by Jamie Nicholson
This essay is published as part of the Youth Critics Initiative II, a collaborative program between the 24th Reel Asian Film Festival and TACLA.
On paper, this is only the second time Reel Asian has done an LGBTQ+ focus shorts program, after 2018’s Spectrum, but queer content has consistently run through their programs throughout the years and the 2020 edition is no exception. Even outside of the Resurgence program this year there are several shorts and features that feature queer themes. GOODBYE MOTHER is a Vietnamese feature about a young man returning from the USA with his boyfriend. He has to be honest about who he is with his family, but fears their reaction. The film is conventional in form but has lots of heart and humour that elevate it. Documentary shorts ACCIDENTAL ACTIVIST and THE WAY WE WERE both tell stories about local gay advocates and community support initiatives. DANCING ON MY OWN documents the impact of Bubble_T, a gay Asian dance party in New York with the mission of being a safe space free from racial discrimination. HANDSCAPE deals with the intersectionality of homophobia, dance and disability. LOLA’S WAKE has a gay creator, as does the stunning documentary about family history and unconditional love, SING ME A LULLABY. Even ATOMIC CAFE: The Noisiest Corner in J-Town, a film ostensibly about a Japanese restaurant in LA where punks would hang out in the late 70s, but truly about the creation of a unique community of inclusion for outsiders, is undeniably queer. I mean Atomic Nancy, the co-owner and heart of the business, is a queer icon in my books, just look at her.
So I have to then ask why, when there was already so much great LGBTQ+ content scattered across the festival, is it essential to create a specific program for queer short films in the context of this year’s event? How do we, the viewers, or even the selected filmmakers benefit from being placed in such a program about a niche topic in what is already, unfortunately, a niche festival?
In exploring these questions, I had to think about how these six films connect, contrast and inform one another. It could be noted that with the exception of GOD’S DAUGHTER DANCES none of the films are by or about cisgender men and all are stories about the Asian North American experience. GOD’S DAUGHTER DANCES works in this context because it is about a specific trans experience that North American audiences will be unfamiliar with. These are stories of resilience, adjusting to the reality of being a multiply marginalized person in a new place while keeping your customs and spirit alive. As an immigrant you suddenly become a racialized minority, trying to endlessly adapt to the customs of the new environment you are in while trying to keep important elements of the culture you come from intact. Then to be trans or a queer person of colour and be discriminated against in this supposedly accepting community, when you were under the impression that this new place was more accepting of the LGBTQ+ community than where you came from is doubly taxing. The outright discrimination you experienced in Asia, sometimes even within your own family, becomes more discrete in North America, but it still exists.
It still exists in the fetishization and sexualization of Asian bodies. It exists in the toxic masculinity in the community. It exists in the limited media portrayal of what a queer person can look like. Resiliency is exhausting. Our parents tell us to keep our heads down, be quiet and keep going. To not actively take up space in order to be inoffensive. Why is it that marginalized people must be more resilient? Because they have to deal with more discrimination in every aspect of their life. We don’t choose to be resilient, we have to be, we are forced to be.
Some say radical hope is hard, but when the opportunities you are given and the future you see seem so destitute, it becomes easy to envision possibilities beyond those handed down by our existing culture. All of these films deal with resiliency and radical hope, the overarching themes of the entire festival and specifically this program. SUPER ZEE is about having the courage to address inequities in order to achieve a vision of equality that is radical only because it doesn’t currently exist. BIND deals with a trans kid finding his path in a restrictive environment. GOD’S DAUGHTER DANCES is about standing strong in your convictions of who you are, emerging stronger from past traumas and questioning unjust conventions to enact meaningful change. GAY AS IN HAPPY: A QUEER ANTI-TRAGEDY is about the resiliency of spirit, recovering from the traumas of your past to emerge with a new sense of hope about your future. SAFE AMONG STARS is about personal resiliency in terms of mental health and finding hope in the darkest recesses of your mind. Reviving the Roost envisions a new type of queer space where divisions of any kind have been shattered and discrimination is eradicated from the community.
The program is wonderfully diverse, not just in terms of the creators it gives voice to or the diverse bodies we see on screen, but in topics that affect queer racialized people. The six films in this program are about traumas deeply felt, but more so about how we move past these experiences to create radical futures.
SUPER ZEE
A smart and funny short about a black woman named Zahira (Sedina Fiati) who transforms into a superhero alter-ego Super Zee to fight injustices in her workplace. In this short, she takes on white privilege in the form of her misogynistic, racist co-worker Brad (Kevan Kase) who benefited from nepotism to gain his position. Unsatisfied with her meaningless office job and stalled career growth due to her race and gender, she decides to take a stand in a way that many marginalized individuals wish they could. When she witnesses Brad berating her office crush, a Chinese woman named Sparkle (Christina Song), she intervenes to teach him a lesson and possibly win the girl.
The film is almost a parody of a workplace sitcom, with the opening exterior shots of cars passing by office buildings affirming this. These are a clever stylistic touch as they bring immediate comfort and familiarity to the viewer. There are some fun jokes and one-liners, particularly in Zahira’s interaction with a woman on the phone who is calling in for help with her computer but instead receives Zahira’s entire life story. Zahira complains that she is only working this IT phone support job since the large tech firms won’t hire her because as a black woman she is perceived as a risk. Therefore she is answering mind-numbing calls and offering such expert suggestions as “check if your computer is plugged into a wall outlet” and “is the power on in your building?”
The script seems to be purposefully cheesy with the archetypal characters slipping into caricature at times. This is true of Brad, who says aloud what many of his peers are thinking or only would voice behind closed doors. He disrespects Sparkle who is his superior and fake coughs through saying “affirmative action,” insinuating that was the only reason she was hired. Doing this cough-snark-cough trope that is frequently seen in comedies, but I have never seen in real life, felt strangely dissonant in the context of the film. This moment is made particularly uncomfortable because there is no audience for this dig, no male co-worker to shoot a look to afterwards. Instead, it just paints Brad as an asshole with no reason for being so, except that he feels that his actions will never have any consequences and he gets light amusement from either his ‘joke’ or the pain he inflicts onto racialized people. Brad is not really a character, but an amalgamation of tropes. This becomes clear fifteen seconds later when he is inexplicably drunk, dishevelled and standing on a table yelling.
The other archetype is Sparkle who unfortunately feels like a damsel in distress because she still needs Super Zee to come to her aid. This still feels slightly wrong even though the hero’s role is subverted, being a queer woman of colour. Sparkle is a bystander in her own story, but hopefully, Super Z stepping in was the impetus she needs to be a superhero in her own life at all times.
In the Q&A Reel Asian hosted with both director/writer Nathalie Younglai and star Sedina Fiati, Fiati shared some interesting insight from her work as an equity, diversity and inclusion consultant. “Many times people actually know what to do and it just takes someone to give them a little encouragement in the right direction because people have a good moral compass generally. It just takes an event, it takes something to push you to the next level, but you had everything you needed all along. I think this idea that courage is just going to come out, or that somehow people are born with it or they’re not, the more I listen and learn, it’s not. Courage is a practice, the more that you do it the better you get at it.” I think this speaks to the journey of Sparkle’s character, where she did not feel she could stand up to Brad because she already feels uneasy with her place in a corporate environment that is not set up for her to succeed as a woman of colour. She had the tools and the courage all along but just needed someone to give her a little nudge and Super Zee was happy to be that impetus.
I also must note that the song which is used briefly when we first meet Sparkle and then played in its entirety over the end credits, Fall’N by MotionLive, is such a great choice for the film. It is energetic, upbeat and makes you happy to sit through the end credits. Something that is sometimes forgotten by shorts filmmakers who submit to festivals is that due to the way they are programmed, it is usually the only instance where a viewer is forced to watch an entire end credit sequence because they are waiting for the next short. This song livens the credits and leaves a great final impression.
Billed as the first segment in an ongoing web series (pending funding) where Super Zee takes on various injustices to marginalized groups, the film purposely subverts Hollywood conventions by casting the superhero as a queer woman of colour at the centre of her own narrative. There is a lot to be said about the intersectionality in this film, comically addressing the oppression of several minority groups including women, LBGT, black, East Asian people and more to come. In addition, the entire crew was made up of people of colour with eighty percent of those women. This was especially important for Trini-Chinese director Younglai who said it was actually incredibly easy to assemble her diverse crew. Younglai is also the founder of BIPOC TV & Film, a grassroots organization pushing for a more inclusive and diverse industry. The feat this film has achieved with its hiring is incredible and hopefully will inspire other sets to hire BIPOC.
BIND
There is a lot to like about BIND, a student film from trans filmmaker Emory Chao Johnson; its strengths more than make up for significant weaknesses, most of which can probably be attributed to inexperience. Restricted in its assignment of a two-page maximum script, the film is brief, but this is to its benefit as it is very to the point. Although Johnson says they are predominantly a documentary filmmaker, the script is the short’s greatest strength.
The short involves a young trans boy named Jules (Hua Chai) whose mother confronts him with the chest binder he ordered online. BIND succeeds in its honest portrayal of a subject that is clearly quite personal for the director and in depicting, in its brief runtime, some intersectionality between the trans and Asian-American experience. The mother (Kate Chang) feels that America has corrupted her daughter, while Jules rightfully points out that there are also transgender people in Taiwan. Johnson also touches on an Asian parenting style that almost sees their child as an investment and enforces excellence. When the mother selfishly asks, “Why don’t you ever think of me?” Jules responds with the most honest line of the film that will ring true for many, “Think of you, you don’t think I ever think of you. Do you know why I never tell you anything anymore? Because everything that I am, everything I do never satisfies you.”
Now, while I greatly enjoyed the film, there are some evident flaws, forgivable though due to its basis as a student film. These include some sound issues, stale cinematography and some minor acting weaknesses.
We start by seeing a few close-ups of the breasts of the statues in the park, but from this point, the camerawork almost exclusively consists of over-the-shoulder shots which are easy and not inherently bad, but just have no creativity to them. This style of shot lives in the absence of choice, which would generally be fine, except that in a film this short every single frame should be intentional.
But this style of shot with its limitation of being unable to see both actors’ faces in the frame at a given moment does help hide its other major flaw which is the acting. While Chang has good vocal tone, pacing and intonation, she is completely dead in the face which sucks a lot of the energy out of the scene. Chai, while not a great actor either, doesn’t make for a dynamic scene partner, but could be excused due to his lack of professional experience.
What I just can’t understand is the setting. Why are they having this conversation on a park bench? The outdoor setting feels at odds with the intimate story and is never explained. It also, by extension, affects the sound. I love the sounds of nature providing a soundtrack for the film, but the dialogue is hard to hear at times and sits strangely in the mix, fighting for space against the sounds of the environment they are in. The level of the ambient sound quite obviously reduces when they are speaking and creeps back up when they are not. It is then distractingly amplified so the audience can hear crinkling when Chang takes the binding package out of her bag. This feels partly like a mixing issue and partly a microphone issue.
Despite the constraints of this production, they do tell a very cohesive story that will be impactful for many watching. If this is the only narrative film Johnson makes then they should be proud, because they have created the lovely personal film they sought out to create.
GOD’S DAUGHTER DANCES
GOD’S DAUGHTER DANCES is a powerful film that deals with issues of South Korean LGBT culture, gender policy, LGBT laws, mandatory male military conscription, transphobia and homophobia; and all in 24 minutes no less. Yet this film never feels overstuffed, as it smartly chooses to address these topics through the lens of one person’s experience. Shin-mi (Choi Hae-jun) is a transgender woman who is a respected dancer at a gay bar in Seoul. The life she has built with her LGBT chosen family is suddenly upended with one phone call informing her she has to report for a military examination for her mandatory conscription as a South Korean male.
This film inspired me to conduct a few hours of research on South Korean transgender, LGBT and mandatory conscription policies to fully understand the story’s details upon second viewing. South Korea has one of the longest mandatory conscription periods in the world at 18–21 months, only after Singapore (24 months), Israel (32 months) and North Korea (156 months or 13 years). All men must complete compulsory military service after they turn 19. South Korea is conservative in regards to their LGBT acceptance and laws. Although it is technically legal to be gay, it is seen as a mental or personality disorder and any same-sex sexual relations are viewed as sexual harassment according to the Military Penal Code. LGBT people still face a fair amount of discrimination evidenced most recently by fervent anti-gay backlash due to a COVID outbreak in Seoul’s gay district in May 2020. All this is to evidence the importance of this film and the cultural conversations it has the ability to open.
The film begins in a Seoul gay club where everything is colourful and the shots are highly saturated. Shin-mi does a vogue dance to a rapturous response from the crowd and explains to them how dancing helped her through tough moments in her past. When we next see her walking in the day the shots are hazy and no longer have the bright vibrancy of the gay club. She shows up to her military service examination at the Military Manpower Administration and is immediately met with several microaggressions as she checks in, both from staff and other conscripts. One conscript in line behind her says “You look like a real woman” to which Shin-mi matter-of-factly responds “I’m not like a woman, I am a woman.”
She then begins her assessment with Dr. Park (Lim Ho-jun) who is immediately abrasive, transphobic and dismissive to Shin-mi. He conflates transgender with prostitute, insinuating that all trans women are such. She presents her medical documentation proving she is a woman, but this means nothing to Dr. Park who abuses his power based on preconceptions and shames her for going to such lengths to avoid being drafted. The doctor states he was once fooled before by a man pretending to be a woman to evade conscription and has vowed never to let this happen again. He refuses to accept her medical certificate and insists then Shin-mi show him her genitals to prove she is a woman. The cavalier manner in which he says, “Take off your underpants” sickens me, a request which Shin-mi rightly refuses.
She soon spots Hyuk-tae (Kim Woo-gyeom), another doctor who she had seen the night before with his boyfriend at her nightclub. She tries to get him to help her, but he pretends not to know her as it would risk exposing himself as a homosexual. This is important because although homosexuality is legal in South Korea, same-sex relations are criminalized for military personnel and punishable by up to two years in prison. In addition, she is in constant search of a bathroom to use, as she keeps being referred to the male washrooms, and desperately needs to pee by the end. She is stripped of all human decency during the examination process while trying to merely be acknowledged as the woman she is. Dr. Park does not accept her gender certification and she is surprised to find out she has been drafted because of this. When Dr. Park is called in to clarify, he demands again to see her genitals.
At this point, Hyuk-tae tries to help her by playing the song that she danced to at the club the night before and she starts voguing in the waiting room. This culminates in her dropping her pants for everyone to see her female genitalia and finally finding an appropriate place to pee, on the waiting room floor. It is at this point of the film that it goes off the rails and completely loses me. First of all, it is a fairly cheesy ending that sucks any nuance out of the story. It is supposed to be a redemptive action for Hyuk-tae, but that is simply not enough to make up for his mistreatment of her at the centre. I also fail to see how dancing helps her in this situation. If the film means to say that dancing somehow relates to or demonstrates womanhood, it is confusing at best and harmful at worst. Possibly, the dancing is what gives her the courage to stand up to Dr. Park, but does she truly stand up to him when she gives him exactly what she wants? The look of shame on his face as he tries to avoid looking at her vagina is almost worth the moment of her dropping her pants in front of everyone, even as he refers to her as “they” like a disgusting alien. But frankly, I am quite tired of this dropping the pants, “she’s a tranny” trope that has been commonplace in mainstream media for decades. It is problematic to equate bottom surgery or sexual organs with gender when it is not such a binary concept as this might suggest.
Ultimately, the fact that this film was made at all is a feat, especially the casting of a transgender lead in Choi. It is one of the only films of its kind produced in South Korea, a nation conservative in its recognition of gay and transgender rights. I just wish the ending would have been written with more tact and nuance, to match the quality of the rest of the film.
GAY AS IN HAPPY: A Queer Anti-Tragedy
GAY AS IN HAPPY is a brief three-minute film that is loud, brash, simple and in your face. It feels like a private film that was cathartic for the creator, Jordana Valerie Allen-Shim, to make. She needed to get all of her unapologetic “fuck you’s” out of the way before she could embrace joy in her life and that is commendable. I just wonder why I had to watch this film.
This film might be thought-provoking for some. The target audience for this film is transphobic and homophobic individuals as well as some trans people who might find catharsis in its message. Since I fall in none of these categories, this film was not made for me and that is fine. I recognize that having grown up surrounding myself with people and organizations that advocate for LGBTQ+ rights I am more knowledgeable than most on these topics and because of this, the information presented seems rudimentary to me. But I also acknowledge that this is playing in an Asian-focused festival and not an LGBT-focused one and therefore, this film will have a reach beyond the insular echo chamber of the conventional LGBTQ+ spaces where this would be perceived as basic in understanding of the larger topics it speaks upon. To individuals not versed in these topics, this film might be eye-opening for them and for that I am happy. So although I don’t think this film deserves to be played in a festival necessarily, if there were to be one it should be played in it would be this one or possibly a youth shorts festival. But maybe it might have played better in another program stream because viewed beside the other films in this program that present similar topics in much more eloquent ways this particular film stands out as elementary and immature.
The film is simplistic in its understanding of the concepts it presents and doesn’t transmit any new ideas or knowledge that most viewers won’t already know. It feels like the kind of film you make in high school that your film teacher commends you on. You decide to send it around to some festivals but don’t hear back, so you learn from that and work to create a better film as your next project. Except this was programmed, which opens this film up to greater criticism.
Allen-Shim describes the work as “an experimental auto-ethnographical documentary about queer joy, resistance, and resilience in the face of abuse, trauma, and transphobia.” It is a documentary about queer resilience in the face of trauma, but it is in no way experimental. That would imply that it is radically innovative in style or it re-evaluates cinematic convention, neither of which it does. It also is not auto-ethnographic and the self-importance in the belief that is such is my biggest qualm with the film. Autoethnographic research involves retrospectively analyzing experiences that are made possible by possessing a particular cultural identity. The events must be analyzed using social science conventions and methodological tools, including comparing personal experience with existing research, published literature and cultural artifacts. In a 2006 interview, Mitch Allen, publisher of Left Coast Press and Research Associate University of California Berkeley, said an auto-ethnographer must
“Look at experience analytically. Otherwise [you’re] telling [your] story — and that’s nice — but people do that on Oprah every day. Why is your story more valid than anyone else’s? What makes your story more valid is that you are a researcher. You have a set of theoretical and methodological tools and a research literature to use. That’s your advantage. If you can’t frame it around these tools and literature and just frame it as ‘my story,’ then why or how should I privilege your story over anyone else’s I see 25 times a day on TV?”
This quote perfectly encapsulates my feelings for the film. Allen-Shim has not placed her story in a larger cultural context and has not done the necessary research in order to frame it as an important piece of nonfiction filmmaking. So while my better judgement tells me to just say it was cute and move on, or go by the age-old adage of, “If you have nothing nice to say, don’t say anything at all” and not review it at all, I feel that would be a disservice to this film.
The film is visually uninspired with repetitive graphics and excessive use of double exposure text that feels like a twelve-year-old just discovered Premiere Pro effects for the first time. There are also several extended periods where we just see a black screen. The time-lapses and close-ups of hands drawing and crumpling up paper are effective enough in visually mirroring the content of the voice-over, but the shots are not visually inventive and unfortunately bring to mind a late noughties educational youtube video stylistically. The voice-over narration is lacklustre, falling flat with a delivery that is monotone and one-note. This is a huge detractor in terms of emotional impact as none of the important moments fully connect, making the narrative presented feel insignificant.
The film starts by saying, “This is a fuck you” which immediately makes the viewer apprehensive. This is not necessarily a bad thing if it manages to justify the emotion and reel you back in. Instead, it just makes you wonder why the speaker has such strong feelings and makes you search for greater meaning in a film where none is presented. Perhaps though, the value of this film lies not in its meaning, but its purpose for the filmmaker as a first step towards films that are about unbridled trans joy, something we unfortunately rarely see represented on screen.
Allen-Shim says she doesn’t want to bring trauma into her films, yet spends the majority of the film unpacking her trauma. She talks about all the friends she lost because they were transphobic and how it nearly drove her to suicide. She states, “I know now that I cannot live basing my self-worth on what others think of me and my identity,” but that statement doesn’t seem true, since she spends so much time in the film calling these people out. At this, I think of a few words that Howie Tsui said in his artist talk earlier in the festival, that instead of calling people out, we need to call them in. How could she have engaged with these friends in order to start their journey towards trans acceptance? People have the capacity to change and although it is not her responsibility to educate them, you can make them start thinking about their preconceived notions of trans people. By planting a few seeds of thought with them and then leaving them to do the work on their own then maybe there will be one less transphobe in the world, just maybe.
I wish this film had been about queer joy and acceptance as promised, but it just felt bitter. It never truly felt like Allen-Shim had moved on, even if the film was directly stating that. I really hope she can, because her future films will only be better for it. So Jordana, if you read this, know that you made this video as a fuck you to people who honestly don’t give a fuck about you. You have been consumed by giving thoughts to their perception of you when they probably haven’t thought twice about you.
Near the end of the film, she says, “Fuck you if you don’t like this.” Well, fuck me then I guess because I, unfortunately, did not like the film. But if the message is true then she should not care what I think, if I don’t like it, it was not made for me and I will move on. I hope this is the start of a long career for Allen-Shim and this truly is the precursor to films not about trauma as she stated. I truly hope she has embraced joy and I look forward to her future projects.
SAFE AMONG STARS
Director Jess X. Snow has produced one of the best narrative shorts of the year with SAFE AMONG STARS. An extremely nuanced film about depression, sexual assault and trauma with a distinct Asian-American perspective. Jia (Poppy Liu) is a young lesbian Chinese-American woman who is living with her mother after dropping out of university due to a past trauma. This is clearly a contention point between her and her mother (Lea Cai). She clearly loves Jia and just wants what is best for her, but also feels that her daughter has disappointed her by squandering the advantages she worked so hard to give her. Jia has dropped out because of her depression stemming from an incident where her boyfriend raped her, but cannot come to tell her mother this. She also starts a new relationship with Sonia (Vera Lam) who is extremely understanding of Jia’s past experience and does not try to pressure her or move their relationship any faster than what Jia is comfortable with.
Taking place in both the realm of reality and the nightmare fantasy realm of Jia’s mind. We witness a lot of Jia’s inner thoughts as she lays in bed, desperately trying to process her trauma and get out of bed. The poetic verses of thought create vivid images in the viewers’ minds and feel heart-achingly authentic. When she speaks about the incident and the aftermath of its effects on her she says, “That night I learned how to leave my body. I watched myself try to go to school and not make it out of bed.” This line felt so accurate to me due to a similar experience that I had, also causing me to drop out of university due to depression. It’s like you see the possibility of yourself going to class because you just can’t get out of bed to do it, and you slowly see your future slip away. Also like Jia, you bet I never heard the end of it from my Asian mother about dropping out, which definitely didn’t aid my recovery.
I think it can sometimes be hard to speak honestly with Asian parents when emotions have never been valued or appreciated. There is something so relatable about the experience of parents pushing you hard to achieve the greatness they project onto you. It can feel like you are an investment, and by disappointing them or veering off the path they have chosen for you, you have squandered the effort they put into elevating your life past their own personal achievements. It can be suffocating to feel like you have to live up to their expectations, and terrifying to think you might disappoint them. The way Jia’s mother speaks to her reminds me greatly of my own mother, direct and cutting. This is their way of showing they care, by trying to push you to greatness without realizing the deep scars their comments can cause. Jia takes these remarks and internalizes them as she tries to work up the courage to tell her mother the truth about why she dropped out. The film ends with a quiet tender moment as Jia is ready to admit the truth. This film touched me because it was so personal to my experience, and I can assume many others as well.
REVIVING THE ROOST
Multi-hyphenate artist Vivek Shraya takes the plunge into animation, writing and directing this film that is at once personal, yet speaks about the larger narratives of queer spaces. I generally do not like the auto-biographical voiceover shorts that make up the bulk of festival submissions, but if any film justifies the continued importance of this form it would be REVIVING THE ROOST. The neon sign animation style done by Tim Singleton is immediately striking and wholly original. It draws you into Shraya’s dimly lit, fluorescent nightlife world and keeps you there as Johnny Spence’s pulsating score bounces along with the story. The only parallel I can draw with the animation is to Canadian filmmaker Norman McLaren, with this form especially evident in his 1940 collaboration with Mary Ellen Bute and Ted Nemeth, Spook Sport.
You are immediately immersed into the world of the only gay bar in Edmonton at the turn of the millennium. Shraya sets the scene with a rundown of the understandably horrendous period fashions she wore on her first gay night out, which includes a black shirt, grey cargo pants, a bronze Indian necklace and blue glitter on the eyes. She envisions a night out in a welcoming club where heavenly R&B plays and gays are holding hands, a notion which I laughed at. Instead, she is greeted with a much more recognizable reality, a dive bar playing a Celine Dion techno remix, reeking of old spilt beer. But it is here that she learned to be the queer woman she is today because with only one gay bar in a city of almost a million you are immediately face-to-face with every facet of the LGBTQ+ community. She laments later moving to Toronto where every subset of the community has their own individualized space, and therefore that larger sense of the community is lost.
As LGBTQ+ persons we are supposedly different and unique individuals, yet we all seek homogeny. That’s why every gay male seems to dye their hair platinum blond/grey at some point in their 20s. Shraya speaks about this homogeneity in the film and how she felt bothered by her skin tone. Shraya is often called exotic, and this has also happened to me many times. People say, “You look so exotic, where are you from?” but they are really fetishizing your non-whiteness.
The film looks towards larger questions like the place of gay bars and clubs in present-day queer culture. Now that secret gay bars are not the only place queer people can meet and be themselves and they have become more widely accepted in many environments, do we still need gay bars? We still needed them even recently when they were the only place to meet others to make friends and find lovers.
As we became more accepted in general society, gay bars became more of a hunting ground for sexual partners, greatly demising the community spirit. You went to the bar for the group you most identify with to find the most suitable companion. But now we meet potential lovers, whether a one-time hookup or a long-term relationship, on the internet. So I question why anyone would go to a gay bar in this day and age looking for a hookup. Is it possible to reclaim these spaces to again be community spaces? It would be nice to have space in Toronto where we have to share, to engage and learn from a broad range of queer people. It is astounding that with the variety of gay bars in Toronto, I have yet to find one that I feel remotely comfortable in. They all feel like sanitized copies of each other and spaces where I as an alternative queer person of colour, am not welcome.
This film left me longing for a space where everyone is accepted and where outsiders feel they belong, a place even more inclusive than The Roost where everyone has no choice to fit in, or Bubble_T where despite their best intentions, the majority of the crowd is still good-looking, East Asian, cisgender gay men who love pop music. Maybe I just need a space like Atomic Cafe, where everyone is welcome and many communities mingle effortlessly, bonded by their communal artistic rebellious outsider spirit. Maybe that is why ATOMIC CAFE: The Noisiest Corner in J-Town was the film I loved and rewatched the most at the festival because even through the medium of film, that is the place where I felt I belonged.
Jamie Nicholson (He/Them) is a person whose impressively scattershot life and diverse ambitions cannot be contained within the confines of a traditional bio.
