Saturday School Season 5: Asian Americans in Asia

AC Lorenzo - Only You (Yazoo acoustic cover)

Saturday School - our podcast where we force your unwilling children to learn Asian American pop culture history - is back for Season 5, and this semester, we are exploring films that involve Asian Americans in Asia. 

We start with a 1957 episode of a TV documentary show called "Bold Journey," where the legendary Chinese American silent film star Anna May Wong shares footage she took when she visited China in the 1930s, and we talk about how Asian Americans are often called upon to explain Asia to American audiences - and sometimes we're excellent cultural translators, while other times, we're quite clueless ourselves.

Then we revisit 1986's "A Great Wall," directed by Peter Wang. (Not to be confused with the 2016 Zhang Yimou monster film "The Great Wall," starring Matt Damon.) "A Great Wall" is reportedly the first American film shot in China, and it's about a middle-aged Chinese American man from San Francisco visiting Beijing for the first time since he left at age 10. There's both confusion and intrigue as his Chinese American family meets his older sister's Chinese family. Some see the overseas Chinese as a threat, while others see them as Western saviors, and it's all wrapped up in a warm-hearted cross-cultural comedy.

Season 5, Ep. 1: A Great Wall

The second episode of Saturday School (Season 5) on Asian Americans in Asia is about the 2000 documentary "First Person Plural" by Deann Borshay Liem. It's a personal documentary about a Korean American adoptee who comes to realize she's not the person her American family thinks she is. And as she uncovers the mystery behind her identities, she brings her adoptive parents to Korea to meet her birth family for the first time. 

Deann Borshay Liem was adopted in 1966, so her story is a predecessor to some of the Korean American adoptee documentaries we've seen more recently from younger generations, including "AKA Dan" and "Twinsters." Also, 10 years after "First Person Plural," Deann Borshay Liem made a sequel 2010's "In the Matter of Cha Jung Hee," and now that it's 8 years after that, someone tell her we need a 2020 update to round out the trilogy!

Season 5, Ep. 2: First Person Plural

This week's episode, as part of our season on Asian Americans in Asia, we revisit the 2003 documentary "Refugee," by Spencer Nakasako, which follows three Cambodian American young men as they go back to Cambodia for the first time to confront their family histories. Like most of Nakasako's films of the time, the documentary makes use of the subjects' personal video diaries and Nakasako empowers Mike Siv and his friends Paul Maes and David Mark to pick up the camera themselves and film their own stories. 

Mike Siv, who's 24 at the time, has been told his whole life that he and his mother escaped the Khmer Rouge when he was a little kid, leaving his father and brother behind. He only recently found out that his brother doesn't actually know his father, so his assumption that if he had stayed in Cambodia, that he'd have a father, is shattered. So we see what happens when see a Cambodian American, from the streets of San Francisco's Tenderloin, brings his very Americanized perspective of what a father should be -- what a son deserves to have from his father -- to war-torn Cambodia. 

And we see that this is just the beginning of a journey: 12 years later, Mike Siv would make his own feature length documentary, 2016's "Daze of Justice," where he follows a group of Cambodian American women back to Cambodia so they can testify at the Khmer Rouge trials.

Season 5, Ep. 3: Refugee

On this week's episode of Saturday School, we're revisiting the 2005 thriller "Cavite" by Ian Gamazon and Neil dela Llana, which is a unique take on our exploration of Asian Americans in Asia. The film basically takes all the anxieties Asian Americans can feel when we go back to Asia -- the awkwardness of not speaking the language well, the feeling of being completely lost, the guilt over having turned into a foreigner in what's supposed to be our "homeland" -- and transports this all into a thriller scenario, having a fictional terrorist exploit all our main character's insecurities in a life-or-death hostage situation.

Adam (played by Ian Gamazon), a night security guard in San Diego, is on his way to the Philippines for his father's funeral. But as soon as he gets to the airport, he hears something ringing in his bag, and finds someone has slipped him a cell phone. Turns out the man on the other end of the line has his mother and sister, and will kill them unless he does everything he says. 

The film is super low-budget guerrilla-style filmmaking. Most the film feels like a home video following Adam racing through the streets, alleyways, and busy marketplaces of the Philippines as this man is taunting him -- and it's an impressive feat they pulled off. It feels like a scary documentary. Also, this was post 9/11, so in some ways, it's reacting to Islamophobia through the lens of a non-practicing Muslim Filipino American man.

Season 5, Ep. 4: Cavite

After a few weeks of exploring the grittier, more traumatic side of Asian Americans in Asia, this week's episode of Saturday School is a little more light-hearted and fun. We're revisiting the 2011 documentary "Big in Bollywood," which follows Omi Vaidya (at the time, your typical working but little-known LA actor) who lands the role of a lifetime. But it's not in Hollywood, it's in Bollywood, and he's the main antagonist in the new Aamir Khan film, 2009's "3 Idiots," which would end up breaking records as the highest grossing Indian film of its time. 

Because "Big in Bollywood" is made by Omi Vaidya's American friends who know very little about Indian cinema, it has an outsider perspective and therefore is a good intro to Bollywood. We see the moment Omi's life changes: when he arrives at the red carpet premiere, no one knows who he is, and shortly after, he's being mobbed by fans. It's interesting to think about how his big break requires him to play an American idiot; in fact the filmmakers partially cast him because they thought he spoke Hindi with a laughably bad American accent. But at the same time, it's hard not to be swept up in the underdog story and the whirlwind of Bollywood stardom -- and to imagine how meaningful it'd be to achieve success in your immigrant parents' home country and to be able to share that experience with them. 

Also, Ada can't help berating Brian when she realizes he hasn't seen "3 Idiots" yet, even though she gave him the blu-ray years ago as a gift. He's watched it since the recording of this episode, so the shaming was successful.

Season 5, Ep. 5: Big In Bollywood

In this week's Saturday School, we revisit the 2015 film Seoul Searching, which follows a group of teenagers sent by their parents to a government-sponsored summer camp in Korea for them to reconnect with their roots. However, according to the film's prologue, this real-life program in the 1980s (which director Benson Lee himself attended as a young man) was canceled after a few years cause the kids were too much to handle.  
 
Seoul Searching is a nod to John Hughes movies, with the Korean American characters all embodying a certain stereotype -- whether it's the punk-rock Sid Vicious wannabe, the Madonna vixen, the Korean Mexican lover, the uptight Korean German, the Korean American adoptee -- before the film really dives into deep-seeded cultural struggles that exist behind the teen angst. In that sense, the characters in Seoul Searching, including the authority figures, carry much more weight than is allowed in the world of a typical John Hughes movie (incidentally a fictional world where the only notable Asian American character is Long Duk Dong). 

So go back and watch it, cause it's on Netflix, and it's fun. 80s music. Soju. Fiery romances. Stud muffins. Teary-eyed reunions. Makes us Taiwanese Americans look forward to Valerie Soe's upcoming documentary on The Love Boat, the Taiwanese American equivalent of teenagers getting sent to the homeland for cultural learning with sometimes scandalous results.

Season 5, Ep. 6: Seoul Searching

Wake up! Saturday School is a podcast where Brian Hu (@husbrian) and Ada Tseng (@adatseng) teach your unwilling children about Asian American pop culture history. New episodes released Saturdays at 8am, when all your friends are still in bed watching cartoons. It'll be a blast from the past, as they dig up some of their favorite works they've come across covering Asian American arts & entertainment over the years -- and discover other gems for the first time. Saturday School is a proud founding member of Potluck, a collective of podcasts featuring unique stories and voices from the Asian American community. Sign up for our newsletter below for lecture notes!

Season 5, Ep. 6: Seoul Searching

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