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Why, When, Where, and How to See Better Luck TomorrowMTV Launches the World's First True Mainstream Asian American Film
April 11, 2003 - For our cousins in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Chicago, and New York, there is one favor you should be treating yourself to this weekend: go to see Better Luck Tomorrow. It's playing at a theater near you. If you’re already planning to see this refreshing, moving, gripping film, read no further. If you’re one of the last Asian Americans on the Internet (or the planet) who has not caught the buzz, read Tracy Uba’s review here first. If you’ve heard about it but are on the fence about seeing it, here are my views about why, when, where, and how you should see it.
What Would a "Mainstream Asian-American" Film Look Like, Anyway?Having seen Better Luck Tomorrow a few weeks ago at the Wisconsin Film Festival with the filmmaker and critic Roger Ebert in attendance, I’m still surprised by how exciting, refreshing, and memorable the experience was. The buzz I see among film buffs online and in the ethnic media show I’m clearly not alone. About the ultimately dark misadventures a group of Asian-American high school students in California, the MTV-distributed film is being promoted as a kind of "Great Yellow Hope": the best chance ever to see a "mainstream Asian-American film".
Since there’s never been a mainstream all-Asian American film before, however, one wonders what that would even look like. The easy answer would be: it’s a film written, produced, directed by and starring Asian Americans that lots of non-Asians see. But that’s not quite right. Another question is: if one existed, would Asian Americans like it? Wayne Wang’s film version of Amy Tan’s smash novel Joy-Luck Club certainly achieved wide distribution, was directed by an APA, and starred very fine Asian-American actors. Amy Tan herself took part in adapting her work screen. At the same time, it was ill-received by many Asian Americans who also did not enjoy Tan’s novel in the first place, and it’s not always easy to explain to non-Asians why this should be so. The thing is: Politically conscious Asian Americans are highly sensitive to issues of our historical mis- or under-representation in mainstream culture. The sheer sparseness of any realistic, balanced, or self-defined portrayals of Asians in popular culture makes any new portrayal stand out conspicuously -- a nail to be scrutinized and hammered down. Wary of media stereotyping or yellowfacing, we can be doubly demanding of – and incredibly hard on – Asian-American artists. For, in the absence of acceptable (diverse, truthful, multifaceted) Asian images in media, any work that’s created by an Asian carries extra weight. It is presumed to be more "authentic" and to reflect of us all. By itself, no work of art or media could possibly bear this burden of representation. While in some ways the book (and film) tried to "deal with" stereotypes, Joy-Luck was accused of replicating them. As with Maxine Hong Kingston’s The Woman Warrior before it, some see Joy-Luck’s emphasis on "old-world legends" and China settings as reinforcing an image of Asian Americans as being exotic and perpetual "foreigners". Trying to offer liberating images and perspectives of Chinese-American womanhood, it was condemned as doing so via bashing Asian men, while "promoting" intermarriage and/with white men as more desirable. Expected to be all things to all Asians (and always to be "positive"), an individual woman’s work of literary imagining like Joy-Luck Club is doomed to be dubbed a sell-out by someone. The point is: There’s much more than just art-for-art’s sake going on in art by under-represented minorities. Representation matters, and what kind of representation matters, too. It’s curious that while some of BLT’s characters and actions are downright awful, this made the film more refreshing and liberating than offensive. It’s also curious that what I found so gratifying about watching the all-Asian American film as an Asian American is that it didn’t have much to do "Asian-Americanness" at all.
Roger Ebert’s Asian-American DreamThe politicization of art is what was at issue in the special BLT presentation I saw at the Wisconsin Film festival in Madison. This was followed by a Q&A with Justin Lin and film critic Roger Ebert. Since attending the film’s screening at Sundance, Ebert has not only given BLT a rave thumb’s up, but has taken it under his influential wing, using it to write forcefully about the intersection of race, film art, and criticism. Specifically, in his column, at Sundance, and in Madison, Ebert angrily defended Lin against ethnic-representation critiques. He proclaimed Lin one of the "great directors" on today’s scene. And he argued that "stupid" people’s identity-based criteria had no justifiable place in judging a film in an industry that had, he suggested, finally transcended race. This last view, while understandable and even desirable, is unconvincing. Ebert was partly right: Lin is a very talented and promising young artist. The high quality of the production, the acting, and the engaging story give the film unprecedented potential for cross-over audience success, and it deserves to be viewed, appreciated, and studied on its many artistic merits. The audience in Madison was overwhelmingly non-Asian -- mostly white -- and deeply engaged while watching BLT…because it was a good film. But Ebert’s argument is also largely wishful thinking. "Race-blindness" in media, as in the rest of society, is more our dream than our reality. If the next-generation MTV Films audience and the more discriminating film festival-goers are ready to attend and appreciate a film that "just so happens to be" written, directed, and portrayed entirely by Asian Americans, BLT may present a new vision of multicultural America that looks as alien as Mars to broader audiences in Multiplex USA. If anything, this film is primarily about being young, middle-class, and California-urban – and being caught up in a deeply young-American kind of trouble that spins out of control in a roller-coaster plot. Part of its thrill is that it lets us see the real California as you and I have seen it: multicultural, massively Asian, and nothing like Hollywood’s version. (Come on: For Buffy to even meet an Asian in Sunnydale, they’ve got to conjure up a vampire slayer in China? Just where in SoCal does the producer live, anyway?) For once, Asians are the norm. And even for the enthusiastic film buffs in liberal Madison, that could be more than a little weird. It’s probably more accurate to say that Justin Lin has transcended not race, but transcended the limiting burden of representing it in certain ways. Since Asians are the norm, no character must "positively represent" all Asians. Individuals have the luxury – the dignity – of being realistic and recognizable individuals: nerds or tough guys, homely or hunky, studious or drop-out, lovable or loathsome. Just like us. Refreshingly, the film is not about "being Asian". Gone are the stock conflicts you’d expect: cultural and historical (no haunted memories of grandma’s internment or foot-binding), interethnic (Chinese and Japanese Americans are not even explicitly identified as such), or generational (as in Peanuts, adults barely exist except as disembodied voices). There are also very few white people. Even if Ebert is right that this is not a problem for today’s open-minded, empathetic film audiences, will those audiences even get to see such a film? For, it would certainly be disingenuous to suggest that the film industry has transcended race.
WHEN: April 11 - National BLT DayAs with any product, film marketers prefer to rely on strategies they know already work: They know that, with very few exceptions, targeting "the Asian-American niche market" will not make a blockbuster. They also know that minorities are accustomed to identifying with white subjects – whether in films, detergent commercials, romance novels, erotica, or Presidents – and that they cannot rely upon white consumers’ similar empathy in the reverse. Hence, there is a reason why Nicolas Cage is the star and "moral center" of a story about Navajo code-talkers (or Dennis Quaid in a film about the Japanese American internment), and why Chow Yun Fat and Jet Li never get to kiss the white girl. Cross-over, for such a small, fragmented group as Asian Americans, is a very hard sell. It is for this reason that "Team BLT" was created to promote buzz. MTV took a relatively large risk in taking BLT on like this – flying in the face of conventional wisdom. While its investment should be applauded, you can bet that MTV will play it cautiously: You will not see big, national BLT promotions airing this week, nor Justin doing Jay and Dave and Conan. If the film does not see high turn-out right away – April 11 in NYC, LA, and S.F., April 18 in other test markets, and a week later that -- be certain BLT will not be crossing-over in Topeka or Little Rock next month. Nor will MTV be itching to pick up another "Asian film" any time soon. In this, timing is everything. As devotees of E! television know, the industry fetish-izes opening weekends. Yes, big openings please studio distributors because it reassures them a film may fare well in other markets. But also, studios make most of their money early in a run (and the theater gets very little), and their share decreases as the run is extended. This is why theaters love and studios loathe "arty-little sleeper hits" like The Full Monty that take time to get legs, then run forever. Team BLT hopes that filling the theaters with Asians in the few test markets over the next two weeks will not only win it wider distribution this time, but also set a precedent, convincing studios that Asians are a viable opening-weekend audience worthy of future investment.
HOW: "Team BLT" Rocks-the-Opening-Weekend
Purporting to have been "surprised" to learn how film distribution works, Lin has pleaded with APAs, fairly effectively, to consider his film a political cause. Parry Shen, the top-rate young actor who plays the film’s sensitive lead role, has also been stumping, issuing get-out-and- watch messages to APA media. The "Team" has also made terrific use of every available online strategy for promoting a buzz – from sending out drop-in articles to creating e-postcards, wallpaper, and other downloadable freebies for viral dissemination. As Parry’s letter to our offices admits, the strategy comes off as more than a little self-serving, but it’s also common among those who have something "ethnic" to hawk, and it’s often necessary. Being pressed to consume a product as our "ethnic duty" is pretty unpalatable to most of us. We know when identity politics are being used to sell us, and naturally feel tokenized. While activists are perpetually decrying our under-representation in all sorts of endeavors – in business, media, politics, and popular culture – the fact is that many, many of us don’t bother to support or patronize "our community" at all, or maybe even avoid it. However, equally many of us wonder why so few people who look like us appear in media, and even fewer people who are really like us, as Jeff Ho puts it in "Where's the Real "Me" in Hollywood?" Part of the answer must be: because in business, as in politics, decisions are made by those who show up. We’re small in number nationally, but Asians have big clout in the cities where the film is opening, and going out for dinner and a movie this weekend is like heading out on Election Day, Hollywood-style.
WHY?The good news is, "helping" BLT is easy. It's the kind of representation we’ve collectively sought for years. And it's a terrific film that’s a pleasure to watch. In that sense, it achieves what many of us would like to be able to say about our relation to race in other parts of lives: It's a unique, interesting, high-quality part of American culture that just happens to be Asian-American. So what are you waiting for?
Better Luck Tomorrow Times & Theaters Near You
Other Readings of Interest
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