Understanding the Unsaid:
Using Silence to Create Queer Asian-American Identities
In this exhibit, we will explore how individuals are navigating the landscape between the intersecting Queer and Asian-American identities. These are the stories of Queer individuals in the Asian diaspora who are reacting to and rebelling against marginalization, adopting the use of traditional tools of oppression, like silence, to create their own futures.
By: Alyxis Smith
Introduction
Since the Stonewall Uprising in 1969, Queer rights and activism have been increasingly propelled into the spotlight, with discourses often involving debates on who should be included and whose voices should be heard within this movement¹. Time and time again, we are shown that mainstream media and society all too often conceptualize Queerness as overwhelmingly white, American/ western, middle-class, male (but still feminine), and centered in urban communities². This view is created by the intentional silencing of the contributions and experiences of Queer people of color, especially Queer Asian-Americans. This phenomenon follows a long history of omitting the impact and existence of Asian-Americans throughout the nation’s history, effectively working to create an image of Asian people that is fundamentally incompatible with being American — and thus, also being Queer.
In order to resist this view of Queerness and Asian- Americans, this project seeks to explore Queer Asian-American experiences in identity making as they negotiate what it means to be both Asian-American and Queer. The project is built off of the film Spa Night, specifically focusing on how the film utilizes silence to highlight how David comes to terms with his Queerness as an Asian- American, as well as how other characters create and navigate Queer spaces in an unwelcoming community ³. This project operates with the central thesis that in order to navigate the separate, but intertwining communities of their racial identity and sexuality & gender identity, Queer Asian-Americans are engaging with tactics that are traditionally associated with subjugation, such as silence, to help them navigate the future by adapting the meaning and purpose of these tactics.
Key Concepts
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The process by which Queer Asian-Americans are simultaneously developing a racial identity and sexual/ gender identity, and how these developing identities react to and influence each other.
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The refusal to participate in discourse. This is a tactic used by those in power to dictate what is allowed to be known and said and by marginalized people to exist under and resist this power. Silence is not antithetical to speech: both strategies are tools of assimilation, resistance, empowerment, and change.
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The notion that multiple identities— such as race, gender, sexuality, class, and ability— interact with each other to shape the experiences of marginalized peoples and the systems that oppress them.
Queerness is also a key concept to know for this exhibit!
Making
Connections
Holding a Dual Identity can be a source of stress and increased alienation from one— or both— identities when their respective communities are in conflict with one another ⁷. This can be exacerbated by the paradoxical hypersalience and hyperinvisibility of individuals who live at the intersections of these identities and communities ⁸. Outed individuals with a dual identity are treated as outcasts and justifications for the conflicts between these identity groups; simultaneously, their dual identity is wiped out from community knowledge to erase the overlap between these communities.
However, holding a dual identity can also facilitate change and liberation, allowing individuals to complicate the traditionally understood animosity between their communities and disrupt the exclusionary norms that have created this divide between them.
Intersectionality is the means by which we can understand how individuals exist under a network of oppressive systems, and how we can connect the work and experiences of all marginalized groups.
Through an intersectional frame, we can see how Queer Asian-Americans exist within and between two communities— Asian-American communities and American Queer communities. For these individuals, it is vital that these marginalized communities recognize their similarities and interconnectedness.
Furthermore, intersectional understandings built the framework for marginalized groups using silence as a tactic for survival and resistance. This method blossomed during Asian women’s experiences during war, and flourished as other marginalized groups draw connections between their experiences and subjugations and those of these women.
Intersectionality calls us to recognize the ways in which we all victims and perpetrators of oppression as we exist in this vast network. We must work towards recognizing and uplifting the voices of people we have silenced in our own communities— those who live on the margins of our margins.
Silence can be used as a mechanism of bridging between dual identity groups and liberating marginalized peoples from these exclusionary norms and systems. Silence has been used as a means to many ends, whether that be to erase the history of oppression, to exist safely under oppressive systems, to be the resolution to these
Methods and Scope
This exhibit features all audio-visual media objects in order to hone in on the topic of silence, as audio-visual media such as films and videos create distinctions between the messages that are seen compared to those that are heard. This strategy is drawn directly from the use of silence in my film Spa Night, as the visual aspect of the film allows for the telling of a story of survival and resistance that was not allowed to be shared audibly within the film.
Furthermore, each media object revolves around different aspects and experiences of silence for Queer Asian-Americans, whether that silence be something that was internal to the video’s story or if it was an external directorial choice on how the story should be portrayed. This was to highlight the diversity of experiences of Queer Asian-Americans, even when it comes to the seemingly narrow topic of silence. Furthering that emphasis on diversity and nuanced stories, this exhibit incorporates stories that span a wide variety of Asian ethnicities to further disrupt a monolithic and exclusionary understanding of Asian-America that predominately features the stories of East Asians.
It's important to note that while this research focuses on Queer Asian-American silence, this narrow scope overlooks the very valid and common experiences of Queer Asian-Americans that reject silence. Regardless of what tools are used in defining Queer Asian-American futures, each and every one of these stories is vital to creating a diverse and multi-faceted Asian America.
Media Objects
In Coming out With the Help of a Time Machine ¹¹, Sid uses his time machine in a series of attempts to find the perfect way to come out to his Indian immigrant parents. Ultimately realizing there is no ideal scenario, Sid sets down his time machine and talks his parents through his struggles and their concerns as they enter a new period of true acceptance.
Sisak ¹² is the silent love story between two Indian men who encounter each other every day on the train. The short film highlights their desire and inability to comfort, be close to, and talk to one another as they fall deeper in love in a society where homosexuality is a taboo.
Appropriate Behavior ¹³ follows the story of Iranian- American Shireen as she heals from a breakup fueled by cultural divides and her girlfriend’s anger at Shireen staying in the closet with her family. Over the course of the film, Shireen finds her independence and happiness as well as her courage to come out to her family.
Spa Night ¹⁴ revolves around the lives of Korean-American family struggling to fit within the expectations of their community. The son, David, is the main character in this film, and the story revolves around how he navigates and comes to terms with his queerness— both fighting internalized homophobia and an unaccepting community while exploring his identity and desires.
Looking for Jiro ¹⁵ reimagines the story of Jiro Onuma, a gay Japanese immigrant who worked in a Japanese internment camp. This fantasy is intermixed with footage of internment camps and male body builders, set to a remix of Abba’s “Gimme Gimme Gimme (A Man After Midnight)” and Madonna’s “Hung Up” for a musical portrayal of pride and resistance amidst oppression.
Fated to Be Queer ¹⁶ highlights four gay Filipino-Americans — Vince, Jose, Tony, and John— as they discuss their experiences discovering and accepting their sexuality, moving to America, finding community, as well as cultural and social concerns for the queer community between the Philippines and America.
Reflections
As previously discussed, Dual Identity Formation is a key process in shaping Queer Asian-Americans experiences and understandings within their communities, especially when these communities view each other as distant and conflicting with one another. These conflicts can often create complex landscapes Queer Asian- Americans learn to navigate to remain connected with their communities while also living authentically, as highlighted by the films Spa Night, Appropriate Behavior, Coming Out with the Help of a Time Machine, and Fated to be Queer. In all of these films, these conflicts are shown through family and friends to represent Asian-American and Queer viewpoints, respectively. These viewpoints come with their own set of conflicting expectations and norms for how Queer Asian-Americans should act that the individuals in these films must strike a balance between.
Each of the Asian-American families in these stories emphasize how many Asian-American communities (1) hold traditional, heteronormative values where their children fulfill family obligations of getting married and passing down the family name and (2) often view Queerness and “coming out” as embodying the white, Western concept of individualism ¹⁷, ¹⁸, ¹⁹. For David, Shireen, and Sid, this heteronormativity becomes a source of conflict for all three characters whenever their parents bring up their love life and romantic prospects. This is because, rather than asking more generally how their love life is going, the parents pose the questions explicitly asking if they are interested in anyone or are dating anyone of the opposite gender. Faced with the reality that these characters are in or thinking about having Queer relationships, these assuming questions become a moment where these characters must decide whether to disrupt this heteronormativity and come out or maintain their parents’ ideals and viewpoints.
Not only do the families’ implicit heteronormative assumptions highlight this viewpoint, but often times explicitly reject and try to hide their child’s Queerness. When Shireen decides to come out to her mother at the end of the film, her mother quietly ignores Shireen’s sexuality, shushing her and going about her day as if nothing happened. Her mother is not angry or reactive, she simply decides that Shireen’s queerness is a problem that can be overlooked and hidden. Similarly, Tony, he remarks that his queerness is known by his family, but is not an issue as long as they can hide it. For Tony’s family, they offer him acceptance at the price of keeping a “straight persona” and hiding his sexuality. Through these complicated relationships, Queer Asian-Americans like Shireen and Tony are developing Narratives of Convenience (NOCs), allowing them to be conditionally out while maintaining important relationships ²⁰. This phenomenon also creates a state of hyperinvisibility for Queer Asian- Americans as they are pressured into keeping their Queerness hidden to maintain access to their communities, concealing any overlap that exists between these identity groups.
These rejections can often take the form of active ridicule and social ostracization as a much more intense method of expressing these viewpoints and widening the chasm between Asian-American and Queer communities. This outcome is particularly moving in Coming Out with the Help of a Time Machine, when Sid’s parents become angry with Sid for ruining his and his family’s status in their community “all for his own selfish reasons.”. This reaction emphasizes how Queerness can be viewed as western, individualistic, and unacceptable in Asian-American communities who place value on communal relationships. Furthermore, in Spa Night, David is fired from his job at the spa when his boss catches him with another Korean boy— highlighting the material consequences and discrimination that can result from being Queer in Asian-American communities. This ostracization becomes the ground for the hypersalience of queerness in Asian-American communities as Queer individuals, when outed, become examples (warnings) to others of the ridicule that can come from being Queer. Shown through these examples, the decisions Queer Asian-Americans are forced to make become complicated by the risks they take in coming out.
While the majority of these stories focus on the Asian- American perspective, the dual identity of Queer Asian-Americans also becomes a source of tension from their Queer friends. While Queer Asian-Americans can face the devaluation of their queer identity in Asian American communities, the mainstream American queer community often promotes Western-normative ideologies that lead to racial discrimination in Queer spaces, including the discreditation of cultural performances of Queerness, expectations of assimilation into these Western norms, and the fetishization of Queer Asians ²¹,²²,²³. For Shireen and Vince, their stories coming to understand their Queer identity were heavily influenced by the white, American Queer community around them.
In Appropriate Behavior, a big reason Shireen’s relationship with her girlfriend devolved was due to her girlfriend being unable to accept and support Shireen not being out to her family. Shireen became upset at her girlfriend wanting Shireen “to come out on her terms” disregarding Shireen’s experiences of homophobia in her family and Iranian community. Shireen was constantly expected to come out and make decisions in line with what her white, American girlfriend perceived as the “authentic” Queer experience, exemplifying how the American Queer community can push assimilation onto minority groups , simultaneously devaluing the ways that non-American Queer people of color blend their cultures with their Queerness. These attitudes contribute to the hyperinvisibility of Queer Asian-American experiences, as they are expected to erase any aspect of their personality and actions that does not conform to these western norms. Moreover, these expectations normalize the whitewashing of minority Queer Asian experiences through the devaluation of cultural connections and promises of Queer authenticity and empowerment in white western frameworks ²⁴.
In some cases, Queer Asian-Americans are expected to perform an extremely racialized caricature of their sexuality, rather than wipe out their racial experiences. In Fated to Be Queer, Vince details his experiences learning about “Rice Queenism,” where white men chase after men. He details how these rice queens expect their Asian partners to be exotic, subservient, boy-like, and hairless, remarking how Rice Queenism is based in relations of power where Asian men are fetishized and infantilized. This Rice Queenism leads to the hypersalience of race in Queer communities as Asian- Americans can risk encountering racial sexual fantasies that contribute to their lack of power in this group.
Caught between the heteronormativity and homophobia that can exist in Asian-American communities and the racial assimilation and fetishization in the Queer community, Queer Asian-Americans constantly face the struggle of forming a dual identity between two conflicting and restrictive communities. Rather than passively exist under these dominating structures, queer Asian-Americans are reacting to and rebelling against them to navigate their identity. Similar to how they are turning difficult realities into authentic futures, they are taking traditional weapons of oppression and transforming them into tools for change in this process.
Each of these films utilize Silence to help explore their identities, reframing silence as a powerful tool in identity making rather than a destructive weapon of erasure and subjugation. These films utilize unique functions of silence to achieve their goals and futures: from using silence to survive and be accepted within oppressive structures, to create alternative spaces where individuals can refuse these oppressive viewpoints, and to resist and resolve these oppressions²⁵. Queer Asian-American silence then becomes a way to reflect on, adapt to, and progress past strict community norms for a brighter future.
The films Spa Night, Coming Out with the Help of a Time Machine, Appropriate Behavior, and Fated to be Queer exemplify the use of silence as a survival tactic in unwelcoming communities to maintain access and acceptance within these communities. For David and Sid, being in the closet means being completely silent on their Queer identities in an attempt to hide that aspect of themselves from their Asian-American family and community. David keeps his job at the spa completely hidden from his parents throughout the entirety of the film in order to ensure that no one finds out that he’s associated with a space known for its Queer, “inappropriate activity.” This silence extends to his relationships with friends, where he often keeps silents on his thoughts to avoid saying something “gay” around his heteronormative friends, revealing his Queer identity. Sid, on the other hand, describes to his parents about how he kept silent for two years while being haunted by the fear of losing his parents because of his sexuality. For these two characters, silence provided the space for introspection: allowing them to calculate how people would react to their behaviors to make the safest choices and remain a part of their community. For Shireen and Tony, they employed the unique form of non-communication—NOCs— to hide their Queerness and gain approval in their Asian-American communities. Both of these individuals, despite fully embracing their queerness in outside circles, protected their place in the community by “acting straight” around certain individuals. In all four films and amidst these five individuals, silence protected their overall wellbeing and promote self-perseverance in what could be a more hostile environment.
Silence, however, should not only be seen as a way to hide and survive— it can be actively used to create alternative spaces unburdened by the norms and taboos of the larger community. This strategy is skillfully employed by a plethora of Queer characters in Spa Night and Sisak who refuse to give up this part of their identity. David begins to learn how many of the patrons use the spa as a way to form intimate relationships kept secret from the homophobic community outside the spa’s walls. These patrons develop glances and physical methods of communication to show interest and form relationships without the need for speech— a key tactic used to continue living authentically while avoiding attention from hostile people in power, like the spa owner and law enforcement. In Sisak, the two characters also develop a silent, physical way of communicating— using glances, literature, and physical proximity to develop a bond with one another while escaping the ridicule of a hostile environment. The silent risks and communities formed within these stories emphasize the spirit of resistance and adaptability of Queer Asian-Americans who refuse to accept their marginalization and perpetuate oppression.
This silent resistance grows even stronger when it is used for explicitly political and subversive means. The films Spa Night, Sisak, and Looking for Jiro all show how silence can not only resist oppressive norms, but can also actively weaken and deconstruct them. David accomplishes this resistance through solidarity with the alternate, resistance-driven community forming at the spa when he remains silent to people in power about their activities. Through his refusal to enforce these rules and punish the patrons, David uses his silence to protect this group and mitigate threats and violence that could ensure if he were to speak in support of his superiors. Sisak and Looking for Jiro create resistance outside of the story itself, instead using silence for directorial and messaging purposes. In Sisak, Ansari explicitly chooses to portray a silent love story to spread the political message that Queerness is not allowed to be performed and celebrated loudly under homophobic norms in India. It is not only a love story, but also a love letter to all of the real Queer Indian couples who are continuing to love and resist marginalization, and a demand for acceptance in society. Conversely, Looking for Jiro does not represent a silent story, but one whose sound overwhelmingly represents the language of western Queer culture. All of the sound in this video is derived from white artists popularly associated with Queer culture; rather than give Jiro his own dialogue, it shows how our common conceptions of Queerness do not account for Asian voices. However, Jiro also does not audibly follow along with the lyrics, choosing to lip sync rather than sing along. This silence serves to show how Jiro does not engage and validate western norms, problematizing its pervasiveness in Queer culture. Each of these powerful examples of silent resistance emphasizes the unique position of Queer Asian-Americans within both of their communities, and the power they hold to create change and determine their futures.
Tony explains how queerness is okay “as long as it doesn’t come up.”
Visible tension in conversation between Shiree’ns family and girlfriend.
David stands silent amidst a group of friends
Powerful moments of unspoken communicating in Spa Night and Sisak
David posting a sign “banning” intimacy while ignoring the two intimate men in the background
Conclusions
Through my analysis of the six films surrounding a variety of Queer Asian-American stories, I hope to have shown the utility of silence as a tool for navigating one’s identity and finding their place in society. Through these stories, we should be able to see how silence need not always have a negative connotation, but can be something that promotes resilience and progress. It’s vital that we dive deep into stories like those expressed here in order to break down exclusionary views in history and current communities and disrupt the ignorance— the silence— regarding the impact of Queer Asian-Americans as a unique and powerful minority within a minority.
Works Cited
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3. Ahn, Andrew. 2016. Spa Night.
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5. Duncan, Patti. 2004. Tell This Silence: Asian American Women Writers and the Politics of Speech. IA: University of Iowa Press.
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11. Gupta, Naman. 2021. Coming Out With the Help of a Time Machine.
12. Ansari, Faraz Arif. 2017. Sisak.
13. Akhavan, Desiree. 2014. Appropriate Behavior.
14. Ahn. 2016.
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Media Credits
In order of appearance
1. Ahn, Andrew. 2016. “Still: David looking at someone in the spa.” Spa Night.
2. Ahn, Andrew. 2016. “Still: David looking at someone in the locker room behind a door.” Spa Night.
3. Ahn, Andrew. 2016. “Still: David writing an exam.” Spa Night.
4. Ahn, Andrew. 2016. “Still: David and Soyoung talking at the table.” Spa Night.
5. Ahn, Andrew. 2016. “Still: Family watching television.” Spa Night.
6. Gupta, Naman. 2021. “Still: Sid looking down at time machine watch.” Coming out with the Help of a Time Machine.
7. Ansari, Faraz Arif. 2017. “Still: Man watching another man read on the train.” Sisak.
8. Akhavan, Desiree. 2014. “Still: Shireen smiling.” Appropriate Behavior.
9. Ahn, Andrew. 2016. “Still: David looking down.” Spa Night.
10. Takemoto, Tina. 2011. “Still: Jiro flexing his bread muscles.” Looking for Jiro.
11. Bautista, Pablo. 1992. “Still: Vince smiling with hands on his face.” Fated to be Queer.
12. Ahn, Andrew. 2016. “Still: David looking away in front of mirror reflection.” Spa Night.
13. Bautista, Pablo. 1992. “Still: Tony talking alongside caption.” Fated to be Queer.
14. Akhavan, Desiree. 2014. “Still: Shireen’s family and girlfriend talking.” Appropriate Behavior.
15. Ahn, Andrew. 2016. “Still: David land friends in a hallway during a party.” Spa Night.
16. Ahn, Andrew. 2016. “Still: Spa guest leaning in doorway.” Spa Night.
17. Ansari, Faraz Arif. 2017. “Still: two men holding onto train car pole.” Sisak.
18. Ahn, Andrew. 2016. “Still: David posting a sign in the spa.” Spa Night.
19. Ahn, Andrew. 2016. “Still: David looking off to the left on street.” Spa Night.
20. Ahn, Andrew. 2016. “Still: David looking at himself through a foggy mirror.” Spa Night.