THE NEW LOWS: REPRESENTING ASIAN-AUSTRALIANS ON TELEVISION (SCREENPLAY & EXEGESIS) BENJAMIN LAW PhD Student: Creative Writing and Cultural Studies Creative Industries Faculty Queensland University of Technology www.creativeindustries.qut.edu.au Cricos No. 00213J [email protected] 07 3358 2895 | 0409 762 027 Submitted: May 2009 PRINCIPAL SUPERVISOR: Geoffrey Portmann [email protected] | 0418 271 540 ASSOCIATE SUPERVISOR: Carol Williams [email protected] | 07 3864 8234 ASSOCIATE SUPERVISOR: Harvey May [email protected] | 0416 201 229 ii The work in this dissertation is, to the best of my knowledge and belief, original, except as acknowledged in the text. The material has not been submitted, in whole or in part, for a degree at this or any other university. SIGNED ……………………..………………………………………….………………… iii iv TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS vii ABSTRACT ix PREFACE xi 1.0 INTRODUCTION 1 2.0 METHODOLOGY 7 2.1 Creative Writing as Research 8 2.2 Research Strategies 9 2.21 Contextual Review 9 2.22 Screenwriting as Creative Practice 10 2.23 Rejected Methodologies 11 3.0 CONTEXTUAL REVIEW 15 3.1 Asian Australian Identities 15 3.2 Asian Identities on Screen 21 THE NEW LOWS (SCREENPLAYS) 47 Concept Document 47 Episode 1: Graduation 51 Episode 2: Christmas 103 Episode 4: Valentineʼs Day 156 Episode 6: Birthday 207 4.0 THE NEW LOWS 259 5.0 CONCLUSION 265 6.0 BIBLIOGRAPHY 271 v vi ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Firstly, I would like to acknowledge the input of my supervisors in this project: Carol Williams, Harvey May and Geoffrey Portmann. Over the last three years, their advice and guidance has been invaluable. Alan McKee also provided excellent guidance for revision in the projectʼs final stage. I would also like to thank Stuart Glover, my original supervisor, for both his ongoing encouragement and generosity of time, as well as my examiners Jinna Tay and Geoff Lealand, whose final recommendations and advice was invaluable. The Queensland University of Technology provided me with a full scholarship to complete this project from 2005 to 2008. Thank you also to the following people: Romy Ash, Rhianna Boyle, Felicity Carpenter, Simon Cox, Fiona Crawford, Helen Franzmann, Marieke Hardy, Krissy Kneen, Anna Krien, Anthony Morris, Anthony Mullins, Denny Ryan, Cory Taylor, Mia Timpano and Lorelei Vashti Waite. All provided much-needed feedback during the development of the creative work, at various stages of its development. Thank you also to Nike Bourke, Matthew Condon, Kári Gislason, Roger González, Ross Hope, Sam Martin, Kris Olsson, Sharyn Pearce, Aaron Peters, Rebecca Pouwer, Fiona Stager, Louise Stansfield, Alice Steiner, Ellen Thompson, Jo Walker and Zöe Zepherelli for the added support. Thank you to my siblings Candy, Andrew, Tammy and Michelle. I cannot overstate how necessary these people are. Thanks also to my father Danny, and my grandmother for their ongoing love and support. And needless to say, none of this would have been remotely possible without Scott James Spark. This project is dedicated to my mother Jenny Phang, and the memory of her mother. vii viii ABSTRACT This project utilises creative practice as research, and involves writing and discussing four sample episodes of a proposed six-part dramatic, black-comedy1 television mini-series titled The New Lows. Combined, the creative project and accompanying exegesis seeks to illuminate and interrogate some of the inherent concerns, pitfalls and politics encountered in writing original Asian-Australian characters for television. Moreover, this thesis seeks to develop and deliberate on characters that would expand, shift and extend concepts of stereotyping and authenticity as they are used in creative writing for television. The protagonists of The New Lows are the contemporary and dysfunctional Asian-Australian Lo family: the Hong Kong immigrants John and Dorothy, and their Australian-born children Wendy, Simon and Tommy. Collectively, they struggle to manage the family business: a decaying suburban Chinese restaurant called Sunny Days, which is stumbling towards imminent commercial death. At the same time, each of the characters must negotiate their own personal catastrophes, which they hide from fellow family members out of shame and fear. Although there is a narrative arc to the series, I have also endeavoured to write each episode as a self- contained story. Written alongside the creative works is an exegetical component. Through the paradigm of Asian-Australian studies, the exegesis examines the writing process and narrative content of The New Lows, alongside previous representations of Asians on Australian and international television and screen. Concepts discussed include stereotype, ethnicity, otherness, hybridity and authenticity. However, the exegesis also seeks to question the dominant cultural paradigms through which these issues are predominantly discussed. These investigations are particularly relevant, since The New Lows draws upon a suite of characters commonly considered to be stereotypical in Asian-Australian representations. 1 Also known as dramedy. ix x PREFACE Emotions, in my experience, aren't covered by single words. I'd like to have at my disposal complicated hybrid emotions, Germanic traincar constructions. I'd like to have a word for “the sadness inspired by failing restaurants.” — Jeffrey Eugenides2 A few years ago, late on a Friday night, my partner and I were walking through the Brisbane suburb of Wooloongabba, through the suburbʼs main streets. The districtʼs centrepiece is a massive, monolithic sports stadium, which looms over the surrounding houses, pubs and restaurants. Itʼs big enough to cast a doomsday shadow on the main road during the day. Unusually for a Friday night, not much was open. However, it wasnʼt long before we came upon a sight you can see in most Australian suburbs nowadays: the crackling fizz of dying neon lights, the sound of a lone wok frying inside the kitchen, and the hopeful smile of a Chinese woman waiting outside, a menu clutched to her chest. That night, it was clear no one was heading into that place for a meal. Business was dead. It was your typical, failing suburban Chinese restaurant. As someone raised by parents who managed Chinese restaurants most of their lives, I have an intimate understanding on the difficulties of making these businesses—or any small business— work towards making a profit. My father has managed small businesses, most of them restaurants, since before I was born. (Now, having recently turned 60, heʼs cottoned onto the fact that Chinese food isnʼt so popular, and manages a Thai restaurant instead.) Some of his business endeavours have been spectacular success stories; others have been veritable failures. So while it might pain most people to see a Chinese restaurant limping towards imminent commercial death, it especially pains me to see family restaurants owned by Asian families go down that route. It is a little close to home. For me, restaurants like these can be the saddest places in the world. This one in Wooloongabba was particularly poignant. The restaurant was a massive, hollowed- out cavern, with enough space to fit close to a hundred diners. It would have been a sight in the late 1970s, which is probably when it was originally built. But here it was, completely empty on a 2 Middlesex, 2002: 217. xi Friday night, which represented the peak of their business week, and no one was there. We passed the restaurant without much ceremony. However, some questions lingered in my mind afterwards. What kind of family ran this restaurant? With so few patrons, how did they afford the rent, or to send their children to school? And how was the businessʼs obvious decline affecting the family inside who ran it? Those questions were compelling enough to act as a starting point in developing the television series concept at the heart of this project: The New Lows. Because I have a background in journalism, I have to admit that I still have difficulty understanding or pinpointing why I chose to create fiction with The New Lows, rather than simply going into the restaurant and writing non- fiction about the family instead. By writing fictional characters and lives instead, I chose to do what most people does when confronted with questions about the lives of others: I speculated. In doing so, I have raised other unavoidable questions, removed from the basic curiosity I felt towards the workers of Wooloongabba. While my screenplays tries to answer those initial, curious impulsive questions about the restaurant and its workers in a creative way, the exegesis examines these other questions, which centre on identity, representation and race. xii 1.0 INTRODUCTION In Adrian Tomineʼs most recent graphic novel Shortcomings (2007), there is a brief scene early on that shoots to the heart of this thesis. It plays out as a dialogue between the characters Ben and Miko, both of whom are Japanese-Americans in their 20s. We first meet them as they watch a short film at an Asian-American digital film festival, showing a young Asian-American woman learning home-spun Asian “haiku-like” wisdom from her emotionally-brittle grandfather. Though she has always considered him cold and uncommunicative, the short film concludes with the woman receiving poignant advice, through a fortune cookie the grandfather has made in his factory. As much as the crowd loves—and is moved by—the film, Ben is bothered that no one else sees it like he does: as embarrassingly earnest and clichéd. Ben asks Miko: “I mean, why does everything have to be some big ʻstatementʼ about race? Donʼt any of these people just want to make a movie thatʼs good?” Miko responds: “God, you drive me crazy sometimes. Itʼs almost like youʼre ashamed to be Asian.” Ben is offended by that. “What? After a movie like that, Iʼm ashamed to be human” (Tomine, 2007: 13). Considering my name is also Ben, I almost feel as though Tomine has created a surrogate or stand-in character for me.