Seoul Searching And The Anti-Blackness Of Asian Excellence

***Warning for mild spoilers*** If there is such a thing as love at first sight, I believe that it would feel exactly the way I did the instant I heard about Seoul Searching back in 2015. Although I’m not specifically Korean, I was raised by a single mother who’d grown up in the 80’s and wrestled with reconciling her Vietnamese heritage with an American upbringing, so I understood immediately what it would mean to have a movie enter the Asian American canon that could finally inherit the well-worn throne of The Joy Luck Club. For months my friends and I plotted on the indie film, and at one point I even seriously considered driving three states away for the opportunity to see a screening. All this was before I realized Crystal Kay, renowned Blasian superstar, was listed in the credits and appeared in promotional material for the Sundance Film Festival favorite (even if you’re not familiar with her name, there’s a high chance that if you grew up an anime fan you’ve heard her work). No, this was no superficial kind of love, but the kind of love you didn’t know was possible and necessary until you saw it with your own eyes. And then, of course, I really did go to see it with my own eyes.

Since then I’ve read the mixed reviews and I feel like both the praise and critiques are fairly accurate. Calling Seoul Searching the Korean Breakfast Club is a bit like calling kimchi the Korean sauerkraut; sure they start with the same base ingredients, but it’s hardly fair to compare them a…