On the idea of being "self-made"
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I took off last few days in December to travel to nature and not think about film or writing. On the drive back, I had a pretty charged and memorable conversation. It was a debate about the idea of being “self-made”… I argued that people are more self-made than you think — everyone has their private battles, even the privileged. I was challenged to think about the flip side of this argument. If people’s “starting points” matter less than their drive and ambition, what does it mean when people who seemingly belong to the “same subgroups” progress at different rates? I know that reads like a math equation… but in dialogue, it’d be said like this:
CHLOE
I never bought into the notion of circumstances. I think you become who you choose to become. Race, gender, socioeconomic statuses are all excuses. If you want to be great, you can be great if you put in the work.
Angela would re-enforce this idea because she was taught this way too.
ANGELA
I think I got to where I’m at on my own. Sure, I’m a third-generation Taiwaneses-American, my dad’s an engineer from MIT, and my parents supported me through college… but I still had to put in the work, ace the interviews, and get things on my own. Tech is a meritocracy, isn’t it?
Upon hearing this, Chloe would think…
CHLOE
Angela and I are in the same subgroup. We’re both Asian American females, we both went to top engineering schools. Then why do things feel harder for me? How does she carry herself so lightly and things just roll off of her shoulders? Why do I struggle more technically and emotionally? I don’t get it.
This kind of thinking would make Chloe at first obsessively observe Angela, then resent her for being “better”. Chloe can’t accept that the baseline that they’re starting at are different and that this matters more than she thinks. She assumes that because they belong to the same subgroup, “Asian American females in tech, graduates from top three engineering schools”, they have the same baselines. So she’s confused when Angela seems to handle emotional, psychological challenges of being a young woman in tech better than she can. Chloe blames herself for being weak, being less than, being dumber than Angela. She hates herself for not having a thicker skin, better social skills, better technical skills.
What Chloe’s failing to recognize is that the baselines — the “invisible things” like whether your parents went to school in America, whether they have generational wealth, stability, emotional maturity, knowledge of American education system, and cultural, linguistic capabilities to thrive here and mentor their children — all matter WAY more than we think. They color all of our interactions, our mental models, our psychological health, our ability to let things roll off our shoulders when shit gets hard, our general anxiety levels.
I think this is what I meant when I said this film is about “emotional safety”. Even though our society and culture categorizes us based on various minority monikers, belonging to the same subgroup doesn’t mean that you start at the same baseline. This is the fallacy that creates resentment among members of the same minority groups. This is one of the things that feeds competition, resentment, and hostility between two token minorities, that then gets even more fuel from the system that encourages this competition, division, and catering to the majority culture and ways of thinking. This is then even more exacerbated by the fallacy that tech industry is a meritocracy. That is bunch of bullshit. Its metrics are created and measured by the majority, and the minority are made to compete in a system that immediately disadvantages them.
Whew. That was rant. I do feel really strongly about this topic.
I need to design scenes that present difficult circumstances for both Chloe and Angela. They need to respond differently to them. Chloe struggles more psychologically, whereas Angela’s able to overcome them. This makes Chloe feel crazy. She doesn’t understand why. They “should” be the same, and progress at the same rate, because the world has told her that they are the same: they are both Asian American woman in tech who graduated from top engineering school, and are both interns at the same, prestigious tech company.