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September 8, 2018 · 11:42 pm

On Crazy Rich Asians

Crazy Rich Asians is an odd beast for me. It’s a movie based on a book I didn’t really like, but oddly it’s one where I do like the movie over the book. More than that, though, it’s a book set in Singapore, a country I’m not used to seeing on screen. Also where, of all the places I’ve lived, I’ve racked up the most years of residence. And now I’m seeing streets I’ve driven on and places I’ve eaten on a movie screen in New York City.

It’s surreal, because a lotta folks don’t really know much about Singapore. When I moved to the States (South Carolina) at fourteen I got asked where in China it was. To this day folks tell me my English is really good for someone from Singapore, never mind that said language is the main language spoken there. The island I sorta come from is an unknown, save for a depiction in the third Pirates of The Caribbean movie so fantastical it makes the New York of How I Met Your Mother look like a documentary.

Now the place it seemed that no one this side of the Pacific had heard about is featured in what’s been the top movie in the US for three weeks in a row. Singapore has summarily gone from “where?” to that place in Crazy Rich Asians. That island is Known.

Herein lies the conflict at the root of the surreality. It’s absolutely thrilling to see Singapore in a movie — and a good movie at that. If this cultural osmosis takes hold, maybe the response to hearing I’m half-Singaporean won’t be thinking I hail from a backwards, destitute island. Maybe it’ll be the metropolis of Crazy Rich Asians. At last there’s an image in the cultural consciousness. And it’s that.

Most of the people I know here in the US will never go to Singapore. For many, this is the first — and maybe only — impression of Singapore they’ll have. As good as the movie is, I guess I wish it was more comprehensive; it held within it a fuller take on Singapore. I wish it showed more of the Singapore I know.

By virtue of its story, Crazy Rich Asians focuses on a very specific Singaporean experience: that of the ultra wealthy, the crazy rich, if you will. The cast, though entirely comprised of Asian actors, are primarily from the West, and so absent from the film is the Singaporean accent and its idiosyncratic turns of phrase — something the novel captured so well. It’s awesome to see Awkwafina and Gemma Chan have hefty roles in a major film, but there’s a part of me that wishes that accent was there — especially because your style of speaking in Singapore very much denotes which social class you’re part of. It feels like a missed opportunity.

Characters/actors’ accents are something so tiny for me to take issue with, but they’re indicative of more. Singapore is a complex place for me; it’s a place that’s taken me away from whatever I’ve had going on in the US a number of times. It’s got the best food on the planet. It’s a place I’ve hated and loved. I want the people in my life to see that country, the one with a pros and cons list each a kilometer long. I want people to see more of this place and get where I’m coming from.

I want to be understood.

Crazy Rich Asians — the film — deserves every accolade its gotten. I hope there are many, many more movies with all-Asian casts. It means so much to me, this mixed race guy who passed as Chinese in the US, to see Singapore and people who look like me in the spotlight. The movie isn’t gonna be the solution to my myriad questions of identity; I shouldn’t expect a delightful romcom to provide a sociological survey. It’s still a closer depiction of a part of my life than I’ve seen elsewhere. I’ve gotta take the advice I hold for so many stories: to let it tell the story it wants and to judge it based on that and not what I might want.

Anyway. Crazy Rich Asians is great. Go watch it. Michelle Yeoh needs to be in everything.

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September 1, 2018 · 11:31 pm

Yellow (流星)

I have A Lot of thoughts about the movie adaption of Crazy Rich Asians. Far more thoughts that I’ve had time to write down. Much of that is wrapped up in the fact that it’s set in Singapore and I have a very complicated relationship with that country, owing to it, well, being where I was born and the odd circumstances with which I’ve found myself returning there for the past decade or so.

So this blog post is not about that.


Rather, it’s about a song that shows up towards the end of the movie, Coldplay’s “Yellow.” Except it’s not; it’s a cover the song, in Chinese; “流星” [liú xīng]. Now, I do really like “Yellow,” as I do a lot of Coldplay’s music; and I really like it when covers put a spin on things (Run River North’s cover of The Killer’s “Mr. Brightside” is nothing short of incredible). But “流星” is an interesting thing, it’s not just a cover, it’s also been rewritten in another language. A language I happen to kinda sorta speak.

Chinese, well, Mandarin Chinese if you wanna get specific, is an odd thing for me. I didn’t speak it at home growing up, owing mostly to having a mother who doesn’t speak it. It’s a language I learnt in school, and mostly used only in class. Chinese was my worst class, at that, one where I thought a C was a good grade and routinely pulled very low grades — grades low enough that I still remember them twenty years later. Elsewise, I’d only use it when ordering food (“Uncle, 一碗鱼丸面加辣椒”) or in smattering when talking to my grandmother.

It’s one that I’ve gotten better at in bursts; I can follow along with a conversation to a certain extent and can interject comments into dinner conversations with the extended family, often to their amusement since I’m very much the Caucasian nephew on that side. Working in retail in New York has meant that I’m the go-to Mandarin speaker who gets to answer all the questions Chinese tourists have, which often sees me finding very basic ways to say more complex things (“每年他们做好的房子，这是十年最好的房子.”)

Point is, I’m not really good at Chinese, and haven’t really done too much to get better at it. Chinese pop songs fall far outside the usual scope of music I listen to, and most of the Chinese cinema I watch is of the Hong Kong variety and so in Cantonese. Not much impetus to learn.

And then along comes this song, one I’ve added to my iTunes and listened to way more times than I care to admit. I understand parts of it, and reading the lyrics replete with pinyin and a translation helps. I really like it, far more than I thought I would/could. It’s surreal to hear a familiar tune with lyrics in a language I don’t speak near as well as I really should. It’s surreal to want to listen to a song in a language that’s meant so much grief for me, be it through bad grades or the othering that my lack of understanding sometimes creates. It’s surreal to like this.

I’m still processing a response to that movie and the inevitable blog post that’s gonna come along with it. Part of the reason it’s taking a while is because so much of the movie ties in to, well, me as myself. The older I get, the more I feel like much of life is processing stuff, processing what’s happening and what’s happened, processing who you are. I’m mixed, I’m biracial, I’m half Singaporean-Chinese, half Norwegian-American, but my Spanish is better than my Chinese. Identity is a weird thing for me, partially out of my own reckoning with myself, and partially out of my reckoning with others’ interpretations of that self. It’s not something I expect to be resolved anytime soon. But “流星” is a gorgeous song, and I like that I like it.

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February 10, 2018 · 9:46 am

Space Car

There is a car in space right now.

Like an actual road-safe, driven on earth on an actual road, not-originally-intended-for-space car in space. And it was playing David Bowie until it ran out of juice.

So, a while ago, Tesla/SpaceX/Boring Company founder/potential supervillain Elon Musk tweeted that the Falcon Heavy’s test payload would be his own Tesla Roadster. The Falcon Heavy is the latest rocket to come out of Musk’s SpaceX. Which sounds pretty cool but it’s important to know what the Falcons are: reusable rockets.

See, when you launch a rocket in space, it’s kinda a one-off thing. The Saturn V that launched the Apollo missions were just junk afterwards. The Space Shuttle was revolutionary because the booster rockets could be recovered and refurbished (along with the orbiter as well). The Falcon Heavy, like the Falcon 9 it’s built on, can also be reused. Not just that, but the rocket literally lands itself. As in, after launching its payload, the first stage detaches, turns around, comes home, and lands.

It’s really cool, both as a technological marvel in itself and also for what it portends to making spaceflight more affordable. Which is really cool because if we’re going to start mining asteroids and send people to Mars, we’re gonna need to make it cheaper to get out there.

And there’s also a car in space.

Tuesday was the Falcon Heavy’s first launch and its payload was, as promised, Elon Musk’s red Tesla. Given that it was the rocket’s first flight, and first flights tend to result in things exploding, it made some sense that it wasn’t anything too valuable (although there’s an argument that given the prohibitive nature of space travel, any risk is one worth taking). But a convertible instead of a mock satellite?

It’s a pretty remarkable image. Leaving Earth’s orbit is a red car, top down, with a mannequin dressed in a spacesuit in the driver’s seat, “DON’T PANIC” written on the dash, a towel and a copy of The Hitchhikers Guide to The Galaxy in the glovebox, and David Bowie’s “Space Oddity” and “Life On Mars” playing on the radio. It was sent beyond Earth’s orbit into an elliptical around the sun, its aphelion nearly reaching the Asteroid Belt.

There’s a car in space.

And its picture’s been all over the internet, all over newspapers. This picture of a spaceman in a car, Earth in the distance behind. There’s been a lot of press, a lot of people are talking about it, and you’re probably wondering why I’ve been ranting on about spaceships and space cars on a blog that’s usually about stories.

Because, by launching a sports car into space, Elon Musk created a pretty neat narrative for the Falcon Heavy’s launch. It’s not unusual for a dummy payload to be a bunch of concrete bricks, something heavy and unimportant. But because the payload here’s a car (and the company CEO’s personal car at that), it becomes that much more interesting. There’s an endlessly shareable image that captures the imagination in ways the picture of rockets touching down can’t quite.

People are talking about the Falcon Heavy’s launch far more than the Falcon 9’s maiden launch or when the Falcon 9’s booster landed for the first time. It’s even gotten way more buzz than when a Falcon 9 rocket exploded on the launch pad (All this is based on a cursory Google Trend comparison for the Falcon Heavy and Falcon 9, with SpaceX used for reference). There’s buzz, people are talking about space travel. And all the little touches and the Hitchhiker’s reference gives it all a sense of romance and whimsey we don’t usually get in the usually very rigorous and economic space travel. It’s cool, and it’s a little silly.

Call it an attention grab, but I figure that’s just what’s needed. Musk and SpaceX have the world’s attention as they forge on ahead in an attempt to revolutionize space travel. An aware an excited public puts space exploration back into vogue, which could lead to NASA having a bigger budget and, in turn, more contracts for SpaceX, and so bigger rockets and crewed missions to Mars.

And in the meantime, Elon Musk launched his car into space. And I think that’s wonderful.

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September 9, 2017 · 9:26 pm

The First Seventeen

I was recently on a plane back to New York from Montréal (if you wondering: poutine’s really good, the Canadians are onto something). It’s a short flight in a relatively small plane, but apparently, still one that lets you have those screens in the seatbacks. Which is nice because, y’know, you can watch a movie or something. Good time to catch up on movies you’ve missed or watch different because you wanna.

Thing is, the flight from Montréal to New York is a little over an hour and a half, which, you’ll notice, is a hair short of the typical two hour runtime of a movie. Which means when you watch something, you won’t finish it and that leaves you in a lurch that I don’t like. Means you get a lotta set up, but the payoff doesn’t complete. Take my girlfriend, who decided to watch Alien. She got to the chest busted scene, a little further, and we were in New York. No showdown between Ripley and the Alien, just, y’know, the build.

Seeking to avoid that, I looked for a movie around ninety minutes. The plane had Office Space, one of those movies I know I should watch and just haven’t gotten around to. I decided to get around to it.

Seventeen minutes in, however, it stopped. Like, ended and returned me to the main menu. I was confused and kinda annoyed. The movie was getting into gear and I was getting into it. Also I knew I’d be cutting it close and the couple minutes it’d take to load it back and find my place could make the difference between seeing the ending and, well, not. So I cued it back up and started fast-forwarding to my spot, whereupon I noticed that the timecode for the ending was at, coincidentally, seventeen minutes. Sure enough, when I reached where I was before, it stopped and I was returned to the main menu and Air Canada’s friendly hello.

Office Space has returned to the list of movies that I will watch eventually. But the first seventeen minutes are a lotta fun. Equally importantly, they serve to set up (what I presume) is the plot of the movie. We’re introduced to our protagonist and his two work buddies and we learn that they all really don’t like their job. There are hints of a scheme to screw over their company, the motivation of being free to do whatever they want with a load of money. We’re also given an antagonist in their smarmy boss a ticking clock with their company’s downsizing to speed along the plot. And, of course, it takes a minute to introduce us to our protagonist’s love interest. In short, everything is set up for the movie to come.

Beginnings are important. Duh. You’re still reading this either because you like me or you found my lengthy preamble about inflight entertainment sufficiently charming. A strong start is what keeps the reader, viewer, listened, or player engaged.

But beginnings might matter even more from a narrative point of view. One of the things Aristotle believed to be key about stories was the ultimate catharsis at the end, that great release of emotion (i.e.: blowing up the Death Star). To get that catharsis, you’ve gotta fill your reader (etc) with those emotions (i.e.: take Luke from Alderaan, destroy Alderaan, and lose Ben Kenobi to Darth Vader). You don’t get that release without doing the work (blowing up the Death Star just isn’t the same without all the build up).

From what I saw of it, Office Space certainly lays some strong groundwork. We know the problem — office life sucks — and now it’s a matter of remedying that. I know it somehow involves beating up a printer, but past that I’d have to actually watch the movie.

I’ll get around to it eventually.

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June 17, 2017 · 5:31 pm

Mixed Results

I really liked the movie Balto as a kid. And for a kid, it makes sense. It’s about a talking dog, and there’s a goose and a couple polar bears in it too. Plus it’s a story about the outsider getting a chance to prove they belong by doing an Epic Heroic Thing and earning their place.’

Also, it’s a story about being mixed.

Like me.

I’m mixed, biracial, half-Asian; whatever the term du jour is. Which is something I mention every now and then on this blog, because it’s part of who I am and thus how I interpret the world around me and, with it, the narratives that the world creates. In other worlds: I tell you this because it directly impact the way I see stories.

And this is important, because Balto is half-dog, half-wolf, which is a major part of his identity in the story. He doesn’t fit in with the dogs because of his wolfness, but he can’t exactly run out and join a pack of wolves. He doesn’t belong to either group. Over the course of the movie he (spoiler) proves himself to his peers and, more importantly, realizes that his being half-wolf is a good thing, not a drawback. The plot progresses and he gets to save the day.

We don’t see a lot of mixed-race narratives, period. TV Tropes has precious few examples, and many of them are either informed traits or their entire story.. Sure, we’ll see interracial relationships play out (Hello, Crazy Ex-Girlfriend!), but anytime the product of one of those shows up, if the question of identity is addressed, chances are it becomes their whole thing. Growing up, Balto was the only story I knew that had a character who was explicitly mixed and dealt with that. As a bonus, it also wasn’t the only thing he had going on; he still got to do the hero thing.

It’s quite unfortunate, then, that I didn’t see much of Star Trek until I was eighteen, but even then just the Abrams film. But that’s a movie about Spock’s journey as a character, one that’s inherently related to his own status as being half-Vulcan, half-Human. Again, the importance here is that though the story deals with Spock’s identity, it is not the extent of his arc. He still has a story of learning humility and teamwork and saving the day and all that, one aspect of which is, of course, struggling with his identity.

I wanna stress just how rare this is. When stories come up with biracial characters that touch on their identity, that’s usually the be all and end all of their story. Douglas Sirk’s Imitation of Life has Sarah Jane, a half-white, half-black girl who passes white and so uses that to her advantage. Her story is one of someone rejecting one identity in favor of another and thus all but abandoning her mother in pursuit of hedonism. Yes, it’s a story about someone who’s mixed, but it’s about being mixed. Most of the time, when someone who’s mixed shows up in fiction and has a role, that’s their story. It’s about coming to terms with their identity, or realizing that they should embrace both halves and what have you. There’s no conjunction; they don’t come to terms with their identity and save the world, they don’t get to embrace both halves and make the big jump to fund their step-dad’s conveniently priced surgery.

This is why Balto mattered to me so damn much as a kid. I got to see someone in a movie dealing with some of the crap I dealt with. I got to see someone do all that and still save the day. It’s about being different, but still getting the normal treatment. Differently normal, if you will. I do think stories about mixed people being mixed are important, but equally important are stories where  they – we – get to deal with the stuff and still be the hero. I want stories about mixed people that aren’t just about being mixed; I’m more than just someone who’s half-white, half-Asian.

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June 3, 2017 · 7:15 pm

Fast Car

I really like Tracy Chapman’s “Fast Car,” and I realize I’m saying this as someone who’s around thirty years late to the party. Beyond its great musicality, there’s the poetry to it. It speaks to a wanting for a life that’s more than you have, one beyond your circumstances; but also to the dashing of that dream when reality ensues. All in all, it’s a beautiful, melancholic song.

Which I don’t really relate. Or more, can’t. See, I’ve lived a privileged life. I come from a home with functional parents in a healthy relationship; I never had to work to support my family or put my education on hold to care for my parents. The “I” of the song and I have little to nothing in common.

“Fast Car” speaks to something deeper than the surface it transcends circumstances. It’s not hard to relate to wanting something more than you have, to wanting to drive away from your lot in life. But Chapman doesn’t just try to paint the picture of those emotions; instead she describes the circumstances that create the feelings. Instead of telling us how to feel she crafts a narrative that elicits it. Specificity lends it empathy; by describing the events in such detail, Chapman is able to really dig into that wanting. It’s so vivid, it’s real. The fast car drives from metaphor into reality.

But it’s still a very particular narrative, that of a poor, black woman. It’s a story about her and her experiences. So what business do I, a half-white half-Asian man who’s not living in poverty, have listening to it?

Now there’s the universality of art. You don’t have to have lived on a boat to appreciate John Masefield’s poetry. Homegoing is still a brilliant piece of literature whether or not you have any relation to the African diaspora. Good works bring you into a world and state of mind, often through specifics. It’s how you make an unknown world known, how you spark a feeling that you can’t describe.

The stumbling block here, especially with something like “Fast Car,” is adopting a narrative or set of experiences as your own. “Fast Car” isn’t my story and it would be disingenuous of me to suggest otherwise. I love the song and I love singing along, but fundamentally I know it’s not my song. It’s the difference between appreciation and appropriation. If you were to make a video adaption of “Fast Car” and make the leads middle-class and white, you’d be completely missing the point.

This is something I’m thinking through, and a lot of this rant essay is me spitballing. I was introduced to “Fast Car” (and Tracy Chapman proper) when an indie band I love covered the song four-odd years ago. Now, they didn’t change the pronouns or the lyrics at all, but it’s still a white guy singing. Does that fundamentally affect the song? What about me and a friend singing it a karaoke? Am I thinking about this way too much?

In all honesty: I probably am. When Barcelona sings “Fast Car” they aren’t making any claims to the narrative. It’s a thirty year old song and a really good one at that; maybe a cover of it costs some of its subtext, but I don’t think there’s anything, well wrong with it. Maybe it’s like reading a good book, where you get to experience another life as your own for a bit. I don’t have a point to all this, more I’m curious about the way I interact with art, especially with narratives that aren’t about me.

In any case, “Fast Car” is a great song, and I do really like both Barcelona’s cover and Tracy Chapman’s original.

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May 27, 2017 · 10:42 pm

So My Apartment Building Caught Fire

My apartment building caught fire yesterday.

Which is a helluva way to start a morning. I’m fine and, by virtue of being in the back on the sixth floor, my unit was somehow untouched.

But it did mean I was outside on the New York sidewalk at 5:30 in the morning watching firemen fight a fire from the pizza place I live over under control.

Then it started to rain. A cold, early morning rain. The sort that makes you wish you’d grabbed another jacket, never mind the smoke.

Just when we were wondering how long we’d have to stand in the rain waiting for news, a woman from the YM-YWHA a few doors down told us all we could wait inside there, warm up, use their bathrooms, and drink their water. Even though most of us weren’t members. The firefighters and police said they’d keep those inside updated.

Thus, with some of Maslow’s hierarchy taken care of, we continued to wait. But what I really wanted was some coffee.

In walked two people carrying boxes of donuts and coffee. They brought fiber bars and bananas. They brought cellphone chargers. They’d gotten them for us. They weren’t affiliated with the Y, not did they know any of us. They were just, as they said, doing what any good neighbors would do. They stayed and talked with us too, just mingling and hanging out.

The morning wore on. News broke that several units were inhospitable. The Red Cross came through with blankets and to help get people to temporary housing. The director of the Y and the leader of the synagogue next door stopped by to let us know that if we needed anything, they would help; if anyone needed clothing, housing, or food, they would reach out to their community to be taken care of.

There are reasons I believe that humanity, deep down, always wants to do good. And New York is a place that reaffirms it. During the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy, people with generators sat outside their buildings with power strips so people could charge their phones. People showed up to work at a pizza place and a supermarket so locals could buy food and supplies. Food carts offered free food. My friends and I were waved down by a worker from a ramen joint to be given free food (I still go to that place to this day).

I’ve seen strangers comfort sobbing people on the subway, I’ve seen an old woman yell at a cabby who ignored a pedestrian crossing sign and almost hit a guy. Half-a-dozen friends of mine showed up, when asked last minute, to help me and my brother move out of our unit a day early.

This is why I don’t believe those stories, those movies and books and tv shows, that declare all of humanity to be depraved and hurtful monsters. It’s why I don’t believe critics who call superheroes unrealistic.  Because when something awful happens, when someone evil crops up, there are always those who step up, who protect, who help. For every Awful in this world, there are a dozen heroes.

It’s one of the reasons I love New York. It’s a city that doesn’t give a damn about who you are, but it will always have your back when things go wrong.

Or, as Fred Rogers put it:

There was something else my mother did that I’ve always remembered: “Always look for the helpers,” she’d tell me. “There’s always someone who is trying to help.” I did, and I came to see that the world is full of doctors and nurses, police and firemen, volunteers, neighbors and friends who are ready to jump in to help when things go wrong.

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