American Fusion

I watched a relatively cute movie called American Fusion over the weekend. It was the tale of a middle-aged Chinese-American woman who falls for a Mexican-American man. Seeing a movie with two minority leads of different ethnicities (and who weren't black and white) was a refreshing change from the normal romantic comedies out there. However, I had a quibble with the movie. A huge plot point was that the Asian woman's family gave her a hard time for dating a Latino. The guy was a dentist, too, but the family, particularly the woman's elderly mother, didn't seem to care. (I wonder if they would have been just as upset if she'd hooked up with a white guy. I doubt it, but whatever.)


In addition to showing their displeasure with the Latin dentist, the family members were also suspect of the black doctor who was treating the mother for a problem with her spine. What bothered me was that the Asian family members were only able to overcome their prejudices when the Latino dentist and the black doctor did something that benefitted them. The doctor performed surgery on the woman's elderly mother and saved her life, so the family liked him then. And the dentist donated blood to the elderly mother when she needed a transfusion, causing the family to embrace him when they'd shunned him before. Why did someone have to do something for these bigoted folks for them to be able to see beyond their own prejudices? Unfortunately, this is often the case with some people. They just can't accept someone different unless that someone does something special for them.