Intangible Heritage as Portrayed in Media - Essay Example

Intangible Heritage as Portrayed in Media The topic regarding heritage being passed down from generation to generation has been a recurring theme inmany of the stories that talk about families, and are mostly found in written literature and in movies. While heritage or inheritance is mostly known by many people as something that can be sensed by the five senses, there are also heritages that are not touchable, but are felt by the people that pass them down and the people who receive them. In the poem by Gladys Cardiff, entitled Combing, Alice Walker’s story Everyday Use, and in the movie The Joy Luck Club, which was based on Amy Tan’s book of the same title, the concept of intangible inheritance is shown through mother and daughter ties in succeeding generations. The poem, short story and movie were able to show that the stories, cultures and traditions are much more important than heirlooms because the former can be passed down from one generation to another continuously, and are able to shape the minds of the inheritors, making them much more enduring and can touch more hearts than material heritages. In the poem Combing¸ the inheritance being passed down from mother to daughter is the act of the mother combing her daughter’s hair, and even arranging it in plaits or braids. The third to fifth and last three lines of the poem explicitly mention combing as a heritage as: Her hair, combing, and think How women do this for Each other… ……………………………… Preparing hair. Something Women do for each other, Plaiting the generations (3-5, 27-29). Upon further analysis of the poem, it seems like the narration of the combing of the mother and daughter tells a reverse of actual events, such as showing the chronological order of the combing. Also, there is a lot of mentioning of the different hair rituals that each mother had to teach her daughters, in each generation. The poem also shows that the comb and other hair accessories are themselves tangible, while they are also prone to damage, the fact that the action is being repeated in the succeeding generations prove the combing act is very apparent, despite the availability or absence of combs. The tradition of a mother combing her daughter’s hair is able to endure longer not just because of the bond that was being shared, but also because of the persistence of the maternal culture that is associated with such acts. In a slightly contrasting but similar theme, the short story Everyday Use tells how within a generation a schooled-daughter tries to disinherit her of her slave roots and tries to cling more to the African culture, but could not fully understand her heritage. Her mother in the story saw that despite her daughter being educated, she was not fully aware of the true meaning of heritage, as well as the sentimental values of the things that were made by her ancestors. Despite being uneducated like her daughter, the mother knows the value of heritage, and she recognized it in her younger daughter, because aside from learning how to make quilts, she got more acquainted with her lineage through her grandmother and aunt (Walker 34). Lastly, the heirloom items such as the old quilts and the butter churn were seen by the mother and younger daughter to have greater value as heritage items because the stories of the people who made these things were also passed down, making sure that the intangible legacy of the family would not vanish. In a movie with a near-similar theme, The Joy Luck Club was also able to talk about intangible heritage, which in this case is the Chinese cultural heritage of the seven protagonists (Joy Luck Club). However, the heritage in this movie was harder to accept by the daughters and even harder to pass down by the mothers, which stemmed from their large cultural differences. The mothers in the movie were currently or formerly deeply-seated in the old Chinese customs and the traditions, and as they fled China and settled in the United States, their wish to keep the traditions and pass them on to their children while letting their daughters get Americanized became a double-edged sword. That is, the daughters were unable to fully accept their Chinese heritage in the beginning, as well as questioning the legitimacy of their Chinese identities while living as Americanized Chinese (Joy Luck Club). The full inheritance of the daughters of their Chinese heritage only became successful after their own immigrant mothers were able to reconcile their whole Chinese selves while surviving in their American society, and the daughters were able to learn from their mothers. This shows that despite the hard lessons that can be learned from the mothers, it is by accepting the strong mother and daughter bond that the true heritage such as cultures and traditions can be passed down without losing the true meaning of such actions and beliefs. Within families, heritage in any form is regarded as something very important. However, it is the cultural and traditional aspects of inheritance which are much more important, because it is able to shape the beliefs and values of the inheritor. This kind of inheritance can be further strengthened by the strong ties between the one that bequeaths and the one that inherits, as shown by the mother and daughter bonds in the poem Combing, the short story Everyday Use, and the movie The Joy Luck Club. The poem, short story and movie were successful in showing that the cultures and traditions have much more effect than material heirlooms because the cultures and traditions can have greater impact on the inheritors than material heritage due to the cultures, traditions, and stories passed down from each generation, making the former much more durable across many generations through the passage of time. Works Cited Cardiff, Gladys. "Combing." Gwynn, R. S. Literature : Pocket Anthology - 5th edition. London: Longman, Inc., 2011. 734-735. Print. The Joy Luck Club. Dir. Wayne Wang. Perf. Ming-Na, et al. 1993. DVD. Walker, Alice. "Everyday Use (1973)." Walker, Alice and Barbara T. Christian. Everyday Use: Alice Walker. New Brunswick/Piscataway: Rutgers University Press, 1994. 23-38. Print. Read More