Saving Face is a comical view of an Asian woman’s struggle in coming to terms with her sexuality and the challenges that her identity caused to arise between her and her mother. While watching the film, I was surprised to see the accuracies in the film’s depiction of the Asian culture within the United States. In my experience, those in the Asian-American community are still very concerned with their reputation and how the rest of the communities views them, like in the film. This deep importance placed on their reputation often affects the parent-child relationship within the Asian community. The protagonist, a Chinese-American lesbian woman named Wil, encounters conflicts where this is demonstrated. When her mother becomes pregnant out of wedlock, Wil witnesses her grandfather’s anger and disappointment with Wil’s mother, despite her being nearly 50 years old. Additionally, we are able to see a common theme in Saving Face as Trespassers by Willow Lung-Amam, though it is more subtle in the film than in the writing, and that is the importance of education. In the film, Wil is a skilled surgeon, proving to be an intelligent woman and a source of pride for her family. Even her love interest, a professional ballerina named Vivian, briefly mentioned her father’s preference for her to have gone into a more traditional field. In her writing, Lung-Amam explores the importance of education in the Asian American community and explains why that may be so. Though this commonality is more implicit in Saving Face, the film accurately portrayed Lung-Amam’s findings, which is very true to the Asian American community. Lastly, an aspect I was surprised to see included in the film was the clear racism of the Asian community towards blacks. Wil’s neighbor and friend in the film is a black man and Wil’s mother displayed discomfort and scorn at his presence when he joined them for dinner. Another example was when Wil’s mother went on a date and the man quickly ran away as soon as their black neighbor greeted them. From my perspective as an Asian American myself, racism within the Asian community is very real and quite similar to this, where people will often use their native tongue to mock blacks or make inappropriate remarks about the darkness of their skin tone. As real as this racism is, I was shocked to see this in film as I believed Asian racism was blatant to those within the community but unspoken about and hidden from others. Overall, Saving Face was a comical take on many accuracies of the Asian American community.
Saving Face is a comical view of an Asian woman’s struggle in coming to terms with her sexuality and the challenges that her identity caused to arise between her and her mother. While watching the film, I was surprised to see the accuracies in the film’s depiction of the Asian culture within the United States. In my experience, those in the Asian-American community are still very concerned with their reputation and how the rest of the communities views them, like in the film. This deep importance placed on their reputation often affects the parent-child relationship within the Asian community. The protagonist, a Chinese-American lesbian woman named Wil, encounters conflicts where this is demonstrated. When her mother becomes pregnant out of wedlock, Wil witnesses her grandfather’s anger and disappointment with Wil’s mother, despite her being nearly 50 years old. Additionally, we are able to see a common theme in Saving Face as Trespassers by Willow Lung-Amam, though it is more subtle in the film than in the writing, and that is the importance of education. In the film, Wil is a skilled surgeon, proving to be an intelligent woman and a source of pride for her family. Even her love interest, a professional ballerina named Vivian, briefly mentioned her father’s preference for her to have gone into a more traditional field. In her writing, Lung-Amam explores the importance of education in the Asian American community and explains why that may be so. Though this commonality is more implicit in Saving Face, the film accurately portrayed Lung-Amam’s findings, which is very true to the Asian American community. Lastly, an aspect I was surprised to see included in the film was the clear racism of the Asian community towards blacks. Wil’s neighbor and friend in the film is a black man and Wil’s mother displayed discomfort and scorn at his presence when he joined them for dinner. Another example was when Wil’s mother went on a date and the man quickly ran away as soon as their black neighbor greeted them. From my perspective as an Asian American myself, racism within the Asian community is very real and quite similar to this, where people will often use their native tongue to mock blacks or make inappropriate remarks about the darkness of their skin tone. As real as this racism is, I was shocked to see this in film as I believed Asian racism was blatant to those within the community but unspoken about and hidden from others. Overall, Saving Face was a comical take on many accuracies of the Asian American community.