Some Thoughts on Representation
When I was young, my favorite movie was The Incredibles. My sister and I were obsessed — we watched it whenever it was on TV. We saw it so many times that we have Incredibles-related inside jokes, borne out of the dogged and methodical fascination of adults who remember what it’s like to be children. Even now, we can quote every line word for word.
The Incredibles is a damn good film. It has everything you could ever want — action, family drama, a sibling bond for the ages. But one character in particular was the reason for my obsession, and that was Violet, the first Asian girl I ever saw grace my TV screen.
No, I knew she was white. But to a young Chinese-American girl desperately seeking validation from the culture she lived in, Violet Incredible was, believe it or not, a passable Asian role model. She had straight black hair. She was soft-spoken and painfully shy. She was invisible to everyone around her. And the moment I saw her onscreen until the end of the movie, I was transfixed by something I couldn’t quite place.
It didn’t mean anything that her parents had blond and red hair and that she could produce purple forcefields —what mattered was that she looked enough like me that I could pretend that my story was being played out on a movie screen. Violet was quiet, but she was strong, brave, and beautiful. She loved her parents and her brother and fought for what she believed was right. She was the protagonist in not only her own life, but also in the lives of those she loved, and, most importantly, in the lives of the thousands of people watching her. And isn’t that what we all secretly think about ourselves? That we could someday, too, be blown-up and beautiful on someone’s silver screen, our emotional and physical prowess on full, unabashed display?
Sometimes I wish I could go back in time and witness her first onscreen moment again. It’s a feeling I have not felt in quite some time, and doubt I will ever feel again — the wondrous discovery that this is how it was supposed to feel all along. Is this how my white classmates felt all the time? I felt simultaneously elated and cheated out of a life of unconditional acceptance and ease.
Because as enjoyable as those two hours always were, they were always over too fast. And, retrospectively, years of preteen yearning for the real thing only brought me to a quasi-mutual relationship with my Asian-American identity. I’m still working on it, and movies like The Farewell and Lee Isaac Chung’s forthcoming Minari help immensely. But where could I have been if, from the beginning, I could have skipped to the good parts? It’s a selfish thought experiment, and one that I only engage in brief, rageful flashes when the going gets really, really tough. But I still do. What could I have been if I didn’t have to pretend Violet Incredible had Chinese parents? Where would we all be?
