After 10 years of hiding my queer identity, I finally came out to my mom at the kitchen table at my parents’ home in Irvine. In tears, reading a letter full of “I know her” and “I’m sorry, she”, I looked up, expecting her to disown me. Instead, my mother looked at me with pleading eyes and asked, “Does that mean you’re not moving home?”
What does my location have to do with my sexuality? I just couldn’t understand her confused reaction – until I saw “Everything Everywhere at Once”. At the climax of the multiverse epic, Evelyn, Michelle Yeoh’s character, catches up with her daughter Joy where the psychedelic journey began – in the parking lot of their humble laundromat.
Of course, I saw myself in Joy as she begged her mother, “Just let me go.” I’ve run as far as I can since I turned 18 – to a university across the country to work abroad from school on the East Coast. But like Joy, no matter how far I traveled, I couldn’t escape the reach of my mother or her love. When Evelyn Joy tearfully declared, “Come what may, I still want to be here with you,” I finally understood my mother—perhaps for the first time.
No matter who I was or who I loved, no matter what other universes there were, my mother, like Evelyn, only wanted one thing: to be with her child, to be close to family, and to be home together.
The full force of this realization hit me like a train. While I’ve spent most of the past decade distancing myself from my family — to spare them the pain of being socially ostracized because of my sexual identity — I really feel the pain of distant family and broken relationships.
The film captured exactly what my mom and I couldn’t communicate before. I began to wonder if watching movies together could bridge the gap between my lack of apology and my mother’s homophobic anxiety.
I called my mom when I left the theater. Since then, my family has embarked on a virtual queer movie marathon that has changed our relationship forever.
We’ve now seen Bohemian Rhapsody and Rocketman (my mom loves biopics) and even the shockingly sexual Korean lesbian thriller The Handmaiden. together. After each visit, my mother harassed me with questions about love and sexuality that we used to be ashamed of. As she becomes more comfortable with our movie nights and the possibility of my strange life living happily ever after, I am reminded that we are a species that fears what we don’t understand.
Queer movies not only show the joyous continuum of queer love, but also open the conversation to the things parents of queer kids have the hardest time talking about.
Our movie nights allowed my family and I to talk about sexuality outside of the intensely personal context of me and my personal relationships. Instead of asking me why I shouldn’t just marry a man to fit in, weird movies like Bohemian Rhapsody forced my parents to think about why Freddie Mercury couldn’t just marry Mary Austin. It gave me respite from defending my way of life and gave my parents the answers they needed.
Watching queer movies isn’t the perfect antidote for all families, especially since the burden of the emotional work often falls on the queer family member. Just ask Joy, who calls out to her mom, “That’s great. You find out your shit… but I’m tired.
It’s true that seeing Taron Egerton and Richard Madden in awkward silence with my parents on “Rocketman” may not have been a panacea for strained parental relationships. But the openness, communication, and connection with my parents that came after that was still worth it.
Ultimately, representation is not just a descriptive idea, it is a transcendent idea. I didn’t just see myself on screen in “All At Once” – I saw my mother’s love amplified many times over. Ten years ago I couldn’t even dream of a universe where my mother accepted me completely for me. Today I live in it every day.
Grace Park is one Southern California native. They previously served in the United States Army and are currently attending Harvard Kennedy School of Government, studying public policy.
Source: LA Times