Episode 83: The Farewell (and a Hello Thrown in)

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Of all the reviews I’ve done, this might be the most recently released subject I’ve featured. I don’t know why I’m speculating when that’s something that would be very easy to verify, but c’est la vie? It is what it is at this point: namely an effort I’m not sure I can muster when, on the other hand, this movie literally came out last year, so my odds are fairly good. Also reviewing new stuff just goes against some of the… tendencies of this podcast. Or the premise and the facts therein.

This podcast is supposed to be a chance to consider the subjective effects media can have on us or the ways it can touch us, the way stories can intertwine in our own personal narratives or into our very sense of self. The sort of thing that can take time to fully realize. But then you have something that… Well, makes its effect known or it can feel reminiscent of a certain C.S. Lewis quote that goes, “Friendship is born at that moment when one person says to another: ‘What! You too? I thought I was the only one.’”

In terms of what that quote describes, an assumed isolation, I’ve felt that way a lot. I think we all have, particularly with our own more personal struggles. The power our pains have over us isn’t necessarily innate but usually a byproduct of its ability to isolate and separate us. Whether by literally doing so or just figuratively removing us from those we care about. Through perception or by trapping us in our own heads.

So even though I rationally knew that there was no chance that I was the only one to feel a sense of isolation and separation relative to the culture I inherited by blood, I couldn’t always admit that. It just felt inaccurate to say I wasn’t alone. I always felt alone. And the fact that I actually wasn’t turned out the sort of thing that needed to be proved. And then it was. Somewhat. Not empirically like we normally want our evidence to be generated but through a movie. This movie. The one I’m going to be talking about today.

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Hi. It’s M. Welcome to Episode 83,

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The Farewell is a 2019 American comedy-drama written and directed by Lulu Wang, and while the cast had many a skilled actor, Awkwafina was put on display in the ensuing press junkets and technically in the movie itself as the main character. She plays Billi, a Chinese American writer who, in addition to facing a pretty major rejection in her professional life, finds out that her paternal grandmother whom she was always fairly close to has terminal lung cancer. Also, she finds out that the rest of the family have decided not to tell their matriarch the truth, choosing instead to lie and say that all the test results showed benign tumors and nothing more. Oh and the family is going to get together for a wedding. It’s really a fake wedding, but that’s the only sort of occasion in which gathering up the family would make sense. Besides the funeral that they all need to pretend isn’t happening or isn’t going to happen.

And if that seems bizarre to you, then good news, the movie does spend a bit of time unpacking the more-Eastern collectivism mindset that leads a family to undertake a lie of this size. To them, it means taking on the emotional burden of Nai Nai’s death without her help and guidance just to spare her feelings. This of course runs against the more-Western individualism that dictates that people are always entitled to their own bodies and all the related knowledge therein, both good and bad.

Now that East/West divide system isn’t so great. At the very least, it’s way too clean to be accurate, particularly in a very globalized age. But that’s how it’s usually presented to us, so accuracy aside that’s the larger conversation that is already happening. And as a result, that’s how it’s experienced by those who stand at the figurative divide. With one foot on each side of the line.

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Now, the film is based on true events, events that have not just happened to Lulu Wang but to other people as well. Never to me, though. However, Billi’s experience more generally speaking--of feeling like an outsider when she both is and is not an outsider--is something that really resonated with me. It’s a retelling of an aspect of my story that can still be difficult to unpack.

Avid listeners of Miscellany Media Studios content won’t be surprised by that statement. I have another podcast rooted in this fact of my existence, but for anyone here who does not know: I’m both Filipino and someone who has felt a discontent from that heritage after being raised abroad and raised by people who felt that maintaining the inheritance of this cultural memory was not a priority. There were people unfortunately but somewhat literally dying in the family household. Namely, my dad. 

But even if life had not repeatedly kicked my father while he was already down with some other ailment, and as a consequence taking up more of my mother’s time and emotional energy, it’s still a physical disconnect that has ramifications that is not easy to redress. I might not have really known what the alternative felt-like because I was born in the states, but I’ve always still been a bit aware that in some parallel dimension, I could have been raised with my cousins, playing in our grandparents’ yard and helping with the various animals that were running around. Okay, my mom had a cousin that kept chickens, and occasionally, they would just end up with my grandparents. Weird statement, and present me doesn’t fully understand it, but I don’t think it had to be that way.

Alternative realities, things could have gone differently, etc, etc. You might not be happy with that perspective and fair enough, but in my defense, it’s hard to not get caught up in the what-ifs when the grass always looks greener on the other side. It might not be, true. I might be overlooking some important details about my life in the states. But even if those fancies aren’t accurate, not indulging them as our parents do, parents who left the difficulties of their home countries for pastures that they knew were in fact green… well, that only adds to the feeling of being adrift. Because maybe your feelings aren’t accurate, but the reminder that they are removed from reality only makes you wonder where you yourself are standing. And no one can really answer that, can they? At least I can’t. And maybe no one else ever can.

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But that was my perception. In my experience growing up in the states, I was the odd one out. Strangely enough not in a malicious way as there were quite literally no other non-white students at my school until fourth grade. Bizarrely enough, in a community that homogenous, there was a sense of protection for those few of us who were actually different. No one thought of difference as a mark of inequality or of something to be afraid of. They had never encountered it before me. 

It’s not incredibly likely that things will work out that way, but I was also fairly pale from being half-white. And my dad was already sick, so you know, teachers actually had a different reason to be aware of my wellbeing. 

But to this community, nothing was wrong with me, and I was where I belonged. A super rare experience, I know, and I am nowhere near as grateful as I could be. Because Dad was dying, and then he did die, and while everyone else had a heap of family to get them through every little hiccup or stumble in their life. My mom and I had…Well, not no one. Dad’s dad was already gone, and his mother was still alive and even lived with us. But that was about it. Not it, per say, but that was when it came to the people who actually cared about us. Which is an important hair to split.

So it’s easy to see, maybe because I am leaving some details out for the sake of time and privacy, why I was so inclined to envision a life where I lived close to the family who actually loved me. Even if it wasn’t wise on some other fronts, it would have been nice to actually have a family.

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But life and time and all other events move on. Things flow forward, and you can find yourself caught up in rhythms or patterns that don’t make sense to you anymore. They should, but they don’t. Even if you literally understand the language text, the cultural subtext can still be lost on you. When it comes to rituals, you know where to stand and when, but that won’t fully clarify the larger picture at work. It won’t change that maybe you don’t feel right about doing it at all. Maybe it is objectively wrong or maybe you won’t get the closure you think you need. Because how can you say what you need to say when the entire premise of the situation is that there is no need to say it at all.

And then, of course, when it is a more collectivist mindset you enter into, you know enough to know that you have to pretend nothing is wrong or--at the absolute bare minimum--that you should expect to be corrected when you try to express that something is wrong. Because all the cogs have to be in line, right?  Yet another way you don’t fit in. Another place you don’t exactly belong in a sea of ones you were already very much aware of. It can seem like it never ends. Or it never does, I guess. Because you’re partially here and partially there. Split in two. 

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The Farewell shows what could be considered a clash of these two world views in such a way that doesn’t have winners or losers. Billi might make her choices, but she makes them not on some grand moral stand of what is right or wrong objectively, but on her best course of action in the moment. It’s not about making sweeping judgments; it’s about doing what’s best right then and there. She doesn’t take a grandstand; she makes do the best she can. Like we all are, I guess, regardless of the circumstances. Or that’s what I’ve been doing. 

First it was a podcast, but now I want to start a division of Miscellany Media Studios devoted to the sort of folktale and folklore stories that my grandfather used to tell and the rest of the culture I didn’t get to experience firsthand. But it won’t necessarily fill that gap perfectly and who knows if it will even be enough for me. The grass being greener and all that. It will always seemingly stay greener. 

But at some point, you can’t be so focused on certain things--be they what-ifs or things you did have--that you lose sight of other opportunities or potentials. Because there are opportunities out there that you couldn’t anticipate, even if it hurts to be away from home. There are things out there for you to find, that can be all of yours, and that can bring an unexpected sense of joy.

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Like podcasting, I guess. When I look back, I don’t think I could have seen myself doing this five or six years ago. Whenever I was in graduate school. It would have been fun, I thought, but actually doing so seemed impossible. But then I kept falling deeper and deeper into the world of new media and possibilities seemed… Not exactly endless but more in my control than old school forms of media were, but that’s nothing I haven’t said a thousand times already.

It’s not just about telling stories anymore or having some other outlet for my creativity.  It’s been an experience I could never fully comprehend or explain. But it’s been… mine. One that I sincerely enjoy.

Part of what pushed me to take the plunge was making that Filipino podcast: this desire to have something of my culture in my life. Maybe some of my other fiction ideas could be twisted to fit into other mediums, but I did not know where else that sort of thing could go. Maybe it couldn’t go anywhere else but here in podcasting. And now I’m working on an array of content that strikes at that same vein: where else could any of it go but here, but where I went? No where, I fear. But it’s not a fear I need to face. Because I saw an opportunity, and I was not so distracted by the what-ifs that I let it slip by.

Because, sure, I would have had family in the Philippines, but I wouldn’t have met the professor who encouraged me to embrace my creativity, to find whatever outlets interested me, and run with it. And I don’t know how to feel about that. But at some point, you just can’t worry about it.

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If you listen to Lulu Wang explain the lengths she went to in order to get this movie made despite everyone wanting it, you’d know that it seemed to be… Not an issue of should it be made but how. The story was intriguing to everyone who heard the premise, but finding an established niche to put it in proved to be that much harder. Which is odd, I think, having seen the finished product because there is something universal about the story. 

We’re all born into a framework or system that may not fit us perfectly, in one form or another. But The Farewell is about coming to terms with the way that system may fail you or not meet your expectations while still embracing the beauty therein, not so much the beauty of the situation, but that which was latent in the circumstances that bore it. It’s about essentially a renegotiation, a reinterpretation of the self that you became not what might have happened had the cards fallen differently.

Billi finds some comfort in this veiled way of interacting with her grandmother. Partially because it forces her to focus not on what she did not have or what she lost when her family moved from China but on the love her grandmother genuinely has always carried for her, something that isn’t so obvious in day to day life but can be almost forced if not artificial in tragedy. The nature of the story makes it obvious in one particular aspect of life, but I do think it could materialize anywhere. 

Anyone could feel this way, not just about their racial identity but about other things as well. Those just aren’t my story to tell.

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This has been a production of Miscellany Media Studios with music licensed from the Sounds like an Earful music supply. Now with a merch store for all of Miscellany Media Studios! And a discount code to celebrate season 3 of The Oracle of Dusk coming out on April 7th. All of that info is in the show notes.

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