes, the beauty parlor scene, and the tea scene. Each frame is opened using one of the Joy Luck mothers’ historical accounts of the life in China that led them to America. Each frame then continues to tell the story of each daughter and her experiences in America. The frames move from childhood or youth into adulthood for each of the girls. Each frame concludes with some sort of flashback that then relates each mother’s experience in China to her daughter’s experience in America (Wang).
If you were to omit the chapters in Amy Tan’s book that relate to June’s experience and read each chapter that relates to a mother and daughter pair sequentially, the same pattern of events would appear. Even in the case of the exception, the story of Ying Ying St. Clair as it relates to her daughter would remain consistant (Tan).
The film, as I have already stated, completely omits the chapter called the Moon Lady. It substitutes instead an altered version of Waiting Between The Trees as an opening for its frame (Tan 64 - 83, Tan 274 - 287).
This does not change the pattern that moves from a mother’s history, to her daughter’s childhood, then to her daughter’s adulthood, and finally to the signifigance of the mother’s history with respect to that daughter’s situation as an adult.
I think that both the film and the book use this pattern to show similarities and differences between the mothers and their daughters. The mothers started their lives in China and are completing them in America. They understand the contrasts between life in the two different countries much better than their daughters. The daughters appear to spend a considerable amount of time trying to understand their mothers’ perspectives. Their mothers’ pasts have influenced them in certain ways, but they do not completely understand the source of the influence, because they have never experienced life in China. The mothers help to relieve the daughters, by reducing the stress created by a lack of understanding of their heritage. They do this by explaining their stories of life in China to them in the best ways that they can (Wang, Tan).
I believe that this suggests that one of the one of the primary themes of both versions of the Joy Luck Club is communication. The myth about the feather explains that the woman wishes to give the feather to her daughter and share all of her good intentions with her (Wang, Tan 3 - 4).
However, it also says that she wishes to explain her reason for doing this in “perfect American English.” This means that the mother knows that her daughter does not speak the language of China. She knows that cultures of China and America are signifigantly different (Tan 3 - 4)
The myth also says that she is waiting for the day when she will be able to do this. I believe that the “day” that this becomes possible is the day or period represented by each frame. In other words, the time where a mutual understanding of these differences becomes clear for both the mother and the daughter (Tan 3 - 4).
For June the realization of this “day”, in A Pair of Tickets, is that she is given the opportunity to describe her mother’s life to her sisters in China. June has brought to China a story of the life of a woman from China who moved to America because she was the victim of a terrible conflict. She brings all of her mother’s good intentions to her sisters. She is also brings them the story of a woman who watched her daughter grow up in America. A daughter who grew up swallowing “more Coca-Cola than sorrow” (Tan 3 - 4, Tan 306 - 332).
Suyuan faced the same sorts of difficulties in explaining her life in China to her daughter that the other mothers did. These difficulties appear in Two Kinds and Best Quality. Two Kinds shows June’s lack of understanding of her mother’s loss. Best Quality shows June’s difficulties in relating to her mother’s public support of Waverly. It also brings out Suyuan’s private belief in her daughter’s quality of spirit (Tan 221 - 236).
June’s realization enables her to display her respect for her mother. It also gives her an opportunity to discover and display her own respect for her mother’s culture. And finally, to take pride in the fact that she is of this culture, and understands the signifigance of her heritage.
Works Cited
Tan, Amy. The Joy Luck Club. Ballentine Books, 1989
The Joy Luck Club. Writ. Amy Tan. Dir. Wayne Wang. Buena Vista Pictures 1993.
by
Christopher J. Bradley
(c)2003
Film As Literature
Mr. Gansworth
October 9, 1996
The Joy Luck Club is a written work that has been converted into a film. We have studied the relationships between the book written by Amy Tan and the film directed by Wayne Wang. I intend to describe some of the connections that are made between the book and the film, and their relationships to the structures of the two works.
It seems that the goals of both the film and the book are to effectively portray characters whose experiences are those of the Chinese immigrant families that ventured into the United States during the World War Two era. It is explained in the first chapter of the book, and also during the opening segment of the film, that the Joy Luck Club is composed of a group of four women who play Mah Jong on a regular occassion in order to keep themselves excited about life. It is also explained within these contexts that the founder of the group, who built the organization of these four women has recently died (Tan 5 - 6, Wang).
The book is a collection of stories. The stories are written from the perspectives of the seven different women that are all mentioned during the dinner described in the first chapter of the book. June, the daughter of the woman who has died, appears in each four chapter section of the book to tell both her own story and the story of her mother, Suyuan Woo (Tan 5 - 32).
This written work relies on a myth to form the major thematic statement of each four chapter section. Each myth describes a fictional mother’s relationship to her daughter in a different way. The first talks about a mother’s hopes for her daughter. The second talks about the concerns that a mother would have for her child. The third talks about a mother’s relationship to her married daughter in terms of her interest in eventually having a grandchild. The final myth is about a grandmother speaking to her grandchild, who she believes will influence her mother by keeping her hopeful, and who will also “Teach her to laugh forever” (Tan 3,87,159,239).
The first four chapters are the stories of the original San Fransisco Joy Luck Club members and their lives in China. In the case of Suyuan Woo, the story about the flight to Chung King is not as well developed because it is built from June’s memories of what her mother has told her (Tan 5 - 83).
The second set of stories are about the young lives of the four Joy Luck Club daughters, Waverly, June, Rose, and Lena (Tan 89 - 155).
The third group relates to these daughter’s lives when they are of the age to have been married. In the third group only June is has not been married, but her profession is described in a recollection of a dinner at her mother’s house called Best Quality (Tan 161 - 236).
In the fourth group the mothers conclude their stories of thier experiences with respect to their daughters, and describe additional experiences that they had while living in China. At the end of this section, June has an opportunity with her chapter to describe her visit to China and her reason for bringing the feather from the myth that opens the book to her two recently discovered sisters (Tan 241 - 332).
The motion picture is constructed much differently. It uses one primary structure and three major framing devices to create stories about the eight primary mother and daughter characters. Each structure or framing device enables the director to deal with two of these major characters, one mother and one daughter (Wang).
June is considered the main character, and the large framing device for the entire film is the party given for her the night before her trip to China by the Joy Luck Club. This frame is what I will call the primary structure of the film (Wang).
At the beginning of the party June plays a couple of piano keys which allow Mr. Wang to create a flashback to her childhood recital experience. A conflict between June and her mother over June’s willingness to practice the piano brings out her comment about the babies that she believes have died (Wang).
This leads into a smaller reverse frame that remains a part of this primary structure. It is introduced when Suyann Woo is shown leaving Kweilin for Chung King, the city from which she eventually leaves to arrive in America. This smaller frame creates an interesting circular contrast. The mother is leaving China, and her daughter is returning to discover it (Wang).
Before returning to the party June has a flashback to a church picnic where she is told about her sisters having been discovered by her mother by the Joy Luck Club “aunties.” They lie to her by allowing Lindo to incorrectly translate a letter from China. The letter actually states that the sisters are very happy that their mother will be visiting them, not June. They also tell June that she should be able to tell her sisters about her mother, which very effectively demonstrates their fear that they will not be remembered by their daughters. This flashback has a resolution toward the end of the film when the party concludes and Lindo explains to June that they allowed the twin sisters to believe that their mother was still alive (Wang, Tan 16).
There is a conclusion to Suyann’s frame at the end of the movie, when June and her father have a discussion in Suyuan’s bedroom about what actually happened to her mother in China. The discussion takes place after the party is over and Lindo has left. June is given the feather during the story. June’s father concludes the scene by telling June that Suyuan had “transferred all her hope” to her (Wang).
The final scene which is brought up after a black out, begins with June creating her own words for her interpretation of the myth that she will relate to her sisters. In this scene she is on a boat in China. She completes her journey by meeting with her sisters telling her sisters that their mother is dead (Wang).
The other three major frames reside in the middle of the film, between the beginning and ending of Suyuan’s journey. Each of them was used to describe a mother to daughter or daughter to mother relationship. Each of the daughters that appear within these frames have been married to characters who are for the most part consistant in terms of their behavior with the husband characters created in the book. The husband characters appear primarily in American Translation (Wang, Tan 161 - 236).
The first of these frames opens just after a scene at the Mah Jong table that takes place after the church picnic flashback. The Joy Luck mothers have finished discussing the lie that Ying Ying and An-Mei had allowed Lindo to create. June returns to the table with a dish of peanuts, and Lindo’s story begins. This story is taken from the chapter of the first section of the book, Feathers From a Thousand Li Away, called The Red Candle (Wang, Tan 42 - 63)
At the end of the story taken from The Red Candle, Waverly is introduced by her mother who complains that Waverly’s relationship with her boyfriend Rich caused her to miss a wedding. Waverly is walking through the party, and attention is focussed on her. Waverly begins speaking, and tells the story told in the book in Rules of the Game which appears in the second section called “The Twenty Six Malignant Gates” (Wang, Tan 89 - 103).
After Waverly’s story about chess, and her loss of confidence in her ability there is a shift in scene to Lindo having her hair done in a beauty salon. The beauty Salon serves as the frame that connects two previous stories with an argument that leads to the chapter Four Directions in the third section of the book, “American Translation.” This is convenient because in the film this scene can be referred back to by her mother’s complaint about fancy hairdressers (Wang, Tan 89-103, Tan 182 -205).
The salon appears in the book in the final section called “Queen Mother of the Western Skies” in Lindo’s story Double Face. From the salon, there is one brief flashback to the story that appears in the modified film version of The Red Candle. In that flashback, Lindo’s mother is grooming her hair. This was added to the film version of The Red Candle from Double Face. In the book version of The Red Candle it was not mentioned that Lindo’s mother had groomed her hair (Tan 290 - 291, Wang, Tan 89 - 103).
The flashback is followed by Lindo communicating to her daughter that she actually likes Rich but does not like many of her daughter’s behaviors. Waverly had intended to marry Rich but felt that her mother did not accept him. The flashback was signifigant because it appeared in the film to change Lindo’s perspective on Waverly’s marriage to Rich and the women begin to understand one another (Wang, Tan 89 - 103).
One particular similarity between these two people seemed signifigant to the situation. In The Red Candle Lindo had escaped an arranged marriage. Waverly had escaped her marriage from her high school sweetheart through a divorce (Wang, Tan 89-103, Tan 191 - 192).
The scene at the salon frames the entire experience of the two women’s relationships with one another. It also allowed all four major sections of the book to be represented through a simple visual link with which every person has had an experience. Every person has hair (Wang).
The frame also saves having to create separate scenes that show relatively mundane things. For example, in Four Directions Waverly stays awake all night, and goes to visit her mother who is sleeping on a couch. These two events would have created extra minutes of screen time, and taken away from the two clear life stories that were chosen for this portion of the film (Wang, Tan 199 - 201).
The switch to the second major mother daughter frame within the primary film structure was facilitated by a shift at the dinner table of the Joy Luck party. A comment made by one of the mothers leads Ying Ying to reflect on having murdered her son (Wang).
There are several changes in this section of the film from the book’s Waiting Between the Trees, the second chapter of “Queen Mother of the Western Skies.” In the film, the mother drowns her son. In the book, she creates an abortion situation (Wang, Tan 274 - 287).
Many people that are taking the Film as Literature course agree that the way in which the baby was killed was changed for the purpose of making the film more politically correct. I did not come to this thought myself after having seen the motion picture and read the book. My opinion is that the scene was added to make the film more dramatic (Wang).
I believe that it is possible to study the political nature of a film. However, I think that a study of the ways in which the political climate of nineteen ninety-three made this film different from other films would require an entirely different collection of evidence that is not related in any way to the structure of this work.
After the sequence related to Ying Ying’s first marriage is completed, Ying Ying is not returned to the party, she is shown sitting in her room on an upper floor of her apartment. She seems to be staring into space recalling the horror of having killed her son. Lena brings her a tray with food on it (Wang).
This scene is the only referrence to The Voice from the Wall from The Twenty-Six Malignant Gates that I recall appearing in the film. It does not seem that it is entirely necessary to re-count the whole story from The Voice from the Wall for the film, because Lena’s subdued looking teenage character suggests that she has lived with a mother who has behaved similarly during her entire life (Wang, Tan 104 - 121).
Lena begins speaking at the end of the scene, and the shift to her adult life takes place on the spiral staircase of her own home. Lena is leading her mother up the stairs to show her the new house. When they enter the kitchen the story becomes Rice Husband, the first chapter in American Translation (Tan 161 - 181).
There is also a portion Waiting Between the Trees that is merged into Rice Husband in both the book and the film. This merging in the conclusion of the chapter with a broken vase on the floor of the guest room, and Ying Ying’s reflection on the tigress side of her personality while standing in the fragmented light of venetian blinds connects all three stories (Tan 161 - 181, Tan 274 - 278, Wang).
The Moon Lady, the chapter that concludes “Feathers from a Thousand Li Away” was omitted entirely from this frame. I believe that it was ommitted to avoid showing more than one additional shaping event in Ying Ying’s life. It would have been confusing to an audience to see Ying Ying as three very differently aged people (Tan 64 - 8, Wang).
Ying Ying’s experience as a child in the The Moon Lady did serve to make her a more subdued individual, but it did not fit into the framework associated with the marriage situation presented by Lena’s character. Ying Ying helps her to understand that she is not getting what she wishes out of the marriage. Her decision to intrude on the situation is largely based on her experience in Waiting Between the Trees (Tan 64 - 83, Wang).
The film moves into the third frame by returning to the dinner where Rose is looking for her daughter. Rose finds her daughter with June who is telling her the feather myth from Feathers from a Thousand Li Away (Wang, Tan 3-4).
The myth appeared during the credits at the beginning of the film, but this is the first referrence that June makes to it during the actual film. This referrence helps to anchor June’s presence at the dinner into the film (Tan 3-4, Wang).
After checking on her daughter, Rose seeks out and finds An Mei. An Mei begins to tell her story from Scar, the second chapter of Feathers from a Thousand Li Away (Wang, Tan 33-41)
Again, in this segment, the film does not return to the party after giving the mother’s background story. Instead there is a short scene where An Mei is asking her daughter about making chocolate peanut butter pie at her car outside a small grocery store. She asks Rose to consider her worth to Ted, her husband, becuase she can see that Rose is unhappy (Wang).
This frame has some clearly defined implied action in it. Rose tells the story of how she met Ted. This story is in the located in the third chapter of American Translation. It is called Without Wood. It seems as though she is reflecting on this story while driving to her house (Wang, Tan 206 - 220).
The main difference between the film version of Without Wood and the novel version is clear. Ted has a different career in the novel. He is a plastic surgeon that is sued for malpractice. In my opinion this gives him more justification for his behavior with respect to Rose than the career he has in the film. In the film he is a publisher. Any major stress that may have influenced his argumentative behavior is not directly defined (Wang, Tan 206 - 220).
I have speculated that the reason that his career as a plastic surgeon was not depicted, was that it would involve more detail than would fit into this segment of the film in a reasonable time. In the film, as well as in the novel, the condition of Rose’s house also plays a major role. It is likely that a plastic surgeon would not be doing a great deal of work inside his house (Wang, Tan).
After the account of Without Wood, the film places Rose and An Mei in her house. They are still discussing the chocolate peanut butter pie. An Mei continues to tell her daughter that she should try to see her own worth and make sure that she gets what she deserves out of her marriage to Ted (Wang).
An Mei tells her story to Rose while they are drinking tea. An Mei’s life story continues with the move to her father’s house that is described in Magpies, the first chapter of Queen Mother of the Western Skies (Wang, 241 - 273).
In the book version there was one signifigant difference that I noticed. An Mei’s new father, Wu Tsing, has a fourth concubine (fifth wife) that he brings home with him from his trip. This seems to put a little bit more pressure on An Mei’s mother (Tan 255 - 256).
The film moves back to the tea house with the two characters drinking tea. An Mei hopes that her story will help Rose to see that she needs to observe her own worth before something terrible happens to her. In the book version of Without Wood An Mei’s feelings make a little bit more sense because Rose’s depression is defined by her visits to a psychiatrist and her stories about old Mr. Chou and laying in bed for days at a time (Wang, Tan 207 - 212, Tan 215 - 216).
The next piece of the book that is brought into the film is the final portion of Without Wood from American Translation that describes her refusal to sign Ted’s divorce papers. She includes part of the story from Magpies in a strange statement that she makes to Ted about eating opium and having died sixty years before (Tan 218 - 219, Wang, Tan 269 - 272).
I understood that she may have been practicing some sort of ancestral rite by the inclusion of the statement, but I thought that the scene in the film was presented in a slightly awkward fashion. I liked the description of the scene in the book a little bit better.
The film returns Rose to the party rather than her mother. It is fairly clear that she has sorted out her problems with Ted and that they have not had a divorce. The focus of the motion picture is shifted to June who tells the story described in Best Quality (Wang, Tan 221 - 236).
Best Quality appears as the fourth chapter of “American Translation.” I consider it a part of the primary structure of the film. It is a story that shows June as an adult. The reflection that she makes to a dinner at her mother’s house is of a recent time. Her mother gives her a necklace after the dinner brings up negative feelings between June and Waverly, and tells her why her personality is of the best quality (Tan 221 - 236, Wang).
There is a short scene following Best Quality with all of the characters standing together drinking champagne and having a picture taken at the party. It brings a nice conclusion to the references to the three other frames, and indicates that the party is at its end. The fact that the party is over helps to move June toward thoughts of going to China (Wang).
At this point the primary structure of the film, specifically the part that I described involving resolutions related to Lindo’s lie, Suyuan’s flight, and June’s voyage to China, appears. June is cleaning the house after the party is over and notices that Lindo is waiting to speak to her (Wang).
This is the first time that June realizes that she has been misled about the nature of her sisters’ letter. She asks Lindo to write a letter to her sisters to explain the true nature of the situation to them. Lindo refuses to write the letter in the film because she thinks it is better for June to break the news of her mother’s death to her sisters (Wang).
In the book Lindo refuses to write a letter to June’s sisters in China a different way than in the film. She writes the letter to them in English in the final chapter of “Queen Mother of the Western Skies,” called A Pair of Tickets. In the film Lindo also uses the excuse that June will be flying to China the next day (Tan 311).
I think that the one reason for this change was to help define Lindo’s character as a controlling person. I think that a secondary reason may have been that the dramatic emphasis was better placed on the scene between June and her father (Wang).
June’s father explains the final version of Suyuan’s story to June in both the film and the book. In the final chapter of the book, A Pair of Tickets, he goes to China with June and tells her the story on a train, rather than in his bedroom as he does in the film. The scene with her father is designed to clarify June’s picture of her mother’s Chinese experience (Wang, Tan 324 - 329).
The scene between June and her Father fits conveniently into the frame of the party. All June had to do to open the scene was walk into the bedroom of her house after she was finished cleaning up. At the end of the scene, he sends her to China with her mother’s good intentions in the form of the feather from the first myth (Wang).
I thought that this clarification of Suyuan’s condition during her flight to Chung King made sense. Suyuan and her husband would have had much more time to talk about the exact details and feelings associated with the journey. It also seems that it would have been more likely that he would be patient enough to hear and understand the entire story (Wang).
I think that it would have been interesting to see in this part of the film some pictures of the caves outside the city Kweilin that are mentioned in the book in The Joy Luck Club chapter. It would have given more detail to the method in which the babies were rescued (Tan 8 - 9).
The three framing devices that I have identified include Lena’s apartment scenes, the beauty parlor scene, and the tea scene. Each frame is opened using one of the Joy Luck mothers’ historical accounts of the life in China that led them to America. Each frame then continues to tell the story of each daughter and her experiences in America. The frames move from childhood or youth into adulthood for each of the girls. Each frame concludes with some sort of flashback that then relates each mother’s experience in China to her daughter’s experience in America (Wang).
If you were to omit the chapters in Amy Tan’s book that relate to June’s experience and read each chapter that relates to a mother and daughter pair sequentially, the same pattern of events would appear. Even in the case of the exception, the story of Ying Ying St. Clair as it relates to her daughter would remain consistant (Tan).
The film, as I have already stated, completely omits the chapter called the Moon Lady. It substitutes instead an altered version of Waiting Between The Trees as an opening for its frame (Tan 64 - 83, Tan 274 - 287).
This does not change the pattern that moves from a mother’s history, to her daughter’s childhood, then to her daughter’s adulthood, and finally to the signifigance of the mother’s history with respect to that daughter’s situation as an adult.
I think that both the film and the book use this pattern to show similarities and differences between the mothers and their daughters. The mothers started their lives in China and are completing them in America. They understand the contrasts between life in the two different countries much better than their daughters. The daughters appear to spend a considerable amount of time trying to understand their mothers’ perspectives. Their mothers’ pasts have influenced them in certain ways, but they do not completely understand the source of the influence, because they have never experienced life in China. The mothers help to relieve the daughters, by reducing the stress created by a lack of understanding of their heritage. They do this by explaining their stories of life in China to them in the best ways that they can (Wang, Tan).
I believe that this suggests that one of the one of the primary themes of both versions of the Joy Luck Club is communication. The myth about the feather explains that the woman wishes to give the feather to her daughter and share all of her good intentions with her (Wang, Tan 3 - 4).
However, it also says that she wishes to explain her reason for doing this in “perfect American English.” This means that the mother knows that her daughter does not speak the language of China. She knows that cultures of China and America are signifigantly different (Tan 3 - 4)
The myth also says that she is waiting for the day when she will be able to do this. I believe that the “day” that this becomes possible is the day or period represented by each frame. In other words, the time where a mutual understanding of these differences becomes clear for both the mother and the daughter (Tan 3 - 4).
For June the realization of this “day”, in A Pair of Tickets, is that she is given the opportunity to describe her mother’s life to her sisters in China. June has brought to China a story of the life of a woman from China who moved to America because she was the victim of a terrible conflict. She brings all of her mother’s good intentions to her sisters. She is also brings them the story of a woman who watched her daughter grow up in America. A daughter who grew up swallowing “more Coca-Cola than sorrow” (Tan 3 - 4, Tan 306 - 332).
Suyuan faced the same sorts of difficulties in explaining her life in China to her daughter that the other mothers did. These difficulties appear in Two Kinds and Best Quality. Two Kinds shows June’s lack of understanding of her mother’s loss. Best Quality shows June’s difficulties in relating to her mother’s public support of Waverly. It also brings out Suyuan’s private belief in her daughter’s quality of spirit (Tan 221 - 236).
June’s realization enables her to display her respect for her mother. It also gives her an opportunity to discover and display her own respect for her mother’s culture. And finally, to take pride in the fact that she is of this culture, and understands the signifigance of her heritage.
Works Cited
Tan, Amy. The Joy Luck Club. Ballentine Books, 1989
The Joy Luck Club. Writ. Amy Tan. Dir. Wayne Wang. Buena Vista Pictures 1993.
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