Better Buzz Tomorrow

As an Asian American organizer and activist, I had long fantasized about a time when my fellow second-generation Asian Americans would take to the streets in support of our community. Finally, my dreams seemed to become reality when my brethren came together earlier this month in major cities across the nation -- not to take a stand for social justice but to go out to the movies.

The buzz had been brewing for over a year before "Better Luck Tomorrow" -- the first mainstream feature film with an all-Asian-American cast -- opened to sold-out audiences in select cities on April 11. Directed by Justin Lin, BLT was being billed as a breakthrough film for the Asian American community -- a demographic that has only seen itself on the big screen in offensively stereotypical roles that emphasize our foreign-ness and in characters that almost always "no speeka Engrish."

The movie -- about a group of overachieving Asian high school students from suburbia who descend into a Tarantino-esque downward spiral -- would allow Asian Americans to star in well-developed complex roles, and they would all speak without accents.

In the weeks leading up to the film's release and in the weeks since, students organized BLT promotion teams on college campuses. Lin and the crew made personal appearances promoting the film nationwide. And lead actor Parry Shen even sent out not one, but two emotional pleas that have been widely circulated by e-mail which explain "just how essential it is that our community support this film."

The tone and content of Shen's letters were unambiguous in boldly ascribing to us the collective responsibility for supporting Asian American art -- and this film in particular. He proclaimed, "In our lifetime, it is rare that we bear witness to an event, much less be a part of one, that might change society." Curiously, though, most of the college students promoting the film on their campuses had not yet even seen the film they were touting.

In regions with larger Asian American populations such as the San Francisco Bay Area, the buzz neared an irrational, frenzied hysteria, almost as though our liberation from the margins was inextricably linked to the box office success of BLT. (Eager Asian Americans in the Midwest had to wait for the film to attain a certain level of success on the coasts before it opened in places such as Minnesota.)

I myself succumbed to the buzz, but should have known better. After all, movies rarely live up to the hype. BLT isn't offensive or racist, as some claimed at Sundance last year. It's just boring, unengaging, and lacking in substance. In its promotion, much was made of the fact that MTV Films had picked up the film for distribution -- which should have been an early tip-off for eventual disappointment -- placing BLT in MTV's continuum that left off with Jackass: The Movie.

BLT also fits in nicely with MTV's history of bad gender politics, with its focus on all-male characters with the exception of the one cheerleader whom everyone wants to sleep with and is rumored to have starred in a porno.

Remarkably, we now have two popular films in theatres simultaneously that address issues relevant to young Asian Americans, although the community seems to have been caught napping on the second one. The British film one, "Bend It Like Beckham," is about an 18-year-old Indian girl, Jess, who wants to become a professional soccer player while her parents would rather she become a "traditional Indian housewife." It is one of a slew of recently released films ("American Desi," "ABCD," "American Chai") with a similarly clichéd plot about inter-generational conflict.

What sets "Bend It Like Beckham" apart, however, is that director Gurinder Chadha exposes the social and historical context of that drives this personal story. In a brilliant scene not central to the plot, Chadha subtly draws attention to Jess' class background when she reveals a gruesome burn that she suffered as a young girl fixing her own dinner while her mother worked the night shift at London's Heathrow Airport. Chadha is equally skillful in revealing the racist white English culture that keeps the girl's parents, despite their rise from their working-class immigrant roots into the middle class, in a space of cultural seclusion.