The Screech Inside
Anger is also a form of power, one that is bestowed by wealth and social class. Today, it's still a consensus among the Asian American to assimilate, adapt, and conform to American communities. Any expression of anger against this norm is often exaggerated and stigmatized as "antisocial." Not only do white people criticize it, but also Asian Americans themselves view it as deviant behavior. As a result, there is limited space for Asian Americans to express anger.
Amy‘s family makes her feel supressed even more. Her husband George comes from a privileged background, whose father was a famous Japanese artist. As a second-generation immigrant, Amy's marriage to George could be seen as a step up the social ladder. Yet she turns out no happier.
Many girls hope to find an emotionally stable man, but after seeing how this couple interacts, I realized that emotional stability does not necessarily mean happiness. Amy's anger was at the tip of her tongue but she had to swallow it down. Therefore, in terms of the degree of anger, Amy and Danny are similar.
Danny and Amy's first meet is no different than those in a typical Hollywood romance cliché. If this were a love story, their chance encounter could lead to a blossoming romance. However, in this story, their meeting led to road rage, which drives the plot development.
Amy's business, a small and simple plant brand, is valued at $10 million. Such a big number stems from Amy herself - her cultural identity as a mixed-race Vietnamese-American married to a Japanese descendant of a famous artist, which appeals to Americans, or specifically, to the wealthy female collector. In the ninth episode, seeing Amy's tour of the collector's culturally curious collection, I realized that Amy is viewed as nothing more than a cultural collection.
However, the brand doesn't truly represent who she is. The philosophy behind it originates from Japan, specifically Zen and wabi-sabi, yet Amy herself is ofVietnamese-Chinese descent.
"I am a cage in search of a bird," Kafka once said. Amy created a cage and locked herself in it. Her brand, the man she chose, and the life she created are all parts of the cage. She sings and dances in it with fake smiles until she wants nothing but break free and live as her true self.
Awakening in the Dark
Both Danny and Amy's pain derives from their family trauma, which has passed down through generations like it's ingrained in their DNA. This is unveiled in Episode 8, which explores their childhood and upbringing.
In the final episode, stranded in the wilderness after driving off a cliff, both try to trace the source of the trauma. All along since they are born they have had to try their best to live a widely acknowledged decent life by simmering discontent, swollowing rage and fighting against racial discrimination. Might the toxic lifestyle be inhereted from monkey ancestors? They have no idea. What they can be sure is, "Western therapy doesn't work on Eastern minds."
In Danny's past, the worst among all he did is throwing his brother's college application in the trash. Years later, he confesses to his brother that he just wanted them to always be the same, perhaps in their failures, pain, and struggle to find a place in society. What he did is hard to forgive, as in my view, it’s even worse than any other out of ignorance, foolishness, madness, theft, and deceit.
In the latter half of the series, the plot accelerates as all characters gather at the wealthy woman's house for different purposes. Danny and his brother are locked in the yard, with gunshots ringing out from inside, police shouting, and armed enemies fighting against. They may die there. Danny's brother climbs onto his shoulder, then the high wall, and reaches out to pull Danny up. Danny jumps a few times but can't reach his brothers stretching arm. It is at the hopeless moment that I finally understand Danny.
He was probably afraid of his younger brother going to college, entering mainstream American society and leaving behind him. The power relationship in his family would have had to change and he, once the eldest son who has more say in the family, would have no priviledge at all. He is even more afraid to be ignored by his family than society. Danny lives his whole life in fear of losing control, but ironically,he doesn't manage to avoid it due to a road rage.
The accumulated beef in life will have to find an outlet. Any more supression will leads to nothing less than a disater. This explains why "western therapy doesn't work on Eastern minds," be it counselling, meditation or gratitude journals. So is America to any immigrant, as the former will never truly understand the latter's struggle, which is implied by the wealthy female collector. The production team of the series really deserves praise for delving into characters with Asian background as opposed to those in works produced by Hollywood which symbolize and objectify them. In Beef,quite the contrary, the milllionaire collector turns out to be symbolized, and the creators makes her end up a tragic death.
Danny's so-called "eastern minds" are now even more clear. The American way of seeing psychologists, meditation, writing emotional diaries, none of it works. If you have to go crazy, you will eventually have to let it out. From this perspective, the female millionaire with hoarding habits is highly symbolic. In this film, the production team deserves praise for not shying away from symbolizing and tooling Asian characters in Hollywood films. They simply give the female millionaire a very tragic death.
In the final episode, Danny and Amy help each other walk through a dark tunnel. Just as Jung put it, "Enlightenment does not come from imagining figures of light, but by making the darkness conscious." In the end, despite their injuries, Amy embraced Danny in his hospital bed and he hugged her back.They both have lost everything, but they found each other.
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