Saving Face

In the film “Saving Face” a Chinese woman, Wil, grapples with the traditional expectations of her Chinese family. As her mother pressures Wil to marry a Chinese man, Wil falls in love with Vivian and tries to conceal this from Ma. Ma, however, reveals that she cannot uphold the Chinese ideal either by becoming pregnant at 48 and without a husband. Throughout the film, Wil and Ma struggle to “save face” for the family even after being disowned by Ma’s father for violating Chinese norms.

“Saving Face,” while it is a work of fiction, illustrates the sixth CRT tenet that “each group has a unique story to tell.” Wil and Ma’s story strays far from the traditional Chinese-American lifestyle of being heterosexual and having children only with a husband, respectively. When Ma violated Chinese norms, her father acted predictably by disowning her. But at the end of the film during the final family social event, Ma’s father grudgingly accepts her decision to remain unmarried and Ma wholeheartedly embraces Wil’s relationship with Vivian—even after previously rejecting it.

In addition to the elements of counter-storytelling within the film, Ma displays double consciousness when Wil finally admits that she is gay. Ma—even though she is pregnant without a husband and is skeptical of getting married again—claims that Wil cannot say “I love you” and “I’m gay” at the same time because she raised Wil “better than that.” Ma seems to support Chinese tradition by forcing her daughter to meet and marry a man and start a family, but she herself will not marry to save the reputation of her family. This warping of Chinese ideals is reflected in Arthur Sze’s poem “The Redshifting Web.” Sze describes observing Chinese traditions as they merge with the culture of his new home until he cannot determine which traditions are true, saying, “Is the mind a mirror?” Similarly, Ma’s perception of Chinese norms bends as she violates the traditions herself, holds her daughter to them, and eventually dismisses them at the end of the film when she accepts her daughter’s sexuality.