From China to Nebraska

Last night, I started watching Wayne Wang's new feature The Princess of Nebraska on Youtube. It was "the first full-length feature" released on Youtube:

Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rKgbIz6CM_E I was having mixed feelings after watching it. While I thought the way he made and shot it as a no-budget film was inspiring, I was also troubled by some story/character and ideological points. Based on a short story by Yiyun Li, The Princess of Nebraska centers on (as I recall) 20 intense hours of a young Chinese girl, who was originally from Beijing, now goes to school in Nebraska, and has come to San Francisco for an abortion.

I wonder why she has come such a long way for an abortion? Sasha comes to San Francisco and meets up with the gay lover of a young man in Beijing who has impregnated her. She definitely loves the Beijing guy, who may or may not be gay. No surprise, the gay lover is a middle-aged balding Caucasian businessman, Boshen. Basically, he is the stereotype of a gay rice queen. The portrayal of homosexuality is not particularly flattering. Boshen first wanted Sasha to abort the baby, then suddenly at the end he wanted to keep the baby and be one happy family with Sasha and his Beijing boy. I was like... WHAT? WHY?

In the middle of the movie, Sasha meets a prostitute (played by the talented Pamelyn Chee) in the middle of the night in San Francisco's Chinatown. How often does that happen? Chee's character leads Sasha into a roomful of businessmen and Sasha toys with the idea of getting together with this scary looking African American older gentleman as if he has stepped right out of Candyman. This older gentleman is the only black character in the movie... and I thought Wang would know better than to exploit the racial spectacle between a young Asian woman and a older black man. Well, he kind of did because the black man let her go after kissing her stomach and felt she might be pregnant. But the scene definitely made me cringe from the start because it reminded me of the racial politics from The Birth of a Nation.

Then after watching Sasha having a lesbian affair with the female prostitute, I thought it was kind of hot but really right out of a straight guy's soft porn fantasy.

As I was struggling with these thoughts, I decided to rent Wang's all-time Asian American hit The Joy Luck Club and rewatch it as a comparison. The complaint I remember about that movie was that it portrayed Asian American males badly because they were all ugly, mean or evil in the movie. It was more of an Orietalist fantasy as people in Asia didn't quite like it... etc. But it was successful domestically and how can you argue with success? It was the highest grossing Asian American film (32.9 Million) ever made.

Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gjpgeCKL2hg&feature=relate So I watched The Joy Luck Club again and kind of enjoyed it. It's a slice of guilty pleasure for Americans. It is the ultimate Hollywood movie that is emotionally manipulative, melodramatic and well-made. The characters are black-and-white. All the Chinese (American) female protagonists are nice, beautiul and strong within while the antagonists who are mostly Chinese men are mean and evil. What can I say?

The interesting thing about looking at The Princess of Nebraska and The Joy Luck Club together is that you see how a filmmaker fares in two radically different situations. In The Joy Luck Club, Wang had studio support (I heard it was around USD$16,700,000) to make an Asian American epic. I'm sure that that whatever capital given he'd also have to sacrifice a level of control to the studios and execs. On the contrary, The Princess of Nebraska was made on a shoestring budget situation where Wang had probably all the creative freedom he wanted albeit with a much smaller budget (I'd guess around USD$200,000).

I'll let you be the judge, and I feel that both films certainly have a meaningful place in the way we talk about Asian American cinema.