Film Critical Analysis On ‘the Farewell’: Immigrants, Identity And Mortality

This is a simple but genius film that sheds light on Chinese culture and philosophy
while delivering a doozy of a paradigm shift ... As Billi begins to absorb the
benefits of the Chinese perspective, it will hopefully also dawn on Western
viewers that their way isn t the only one. Honesty, compassion, and empathy are
traits that many Americans prioritize instilling in their children, but Wang
brilliantly challenges Western views by presenting an opposing way of
interacting, letting viewers chew on what s right and what s wrong . The
film s final moment is a philosophical explosion, and the audience s reaction is
the sound of minds being blown. (McNamara, 2019)

INTRODUCTION
The Farewell is a work full of tenderness. Lulu Wang, a Chinese-American film director,
brought her own experience to the big screen. After the film premiered in Los Angeles in
June 2019, it gained strong public praise. In the ongoing award season, it has won 13
awards and nominations, including the Golden Globe Award, the British Film Academy
Award and the American Critic s Choice film award. With this film, Awkwafina has
become the first Asian American film queen of the Golden Globe Awards.
The Farewell is based on Wang s personal experience. Instead of being obsessed with
one s unique identity, it is better to turn it into a storytelling power, Lulu Wang always
firmly believes that in the future, there are more opportunities, potential and diversity
waiting for us to explore. Wang was born in Beijing, China. She spent her early years in
Beijing with her parents and briefly lived with her paternal grandmother for a year in
Changchun, Northeast China, before emigrating to Miami, Florida at the age of six. In
2013, Wang s grandmother became the centre of her own cancer story. She wanted to
make a movie with this real-life family drama (Mitchell, 2019). The production of the
film was delayed for three years because of its special context When I couldn t invite
any American producers, they said, Maybe it`s not an American movie, it`s a Chinese
movie. So I went to a Chinese investor who said the film was too American for the
Chinese market. (Wang cited in Mitchell, 2019). It was not until 2016, when Wang told the story on the national public radio program This American Life , that The Farewell
was taken by producer Chris Weitz by surprise (Sperling, 2019).
Drawing on the finding of Bhabha(1982) and Parekh(2005) in their extensive study upon,
which The Farewell was based, the paper will critically analyse the representations and
discourses of two-way integration shaping The Farewell. Besides, it will discuss
mortality based on Gorer (1932) and Gawande (2014).
This analysis has been divided into four parts, it firstly gives a brief overview of The
Farewell, then it introduces identity , after that it focuses on cultural clashes and two-
way integration, the third part is the third space , the last part will discuss mortality.
Taking its core question should we tell a dying family member that their end is near? ,
the paper will explore more about mortality.

SUMMARY
The Farewell tells the story of the protagonist s grandmother, who is diagnosed with
cancer. The whole family, aware of their loved one s imminent mortality, come back
home to see her for one last time, using the wedding of Haohao (the protagonist s
cousin) as an excuse. Unlike the Asian theme works favoured by Hollywood in the past,
The Farewell has no Chinese Kung Fu, no oriental mythology, no exotic beauty, no
American hero who saves the world, no rural town in the stereotype of Westerners, and
no front-line metropolis frequently appearing in Sino foreign joint-venture blockbusters.
The film always revolves around Billi s question based on the differences between
Chinese and Western cultures: should we tell Grandma the truth about her cancer? .
This is about yin and yang of roots and identities , banter, passion and balance (Ide,
2019). Renowned film critic Mark Kermode quoted Ide s beautiful words on Twitter:
The American tendency to freely share thoughts and feelings collides with the Chinese
way of parcelling up emotions into tightly wrapped dumplings (Kermode, 2019).
In addition to the core issue discussed in the film, a number of scenes in the film reflect
the nuances of contemporary Chinese culture. For example, taxi drivers swarm over the
protagonist as soon as she reaches the airport arrivals hall. Another scene shows the
quilts that the Chinese locals place on their community fitness facilities for sunbathing.
There are many references to a culture of heavy smoking. Middle-aged men roll up their
shirts and expose their navals to cope with the heat on the street the list goes on. This
is an interesting examination and reflection of cultural differences and similarities
between America and China (Hoose, 2019).

The Farewell triggered a wave comments after its release in the western world. Semlyen
(2019) praised The Farewell on the professional movie review website EMPIRE for its
combination of comedy and melancholy, forming a series of charming dramas that make
people feel great emotionally. Some people pay attention to the details in this film
birds the constant presence of birds in Billy s view of the interior may be another
opaque spiritual symbol that never really stands out in the film (Hoose, 2019). Ide (2019)
described the film exactly as a delightful, semi-autobiographical family drama where
the push and pull between the bonds of blood and the ties of culture are explored with
a light touch and a perceptive eye for detail . Every single character is on edge, and
wracked with guilt. However, the characters are forced to keep their feelings secret.
Kermode (2019) claims that the grandmother could not possibly deal with the truth in
ignorance, but ironically she seems on some fundamental level to understand the truth
of everything in the world, more than anybody else around it. The film is subtle and
absurd to some extent. Every individual in the family has their shortcomings, but
demonstrate that we are all sometimes forced to play unacceptable roles and are forced
to do what we do not want to do. For the family mission, and for the sake of family
harmony, everyone will make sacrifices and compromises. People also see the true face
of love, increase their courage to face the outside world in defiance of their grievances.
Whether their white lie is right or wrong, and whether the grandmother knew the truth
all along or not, the film did not appease us with an answer.

The film was released in mainland China on 22 November 2019, and many of the
comments were made by immigrants. They were surprised very much by the authentic
Chinese scenes in the film, and people exclaimed: This is so real! (Zhihu Film, 2020).
Some Chinese respond by evaluating their own bonds with their parents, aware that
their own life struggles are not as harsh as their parents upbringing. They know that,
when their parents are old, they have agency over their parents affairs. There were also
comments that this film reminded them of their grandmothers because their family had
encountered the same situation.

More people have discussed the film s cultural values and the breaking of stereotypes
(Sun, 2019). From The Insidious Di. Fu-Manchu to Crazy Rich Asians , the western
world has a deep-rooted stereotype of Chinese people that Chinese people play Kung
Fu, that Chinese people are good at mental arithmetic, or that Chinese people are
upstarts. The American stereotype in Chinese films is also crude - one of stupidity - as
can be observed in titles such as Chinatown Detective 2 , Crazy Aliens , Chinese
Partners and other popular films in China.

The Farewell breaks the stereotype and every character is real and different (Han, 2019).
Only when a large number of films exploring the stories that have taken place in these
Chinese ordinaries continue to appear, will the display of Chinese images become more
abundant and comprehensive, and the real cultural discrimination can be gradually
disintegrated. Mtime (2019), China s largest film review website, praised The Farewell
that it gives the audience a very high degree of acceptance because its attitude is akin to
objective discussion. Ultimately, it is about the way in which different systems of
organizing family life, in the wake of clashing cultures.

IDENTITY
We live in a world where identity matters. According to Gilory (1997), theoretically, it is
not only a concept but also a controversial fact in contemporary political life, which is of
great importance. The main characters of The Farewell, except for grandmother, are all
immigrants. Billi s family moved to the United States when she was only six years old.
Billi s cousin, Haohao, moved with his family to Japan after that.
Through the entire movie, Billi and her mother had two positive conflicts, all around the
issue of identity. The first time was when Billi talked about her grandma with her
mother. Billi assumed that her mother was not sensitive to the dying grandmother. The
mother claimed when her father was about to die, she was also sad, but when she came
back to China for the funeral, everybody was watching her, they were all expecting her
to follow part. She felt as though, if she did not cry, people would think she did not love
her father. She then makes reference to a peculiar funeral custom: They even hire
some professional criers just to show how sad they are, it is so ridiculous, I hate that!
Billi s second conflict with her mother was the day before the wedding. Billi suggested
she could stay in China, and shared her story of going to America with her parents since
childhood. Everything was different, everyone was gone, and there were just three of
us Billi cried. In these two heated arguments, it can be seen that the identities of Billi
and her mother are complex they cannot be taken at face value.
Cultural diversity is an inevitable fact in modern life, and a diverse range of cultures
carries a diverse range of beliefs and practices. A culture gains its identity through
having its own beliefs and practices, and these can reflect systems of meaning and
significance. (Parekh, 2005). The identity of a culture can be experienced through
visibility, audibility and recognition (Calhoun, 1994 Taylor, 1994). Drawing on this, it is
clear that Billi and her mother lack recognition of their own identities.

The Farewell also gave the hotel attendants a special shot of chanting slogans about
their dedication to customer service. This lens well explains the stereotype of Chinese
people - the same uniform, the same slogan, and the same recognition.
Back to Billi and her mother, their lack of identity recognition was because they did not
realize that identity is always changing. As Bauman(1992) argues, culture and identity
are constantly recentering. Identity is multifaceted, multi-layered, circumstantial and
contingent in construct identity and culture are ongoing and shifting all the time.
Indian English scholar and critical theorist Homi Bhabha (1994) proposed the discourse
hybridity , which is a production of hybrid understandings of culture. He refuses
traditional liberalism and liberal multiculturalism, as they are sorting and management
of differences, and speaks of intersectionality and hybridity. Bhabha is keen to stress
the continuing process of hybridization . The classical philosophical understanding of
the relationship between the object and the subject,(i.e. between one s self and the
other ) may be damaged as a result- which is too common when two different cultures
collide (Huddart, 2006). Hybridization applies to the authoritative mixture of each
identity mode. Therefore, people like Billi and her family, who are the intersection of
different cultural encounters, should not be afraid of differences. The obstacle of their
identity recognition in the collision of Chinese and American cultures is precise because
they regard the other as uniform, and they see one culture as uniform. They did not
acknowledge hybridity.

CULTURAL CLASH AND INTEGRATION
British political theorist Bhikhu Parekh (2002) proposed the two-way integration of
unity and diversity of multicultural society . There are many sources of cultural
diversity in modern society, including different religions, races, cultures, immigrants and
so on, which have more or less exclusive lifestyles. Multiculturalism should not be
equivalent to the demand for special rights of ethnic minorities or the demand for
one-way integration or assimilation of hegemonic culture but should be regarded as a
relationship of mutual integration or two-way integration (Parekh, 2002).
The family in The Farewell can be seen as a microcosm of all society. Their cultural
conflicts and diversity mainly come from immigrants. The push-pull dialogue between
the aunt who is a Chinese inhabitant and Billi s mother at the reun ion dinner is dramatic,
in which they secretly contest and debate which life is better, Chinese or American. The
bitter and cold mother showed off to the whole family that Billi could play the piano in
church for free while hiding the contradictions of American life as an immigrant. Even when grandmother, the head of the entire family, stopped their seemingly benign
arguments, the mother rejected to let the matter drop. Her strong attitude was a sign of
vulnerability and self-distrust. The psychology of the mother (immigrants) is in the sense
of division and identity between the two countries. To Chinese inhabitant, Billi s family
represents the other - Chinese immigrants who have betrayed China and moved to
the United States should regret their decision to emigrate after China s economic
development the inhabitant aunt represents us Chinese citizens who enjoy the
benefits of easy money in China.
According to integrationists, immigrants should be committed to their country of
residence and give them firm loyalty (Parekh, 2005). If they nostalgically look back on
their country of origin and maintain close moral and emotional ties with it, their
commitment to the country of the settlement remains negligible. This is why Billi s
family feel conflicted and without belonging - when they emigrate to America, they are
others and outsiders in the eyes of others, but are also others in their own eyes.
However, under pressure over the family dinner table, they have to admit that they are
still Chinese to some extent. Just like the grandmother said at the reun ion dinner: no
matter what, you can not criticise China. Do not forget, you are still Chinese. This
highlights another interesting topic. Why is it seen as disloyal and ill-fitting for a Chinese
individual to criticize their own government and country? Contrast this with the West -
British news media are generally ready to criticise the government.
Nick Cohen (2019), in the Observer, criticised the British government for gambling with
the lives of elderly people during the 2019/20 coronavirus outbreak. However, in China,
in most cases, criticism has not been commonplace. As Siebert (1984) put forward six
functions of the press under social responsibility theory, press independence is noted to
be an important institutional value. China s news media cannot be politically
independent, and so it fails to meet this critical role. The Chinese media also fails to
create an impartial environment, which is one of the most important media functions.
We may find an explanation for this in China s chaotic experience over the century (Kuo,
2019). After August 1945, there was war, scarcity, foreign invasion and famine, with a
fragile and transient peace. Shortly after, more wars broke out. Upon reunification,
hundreds of thousands of Chinese soldiers were sent to fight and die in North Korea.
Even with peace, prosperity did not come - in 1955, Mao announced the high tide of
collectivization , followed by the cultural revolution and the famine, leading at least 45
million premature deaths during the famine years and about one and a half million
people died during the cultural revolution (Dik tter, 2011 Fenby, 2010 Dik tter, 2016).
Many living Chinese today will not forget that individuals have been humiliated, tortured, sometimes imprisoned, or even murdered. These individuals included teachers,
doctors, administrators and parents (Kuo, 2019). As Yang(2013) revealed:

In the second half of 1959, I took a long-distance bus from Xinyang to Luoshan
and Gushi. Out of the window, I saw one corpse after another in the ditches. On
the bus, no one dared to mention the dead. In one county, Guangshan, one-third
of the people had died. Although there were dead people everywhere, the local
leaders enjoyed good meals and fine liquor I had seen people who had told the
truth being destroyed. Did I dare to write it?

After bloody purges (Dik tter, 2016), China s economy, science, technology and
transportation have improved significantly trading off personal liberty for personal
security and stability time has shown that Chinese society is willing to make this trade-
off.
THE THIRD SPACE
One can define third space as the space where people enter dialogue with the others .
In The Farewell, Billi, her father and her uncle have created such a third space where
they can talk to each other and confront differences.
Billi s uncle moved to Japan, his view is still traditional and conservative, representing
the east:

Western people think one s life belongs to oneself. But that is the difference
between the east and the west. In the east, a person s life is part of a whole
family and society. You want to tell the truth, because you are afraid to take
responsibility for her. Because it s too big of a burden. If you tell her, then you do
not to have to feel guilty. We tell her because it is our duty to carry this
emotional burden for her.

Young (1990) frames humans engaging in dialogue as social beings, and not as single-
celled solitary organisms. It is needed to develop common means, to face common
challenges and realise common visions and values, therefore people recognize that
dialogue is the core of society. Phillips (2009) and Young (1990) shared the same view
that common point between cultures as the basis of dialogue with other cultures should
not only be cultural differences, and storytelling can be a mode of humanizing the
other so as to appreciate the other and its culture. Dialogue can be regarded as a
hearing space, which is the third space pointed out by Bhabha (2005). The third space is
a space where Billi and her relatives are challenged, but also is a space of learning, the
space of understanding, a space of dialogue. Dialogue presupposes individuals,
communities and living cultures. In dialogue integration, people have empathy with
each other, which means that people put themselves in the other s shoes and
understand their views.
When facing her uncle who is different with Billi, they both chose a respectful and open
attitude to thoroughly understand each other. Empathy plays an important role in the
third space. When there are disagreements, they did not choose to find who is right,
who is wrong, Billi and her family reach a consensus to solve the problem. This is a good
way to understand starting point of each other and find a compromise. Billi s uncle s
words also echo the philosophy of Chinese culture in pursuit of the mean. It is not that
Asians avoid difficult topics, but rather that Asians tend to have indirect communication,
said Jeff Mio (cited in Chen, 2019), Professor of multicultural psychology at California
Polytechnic State University, communicate in a way that shows, not tells. This affects
Chinese attitudes towards mortality.
MORTALITY
The core question of the whole film - whether to tell the truth to a dying loved one or
not - is clouded by different cultural values in China and the West., and in particular,
stark differences in attitudes towards death. A half-century ago, British anthropologist
Geoffrey Gorer (1932) suggested that people were not afraid to talk about death, and
children were taught to think about death, their death, and the cautionary deaths of
others two hundred years ago. However, in the 20th century, death was increasingly
taboo unremarkably, as a natural process, death became more and more
unmentionable especially in Anglo-Saxon society. This is due to the change of taboos
and religious beliefs.
When people have a living faith in the integrity and glory of the immortal part, they can
insist that the body is corrupt and its origin is disgraceful. However, the basic fact of
death must be accepted if social formality hinders this open and dignified way, it has to
be done secretly, and the implications of death will be accepted in some way (Gorer,
1932). Therefore, contemporary society has restrained people s healthy acceptance of
death and mourning, in the same way that sexual behaviour was restrained in the
Victorian era. In the 20th century, the mourning activities of Britain (and possibly
Western Protestantism) lacked a common ritual model to deal with the death crisis.
Gorer (1965) suggested in his study Death, Grief, and Mourning , that traditional
mourning practices were out of date (such as wearing black clothes), and that most
mourners (except Orthodox Jews, Catholics and Scottish church believers) did not have
clear guidance on general trends (death, sadness and mourning).
Tolstoy (1973) describes this death taboo in his novel The Death of Ivan Ilyich:

As he grows weaker and more emaciated he knows what is happening. He lives
in mounting anguish and fear of death. But death is not a subject that his doctors,
friends, or family can countenance. That is what causes him his most profound
pain What tormented Ivan Ilyich most was no one pitied him as he wished to
be pitied.

Age had the value of rarity in the past, and elders not only demanded to be respect and
obedience, but also led sacred rituals and exercised political power in many societies.
The relationship between the young and the old has changed significantly since. First, it
is very common to live to old age. China is now the first country in the world with more
than 100 million old people . Second, new technology further weakens the value of
long-term experience and experienced judgment. Third, the life span of the elderly is
significantly longer, and tension appears (Gawande, 2014). A 1912 report from Illinois
State Charities Commission and a 1909 Virginia report both implied another change in
people s thinking about death and elderly.
We can also look at death through the North American lens, which is clinical and is
remarkably focused on preserving life. On the one hand, American medicine is moving
towards transparency and continues in the pursuit of longer patient life. Obamacare
could be argued to spread this wider among the whole population.
However, does risky clinical intervention make life better or does it merely prolong?
American medicine (as any privatised system) has perverse incentives to keep people
alive and to intervene. There is a much healthier - school of thought which focuses on
the quality (rather than just the length) of life - and it comes from the Palliative Care
Movement (VITAS Health Care organization, 2016 Krau, 2016). Dame Cicely, who is
recognised as the founder of the modern hospice movement, is passionate about this
alternative view, and about palliative care. In the recent edition of The Lancet (2020), it
is pointed out that the lack of resources in palliative care is encouraged at all levels,
including supranationals:

WHO has issued guidance on how to maintain essential health services during
the pandemic, highlighting immunisation, maternal care, emergency care, and
chronic diseases among others, but there was no mention of palliative care. This
was an oversight.

Carnage and the Media is a book that discusses blood, with media and public attitudes
towards blood. It was written post 9/11 when significant differences emerged over the
world in attitudes towards the screening of the moment of death around the jumpers .
Protestant North did not want to show the moment of impact that the Catholic south
did. Some Americans saw these jumpers as cowards, whilst Protestant Europe saw
them as people exercising agency in the most terrible situation. Broadcasters and
filmmakers have implicit rules around this - no northern (Protestant) European countries
showed impact, with reservations about showing the moment of death, whilst Southern
European and Latin American, i.e. RC, broadcasters showed the impact and moment of
death (Seaton, 2005).
According to Heidegger, Being towards death , westerners have a literary tradition of
facing the limitation of life and thinking about the value of life. China is a contrast to this.
Tomb brings people the sense of terror, which shows that death is still a taboo to
Chinese, claimed Zijiao Shen (cited in Get China, 2019) from Beijing Normal University
believes that Chinese people are more taboo about talking about death.
There are two reasons why Chinese people are afraid of death and ageing, or even
talking about them. Firstly, in the modern fast-paced life, people have little time to think
about the meaning of death and life, especially the Chinese who lack death education.
When Chinese people talk about death, they are just primary school students, because
there is no real death education in China, CCTV host Yansong Bai (cited in Daily
Headlines, 2019) proposed. Secondly, influenced by Taoism, Chinese calligraphy, tea,
Chinese food and many other typical means of life extension have been used
throughout history in China (Zhang, 2015).
The signs suggest there are still taboos and superstitions about death in China.
Longevity villages (Big World, 2017) in China are encouraged, thus it can be seen that
Chinese people always try to live longer. The number 4 is avoided because in
Mandarin it sounds like death a phenomenon known as tetraphobia. Thirdly, under
the influence of modern thoughts such as the May 4th movement, death has become a
negative and dark existence, representing collapse, disappearance, failure and end
(Daily Headlines, 2019).
On one hand, the Chinese are fearful of ageing and death, on the other hand, people
respect filial piety, due to the Confucian ideal. In such a strong cultural atmosphere of
human feelings and ethics in China, the grief caused by bereavement is particularly
profound, said Jun Hong (cited in Ma, 2018), a professor of psychology at Southern
Hospital of Southern Medical University.
Besides, China has long formed a feedback model , that is, parents raise their children,
and their children support their parents in turn when they grow up (Fei, 1983 1985
Yuan, 1987 1989). From all sections of society, children receive consistent reminders
that they owe everything to their parents and that they must repay this debt in full,
which can be seen from the largest population movement in the world - Spring Festival
travel rush.

CONCLUSION
In conclusion, we can see that The Farewell presents many innocuous aspects of
Chinese culture to the western audience whilst giving the Chinese and diaspora
audiences a reflection of themselves. Less innocuous is how Western and Eastern views
about mortality can contradict. We learn through the experiences of Billi and her family
that death can mean different things to different people, regardless of the cultural
pigeonholes that they put themselves in. We also learn that, to an outsider, two people
may have the same cultural identity, but those two people may not feel the same way
about themselves, and when their ideas of their own identity are challenged,
relationships can be strained and break down. In order to heal these strained
relationships, dialogue in the third space must be sought.