After Yang Asks: “What Makes Someone Asian?”
After Yang is a meditative exploration of what it means to be Asian. Based on a short story by Alexander Weinstein and directed by Korean American director Kogonada, the futuristic film begins with the malfunction of Yang, a beloved android (Justin H. Min) and companion to young Mika (Malea Emma Tjandrawidjaja). When she is devastated by Yang’s unexpected shut-down, Mika’s father Jake (Colin Farrell) seeks to repair Yang while her mother Kyra (Jodie Turner-Smith) holds the family together. As the film unfolds, we learn about each family member—through memories of their time with Yang—and about Yang himself.
Even though Yang is a “cultural technosapian” programmed with encyclopedic knowledge of Chinese language and culture to support Chinese interracial adoptees like Mika, he is torn about his racial and ethnic identity. Unlike other cinematic androids like Bladerunner’s replicants or Ex Machina’s android who obsess over being human, Yang simply wanted to know if he was Chinese and “what makes someone Asian,” we learn from a conversation between Jake and Yang’s friend Ada (Haley Lu Richardson). At one point, Yang lamented not having memories of actual place, time or context to accompany his Chinese knowledge—important factors that shape ethnic identity according to scholars.
Director Kogonada told an audience in one Los Angeles screening that he “resonated with Yang’s manufactured Asianness.” He said, “I think of my own struggle of trying to understand my own history and my own sense of Asianness…Maybe when you’re away from where you were born or where your history is, you do have to construct it and you have to deal with perceptions of Asianness and also kind of integrate that into who you are.”
Like Yang, I have pondered my own Asianness throughout my life. As a young immigrant growing up in the United States, I felt parts of my Asian identity slipping away as I forgot Chinese words I once knew. Asian languages are the first cultural markers to disappear for U.S.-born Asians–nearly two-thirds (65 percent) of whom speak only English at home. Watching Yang teach Mika Chinese vocabulary words like “rainbow” along with “Chinese fun facts” reminded me of Asian American children sent to heritage language schools by their parents to learn how to be more Asian. Strikingly, in After Yang, whenever Mandarin is spoken, there are no English subtitles or translations. In one particular scene towards the end of the film, Mika enters Yang’s empty room and uses Mandarin to say a personal good-bye. This is the first time she speaks in Mandarin besides the occasional “gege” (older brother in Chinese). Since her parents do not speak Mandarin, her words are meant only for Yang (in absentia) and perhaps herself. Watching this scene, I felt a particular kinship as someone who understood Mika’s words—similar to when I speak Mandarin with my family as our “secret language” to avoid being understood by outsiders in public.
Although it’s unclear where After Yang is based, the film also reflects the Asian American experience. In a flashback scene, Mika told Yang that kids at school said her adopted parents were “not really” her parents and she seemed to believe them. This is one of the few allusions to the interracial composition of the family with Jake, who is white, and Kyra, who is Black. It also shows how racism shapes how we conceptualize ourselves whether we like it or not, even from a very young age. But Yang’s response to Mika is one that empowers her and teaches her that identity and family can be disparate parts coming together to make something new and beautiful. He brings Mika to an orchard to show her how the grafting of branches from different trees creates a new tree (and throws in a Chinese fun fact that grafting comes from China). While Yang’s object lesson is about the joining of Mika’s parents and her to form a new family, the analogy also applies to Mika growing up as an Asian girl in a multiracial environment. Even Yang himself is an amalgamation of cultures—simultaneously imparting Chinese language and fun facts and teaching Mika how to sing his favorite pop song, “Glide” (originated by Japanese singer Lily Chou-Chou and covered by Japanese American artist Mitski in the film). The grafting of different cultures to create something novel is an apt metaphor for the Asian American identity.
In another flashback, as Jake (who owns a tea shop) makes tea, Yang asks him why he has devoted his life to tea. Jake explains that his interest began after watching a tea documentary in which a German man (whose name he can’t remember) has a profound tea experience. But when Yang offers to share actual Chinese facts about tea, Jake dismisses him. Jake’s relationship to tea is many times removed from its Asian roots. But Yang, as a programmed android, also lacks actual connections to Chinese people or culture; he wishes he had real memories of a place and time to support his Chinese tea facts. Though both are distant from tea’s origins in their own ways, Yang’s contemplative self-reflection stands in contrast to Jake’s oblivion. Only through the process of uncovering Yang’s memories (with the help of a technosapien researcher played by Sarita Choudhury) does Jake begin a journey towards greater awareness of himself and others.
Scenes like Yang’s moments with Mika and his tea conversation with Jake help to answer the question of what “makes someone Asian” — that trivia knowledge does not cover it all. Even though Mika’s parents bought Yang so that she could be “more in touch with her culture,” the bond Mika and Yang shared went beyond “Chinese fun facts” to include shared experiences and memories. And what makes someone Asian American can be the product of multiple identities coming together, like a grafted tree, especially for those living with blended families.
Not every case of Asian American representation has to be about immigrant narratives, generational divisions, or racial trauma. Rather, a film can look like After Yang, which integrates Asianness organically. From the Zen-like set designs and kimono-inspired costumes to the musical score by Japanese artists Ryuichi Sakamoto and Aska Matsumiya, the film justfeels Asian. Kogonada flawlessly weaves the existential question of what makes someone Asian throughout the narrative like a prayer, compelling audiences towards greater contemplation and empathy.
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