Everything Everywhere All At Once and the Asian American Family

Mia talks with film maker Tiffany Yang the politics of the Asian American family and queerness in media.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:05):
Welcome to Dick. It happened here at the podcast that
I and Mia Wong occasionally hijack talk about Asian American stuff,
and you know, some some some some pretty interesting Asian
American stuff happened, which is that, Yeah, there was a
sort of massive sweeping cultural victory question mark for the

(00:27):
Asian American community TM when everything ever we were all
at once did. Okay, I'm getting conflicting sources about exactly
the record that I said at the Oscars, but it
won seven Oscars, did very well. Everyone is very happy. Um. Yeah,
So I decided that I was going to use this
to talk about some other stuff that is related to it,

(00:49):
and with me to talk about many things, including sort
of the family in patriarchy and Asian American culture and media.
Is Tiffany a filmmaker from New York. Tiffany, Welcome to
the show. Hi, thanks for having me on. Thanks thanks
for being on. Um. So we were for trying to

(01:09):
figure out how precisely we want to sort of start this,
because you know, there's a lot of sort of angles
you can take. I think that the thing that I
want to start with is well, like a okay, everything
every all it Wants is a very good movie in
a lot of ways, and I think it's sort of
it's kind of the apotheosis of a structure of Asian

(01:33):
American media that I've I've talked about before on this show.
Um that I'm gonna I'm gonna run through a brief
explanation of what this is. So something that I yeah,
I've talked about a bit before that that I think
about a lot is the way in which Asian American
media has been. It has a basically a structural form.

(01:59):
It has there's a very specific story or set of
story structures into which anything you're trying to tell has
to be fit and that that series of things is okay.
So you have a small business, you have you have
a bunch of immigrants that come to the US or
that they are well usually they're already in the US,
and they're trying to run a small business and they're
having these issues sort of integrating into into sort of

(02:21):
like a wide American society, and there's some kind of
conflict in the family, and the TV show or the
movie is about like resolving this sort of conflict. Um. Yeah.
And I think everything ever all at once is like
the best version of this that we've ever gotten in

(02:41):
a lot of ways. But you know, and something I've
talked about in a certain New Year's episode is that
there's something about I guess Asian American like the way
our sort of political culture works that makes it so
that this is the only story that we tell. And
you know, I mean, you can look at a lot
of the sort of like, sorry, I've been rambling for

(03:02):
a lot, but I want to get this out of
the way before you go further. But you know, like
the there there's a lot of movies that are like
it's like you know, shows like Fresh off the Boat,
like Iron Fist is also sort of like almost literally
this right, um like Turning Red. This is sort of
like an emblematic example of sort of thing that is

(03:22):
exactly this, Like Fresh off the Boat is basically this, right.
I think part of the sort of there's a kind
of ideological shell game happening here that's about the family.
Everything ever, all at once, has a lot of similarities
the crazy rich Asians in ways that are kind of
not immediately apparent. I have finally reached the point, TM,

(03:42):
but which is that both everything everywhere, all at once
in Crazy Rich Asians ends in exactly the same way, right,
which is the the like the this the sort of
family tension that has had been sort of building up
and playing out throughout the entire movie like is resolved
and every one sort of goes back to being a family.
And this is interesting specifically for Crazy Rich Asians because

(04:06):
in the original, like in the book version of this story,
the family shatters. The plot of that movie is this,
this Asian American girl is dating like this guy who's
from Singapore, who has not told her that he's from
like an unbelievably rich, like Singaporean family, and the story
is about him going about them going to Singapore and

(04:28):
realizing that this guy is unbelievably rich and that his
family is just assholes who suck. And in the book,
like the family like mistreats both of them really badly
and so they just leave and they book it and
they cut they cut off the rich family. But in
the movie they some weird thing happens where like the
main character plays Ma Jung with the guy's mom and

(04:52):
like a miracle occurs in the family works out and
everything everyone at wants has a very similar sort of
thing where like the way this movie ends, And I
want to say I do. I do like this movie
a lot, But the way that it ends is Evelyn,
who is Joy's mom, walks up to her and says,
you're fat, and I don't like that you got a tattoo.

(05:12):
But also the family is good and like we should
work it out, and then they do, like a baricle occurs,
and there's this sort of running ideology in this which
is that like the family is sort of sort of
too big to fail, like you're you're not allowed to
have a a movie that's about something that's not about

(05:33):
the family, or be a movie where you know, like
the end of it is people walk away from your
family because it's hurt them a lot, right, And I
will also say that sort of Asian American cultural production
that doesn't center the family, it actually just doesn't get
read as being Asian American, right, Like I think, I um,

(05:56):
I don't know if you've seen this, but like being
View has this beautiful documentary called Minding the Gap, and
it's about like his trauma and his like sort of
youth growing up in a broken home and hanging out
with skateboarding friends, some of whom are like black and

(06:17):
that just never gets talked about as an Asian American film,
even though it's made by an Asian American filmmaker, and
his experience as like someone who actually migrated from China
is such a big part of his story. Like, because
it's not about the sort of family conflict and reconciliation,
it actually doesn't get read as an Asian American film

(06:39):
a lot of the time, which to me is interesting.
And yeah, I just wanted to second your point that
like in both of these films, everything everywhere, all at
once and crazy rich Asians, like nothing actually changes. You know,
there's the reconciliation within the family, but nothing about the
family structure changes. Like I think Evelyn her the sort

(07:02):
of like conciliatory gesture she gives us, like, oh, I'm
your mom, and I would always choose to be with
you in any universe. I forget like the exact phrasing.
It's been a while since, but it's something like that.
It's like, you know, I would still want to be
with you because I'm your mom. And it's like this
very um the family is it is its own explanation, Yeah,

(07:29):
and I think it points to sort of this is
the movie that I think hit the exact limit of
this kind of of this kind of sort of Asian
family politics because in in in it's in this sort
of like moment where it needs to justify itself. It can't.
It doesn't have anything. The moment's it's sort of it's

(07:52):
it's it's it's it's empty of an actual like it's
it's empty of any sort of like I D logical
message about why this should be redemptive, right, like just
you know, and and I think this is something that
like we don't think about enough, which is that like like, okay,
if if your mother hurts you like a lot, right,

(08:15):
like them being your mother is not a redemptive thing.
I mean, this is something I've been thinking about a
lot in the context of sort of transness and and
you know, and in the ways that like trans people
like i mean literally get killed by their families, in
the ways that they get you know, kicked out from
their families, and the ways that sort of this this

(08:40):
this sort of self justification of it's good because it
is right that like the relationship. Yeah, this is sort
of what you were saying, right, is like it justifies
itself by just like well, I am your mother. It's like,
well that's not an argument, right, yeah, right, and it's
not enough. Like I think Joy spends the whole film

(09:02):
like fighting to be seen by her mom, and in
the end, her mom doesn't really give any reason why
she loves Joy, Like there's nothing like specific to Joy
herself as a person. It's just like you're my daughter,
I'm your mother. Of course I love you. And you know,

(09:24):
like why should that be something a queer child settles for,
like just this very basic baseline of acceptance rather than
anything that like actually celebrates who they are as an individual. Yeah,
and that's something that I also wanted to talk about
with This is like and this is not just like
the specific you know, we're talking a lot about the

(09:45):
Certific movie because this is like the most recent one
that's come out, and and we're not sort of saying
this to like like there is a lot of like
good stuff in this movie, Like this is the movie
like like Joy is probably the character who is like
closest to me who I have ever seen in anything
like at any point, right, and like there was something

(10:05):
you know, sort of incredibly emotional, like I cried a
lodger in this movie. That was like incredibly emotional about
you know, like seeing yourself in it, Like yeah, yeah.
But there's something about the way that Asian Americans, like
especially sort of like cysaid Asian Americans, think about queerness
that that I think is is you see in this movie,

(10:26):
which is that. Okay, so this movie has two queer
relationships in it, right unless you're going to count like
the guy in the raccoon, which it's funny, but I
don't know about that one, but right, but you know,
the actual like the actual two sort of like queer

(10:46):
relationships are between Joy and her girlfriends and then between
Evelyn and the tax lady. And there's two things that
are interesting about that. One is that both of the
both of the characters, they're in relationships with our white
and very and this this is a visit like something
that's very very specifically like pointed out about Joy's girlfriends,

(11:06):
and you know, you know that's the joke is like, well,
she's half Mexican, but she's played throughout the entire thing
as like an outsider who like doesn't understand what's happening
in this sort of scenes, like doesn't understand the family dynamic,
doesn't doesn't understand its knees and you know, and you
see this again with Okay, so who have like you know,
they're able to imagine a world in which, like Evelyn,

(11:31):
the main character, who has like just been homophobic this
entire movie, is in a queer relationship and like, yeah,
like I good for her. But if you look at
who it's with, right, it's it's the character in the
movie who is this tax lady who her thing is
that she is like like she she she she is
like the human representation of the sort of white supremacists,

(11:52):
like capitalist bureaucracy that is, you know, attacking this family
and is sort of like driving these people into the ground.
And then she's sort of redeemed by by like love
and queerness. But there's this way that queerness gets positioned
is outside of asianness, by the way that like by
the the way that the only possible crew relationship that

(12:14):
they can imagine is with a white person, as you know,
as someone who's explicitly marked as an outsider. Right, Yeah,
I think that's a really good point. Like queerness it
queerness is like attached to these anxieties over assimilation. Yeah,

(12:34):
from the perspective of like the older generation like Evlyn
and Going Going is like the fear of them being
assimilated too much into this Western culture um, which is
just a very it's it's very strange to me that
this is the thing that keeps coming up in like
Asian American narratives and discourses because obviously, like Asian American,

(12:59):
like Asian your cinema in Asia is like such a
powerful cultural force. And the film makes all these one
car Hire references, and I feel like One car Hi
has made like one of the greatest works of crew
cinema happy together um of like recent decades. And so
it's just it's so strange, um how craness is being

(13:21):
positioned as like an external threat. And I mean, like
you know, you you could you could take a sort
of like like the if you if you want to
do the lib analysis of this, Like China has had
queer rulers like there has there has the West produced one,
like maybe I possibly at some point maybe, but like
you know, like it's kind of like it's ideologically frustrating, right,

(13:44):
like like you know you can fall back onto like
we know that, like we have records of where people
in China for like five thousand fucking years, right, Like
it's you know, but like I think, I think what's
really interesting about this is that this is something that
seen as so natural that people writing like even like
like Asian American like writers writing about the film don't

(14:07):
even notice it, like they just they just sort of
passively reproduce it. Yeah, And I don't know, I think
it's like, I mean, it's deeply frustrating, like being an
Asian queer person, because this is something that like, you know,
the the kinds of right wing nationalism that like are

(14:31):
like they they you know, like there's kinds of sort
of Chinese nationalism right that will make that will make
this like explicitly make the same argument that like gay
people are like a like a sort of like I mean,
I guess they would have they would have said it
was borshewaba. Now it's a sort of like decadent Western
like imposition onto the like onto the world of Asia.
But it's like like no, but then but then, but

(14:52):
you know, you you get these like sort of like
very well credentialed, like progressive like Asian American who are
just either implicitly or almost explicitly making exactly the same argument. Yeah, yes,
And it's also what the American right wing think, right

(15:12):
like they want to China as like if you know,
China represents this like sexual threat of having like the
society where everyone is in their place, you know, Like
they imagine that these sort of like traditional gender roles
are much more adhered to in China, which is why
it's like we're on the decline, like China's rising. So

(15:35):
it's yeah, it is a very weird idea that nationalists
on both sides are attached to. And it's disappointing that
um Asian Americans who think of themselves as progressive or
even radical kind of reproduce this unthinkingly. Yeah. I mean
one of my like recent black Pill moments was I

(15:55):
don't know if people remember this, um, but there there
there was There was someone on Twitter who very kind
of famously got like just like obliterated for saying that,
I for for saying that like people people shouldn't like
cancel their subscription to The New York Times after they
like did the whole thing. They did this whole bullshit.

(16:17):
A few people don't know what the sort of scandal
was it. So the a bunch of people who'd written
for the New York Times sent them a very very
bild letter saying like, hey, can you guys like fix
some obvious like like not even saying fixed, like can
you report on trans issues better here? Or some like
glaring short of mistakes that you made in New York
Times through a hissy fit and got really mad at

(16:38):
them and and you know this, this person's reaction was like, oh,
well you can't you like, don't cancel your subscription, like
you have to support the news. And it was this
like sort of moment and she she is one of
the host of like one of the big progressive ation
American podcasts, and it was like it was just you know,
for me, it was it was just really sort of
like black pilling moment of like, oh, this is like
this is like what like like you know what like

(17:01):
like three three, three seventy five a month. It is
what these people think my life is worth. Like yeah,
I don't know. I think this kind of ideological stuff
is very deeply tied into the way that Asian Americans
have been representing and thinking about the family instead of
recent years. And but but but but before before we

(17:22):
go into that, do you know when the family is
trying to sell you. It is it is the products
and services that support this podcast. We have to take
an ad break. We will be right back. Yeah, just

(17:46):
out of just out of curiosity, since I don't have
the pleasure of listening to the ads while we're recording,
Like what is going to play during that? I have
no idea, Like, it could be anything. I don't know.
It could be a gold ad, it could be the
f while we have the FBI tried to do it. Yeah,
we've had, We've had, We've had law unfortunate agencies. We've
had people selling gold Ronald Reagan coins. I we've had.

(18:09):
I don't think I've seen that, like since I was
a child. I think they used to have like television commercials. Yeah,
they do it on podcasts now. Apparently a thing that
I discovered when people sent me so look like maybe
maybe maybe maybe maybe they'll do a Thatcher one and

(18:31):
you two can own the the immortal words. There is
no such thing as society. There is only individuals in
the family. Yeah. Wow, Well, whatever it takes to keep
the podcast running. Yeah, so all right, something I wanted

(18:52):
to sort of circle back to is, you know, I
think one of the one of the sort of one
of the things about this kind of Asian American media,
You know that you have this this sort of ambivalence
of like like like what the sort of queer child

(19:15):
is supposed to be? And you know, like I would
say this like it is a pretty common experience if
you are like a queer child of an Asian family
that your family does fucked up shit. Do you like
that's a thing? Um? And this is I wanted to
ask you about something that you've been talking about that

(19:36):
I'm sort of interested in, which is one of the
things that I don't know when you try to talk
about this stuff. There's this way in which the way
we sort of collectively think about when I say we
this is like I guess, like a kind of specific
Asian American thing. The way we think about trauma gets

(19:57):
involved very quickly. Yeah, And I was wondering for you
talk about that some more. Yeah, I feel like there's
this there are these sort of like unspoken discursive rules
where when you talk about trauma within an Asian immigrant family,
there are like, first of all, it's always intergenerational trauma, right,

(20:21):
Like you can't talk about like a queer child experiencing
trauma without then like getting into the fact that, oh,
like the parents have experienced traumatic things like through the
process of immigration or like war, the refugee experience, etcetera, etcetera.
And so there's this sort of like economy of trauma

(20:41):
where some members within the family get their trauma treated
as more legitimate and others don't. I think it's like
really common to hear this refrain, which is like, oh,
second generation immigrants are like the you know, people like
US Asian immigrant children who were born in the West, Um,

(21:05):
can't possibly know that like the real trauma that our
parents or grandparents went through because they were the ones
who like fled their countries or experienced war firsthand, or
grew up in poverty. But then it's also just like
when we talk about eight intergenerational trauma, Um, there's this

(21:29):
sort of like obfiscation of who was enacting that trauma
within the family, right, like if the intergenerational trauma exists,
like who is passing it down? And so I don't
I don't know if I'm articulating myself well on this,
but um, yeah, I guess the essential ideas that I

(21:52):
think there's this like mechanism which kind of um immediately
dilegitimizes any talk of abuse or trauma from the perspective
of um Asian youth or from the perspective of like
the child in the family. Yeah, And I think I

(22:13):
think that's a kind of I don't know, there's just
really baffling, deep unwillingness in a lot of ways to
think about. And I think this is a sort of
broader like cultural thing too, But there's just deep unwillingness
to think about the family as a side of violence
and as a side of sort of profound violence. It's like,

(22:34):
you know, like it's the place where the violence that
shapes you comes from in a lot of cases. And
I mean, like I know a lot of people. This
has happened to you, has happened to me to some extent,
And there's this real kind of you know, this is
what this is what I actually really liked about everything everywhere,
all at once. It's like it like goes into that

(22:55):
in a lot of ways. Like it is a movie
for about nine the nine tenths of the movie. It
is a movie about how like the people around like
how how the people in your family can hurt you
repeatedly and about the sort of like the ways that
they think about it, the way but you know, there's
there's but but but but but I think this is

(23:17):
where this sort of perspective thing comes into it, where like, yeah,
we're I think, like we don't really have a language
to sort of talk about this stuff, and the way
the film deals with it is sort of like you know,
is is this kind of like very specific kind of nihilism,

(23:38):
which is like definitely a thing that you can fall into, right,
like you know, like that like that that is definitely
a reaction to being traumatized, but it's seen as like
illegitimate and world destroying I think in a lot of
ways because it causes you to sort of like if
if that's your experience of the family, like you're going
to leave or you're going to or you're only going

(23:59):
to and by force, and so you know, the movie
sort of rejects it. But but you know, there's this
way that it's very difficult to talk about this stuff
and about the sort of like long arc of how
people have thought about the family before us. Right, what's
an example of what you mean by like how people
have thought about the family before us? Well, I think

(24:21):
I think in the Chinese context in particular, there's a
very there's like there's I mean, if you look at
what was happening in in the sort of rat like
in the in the sort of very radical periods in
Chinese history in the last you know, if you like
last sort of hundred years, you look at sort of
what's going on in nineteen twenty five, if you look
at what happens immediately like after the Chinese Revolution, like

(24:44):
there is a real period of like questioning, questioning patriarchal authority,
of questioning like what is the family for? Like why
why are we doing this? And you know, I think
I think the answers they came to were ultimately unsatisfying,
which is that like, well, we need the family around
because like we we are, our economy does not function
without uncompensated labor. So the Maoists sort of like attempt

(25:09):
to grapple with this fails. But I don't like as
as as as with many things that Maoism attempt to
grappled with, I don't think they were wrong to look
at it. I think their solutions were all terrible, But
I think there's this kind of I mean, there's this
reaction there's there's a kind of older Asian queer reaction
which I think is like kind of deeply suspicious of

(25:31):
the family, as you know, this thing that has an
enormous amount of potential to sort of inflict violence on
you and sort of destabilize your life and cut you
off from resources and information. I mean, I was struck
by someone else making this comment about how like in

(25:53):
everything everywhere, all at once, you know, they can imagine
like the sort of infinite um number of universes, but
in every single one, the family unit remains the same,
you know, like the social arrangement never changes across all
of these different universes. Yeah. I thought that was a

(26:16):
really good point. There's just like the sense in which
a lot of the recent Asian American culture can't imagine
the family as like something that can be transformed. It
just kind of takes it for granted as this like static,
eternal structure which can't be challenged, and people, if they

(26:37):
find reconciliation or happiness, it needs to be somehow within
that same arrangement. Yeah, And I think a lot of
that has to do with like the thing that we've
decided about elders collectively, which is another one of those things,

(27:00):
like is like the legitimacy of the authority of elders
is something that in in Chinese revolutionary history is something
that's very much up for debate, and almost everyone who
decided to like take up arms against the state, like
almost all of those people were like, this is messed up.

(27:21):
And then you know, I think, I think partially as
a result of how badly sort of the Maoist project goes,
and then also I think as as as a kind
of like explicit part of state policy, there's this way
in which that kind of authority gets reinscribed and any

(27:43):
sort of questioning of it gets gets looked at as
like oh or like a return to sort of like
Maoist egalitarianism or whatever. Which the thing that I see
a lot in the ways that like not really Asian Americans,
but like in the in in in in, you see
this in Chinese discourse like a decent amount. I mean,

(28:05):
you see this in kind of um messed up ways,
and some of the Asian American discourse from people whose
families never participated directly in the Maoist project. You know,
they might have like a lot of people who immigrated
here to the US weren't like they were connected to
the KMT. They were on the nationalist side. There are

(28:28):
people who ideologically were never aligned with UM any sort
of socialist project, and you know they'll they'll they'll invoke
things like well, you know, this is exactly what my
ancestors were fleeing from China. Yeah, and it's like, okay,
like you guys, like I I have really bad news

(28:50):
for you about like what the KMT's ideology was, and
like I feel like this is like sort of these
are like the egg monopoly people, right, Yeah, And but
I think I think like this has two effects, right,
which is like, on the one hand, those people like
that that like specific kind of very weird Chinese anti

(29:11):
communist is sort of incredibly privileged in in the way
that like that stuff's thought about. But then you know,
like there are a lot of people who are in
like from like from China who are in the US
like specifically because of the failure of this project. And
this is something else you talked about in the Atlanta episodes.

(29:33):
But like several of the people like who were killed
in Atlanta, like were there because like liberalization drove them
to a point where like they you know where where
they had to work to support their families, and you know,
and and and the the other thing that sort of
comes hand in hand with liberalization is that that and

(29:55):
I don't know, this is something that like people really
don't want to think about, which is that you know,
economic to somebody said political liberalization in China came hand
in hand with this massive entrancement of the patriarchal project,
which is the one child policy just sort of slamming

(30:17):
down like a hammer of being of the state, just
being like we are going to directively like we are
we are going to directly control your reproductive autonomy. We
are going to you know, we are going to force
that we sterilize people. We are going to like we
would literally just limit the amount of kids you can have.
We are going to make this sort of like giant
I don't know, like this enormous state intervention into like

(30:39):
social reproduction, and the people who are the victims of that,
like you don't really hear from them much. I mean,
like what one of the stories I'm still just haunted
by is that one of the people who died in Atlanta,
like her family refused to bury her, like refused to
take her remains to bury her because like their village

(31:00):
is like no you you you never married, so you
can't be like buried in the village and wow. Yeah,
and so you know, like her like she had a
funeral in the US that was attended by no one
who knew her because none of her friends could show
up because you get a rushed by the cops. And
you know, there were these like there were these kinds

(31:20):
of like transnational linkages of like the violence of people's
families that just disappears from this sort of like narrative
of like like Asian americanness, like is the family is
this union basist relation? Right? And on that d of

(31:41):
did we also want to talk about how the sort
of like focus on the small business slash family or
the family as a small business obscures some of the
class conflicts within the Asian American community. Like yeah, these
very massage workers you're talking about. I remember in the
wake of that Atlanta stings, a lot of people started

(32:02):
they kind of views the massage workers as like an
emblem of the Asian American community more broadly um one
in fact, like a lot of the sort of like
more professional class Asian Americans or like the Asian Americans
who get platforms in the media, they aren't like they

(32:25):
aren't from the same class as like the massage workers are. Um,
we heard from like a lot of small business owners,
but those are those are the same people who like
own massage parlors and hire these exploited workers, who like
have undocumented status and who can thus be like put
into much more precarious positions than like you know, US

(32:51):
citizens and so, um, yeah, I did you want to
talk a bit more about that? Yeah, I mean, I
think I think the small business owners it's a really
sort of interesting and powerful character, like especially in the US,
because it's it's like it's possible to be a small

(33:13):
business owner, be really poor, but also not be propertyless. Yeah,
and I think that like the like the specifically like
the core of the American dream is is to own property.
And you know, so here is this class you can
point out as like, oh, well we're really poor, but
you don't actually you never have to look at labor
relations at all, right, and that that like frees you

(33:36):
from having to actually think about what capitalism is and
and it also lets you it lets really like the
actual sort of like the real sort of Asian American
ruling class, right, like the actual billionaires, right, and you
know there are Asian American billionaires. There's there's a good
number of them. There's also just a bunch of just
Asian billionaires. Because there is a there's just an Asian

(33:59):
ruling class. It lets those people, especially in the US,
hide behind the image of the Citi small business owner, right,
and they can you know, and they can use it
the launder their sort of reputation because like it's in
the US, like being anti small business is like the
hardest position you can possibly take. It is like like
it is you you like, I don't I don't know

(34:22):
if people remember this. Um, a friend of mine, Vicky Ostwall,
wrote this book called in Defensive Looting. Oh yeah, yeah,
great book. Everyone should read it. Like they were like
sitting US senators were like like yelling about the book,
like like a huge swasp on left left got like
unbelievably mad about it. Like a lot of you will

(34:42):
probably also get mad about it. But like, like one
of the things that always comes up with with with
looting is like I you know, it's like, well, are
you gonna loot small businesses? And it's like well, actually, yeah,
like like it as far as people looting small businesses,
a lot of times it's the people who work there
and it sucks because working for small businesses is fucking
terrible and right, yeah, people in the community where those

(35:06):
like small businesses are and like our discriminatory towards Yeah,
and Vicky makes this point about this, there's this kind
of populism that gets invoked where you know, one of
the police statements about I think it was about ferguson
Um was there talking about like they burned down our
Walmart and it's like, well, what do you mean our Walmart?

(35:28):
Like fucking owned the Walmart, Like, don't get shipped from it.
Everyone who works on the walmarket's fucked. Everyone has to
buy it from the Walmart. But it's it's just really
hollow like populism, Like it's this thing that like you
assemble a community based around then around the corporation. And
I think that's kind of what's been happening with Like
I think this is the reason why Asian American culture
is like like this, because it's it's this it's like,

(35:51):
you know, there's there's this this very hollow like in
a lot of like like multinational like populism has been
assembled around like the figure of the small business owner,
but it's ultimately like it doesn't really have ideas other
than you should let us like you should let us
make money without being racist. And also the fact like

(36:12):
the it has that idea, and then it has the
idea that the family is good because it is and
that's kind of it. M yeah, yeah, I don't I
don't know why. I think there's there's a lot about well, okay,
I always say this, like the the the day people

(36:36):
are okay with looting small businesses is the day the
US can actually fall, and any until before then, like
it will, it will survive, because that's always the sort
of last defense of capitalism is like what about small
businesses and you will you will get people who call
themselves communists who will be like no, no, no, actually
these are fine. It's like I mmmm mm hmm. Okay.

(37:09):
So I wanted to kind of pivot back around a
bit to talk about elders a bit more because I
feel like I kind of sidetracked us off of that.
And yeah, I think there's this really I don't know,
there's been this kind of like rehabilitation of the elder
in a way that like was something that was deeply

(37:32):
questioned in periods where it was kind of like it
was more obvious and less and more socially sectable to
sort of look at the power these people have and
how much it can suck. M Well, yeah, I think
I noticed this picking up during you know, the sort
of like first state of anti Asian attacks during COVID.

(37:54):
I think that's one like a lot of progressive Asians
started invoking the figure of the elder, right, like, our
elders are being attacked, like, um, an attack on our
elders is an attack on our community, Like that sort
of thing, um where the elder is kind of like

(38:15):
used as a sort of emblem of the innocence of
the Asian American community, or what do you like, what
work do you think the elder is doing there in
this discourse? Like why does it have to be an elder?
Like what if we were just saying Asian people are
being attacked, or like what if it was Asian youths
being attacked? Like why does it have to be the

(38:36):
Asian elder? Because I think we were talking about this earlier. Empirically,
it's not exactly true right, it wasn't mostly old people
who are victims of these attacks. Yeah, And I mean
I think this is one of the areas where, like
the murky, like it's really really hard to get good
data on being attacked because I mean, police reports are

(38:57):
obviously incredibly unreliable, right, and then you know, like they're
self collected data. But the self collected data is not
all encompassing it, you know, it's sort of skewed in
its own ways. But yeah, I think I think there's
this way in which, like, I don't know, like I
think there's almost as way in which elders almost like

(39:18):
they're also like like personally infantilized by it. Where it's
like pick does this sort of like like part of
like they use as a sort of symbol of like
people who can't defend themselves, which partially isn't true, like
there were actually examples of like Asian elders like defending themselves,
but but it does this kind of like and also

(39:39):
like the rates of gun purchase purchases one up with it.
I mean, I know, like just then totally in the
Chinese American community, I knew so many like like elderly
Chinese people who are like I'm going to go out
and buy a gun though. Yeah, yeah, I think like

(39:59):
the the way that that thing it was invoked has
a lot of sort of like I don't know, it
was it was like there was this way in which
they like they became framed as like this is sort
of like this is the apotheosis of like everything that
it is to like be Asian American h and that

(40:21):
like that like the fact that that was under attack
was this sort of incredible crisis, right, And I think
like I think there's like that abs gears a lot
about what was happening, which is that like if there
was one clear trend in the data, it was that
women were being attacked at like a way higher rate
than anyone else. And you know, and this has been

(40:45):
a thing that has sort of continued, which is like
I don't know, like there's been more attacks in the
last like few months, right, and it's it's it's it's
been a lot of like young women getting like young
Asian women getting pushed in front of trains and people
have just really stopped caring, like yeah, to the extent

(41:08):
where like it's it's like literally a meme that you
can like watch the cycle of like the stop API
hate like signs coming up and down right, And I
don't know. I think I think the elder part of
it kind of like it obscured a lot of what
was actually happening. Yeah. I feel like the last incident

(41:28):
that really made a splash in the media was, um,
the murder of Christina Una is that her I forget
what her last name is, but um, Christina Una Lee
um getting murdered in Chinatown. And this was already a

(41:49):
year ago, um, And I haven't really heard anything since.
Like I see things in the local news that where
I live in Queens recently how to a couple of attacks,
um just a week ago, I think, But it didn't

(42:10):
make the national news or anything. Yeah. And I think
the way that the kind of like hierarchy of victimhood
I guess affected that like has had I you know,
I'm not sure it's the biggest, like single reason why
everyone has sort of stopped caring. But like, I like,

(42:31):
I think the sort of stop API hate like that
moment kind of only happened because there was this sort
of backlash against like there's this backlash against Black Lives
Matter and against the insurrection and people needed another people
needed a kind of like ideologically safe like thing, like

(42:51):
way of demonstrating like how good their politics were or whatever.
But I think it definitely contributed to sort of why
like stuff has been abandoned. And I also wanted to ask,
do you see this this thing, this stixation on alders. Um,

(43:14):
it's happening at the same time that ancestors get invoked
a lot in like Asian American literature, especially queer literature. Um,
I'm thinking of authors like Ocean Wong, Like, how did
ancestors become such a thing. Yeah, it's really I don't know,
I really don't understand how that happens. Like a lot

(43:35):
of my ancestors fucking sucked, Like I don't know, like
like I don't know how to sort of like I
don't know. I have this sort of I don't know,
I have this sort of weird sense of the kind

(43:56):
of politics at work here, which is like there's a
lot of kinds of politics that I think can work
in for example, in indigenous contexts that are very very powerful,
that don't really work in the Asian American context where
like like our ancestors, like if you're a Chinese, right
your ancestors did some fucked up shit, like your ancestors

(44:19):
did a lot of jeticides, like you you like, you know,
and I think I think this is something that's actually
at the core of the kind of like right wing
Chinese nationalism, which is that like right wing Chinese nationalism
is basically about the anger that China was like ceased
to be able to be an empire, because like if
you look at the sort of colonization process, right like

(44:39):
the Qing are this very very expansionist like like sort
of militarist imperial state, right like they're they're they're they're
they're like they conquered like they if they find a
bunch of wars around Tibet, they conquered shing John they
do Jedticide. They're like immediately they're pushing south. They're pushing
like they're they're basically pushing like in every direction they

(45:01):
can possibly push. And then they kind of like you know,
they they they hit like a pretty impressive territorial boundaries
and then their ability to do imperialism gets kind of
halted because suddenly there's other imperial powers like in the region,
and you know, and the sort of end of this
is like they they lose all these wars and you

(45:23):
have the start of like you have the start of
the Century of Humiliation and all of the sort of
stuff that happens there. But it's like the actual thing
that they're like, the actual thing that the Century of
Humiliation people are humiliated about. Well, I mean the fact
that it's called the Center of Humiliation and not like
I don't know, like the like the Century of Death
or something, which for people who don't know what Century

(45:44):
of Humiliation is. Um, So, I think it's it's I
think that the actual I think it's like eighteen forty
nineteen forty. There's this is sort of nationalist term around
understanding this period in which China is undergoing like you know,
like it is genuinely like in China are like suffering
enormous imperial violence. Um Like, I like unfathomable numbers people

(46:07):
die in this period. This is like the Opium but
basically a period from the Opium Wars until you know,
sort of through the various Japanese conquests and then sort
of ending essentially with the Revolution. But yeah, I don't know,
like I think it's interesting that it's it's understood in
the in terms of national humiliation, in terms of sort
of like the loss of this ability to do I

(46:29):
mean to do imperialism and instead of in sort of
terms of like the just unfathomable human suffering that went on.
And I think this all of this sort of comes
back to this weird kind of intensification of nationalism kind
of among everyone in the last like especially since twenty twenty.

(46:53):
You know, I mean there's been there's been like a
kind of like explicit like Chinese nationalists terms some parts
of left, but I think I think it's really kind
of like hit everyone in ways that like hasn't really
been examined. There's been this kind of difficulty in having

(47:14):
a kind of like theoretical and cultural language to speak
about Asian American nous, partially because well because like the
you know, I've talked about this before, right, but like
the the the term Asian American was created by like
third worldists, right, many of whom are a Maoists, some
of whom are certain marketist Lendinness. But like that that

(47:36):
whole language just died. I mean, like you know, you know,
you can still find like Boba Vankian or whatever, but
like the sort of language is like understanding yourself was
part of the Third World, and like you know, like
as as like a liberal national liberation movement, like that's over.
National liberation is basically dead as a politics, like and
any and anyone who tried it after a certain point

(47:58):
like just got called session and now just get murdered horribly.
Um and like you know, and there's there's obviously also
the sort of like China Vietnam, Cambodia fighting each other
thing that that has this massive impact on that kind
of politics, and it gets replaced with um, this kind
of politics that's based that's you know, it gets sort

(48:19):
of replaced by like the Asian civil rights movement stuff, right,
But like there's there's no the thing is like a
rescue is it doesn't have politics, Like its politics are
completely incoherent. Like you have like you literally have these
marches where you have like like old school like camt
Des squad guys like marching next to maoists, And it's

(48:40):
like why you can you can because it's supposed to
be a sort of like panaty logical thing and over time,
like all the all the ideologies they're supposed to compose
it die and but but that meant that they're like
there's there's no like, there's no actual language to sort
of talk about the experience because the two sets of
vocabularies that like or like wait like frames of understanding

(49:02):
the struggle or just have both kind of like you're
basically collapsed or been discredited. And I think that leaves
this whole, and people are trying to fill the whole
by like adopting other people's politics, but like, it doesn't
work for us. I don't think, like, I I don't know,

(49:22):
like I like, I think people will disagree with me
about the potential of of sort of ancestor politics and
politics of elders, but like, I don't think it does
that much for us. Yeah, I think the last thing
that I do want to say is, you know, if
we've reached the limits of a lot of the politics

(49:45):
that we've been seeing here, um what what what kinds
of politics and what kind you know, also sort of
what kind of media do you do? You do you
see as stuff that we can use to go beyond this,
because I think there is a lot of like, like,
there are a lot of like people creating good like
queer stuff. They're not like, yeah, actually I think I

(50:11):
mentioned this to you. Um. I recently watched this film
called Return to Soul Um. It's by a director called
Davy two, and it's about a French Korean adoptee. So
she was adopted from Korea as a baby, I mean yeah,
as a baby by French parents and grew up in
friends And the film is like kind of a journey

(50:34):
of her going back to Korea and meeting her birth family.
But it's like, it's not it doesn't fall into the
same sort of like family natalist politics. It's very like
deeply questioning of um, of the family, and of even

(50:57):
like this idea that um, I guess what the sort
of like wayward queer, stray Asian child like needs in
order to heal from trauma. Like she doesn't really have
reconciliations with either family, like either her French family that

(51:21):
she comes from, Like they're very much sidelined in this film.
They just don't play that big of a role. And
then she and then when she goes to Korea, you know,
she has these very like awkward encounters meeting her birth
family because they're like immediately like oh, you know, we're
so sorry. We gave you away, now you're back, you

(51:41):
could come live with us, And then she's just like
hold on, like I don't even know if I consider
you my family. And so it it seems to me
like to really depart from this like script that we've
become so accustomed to in Asian diasporic in a really
interesting way, I thought. And it's also a lot about music,

(52:04):
Like it's a very moody, music driven film. It doesn't
feel that identitarian. Yeah, I would recommend everyone to watch
it everything everyone all at once. Is we have that
we have now told the best version of that story,
and I think we can find you know, I would
just like like this is this is a really broad recommendation,

(52:27):
but like, go watch One Car. This is this, Okay,
this is the most film nerd I'm ever gonna get
that doesn't involve I am I suddenly blanking the name
of the thing, Sorry, Daniel, The most film nerd I'm
ever gonna get that doesn't involve like Commune de Paris
eighteen seventy one is go watch One Car. Why Like
they're they're I don't know. I I think I think

(52:47):
there is something to be gained by looking at you know.
I mean they're like looking at Hong Kong Cinema looking
at I don't know, I I like good, good, Like
Americans have finally realized that Koreans and it was really good,
which is wonderful. Um, I'm glad, I'm glad. We're, you know,
getting to the place where people realize that it's that like,

(53:09):
there's a lot of great stuff going on there. But
we know it is possible for Asians to tell different
stories because all across the world they already are, right,
like we we are already telling stories that are different
and more interesting than this. And I think, well then,
and I must typically saying, like then everything everywell it was,
but then that then the specific structure that that that

(53:31):
the Asian American movies fall into. And yeah, people should
go discover them because they're great, and yeah, we can
find new and better kinds of queer joy and yeah, yeah, Tiffany,
thank you so much for joining us and being I
don't know why I'm saying us as if there's more
than me here, but yeah, thank you, thank you for

(53:52):
being on the show. Yeah anytime. Thank you for having
me on. And it's been a really stimulating conversation yeah, yeah,
this has been na could Happen Here. You can find
us at happen Here pod on Twitter and Instagram. You
can find cool Zone Media at Coolson Media. I hope
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(54:12):
I should know this by now, I simply have not learned.
Um yeah, go go go go into the world BGAU crime.
It could Happen here as a production of cool Zone Media.
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(54:34):
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