Although Choy and Tajima speak of the complexity of the Chin’s case, they do little to explain the flaws within society through the sociological imagination. By choosing the route of cinéma vérité, they omitted significant facts. Rather than arming the American people, particularly Asian Americans, with a clearer understanding of the systematic methods the United States has disenfranchised Asian Americans with throughout the past century, Choy and Tajima rely on audiences to empathize with Chin through the crosscutting of interviews.
Specifically, a sequence within the film that demonstrates the Rashomon-like structure occurs in the interview with Ebens, followed by an interview with Chin’s mother. (37:00-37:30). Ebens of course, nonchalantly maintains that the incident was not racially motivated and demonstrates zero signs of remorse. His perceived “logical” rationalizations are juxtaposed with Lily Chin’s emotional outbursts. His dismissive attitude in this sequence represent the ignorance of society at large whereas Lily Chin’s reaction represent the real-world consequences of these dismissive attitudes. Essentially, this parallel editing by Choy and Tajima is utilized to gather audiences to empathize with the Chin family and condemn Ebens.
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| Lily Chin |
While this conscious cinematographic technique is employed to strike a chord with the audience on a visceral level, Choy and Tajima never come full-circle and build a connection between the personal and sociological. Where is the dismantling of Ebens’ argument through narration of the model minority myth, perpetual foreigner or other schemas forged by the United States to dehumanize Asians? Again, this type of editing resurfaces to continually induce the same effect as the previous sequence; Choy and Tajima juxtapose Ebens’ overall ignorance, with a montage of Lily Chin crying in a memorial service for Chin (57:00-57:30). Without invalidating the grief of Lily Chin, the emotional elements of the film became superfluous, as the omission of other social elements was necessary to generate screentime for them.
To reiterate, there is nothing inherently wrong with the Rashomon-like structure, however, in a film created to empower and inform, it is suboptimal. One sequence which utilized crosscutting very well occurs after Chin’s mother goes off on the injustices of the court, where she asserts that “if they[the defendants] were Chinese, it would be so different!”(39:40-40:10). Lily Chin explicitly asserts that the courts were negligent to her demands because of her race which is what Fishbein implies the film needs more of: A more direct calling out the legal system's incompetency for what it is, unjust and racist.
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This is immediately followed by Starlene, the dancer at the scene of the crime, as well as two other officers agreeing with her assertion. They state facts about their involvement with the case, expressing their shock that where they weren't called in as witnesses and were the last to know about the developments (40:10). Starlene’s testimony, as well as her fellow dancer, Racine Colwell, especially, were of the utmost importance because they were the only sources of testimony that prove Ebens’ assault was racially motivated. To reiterate, it was these two witnesses that heard Ebens shout “It's because of you little motherfuckers that we’re out of work!” yet, the film only relies on these two, who have barely a minute or two in the film, to prove evidence that race was a factor. Instead, we have a significant amount of time to hear Ebens’ and his cohorts’ rambling rationalization after the court's ruling in his favor (49:40-50:10). Why are media-makers so scared to talk about race and call it out for what it is: a hate crime. Why are we once again trying to give the man, the criminal, an opportunity to defend himself, when everytime an Asian man is killed or commits a crime, media outlets never try to humanize him? If a minority man in America commits murder, he is locked up immediately, not interviewed, not given a chance to speak the American public, photographed with his "best" picture with his accomplishments on the headlines and with headlines avoiding the word rape, murder, etc |
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