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American Born Chinese: Reconstructivist Art

Note: Please read Reconstructivist Art first.

Gene Luen Yang’s critically lauded graphic novel, “American Born Chinese,” centers around what at first seem like three very different narratives.  The first is a superhero-themed retelling of a beloved classic tale from Chinese mythology, the story of the kung-fu practicing Monkey King.  The second is a realistic, contemporary story about a young Asian American boy, and his struggles to fit in at an almost wholly white school.  The third and final narrative is a sitcom about a white boy named Danny, and the mischief caused in his life by the yearly visits of his cousin “Chin-Kee”, a walking conglomeration of every possible offensive stereotype about Asians.  What makes the work a tour de force, however, is the way Yang swiftly, unexpectedly and yet credibly brings together the three narratives at the end, revealing them to be linked not merely thematically but also as facets of a single unifed storyline.

Nod to Artifice:  Although the cartoon format is highly contrived to begin with, Yang further heightens the sense of artifice with the framing device for his third narrative, which is presented as an American sitcom, complete with an intrusive laugh track.

Iconic and Transcontexual Elements:  The most notable examples of this are the Monkey King, an icon of traditional Chinese myth transposed to a number of alien settings throughout the book, and his counterpart Chin-Kee, a montrous being uniting a host of iconically offensive elements.  Other, less prominent icons include the herbalist’s wife, who represents the archetypal figure of the wise but sinister old woman, and a wide variety of pop culture references and icons, including Transformer toys, a high school named after a racially insensitive cartoonist, a reference to American Idol non-singer William Hung, and a cartoon representation of a popular You Tube video featuring two young Asian lip-synchers.

Classic Structure:  Although Yang’s triple narrative structure is nothing if not innovative and unique, the three narratives considered separately all have familiar structures –the first story is patterned after the classic myth it borrows from, the second has elements of a teenage romantic comedy, and the last is a parody of a typical sitcom episode.  In addition, the larger story arc can be considered as having a traditional three act structure, with the caveat that all three acts are presented simultaneously.

Moments of Genuine Emotion and Significance:  Stripped of its trappings, the heart of “ABC” is a starkly honest story that will be both familiar and relatable to anyone who has ever sacrificed some portion of his or her identity in order to fit in –which is to say, everyone.

Inception

Inception was, as promised, the thinking person’s action film, a thrill-a-minute adventure with a thoroughly engaging cast and a thought-provoking high concept.  So why was I disappointed?

Because the world’s most imaginative heist movie was also the world’s least imaginative movie about dreams.  If you’re taking a tour through the wild regions of the subconscious, why was each new dream just another a set piece from a James Bond movie?  Where were the psychedelic fantasy landscapes, the castles, monsters, archetypal figures and magical powers of myth? The movie did have its scraps of psychological insight and resonance, but those were so thinly spread that they only left me wanting more.  After the movie did such a good job developing and explaining its farfetched concept, it seemed like a real waste to squander it on standard-issue high-speed car chases, gunfire and faceless enemies.

In addition, the movie’s success in making the sci-fi dream exploration seem real and plausible was undercut by the unbelievability of the characters and their relationships.  Clearly, there was an entire backstory about the hero and his father-and-law that got left on the cutting room floor, but I can’t think of anything it might have contained that would have explained their close, chummy relationship, given what we later learn about the hero and his wife.  And while Ken Watanabe does a great job at bringing a thinly written character to life, his transition from shadowy sinister employer to good-guy team member doesn’t make either emotional or dramatic sense.

One final quibble –I don’t think it requires any spoiler alerts to reveal that the director wants to make the viewer question his or her own reality.  But this agenda is severely undercut by the fact what is presented as “Reality” in the movie is never even remotely believable –not because it resembles a dream, but because it is so clearly a “Hollywood” version of reality  (and because it utilizes the exact same palette of endless chases across exotic locales as do the dreamworlds).  A more prosaic, gritty, relatable base level of reality would have greatly raised the stakes.

All that said, the film is still a finely crafted, fun and thrilling romp, and the nutty physics of multiply embedded dream worlds is a highlight.  Still, I couldn’t watch the film without feelings of regret for what it might have been.

Modern Racism

There are two attitudes that have come to define the modern American perspective on racism. The first preaches that racism is a hideous moral crime and that anyone who is racist is a monster on a par with a killer or a child molester. The second flaunts racism as a badge of authenticity, and suggests that anyone who is forthright about his or her racial prejudices is an honest voice, an iconoclast, a freedom fighter and and true patriot. Although these two attitudes seem like polar opposites, they are in fact closely linked. In addition, both are equally misguided, and equally dangerous.

Those of us born subsequent to the end of the Civil Rights Movement have no living memory of a time before the commitment to reject racism became a foundational plank of the collective American moral platform. We typically do not realize, therefore, that it did not come about as a spontaneous flowering of enlightenment. Rather, it was was crafted with great difficulty and considerable sacrifice by the members of the Civil Rights Movement.

The key to producing a national consensus against racism was to smash the polite, genteel, agreement-among-friends facade of racial prejudice to reveal the horrors beneath. The peculiar genius of Martin Luther King, Jr., was his ability to stage events of pyschosocial theater capable of producing stunningly visual images of segregation’s previously hidden raw brutality. As King knew, the entire Southern caste system ultimately rested on a belief that black people were less than human and could be treated like animals or property at the whims of their paler neighbors. For years, however, this underlying belief had been hidden under a veneer of civility. Yet when pressed to their limits, the enforcers of segregation reacted with savage attacks upon unarmed protesters of all ages in a way that plainly revealed both their contempt for the humanity of their victims and the ways in which racism had compromised their own humanity.

It was the collective recoiling of the nation from this hellish vision that produced the myth of the racist monster. Rather than accepting the truth that we all carry racial prejudices and all make race-based decisions, and thus are all complicit in the larger narrative of racial conflict, a new American myth was created of the monstrous Southern Racist, a lowlife creature animated solely by an unreasoned hatred of others based on their skin color. As incarnated in figures such as Bull Connor, this useful scapegoat became the bearer of all the nation’s racial sins. In collectively rejecting, despising and casting out the Southern Racist, we symbolically became cleansed of all prejudice, and a new nation emerged, forever freed from all race-based inequities –at least in our hopeful imaginations.

As the events and the images of the Civil Rights Movement receded into history, however, a realignment began to take place. “Racist” remained a reliably powerful epithet for a generation or so, as people continued to symbolically reject the Racist monster in lieu of reexamining their own behaviors and attitudes. With the rising to adulthood of a new generation, however, a backlash against the willful simplicity of this notion began to build.

Rather than a step forward into examining the silent-but-deadly realities of racial inequity, however, it was a reactionary backlash aimed at rehabilitating the image of prejudice itself. This in turn led to the notion that openly prejudicial statements were signs of a bold, courageous honesty, an authentic, free-thinking antidote to the hypocrisy of a previous generations’ pious condemnations.

As we attempt to move forward into a new era of shifting racial realities, it is time for us to say goodbye to both of these myths –the myth of the Racist Monster and the myth of Heroic Prejudice.  We must never lose sight of the fact that prejudice is ugly, not noble –but that what makes it monstrous is the soul- and sometimes body-killing impact it has on people’s dreams, self-image, opportunities and lives.