Saving Face

When watching Saving Face in class today, one of the things that really stuck out to me was the emphasis that was put on each character to honor their family, which seems like a big characteristic of Chinese American tradition. Vivian, for example, was a dancer who strove to break her own comfort zone in dancing in a more modern style while her father insisted she take the chance to travel to Paris to pursue a career in ballet dancing. Wilhelmina's mother, as well, strove to honor her family. Her goal throughout her entire life seemed to be to protect her father's reputation, which she did in the movie by (almost) marrying Cho, because "he would give her a good family name." When Wilhelmina's mother got pregnant outside of marriage, her father was so angry and worried about his own reputation that he practically disowned her. In an attempt to regain her father's favor, she agreed to marry Cho, though she longed to be with Little Yu. Her father was equally displeased when he found out that the child his daughter was carrying turned out to belong to a man as young as Little Yu. In addition to her mother and Vivian, Wilhelmina was another character in this movie that strove deeply to honor her family. Though (I think it's safe to assume) she had known she was gay for most of her life, Wilhelmina kept her sexual identity a secret from her mother because she knew it would trouble her; she was right. When she told her mother "I am gay. And I love you," her mother countered with "How can you say those things at the same time?"

Critical Race Theory is also very evident in this film in many ways. First, and less significantly, the first tenet, which states that racism is ordinary (everyone's a racist), is pretty clearly indicated. When Wilhelmina invites her African American neighbor Jay to have dinner with her mother, an exchange in Chinese indicates Wilhelmina's mother might have some ill-will toward African Americans. She mentions that she will be careful not too much of anything that might "darken" her baby, and she also warns her daughter to do the same to avoid getting "spotty." In addition to this tenet, the model minority myth is visited relatively intensely in this movie. The younger generation of Chinese American citizens, like Vivian and Wilhelmina, seem to represent a very well off generation of children who worked hard to attain the lives that they have, Vivian being an established ballet dancer and Wilhelmina a talented surgeon in a busy hospital. Additionally, the grandfather kind of perpetuates this stereotype in his one way by disowning his daughter. In a way, his actions said "you are not being a model minority and don't belong in our family because of your actions."