When do we get to the good stuff?
Mar. 16th, 2023 05:18 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shrimpchipsssWas talking with people on twitter about Everything Everywhere All At Once and Asian diaspora movies and the celebration but also miasma of defensiveness around them.
A lot of big Asian diaspora movies follow the same rote story structure common to coming of age/coming out/being a second generation immigrant stories in which there is a family, there are the hopes and dreams the parent has for their child, there is the child's hopes loves and dreams (their queer identity, a career or interest in the arts) which they are terrified their parents will know about and not approve of, the thing is revealed, conflict!!!, resolution (here's a video essay about this). It's a tried and true story structure that works well and which EEAAO is a perfect example of.
The interesting thing in the discourse around EEAAO and Asian diaspora movies in general is the outsized celebration about "breakthrough narratives" that are actually the same narrative structure tons of stories use, and then defensiveness about why these stories are important (though did anyone say that they weren't? do people just want to start fights?).
The defensiveness is interesting though because I think it reflects an abject hopelessness about whether 2nd generation Asian diaspora think their parents are capable of change.
And I get that. These days I go back and forth about whether it is protective or detrimental for me to live assuming that my parents will never accept my queerness. Faatima brought up the harmfulness of assuming that our parents are not capable of change or critical thought. But then there's the lived reality of parents continually deciding that their love for you does not, in fact, override their expectations for your life, or their fear of social shame or exile.
I do think that this defeatist assumption is the reason for the perpetual angst-riddled state of diaspora Asian movies. We are still purging some kind of trauma through our art, and it has to happen, however much it makes me want to physically recoil at times. For better or for worse, this is the question that we are stuck on.
But is it that we won’t get to the promised land of storytelling that is more nuanced about parental/intergenerational issues until all of this shit is dealt with? That can’t be true when we already have movies like Saving Face (2004) which also follows the same simple story structure, and yet with much more nuance. Are movies like that just a fluke of that thing people have said about queer stories in media in the 80s and 90s and early 00s feeling more raw than the mainstream queer media rep we get now because the movies we get now are catering to a mainstream (cis, straight, white) audience.
Which is unfortunately also. something we are trapped in in this moment. The boba liberalism vision of our beautiful political future which is limited to media representation and being understood by white people and assimilated into white culture. Horrific!
Anyways.
Tangential thought about the way diaspora communities can be more traditional and conservative and the homeland because they are holding on so hard to what they see as their traditional values which by then are decades outdated. Which leads to some 2nd generation people being even more traditional or conservative than their parents, which is an actual plot point in Andor. And might contribute to 2nd generation people viewing their parents and culture as more unchanging than they really are or have the capacity to be. Because some of their beliefs are outdated by decades.
This is a mess. No big conclusion. I want more!
A lot of big Asian diaspora movies follow the same rote story structure common to coming of age/coming out/being a second generation immigrant stories in which there is a family, there are the hopes and dreams the parent has for their child, there is the child's hopes loves and dreams (their queer identity, a career or interest in the arts) which they are terrified their parents will know about and not approve of, the thing is revealed, conflict!!!, resolution (here's a video essay about this). It's a tried and true story structure that works well and which EEAAO is a perfect example of.
The interesting thing in the discourse around EEAAO and Asian diaspora movies in general is the outsized celebration about "breakthrough narratives" that are actually the same narrative structure tons of stories use, and then defensiveness about why these stories are important (though did anyone say that they weren't? do people just want to start fights?).
The defensiveness is interesting though because I think it reflects an abject hopelessness about whether 2nd generation Asian diaspora think their parents are capable of change.
And I get that. These days I go back and forth about whether it is protective or detrimental for me to live assuming that my parents will never accept my queerness. Faatima brought up the harmfulness of assuming that our parents are not capable of change or critical thought. But then there's the lived reality of parents continually deciding that their love for you does not, in fact, override their expectations for your life, or their fear of social shame or exile.
I do think that this defeatist assumption is the reason for the perpetual angst-riddled state of diaspora Asian movies. We are still purging some kind of trauma through our art, and it has to happen, however much it makes me want to physically recoil at times. For better or for worse, this is the question that we are stuck on.
But is it that we won’t get to the promised land of storytelling that is more nuanced about parental/intergenerational issues until all of this shit is dealt with? That can’t be true when we already have movies like Saving Face (2004) which also follows the same simple story structure, and yet with much more nuance. Are movies like that just a fluke of that thing people have said about queer stories in media in the 80s and 90s and early 00s feeling more raw than the mainstream queer media rep we get now because the movies we get now are catering to a mainstream (cis, straight, white) audience.
Which is unfortunately also. something we are trapped in in this moment. The boba liberalism vision of our beautiful political future which is limited to media representation and being understood by white people and assimilated into white culture. Horrific!
Anyways.
Tangential thought about the way diaspora communities can be more traditional and conservative and the homeland because they are holding on so hard to what they see as their traditional values which by then are decades outdated. Which leads to some 2nd generation people being even more traditional or conservative than their parents, which is an actual plot point in Andor. And might contribute to 2nd generation people viewing their parents and culture as more unchanging than they really are or have the capacity to be. Because some of their beliefs are outdated by decades.
This is a mess. No big conclusion. I want more!
