21 minute read
Feature
Courtesy of Ricky Widdlesworth.
Adele Lim, '96, stresses the importance of finding and employing your voice as an artist of color, because that is what benefited her most in writing "Crazy Rich Asians" (2018) and "Raya and the Last Dragon," her newest film available in theaters and Disney+.
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“You want to celebrate and be as authentic as you can to the culture you’re portraying:” Adele Lim on Her Career in Screenwriting And The Significance of Asian Representation in Films
By Althea Champion
In her 17 years of screenwriting for television, Adele Lim never wrote for a lead that looked like her until "Crazy Rich Asians." The film, which earned $35 million within the first five days of its release, spoke specifically to her culture as an Asian-American woman. Two years later, on Friday, March 5, 2021, Lim’s newest project premiered—the Disney animated feature film "Raya and the Last Dragon,” which is inspired by the cultures of Southeast Asia, where she grew up.
As a child in Malaysia, Lim diligently watched television, specifically the “Andy Griffith Show” and “Manimal.” However, despite her passion for writing, she did not know that writing for television was an option. She figured she would be "an underpaid novelist or work in magazines or newspapers."
Lim currently lives in Los Angeles and, with "Crazy Rich Asians" and "Raya and the Last Dragon" under her belt, her perspective on being a minority in the film industry has shifted.
“It is easy to feel that it's a big monolithic system out there, and it's hard to break into,” Lim said in a Zoom interview with The Intersectionalist. “But I would say, whoever you are, wherever you come from, that you have a specific point of view and you have a story that needs to be told, and it is on you to tell that story, however you do it.” The Intersectionalist spoke with Lim over Zoom on Feb. 15 about the importance of Asian representation in media, how she was able to employ her voice in her most successful projects to date, and the challenges she faced in getting to the place she is now in the industry.
The following interview was edited for clarity and style.
Q: How did you get into film?
A: At Emerson, I met other young people and met my boyfriend at the time who said, I want to drive to LA and write for TV. And I was like, Holy crap, that's an option? People can just do that? So that's what we did. We had zero money. I was like, I'll be fine. I mean, it's great to be ignorant when you're young, by the way. I highly recommend it. You should not know how hard it is. You should just go out and just do the thing.
Q: And what happened after that?
A: A very long story short, we both just hustled our asses off. I got my first job as a writer's assistant on “Xena: Warrior Princess.” And that kicked off a 17, coming on 20 years, career in TV. And I had no plans of getting into film, because it wasn't a medium that spoke to me… I have to say, I think it's because movies weren't necessarily made with me in mind, and it's not just about representation of having someone who looks like you — although that matters, but a lot of these big, huge blockbuster movies spoke specifically to very white men, so it never really resonated with me. Everything changed, though, when Jon Chu [the director of “Crazy Rich Asians”] gave me a call.
Q: Did you expect "Crazy Rich Asians" to be the kind of breakout hit that it was?
A: Oh hell no. In the industry, it's hard to get a TV show on the air. It is a hundred times harder to get a feature movie made. There are so many variables, and specifically for a movie with all Asian actors, we don't have the same sort of go-to list of A-list actors. But what helped us tremendously was Kevin Kwan's book. Kevin Kwan is a [Singaporean-American] writer. He wrote this book that exploded [in the US], which was fantastic. I loved reading it because it was really a joyful celebration of our culture. And it really took off with all these book clubs in America, so the studios had this reassurance.
And the most touching part of the experience was that there were all these different communities… reaching out to us saying, this speaks to my culture also, and it's something that we haven't seen on screen. So there are things that are universal truths that maybe aren't as familiar to…what we're used to seeing on screen. Leaning into cultural specificity was something fresh and was something that people connected with, so we were beyond excited about that. You want to be as specific, and you want to celebrate and be as authentic as you can to the culture you're portraying. And if you do it right, it will also resonate with other people. And that's really what we lucked in on.
Q: I know you stepped down from writing the sequel to "Crazy Rich Asians" because you were being paid much less than your white male counterpart, with whom you wrote the script with. According to the Hollywood Reporter, about $800,000 less. Do you want to talk about that a little bit?
A: It's a lot of pressure, and it's embarrassing, and nobody—no writer, no creative person—wants to come out and say what I did, because this is a business of references, of reputations, and no one sets out wanting to be the poster girl for pay equity. But it was something important, and it had to be said, because whatever inequity exists in television, it's so much more in features, because again it's so hard to make a movie, that the people who end up going to the top of their field, are people who are given the opportunities again and again and again and again, and it tends to be white men even to this day. So, it was an important point for me to make, but I didn't want that to define me as a person or define my career moving forward.
Q: Do you feel good about your decision to speak out?
A: I would say, coming out on the other side, I'm very glad I did it. Because the most rewarding part of it really was all the women who reached out to me — women and men — people who've been marginalized, whether they were women, whether they were LGBTQ, whether they were people of color, reaching out and saying, I've experienced this. And there were a lot of people who felt that they now had the support they needed to step forward and tell their story, or to step forward and really fight for what they were due, or to demand that they be treated equally or that they were paid equally, and that's the important point to me.
We're also at a different point in entertainment right now—again, I've worked in it for a long time.
There were talks about diversity and equity and representation, and for a long time, it felt like tokenism. And I really do believe we're at the point where we're in the early stages of making significant, lasting change because it's not just about what you see on screen. It really is about content creators.
Q: Do you think the environment for minority filmmakers is getting better in Hollywood?
A: Well, it's hard to say if it's necessarily getting much better. We're in a weird year. We're not in the same writers' rooms, the medium has changed too. Now with the streamers who have a global audience, and Netflix and Amazon and Hulu and Apple, there's such a demand for content, so the opportunities for storytelling are huge, and who they are looking to for those stories is changing.
I would say that there are more opportunities for women and people of color to tell their stories, and they have a better chance of it getting made and getting the support it needs. Where it becomes an issue is that traditionally, those people have not been given the same opportunities in the past. So when you talk about either skill level, or experience working within a system, or how to get a project off the ground and made, a lot of the crew, a lot of the infrastructure is still of the old system, and that's something you have to traverse. So, there are more opportunities, but it doesn't mean that suddenly it's an equal playing field, because it's not.
The issue we're dealing with is that traditionally in our system, the only people who got to tell stories were white men, so the only people who got to write the scripts about Asian women [and] Black women were not from our community. And, on top of that, were not necessarily people who had a particular love or familiarity with the culture that they were depicting. Because of that, there needs to be an effort to correct this before you can say anyone can write for anyone.
Q: So, moving onto "Raya and the Last Dragon," is that stuffed animal [behind Lim in the Zoom window frame] a dragon from the film?
Lim held up a figurine of the star of her new film, beaming.
A: This is Sisu. She is a Southeast Asian dragon, which is a very different dragon from what you're used to — no wings, no firebreathing. They're not agents of destruction. When we talk about this, a lot of our storytelling, whether we realize it or not, is sort of based in Judeo-Christian concepts: there's a good, and a bad, and a God, and a devil, and certain things represent good or bad. For us, and for Asians, dragons are wonderful creatures that are auspicious and bring wonderful things.
So with "Raya," it was this amazing opportunity to tell an original story inspired by the cultures of Southeast Asia, and really try to do it justice. That was one of the wonderful, very new experiences for me working with Disney. They take the time and the care to get it done right.
Q: I'm so excited to see it. Earlier you were talking about the importance of cultural specificities. What kind of cultural specificities from your experience growing up are in the movie?
A: It's hard to break down, because it's not just about one specific element that you put into the movie. It really is also your voice. And this is circling back to us talking about how important it is for content creators to either be of the culture or have an understanding and appreciation of the culture. Disney sent its creative teams to Southeast Asia and had a lot of cultural consultants working from day one…
It's not just about going to a culture, picking what feels right and looks pretty, and sticking that in. It's having a continuing conversation to make sure that the authenticity is there, even though we are in a fantasy world. We wanted to make sure that what is at its heart feels true and is resonant.
So parts of the culture, which also feel very specific to us, is the sense of community. In a lot of Western storytelling, it is about one single hero riding in to save the day. And even if there is a teamwork element to it, it really is about that one person. It's less about you sticking out as an individual — and sometimes Asian storytelling gets a bad rap for that. It really is appreciating that we would not have the successes in our lives if it wasn't for this community of people who loved us and supported us and were invested in us, and it is on us to also feel that responsibility for the people in our community.
Q: What was your reaction to "Raya" when you first saw it in its entirety?
A: My mind was completely blown. I know the story forwards and backwards, I know what's going to happen, and still, I felt surprised and emotional, and maybe because I'm so close to it, I cried for all the wrong reasons. I never thought I'd see that on screen. I never thought I'd see a Southeast Asian Disney princess lead on screen, and here it is.
I think it's the most beautiful animated movie Disney's ever made.
The Power
of Pleasure Activism
By Cari Hurley
Note: Author and activist adrienne maree brown stylizes their name in lowercase, so the Intersectionalist has done the same in the following article.
Any activist knows that creating systemic change is tiring, especially since progress can be excruciatingly slow. Those at the forefront of this labor are often overworked and heavily depended upon, without regard for their well-being. As a result, many social justice spaces are immersed in a culture of stress, suffering and martyrdom. But, what if that wasn’t the only way to practice activism?
Pleasure activism, a potential new approach to social justice work that can combat the mental and physical health consequences experienced by activists, was popularized by author and activist adrienne maree brown in their 2019 novel, “Pleasure Activism: The Politics of Feeling Good.” The approach seeks to show that activism doesn’t always need to be characterized by stress, tiredness, and frustration, brown said.
“[Pleasure activism is] making justice and liberation the most pleasurable experiences we can have. Learning that pleasure gets lost under the weight of oppression, and it is liberatory work to reclaim it,” brown said in a 2019 interview with Repeller.
In the same interview, brown says they first heard the term “pleasure activism” from late harm reduction and AIDS activist Keith Cylar. The idea of incorporating pleasure into activism comes from a lineage of Black activists and thinkers who have written about joy as an act of resistance.
Many people find pleasure activism hard to imagine because of how society’s relationship to pleasure is distorted by capitalism, brown said in a 2019 interview with the “Call Your Girlfriend” podcast. When our society does encourage pleasure, it is most often that of white men and women. The presence of capitalism and white supremacy in self-care and self-help spaces is made clear by wealthy white women’s domination of these spaces.
brown said they encourage those who are engaged in social justice and activism to prioritize reclaiming their pleasure from these structures.
Pleasure, as brown speaks of it, does not only include sexual activity, but also things like humor, dance, food, song, friendship, and
community, they said.
Dr. Sami Schalk, University of Madison-Wisconsin professor and a contributor to “Pleasure Activism”, said she incorporates pleasure into her work with Black Lives Matter and other protest movements by expressing herself through colorful fashion, serving food at protests, hosting musical and drag performances, and creating safespace tents for people of color.
“Pleasure is inherently political,” Schalk said in a Zoom interview with The Intersectionalist. “Being alive and being joyful in the midst of oppression is a form of resistance when that’s not what the world wants us to do.”
For brown, pleasure activism became significant to their career after they realized what constant activism could do to a person. Along with writing books and advocating for justice and liberation, brown is a Black feminist, doula, and organizer that has made a career in social justice work for 21 years, much of which has been emotionally tolling. In movement spaces, it is all too common for Black women like themself to take on extreme workloads, brown says.
“I floated around busting my butt for the movement, repressing my need for healing, for health, for a living wage, for respect, for consideration, for sleep… I confused numbing myself and escaping for pleasure,” brown said during a keynote address at the SoulSista Search virtual conference in Dec. 2020.
In their twenties, brown said they began to experience suicidal ideation as a result of this pressure. It was at that point that brown came across Audre Lorde’s “Uses of The Erotic: The Erotic as Power,” a book which changed their outlook on activism.
“Reading Audre, and looking at my life,” brown said in their keynote address, “I had this awakening – I am not constructed for suffering. I am not a miraculous being meant to toil to the bone for other people’s imaginations which are based in me shrinking and serving them.”
As a Black queer disabled woman, Schalk said she also knows that many systems of oppression were built to work against her health and well-being. Thus, it is all the more important for her to prioritize her pleasure. She has experienced activism spaces where an overwhelming sense of anger and urgency pushed activists to burnout and she is not attracted to that
environment, she said.
Emerson College Vice President for Equity and Social Justice Sylvia Spears said her and her colleagues struggle with the harm the oppressive structures of academia have created. Dr. Spears is a Black woman who works closely with many Black, Indigenous, and students of color to fight for racial justice at Emerson. She said reading “Pleasure Activism” reminded her to prioritize her wellbeing and joy in the midst of this difficult work.
“You can end up where you are so entrenched in that work that you’re actually devoid of anything that’s nourishing, pleasurable, enjoyable, or liberatory in its effect,” Dr. Spears said in a Zoom interview with The Intersectionalist.
Spears said she finds the greatest solidarity and pleasure in working with Emerson’s students. She also said that sharing values and goals with the younger generation makes her feel less alone and brings her hope for the change these students will create.
Recently, Spears was inspired by the pleasure activism demonstrated amongst the student organizers of Emerson Students of Color Week of Action, she said. During this social media campaign, which called for racial justice at Emerson, Spears said she saw examples of pleasure activism in the way that students cared for, loved, and shouted out each other during Instagram live streams.
Spears said she knows that advocacy work is painful, tiring, and urgent for BIPOC students who are struggling to gain access to an equal and safe educational environment at Emerson. But she believes that practicing pleasure activism in the midst of this work is essential to avoiding burn out and creating sustainable, long-term change.
At a creative institution like Emerson, Spears said she believes the community has the ability to imagine the world they want to see. Practicing pleasure activism means bringing parts of that world into the present.
“If we can create extraordinary films, beautiful literature and poetry and marketing and performances, we actually have the ability to reimagine the future and a future without oppression,” says Spears. “If we can do that, then we can snatch away glimpses of that [future] into our activism.”
By Jordan Owens
On March 13, 2020, creative writing major Lisa Simonis, was scared when she received two pieces of bad news: the Emerson residence halls were about to close and the country of Colombia, her home, would be closing its borders to slow the spread of COVID-19.
“I was at risk of being stranded in the U.S. with nowhere to stay, so I decided to come back here to my home and just ride out the pandemic,” Simonis said in a Zoom interview with The Intersectionalist. “I think if I would have been given the option, maybe I would have stayed in Boston, but at the time, it was not an option.”
Three months later, Emerson announced that students were welcome to come back to campus for the fall semester and participate in the Flex learning option, partially in-person, and partially online classes. However, some international students did not have the luxury of choosing whether to return or not. Thus, many international students were forced to take classes online from home because of travel restrictions and the uncertainty resulting from constant fluctuations in visa
Justin Chen, a first-year journalism major, said that obtaining a visa to come to the U.S. was a challenge for him—one that ultimately ended in him not being able to return to campus.
“The [U.S.] embassy in China is still closed. My visa has actually expired,” Chen said in a Zoom interview with The Intersectionalist. “So, I feel like I am forcefully sacrificing my education.”
Thus, Chen and Minseo Kwon, a first-year Visual and Media Arts major from South Korea, were forced to take online classes. Kwon said learning online and establishing Courtesy photo by Joseph Chen. relationships with Justin Chen, first-year journalism student, expresses his professors was feelings about being an online international student and difficult during the fall how it affected him. semester because of time and scheduling with the frustrations of poor differences along with not having as internet connection and classes much hands on experiences. based on Eastern Standard Time, which is 12 hours behind China, “I took an intro to visual arts class Chen said. He also said the time [which] didn’t do an in-person class zone has negatively impacted his or a [synchronous class],” Kwon physical and mental health because said in a Zoom interview with the he has to be awake after midnight Intersectionalist. “[The professor] in order to attend his classes. only uploaded a five-minute or tenminute video, and she wanted us On top of struggling with classes, to figure out all the assignments by international students that have only reading the textbook and that been forced to stay home during was kind of hard for me.” the pandemic were unable to experience the extracurricular Studying from home also comes side of college: student-led
organizations and events. Kwon said it was difficult to gain access to information on how to join organizations because she did not fully understand EmConnect and did not realize that they had social media accounts.
Kwon said the constant conflict of not being able to fully understand schoolwork and be involved with the Emerson community is part of the reason why she decided to come to Boston for the spring 2021 semester.
“I thought by coming to campus I can be connected more to other people and concentrated on my studies,” Kwon said.
The process of obtaining Kwon’s student visa was extremely long and stressful. Kwon described the process as having to fill out numerous forms and registering to get an interview months in advance of the spring semester. She also said part of the stress of getting a visa came from having to organize documents about her educational, travel, and family background.
“If I get denied from the visa interview, then there are some restrictions [on doing] the visa interview again and coming back to the U.S.,” Kwon said. “So, I was very nervous when I was preparing for the visa interview.”
For international graduating seniors, staying connected to the other students in their class as they transition into the next stage of their lives is made more difficult by the cancellation of in-person graduation. Simonis said she is not able to say goodbye to Emerson friends the way she would have wanted.
“Having to graduate online, I think there [is] no closure,” Simonis said. “You don’t get to say goodbye. You’re so in a rush.”
However, Simonis also said she was more
Courtesy photo by Minseo Kwon. Minseo Kwon, first-year VMA student, describes her experience being online Fall 2020 and why she decided to come to Emerson’s Boston campus this semester. comfortable spending the end of her college career at home and online because it forced her to participate more while being safe in her home.
One positive element to not coming back on campus is that international students at home have been able to spend more quality time with their families, Chen said. After moving to the United States without his parents in the sixthgrade, he said he is thankful to finally be in their company.
“The only time that I saw them from middle school all the way to the end [of] high school is my high school graduation,” Chen said. “I didn't go back to China at all, so now I am able to spend more time with my family, with my cousins.”
Chen said he is annoyed that his opportunity of learning in person at Emerson has been robbed but looks forward to the day that he and other international students can return and get the full college experience they deserve.
“International students are one of the most important components of the Emerson community,” Chen said. “Without international students returning to campus, the school will never be complete.”
