Graduation Year

2023

Document Type

Thesis

Degree

M.A.

Degree Name

Master of Arts (M.A.)

Degree Granting Department

Humanities and Cultural Studies

Major Professor

Amy Rust, Ph.D.

Committee Member

Scott Ferguson, Ph.D.

Committee Member

Abigail Jinju Lee, Ph.D.

Keywords

Asian American Studies, Blockbuster, Maternal Melodrama, Multiverse

Abstract

In what follows, I look to the visual and narrative composition of the multiverse between Everything, Everywhere, All at Once (The Daniels, 2022) and Doctor Strange: Multiverse of Madness (Sam Raimi, 2022) to develop a more precise understanding of the superhero blockbuster as a contemporary expression of sensation melodrama. To do so, I use two depictions of maternity to excavate two very different approaches to the multiverse: one that externalizes social conflict, which it answers with individuated and exculpatory violence, and another that internalizes social conflict, which it answers through collective care. I introduce the blockbuster’s mobilization of the multiverse and the symptoms of its escapist logics through visual composition and action sequences that influence external / internal narrative crises. Everything, Everywhere reconfigures these tropes in order to articulate the pivotal role of maternal care in opening new possibilities, straying away from dominant representations of Asian American women as simple or subservient. It also reshapes an agentive image for the Asian American hero in the immigrant mother, previously reserved for male characters in cinema. The implicit involvement of the larger scale of the world redresses the xenophobic and racial violence against Asian Americans and immigrants in general. Looking to how the film exhibits Asian American identity and interdependency within its narrative suggests a path for progressive politics, I argue, that reshapes collectivity and care as central in departing from the racial stereotypes that dominant media generally maintain.

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