Family Analysis
Asian families in America have traditionally fought to maintain and preserve their cultural identity in the face of pressing western culture. Whilemost of these families relocate to America to pursue the American dream, they are caught between giving their children the American promise of a better future and guiding them against assimilation by westernization. Angie Y. Chung against these juxtapositions, providing a methodology she dubs, “Saving Face” to lead Asian families carefully through this path. Her concerns for theeroding Asian values in the face of persisting westernization is better seen through the film depiction of Asian families. These movies create the picture of distorted and dysfunctional Asian families caught in the crossroads of carefully sieving through the American cultureand influence, and their refusal to blend in thoroughly. More importantly, these films give weight to the shift and disunity that occurs as family members adopt individual cultural preferences out of the need to exercise their independence, as seen in Fresh Off The Boat.
Fresh Off the Boat is an American Broadcasting Company (ABC) sitcom production series that follows the lives of the Huang family, a Taiwanese-American family as it struggles to live freely in America, much to the disappointment of Taiwanese views and values of family and gender roles. The series revolves around the lives of Louis and Jessica Huang and their three children following their relocation to Orlando, Florida, from Washington DC. While in Florida, the family opens a cowboy-themed steakhouse. Typically, Jessica moves to start a joint business venture with her white American neighbor, Honey. This joint partnership, like the family’s restaurant called the Cattleman’s Ranch, depicts the family’s resolve to chase the Americandream, preferring to completely blend in and assimilate in the cowboy culture to reduce resistance.
The aspect of blending in and complete assimilation is one of the critical elements of the depiction of Asian families in American films. These families are perceived as weaker, drawing a lot of competition and opposition unless they blend in with the rest. In Saving Face, Chung presents the dilemma most Asian families find themselves in America as they struggle to make ends meet for their families. The author submits that remaining glued to one’s cultural identity is mostly regarded as being odd, which in the short term could cost them not only their friends but also their source of living. Most of these films depict Asian families that remain glued to their cultural identity as weirdos who find it hard to accept. The kids find it hard to fit into their schools and make friends since their dressing manner judges them.
Thus, Chung presents the need to blend in as one out of necessity than it is out of personal preference. The Huang family only moves into the countryside after a long debate that highlights the challenges and the opportunities that the family will have operating in the cowboy countryside as opposed to the problems of the Chinatown of Washington DC. While most people would perceive such transformation and willingness to adopt the western culture as purely out of choice and out of respite or perhaps shame for one’s indigenous cultural identity, these films paint the other side as being necessary to survive. Once in the countryside, the Huang family is divided and conflicted on several issues, including Jessica’s decision to look for her source of income, establishing her financial independence, which is unheard of in the traditional Asian community.
The Asian films depict a break from culture, both in terms of lifestyle and preferences. One of Chung’s preservations is that in the pursuit of the American dream, Asian women fall in love with the freedom and the ability to be considered an equal to their husbands based on their ability to provide for their families. The author offers a behind the family portrait of gender roles, painting a feminist color which blurs the home-work boundaries. While traditionally Asian women were expected to stay at home and take care of the children while their husbands hustled to provide for the provisions and needs, more contemporary Asian women are pursuing their desires to have careers. Asian films depict this stretch in the family, emphasizing the challenges these women face, particularly their ability to carefor them adequately. In Fresh Off the Boat, the film highlights the family that is slowly falling apart, with the three children adopting unruly and unguided lifestyles.
Most of these films paint a picturethat blames the woman for her lack of proper care as she struggles to pursue her career dreams. The Huang family is in constant disarray, for instance, Eddie Huang’s tendency to be a troublemaker and his strained relationship with his mother since he believes she is not there for them as she ought to be. Most of these films not only blame the woman for the chaos ion her family but also raise awareness of this genderoppression bycalling out the men. While Jessica’s mother in law slightly blames her, telling her that she needs to pay her family more attention, she does not say anything against her son, who spends most of his days running the family business. Chung presents that women of color have been tasked with the dual burdens of wage work and domestic responsibilities for time immemorial.
Another outstanding aspect of Asian-American families is the depiction of strict parenthood that severs the ties and relationships parents develop with their children. Chung argues that love and communication have been strained across the generation gap between parents and their children because they are perceived to be overly strict, primarily when held in comparison to the white American parents. The latter seems to be more liberal, granting their children exclusive freedoms to do as they wish. This disparity in Asian film representation, thus, not only attracts Asian American parents, but it also dehumanizes them. In the film Fresh Off the Boat, Eddi and his siblings struggle to understand their parents, mostly being mad at them for what they term as hierarchalorderliness that demands passive obedience. Most of these films hold Asian parents in comparison to the white American familiesaround them, such as the Huang family that lives in the countryside surrounded by families such as Honey’s, which are perceived to be more liberal.
However, by focusing so much on the love and communication breakdown, these films overlook the bearing need to preserve culture through the children. Asian families are stricter with their children because they are held under the responsibility of maintaining their lifestyle, something they cannot do when their perceptions about life are polluted. The Huang family expects the three children to carry on with their traditions and rituals to keep their indigenous values alive for a long time.