One aspect of the novel that I found most interesting was the relationship between the theme of self-imprisonment and the restrictive form of screenwriting used throughout the majority of the novel. Interior Chinatown is presented largely in the form of a script, rarely breaking this structure except in moments of overwhelming seriousness, as if reality was too “real” to be told in the rather flippant manner of a Hollywood script. Willis Wu is restricted to a mode of storytelling characterized by stage directions, short lines, and brief set descriptions, but it is a restriction that Wu not only grew up with but that he actively plays into. In short, it is all he knows, and it influences his own identity, aspirations, and even his level of personal freedom in communicating with the people around him. The evolution of the self is confined to rising up the totem pole of acting positions, thus Wu’s identities are tied to the roles he is confined to: “Generic Asian Man,” “Kung Fu Guy,” and “Kung-Fu Dad.”
The interplay between the societally-prescribed stereotypes and personal identification is one of the biggest hurdles Wu must overcome throughout the novel, and the screenplay formatting of the novel only reiterates the limited, oppressive nature of American society and Hollywood. Wu slips in and out of script narration, even in moments of major life importance. His first date with Karen is titled a “Romantic Montage,” and he even slips into treating their conversation like lines, a “force of habit” (167) she has to break him out of. He is unable to enjoy Karen’s pregnancy announcement because so much of his self-identity is tied into achieving his dream role of “Kung Fu Guy,” and he even goes so far as to tell Karen he “can’t see himself [as a father]” (175) because he is still only a “Special Guest Star.” Once Phoebe is grown up and Wu claims to leave “Kung Fu Guy” behind, he simply transitions into the role of “Kung Fu Dad” (196). Within Interior Chinatown as in reality, life is defined by the roles one assigns themselves, but Willis Wu is especially restricted by the stereotypes of the roles he sees as available to him. He effectively typecasts himself within his own life and blurs the line between who Willis Wu is as a person and who Hollywood and American culture say he should be.
It is here that internalization and self-imprisonment are embodied in the screenplay format. Time, location, dialogue, and characterization/character development are restricted to the short, succinct sentences of a Hollywood script designed to deliver the bare minimum information needed to bring a story to life. The script becomes a “self-defense mechanism,” (246) a place where roles are defined, unchanging, limited, and safe but where “doing well is the trap” (180) and the line between “where reality starts and the performance begins” (246) is faded. State-sanctioned American racism and xenophobia, where Asian Americans are viewed only by how American hatred characterizes them: shifty, evil, dirty, etc., has defined generations of Asian Americans and been internalized. Yu uses the screenplay format to convey how external factors like racism or xenophobia become manifest and limiting, reducing individuals to mere stereotypes and effectively transforming into their own kind of prison. Only once Wu resigns the losing battle of defining himself by a society that rejects him is he able to embody his “real” role as “Willis Wu, dad. Maybe husband” (256). Instead of counting lines and memorizing stage directions, Wu lives “life at the margins” (256), free from the format that previously controlled him.
The screenplay format is a clever technique for telling Willis’s story and emphasizing the strict linearity of it. Yu contrasts the stereotypical Asian roles with those of the stars of BLACK and WHITE, Sarah Green and Miles Turner. Their existence serves an important purpose in the novel: exposing the internalized discomfort that comes with Asians in main roles. Yu, through Willis, explains to the reader the “proven template” that is BLACK and WHITE. Police procedurals have a formula that excludes Asians, not necessarily due to “some overarching conspiracy…but because it’s easier to keep it how we have it” (39). Yu is reiterating that the source of the issue is the comfort level of the wider audience. When, for example, a middle-class white family sits down to watch their weekly cop show, they expect to see Turner and Green, because “there’s just something about Asians that makes reality a little too real, overcomplicates the clarity, the duality, the clean elegance of BLACK and WHITE” (39). As a result, Willis and other Generic Asian Men are confined to static background roles with little room for growth. They remain undescribed and silent props in the corner of the scenes, with KUNG FU GUY as a distant ceiling for their potential. Willis has no real options with his roles, because giving him those options is too jarring, too much of a deviation from the status quo. Like you said, only when Willis leaves the totem pole behind and embraces his final role as a father does he finally have the chance to truly live (256).
ReplyDeleteI also found Charles Yu’s style choice, the structure of a screenplay, to be interesting and effective at getting his main points across. The strict roles in the screenplay highlighted Willis Wu’s limitation as an Asian man not only in the movie/TV show industry but also in his life in America. Yu also highlights the roles of other races and minorities with the structure of a screenplay through the “Black and White” show. Because there is one black actor and one woman actor, the show is supposed to be considered by society as diverse and representative. Turner, the black cop, goes on a rant saying, “Giving me a lead doesn’t make me anymore of a person. If anything, less. It locks me in” (Yu 96). At the end of his rant he says, “If you don’t like it here, go back to China” (96). Here inlies a key distinction: black Americans are considered a part of America, and Asian Americans are not.
ReplyDeleteThis conversation about the different kinds of racism Asians face than Black Americans continues in the courtroom scene. In the courtroom scene, Older Brother discusses how despite all of the oppression Asian Americans have faced in America (discriminatory laws, internment, etc.), Asian Americans feel their “oppression is second class” because “it does not include the original American sin-of slavery” (233). Older Brother makes the case that the oppression Asians face is not a “dialed-down version of the Black experience” but a different experience entirely.