Who Killed Vincent Chin.: A Critique of Who Killed Vincent Chin? I

Fueled by the hysterical outbursts of Chin’s mother, Lily Chin, the unwavering stubbornness of Chin’s murderer, Ronald Ebens, and the perspectives of the scene’s eye-witnesses, Who Killed Vincent Chin? (1987) was nationally revered by mainstream pundits for thrusting the subject of race relations into the United States’ Overton Window. However, after closer inspection, Who Killed Vincent Chin? failed to reach its potential in sparking an analytical discourse on the manufactured, prejudiced systems that led to Chin’s demise, never explicitly condemning the tragedy as racially motivated. Consequently, a very surface-level discussion regarding race arose, and like the feelings Catherine Choy and Renee Tajima attempted to convey, Chin was a forgettable and fleeting talking point in United States history. Rather than narrowing in on the film’s original intent —revealing the ruthlessly rampant undercurrent of Asian and Asian American racism in the United States—  Choy and Tajima fracture the narrative into diametrically opposed pieces in effort to establish "objectivity" within the film, limiting the film’s capacity for social change.

Released in 1987, the film in question.

Depending on what you read, Who Killed Vincent Chin? is either lauded as thought-provoking and successful, or acknowledged as noble, but flawed. In heavily-read, mainstream media outlets, the film is the former, while in lesser-known, analytical critiques, the film is the latter. Renowned film critic of The New York Times, Vincent Canby asserts that “Choy and Ms. Tajima have so successfully analyzed this sudden, sad, fatal confrontation that almost everything except the Big Mac becomes implicated in the events.” Similarly, veteran film critic of The Los Angeles Times, Mark Chalon Smith, described Who Killed Vincent Chin? as “though-provoking.” In contrast, however, Associate Professor of American Studies, Leslie Fishbein, declares the film a “babble of competing discourses,” a scattered narrative.2 Which one of these reviews are more accurate and why is there a disconnect between the two conclusions?  

According to interviews prior to the film’s release, Choy and Tajima initially sought out to produce Who Killed Vincent Chin? to expose anti-Asian violence in the United States, specifically through Chin’s case, as well as empower Asian Americans. Essentially, Fishbein, with her expertise in humanities, researched herself the entire background of the case and criticizes the film with the directors’ objectives in mind. Smith and Canby, however, appear to be similar to the average American audience member, likely equipped with surface-level knowledge of everything surrounding the film. They do not understand the gravity of the film for the Asian and Asian American community nor contextualize the film with any other analytical framework. As a result, we will primarily be focusing on Fishbein’s critique, which speaks on how the film failed to adequately address Asian and Asian American racism in the United States and as a result, reach a broader social impact.  

Racist Ebens

While there is an inherent struggle in compressing such a layered subject into a limited timeframe, Who Killed Vincent Chin? could have greatly benefited from a change in filmmaking style that emphasized the primary narrative. Fishbein describes the storytelling structure of Who Killed Vincent Chin? as “Rashomon-like.” The “Rashomon effect,” described as “contradictory interpretations of the same event by different people,” is precisely what Who Killed Vincent Chin? constructs through its series of interviews and eyewitness accounts.2 If the intention of Choy and Tajima were to take audiences to the scene and aftermath of the incident, than the utilization of these interviews were perfectly executed. However, the intention of Choy and Tajima was to condemn the prejudiced thought-patterns held by Ebens and catalyze change, and thus, a Rashomon-like retelling of the tragedy strayed away from that critical sociological analysis necessary for that to happen.2

Instead of a concrete point of view that criticized the United States’ government for manufacturing the conditions that led to the antagonization of Asian American citizens— enemy-imaging through propaganda— or the institutionalized racial biases of the legal system held against ethnic minorities, Choy and Tajima opted to showcase a multitude of perspectives from all those involved in the case. Canby asserts that Who Killed Vincent Chin? is “about many things, including Detroit, the economics of the automobile industry, the history of Oriental immigrants, blue-collar aspirations, American justice and the ways Americans talk,” which ideally should not be the prime takeaway from the film.1 The crux of Fishbein’s argument is that racism should have been the film’s principal motif, not about “many things,” yet it is de-emphasized by Lily Chin’s bawling, Ebens’ denial and the inclusion of other narratives such as Detroit’s economic downturn.