verywhere aLL at the aUdIted ndroMat In the U.s.

Directed and written by Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert, Everything Everywhere All at Once (2022) won seven awards at the 95th Academy Awards in 2023. For me, the film’s most notable achievement was Michelle Yeoh’s performance winning the Best Actress award, making her the first Southeast Asian to receive the award. Born in Malaysia, Michelle Yeoh underscores the very same notion of immigrant identity that her character Evelyn (a Chinese immigrant woman) represents in the film.

Everything Everywhere All at Once is a story about a middle-aged Chinese woman who becomes involved in an adventure when she connects with different versions of herself by travelling through time and space. The main backdrop of the story is the plight of the Wang family’s laundromat, which is being audited. The Wang family’s plight may also, more generally, represent the experience of other Chinese-American immigrants. In the following article, I will draw on the history of Chinese-American immigration to interpret this setting in the film.

To begin with, the movie’s setting is “Americanized” because of Evelyn Wang’s laundry business, which is a phenomenon that can be traced back to the 1990s, although at that time the laundry business was almost exclusively by men, also known as “Chinese laundrymen” (Takaki, 201). This phenomenon occurred because Chinese immigrants faced exclusion and discrimination from within the local American workforce (particularly from white workers), due to their provision of cheap labour. This discrimination was particularly pronounced between 1870-1890 and sometimes developed into violent riots, such as the Los Angeles Chinese massacre of 1871 (Zesch 147), which caused the deaths of many Chinese immigrants. Since working in mines or railway companies resulted in exclusion, discrimination, and even, at times, danger to one’s life, Chinese immigrants had to opt for self-employment, with low costs and minimal educational requirements. Thus, the management of laundromats became a common mode of employment for them. Does a laundromat mean a stable income and life? Not necessarily. The U.S. government, specifically the U.S. Internal Revenue Service, also posed a major obstacle for Chinese immigrants, as portrayed in the movie through the audit conducted by Deirdre Beaubeirdre (Jamie Lee Curtis). The auditor’s black bold circles on the tax form become a symbol of evil, a black hole that could instantly devour Evelyn’s family’s life. The language barrier during the auditing meeting between the auditor and Evelyn leads to misunderstandings, and the Wang’s ultimately face the confiscation of their laundromat. This plot not only criticises the contemporary attitude of the US tax authorities towards immigrant businesses, but also alludes to the Red Scare which occurred between 19471957, during which Chinese laundry businesses were targeted by the FBI due to widespread fear of a potential rise of communism (Yung et al. 226).

Whether the directors intended to allude to such history or not, Everything Everywhere All at Once portrays parts of the struggles faced by Chinese immigrants in the US. They endure the ‘glass ceiling’ imposed on their careers, and the government’s constant scrutiny, the challenges are both social and official. However, at the end of the film, Waymond Wang’s positivity and goodwill resolve the family’s dilemma and the auditor grants them a second chance. This ending leaves me to wonder if it is merely a beautiful yet overly-hopeful ending, as the auditor still holds the ultimate decision-making power and there are still problems to be solved. However, alongside the prevalent discussions in modern academia on anti-racism and postcolonialism, this movie’s success at the Academy Awards and in the box office may be a sign of a changing American society. Hopefully, in the near future, immigrants in the US, regardless of their race and ethnicity, will be able to live in a world as beautiful as that of the movie.

Cited

1. Everything Everywhere All at Once. Directed by Kwan Dan and Daniel S. Dan, performances by Michelle Yeoh, et al., A24, 2022.

2. Takaki, Ronald T. A Different

Mirror: A History of Multicultural America. First edition., Little, Brown & Co., 1993.

3. Yung, Judy, et al. Chinese American Voices: From the Gold Rush to the Present. University of Califor- nia Press, 2006. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/ed/detail.action?docID=254866.

4. Zesch, Scott. ‘The Night of Horrors’. The Chinatown War: Chi- nese Los Angeles and the Massacre of 1871, edited by Scott Zesch, Oxford University Press, 2012, pp. 122–50. Silverchair, https:// doi.org/10.1093/acprof:osobl/9780199758760.003.0007.