American Born Chinese review: a Disney Plus show unlike the book

American born Chinese, the graphic novel by Gene Luen Yang, is a near-universally lauded, surreal graphic novel about a Chinese American kid who’s deeply embarrassed to be Chinese. So it’s not surprising if fans — myself included — were a little skeptical of trailers for American born ChineseThe TV show is available on Disney Plus.

The show’s footage has featured action and battle scenes between heaven and the mortal world, seemingly playing on the huge success of The World at One TimeThe show was fair. You can also read about how to get started. Borrow almost the whole cast from the Best Picture Winner). It’s a choice that feels disconnected from the story of Jin Wang, high schooler with a lot to learn about himself and the racist discomfort he’s both trapped by and clinging to. American born Chinese, the graphic novel, has elements of the fantastical, but they’re… actually, what they are is kind of complicated. They’re It is not clear how to get there. a kung fu action fight for the fate of the world, that’s for sure.

After watching a few episodes, American born Chinese, the TV show, ahead of its debut, I can say confidently that there’s more to the adaptation than meets the eye. And what I’ve seen so far is more than enough to get excited about.

Image: Carlos Lopez-Calleja/Disney

The most “challenging” aspect of American born ChineseThe graphic novel is what makes it such a thought-provoking read. It’s not simply the story of Jin Wang, high schooler, tanking his relationship with his best friend in order to gain in-group status with the white kids. Yang’s graphic novel presents two other stories simultaneously: one about the early life of the Monkey King, Sun Wukong, and one that is a fictionalized American sitcom about a white American teenager and his embarrassing cousin, Chin-Kee, a comprehensive collection of the most pernicious Western stereotypes of Chinese men.

None of these stories appear to have anything to do with each other until the final scenes of the book; even then, it’s never entirely clear whether the Monkey King’s story or the sitcom are as “real” as Jin Wang is. Each story reflects the theme of wanting to change your identity because of outside prejudice. The book is successful regardless of whether it was real or not.

But Yang’s experimentations with the diegesis — with different cartooning and layout styles on the page, and clear chapter breaks — doesn’t translate one-to-one to TV aimed at all ages. The “reality” of live-action television can’t replicate the hyperreality of cartooning. In the meantime, live-action sharpens heavy material into an incredibly clear resolution. In the graphic novel, Yang’s depiction of cousin Chin-Kee is uncomfortable (as it should be!). The buck-toothed, pidgin-speaking stand-in of racism directed towards Chinese Americans in live action would be unimaginable.

The first few episodes are available on DVD. American born Chinese shows a remarkable understanding of how to keep the spirit of a story while it’s retrofitted for another medium and modern audience of young viewers. No, the show doesn’t maintain the ambiguity of “realness” that the book does — Jin does eventually find out that his new friend Wei-Chen is the runaway son of the Monkey King, though it takes a few episodes before that shoe drops for him.

You can find out more about it here You can learn more about it here.The show is still updated to the language of the sitcom, but there’s still a Cousin Chin Kee. Friends-era television. In a frankly brilliant bit of metatextuality, Ke Huy Quan plays an actor who used to play a broad Asian butt-of-the-joke character on a ’90s sitcom that’s seeing new relevance with The Youth after his pratfalls become a TikTok meme.

Image: Carlos Lopez-Calleja/Disney

“Isn’t that kind of problematic?” one teen asks another as they laugh at yet another video of his accented catchphrase, “What could go wong?” — right before they ask Jin, the Asian person who happens to be standing next to them, to tell them it’s OK to laugh. Jin doesn’t object, not necessarily because he doesn’t want to, but because he desperately cares to make everyone think he’s a fun and chill guy to hang out with.

It’s a tableau that could have easily played out in the book, if the book hadn’t been published in 2006, when social media and the widespread use of “problematic” were undreamt of. Here in 2023, they’re vital attributes of how race and racism are communicated in the life of an American teen — and American born ChineseIs smart enough to recognise it.

The first few episodes are out. American born ChineseFeels clever, funny, contemporary, serious and modern all at once. Ben Wang and Jim Liu, who play our two leads Jin and Wei Chen respectively, are able to deliver a great deal of this talent. It could only need to match its original material. If audiences come for The World at One TimeBut stay around to read a story of coming-of age that is equally trenchant. American born Chinese, the book, then, hey — that’s the art of adaptation at its finest.