![]() ![]() Now, however, she’s seeing more of an interest in exploring characters’ diverse backgrounds and incorporating rather than neglecting what makes them unique. Throughout the 1990s and the early 2000s, Shi said, Hollywood’s approach to race was often to adopt a colorblind attitude, so stories about people of color were usually not culturally specific. “It was important for me to make sure that we had a lot of people in the room that could speak to the main character’s background.” And if we were to speak to our moms as tweens, what would we say and what would we want to hear from them?” Shi said. “We just talked about our own experiences and what embarrassed us and what did we wish we did back then. But to truly get Mei’s world right required enlisting a team capable of both researching and informing the film with their own lived experiences. That’s how I speak at home with my parents.” How to create authentic characters? Just ask, ‘What’s funny and embarrassing to us?’Ĭanadian filmmaker Domee Shi, who directed “Turning Red” and the Disney Pixar short “Bao,” drew much of her storytelling inspiration from her own childhood and background. “Even the subtleties of the characters’ speaking Mandarin one second and then Cantonese another second and then English another second and they hop back and forth in between their words. “And then ‘Everything Everywhere’ came out, and it just socked me in the face,” he said. It reminds him of the way many Asian Americans tend to internalize their feelings for the sake of keeping family happy. The way Mei tries so hard to keep the peace with Ming, even if it means bottling up her emotions, is instantly relatable to Lee. “Turning Red,” for example, captures such a common mother-daughter conflict - of a child’s feeling caged in after she develops interests that don’t align with what her parent believes is best, Lee said. Soon afterward came “The Farewell,” then “Shang-Chi,” then “Turning Red.” That’s when Lee began catching all the subtle details in the films that, for the first time, made him catch glimpses of himself and his own family. Then, “Crazy Rich Asians” released in 2018 with an all-Asian cast. Stephanie Hsu as Kat, Sabrina Wu as Deadeye, Ashley Park as Audrey and Sherry Cola as Lolo in "Joy Ride." Ed Araquel / Lionsgate Films made for mainstream audiences are no longer shying away from putting the cultural nuances of diaspora characters on full display.įor Kevin Lihuan Lee, a film production master’s student at Columbia University, growing up watching movies that gave nuance to white characters while relegating people of color to stereotypical or one-dimensional roles taught him to view white experiences as a universal default. Marvel” to this year’s “Joy Ride,” recent Asian American films have increasingly tackled the diaspora experience. AAPI creators aren’t explaining themselves to mainstream audiences but attract them anywayįrom “Everything Everywhere All at Once” to “Ms. She said “Beef” provides a deeply complex story about traumatic events that can lead people to spiral - a story not often told in this way for Asian American communities.Īlthough Choe’s past comments overshadowed the show’s acclaim, Chu, like other Asian Americans, said the actual storyline and characters still resonated. ![]() “But the way it was handled was an example of how ‘Beef’ didn’t feel the need to contextualize or over-explain itself for viewers outside the Asian American community,” said Seo-Young Chu, an associate professor of English at Queens College in Queens, New York. Ali Wong as Amy and Steven Yeun as Danny in "Beef." Andrew Cooper / Netflix While “Beef” revolves around the accessible feelings of anger, grief and resentment, the storyline still includes pieces of the Asian American experience, like Danny’s (Steven Yeun) emotional experience during a service at a Korean evangelical church. Instead, diaspora storytellers are increasingly defining mainstream culture while creating their own spaces on their own terms - without feeling the need to contextualize their stories for the masses. A proliferation of movies and television shows in recent years has made it clear Asian Americans are no longer chasing the opportunity to merely be included. ![]()
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