Stereotypes In Finding Chan

In the film Chan is Missing, director Wayne Wang creates a detective story in which he allows the audience to be engaged with the characters in the film in order to find Chan. Upon the adventure of finding Chan, the audience comes to realize that Chan is this complex, changing, and elusive figure that Wang has presented. Presenting Chan through multiple perspectives, Wang undercuts the homogenized Asian America stereotypes and shows how they have no solitary identity. In essence, with the mystery going unresolved, Chan becomes a representation of Asian Americans, which are a complex, contradictory group that are impossible to be stereotyped or be ‘found’. Yet Wang was only able to do that through creating a detective story so the audience can …show more content…
This detective storyline prepares the audience to find the clues to put the mystery puzzle into pieces and since the director films it in this genre, the audience had expectations that they may have formed. One expectation is that these clues would eventually lead to a conclusion that is neat and well ordered. Wang plays around with these expectations and purposely avoids of creating a neat conclusion to point out the reality of Asian American culture and the need for the deconstruction of it’s typical stereotypical homogenized identity. As emphasized in Lecture and Discussion, with unresolving the mystery of Chan, the film displays how there is no solitary identity, racial stereotype, or category to which Asian Americans belong. With no neat conclusion, it leaves the audience to wonder of the identity of Chan. Similar to the Asian American identity, it is something that can’t be pined down and …show more content…
In the film, it emphasizes the behavioral assimilation issues that Chan had, which came from him simply holding on to his cultural traditions and not embracing his new American ones. For example, when Jo and Steve were talking to the lady at the café about Chan’s accident, it brings to context about how the lack of communication correlates with cultural difference. Chan was answering the questions that he received in the Chinese way and how he was simply “Thinking Chinese”. This way of thinking and belief can intervene with his assimilation with his culture and him becoming successful. This gives the audience the presumption that this causes for Chan to ‘find his identity’. Besides between ethnic groups, there can also be assimilating issues within a cultural group as well. For example, Steve mentioned of how he had misunderstanding Chan about humor. This form of cross-cultural differences came from them two coming from two different backgrounds. With this, it allows the audience aware of the causes of these misunderstandings and of the issue of people rethinking their cultural identity through these