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Act 4: Striving Immigrant
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Interior Chinatown, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Immigration
Performance and Identity
Stereotypes
Family and Ambition
The System
Summary
Analysis
INT. CHILD’S BEDROOM—MORNING. Happy music plays, and children sing about being happy as Phoebe Wu wakes up and yawns. “Rise and shine, Phoebe Wu!” the children sing.
Now that Phoebe has her own TV show, the question becomes whether she’ll inherit the suffering her family has endured and internalize problematic racist stereotypes, as her parents and grandparents have done before her—or whether she’ll break the cycle and play a part that doesn’t rely on racist stereotypes and instead foregrounds her authentic self.
Themes
INT. BATHROOM—MORNING—MOMENTS LATER. Phoebe is dressed now and getting ready for her day. INT. KITCHEN—MORNING—A LITTLE LATER. Phoebe enters the kitchen, singing along with the singing children: “Xie Xie Mei Mei!” She puts on her backpack and lines up with children who are all the same size and weight as her. All the children board the bus together. The show is a kind of cartoon, featuring real people against an animated background. It’s about a little Chinese girl, Mei Mei, and her life “in a new country,” a made-up place that sort of resembles an old Taiwanese village, pre-colonization, that’s been “focus-group-tested, aesthetically engineered” to be the “perfect mythical U.S. suburb.”
Phoebe’s TV show resembles contemporary children’s shows geared toward teaching kids about other cultures and instilling in them a capacity to embrace and respect difference. Willis’s observation that the world of Phoebe’s show depicts the “perfect mythical U.S. suburb” reflects his fear that such an accepting, multicultural utopia is mere fantasy and not something that can happen in the real world.
Themes
Phoebe’s show is “an optimistic amnesiac’s retelling of the age-old-story of immigration, acculturation, assimilation.” In this land, Mei Mei can move between places just by stepping through a doorway. Strangers are kind to her, and she’s still so young that she probably hasn’t had anyone make fun of her for how the lunch her a-kong packed for her smells.
Themes
INT. PHOEBE’S ROOM—MORNING. Phoebe opens the door and sees Willis (as Kung Fu Dad). “Daddy!” she shouts. He says he misses her and apologizes that it’s been so long since he’s seen her. Karen appears and dryly thanks him for making an appearance. Willis tells her she looks amazing. He also remarks on how much Phoebe has grown up. Karen tells him things move fast “when you’re doing the kid show.” The voices of singing children offer commentary on the awkward reunion. Karen leads them in song and tries to get Willis to join in, but he doesn’t want to.
Themes
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Phoebe explains to Willis that they learn all about food, culture, inclusion, and even divorce on her show. (The singing children sing cheerfully about how divorce is a totally normal and even good part of life.) Phoebe asks what she’s going to learn today. Willis offers to teach her some Kung Fu moves, but Phoebe just laughs and calls him “silly”; Karen agrees. She suggests that she and Willis have a chat and leads him somewhere they can speak in private.
Themes
INT. PHOEBE LAND—GROWN-UP TALKING PLACE. Karen calls Willis out on being gone for so long and then showing up out of the blue. He says he misses Karen and Phoebe. Karen is unimpressed but tells Willis she’s going to leave him alone to get acquainted with his daughter.
Themes
Willis (as Kung Fu Dad) hears a whimper and realizes that Phoebe has been listening to them. He apologizes for being a bad dad. Phoebe seems to shrug it off, though. “You tried,” she offers. Willis asks if Phoebe wants to play, and she eagerly orders him to follow her to “the castle.”
Themes
INT. CASTLE (AKA PHOEBE’S CLOSET)—DAY. Willis (as Kung Fu Dad) listens to Phoebe telling a story to herself in her castle/closet. She talks about making things and selling them in a store one day. Her daddy will help her with it when he’s not busy working. Willis observes Phoebe and thinks it feels like seeing himself as a kid—back when he still knew how to be himself rather than “perform or act.” He looks around Phoebe’s room. There are stuffed animals everywhere. There are also drawings and notes she’s made for herself. “The whole place, the objects in it, all from her.” He’s astonished at her capacity to make “a whole world” for herself, but Phoebe claims it’s easy. Willis inwardly muses how “thoughtful” and good and smart Phoebe is—she’s doing better at this than he is.
Phoebe teaches Willis how to build a castle in the air, explaining that you have to use a ladder to get up high. Then, when you’re finished building the castle, you get rid of the ladder and are left with a floating castle. Willis asks why you need a ladder at all. It’s clear that Phoebe thinks the question is silly, but she answers anyway, explaining that you can’t just start building in the air—you need the castle to first be “connected” to something, so you need to “build a bridge to the air.” Willis thanks Phoebe for her explanation.
Themes
INT. PHOEBE’S ROOM—NIGHT. Phoebe is a weird kid, just like Willis was when he was little and like all kids are when they’re little—before the world teaches them how to act and what race they are; before the world crushes their dreams. Before bed, Phoebe tells Willis the five things she’s afraid of, which include “secret passages” and being “eaten by a witch.” She hesitates before telling him number five but finally admits that she’s afraid of him dying. Willis says she shouldn’t worry about that—dads don’t die. This puzzles Phoebe. “Everyone dies,” she tells him. He’ll get to be 100 and then he’ll die. Willis says that sounds like a fine plan, and Phoebe seems relieved.
Themes
Phoebe asks Willis to tell her a story, and the request stumps him: nobody’s asked him to tell them a story before. But he agrees to try and begins a story about a little girl. But then he stops, not knowing what comes next. He knows that whatever he says next is vitally important: it’ll either “open up the story” or confine it. After a while, he starts a story about a guy whom “something weird” happened to. This pleases Phoebe, but she says she’s sleepy before Willis can get very far into the story. The singing children sing a soft lullaby, and then Phoebe falls asleep.
Willis watches Phoebe sleep and strokes her face. He realizes how “useless” his Kung Fu is in this place, the “dream” where Phoebe exists. There are no “sirens or cops or dead bodies” here, nor any smelly garbage or the sound of different dialects pulsing through the cramped hallways. PHOEBE LAND is so different from INT. CHINATOWN SRO. There are no Generic Asian Men or Hostess/Prostitutes or Old Asian People here. There’s no “history” here—it’s just happy songs. And what if this was the point of all that came before? This could be the “dream of assimilation, a dream finally realized,” and Phoebe is now “a real American girl.”
Themes
INT. PHOEBE’S ROOM—NIGHT. Willis goes through the routine of feeding Phoebe and getting her ready for bed. He kisses all her stuffed animals when she asks him to, and then he does it again. He watches her wash her face and thinks it looks familiar, then he realizes that she’s doing it the way he does it: she’s watched and learned from him.
Themes
INT. PHOEBE LAND—NIGHT. Willis lies awake and stares at the moon. “This is the dream,” he thinks. He has solid work and knows how to “talk white.” He can show the world that he’s “responsible” and “unthreatening,” and he can work on the “dream of blending in”—the dream of transforming “from Generic Asian man to just plain Generic Man.” But he also knows he can’t stay this way forever—it’s “just another role.”
Themes
Willis looks out the window then and sees the police. Willis assures Karen and Phoebe that everything is okay—they’re there for him because he stole the police car. Turner and Green call out for him to surrender and nobody will get hurt. Karen tells Phoebe that Willis is going to prison but that it’ll be a good thing. Then to Willis, she remarks, “You wanted them to find you.” Willis replies that he “wanted them to find us.”
