The Everything Bagel: Culture, Queerness, and Intergenerational Disappointment
“Everything Everywhere All At Once” is the story of a Chinese-American immigrant jumping from universe to universe to save the multiverse. Its protagonist, frazzled and weary Evelyn Wang (Michelle Yeoh), struggles to keep the family laundromat open. After a lien is placed on the business, a typical IRS audit turns into the discovery of a multiverse and the dark figure haunting it, Jobu Tupaki (Stephanie Hsu). However, after watching the movie several times, it is also the story of a mother jumping between universes to find her daughter. Spoilers ahead.
In a movie with hotdog fingers, Racacoonie, and multiverse travel, I’m kept grounded by the throughline of Evelyn and Joy’s relationship. Michelle Yeoh is billed as the main actress, but Stephanie Hsu is integral to the movie. Evelyn’s expectations of Joy are the catalyst that creates Jobu Tupaki, the movie’s antihero.
Evelyn has spent her life trying to meet her father’s expectations and rise above his disappointment. One way she does this is through Joy, living vicariously through her to gain Gong Gong’s (James Hong) approval. If she can make Joy better, can make Joy the daughter Evelyn failed to be, perhaps Gong Gong will be proud. So, Evelyn tries to mold Joy into the ideal daughter. Joy, however, is too much like Evelyn, and thus never lives up to expectations. In this way, at the beginning of the film, the Wang family represents two generations of disappointment.
Evelyn and Joy’s relationship highlights this in one of their first scenes. Evelyn tells Joy she has to eat healthier because she’s getting fat, a common phrase Asian American children hear from their parents. Despite Joy knowing this is one of the ways Evelyn expresses her care, hearing it only serves to deepen their divide. Evelyn is unable to articulate her love in a way that isn't tinged with criticism. Similarly, Joy is unable to make her mother listen to her long enough to share her perspective. This divide is further exacerbated by Evelyn's response to Joy attempting to introduce Becky to Gong Gong as her girlfriend.
Although Evelyn tells Joy she’s lucky to have a mom open to Joy dating a girl, Evelyn’s openness is more accurately a reluctant tolerance. She avoids the topic and refuses to introduce Becky to Gong Gong, citing his age and generational differences as the reason. Evelyn’s refusal to explicitly accept Joy’s queerness is not a simple matter of homophobia, but a messy combination of generational differences, culture, expectations, and the pressure to meet them.
Evelyn and Joy’s relationship is influenced by their own circumstances of immigrant mother and second gen Chinese American child. The multiverse is an apt metaphor for the immigrant experience, Evelyn stumbling through an unknown world while clinging to what she knows. It’s this attempt to hold on, to hold Joy to the same expectations Evelyn didn’t meet that fractures her relationship with Joy.
This alone is not a unique story. What makes “Everything Everywhere All At Once” unique and effective is how it chooses to frame this story. By centering the movie on an Asian American family, specifically a family with a queer daughter, it brings all the nuance and complications that come with the Asian American experience.
As a film about intergenerational trauma and disappointment, it highlights the difficulty of intergenerational communication. Evelyn loves her daughter deeply but it’s buried beneath all the things she can’t say. Few Asian American children remember their parents actually saying, “I love you.” More often, they have a memory of their parent cutting up fruit or offering them a bowl of their favorite food. Words are rarely used to express love. Even if they were, Joy would find it difficult to express her thoughts. Joy isn’t fluent in her parents’ first language. She struggles in not only speaking Mandarin, but also in remembering the word for girlfriend. Evelyn takes advantage of this lapse in memory, quickly introducing Becky as Joy’s good friend. Hurt and resigned to disappointment, Joy leaves.
It would be easy to frame this through Joy’s eyes, to see her frustration and disappointment and hurt at being dismissed so easily. Yet, we also see Evelyn’s perspective, the moments in her life that shaped her into the woman we’re first introduced to.
Told to choose between her family and Waymond, a younger Evelyn chooses Waymond, a parallel to many queer children being told to choose between their significant other or their family. Evelyn’s choice makes her life harder in many ways. Without Gong Gong there, Evelyn becomes like him, perhaps in an attempt to bring back some of the home she left behind. None of Evelyn’s life now is what she pictured as a child, and Joy’s queerness is merely one of the many aspects of life that doesn’t fit neatly into Evelyn’s expectations of her.
This becomes clear in the way Evelyn initially views Jobu. “The ‘Great Evil’ that Waymond was talking about … is in my Joy?,” she asks upon meeting Jobu. In the same scene, she assumes Jobu is the reason Joy “thinks she’s a gay” and refers to Jobu as the monster in her daughter. This is similar to how parents view their children before and after their coming out. Many view their child as a different person, and in the film Evelyn sees Jobu as a different entity from Joy in the beginning. There is a deliberate separation of Joy and Jobu so Evelyn can keep her view of Joy not being queer.
It’s important to note that so much of what Evelyn expects from Joy comes from her own experiences and relationship with her father. Various scenes show just how much Evelyn craves her father’s approval yet is met with his disappointment each time. Even the first mention of Gong Gong demonstrates this. In an attempt to encourage Evelyn, Waymond assures her Gong Gong will be proud of her. Evelyn’s immediate response is “you know he won’t,” indicating their rocky relationship. Gong Gong’s approval is important to Evelyn, despite or perhaps because it isn’t given often.
Flashbacks show Evelyn was always going to struggle to gain her father’s approval. Gong Gong is disappointed to have a girl, and a montage of Evelyn’s childhood furthers this pattern, ending with him disowning Evelyn when she leaves with Waymond. Even during his visit, from being visibly unimpressed with the thought of the laundromat being expanded or incredulous that Evelyn, not Waymond, is the one “leading the business.”
Their relationship comes to a head in the movie's climax. As Evelyn slips between universes, she hears her father say, "Do not call me father! No daughter of mine would act this way." In the next scene, he tells her to let Joy go, and this is Evelyn's breaking point. She can't let Joy go.
Even though she doesn't understand Joy, she loves her. She knows the hurt that comes with being abandoned. She has felt it for years. Evelyn refuses to put her daughter through the same pain. Despite years of Evelyn trying to win her father’s approval, in the end she accepts that she disappoints him. And in doing so, accepts Joy in all her achievements and failures.
Evelyn finally gives her daughter the validation Evelyn has been looking for from Gong Gong. “I am finally finding the courage to see things through my own. It's okay if you can't be proud because I finally am,” she says. Evelyn accepts that Joy is like her that they are both less than what their parent hoped for. By recognizing this, Evelyn chooses her daughter even if that means continuing to disappoint her father. She introduces Becky as Joy’s girlfriend and though Gong Gong doesn’t explicitly approve, Evelyn’s point has been made.
The film is an incredibly sympathetic and personal glimpse into the life of the quintessential Chinese-American mother struggling to connect with her queer daughter, with the added stress of a crumbling multiverse. At the end of the film, Evelyn is still the frazzled, weary woman from the beginning of the movie. She still has to do her taxes, run a laundromat she hates, and has a rough relationship with Joy. One moment of acceptance does not undo years of reluctant tolerance and pressure. The difference now, is that Joy knows that this universe is the one her mother wants to be in.
Article by Katie Jones, Contributor, PhotoBook Magazine
Tearsheets by Alexa Dyer, Graphic Designer, PhotoBook Magazine
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