Opinion: ‘Elemental’ hit me hard in my feelings

Editor’s Note: Jeff Yang is a research director for the Institute for the Future and the head of its Digital Intelligence Lab. A frequent contributor to CNN Opinion, he co-hosts the podcast “They Call Us Bruce,” and is co-author of the book “RISE: A Pop History of Asian America from the Nineties to Now.” The opinions expressed in this commentary are his own. Read more opinion on CNN.

I was fortunate enough to watch a very early screening of Pixar’s latest animated feature, “Elemental.” My immediate reaction then — one that I had to keep to myself for months — was this: I’ve just watched the most Asian-American animated feature I’ve ever seen. And that’s saying a lot, given that “Elemental” exists in a reality populated entirely by beings made of fire, water, air and earth, where the terms “Asian” and “American” have no meaning.

The Asian Americanness of the film is metaphorical. In director Peter Sohn’s intricately woven imaginary society, the Fire people fill the Asian role, their tell-tale traits, tropes and signifiers highlighting how much his combustible creations were shaped by his Korean American identity and personal experience.

“[My parents] both passed away during the making of this film. But it was so much of what they taught me and sacrificed,” Sohn said during a press conference. “I’m thankful for my parents who came from Korea to New York in the late 1960s. My father started a grocery store and his customers came from different backgrounds. The compassion my father showed to diverse communities had an impact on me that made me want to showcase it in the film.”

Like so many Asian immigrants, Sohn’s Fire folk live in an urban enclave that’s a magnet for gawking tourism by other Element City residents — a neighborhood full of small businesses selling spicy food (literally too hot for “outsiders” to handle) and exotic souvenirs, whose signs are bilingually printed with the universal Element City tongue and native “Firish.”

Even the history of the Lumen family, expatriates from faraway Fireland who crossed a vast ocean seeking prosperity but settling for tenuous survival, will feel legibly familiar to any second-generation Asian American. And for myself, as someone whose family was inadvertently split into a pair of fractious factions due to lost-in-transliteration mishaps — half of my dad’s clan ended up as “Youngs” and half of us as “Yangs” — the scene where a border official casually renames the newly arrived Lumen parents after being unable to pronounce their original ones hit me particularly hard in the feels.

That’s intentional, of course. This movie is ultimately focused on feelings, like so many of Pixar’s movies, which have been virally shorthanded as “toys got feelings” (“Toy Story”), “cars got feelings” (“Cars”), “fish got feelings” (“Finding Nemo”), “monsters got feelings,” (“Monsters, Inc.”), “feelings got feelings” (“Inside Out”) — and now, perhaps, “elements got feelings.”

The issue here, however, is that the elements in question won’t let their true feelings show. High-expectation parents Bernie (Ronnie Del Carmen) and Cinder (Shila Ommi) love their daughter dearly, but can only demonstrate that love by pushing her along a path that they’ve laid out for her since birth.

Repressed, eager-for-approval daughter Ember (Leah Lewis) is an artistic prodigy but buries her creative talents in favor of modestly pursuing her parents’ expectations.

This intergenerational stalemate, forged from the inability to openly say what lies deep inside, might seem familiar to Asian American audiences. Our childhoods may not have been full of parental hugs and kisses, but there was always hot and delicious food piled high on our plates as a nonverbal display of care and love.

Meanwhile, even as we second-gen kids sought our parents’ approval, we bottled up the ways we intended to ultimately disappoint them through our lifestyles, partners and careers — sometimes until these choices erupted unavoidably into view.

In “Elemental”, it takes Ember’s chance meeting and slow-burn romance with a buoyant boy of the Water folk, Wade (Mamoudou Athie), for her to find the voice and courage to tell her parents what she really feels. Her heart’s desire is to pursue her artistic dreams, and to do so with Wade at her side; both of these objectives run counter to her parents’ hopes but ultimately, they come to accept her goals and her choice of partner (even if they still secretly think of him as something of a drip).

Naturally, love wins out in the end — the love between parents and child, and between partners who are polar opposites yet destined to be together. It’s all a bit pat, but I still laughed and cried and called my parents and my wife immediately afterwards.

“Elemental” may not be a perfect film, but it’s the perfect one for a moment when Asian Americans are finding the confidence and platform to dig ever deeper into the complicated and unruly aspects of our reality.

Who could have imagined even just a few years ago that an animated movie would address the sometimes-tense interactions between Asian shopkeepers and their non-Asian customers; the abandonment of majority-ethnic enclaves by civic and social services; or the awkward experience of being a working class outsider visiting the home and family of a blue-blood romantic partner whose background is drenched in, uh, wet privilege?

I couldn’t. And yet, here we are. Asians got feelings. We’re ready to talk about them. The fire is hot, the tea is brewing and you’re all invited to sit and have a cup.