Better Luck Tomorrow: Asian Flavor of the Month, or the Beginning of a New Era for Asian Americans in Film? (2 of 4)

I thought the film was entertaining, well done, with hints at meaning that at the least provokes discussion and thought and within its layers, could be an insightful look at the dark side of the model minority myth. But not surprisingly, its vision is flawed, and incomplete.

Identity as Violence; Cell Phone as Death
BLT filmmaker Justin Lin has referred to this film as portraying the inherent violence in identity politics. BLT is in some ways a cautionary tale that is a morality tale about the violence underlying the model minority myth. The characters of BLT are faced with choices and the consequences of those choices are turned on their head. Here, the American dream of going to the best school, getting a great job, and living an ideal life is a stultifying trap; it is the cycle that Steve obsesses about breaking, the life that Ben nearly (?) throws away by drifting into petty and then heavy criminality and thuggery. The Asian friends crash a party where a white jock throws racial slurs at them, calling them math clubbers or the like, and gets into a shoving match with would be-Asian jock Derek only to find Derek pulling a piece on him, pistolwhipping him into submission and terrifying the whites in an explosion of violence. Main character Ben, always focused on doing the right thing, erupts in homicidal violence in the film’s climax. Steve’s death, while ambiguous in the best indie tradition, seems symbolic of the shattering of the American dream. When he dies, the American dream dies with him, as if to signal that that dream is at best different for Asian Americans, and for most of us, fool’s gold. Somehow, the violence of his death seems fitting; when our hopes for the justice and promise of America die, it is not a mild disillusionment, it is gut-wrenching, change-the-world stuff. Nobody embraces that dream with more gusto, passion and innocence than immigrants, except perhaps the offspring of immigrants. When gold mountain comes tumbling down, as we realize the inequality and racism this country is built on, it is as if dyamite went off. On another level, the violence in the film mirrors the senselessness of modern American violence. Anyone can be a victim. In BLT’s world, who dies seems almost random, but also a consequence of out-of-control materialism and amorality. Rich kid Steve dies in a melee where it could be anyone’s turn. In one of BLT’s flashes of dark humor, the film begins and ends with Ben and Virgil hearing a cell phone ring, both saying “it’s not me”, only to discover the ring is coming from Steve’s buried corpse. The cell phone ring as grim reaper in the new millennium.