podcast friday

[sabotabby]

 Today's podcast rec is "Everything Everywhere All At Once and the Asian American Family," on It Could Happen Here. I'm highlighting it because 1) it's a take I haven't seen anywhere else and I happen to agree, and 2) it's just an excellent piece of media criticism of the sort that I don't see enough. Mia chats with filmmaker Tiffany Yang about the film and where it's positioned more generally within Asian American cinema and culture. They are both Asian American and I am obviously not, and they do a good job of exploring nuances that I'm either unaware of or did not realize was a thing.

First of all, we all liked the movie. My initial impressions were that its reach exceeded its grasp and it was overlong, which I don't really object to, and that it didn't land the ending, which I do object to. But why? I saw it a second time and liked it a lot more, but I still felt the ending was kind of unearned. Its Oscar sweep and Michelle Yeoh and Ke Huy Quan finally getting the recognition they richly deserve is something we should all truly celebrate. Mia talks about how the character of Joy was the closest she's ever come to seeing herself on screen. And I don't think that any critique can take away from how important all of that is.

But we can also critique things we like, can't we? The problem with media criticism on the internet is that it so often boils down to Thing Good or Thing Bad with zero analysis or nuance. So when I see a piece like this that genuinely appreciates a work while picking it apart, the film critic in me goes absolutely bonkers with joy.

Mia describes it as the best version of the only type of film Asian American filmmakers seem allowed to make. Which, once you see the pattern, is impossible to avoid. There's a family struggling to run a small business that's in financial trouble. They struggle to assimilate into American society. There is intergenerational tensions. That tension is resolved, and the family is reconciled. No other story is allowed to be told, and the class positionality is very specific. Tiffany points out the difference between the film and book versions of Crazy Rich Asians; in the book, the family is not reconciled, and they change it for the film, because no other story is allowed to be told. She also references some filmmakers who tell other types of stories but these are not considered Asian American Films (TM), which is fascinating to me.

The most interesting element of it is the discussion of queerness, because I keep seeing EEAAO described as "queer joy" and like. It isn't? to me? Like it struck me how remarkably sexless the relationship was between Joy and her girlfriend, how that relationship only exists as a point of tension between Joy and Evelyn. But Mia and Tiffany go deeper, talking about the generational trauma that is glossed over by the film's resolution, the way in which the trauma to older generations must always supersede the trauma that parents and grandparents do to their children, the ways in which queerness is always framed as Other (note that both of the queer relationships depicted in the film are between Chinese characters and white/white-passing characters), and most of all, the fact that it's not anything intrinsic to Joy and her queerness that Evelyn embraces at the end, but the sheer fact of biological relation. Which is often just not enough.

They also talk about the role of the Elder in Asian American political discourse, and how it gets conflated with, say, Indigenous ideas of the Elder but is fundamentally different. There's a dovetail here with the concept of family abolition, which they suggest but don't explore, and I am absolutely dying to discuss this with the family abolition academic I know (who, incidentally, loved the film).

Anyway, I enjoyed the absolute hell out of this analysis and it made me really excited to talk about film again. 

Comments

[mistersmearcase]

I kind of want to watch it because 1) zeitgeist and 2) a client actually talked about it the other day and I felt like the only person in the world who wasn't getting the reference but I started it and found its aesthetic squicky and, if I'm being honest, had a big moment of Do Not Love with the casual antisemitism thing where a character I assume I'm generally meant to like calls Jenny Slate "big nose" and she's (until they edited it, I think I read) called that in the actual credits.

[grimjim]

From the Chinese perspective, all white Westerners are stereotyped as having big noses. Different normative baseline.

The linked Q&A concludes that the term was originally xenophobic and therefore racist, though different in meaning from comparable use in Western racism.
https://chinese.stackexchange.com/questions/23363/is-big-nose-really-used-for-westerners

Disclosure: I am Asian, and I have a relatively big nose.

[mistersmearcase]

And yet she uses the term to make specific reference to a woman played by a Jewish actress who flags very Jewish in and out of character. Disclosure: I am a Jew with a nose that passes on a face that doesn't.

[grimjim]

I've not yet seen the film.

Maybe we have a form of intersectional or hybridized racism in play, as integration/assimilation with a dominant culture can imply adopting the host culture's biases, both positive and negative.

Alternately, it could be cross-cultural insensitivity compounded by ignorance. I can point to a few offensive gaffes in Asian culture that shows how removed some of them are from Western consensuses regarding racism. Things hopefully have improved since this report from 1999 in Taiwan:
https://apnews.com/article/331b1b5874348ea70b35f261990d0176
Quote: Johannes Goeth of the German Trade Office in Taipei said the [offending] advertisement didn’t surprise them because he often encounters Taiwanese who admire Hitler and lack a deep understanding of European history.

[mistersmearcase]

But I guess something that has been bugging me lately and maybe this got caught in the same filter is that we use the term "racism" to refer to everything but racism toward/about Jews and then it's "antisemitism" which needs its own term because....not sure!

[sabotabby]

Yeah, there's a definite distinction between how other white characters are described (Sweater Guy) versus how the Jewish woman is described (Big Nose), though.

[sabotabby]

I didn't even remember that because the tacit endorsement of fatphobia was fresher in my brain.

I don't mind that Evelyn is flawed and sometimes a bigot—even abusive—if it didn't feel like the film decided some oppression/suffering is more important than others. But. It does. They don't specifically talk about that, but they mention how the fatphobia is played for humour and the homophobia isn't.

[frandroid]

Looking forward to that so I can blow people's bubble about the film a bit more. 8)

[sabotabby]

HAH. You can't on the internet. Did you see Jordy's post?

I should reiterate that I did enjoy it and prefer it getting accolades over some shit like Green Book. But it's sacrilege to say that it had any flaws at all.

[minoanmiss]

I loved _Green Book_ for 12 hours and then I realized how thoroughly I had been bamboozled and wanted to bang my head against the wall. And that was before I found out how Mr. Ali was lied to by the director and production about the character he portrayed.

[minoanmiss]

"genuinely appreciates a work while picking it apart" omg yes. I want to have this discussion about _Hidden Figures_ The Movie, but I digress.

"Mia describes it as the best version of the only type of film Asian American filmmakers seem allowed to make. " that makes a lot of sense. *takes notes*

[sabotabby]

OH yes, definitely with Hidden Figures. Which had a lot of great in it, mixed with whatever the fuck they decided to do with Liam Neeson's character.

[minoanmiss]

Liam Neeson? I don't think he was in the _Hidden Figures_ I was rferencing, the one about the Black ladies who worked for NASA? Do you mean Kevin Costner who got to play The White Guy Who Solved Racism who has to be in every movie about racism in the '60s and '70s (another one of those Required Tropes)?

[sabotabby]

*googles*

Yes, I mean Kevin Costner, whoops. Um. I swear I know my old white guy actors.

[minoanmiss]

[insert "they all look alike" joke here]

[sabotabby]

I wasn't gonna say it but we were all thinking it.

[yhlee]

Heh, I have not seen this because a clip convinced me it would set off my migraines like whoa with the visual? effects. My sister's opinion was that it was fine as a movie but didn't live up to the hype. OTOH, I have a friend of partial Chinese descent who loved it.

the best version of the only type of film Asian American filmmakers seem allowed to make

Oh gosh, now this I believe. :] (And I loved the film version of Crazy Rich Asians, haven't read the book, but...yes.)

[sabotabby]

I also have migraines that are sometimes triggered by film (not all the time with strobe or hyperkinetic cuts but 100% of the time with 3D) and yeah. If that is generally a migraine trigger for you, do not watch it because it is a zillion hours long and there is a lot of that kind of thing.

Most of my Chinese friends absolutely loved it and saw themselves in it in ways that they did not see themselves represented. And. Yay! So did Mia and Tiffany. But it's very easy to pick bad movies apart—I do it all the time—and so it was interesting to see people pick a pretty good movie apart.

[china_shop]

Ooh, thanks for this! *adds to line-up* :-)

[sabotabby]

I'm psyched for your take!

[greylock]

I enjoyed EEAAO enough when I saw it (aside from the hotdog fingers and the rocks) because it was a different flavour of film. And less studio than Shang-Chi.

I'm not sure it was worth the Oscar buzz, but I am not in the Academy, and at least it wasn't Oscar bait.

But... I don't remember a lot about it either? Which may be yet more proof I am way out of the zeitgeist.

[sabotabby]

HAh, see, I loved the hotdog fingers and the rocks. But other elements of the humour didn't work for me, and in general I didn't think it leaned in to the concept as much as it could have, opting more for a a Matrix-style "I can download these skills" over exploring the genre possibilities. But it was an enjoyable film. I was along for the ride right up until "be kind."

[greylock]

I mean, my overwhelming memory of hotdog scenes were "how does their society work?".
And laughing at the absurdist humour.

Still it's better than the movie I last saw.... ugh.

[highlyeccentric]

I have not seen this film, although I intend to (it was recommended to me as "an ADHD mood", as well as the Asian-diaspora angle; I actually only realised it had anything queer in it during the Oscars). But I have looked this podcast up and saved several OTHER episodes, they seem cool!

[sabotabby]

It's absolutely an ADHD mood. And a queer mood, for some, but I found that element of it unsatisfying personally. YMMV.

The podcast is amazing. If you're listening to Mia episodes, definitely err on the more recent ones rather than the older ones. She starts out as a fantastic researcher but not the most charismatic as a host, and then has massively levelled up as a host in the past few months.