The Baby Scene (The Movie vs. The Book) - The Joy Luck Club (1993) Discussion

[–] Better_Off_Dead 18 years ago

I'm not going to debate about murder vs. abortion, either. But maybe the movie decided to take advantage of being able to show the baby's face and then the little limp body in Ying-Ying's arms. Gave her a chance to scream that horrible scream. I understand and agree that sometimes when a movie changes things, I feel disgusted.

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[–] Joysma 17 years ago

That scene was so upsetting as it was so graphic. For the life of me I cannot understand how the parents of that child could let the little fellow take part in the movie. I do realise that some little ones of that age do go to swim lessons & would be used to having water all over their faces but seeing it & how he squirmed briefly was shocking to me. Then when the "mother" held him in her arms makes me tear up just writing about it.

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[–] Punctuality 17 years ago

Horrible scene. I can't agree more. Had difficulty watching it before I had kids. Now that I'm a parent, I have to leave the room and I still cry!

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[–] merylstreepfan85 15 years ago

I'm not a mother, and I still had to leave the room to cry. I can't imagine watching it with kids.

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[–] LittleMissLola 18 years ago

Drowning an infant does not allow you to identify with the mother's pain nor does it show her degree of "sacrifice" - or at least not in my opinion.
I sure don't identify with her pain or her sacrifice through such a means.
I have a baby and a husband. Even if I had the worse husband in the world I would not kill my child to get back at him. So who is suppose to identify with her if not mothers or wives? Having an abortion, especially around those times with lack of proper medical procedure, would have been vivid and emotional enough for the audience to "get it" and understand what was going on.
Abortion isn't abstract.
Most of the time it's very in-your-face.
If the audience needed to see a defenseless infant be drowned to understand what was going on with the character then I really have to wonder what's going on with society.

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[–] Hoshi_Reed 18 years ago

I guess it can be hard to identify with her if you don't understand the situation. She wasn't free. She couldn't divorce. The baby could have been taken away at any time if the husband wanted to do so. Not to mention the baby was a BOY. This may not mean much to you now but you have to understand that if she had drowned a girl baby, the point wouldn't have been the same. You I bet would have felt just as distrought at such an act but the situation wouldn't have as much meaning culturally.

It is like when a slave kills their child so that they won't grow up a slave.

Or if you watch Smallville, Lillian killing Julian to save him from Lionel Luthor.

The sacrifice is the loss of something so valuable, a son. Your opinion is clouded by modern day morals. There was a time when drowning a child out of infidelity or disability was morally accepted. At that time in China, the death of a baby girl would have meant NOTHING, where as the death of a boy, everything.

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[–] francienol 18 years ago

Hoshi, excellent response. In a indirect way it reminded me of the "choice" Sophie was told to make in "Sophie's Choice." Life is NEVER black and white.

Anyone who tells a lie has not a pure heart, and cannot make a good soup. Ludwig Van Beethoven

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[–] EARLGREYHOT 17 years ago

You are very correct in your assumption. The time and place is different from the present and cannot be judged just the same. Ying-Ying WAS trapped, within her own fear, her own mind and spirit, by the brutality of her husband, by the expectations of her culture, by her own shattered innocence. Graphically, for a movie, I'm sorry, but as awful as the scene is, it works better than seeing her during an abortion---the whole point was her taking away from her cruel husband the big point of Pride in his life: a healthy, handsome SON---and you're also right that if it had been a girl, it would have had little meaning in China at that time. And to be honest, even now, in the apartment complex we live in, there are posters encouraging people to remember to cherish their girls, that Girls are Gifts, they are special too--why? because so many couples in China, given an ultrasound which tells the sex of the child (though TECHnically this is against the law), when a girl is found, will choose abortion, rather than have their one allowed child be a girl. Yes, she does appear in a daze, so far gone with abuse that she has this crazy thought, and while in a kind of spiritual/mental stupor, actually commits the heinous act. I think this is the directors way of taking some of the moral sting out of the murder--she is a girl, half-destroyed and NOT in full mental clarity, taking the life of her child.

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[–] LovecraftLass 17 years ago

I have to say that this scene repulsed me and I was mad as hell that they changed it. I understand what the director's and such were going for, I just don't agree with it. My nephew drowned when he was 2 and when that scene came on, I was totally unprepared for it. I'm not trying to garner sympathy or anything, just letting you know my personal reasons for hating the change.

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[–] perorewen 17 years ago

Personally I didn't like the change at all.
The reason is that the book so briliantly describes Ying Yings premenitons. She had the abortion because she knew before the baby was born that it was going to resemble the father. She knew it would look like him. And she hated her husband so bitterly she couldn't bare to have that child. She couldn't have a child that reminded her of him, even attached her to her husband in any way. So she had the child removed before it was born so she wouldn't have to deal with it later on.

**********
They blew up Congress!!! HAHAHA!

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[–] dizzy_hampster 16 years ago

perorewen- how would you have the screenwriter and director portray all the premonitions and everything that led up to the abortion.

I think the change was made primarily because time dictated a new way to show just how cruel the husband was in the movie. The movie was already 2 1/2 hours long. Movie adaptations often make changes in the storyline in order to convey a deeper theme in a shorter period of time or in a more concise way.

Did you see Ying Ying's face as she saw her son being handed into the arms of his latest conquest? It showed not only the cruelty the husband had towards her and how little he valued her, but also portrayed the total control he had over her and her son. She could not leave him knowing her son was left behind. As long as that boy was alive, he had total control over the both of them and their lives would both be worse. I saw the drowning as a mercy killing (in the characters mindframe at the tim

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[–] shannonrbc 16 years ago

What many people don't realize is why boys are so important to the Chinese culture. It is the responsibility of the son to care for his aged parents, and since in China you can only have one child, which would you want? A son who is morally responsible to care for you later in life? Or a girl who will essentially cost you money for her care and will grow up and marry just to take care of her husband's parents? I'm not in any way saying this is a correct attitude, just trying to explain the mindset.
One thing I also have to constantly remind my high-school students is that we have to be careful about judging people from other time periods/cultures by our modern standards. Most of our grandparents brought our parents home from the hospital in a basket on their lap. Should we arrest all of our grandparents for child abuse? Of course not.

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[–] whendovescry89 16 years ago

Well, in traditional China, only men can carry on the family name. Women when married, adopt the man's family name. By killing the child, she was extinguishing part of the man's family line.

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[–] christieb7 15 years ago

My sister thought the same thing, that she didn't really realize what she was doing. Anyway, you know it haunts her later.

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[–] bgbdsuisue 15 years ago

i think she was mentally unstable, i agree with you, most mothers can't understand killing a child regardless of what happens in our lives. But mothers do it all over the world, so someone can probably understand. You and I are rational, this woman obviously wasn't.

Thanks for hating, I needed to get to 214 haters before the summer.

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[–] FascistFashion 15 years ago

Thank you Lola!! Finally someone sees the repulsiveness of baby-drowning!! Which is NO WHERE NEAR the same thing as an abortion.

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[–] Taran_Wanderer_2 14 years ago

Em, murder and abortion are synonyms. Second of all, the film's "murder" could be interpreted as a careless accident. Ying-Ying did not intentionally drown the child to get back at her husband, whereas in the book she murders the child through abortion to get back at him. For this reason I don't get your comparison; Ying-Ying's behavior in the novel is far colder than that in the film.

I also agree that filming the concept of abortion as powerfully as the finished product turned out would have been extremely challenging.

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[–] hodie 17 years ago

This movie was one of the handful of instances where I thought the film was better than the book. I agree that the change was made for the dramatic impact. It was on impulse, and we have the image of the baby and Ying-Ying's scream.

God save Donald Duck, vaudeville and variety

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[–] lisabwp 17 years ago

I dont think she really meant to drown the baby. Her reaction afterward when she realizes he's dead was pretty profound for committing murder. I think subconsceisly(sorry about the spelling) she may have wanted him dead in order to punish her husband and that her mind being some place else when shes bathing her child enabled her to do it. I dont have kids but I can tell you when I do nothing is going to distract me when he/she is in water. Harming the baby was the only way she could harm him, and he could do anything to her.

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[–] jfondo 16 years ago

I also didn't get the impression that she intended to drown the baby. I've seen the movie several times and like lisabwp, her reaction seemed to indicate shock. The character was zoning out in the drowning scene, similar to her states as an adult. When she says she "took from him" the only thing that could hurt him, etc., I always felt she was saying that in retrospect. Just my opinion, though!

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[–] 16 years ago

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[–] Alien3_fan 16 years ago

How about empathy instead of sympathy? I don't think it was an easy thing for her to do at all. I think it's one of the best scenes in any movie. It's haunting.

"You've been in my life so long, I can't remember anything else."

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[–] raykeller 14 years ago

I'm absolutely with you on this one -- I never interpreted that sequence as a willful "murder" as much as subconsciously taking the opportunity when it presented itself. Her horror at what she had allowed to happen (compare to if she had actually had done it herself with premeditation, which I don't believe at all) and her reckoned soul-wrenching scream ... wow.

BTW -- Huge 'Alien' film series fan here, and I thought the under-rated Alien3 rocked! I actually have the tank-top Sigourney Weaver wore in Alien Resurrection (under her very cool leather vest) mounted and framed.

"You mean -- all this time ... we could have been friends....?"

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[–] ForeverInBlueJeans 16 years ago

They could've at least gotten an ugly baby to play the part lol. When the scene started and they showed the baby's smiling face I was all gushing and junk and then it hit me that they were setting us up for a drowning scene. So stupid and unnecessary and then we're supposed to understand? If you hate the father so much, here's an idea, run away with the baby then put him on someone's doorstep and walk away. June's mum left the twins by the tree and they were found and taken care of, so what the hell? I'm still pissed.

I see what you did there.

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[–] jpoo 16 years ago

I saw the movie first, probably a couple times on movie channels, and then read the book. This scene is partly what prompted me to read the book!

First off, I agree with a couple other posters that I got the feeling she did not truly mean to drown the baby, even though subconsciously she may have been having the thoughts she narrated and other people are posting -- she wanted to get back at her husband, she knew the baby could be taken from her, she wanted to save him from growing up to be just like his father. I got a strong sense of something like postpartum depression or even postpartum psychosis in that scene, especially with the "spacey" look on her face, almost like her tuning out. And as people said, her reaction or horror when she realized what happened.

As for why they went with the drowning as opposed to the abortion, I only read the book once but I got the impression she performed the abortion on herself? So it may have been difficult to show her getting an abortion period, but that would have been even more difficult to do and have it pass MPAA standards (or whatever). Not to mention it would have villified her -- even though the husband was a bastard, lots of people would have trouble understanding and sympathizing with what she did. It seems the drowning had that reaction as well to a certain extent, but like I said, there are people who also believe it was not what she intended and instead a horrible accident.

But anyway, the movie scene confused me in the end, because I kept thinking "what would have happened to her when her husband and everyone else found out?" I can see him going crazy on her, even if she tried to say it was an accident -- his precious boy was dead and she was responsible. Whereas I imagine she could have tried to say she miscarried or went into premature labor and the baby couldn't survive with the other situation. But I always wondered what he and his family would have done to her after the drowning, and that's partly why I read the book. I guess we're supposed to believe she ran away and never came back.

JP

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[–] 16 years ago

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[–] macklin-1 16 years ago

JP,

That was the post I wished I had written, I couldn't agree more. I believed she didn't know what was happening (in the film) and when she realized it, it haunted her for the rest of her life. She accepted the guilt because it was something she had thought about BUT it was an accident. That's the way I saw it. The book seemed more grusome to me. I can't really remember but I thought, in the book, she had the fetus delivered to the father and ran away.

Macklin Crew

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[–] anny12 16 years ago

She a naive, weak woman who was practically driven mad by her abusive husband.

Exactly. As she says, he stole her youth and her innocence. She was a broken shell of a person because he had completely destroyed her. Of course killing her child was unbelievably wrong, but the look on her face in the bath scene is almost trance-like. I don't think she meant to kill him, but subconsciously she knew it was her only way out.

"He was adorable. Gorgeous. So full of life."

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[–] pullcartweek 14 years ago

Is murder more socially acceptable than abortion? .. what is the diffrence in abortion and murder ...

...
I HAVE BAD SPELLING GRAMMAR AND PUNTUATION PROBLEMS?

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[–] 14 years ago

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[–] kellydofc 14 years ago

I have seen this movie countless times and always thought that drowning the baby was an accident. She was so emotionally disconnected that she didn't really know what she was doing. I think it is important to remember that she is telling this story to the audience decades after it had happened so she probably has a clearer idea as to what her motives were now than she did at the time. Especially if she had undergone any form of therapy in the years following. She certainly seems to be much more well adjusted in the scenes that occur later in the timeline.

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[–] morning_coffee_cub 13 years ago

it's simple. one is accidental (film) the other is deliberate (book). regardless how you look at abortion, it's never a popular subject. one moment it's alive, the next it's dead (abort=terminate). how anyone cannot grasp this being murder is too idiotic and quite frankly *beep* in the head. I'm glad they embrace the fantasy that it's not, because, hopefully, they terminate future ignorance as dumb as they are.

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[–] 13 years ago

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[–] hello_omgee 13 years ago

I remember watching this movie in 10th grade in high school & when this scene played...oh,no. Tears just burst out. I was hiding my face throughout the scene bc i didnt want anyone to see me crying. I know its just a film but it broke my heart.

You're gonna wish you had never met me

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[–] LittleMissLola 12 years ago

Years later and my thread is still active - makes me feel a little special!

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