Jennifer Cheung | Love Languages: Animating misunderstood emotions in Chinese American families

“Love Languages” is a web-based interactive animation that contrasts actions with misunderstood expressions of love between me and my Chinese immigrant mother. By using mouse interactions to switch between hearing my mother’s and my own voice overs while watching the animation, users can uncover contrasting Chinese and American emotional perspectives on the same experiences.
 


Differences in Chinese and American cultural conventions can cause conflicts in how Chinese immigrant parents and their American born children communicate emotions. With lower levels of acculturation, immigrant parents adhere closer to Chinese cultural norms of controlling emotions to maintain stability and harmony in the family unit. This leads to a pattern of expressing emotions through actions instead of words, such as providing and sacrificing for the family. However, their children are socialized in American culture, where they learn that emotions should be openly vocalized and heard to promote their individual well being. The contrast between parents’ action-based emotional expressions and children’s verbal-based emotional expressions can cause misunderstandings of each others’ intentions, thus diminishing mutual empathy and exacerbating intergenerational conflict.As an American born child of two Chinese immigrants, my evolving relationship with my parents has shown the importance of open emotional communication in forging closer and healthier bonds. “Love Languages” was made to illuminate the common struggle that parents’ and children’s face to connect as they rely on two different modes of expressing their emotions. It aims to create intergenerational mutual understanding by validating both parents’ and children’s emotional and cultural experiences. The use of animation and two concurrent voice overs can represent my family’s emotional relationship through the contrast of visual actions and hidden feelings my mother and I exchange. Visually, the animation shows the common act of slicing and eating fruit as a simple everyday act of service. However, buried feelings behind this action are revealed through two narrations that the audience can switch between by panning their mouse to either side of the screen. These concurrent points of view between me and my mother convey that the root of intergenerational conflict lies in the miscommunication of love. For Chinese American viewers with similar experiences, seeing and hearing emotions vocalized will hopefully serve as a first step towards building mutual empathy and mending intergenerational relationships.

 
Tags:#animation#ChineseAmerican#storytelling