Diaspora Melancholy: Asian American Film Series 2007
by Leslie Bow
Director, Asian American Studies Program
University of Wisconsin, Madison
The Cats of Mirikitani (Thu., 4/12, 5:30 p.m.; Sun., 4/15, 6 p.m. - Bartell Theater): On the streets of New York, a
homeless man draws swirling dragons, glorious landscapes, and cats -- hundreds of curious, vibrant cats. As
filmmaker Linda Hattendorf discovers when she takes him in, this Japanese American artist has a backstory.
Punctuated by uprooting, incarceration, abandonment, and nuclear annihilation, Mirikitani's past would be both a
warning and a reproach, but it is instead an affirmation -- of commitment, of art, of the beauty and indifference of
cats.
Man Push Cart (Thu., 4/12, 6:30 p.m., Orpheum Main): On the streets of New York, the man who sells coffee and
bagels from the corner pushcart also has a past. His former identity as a Pakistani rock star, the "Bono of Lahore,"
is one he chooses to disavow, only to find that others won't let it go.
Sentenced Home (Thu., 4/12, 7:15 p.m., Bartell Theater): In post-9/11 Seattle, a Cambodian family man is
deported as his former life as an urban gang-member comes back to haunt him. Separated from his wife and
children, he finds himself making life anew and alone, somewhere in a rice field outside Phnom Penh.
These are some of the stories told in this year's Asian American Film Series as part of the Wisconsin Film
Festival. The cumulative narrative these films tell is that even as a new life is sought, the old one -- and the people
who were within it -- is never wholly discarded or lost. The past in these films lingers as a haunting, unburied
presence. The films strike a melancholy note in the diaspora, but a hopeful one as well.
Asian American film is about transition. The films in "Diaspora Melancholy" depict the rough moments of multiple
forms of movement: from Asia to the U.S., from old world to new, from boy to man, from wannabe to world
champion, from death to resurrection. In the diaspora, in movement, what is lost and what is gained? At stake in all
of these portrayals of transition is the question of masculinity and manhood, whether it is represented as a crisis
between stoicism and feeling; of providing for one's family or the risk of its loss; of virility and fulfilled desire; of
symbolic impotence or empowerment. At the center of some of these films is a self-conscious question about how
Asian American men are represented in American culture; at the center of others lies a more subtle rendering of
the similar queries: How can an Asian "be a man" in the U.S.? How can one "be a man" if mourning loss; how can
anyone simply get over it?
Tanuj Chopra's Punching at the Sun (Sat. 4/14, 10 p.m., Monona Terrace) approaches these questions with
lyricism and grace. Focusing on a desi youth's attempts to come to terms with his brother's violent death in the
family's mom-and-pop store in Queens, the film reaches beyond ethnic family melodrama or depictions of quirky
ethnic eccentrics to provide a meditation on South Asian American street culture and one teen's struggle with
melancholic loss. Mameet faces the challenge of coming-of-age in a world where brown cannot signify between
black and white, where he is neither a child nor yet a man, and where he is not really a lover nor a simply a friend.
Eric Byler's new film, Americanese (Sat., 4/14, 5:30 p.m.; Sun. 4/15, 5:15 p.m., Madison Museum of Contemporary
Art), based on Shawn Wong's novel, "American Knees" (1995), likewise poses provocative questions about
masculinity, race, politics, and desire. The protagonist, Raymond, a Chinese American man in mid-life, searches
for intimacy and connection in a culture that divides Asian American men from Asian American women. How can
Raymond hope to find love if the ghosts of past relationships and individual histories rear up to compromise the
present?
Melancholia is likewise the subject of Ramin Bahrani's Man Push Cart, which tells the story of Ahmad, a former
Pakistani singer now reduced to selling coffee and bagels, and hawking porn on the side. It is not only the memory
of past glory that he must overcome in order to move forward in this new world, but the death of his wife. The
instruments of change symbolically appear in the form of a beautiful Spanish immigrant manning a neighboring
push cart, and a wealthy Pakistani who wants to bankroll Ahmad's comeback. The film poses a fundamental
question about immigration and life in the diaspora, whether it represents a comedown and a net loss, or the very
possibility of renewal and a better life.
From all external appearances, for Jimmy Mirikitani, it would, at first glance, appear to be the former, a net loss.
Aged and living on the street, the Japanese American artist is a fixture on a Manhattan corner where he waves
away offers of help or money for his drawings of cats. This is where filmmaker Linda Hattendorf finds him in the
wake of 9/11. In an extraordinary act of charity, she takes him in and follows a weak paper-trail to uncover his
identity. Her film tells the story of a family annihilated in Hiroshima, the injustice of Japanese American internment,
and in a less historical, but no less compelling narrative, how to get a talented but stubborn homeless man off her
sofa and out of her apartment. This life-affirming film draws an overt parallel between measures taken in the wake
of 9/11 to safeguard American domestic space and the travesty of Japanese American incarceration during World
War II in the wake of Pearl Harbor. Ironically, it is the figure of this anonymous, wizened homeless man that
initiates a bigger narrative about history and its cautionary lessons, but also about community, resilience, and
charity.
A cautionary tale also lies at the heart of the documentary film, Sentenced Home in which directors David
Grabias and Nicole Newnham profile three Cambodian refugees subjected to inhumane immigration laws newly
enforced in the wake of 9/11. Fleeing the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia and settling in the U.S. as youths, the three
men portrayed have one thing in common: they were convicted of felonies after being drawn into gang life as teens.
The story begins, however, after Sept. 2001 when the U.S. put pressure on Cambodia to accept deportees; as a
result, having done their time in American prison as teenagers years before, the three men face deportation to a
"home" they can no longer recall. In both The Cats of Mirikitani and Sentenced Home, a focus on Asian
immigrants unearths not simply the individual life but the ways in which the individual story is enmeshed with
history-and made to bear the brunt of history, whether Hiroshima, the Killing Fields, or 9-11. At times of domestic
crisis, who is the enemy going to be? What will he look like?
Even in death, the body can be resurrected -- if it is useful. Justin Lin's new film, Finishing the Game (Sat., 4/14,
11 p.m., Orpheum Main) demonstrates this to comic effect by spoofing Hollywood's attempts to exploit Bruce Lee's
image by releasing Lee's posthumous film using a stand-in. Reuniting the cast of "Better Luck Tomorrow," Lin
imagines the attempts to replace the "real" Bruce as farce. In the process, he lampoons the narrow box into which
the dominant culture places Asian American men. So who wants to be the New Bruce? And is that question
supposed to be funny, sad, or both? The film is a comic reminder of why we can't let Bruce Lee go.
Hollywood's "slanted" bias against Asian Americans in the media is also the subject of Jeff Adachi's
documentary, The Slanted Screen (Sat., 4/14, 9:45 p.m., Memorial Union Play Circle). Why are there so few
images of Asian American men in the media? And why are they so bad? Adachi traces positive-and rare-models in
the careers of actors Sessue Hayakawa and James Shigeta. Their positive conceptions of (predominantly East)
Asian masculinity are countered by the long tradition of Hollywood yellowface-white actors playing "Orientals" --
and the Fu Man Chu -- Mr. Moto-Charlie Chan dirty tricks of the silver screen. The documentary uncovers some
fascinating footage in the history of racial imagery and American film. It poses questions about difference and
masculinity that can also be left to your judgment: Mortal Kombat-positive image of a powerful Asian villain "with
balls" or just another trucked-up Fu Man Chu? Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle? What's up with that, son?
Fulfilling the stereotype or turning it on its head? You be the judge. Bigotry can be funny, too. Just ask Long Duc
Dong and Michael Richards.
Air Guitar Nation (Thu., 4/12, 10:45 p.m.; Sat., 4/14, 5 p.m., Orpheum Stage Door) gives us another set of
questions to ponder about masculinity, racialization, and laughing "at" or "with" Asian American protagonists. As
the documentary reveals, a second-generation Korean American, the self-styled "C-Diddy," aspires to be the best
at something -- in this case, not the Westinghouse Science Competition, but the title, "Air Guitar World Champion."
Can C-Diddy represent his country in the battle for air guitar global supremacy? And is his Hello Kitty-clad
presence a shattering of Asian male stereotypes or one more example for Adachi's hall of shame? A fascinating
glimpse into the psyches of rock star wannabees and the mildly talented, Alexandra Lipsitz's documentary follows
in the recent tradition of loving, yet ironic portrayals of American subcultures and the committed-obsessed?--folk
who populate them. You may well ask, "Why is Air Guitar Nation part of an Asian American Film Festival?" The
answer goes back to a question posed in The Slanted Screen: when are Asian Americans going to be "just
people" in American film? Is it noteworthy that in Lipsitz's work race is not an issue? Can a Korean American
represent all Americans? If the subject is air guitar, apparently the answer is, "Yes."
In one way or another, whether subtle or covert, the films in the 2007 Asian American Film Series pose questions
about social justice for all Americans. In asking their audiences to think about what they expect to see in images of
Asians in dominant culture, some of these films put pressure on conceptions of who counts as "really" American.
Others, like Sentenced Home and The Cats of Mirikitani, take as their subject the privileges of citizenship and the
vulnerability of communities of color to the state intrusion. And they do so in same way that all films do: by asking
us to witness the lives of others in the search for security, fulfillment, love, a space beyond grief -- and for home.
So as entertaining as all these new, independent films might be, they also pose thought-provoking questions
about our mundane fascinations or about the inner life and past of someone you might pass by on the street.
Whether humorous or hauntingly melancholic, uplifting or cautionary, these films challenge our reverence towards
the idea of "America" and its use as the symbol for a clean start. Depicting Asians many generations here and new
immigrants as well, the films in Diaspora Melancholy show their subjects to be both holding onto and letting go of
the past. They are populated by protagonists who are, in the words of novelist Bharati Mukherjee, "greedy with
wants and reckless from hope."
The Asian American Film Series is funded in part by the Anonymous Fund and the Asian American Studies
Program at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. Special thanks go to Lisa Bu. For more information about Asian
American Studies at UW, a listing of film holdings on Asian Americans, and a downloadable list of film showing
dates and times, go to http://polyglot.lss.wisc.edu/aasp/