Sohn's Inscrutable Belongings
quite quote heavy since was hunting for quotes for movie i think
"it gets better" - does in fact get better for mc and all others. however, survivorship bias plays a role. The fictional movie provides a fantasy of a somewhat ‘decent case scenario’, giving hope to queers even if things may not pan out as well for them
"Austen’s heroines could no doubt be seen as marginalized subjects, seeking forms of security through heterosexual marriage." - Tells us to digest media from the perspective of the queer and how there may be parallels between them and queer
"Two patterns become most evident: queer Asian North American protagonists are lucky simply to survive, and their survival depends on a community of other characters (including nonliving entities) who do not come from the protagonists’ biological families." - literally protagonist finding vivian
"camoflauge - If death and injury in both literal and metaphorical forms stalk the everyday lives of racialized queer subjects and the many people they associate with, then the price of desiring another of the same sex is already too high." -same as idea of saving face. By camouflaging, you can save face for yourself.
social death - result of not camouflaging
On the experiences of gay/queers. For men, "stressing Asian American ‘family’ values and perpetuating the model minority image for Asian Americans—that simply denies the existence of gay Asian Americans". For women, "the queer Asian North American woman is most often read as invisible or as impossible, precisely because her relationship to another of the same sex is misinterpreted as sisterhood or platonic friendship." This can be seen in how vivy was introduced as a friend of mc to the mother instead of a gf, how mother turned her eyes away from the truth and rejecting it as an impossibility, and how the mother cut the mc out of her life as the mc became 'invisible' to her mother.
"Eng highlights the danger of regarding the injustices embedded in race relations as something from a bygone era in order to promote a different, apparently more pressing cause such as queer equality. Instead, race and queerness are indelibly and historically linked" - similar to hypersexuality. our modern ideas of race and queerness are all influenced by the past and their culture. To deny its existence is to deny what what we are. To move forward, we must understand the history before us, and embrace it.
"The interventions that fictional narratives can make to discourses of progress and futurity have become conspicuously evident to me" - Desai film and how movie/fiction can effect culture
"The critical promise of fantasy, when and where it exists, is to challenge the contingent limits of what will and will not be called reality." - the progressive fictional/fantastical movie helps shape reality like desai to help change public perception, possibly helping in the destruction of anti gay laws a decade later