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May 5, 2013
Television Review
Foreign Bride as a Fetish and a Person
By MIKE HALE
Steven is a 60-year-old parking-garage attendant who lives in a small apartment above a store in the Northern California suburbs. He’s white, which is significant because he has what is politely known as an Asian fetish and popularly known as yellow fever. “They’re all so beautiful,” he says, looking at a display of thumbnail images of prospective Asian brides.
In the documentary “Seeking Asian Female,” showing on Monday night in the PBS “Independent Lens” series, Steven manages to persuade Sandy, a 30-year-old office worker from Shenzen, China, to come to the United States to marry him. And his good fortune doesn’t end there. The film’s director, who becomes immersed in Steven and Sandy’s lives and deeply implicated in the torturous course of their relationship, is Debbie Lum, an attractive young Chinese-American. When a friend of Steven’s comes to the apartment to meet Sandy, he sees Ms. Lum behind the camera and exclaims, “You’ve got two of them!”
Ms. Lum indicates that she set out to profile a man obsessed with Asian women in order to understand a phenomenon that has weighed on her own life: “I’ve been stared at, hit on and harassed by so many men like Steven,” she declares. “Seeking Asian Female” doesn’t have a lot to offer as anthropology, however. The nature of Asian fetishism remains as mysterious, or perhaps as obvious, as ever. Where the film succeeds is as an acerbic romantic comedy with Ms. Lum as a bumbling Boswell, alternately speeding the course of love or throwing up roadblocks.
As Steven and Sandy make wedding plans — her K-1 visa gives them four months to marry — fights erupt over money (he doesn’t have much) and whether he’s still infatuated with an earlier Chinese pen pal. Ms. Lum not only records these events but also becomes a semi-willing facilitator with divided loyalties, sympathetic to both her original subject and to the resourceful young woman stranded in a country whose language she barely speaks.
The dramatic arc of Steven and Sandy’s relationship (no spoilers here) is mildly suspenseful but also pretty familiar. Much more interesting is Ms. Lum’s willingness to portray herself as less than sympathetic, acknowledging — to some extent — her own preconceptions and serving as a stand-in for a skeptical and conflicted audience.
Though Steven’s predilections and creepy good cheer make her queasy, Ms. Lum is also suspicious of Sandy’s motives: “What kind of woman would move countries to marry a man she met online and barely knows?” Her knowledge of Chinese and the forced intimacy of filming conspire to make her Sandy’s best friend and lifeline, however; not sure how to handle the situation, she blunders along, warning Sandy at one point that Steven may not be “the guy you imagined him to be” and asking her at another, “Did you really just want the green card?”
Ms. Lum’s exploration of her assumptions goes only so far — ideas about sex and love are on the table, but issues of class and power that seem just as relevant to the story don’t receive the same attention. While Ms. Lum means to challenge stereotypes about cross-cultural romance and sexuality, her portrayal of Sandy often seems to echo a set of conventions about Asian women involving stubbornness, jealousy and manipulation.
What keeps this 54-minute film consistently engaging is Sandy herself, wary, pragmatic and, much to Ms. Lum’s good fortune, an absolute natural in front of the camera. Anyone with an Asian female in the family will feel a tug when she tells Ms. Lum, after another epic fight with Steven, “I kept wondering, has he eaten?”
Independent Lens
Seeking Asian Woman
On PBS stations on Monday night (check local listings).
Directed and produced by Debbie Lum; written and edited by Ms. Lum, Tina Nguyen and Amy Ferraris; Ms. Nguyen, Ali Sargent and Cianna Stewart, co-producers; Gordy Haab, composer; Stanley Tucci, host.
Television Review
Foreign Bride as a Fetish and a Person
By MIKE HALE
Steven is a 60-year-old parking-garage attendant who lives in a small apartment above a store in the Northern California suburbs. He’s white, which is significant because he has what is politely known as an Asian fetish and popularly known as yellow fever. “They’re all so beautiful,” he says, looking at a display of thumbnail images of prospective Asian brides.
In the documentary “Seeking Asian Female,” showing on Monday night in the PBS “Independent Lens” series, Steven manages to persuade Sandy, a 30-year-old office worker from Shenzen, China, to come to the United States to marry him. And his good fortune doesn’t end there. The film’s director, who becomes immersed in Steven and Sandy’s lives and deeply implicated in the torturous course of their relationship, is Debbie Lum, an attractive young Chinese-American. When a friend of Steven’s comes to the apartment to meet Sandy, he sees Ms. Lum behind the camera and exclaims, “You’ve got two of them!”
Ms. Lum indicates that she set out to profile a man obsessed with Asian women in order to understand a phenomenon that has weighed on her own life: “I’ve been stared at, hit on and harassed by so many men like Steven,” she declares. “Seeking Asian Female” doesn’t have a lot to offer as anthropology, however. The nature of Asian fetishism remains as mysterious, or perhaps as obvious, as ever. Where the film succeeds is as an acerbic romantic comedy with Ms. Lum as a bumbling Boswell, alternately speeding the course of love or throwing up roadblocks.
As Steven and Sandy make wedding plans — her K-1 visa gives them four months to marry — fights erupt over money (he doesn’t have much) and whether he’s still infatuated with an earlier Chinese pen pal. Ms. Lum not only records these events but also becomes a semi-willing facilitator with divided loyalties, sympathetic to both her original subject and to the resourceful young woman stranded in a country whose language she barely speaks.
The dramatic arc of Steven and Sandy’s relationship (no spoilers here) is mildly suspenseful but also pretty familiar. Much more interesting is Ms. Lum’s willingness to portray herself as less than sympathetic, acknowledging — to some extent — her own preconceptions and serving as a stand-in for a skeptical and conflicted audience.
Though Steven’s predilections and creepy good cheer make her queasy, Ms. Lum is also suspicious of Sandy’s motives: “What kind of woman would move countries to marry a man she met online and barely knows?” Her knowledge of Chinese and the forced intimacy of filming conspire to make her Sandy’s best friend and lifeline, however; not sure how to handle the situation, she blunders along, warning Sandy at one point that Steven may not be “the guy you imagined him to be” and asking her at another, “Did you really just want the green card?”
Ms. Lum’s exploration of her assumptions goes only so far — ideas about sex and love are on the table, but issues of class and power that seem just as relevant to the story don’t receive the same attention. While Ms. Lum means to challenge stereotypes about cross-cultural romance and sexuality, her portrayal of Sandy often seems to echo a set of conventions about Asian women involving stubbornness, jealousy and manipulation.
What keeps this 54-minute film consistently engaging is Sandy herself, wary, pragmatic and, much to Ms. Lum’s good fortune, an absolute natural in front of the camera. Anyone with an Asian female in the family will feel a tug when she tells Ms. Lum, after another epic fight with Steven, “I kept wondering, has he eaten?”
Independent Lens
Seeking Asian Woman
On PBS stations on Monday night (check local listings).
Directed and produced by Debbie Lum; written and edited by Ms. Lum, Tina Nguyen and Amy Ferraris; Ms. Nguyen, Ali Sargent and Cianna Stewart, co-producers; Gordy Haab, composer; Stanley Tucci, host.
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