For today, I downloaded the movie The Joy Luck Club and use what I have observed and learned from the movie as a basis for my first blog post and and an introductory or supplementary film as I am about to know how Chinese people think and live.
What idea did you encounter that turned out meaningful?
In the movie, the stories of the Chinese women were a picture of the different problems traditional Chinese daughters, wives and mothers face. First Problem shown is that the inferiority of women. It can easily be observed in the movie that women in the Chinese culture are subordinate to their husbands and that they do not have the right to speak up and contradict their decisions. It was evident that wives must pay high respects to their Husbands thus they have to remain silent and obedient to their husbands as what is expected to every Chinese wife. Second is that they pay much respect to their ancestors and dead people that it sometimes dictate what their future actions will be. This kind conduct can be linked similarly to that of the paying high respects of the Catholics to their Saints. Catholics asks help to these saints so that they will be with delivered from evil and their sins may be forgiven. All of these in the hope that after they die, they will be in a state of peace. The same case as with the Chinese that they worship their ancestors because they believe that they influence their afterlife. The only difference is that the Saints of the Catholics do not dictate what they have to do. They believe that they are already souls and can never have affect the lives of the living unlike in the Chinese, they believe that their ancestors has the ability to affect the fortune of the living. To sum the two problems, Chinese hold on too much to their tradition. Even the new generation of the Chinese women were enacting the traditional roles of wives and daughters. They did not also spoke up and only did what pleased their husband and the other family members. They, especially the main character, clinged to that belief that the dead can affect the future actions of the living. Last problem is that because of traditional role of women, the native Chinese mothers raised their children in a manner differently, maybe not entirely everything, from the Chinese culture because they hoped that these daughters of theirs may not have the same future or may not end up like them, voiceless in the family. They all wanted their daughters to exercise the privilege of standing up for themselves and speaking up what they have in mind and to not just merely obey what others dictates them to do. All these ideas helped me in having a glimpse of the rich Chinese tradition that may use as a support in knowing how Chinese Philosophers think.
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