Cloud Atlas--the Film Review in 3 parts

So I just saw the film Cloud Atlas, which is based on David Mitchell's novel of the same name--a novel that defies easy categorization since Mitchell is Irish, the six settings of the six embedded stories take place across various geographies and millenia (in chronological order, the story starts in the mid-19th century and ends in a post-apocolyptic future time marked by the seasons rather than by a calendar).

[Aside 1: Movie posters are always a good indication of who is most important, character-wise & star-wise in a film.  Case in point: Tom Hanks's head is HUGE compared to everyone else's--Halle Barry comes a close second in terms of prominence, and then you can figure out the prominence of everyone else in descending order]

Cloud Atlas, the novel, has been on my radar for several years.  In fact, a friend of a friend handed me a copy and told me I should read it.  And the book sat on my shelf for years, until finally in a purge I (stupidly) placed it in a library donation box.

[Aside 2: It's not stupid to donate to a library--only stupid that I didn't actually read the novel before doing so, because when I finally DID read it, the novel BLEW ME AWAY]

That brings us to August 2012.  As some of you may (or may not) know, I am a guest contributor to an Asian American magazine, ALIST.  In fact, you can read my latest column about Patsy Mink here (although I'm sure regular readers will recognize it from an older post I did over the summer--I did think with the election coming up on Tuesday, doing a political piece seemed in order).  In August I read this guest post by Matthew Salesses, where he talks about the yellowface going on in the film version of Cloud Atlas.

[Aside 3:  Full disclosure: Matt is a former student of mine, dating back to the first ever class I taught at Southern U--a course on Asian American literature.  Matt is also a very fine writer (which I know from the essays I've read by him).  You can check out his work by going to his website.]

Of course once I realized that there was yellowface in this film, I knew I had to see it.  But I had heard good things about the novel, so I sat down and read all 528 page in 2 days (doing nothing else but--well, eating and sleeping obviously, but you get my drift).  It's a brilliant novel--I couldn't put it down.  And is very thought provoking and well executed, despite the misgivings by this New York Times review.

One might say, based on the complexity of setting, time, character, and form that this would be an impossible novel to film.  But that apparently didn't stop the Wachowski siblings (the folks who brought us The Matrix franchise) and Tom Twyker from deciding that they were going to try.  And some might say that it's an admirable task that these three directors have done, distilling the essence of the novel, particularly the theme of "eternal recurrence" (taken from Frederick Nietzsche).  In trying to whittle down a 500+ novel into a film (one that clocks in at nearly 3 hours) certain choices had to be made--and one of the devices that the filmmakers used to unify the six narratives was to have the main actors portray various characters, major and minor, in all 6 segments, which inevitably meant that actos would be portraying people of different races, and in some cases gender.

The above image of the actor, Hugo Weaving, is an excellent demonstration of the ways in which he crosses gender, race, and in the last case metaphysics to play a female nurse, an unidentified Korean enforcer, and the incarnation of a tribal devil.

There's SO MUCH to say about this film that I've decided I need to divide it up into 3 parts--an introduction (which is this post) and then two parts: cross-racial masquerade, most notably the use of yellowface and whiteface and mixing of races as the salvation of humanity.

So stay tuned--also, I'll be talking about the films in their entirety, so I'll be sure to put "SPOILER ALERT" warnings for those of you who want to watch the film.

Dear Mixed Race America, it's time to stop the MADNESS

An Open Letter to everyone in the United States,

I am heartsick.  The recent violence in Aurora, Colorado and now the shooting at the Oak Creek, Wisconsin Gurdwara (Sikh temple).  So much violence.  And not enough outrage.

Oh, I know there are plenty of people who are angry at the shooters.  Angry that this "senseless" violence could happen.  There's lots of hand wringing and, in a case of what I consider to be misplaced fear and anxiety, gun purchases ratcheted up in Colorado immediately following the midnight massacre.

This isn't going to be a post just about gun control, although heaven's knows I believe in it--I believe that we absolutely need more not less gun control--there's no earthly reason why any individual needs semi-automatic weapons and so much ammunition you could kill a theater or temple full of people.  And I wish there was more concentrated outrage that will lead to stricter measures.

But what I want to concentrate on today is hatred.  The madness of hating someone else based on their difference--their racial and religious difference.

Members of the Oak Creek gurudwara listening to an FBI report on the shooting

That's the crux of the Oak Creek shooting.  Wade Page was a known white supremacist.  According to this New York Times article, the Southern Poverty Law Center had been keeping tabs on him due to his "ties to the white supremacist movement and his role as the leader of a white-power band called End Apathy."  While some officials are calling this an incident of domestic terrorism -- there are many who are clamoring to call this what it was: a hate crime. 

Page walked into the Gurdwara and opened fire because he had steeped himself in an ideology of white supremacy that taught him that it was his right to hate people non-white and his right to inflict violence on non-white people.  There has been some speculation that perhaps Page was confused about the Sikh religion--that he had meant to target Muslims and confused Sikhism for Islam.  But as my colleague Amardeep Singh so astutely and powerfully writes about in this New York Times piece:

Whether or not that target was actually the “right one” was beside the point for the Oak Creek shooter. . . . I also don’t think we should fool ourselves that all hostility will be resolved purely by education, nor should we presume that this shooter suffered only from ignorance. As a white supremacist, it seems safe to suppose, what mattered to the shooter was that he hated difference — and saw, in the Sikh gurdwara at Oak Creek, a target for that hatred.

Difference, the targeting of others based on racial difference, is the subject of Matthew Salesses piece in the Asian American Writer's Workshop:  "If you look different, you are treated differently. This is just how our world is. We are not in another, better place, where we each fit in for our individuality. There is a true power to appearances, and there is a true power to the words we attach to those appearances."

[Side note:  Matt is actually a former student of mine from Southern U, and I am so proud that he has become such an eloquent writer]

Another colleague, Viet Ngueyn, makes a very astute connection about various forms of global violence and racialized violence in the United States, writing that his essay will show "the direct line from the core of American culture and history to the Viet Nam War to the Oak Creek massacre and a couple of other massacres many of us have already forgotten about."  And Harsha Walia in Racialicious reminds us, quite forcefully, that the root of the shootings by Page are in racism--not an individual act of racism by a lone white supremacist, but racism in its institutionalized and systemic form:  "The crimes of white supremacists are not exceptions and do not and cannot exist in isolation from more systemic forms of racism."

The image above makes me weep--literally, the first time I saw it, I cried.  I cried because not only Wisconsin is weeping, but America is or should be weeping.  We HAVE to do better.  Better gun control, yes.  But we also need more allies of all races and religions to stand together and to say no more.  We are not going to continue to vilify one another.  We are not going to tolerate this kind of intolerance.  We are going to educate our children and teach them about the history of racism in this country and that they can do better than previous generations.  We are going to decide that we aren't just going to wait for the next generation but do better NOW for ourselves--for others--for our society and our nation.

We live in a Mixed Race America.  What happened in Oak Creek, Wisconsin hurts my heart.  It also reminds me that I not only can but must try to make a difference and be an ally to others who are oppressed and to not let the Pages of the world have the last word.  We can and must do more.  We can and must stop this madness.

Authentically Asian American?

Happy May Day! It's awfully embarrassing to realize that it's been A FULL MONTH since I last wrote a post (sigh). Do I have any readers out there anymore??? I have found that multi-tasking is something that I'm unable to do anymore post-chemo. And my energy level isn't what it was pre-cancer diagnosis. Sometimes I think these are excuses I make for myself. And then I think, my body went through a lot of trauma, so why not just cut myself slack?

Anyway, that's the rationale/excuse/reason for my not writing more--I've been tired and been trying to keep my head above water with the other commitments I have going on in my life. And I'm sure all of you can understand that because I'm sure you are also trying to keep your head above water.

I'm actually at Williams College right now--I just gave a talk about what it means to be "authentically" Asian American -- and don't worry, it was not a workshop meant to give students a list of all the things they should be doing to be considered an authentic Asian American. Instead, it was a workshop meant to provoke and dismantle the idea of "authenticity" -- or at the very least to trouble the notion of authenticity.

At one point I had two lists on the chalkboard--one with traits and characteristics of "authentic" Asian Americans and one with traits and characteristics of "inauthentic" Asian Americans. And as I demonstrated at the end of the exercise, we can all fit into both categories. I use chopsticks (check authenticity box) but I am not fluent in an Asian language (check inauthenticity box) and I'm married to a white man (this was a little contentious--some students thought this was something that made you authentic and some students thought it signaled inauthenticity--all the more reason to understand the troubling nature of creating such lists).

We also talked about the difficulty of coalition building among Asian Americans and the lack of a discernible Asian American culture--what, exactly, brings Asian Americans together? We do share the common language of English, but unlike the majority of Latinos in the U.S., we don't share a secondary language/culture (although we should remember that Latinos are not a monolithic, "hispanic" origin group and while many do come from Spanish-language backgrounds, different Spanish speaking countries have different words/slang/expressions--and we shouldn't forget about Brazil or indigenous Latin Americans).

So what exactly brings Asian Americans together as common cause?

Jeremy Lin.

Yep, Jeremy Lin's name came up as someone that various Asian Americans, regardless of ethnic nationality/culture could all get behind. One Korean American student admitted that his father, who is not known to root for Chinese people or celebrate Chinese accomplishments nor is a big basketball fan, began watching Knicks games and rooting for Jeremy Lin. This was echoed by all the students at this workshop.

Which brings me to this very astute and moving piece by a former student of mine, Matthew Salesses:

"DIFFERENT RACISMS: On Jeremy Lin and How the Rules of Racism are Different for Asian Americans"

About 2 months ago, Matt got in touch with me over email and was kind enough to send me the link to the piece he wrote about Jeremy Lin and what Lin means for Matt and other Asian Americans, especially other Asian American men.

As you'll see by Matt's piece, he's an incredible writer and you should definitely check out his website and his writing (click here).

Matt explains, in very personal terms, what it means for him to be Asian American--for him to grapple with that term and to figure out whether he wants to embrace that racial marker--as he writes in his piece,

"I was taking the AA course to find out what I was."

I know that feeling. I remember vividly my first Asian American studies course and that moment of discovery--the moment of feeling like finally I was being reflected in the syllabus. It's a very empowering feeling--and disorienting when you are Asian American because you realize that the rest of your courses and the rest of society doesn't really want to deal with you as an Asian American in the way you want to be dealt with--with full acknowledgement of the way Asian Americans have been racialized and are marginalized into a model minority monolith that remains invisible in plain sight.

I'm humbled by students like the ones I met at Williams and former students like Matt--quite frankly, they're the reason I teach.