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"After 2 minutes, you forget they're even Asian," some guy muttered as he fumbled out of the theater. Part of me thought it a victory for all Asians. How cool, we’re just as good as them… Ouch. I wasn’t sure where it hurt, but I knew it did. Seeing Justin Lin’s “Better Luck Tomorrow” did nothing but confuse the hell out of me when it came to my concept of the modern Asian American condition.

For those unfamiliar with the originally independent film, “Better Luck Tomorrow” is a dark, yet well founded introspective work into the lives of modern Asian American youth; Adolescents bursting with computational ability, yet with nothing worthwhile to compute. The film dealt with relevant issues such as Asian social status among other racial students, the frustration and boredom wrought by our society from empty achievements, and the end hope of what these kids really are after in life: Genuine satisfaction.

The purpose of this article is not to praise or criticize the film per se. You’re welcome to see it at your convenience of course. The phenomenon I experienced by watching it is not something I can label. For the two awesome people who read my column regularly, you know that every month, I find a new way to rehash the pedantic pathetic-ness of the Asian American experience. This movie brought all of it to a head. Every argument was a jumble, every point, irrelevant. It was as if the movie had shown an essence of being an Asian American that I related to and with no route left to escape, I felt ashamed of it - of my own existence. My mind was racing. Whether unfair or not, societal justice be damned, at the end of the day we as a people were pitiful. Now, I’m sure someone will disagree with me in a righteous holier than thou art tone and I do admit that I, perhaps, am faltering under the hand of insidious racial propaganda. Honestly, I just felt badly about being who I was. I felt badly about not being white and cool. Simple as that.

me back to a sane place. A few stray thoughts presented themselves. Who are we as a people and where are we trying to go? Are you as an individual proud of yourself or does anyone even care about this? Without any concrete answers to these queries, I simply thought we as a race of Asians and we as a species of humans need all the luck we can get today because this world is a mess. Maybe most anyone reading this thinks I’ve wasted perfectly good web space. Maybe no one will see it. But I believe that my experiences should be expressed in the hopes that it may help someone who relates. This society we fight to keep up with can be hostile and I don’t know where Asians will end up. But we seem to survive and live to study hard another day. That seems to be the only sure thing in all this.

picture source: betterlucktomorrow.com