This past week, as I sat there reading, I questioned “is there even a show called Black and White?” Charles Yu does an amazing job blending elements of traditional scriptwriting with a non-fiction novel to create a story with an unreliable narrator where the lines are blurred. Where does Willis’ imagination of his Kung Fu action life end and his real-life starts? He categorizes and views life through the lens (no pun intended) of something he holds near to him, movies, in order to cope with the reality and boredom of everyday living.
I read a book eight or so years ago that was intentionally written in script format but was consistent for the whole novel. In terms of Interior Chinatown, sometimes we break from the script format and turn to a traditional novel layout. A very meta example of when this happens is during “Love Story” on page 167 when Karen Lee questions in script format “Why are we talking like this?” to which Willis replies “‘Sorry [...] Force of habit” (Yu). When Willis is nervous or bored or needs some spice in his life, he slips into the screenplay world he perceives life through. Karen Lee obviously makes him nervous, as mere pages before this he was saying how her beauty makes him want to faint. As an ex-theatre kid myself, I know that with a script in hand choices and decisions seem so much more clear-cut and natural. A play gives you who you are and your intentions. To Willis, diving into the screenplay acts as a place of refuge, of safety. This is a habit for him. Willis knows his role and what to do in it. After he reveals to her that he doesn’t know how to date, he starts to slip back into play-style narration, implying that he’s starting to go back to his old habit.
In the end, Kung Fu guy dies, and so does the show. Green and Turner can’t do it anymore, and Wu agrees. The script style ends, and it goes to the typical novel narration. Wu is no longer “Kung Fu Guy. You are Willis Wu, dad. Maybe husband” along with a laundry list of traits that are average, but okay (Yu, 256). His life isn’t dramatized anymore. He’s not playing some role, he’s playing himself. After the courtroom scene, he realizes that his life can be just that, his life, and that’s okay. Having this grand old movie backdrop is cool, but it isn’t realistic. The play and theatrics aren’t needed anymore because he is comfortable with who he is. He doesn’t need to rely on habit anymore, and he’s okay with it. To be there, present, in his life, he just has to be himself. Willis.
Your point about a script being a place of safety and refuge really spoke to me. It is so true that Willis sticks to the script because he is unsure of who he is and therefore since society has already given him clear cut roles of what he can play as an Asian man he just sticks to these. Although the script may be seen as a place of safety, it is also a trap. Society has trapped Willis into thinking he can only be a few "types" and therefore he has no choice but to stick to script. On page 246 Willis says, "I'm guilty too. Guilty of playing this role. Letting it define me. Internalizing the role so completely that I've lost track of where reality starts and the performance begin". This is such an important part of the novel because Willis is finally starting to acknowledge how he has been thinking throughout the novel. This self actualization leads to the moment that you speak about in your last paragraph where he finally becomes just himself. He finally realizes who he is and no longer feels the need to act. This points to how stereotypes can start to affect individuals who they are directed towards, as they start to internalize the stereotypes and question their identity.
ReplyDeleteI like the way you put this and I think you're totally correct. One thing I thought was very interesting about this novel is the way it's written like a script. Yu, the author, works in Hollywood as a scriptwriter and writes this book like a script. The format lends itself to easily slipping back and forth been a narrative-esque structure and a more official script. This, in turn, allows the lines to be blended between what is reality and what is Wu romanticizing or dramatizing the situation. We see this with his cut in and out of the "romantic montage" with Karen (Yu 167). What, then, in the book is real? What is in his head? There's a beauty in the way Yu chose to write the book because it allows the reader to have questions about our narrator and decide for themselves whether or not certain things are real. It also runs parallel to Wu's life, with his work consuming and changing him. It seems like Wu himself doesn't quite know where the role he plays ends and where he as a normal human being begins. It's a great commentary on the way he as an Asian man has always had to hop into role that stereotype people like him until they're nothing more than a parody of their own ethnicity. When you have to wear that mask, to play a version of yourself that everyone in the mainstream likes better, it's hard not to slip into believing that might be who you are after all.
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