Experimental Technique, Destroying Tropes, Asian American Identity

Raamish Karatela
10/10/13
ENG 4120
Ongiri
Experimental Technique, Destroying Tropes, Asian American Identity

The use of experimental techniques in Asian American filmmaking can but not necessarily foster the creation of Asian American identity. It is merely a methodology of film. For instance, in Byron Q's Bang Bang, documentary impulse, Italian neorealist, and French new wave influences are effective at portraying a representation of Asian Americans that is not saturated with stereotypical Hollywood tropes usually employed. Yet Gregg Arakai, who repeatedly experiments with new wave style and has origins as an experimental guerilla filmmaker (Hart) is known for casting no Asian Americans in his film and deals rather with questions of sexuality and queer representation. Thus, experimental film techniques and aesthetics in Asian American filmmaking is a methodology that may be used to discuss Asian American identity, however it is largely dependent on the what thematic framework the auteur decides to engage with.
Bang Bang heavily picks up on the documentary impulse that characterized Italian neorealist film and was also adopted by French New Wave directors. By employing these aesthetics, Byron Q successfully steeps the narrative of the aimless Asian American youth of the film in a sense of realism that is unlike any popular representation of Asian Americans. Schein explains in "Gran Torino's Boys and Men With Guns: Hmong Perspectives" how popular discourse has led to "the relentless attribution of hyperviolence to Hmong men, especially youth" (Schein 60.) She calls this particular stereotype the "perpetual warrior" because for many generations the Hmong "are not known as anything else, they can…collectively apprehended as culturally disposed towards killing and aggression." This is one of the stereotype that Bang Bang explores and subverts in an interesting way.
One notable example of the formal techniques at work is the use of handheld camera. This is a method highly adopted from Godard, as he uses it in Masculin/Femenin when filming the Parisian streets before the scene where the Paul and the girls go to the theater. He repeatedly uses it throughout the film and in most of his other films (especially Ici et aillers while filming the Palestinian group of militants test out their weaponry.) Byron Q uses it often throughout most of the film and this adoption of Godard's technique helps in particular to subvert the idea of Hmong and Asian Americans in general as perverse foreign brutes.
For instance, in the scene where Charlie shows off his gun, he is never in a position of terrifying power because of the handheld camera preventing the scene from becoming a tropifyed scene of Hollywood violence. There is no focus on the weapon, no reverse-shots between characters to heighten the tension of having a gun in the scene. Rather, what is seen instead is Charlie posturing as one of these tropes. He is posturing as a gangster with his display of military power, but he never really looks like one because the use of handheld camera and rejections of Hollywood formal techniques does not allow him to fit the trope. Justin affirms that this posturing is unsuccessful when he jokes around and jeers at Charlie "Look at me! I'm Charlie, a fucking OG gangster; man shut the fuck up" (Byron Q.)
Another use of handheld camera to this effect is during some of the fight scenes. They are not intricate sequences of combat, but rather images of young men squirming around and throwing fists in all directions. These scenes do not fit the trope of Hollywood violence either. In fact Byron Q illustrates parts of the fight scenes with multiple black and white still-frames over the sound of the struggle. This notable experimental element almost gives these moments a sense of photojournalistic realism, again subverting trope-like representations of violence so pervasive in Hollywood. In fact, none of the characters, even Rocky (since he decides to want to leave for New York and is then killed) accomplish the trope of being a gangster. Thus, they do not fit into mold of the "perpetual warrior," rather the film continues to show these aimless Asian American youth and their very real problems, aiming for a more objective and less sensationalized representation than what we find in Gran Torino.
The documentary impulse is formally accomplished by scenes like these with handheld camera and also with on-location shooting at public places like sushi bars or the side of a street. This impulse stems from the Italian Neorealist movement with films like Bicycle Theives. For example, Bicycle Theives has multiple shots of Antonio wandering with his son around the streets of Rome, occasionally actual pedestrians are captured on camera. Along with this the locations at which the film is shot do not give us the conventional images of Rome (conventional as in: major monuments, the Colosseum, etc.) Instead we receive images of back alleys, normal streets, unimportant buildings and the like. This formal element is present in Bang Bang with scenes like the one of Justin walking down a street in Los Angeles and giving money to a homeless person as he passes by. In Bang Bang also we are not given the typical images of Los Angeles. In fact, shots of the beach are the only visual cues we are given that this is Los Angeles.
With the adoption of these documentarian Italian Neorealist and French New Wave conventions a cohesive identity of Asian American youth begins to form. The handheld camera follows our protagonists to the beach where they do un-sensational things like commenting on how the white boy in the water surfs well and expressing (seemingly out of nowhere) the want to surf as well. We begin to see that this documentary impulse is focused on this de-tropifying of Asian American youth and how the focus instead is on issues of class.
This focus on class struggle is mainly experienced through dialogue. Notably in the scene where Charlie and Justin are framed in a frontal shot sitting on the steps of an apartment building and Charlie asks what Justin wants to be when he grows up. He says he wants to be rich and "ballin'" and then begins to reflect on how eventually people realize that will not happen. He then goes on to tell Charlie that he is lucky that his father is offering him an internship at law. This already begins to reveal that the violence among the gangs in the film are more an issue of being a repressed, under-represented, and frustrated class which has nowhere to go rather than violence innately rooted in being Asian American or Hmong specifically. Justin and most of the gang does not want to be there. They repeatedly voice their wants to leave. But their situation and class impede them from leaving.
The misc-en-scen of the film also touches on this issue of class when there is no food in the fridge or dishes unwashed in the kitchen or cluttered laundry all around the house which Justin's mother is hard at work organizing. Like Justin remarks that no one wants to imagine themselves being poor or homeless in the future, this neorealist (Antonio's house is cluttered and empty as well) misc-en-scen would rarely be represented in Hollywood as no one wants to see a struggling house like their own or imagine one.
Although Bang Bang uses experimental techniques stemming from the documentary impulse of Italian neorealism and French New Wave to portray a de-tropifyed image of Asian American youth and families, and explore questions concerning class struggle, Gregg Araki uses experimental techniques to a completely different effect.
Gregg Araki, despite being third generation Japanese-American, is more interested in propagating the historical narrative of New Queer Cinema often using Godardian techniques and a postpunk misc-en-scen. For example, the disjointed narrative structure of Mysterious Skin is evocative of Godard's disjointed scenes organized by intertitles, notable in films like Weekend.
In Weekend Godard follows a couple through the French countryside encountering literary figures as a Marxist revolution is underway. This loose narrative however is punctuated often by intertitles like "A Scene in Parisian Life" which goes on to depict a bourgeois woman chasing a man down for bumping her car slightly and depicting the violent absurdity of the situation. Or occasional intertitles preluding scenes explaining Marxist theory. This tendency of fragmented narrative can be seen in the narrative structure of Mysterious Skin in how it handles two narratives at the same time, beginning with the first childhood interactions Neil had with the coach and Brian had with aliens, and then eventually moving into the narrative of both men as adults, but still switching back to the childhood narrative at times.
More distinct of an adaption of Godard's style is witnessed in the scene where Neil describes to Brian the explicit sexual acts they performed with the coach as children near the end of the film. Godard exhibits this same tendency near the beginning of Weekend where the loose narrative of this couple begins with the wife giving an excruciating description to her husband as to how she proceeded to have a threesome with another man and woman.
Again however, the adaption of Godard is not used to explore ideas of Asian American identity, partly because there are almost no Asians ever represented in Araki's films. Instead, like in the case of Mysterious Skin experimental techniques (in this case Godard being the influence) are used to explore a queer narrative; the example here being Neil's budding homosexuality and Brian's childhood trauma.

Postpunk style is another major component to Araki's style. The experimental/subversive aesthetics of postpunk music are inherent in his misc-en-scen and again is used as an aesthetic to foster a queer identity rather than Asian American. For example, the soundtrack of the film frequently uses the music of prominent shoegazing band Slowdive (shoegazing is a sub-genre of postpunk music) to paint the bleak, worn environments the characters travel through. Often Araki makes the choice to raise the volume of a song as the character has some sort of narrative development (Neil as he runs down a street after having a particularly disturbing prostituting experience is an example.) This choice alone, along with the makeup Neil's queer friend wears, along with the posters in the characters' rooms, speak to an intense use of postpunk as a visual aesthetic. The postpunk aesthetics are distinctly used for a queer narrative since they are introduced to viewer as the queer character's interests and sensibilities.
There is perhaps one convention of the film that may speak to the construction of an Asian American identity. This is in the repeated use of frontal shots of characters (looking straight at the camera) when they are speaking, and crossing of the 180 degree line when two characters are talking to each other. This is notably used in sequences like when we are first introduced to the coach's house near the beginning of the film and he wants to record Neil's voice. The dialogue here is not represented through conventional shot-reverse-shot. It is represented through alternating frontal shots of the Coach and Neil talking to each other.
The reason that the use of this convention may be read as an expression of Asian American identity is because it is a technique frequently used by and almost characteristic of Japanese director, Yasujiro Ozu. For instance, in his 1959 film Good Morning when a child is explaining to his English language teacher how he ingests pumice powder everyday, the exchange is filmed through only frontal shots, crossing the 180 degree line with each alternating shot.
This is where we must ask: by using the experimental film techniques of an Asian auteur, is Gregg Araki fostering the growth of an Asian American identity? This can be answered by re-thinking representation in film. Byron Q explicitly represents Asian Americans by casting Asian Americans as his cast, and he makes forms connections between Asian American identity and experimental techniques by adapting the documentary impulse of neorealism and French new wave to portray Asian Americans with de-tropifyed realism not found in mainstream Hollywood. Thus the connection between experimental techniques and identity in his case is valid and explicit.
However, Araki does not deal thematically or explicitly (like Byron Q) with issues of Asian American identity yet he does adapt formal film techniques of Asian auteurs from time to time. If he is furthering the use Asian formal elements of film style in the American film industry then he is to some extent furthering Asian American representation in film style (as these formal elements may continue to be adapted in American film history.) Along with this, we must consider whether the fact that Araki is Japanese-American furthers representation of Asian Americas on a historical level (not thematic) by default. I assert that this depends on whether Araki will be remembered as a distinct auteur because, as it is with those who use experimental techniques, their historicity (biographical information, style, ethnicity) is usually recognized retro-actively (examples being Alfred Hitchcock who was recognized as distinctly an auteur only when the Cahiers group began writing about him.) Hart seems to think that "Araki is one of the handful of American auteurs working in film today" (Hart 32.) However, notice how Hart uses "American," suggesting that Araki has not identified with his Japanese-American identity enough through formal techniques or thematic or otherwise, to be dubbed an Asian-American filmmaker. Thus, the usage of experimental techniques can, but not necessarily foster the creation of an Asian American identity and we cannot simply dub an Asian American who uses experimental film techniques as furthering the creation of Asian American identity because we cannot completely predict whether the historical re-contextualization of that auteur will take into account his Asian American identity unless he explicitly and thematically (maybe even stylistically if the influences are strong enough) deals with these ideas of Asian American identity in his/her body of work.






































Works Cited
Good Morning. Dir. Yasujiro Ozu. Perf. Keiji Sada, Yoshiko Kuga, Chisu Ryu. Shochiku, 1959. DVD.






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