Can Asian Masculinity be Redefined as Romantic in a Non-Asian Context?

This blog has had a persistent issue with how Asian men are portrayed in American mainstream media. To this day, the post about the perceived lack of "manliness" among Asian men is the most viewed of the blog's history spanning more than a decade. In subsequent years, this blog followed the rise of K-pop as a phenomenon that gradually changed how Asian masculinity is defined in both Asian and non-Asian culture, sparking a boom of clean, often non-muscular Asian men being perceived as a more down-to-Earth alternative of the domineering, violence-prone attitude of the Western "alpha male" trope.

Yet, the juxtaposition of the slender K-pop stars and macho white men often does not go beyond their obvious visual differences. Their representation in mainstream media, even when it involves narratives on their background and craft, often remains skin-deep, incapable of uncovering fundamental differences between worldviews, ideologies, and cultural values that underpin those visual differences. The lack of deeper explanatory power, then, often helps propagate stereotypes of how Asian men are simply biologically weaker and more effeminate.

Indeed, media discussion of masculinity, in general, fails to portray diversity within how masculinity can be defined. This diversity goes well beyond the simplistic dichotomy of "Asian" vs. "non-Asian" as if ethnicity is the only factor that affects how men behave themselves. Multiple other factors, including religion, familial relationships, and the surrounding physical and economic environment can all affect how a particular man behaves. And these factors can also help color the interpretation of whether such behaviors should be considered masculine or not.

Given the ambiguity surrounding the definition of masculinity, it is great that the much-lauded Hollywood movie Everything, Everywhere, All at Once manages to touch upon the topic subtly in its portrayal of family relations. The sci-fi movie features an Asian mom seeking to rescue her daughter from nihilism after acquiring the ability to travel through different universes featuring different life stories for each of the many protagonists. In exploring many of life's counterfactuals, family members come to appreciate the present rather than what at first seem to be much more glamorous and success-filled alternatives.

Central to the storyline is the character of the father, who, unlike the mother and daughter, did not undergo the epiphany through the acquisition of multiverse-traveling capabilities. Yet, as his wife meets different versions of him across multiple universes, she comes to realize that whether he is a failing laundromat owner, a successful businessman, or a brutally efficient kung fu fighter, ultimately he sought to find his place in society, and within the family, through compromise and yielding to the preferences of others. The wife's mild disdain toward his "weakness" at the beginning of the movie turns to love and admiration at the end.

By presenting the unchanging nature of the compromise-prone father as an ultimately positive influence on the family as a whole, the movie subtly redefines what it means to be "manly" in the field of romance. Rather than introducing men who resort to violence to defend women as the romantic ideal as most hero films do, this movie is at pains to say that it is also worth loving men who are willing to toil behind the scenes, smoothening out tough interpersonal relationships and help assuage the anger of others. Helping to calm others can be more effective than fists and kicks, and can also be a sign of manliness.

In the process, the movie, through the Asian father figure, introduces what can be interpreted as a romantic form of Asian masculinity. It has nothing to do with clean looks and sick dance movies espoused by K-pop stars, and certainly not the violence of muscular and cold-blooded kung fu stars in the past. Instead, it is about protecting loved ones without inducing unnecessary conflict. As stereotypical as conflict avoidance may sound to the concept of "Asian ethics," it does help formulate how exactly masculinity can be found within the context of many Asian sociocultural norms.

Questions remain about whether this type of Asian masculinity will find resonance outside specific Asian contexts. K-pop, at times, still falls flat in interpreting its relationship with the outside world. And despite anger toward gun violence and high incarceration rates, American pop culture still worship violence in everything from movies to comics to music. The fact that Everything, Everywhere, All at Once is a sci-fi movie does not help ground it in reality at times. But the fact that it has won multiple awards and garnered positive reception even from non-Asian audiences does help start the conversion of what Asian manliness means.