Everything Before Us || The Modern Asian American Archetype
'Everything Before Us' was a refreshing change of pace from many of the other Asian-American science fiction pieces that we've looked at: it was a modern, cheesy film, centered around social stratification, relationships, and of course, 'true love'. While other pieces have explored nuanced and complex ideas surrounding both the concepts of being Asian-American and science fiction, 'Everything Before Us', was, at least for me, a relatively straightforward film - at the very least, it certainly appealed to me as the most apparently relevant. The plethora of tropes, both dramatic and of demographic representation, created an interesting commentary in which the narrative revolves around the interaction between idealistic forms of these stereotypes - the characters are not so much 'real' people as they are perfect manifestations of these Asian-American archetypes that are prevalent within society today (these 'archetypes' refer to coalitions of common stereotypes of certain demographics of Asian Americans).
These two videos are made by FungBrosComedy, a YouTube channel which focuses heavily on Asian American culture. The videos are obviously humorous and not serious, but do a pretty good job of capturing the broad 'types' of Asian Americans.
I have to emphasize that these stereotypes are not to be taken seriously ... It was simply interesting to see how accurately EBU utilized some of the archetypes that the Fung Bros explore.
I'll leave it to you guys to look for the connections between the characters in EBU and the types of Asian Americans outlined in the videos, but terms like 'Yappie' and 'White-washed' should really stand out.
And just as an aside: It was really cool to watch a film in which the culture being focused on was one that I could immediately relate to. I loved the whole 'California Asian' vibe, even though I'm not from California, or even American, just because it's such a prevalent demographic.
Terrence, If I hadn't read your blog I wouldn't have realized that the characters in EBU are another kind of Asian-American stereotype. The YouTube videos were really specific about all these Asian-American stereotypes that I didn't know about before (I thought only nerdy and cute were stereotypes). I feel like all of the EBU characters feel 'white-washed' in the sense that Asian culture never came up in the movie. There was definitely the artsy/hippie feel and Haley was the nice girl. But in both EBU and these YouTube videos, the Asian part of Asian-American seems to be just about race and not culture - they don't mention a second language, immigrant parents, or different cultural values at all... - Tiffany
I totally agree! I wonder if it has to do with visibility of culture - what traits we can immediately see vs. subverted values and ideologies that aren't apparent. The 'Yappie' archetype comes to mind when considering how they are perceived as hard-working, professional, ambitious, etc. without having any understanding of why they might be that way - it's simply attributed to their being Asian. I think the same thing could be said for a lot of the other different 'types' as well.
Terrence, If I hadn't read your blog I wouldn't have realized that the characters in EBU are another kind of Asian-American stereotype. The YouTube videos were really specific about all these Asian-American stereotypes that I didn't know about before (I thought only nerdy and cute were stereotypes). I feel like all of the EBU characters feel 'white-washed' in the sense that Asian culture never came up in the movie. There was definitely the artsy/hippie feel and Haley was the nice girl. But in both EBU and these YouTube videos, the Asian part of Asian-American seems to be just about race and not culture - they don't mention a second language, immigrant parents, or different cultural values at all... - Tiffany
ReplyDeleteTiffany,
DeleteI totally agree! I wonder if it has to do with visibility of culture - what traits we can immediately see vs. subverted values and ideologies that aren't apparent. The 'Yappie' archetype comes to mind when considering how they are perceived as hard-working, professional, ambitious, etc. without having any understanding of why they might be that way - it's simply attributed to their being Asian. I think the same thing could be said for a lot of the other different 'types' as well.