Not Even “The Half of It”
Content warning: rape culture.
Contains spoilers.
As queer Asian Americans, Alice Wu's “Saving Face” made us feel seen for the first time. In 2004, the media had nothing for us, and in many ways, this film saved our lives, and the lives of many of our queer siblings. As filmmakers, Alice Wu is the artist who inspired our creative paths. 16 years after Wu’s legendary “Saving Face”, the lack of queer and Asian representation in mainstream media remains much the same as it did in 2004. In anticipation, queer Asian Americans across the internet joined virtual watch parties on May 1 to see Alice Wu's long-awaited follow-up.
Amidst the overwhelming praise for “The Half of It”, including that from the queer and Asian community, there are a few things portrayed in this film that we feel are important to call attention to.
We share this with love and compassion for our community and for the queer and Asian artists involved in making this film. It is our hope to open up space for discourse and art that can move us towards our vision for liberation. Most importantly, we speak out with our creative values at the forefront: healing, empowerment, and community.
1 On Rape Culture
“The Half of It” is about an Asian American teen, Ellie Chu, who writes love letters for a jock to help him win over his crush. Unbeknownst to him, Ellie has a crush on her too.
Throughout the film, there are several harmful acts that are actively romanticized:
Nonconsensual kissing is romanticized.
Nonconsensual touching is romanticized.
Nonconsensual removal of another person's clothing is romanticized.
Nonconsensual nonmonogamy is romanticized.
Repeated denial of a woman's request for a platonic relationship is romanticized.
All of these nonconsensual acts serve as major plot points to build intimacy between characters, and ultimately, to convey love. To assume permission for sexual intimacies is an act of violence. To portray these acts as cute declarations of love molds our society into one that tolerates, and even praises, violence in relationships.
“The Half of It” normalizes the age-old trope of “winning the girl” — woman as an object to be claimed. The characters explicitly praise the valor of “try[ing] hard”. With enough will power, literary preparedness, deception, and persistence, the prettiest girl in school will surely be yours. We wait only to find out whether it is Paul or Ellie who takes her. Paul and Ellie explicitly discuss how to kiss Aster without her consent. Both suitors do kiss Aster without her consent — and she smiles. This is romance.
Furthermore, as a means of winning the girl, the film normalizes catfishing, the practice of luring someone into a relationship by pretending to be someone else. While the deception is ultimately frowned upon, the catfishing ploy is the central plot of the film. “The Half of It” has been cited for adding “depth and consideration” to the 19th century “Cyrano de Bergerac” catfishing plot. Alice Wu claims that the film “subverts the genre” because both characters “fail” and neither of them ends up with the girl. A failure to achieve the prize of predatory advances is not a subversion of the structure — it is merely an alternative ending.
The film perpetuates the idea that a woman's repeatedly stated desire for platonic friendship should be dismissed for the superior chance at romance with her noble suitor. Aster wants to be friends; Paul kisses her. Ellie wants to be friends; Paul kisses her. Aster wants to be friends; Ellie kisses her. The platonic relationships that exist at the end of the film are not an “ode to platonic relationships”, but a concession by the characters due to their failed attempts at winning the girl.
Women are framed consistently in this film as objects — as currency. These classic tropes of “rom-com” that perpetuate rape culture and the predation and possession of women are acts of violence that have real implications in our world and in our lives. To praise this film as a step forward for queer and Asian identity condones this violence upon ourselves.
2 On White Supremacy
While the film claims to be about a queer Chinese girl, it's really about a white boy. Only within a white supremacist and patriarchal worldview is being a white jock's sidekick the only social power available to a queer, Asian, woman.
“The Half of It” is a queer Asian film that relegates queerness and Asianness to the margins. The big character transformation of the third act occurs in Paul, not in Ellie. He is the one who searches the internet for answers and reaches the epiphany that queerness is okay. He — a straight, white man — is the one who makes the courageous speech in defense of queerness. Our existence as queer and Asian women is only deemed valid because a white man says so.
As an Asian community, we have been critical of Hollywood's insistence on casting a white romantic partner for every Asian lead — a white lover to prove that an Asian person could be desirable. As a queer community, we have been critical of straight actors playing queer characters. Why, for this film, are we unwilling to hold ourselves to the same standards?
This film was written for the white viewer: in an interview with NPR's Code Switch, Alice Wu says, “I was actually hoping to lure people in who live in a town like that...Hopefully, they fall in love with the characters, and then by the end it might make them think a little bit more about that one immigrant family in town.” While the white lens in this film may be intended to help move us forward, pandering to white sensibilities to validate our own existence perpetuates the insidious model minority myth that keeps us from any semblance of true empowerment. Measuring our own power based on our proximity to whiteness is not only in vain, but is self-perpetuated racism against ourselves and all communities of color.
Asian women are prized in patriarchal white society as the pinnacle of femininity — they are demure, they are modest, they are servile and self-policing without you asking. Ellie's role in this film is one of literal servility to a white man's desires at the expense of her own. And she voluntarily gives more of herself — to soothe his insecurities, to advocate for his sausage ambitions — without him asking. The same is true of this film: it surrenders its own dignity without you asking. It volunteers the use of a much whiter lens than 2020 Netflix would ever require. As Asian women living in the world, we've cast aside these antiquated modes of being, yet this is the way we choose to represent ourselves — as subjects providing femme labor in service of white misogyny.
This film uses the oppressor's frame and the oppressor's language, and we are willing to take the scraps off the dinner table, to be merely the dressing, and claim that as success — as the thing that melts our hearts — the thing in which we see ourselves represented. We have such low standards. We are so starved that we are willing to jump on any representation at all.
Lastly, we would like to emphasize that we don't share this critique lightly. As filmmakers ourselves, we know how vulnerable it feels to put our art out there. It is because we love "Saving Face", Alice Wu, and our queer and Asian community, that we are moved to share this experience.
Our community is precious to us. We depend on it to teach us, to hold us accountable for our mistakes, and to carry us with love and compassion as we heal, learn, and grow. It is community that fuels us towards liberation.
Art and culture are deeply engaged with big, important ideas about the way we live our lives and the conditions we’re willing to let ourselves live in. In solidarity, in this violent world, amidst this global resurgence of ethnonationalism, we must hold ourselves accountable. We believe in the power of media to liberate us. As queer and Asian filmmakers, we commit to doing the work. We demand more for ourselves and for each other. We deserve better.
This article is a critique of problematic and harmful practices that are romanticized in Alice Wu Netflix film, The Half of It. Topics that are discussed include consent, nonconsensual kissing, non-consensual touching, rape culture, white, whiteness, white supremacy, model minority myth, sexism, misogyny, heteronormativity, identity, Asian American, film studies, ethnic studies