The Fencesitter's Dilemma

The opening scene in Randall Park’s directorial debut Shortcomings is a film within a film, in which an Asian couple buys a hotel as a show of power after being snubbed by a racist concierge. The scene is a direct allusion to the film that started the current wave of Asian American representation, Crazy Rich Asians. The camera zooms back to reveal the audience of an Asian American film festival clapping and cheering—except for Shortcomings’ main character, Ben Tanaka. The film then cuts to a scene where Ben tells his girlfriend Miko that he thought the movie glorified capitalism too much and only served as lowbrow entertainment that appealed to mainstream Asian American moviegoers desperate for identity-based representation. This scene serves not just as a preview of Ben’s bluntness but also as a meta-commentary on the question of representation in general: Shortcomings itself is the kind of indie film that a film connoisseur (or “filmbro”, as some may put it) like Ben—who manages an arthouse film theater in hipster Berkeley, California—would like to see.

Shortcomings feels like an exercise in metafiction. Graphic novel fans will know that this film is an adaptation of Adrian Tomine’s book of the same name, with updated cultural references (BTS is name-dropped in the first few minutes). The medium of film can show a lot more than just a few static images, yet the film still has a graphic-novel sheen to it, with each new segment introduced by a “chapter title.” Within the cramped format of a graphic novel, where every tiny panel leaves no room for subtlety, there is nowhere to hide Easter eggs—and the film replicates this cramped feeling by making its allusions obvious. One early scene shows a Frances Ha DVD on the couch, and later, Ben ends up in a situation resembling Frances’ in that film. Another scene shows Ben holding up a book with Parasite on its spine, referring to the acclaimed Korean-made film. And the already-fragile fourth wall shatters when Adrian Tomine himself shows up as an extra, the name TOMINE clearly visible on his work uniform’s badge.

The entirety of Shortcomings is one big slideshow of how unlikable Ben is, mixed with commentary on romantic relationships between Asian and white people. If this sounds familiar, that’s because R.F. Kuang wrote something similar a few months ago—or just the simple fact that a lot of Asian American art and literature revolves around white people. Ben’s interactions, like the movie theater he manages, involve a lot of projection. He is obsessed with dating white women while simultaneously denigrating Asian women who date white men. The film makes his preference very clear, showing that he exclusively watches porn with white women actresses even though he has an Asian girlfriend, and showing his attempts to date white women after he and Miko agree to take a relationship break.

There is one scene where Ben attends a punk show where a woman he is crushing on is performing. She declares that her next song is about immigration. The camera pans to the crowd, revealing that Ben is the only Asian person in a sea of white concertgoers. The message is obvious: Ben is trying too hard to be someone he’s not.

Another example is when his friend Alice, a Korean American lesbian, takes him to a lesbian party where he hits it off with Sasha, a white woman who is apparently the only woman at the party Alice hasn’t seduced. On Ben and Alice’s ride home, Alice pejoratively calls Sasha a “fencesitter” for being bisexual (there’s a meta-joke, as the actress playing Alice is herself bisexual). Ben and Sasha have a brief fling, where Ben tells Sasha “I’ve never been with…” before cutting off, to which Sasha replies “It’s my first time too.” The film deliberately leaves Sasha’s response vague: does she mean first time with an Asian, or with a man?

After a while, Sasha and Ben’s situationship blows up over Ben’s insecurities, including a scene where Ben asks Sasha if people are staring at them for being a mixed-race couple. Sasha decides to go back to her old girlfriend. Ben is angry and calls Sasha a “fencesitter” to her face, again telling the audience that Ben is meant to be an unlikable main character.

The next half of the film takes place in New York City, where both Alice and Miko have ended up. Without spoiling too much of the plot here, Ben begins to melt down over his insecurities, and the viewer can see just how much he projects his own sense of self-worth onto other people. Ben gets into an argument in which he criticizes the way Quentin Tarantino portrayed Bruce Lee in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. Again, the argument serves as a vehicle to deliver commentary on Hollywood representation while also demonstrating Ben’s insecurities about how he feels Asian men are viewed in America.

Shortcomings’ director stated in an interview that the film is “an airing of dirty laundry.” Such a sentiment is common within members of minority groups. There is a strong pressure that certain topics are only to be discussed within members of that group and not aired out to the public, and yet the film has it all: tensions between Japanese and Korean families over WWII history, internal debates over what makes good Asian representation, and, especially, views towards both Asian-male-white-female relationships and white-male-Asian-female relationships. Interracial dating has long been a controversial touchstone within Asian American discourse. One needn’t be Asian to know that there are far more Asian women dating interracially than Asian men, especially among the older generations, and that such a gender imbalance can create bitter tension between the genders. This tension is visited time and time again throughout Shortcomings, and the film does not provide any sort of resolution, suggesting that interracial relationship dynamics are still hotly debated among Asian Americans.

This brings the film back to the initial question of what makes good representation. Should art depicting a minority group only feature positive representations, as to increase positive sentiment toward said group? Or should art about such groups air out all their internal tensions, so that others can see that such groups have internal conflicts just like everyone else? The last scene of this film suggests that one need not choose between the two—that some people will react to a certain piece of representation differently than others. It seems that true representation is achieved by having it both ways. Fencesitters win this round.

Sheluyang Peng is a writer living in Sunset Park, Brooklyn.