Hacker News Reader

Comment by usui | Hacker News Reader

In 2022, it seemed like every Asian American raved about how good the movie is, just like when Crazy Rich Asians came out in 2018. I believe I'm in the target demographic for Everything Everywhere All at Once.

I fell asleep halfway through the movie and I tried my best to stay awake, even after my friends woke me up. The most interesting parts of the movie existed in the real-world plot but the movie kept running away from it. Even then, all universes (real-world included) had cringe-worthy levels of cliché metanarrative. It was a chore to make it to the end.

It's even worse that any criticism of the movie was actively shut down and nothing negative about it could be found online. If you did find a shred of criticism, viewers either accused you of ignorance, unappreciative of art, or racism.

I liked the actors playing the parents. I thought Stephanie Hsu and Ke Huy Quan were good in the real-life scenes.

View on HN

> If you did find a shred of criticism, viewers either accused you of ignorance, unappreciative of art, or racism.

To be fair, the first 2 out of those 3 things are the coming go-to accusations when it comes to making a “you didn’t like this and this is why you are wrong” point. For any kind of media.

The last one is situational, and depending on the movie could be swapped with something else. So I wouldn’t worry much about those accusations.

With that said, I haven’t watched Everything Everywhere All at Once myself yet (it is on my “very soon” list), but all of my friends (who all have very different tastes in movies) ended up liking it. So I am a bit optimistic about this one.

Asian American movies are so rare that even a moderately interesting one get a lot of excitement.

Which is a sad commentary on Asian Americans. There’s multiple, massive movie industries in Asia, which are dependent on non-Asians for nothing. You can go your whole life watching nothing but Indian, Chinese, Japanese, or Korean content.

Films from India, China, Japan, and Korea have almost nothing to do with "Asian AMERICANS". We don't generally consider films from Germany, Italy, France, Sweden, etc to have anything to do with "white Americans".

That said, movies are made by (a) people with the chutzpah to make them and (b) funding. You'd think if Asian American's want more movies about Asian American issues and/or staring Asian Americans, they have enough connections to get the funding to do it. No need to wait for permission from any other groups. Just do it!

> Films from India, China, Japan, and Korea have almost nothing to do with "Asian AMERICANS". We don't generally consider films from Germany, Italy, France, Sweden, etc to have anything to do with "white Americans".

If an “Asian” American can’t relate to content from Asia, then they’re just a generic American. Which is fine. But then they should just watch other generic American content. It’s not like Swedish Americans are sitting around demanding more movies with Stellan Skarsgård.

Here’s a new way of thinking about it. “Asian American films” are generic American films. Some generic American films are about Italian-American crime families in New York, some are about Indigenous teenagers in Oklahoma, some are about detectives in Minneapolis. And some are about Chinese-American immigrants in Los Angeles county.

Generic American film audiences often get excited about films that tell stories they can easily identify with or that speak to their own life experiences, especially if those films are relatively rare.

In your ignorance, you accidentally captured the scenario that American Born “Asians” find themselves in. As second or third generation Americans, they aren’t quite homogenized enough to be Americans. Bonus points for racist attitudes. But as not born in China/India/etc, they are obviously soft decadent Americans.

It’s like saying the Godfather isn’t valid art because Fellini made movies in Italy. Different world.

The other obvious issue with respect to the PRC in particular is that you cannot export content that violates certain standards in China. Hollywood self-censors to keep the market broad. Other entities such as the NBA do as well.

> As second or third generation Americans, they aren’t quite homogenized enough to be Americans.

They are as homogenized as they choose to be. I enjoy M. Night Shyamalan‘s cameos, where there will be a random brown guy in a town full of white people and nobody will comment on it. Because that’s what life is like as an Asian in America 99% of the time.

> But as not born in China/India/etc, they are obviously soft decadent Americans.

But they are though. Which is why “Asian” American content is usually so awful to watch as an immigrant. So often it’s about rejecting Asian culture and values in favor of European ones, while complaining about people sometimes making fun of your school lunch or noticing that you look like your parents didn’t fight in the American Revolution. (I’m looking at you Mindy Kaling.)

> It’s like saying the Godfather isn’t valid art because Fellini made movies in Italy.

I’ve never met an Italian American that purports to have some special affinity for The Godfather. They don’t care whether Coppola was Italian nor do they care Brando wasn’t the least bit Italian. It would be silly for a second or third generation Italian American to hold out the distinctiveness of their identity the way you see similarly assimilated Asian Americans do.

Everyone’s different. My neighbor is Greek and 90, she doesn’t speak fluent English. Her kids and grandkids are still Greek to the core but are regular Americans too. Great people.

I’m a second generation Irish American. I grew up in a NYC neighborhood that was heavily Irish and Italian. My grandparents and parents were into Irish orgs. My grandparents were in a fraternal society for the county they were from, we had a lot of extended family within a few minutes of where we lived.

That affinity faded, for good and for bad. My uncle dating an Italian girl was mildly scandalous in the 80s. (“My son, getting married at St Anthony’s parish? Gasp!”) Thats not a thing for our generation.

We’re fortunate to live in a society where it’s ok to do you. Art is an expression of how we think and feel, and these expressions are a good thing. How awesome is it the the mass culture of Indians has evolved from some version of Apu from the Simpsons to some level of actual representation of the cultures of the subcontinent?

> We’re fortunate to live in a society where it’s ok to do you. Art is an expression of how we think and feel, and these expressions are a good thing

That sentiment is an example of white American individualism. It would be out of place in say India or China, but similar sentiment is widely embraced in “Asian” American identity and media. Oftentimes it will be in the form of conflict between whitewashed children and their Asian parents. Which highlights my point—it’s brown/yellow-face over white American culture. It’s a fabricated cultural identity worn as “pieces of flair.”

> That affinity faded, for good and for bad. My uncle dating an Italian girl was mildly scandalous in the 80s. (“My son, getting married at St Anthony’s parish? Gasp!”) Thats not a thing for our generation.

Because they’re not meaningfully Irish or Italian at this point. If there were real cultural differences, then there would be conflict.

> How awesome is it the the mass culture of Indians has evolved from some version of Apu from the Simpsons to some level of actual representation of the cultures of the subcontinent?

To the contrary, it’s a farce. The “representation” of Indians in media these days is mostly just brown people acting like white people. Apu is much more realistic.

The Godfather is famously popular with Italian Americans, to a degree that was newsworthy in 1972 and people still write think pieces about it today. My cousin on the Italian side of the family started a Godfather-themed sandwich shop in Saugus, where he was out-competed by the existing Goodfellas-themed sandwich shop in Saugus. Italian Americans love The Godfather like Irish Americans love the Dropkick Murphys.

This is making a sweeping assumption that Americans are a homogenised society, which they are anything but given it's mostly composed of Nth generation immigrants.

I agree, it is a sad commentary on Asian Americans. I have had the same opinion for years, so I'm glad to see someone else write it. Aggrandized uncritical positive reception and raving about the newest Asian American movie reeks of media representation desperation.

Pan-Asianism is a very weird phenomenon to me that seems common in the USA outside of California (very popular in Midwest and East Coast). Asian Americans have an "Asian American identity" that, while I understand why it exists due to how average Americans treat Asian Americans, I find very odd because it conflates a huge range and their happiness basically hinges on what white Americans think. Part of donning this "Asian American" identity reduces the ability to appreciate massive, wholly-contained independent Asian film industries.

I enjoy watching Indian, Chinese, Japanese, and Korean films, but so far, when I watch an "Asian American" film, I end up rolling my eyes hard. Films centering around "Asian American"-specific issues are not fun to watch. They feel cringy because they exhaust their main points within minutes on-screen.

I'm glad pan-Asianism isn't as big in the Bay Area simply because coalescence isn't as necessary when respective Asian populations become sufficiently large.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com