Charles Yu's 'Interior Chinatown' Skewers Hollywood's Surface Perception of Diversity and Representation
Issue No. 30: rEpResEnTaZiAn MaTTeRs!
Let's just get this out of the way: Interior Chinatown is a good series. It's worth your time and is fun to watch. Is it perfect? No. Then again, is any show ever perfect? Because there's no such thing about perfect.
Ever since Crazy Rich Asians and post-Fresh Off the Boat, there have been offerings of Asian-led scripted series from many streamers and networks. Netflix gave us The Brothers Sun and Never Have I Ever, FX served up the Emmy-winning juggernaut Shōgun, The CW had their redux of Kung Fu while Disney+ gave us the fantastical, culturally-rich American Born Chinese which had Charles Yu, the creator of Interior Chinatown and the author of the award-winning book on which the Hulu series was based, in the writers room.
In a perfect world, Interior Chinatown would be taken for what it is: a meta sci-fi series about a dude named Willis (Jimmy O. Yang) who discovers he is stuck as a background actor in a procedural series and finds out his older brother may or may not have been a victim in the scam-of-a-life that he has been living. When he inadvertently becomes a witness to a crime, Willis begins to unravel a criminal web in Chinatown, his family's buried history, and what it feels like to be in the spotlight.
Considering we are in an age of the diversity and representation police coming at us from outside and within marginalized communities, the series is going to be labeled Asian-forward (I mean, look at the title) which is great, but I hope viewers don't hinge the narrative entirely identity. Yes, it's a part of the narrative but Yu shakes all of that shit up and fucks with it -- and us. He's simultaneously skewering and appreciating Hollywood's "I would have voted for Obama a third time if I could have" perception of diversity, equity, and inclusion -- aka the Notorious D.E.I.
Specifically, the series is a parable about the evolution of Asian representation in film and TV by using the procedural as the perfect example with Yang embodying stereotypical, nameless roles for AAPI actors: “Chinese Restaurant Waiter”, “Delivery Guy”, “Translator”, and "Tech Guy” (which was a job Willis takes from a South Asian in the series -- don't know if that was intentional, but loved it) Each "role" gets him closer and closer to having a name, finding his brother and having a fully fleshed-out character and, as the show stresses, “a brand”.
In its hyper-meta way, Interior Chinatown speaks to the impact of the divisive discourse of what DEI has become. It does this with humor and leaning into stereotypes in a playful, yet meaningful way so that we can unpack it instead of being hypercritical about it. It doesn’t shove it down our throats. At one point, Willis and his BFF Fatty (Ronny Chieng) are having a conversation about how people like them don’t leave Chinatown:
“Guys like us don’t become the heroes,” says Willis.
“Guys like us? Waiters?” asks Fatty.
Willis responds, “Yeah! Guys in an alley – far from the action. From Chinatown.”
Smartly, Yu keeps the story open so it could be a narrative about belonging to something bigger. When Willis says that one way to get out of Chinatown is through kung fu, it’s like when Belle from Beauty and the Beast sings, “There must be more than this provincial life”.
Like Belle and Bilbo Baggins, he’s ready for an adventure.