My first reaction to the film was a little contemptuous. I could never imagine being a picture bride, even if it meant a better future. As crude as it sounds, I remember hearing someone tell me, "if you marry for money, you'll work for it for the rest of your life." I feel as though the same applied for the pictures brides. Seeing as they had no way of knowing what their husbands would be like when they arrived in Hawaii, and no way to get back right away, they pretty much were stuck in making the marriage work, and becoming laborers. Riyo struggles with this when she first arrives. It's not as though she has a warm loving family and a life to go back to in Japan, but because she's so unhappy with her situation, she idealizes her hometown, and desperately wants to return.
She doesn't seem to struggle with double consciousness as much as much as she just wants to leave the hard work and life she doesn't think she agreed to. Her change of heart is shown in the film through the darkening of her skin, and her close bond with a woman from the planation. As she becomes closer to her, forming a bond, and working harder, she also forms a bond with the land. Eventually, she also forms a bond with her husband, and she becomes assimilated into the culture.
Her transformation and assimilation is very interesting to watch.
Elena,
ReplyDeleteYeah. I think at the end--when she finds her own voice/identity, that she has developed double consciousness.
In Hawaii, Japanese workers were not a minority, asian americans were not a minority. Japanese immigrants immigrating to Hawaii did not face a large wall of culture barriers. I wonder if because of this assimilation was less drastic, and possessing a dual consciousness was not as noticeable as those who immigrated to the mainland.
ReplyDeleteI'm curios of the attitude of picture brides in regards to how you portrayed them. As Japanese culture dictated, during that time all marriages were arranged by parents and relatives. I wonder if being a picture bride was any more risky than a normal marriage. It does not seem, besides weird age differences, that picture brides faced anything different, or worse, in their marriages than they would have faced if they married someone in Japan.