By Siti Sarah Sofea
Everything Everywhere All at Once is the movie that keeps creating surprises as it sweeps awards and box office records despite its minimal budget of $25 million. It also has the absurd premise of ‘downloading’ skills from the multiverse to save the world. Another aspect of the movie that is being talked about is the cast, which consists mostly of Asians. However, the main thing that I want to unpack here is not just how they achieve high miles, how absurd the idea of hotdog fingers in one of the multiverses is, or how diverse the cast is. More than that, I would like to discuss the Asian American experience portrayed and the stereotypes challenged in the movie.
Asian Americans are often stereotyped as the model minority group, a high-achieving group that is able to overcome adversity and achieve the so-called American Dream. The concepts of the American Dream and model minority are problematic as they ignore factors such as systemic discrimination and economic barriers while brushing off the complexities and intersectionality that exist within Asian Americans. In the movie, instead of achieving the American Dream after migrating to America, Evelyn and her husband, Waymond, end up struggling economically as they live in "a tiny apartment over a failing laundromat". To further subvert the narrative of upward mobility and success of the American Dream, there is an instance where Evelyn and Waymond are portrayed as being able to be successful in their own country, which is in the movie Star Universe.
Consuming American media, you would likely notice that Asian women are often portrayed as meek, submissive, and oversexualized, while men are portrayed as either hyper-masculine or emasculated, which can be traced back to the history of Asian American in the country. Interestingly, Evelyn is portrayed as a strong female protagonist who is responsible for saving the whole universe. Such portrayal provides more representation of Asian Americans and serves to challenge the usual perception of female Asian Americans in a negative light. While subversions are prevalent in the movie, there is also an intriguing way to challenge the stereotypes of Asian American men through the empowerment of kindness.
Reflecting on the history of Asian American men being left to do service jobs (deemed women’s work), such as launderettes, Waymond, as an Asian American man character in the movie, is a laundromat owner. Instead of having manlier jobs such as firefighter or mechanic, the character Waymond embraces the job of a laundromat, rejecting the so-called standard of masculinity framed by society and proving his worth through his kindness and patience. This portrayal of Waymond, an Asian American, as a kind person doing laundry shows that each individual has their own complexities and depth and should not only be viewed through the lens of stereotypes.
Aside from the stereotypes addressed in the movie, the experience of Asian Americans pertaining to a sense of otherness is also presented in the movie. Even after decades of living in America, Evelyn still finds herself not quite assimilated into the community. In the matter of taxes, she accuses the auditor, Deirdre, of targeting the Chinese people and refuses to abide by her suggestion to bring the daughter, Joy, over to "avoid any more miscommunications". Despite her claim that her English is fine because "they have Google", we find her struggling to understand the tax terms and the idea of gender and sexuality through language.
Resembling the action of Verse Jumping from one universe to another, Asian Americans in the movie can be found to be alternating between different cultures most of the time. As someone who is fluent in English but less so in Cantonese or Mandarin, Joy struggles with communication with her family, who are fluent in Cantonese or Mandarin but are less fluent in English. The language differences create a barrier between Joy and her family, making it more difficult for Joy to express herself to them. Seemingly feeling disconnected from everything, Jobu Tupaki (an alternate version of Joy) creates a ‘third space’ to pour out her guilt, pain, and shame in one place. The displacement of emotion can be associated with the displacement of trauma that happens intergenerationally between Evelyn and her father and between Joy and Evelyn. Being hurt by her father’s disappointment in her and the expectations that he forced upon her, Evelyn ends up being estranged from both her husband and daughter as she doesn’t properly manage her trauma. Evelyn then does a similar thing towards her daughter, as she puts expectations on Joy while Joy suffers the guilt, pain, and shame of not meeting her mother’s expectations.
All in all, while I personally find the premise of saving the whole universe by Verse Jumping to deal with a nihilist antagonist amusing, the Asian American experience delivered and the stereotypes readdressed by the movie are way more exciting to unravel. Standing out with a cast full of Asians, the movie also presents the complexities of Asian American identity in a different light as it attempts to break away from the stereotypes of Asian Americans and address the struggles experienced by Asian Americans. Everything Everywhere All at Once is not only a movie that entertains and tugs at your heart; it is also a movie that allows us to explore important social and cultural issues.
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