7 Themes I Noticed When Watching “Joy Ride”
CAUTION: As usual, spoiler alerts below.
When the trailer for “Joy Ride” first popped up in my feed, I was reluctantly excited. Contemporary Asian American stories has only really had visibility in the last five years with the success of Crazy Rich Asians and Everything, Everywhere, All At Once. At the same time, I was still hungry for more representation especially of this unique group of Asian American adoptees. Our stories and added complexity of transracial and transnational adoption are not told often and especially not from our perspective. This movie could appeal to that piece of representation still not satiated by mainstream Hollywood.
At first, I was curious about how female Asian American adoptees would be portrayed. Was it going to be another tired “adoptee birth search” trope? I was nervous that the nuance of Chinese adoption would be overshadowed and only play as a plot device. The story is centered around Audrey Sullivan (Ashley Park), who is a Chinese adoptee to white parents. She is about to go on an important business trip to China when things go completely awry. On the quest to both land the deal for her law firm and find her birth mother, Audrey and her three friends, Lolo (Sherry Chen), Deadeye (Sabrina Wu) Kat (Stephanie Hsu), end up on the joy ride of a lifetime.
Photo credit: Lionsgate
Through watching this movie, I found some big themes both explicitly and subtly addressed.
Microaggressions
The opening scene starts with Audrey and Lolo befriending each other on the playground. As they run towards the slide, a white boy says a racist thing and Lolo punches him in the face. In this defiance and “f-u” attitude, Audrey and Lolo quickly become friends: the only two Asians in their class. The scene cuts to Audrey, older, presenting to the class about family lineage. As she explained the family tree of her adopted parents to the classroom, the boy in the front asked her why she didn’t look like her parents. Audrey confidently said it was because she was adopted, and the classroom erupts with a murmur of microaggressions. As an adoptee, I dreaded class assignments like this growing up, having to explain to other kids why there was another reason for me to be different or relive feelings of abandonment.
Perfectionism
Much like how I approached my own childhood, Audrey decides to “show them wrong.” The movie flashes with images of her achieving several awards and accomplishments, becoming a lawyer at a prestigious firm. My own drive for achievement mirrored these images, they could have been taken from my childhood photo album. At 29, on the surface, she has it all. She owns a house; she is a lawyer at a prestigious firm, on her way to becoming a partner. It is clear that she is preoccupied with her next achievement. On the flip side, it gets in the way of her stopping and enjoying life. Audrey is seen trying to control a variety of aspects of her life. The thought of trying something new or taking a risk and messing up paralyzes her. This manifested in how she is constantly attempting to save face and appear a certain way externally for everyone but her own friends.
White Male Adjacency
A recognizable scenario is when Audrey is playing racquetball against her boss in the country club. The camera pans across the ornate frames showing the board members over the years, all white men. Audrey clearly tries to impress her boss and colleagues as she navigates showing off but without threatening them. As she is congratulated by her coworkers, it is clear that attempts to be “one of the guys” are never going to happen even with a promise of partnership dangled in front of her. I found this desperation to be liked or respected by her male coworkers fascinating because it is not uncommon. It is clear to me that Audrey is smarter and works harder than many of her counterparts but is being held back and prejudiced by those in power. Her obsession to be “like them” is a survival tactic to play in an already rigged game.
Internalized Racism
Speaking of a rigged game, many of us transracial adoptees, carry the unique burden of internalized racism. By being raised by people who do not share the same racial identity and often are the dominant identity, we may subconsciously internalize our own sense of inferiority. The scene on the train in China perfectly highlights this. As anxiety-inducing as that scene was, I found myself relating deeply to Audrey in her attempts to find familiarity. After arriving in China, Audrey steps into the caretaker role, attempting to keep everyone safe and comfortable. She searches the train cars for a spot for the four of them to sit, opening doors with existing passengers before moving to the next. She finally finds a car with a lone white woman, her face softens. Relieved to see a “fellow American,” Audrey urges her friends to join this white woman. It is clear that this woman is trouble, but Audrey is blinded by her own internalized racism, trusting this white woman over people of her own race. Her friends quickly point out how suspicious this woman is, but Audrey denies their suspicions. This does not end well for them.
Sexuality and Asian-ness
It needs to be talked about. A rated R movie focused on Asian women was going to bring up the stereotype, but I was curious on how. Well, the answer is that it was nothing like I had seen before. It was clear that both Kat and Lolo were more sexually open than Audrey, serving as foils to her obsessive perfectionism. However, the scene with the basketball players showcased a few surprises. Each of the girls experience their own expressions of their sexuality. The male cast, predominately Asian, were a represented in a way to squash the stereotype against Asian men and sexiness. Let’s be clear though, the focus of this movie was on female pleasure only in a ridiculously comedic way at the expense of these super-hot guys. Additionally, I found it refreshing that Deadeye represented another version of sexuality and gender altogether but in a nuanced kind of way. It was like Deadeye’s own growth over the course of the movie, finally accepting themselves as nonbinary. The girls didn’t make a big deal out of it, stumbling or questioning their friend’s sexual orientation or gender identity but rather accepting it and moving on; its only a piece of their identity. We need more of this represented in our stories.
Grief and loss around adoption
As Audrey grows more comfortable with searching for her birth mother, she discovers there is more complexity to adoption (something that many of us dread). Upon meeting with an agent in China, she discovers that she is not actually Chinese (called it), and that her mother was sent to China to give birth before returning to Korea. This is an interesting twist I didn’t fully see coming except that I was curious what the director was thinking casting a Korean actor in a Chinese lead role. Lolo and Deadeye’s family reacted by saying “at least she isn’t Japanese.” This nod would likely have gone over a white viewer’s head as some funny quip but shows just how much racism exists even between other Asian groups. But the twist and turns of our adoptions feel almost intentionally complex. As Audrey goes to the agency in Korea to track down her birth mother, she learns that she is too late. Her birth mother had passed away before they could meet, Audrey stepping out of the agency and crippled with grief. She is ultimately able to have some closure as she unites with her birth mother’s husband while visiting her mother’s grave. Before her death, Audrey’s birthmother leaves a video of her saying how much she loves her. While this felt a little too forced, too easy, too perfect, having that older woman on screen talking directly into the camera, it felt like she was talking to us adoptees. In some ways, maybe she was and it was the catharsis we needed.
Fitting in
Over the course of the film, Audrey says multiple times that she feels like she didn’t fit in. She isn’t white for the people in her hometown but she is not Asian enough for her Chinese friends. The nuances between the Chinese people are something she is unable to pick up on. Perhaps that is why the moment that Deadeye and Audrey have in China is so important. Deadeye confesses to feeling like they never fit in, never say the right thing, and push people away. Even Audrey at the beginning of the movie dreads having Deadeye join. This olive branch is a powerful scene for all of us as it feels like Deadeye is recognizing that feeling many of us have.
Conclusion
There you have it, a movie starring Asian women and an adoptee storyline that could appeal to a mainstream audience. Even when I went to the theaters to see the movie, none of the other viewers were Asian. It seems like our stories can exist at the same time and doesn’t need to just be a romantic comedy. We can be messy, complex, and different. I hope there continues to be more stories like this so that I may further find that sense of identity. Drunk businessman, Chao (Ronny Chieng) even said to Audrey, “If you don’t know where you come from, how do you know who you are?”
In some ways, I think we are all on the quest to become who we truly are. Sometimes that involves discovering our origin story so that we can see how far we have come. And after that, we are constantly on the pursuit of finding ourselves, much like Audrey, realizing that the truth is within us the whole time.