There’s an inherent power in the art of the meta-narrative—stories that construct an obviously fictional, heightened version of a reality we recognize, only to peel back the layers one by one, exposing a truth we may have never allowed ourselves to acknowledge. The Matrix is, of course, the big one, challenging its audience to go back to the “real world” and work in an “office building” and live according to the “expectations” of “society” after watching all of those things being disassembled piece by piece over the course of two hours.
Because the current entertainment landscape demands even more specificity, stories of this type have grown even more specific. Interior Chinatown, the new Hulu limited series based on the 2020 National Book Award-winning novel by Charles Yu and premiering Nov. 19, turns the ever-familiar form of the police procedural inside out, poking at the subtle and not-so-subtle ways the entertainment industry bows to the invisible influence of racial stereotyping.
Willis Wu (Jimmy O. Yang) works in a Chinese restaurant in a Chinatown that exists within a Law & Order-style cop show called Black and White. When the leads of the “show,” severe white female officer Sarah Green (Lisa Gilroy) and her equally brilliant Black partner Miles Turner (Sullivan Jones), show up at the restaurant toting along ethnically ambiguous rookie detective Lana Lee (Chloe Bennet), Willis soon realizes that their latest case might involve his elder brother (Chris Pang), who went missing shortly after achieving the coveted role of “Kung Fu Guy.”
The only problem is that Willis’ world begins and ends in the restaurant. He’s a background character, unable, according to the laws of the television universe, to escape those confines. If he wants to help Lana solve the case, he’ll have to leave, and the only way to leave is to make his way up through the roles relegated to so many Asian characters on TV and in the entertainment industry as a whole: Generic Asian Man. Delivery Guy. Tech Guy. Kung Fu Guy.
Yu’s remarkable source material is written in the style of a screenplay, itself a rigid structure that does not often reward any bending of the rules. It’s a natural fit for a somewhat metatextual TV show, not least because half of the screenplays for each episode have, in essence, already been written.
The story has been expanded, of course—the book, at 288 pages, is not long. What is lost in the act of reading the text in its original form is made up for in a deepening of its story, turning a treatise on the industry’s unfair treatment of Asian actors and characters into some genuinely cool television with a steadily ascending, almost video game-y composition. That’s unsurprising considering that, aside from being a novelist, Yu has (among many other pursuits) co-written an episode of Westworld. He knows his way through a convoluted idea.
It is also obvious, though should be noted, that this is a story that specifically dismantles racism against Asian Americans in all of its complicated forms. It’s easy to agree that delegating delivery guys and other background parts to Asian characters is discriminatory, but even something that is otherwise aspirational, like “Kung Fu Guy”—that is, the Asian character in an ensemble show whose character trait is “knows martial arts”—is a stereotype, and therefore a trap.
None of the characters in the show (at least in the first five episodes made available to critics) are specifically racist at Willis, or at anyone else. This is a world devoid of such obvious moral markers. Instead, the universe’s disregard for Willis and his family and home and even his badass brother is indicated in other ways. The lighting shifts between harsh gray tones—when the “show” is “on”—and moody warm notes—when the show is “off”—coinciding with the star detectives entering and exiting each scene. Everything Willis does happens in the background, out of sight of the audience. This isn’t remarked upon by anyone onscreen, but they feel it nonetheless. The characters of color—Willis, Lana, and the Black detective Miles Turner, eventually—are the only people to ever consider that something in their world might be amiss.
What is truly great about the show, aside from its creatively depicted structure and the ways the characters move alongside and against it, is the way it suggests that racism is a trap not only for its targets, but for everyone else who encounters it. Every time Willis is unable to make his way forward, pass through a door, or enter the next set, the plot screeches to a halt, everyone wondering what could possibly be holding them back. Interior Chinatown boldly posits that it’s the entertainment industry in its entirety that is imprisoned by the very patterns it reinforces, whether through malice or neglect, and the only people who notice it—who can see the Matrix, if you will—are the ones who can’t escape.
