The first time I watch Everything Everywhere All At Once in theaters, I am struck by the way Ke Huy Quan and Michelle Yeoh are presented—not as the generic smooth-faced Hollywood types but decidedly middle-aged, grey hairs and pores and all. He looks like my former piano teacher, I think. She could be my parents’ church friend. And yet: the fanny pack swung with stunning agility. The bullet stopped mid-flight, the daughter pulled back from the brink. This is how I fight. No shame in having survived, here—in being the star of many lives, each branched out from a decision made in childhood or as a young adult: to go or to stay; to sing or chase scientific glory; to please the demanding parent, or break down, or break away.
Dragon fire on white bodies is sad. Dragon fire on not-Muslim bodies is cheered on the screen. We ache when the scimitar prows of not-Muslim ships cleave through a white human captain’s ship. But bombs sent by white admirals into not-Muslim countries are the only way to make these barbarians hear reason (and maybe also a chance to prove how nice we are, we of the civilized world). Don’t listen to the not-Muslim’s testimony of pain. He is probably lying.
