We Radiant Things: Notes on Being Alien and Becoming Cyborg by Franny Choi
I recently read David Treuer’s The Savage Mind, which
is a fascinating book that asks us to reconsider the ideas of savagery and civilization
throughout American history. Treuer referred to literary critic Northrop Frye
in a part of the book that resonated with me. Treuer emphasized the differences
between a historian and a poet by noting that “history (and historians) tackle
what has happened. But poets (and poetry) look at ‘a kind of thing that might
happen’…The poet’s job is not to tell you what happened, but what happens: not
what did take place, but the kind of thing that always does take place. [She}
gives you the typical, recurring, or what Aristotle calls the universal event.”
I really liked this distinction, as it is a reminder of not only the importance
of artists to complement the historical record, but also how important their perspectives
and deep, personal understanding is for interpreting and making meaning to events,
whether they are well-known or experienced by individuals. Franny Choi’s
excellent new collection of essays We Radiant Things: Notes on Being Alien and Becoming Cyborg made me think again about Treuer’s points about the role
of poets in providing more context and a more nuanced look at events,
especially as we are continually inundated with various perspectives of
different events, media and entertainment. Choi, who is also a poet, provides
interesting perspectives on a wide range of topics, frequently critiquing how
robots, aliens, cyborgs and other popular figures in sci-fi and horror are often
coded as representations of Asian, and particularly Asian females. She examines
popular films, shows, and even music to explore these representations, how they
have impacted her own identity and how others perceive her, as well as how
these representations are not necessarily new, but rather an evolution in the
racialized portrayals of Asians that have led to exploitative practices and
treatment in labor, employment, education, relationships, and sex. Choi begins
the essay with an analysis of Kyoko from 2014’s Ex Machina, examining
how Kyoko’s silence and subservient portrayals rely on her racial ambiguity and
Japanese name. In an interesting twist, Kyoko ultimately kills the man
responsible for her creation, yet Choi explores how Kyoko’s portrayal of a
mute, obedient “other” has been shaped by stereotypes and myths about Asian
women that have persisted for many years. I’ve only seen Ex Machina once,
and I was blown away by the story, but I was more focused on Ava’s role in the
story. Choi’s observations and analysis (and apparently a recut of the film with
only the scenes of Kyoko) provided a new understanding and perspective, like the
kind that Treuer argues poets bring to events. For what it’s worth, Alex
Garland, the writer and director of Ex Machina, has worked with Sonoya
Mizuno, the actress who plays Kyoko, in a few other projects, notably Devs,
where she plays the lead role of Lily Chan, a software engineer trying to
uncover the mysterious death of her boyfriend. Regardless, Choi identifies
other portrayals of these kinds of racialized portrayals where a future in
society is often portrayed as a dystopian Chinatown, like Blade Runner. It’s
definitely something I’ve noticed, and with the recent reveal that the coding
for The Matrix was taken from a Japanese cookbook, we can see how sci-fi
filmmakers have often portrayed the future as an exotic other, like Edward Said’s
argument about the West’s portrayal of other cultures, particularly in the
Middle East and Asia as distorted and inferior, a portrayal that continues to
play out not just in popular culture, but in policies and programs, unfortunately.
I found Choi’s analysis of cyborg films to be particularly
interesting, as she brings her own personal interest to films like Ghost in
the Machine and Terminator 2: Judgement Day. I loved her writing
about T2, which I remember seeing in the theater. Choi recounts how this
film became a favorite of her father’s and a family staple, but also notes it’s
particular connection to Korean immigrant culture with the film’s themes of “good
machines” and “bad machines.” Again, I appreciated the perspective she brings
to analyzing this film, exploring scenes where Edward Furlong as an adolescent
John Connor is trying to teach Arnold Schwartzenegger’s T800 to speak with some
slang and idioms, almost like an immigrant learning to use American phrases and
idioms. However, as Choi notes, the appearance of Robert Patrick’s T1000, who
can mimic other’s appearances and takes the form of a police officer, provides
some insight into the struggles of immigrants and other minorities with
cultural assimilation. This was definitely not a reading I took when I saw the
film as a teen, but I loved reading about how Choi’s viewings of the film have
evolved over the years, and how this idea about good machines and bad machines
resonated with her own experiences as a child of immigrants. Nevertheless, Choi
grounds her understanding of these machines in the historical accounts of
immigrant Chinese workers who helped to build the transcontinental railroad and
were largely characterized by their machinelike work ethic and lack of
complaining or pushback. Choi also explores how this view was often pushed by
those who exploited the precarious nature of these immigrants’ work and later
ended up implementing the Chinese exclusion act, also based on the portrayal of
Asian countries as “the other”, a dangerous kind of image of the West. This was
also resonant as we are currently witnessing a calculated and systemic backlash
against immigrants, often relying on tired and reckless stereotypes that not
only cast immigrant groups as backwards or uncivilized, but also as threatening
to American’s jobs and culture. As Treuer noted in The Savage Mind, it’s
the ability of these stereotypes that induce fear of the loss of status and culture
among other things that leads to violence, whether it is institutional violence
through policies or physical violence that Choi also documents against Asian Americans
through the brutal murder of Vincent Chin in 1982 in Detroit.
Where Choi’s writing especially stood out to me was in her
chapter “Love, Death, and Pink Robots” that explores how the Flaming Lips came
to write one of their most iconic albums Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots.
Like Choi, this album also has significant memories for me from the summer of
2002 and beyond. I was struck by the beautiful descriptions of the music for
both the song “Fight Test” that opens the album and “Do You Realize”, which still
nearly brings me to tears every time I hear it. Choi’s music writing includes
some of the most aural elements, fitting for a poet: “The track begins with a
simple four-chord progression on acoustic guitar, which warps at the end of
each phrase. In the back ground, what sounds like a slide guitar (actually a
pitch-bending whammy pedal) evokes cowgirls pining in space.” There are some
other amazingly-apt descriptions of the sounds that Coyne and Company evoke
throughout their iconic album, like “The key changes, and the strange chorus of
Wayne Coyne’s sixteen cloned voices rises to fill the space around my heart
again.” While Choi contrasts Yoshimi’s role in the song as a Japanese woman who
fights the automation, possibly challenging the stereotypes of the female Asian
automaton, she also notes how Yoshimi is relegated to parts of the other songs,
without having much to do with any theme of this kind of resistance and
challenging stereotypes throughout the entirety of the album. Similarly, she
notes the smaller image of Yoshimi on the cover of the album, nearly dwarfed by
the pink robots. Choi does share her heartbreaking connection with the song “Do
You Realize”, one of the saddest and most beautiful songs about the eventuality
of death. I won’t give the details here, I loved the way that Choi explores how
the meaning of the song and its heartbreak take her back to different eras of
her life from 2003 to 2009 to 2025. While she connects the album to her main
themes, it’s also one of the enjoyable connections she makes with these forms
of popular media that have influenced her interests in robots and Asian
American culture.
Another chapter and observation that stood out to me was “Ghost
in the Shell (Intensive Care)” where Choi recounts the last days she spent with
her mother, who was hospitalized in Italy after an aneurysm burst, kept alive
by a respirator and hooked up to machines. As someone who experienced a dying
parent in the hospital, attached to machines, I can relate, and Choi explores
how these machines that seem so inhuman and artificial can actually keep us
alive and help us perform integral functions. Like her reflection on the
Flaming Lips’ song, this is another beautifully written but heart wrenching
experience that Choi manages to capture all the confusing and intense emotions
that she experienced. Yet, she also envisions her mother as Kusanagi from Ghost
in the Machine, and how her cybernetic connection enables her to have a new
view of consciousness. In another chapter, she explores how she has a similar
conflicted relationship with technology, and how she’s harnessed the power of
spreadsheets to be “the bionic arms I use to keep up with the work, to run alongside
the assembly line, or maybe, to outpace my alienation and disgust.” Choi explores
this complicated relationship and how technology has become like a cybernetic
extension of ourselves which we rely on to survive (or maybe it’s feeding off
of us, harvesting something from us).
I wasn’t sure what to expect from We Radiant Things.
I am fascinated by this idea of cyborgs and robots and their portrayal in
popular culture, and Franny Choi’s observations and analysis helped to
challenge some of those perceptions, especially in how they are often tied to
portrayals of Asians, Asian Americans, and especially Asian women. However, she
also draws from her own personal experiences, which create a more intimate, funny,
sad, and heartfelt rendering of these portrayals and instances. I really
enjoyed learning more about how these portrayals have affected her identity,
and how she challenges many of these roles by analyzing them. I would also love
to take her class “Race, Robots, and Asian American Literature” or “Poetry and
Technology”, since some of the work from these essays probably informs her
teaching. This is a wonderful collection that will hopefully provide new insights
into looking at the implications of how robots, cyborgs and technology are
represented on the screen and in popular culture. Many thanks to Ecco Publishers
and NetGalley for sharing an advanced copy of this wonderful book. Highly
recommended!
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