Commentary | "Better Luck Tomorrow" (2002)

Better Luck Tomorrow really hits close to home for me in terms of its representations of Asian Americans. In high school I definitely saw firsthand the dark side of living up to the “model minority” stereotype in America, so it was hard to separate the images I saw in the film from the personalities and lives of my own friends back home. I know that writer/director Justin Lin grew up in the same southern California suburbs as I did, so it was interesting to see how he may have interpreted his characters from people he knew as well, and more importantly, it made me wonder how people from backgrounds unlike the both of us might react to their characters.

However, I think a discussion on whether these types of characters are “good” or “bad” for the Asian American community kind of misses the point of this film. Overall, the representations of Asian Americans in Better Luck Tomorrow are not about stereotypes or counter-stereotypes themselves, but more about challenging both of those ideas by depicting characters who are multifaceted and really uncategorizable. In the end, these boys sort of capacity for evil transcends their ethnicity and is brought down to a human fault. I think the film comments well on the possibly disastrous outcomes of self-destructive ambition and in that sense is very thought-provoking.

Company Credits (via IMDb.com):
Production Companies / Cherry Sky Films, Day O Productions Inc., Hudson River Entertainment, MTV Films, Trailing Johnson Productions
Distributors / MTV Films, Paramount Pictures

Commentary | "First Person Plural" (2000)

In the essay “What Must I Be? Asian Americans and the Question of Multiethnic Identity,” Paul Spickard argues that persons of Asian descent should embrace their Asian ethnicity perhaps even more if they are situated in an Anglo-American context. Even though Deann Borshay is not multiethnic, I think that her story of being adopted in a white American context is one that really complicates the notion of reconciling multiple identities. Whether it is possible to feel completely whole in either context (or even between them) is a question that I don’t think Deann has found an answer for in this film.

While she describes her connection to her Korean family and Korean culture as stemming from emotion and memory, she also comes to the realization that because she no longer depends on the Borshays for survival she has difficulty accepting them as her parents. I think in this way she is questioning where her loyalty should lie—with the family who took care of her or the family she feels that she truly belongs to but can’t truly communicate with. It’s difficult to choose sides, and because each adoptee’s experience is so different, there are no easy answers. What this film does bring up, however, are important ideas about the human need to belong to a past that can validate our present existence; and no matter how far removed we may be from it, why some consciousness of our roots and ancestry is vital to our self-worth.

Company Credits (via IMDb.com):
Production Company / Independent (Dir. Deann Borshay)
Distributors / Independent Television Services (IVTS), PBS P.O.V., National Asian American Telecommunications Association

Commentary | "Chan is Missing" (1982)

Chan is Missing asks a central question concerning Asian American identity—whether there is one, and to what extent assimilation plays a part in constructing it. This film was very accessible to me in its discussion of race because it portrayed the tension between wanting to retain Chinese culture exclusively or assimilate completely.

For instance, while a film like Flower Drum Song (1961) extols becoming fully American, Chan is Missing presents a more complicated picture; one that certainly relates to my own experience about wanting to retain the “good things” from my Chinese culture and using American culture to enhance my individual life. Director Wayne Wang’s solution to this mystery is precisely that everything is so contradictory despite what most of the film’s characters consider as fact. When Jo sets out to better understand who Chan Hung is, he is met with a myriad of perspectives about Chan and about Asian American identity—and throughout the film it seems that Jo is struggling to figure out if and where these perspectives intersect, both for Chan and his own sake.

Personally my opinion was swayed as each new perspective was introduced because I related to them in different ways. Perhaps most salient to me was the generational conflict between the “Chinatown politics” argument (“If they don’t want to recognize us, they will not recognize us”) versus Steve’s insistence that trying to find an Asian American identity was old news. It made me question whether identity was a group or individual finding, and whether it is fair to choose between the two in forming an Asian American identity that is profoundly shaped by both of its components.



Company Credits (via IMDb.com):
Production Company & Distributor / New Yorker Films

Mission Statement

What is Asian America?

During my first Asian American Studies class, this was the first question my professor posed. And even after weeks of study and a lifetime of firsthand experience, it remains a question that I have too many and too few answers for all at once.

What I can say about being Asian American is that one’s cultural attributes are constantly being redefined. In a sense, being Asian American means to exist in a constant state of being yet at the same time, a constant state of fluidity. For this reason, Asian American produced media and the genre of film in particular possesses so much potential for empowering Asian Americans as a community.

I’m fascinated by how the process of filmmaking is also an ongoing project of unlearning the images and messages Asian Americans are told on a daily basis about our identity. Asian American filmmakers explore the tensions between different aspects of representation, gender, history, and memory.

It is this exploration which allows us to realize that these ideas are in conversation with each other, both competing and complementing, and doing all of these things at once.

This website is my attempt to keep this conversation going. I want this to be a space where anyone concerned with the reconstruction and reifying of fictionalized histories in film can discuss how Asian American media can be subversive in the mainstream. And perhaps, for the prejudices of the past, this can be a space in which to find justice and resolution.

-- JL