Tuesday, April 24, 2012
Invention in 'Children of Invention'
As discussed in class this past Monday and presented by the 'Invention' group, in a literary sense I understood the term invention to be the basic the process by which the author, or in this case the director, develops their story. This can include a multitude of things, including character development, narrative perspective, or even the particular style of language used if the work is written. When it comes to the film Children of Invention, as directed by Tze Chun, one of the most notable forms of invention that Chun utilizes is his decision to use the perspective of the children in the telling of Elaine's (the mother) story. In reading a statement by Chun about the film, we as the audience learn that the director is retelling a story about the world in which he grew up. From this we may infer that the story is his, which may be his reason for using a child's perspective to tell the story in the film, because that was the only perspective he knew, the one that he grew up with. An ironic point that Chun makes in his director's statement, however, is that "immigrants. . .are, by the nature of their journey here, survivors." If he is referencing the Chang family in the film, this may hardly be the truth. This implies that the story of the family ended on a happy note in which survival took precedence over perish. While yes, it seems the family has survived their current crisis, the end of the story leaves the audience wondering what will happen next to the children and how will Elaine actually overcome this financial devastation. It is Chun's invention of using the perspective of children that I believe leaves the audience in the unknown, with the innocence of not having to worry about what will happen next.
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I think I agree with you that Chun's invention is, at least in part, based on telling the story from the part of the child. That is, we the viewer receive the innocent naivety and pure thought with which to view the narrative and other characters (for instance, the city being big in Tina's eyes such that she is afraid to leave the apartment because of her mother's abscence, or Raymond and Tina's lack of knowledge about real estate prices). A good specific example of this is when Raymond saw that his mother was in a seminar for Gold Rep, Betty Cardellini was shown pointing to charts and graphs with a big fake smile on her face, while music plays. He stands there, absorbing the situation, as if he had seen this before (through his mother's past dealings with pyramid schemes), but he is either confused by it or helpless to stop it.
ReplyDeleteAnother, different type of invention I think is a sort of meta-description which we've only half-discussed here. The other half would be that of Elaine Chang herself, as the first part of the movie seems to focus on, as well. For instance, Elaine is shown talking to Betty at the seminar, and discusses checks and payment soon after, but Raymond and Tina are hardly seen. Specifically, the invention of contrasting the childlike naivete (Tina's screaming and when she gets slapped, for instance) with the necessity and difficulty in being an impoverished single mother is Chun's invention, which we see come to a headway when Elaine is arrested: just when she needed help the most, she is presented with much worse problems in tragic fashion. As you mentioned, Chun's portrayal is that of the "survivor", which is pretty accurate in describing Elaine, Raymond and Tina: Elaine, through her efforts toward providing for her family despite coldness from family (husband, mother) and misfortune in business; Raymond, who steps up to be a parent in his mother's stead; Tina, who matures from a child (quite literally wearing her pink childhood on the outside as a dress when going to the bank, where she would soon lose it) to a young adult at quite an early age. This, I think, is much of the application of Chun's rhetorical purpose in narrative and invention.