Beef: Diving Into the Asian American Experience

After countless TikTok recaps/commentary videos on Beef, I finally decided to hop onto Netflix and take a look at this new series for myself. Beef is a new A24-produced Netflix series created by Lee Sung Jin — this short comedy/drama series stars Ali Wong, Steven Yeun, David Cho, Joseph Lee, and more. Our main characters Amy (Wong) and Danny (Yeun) meet outside a Home Depot-like chain during a road-rage incident. From here, the story takes wild, anxiety-inducing twists and turns til its magnificent ending in 10 episodes. I’m always excited to see A24 work, especially since they’ve been so solid on providing a non-glamorized and authentic narrative around Asian characters.

In an interview with Variety, Lee Sung Jin noted, "yes, these characters happen to be Asian American, but there’s so much more to them.” Instead of focusing the entire narrative around race, Beef allows Asian-American nuances and norms to operate without overtaking the whole storyline. As someone who struggles to balance the strong pride and internal conflict of being Asian-American, I appreciated the cast and crew’s approach when producing this show. Let’s dive into some of the larger themes/topics I noticed and resonated with — spoilers ahead!

Family vs. Personal Values

At first glance, our main characters Amy and Danny have little in common aside from the fact that they’re both Asian-American. Amy is a wealthy, suburban businesswoman working on closing an acquisition deal with Amy Forster, a home improvement store chain owner. On the other hand, Danny is a contractor financially struggling to support his brother and his parents. These two characters are on opposite ends of the socioeconomic spectrum, but it’s clear that they immediately both share feelings of rage and obsession towards each other from the first episode.

Yet, when we look closer, both Amy and Danny have a deep desire to bring their families together — especially through their hustle mentalities. As the primary breadwinners, Danny and Amy both express disdain that their family members (Amy’s husband and Danny’s brother) don’t contribute to keeping the household afloat. However, they continue to engage in cycles of work and seek uncomfortable opportunities because they are so dedicated to making their respective dreams come true. For Amy, this is being a present mother to her daughter June — for Danny, it’s buying a home for his parents who’ve been floating around in Korea. The subtle demonstration of filial piety and Eastern values around family and work conflict with their own turbulent emotions, showing a very real issue that many Asian-Americans face today.

Mental Health

From a study in the Journal of Social Science and Medicine, Professor Lawrence Yang talks about how Confucian values play into the tangible and symbolic threat many older AAPIs view regarding mental health. Confucian values emphasize self-cultivation via moderate behavior — the mental illness stereotypes of dangerousness and unpredictability directly challenge these cultural norms of restrained behavior. For many AAPIs, mental illness is seen as taking away a person’s ability to care for others, which is the ultimate form of shame in community-oriented cultures of AAPIs. This is a direct cause to reason why some AAPIs, especially older generations, don’t seek help or disclose their mental illnesses or struggles.

In a very sharp scene early on, Danny sits cross-legged in his dimly lit apartment and attempts to asphyxiate himself with a set of barbecue grills. His brother comments that he is depressed and sad — it’s clear to everyone around him that Danny’s behaviors can be self-destructive and harmful. On the other hand, Amy seems to have a more balanced lifestyle and “healthy” emotional regulation. Amy goes to couples therapy with her husband and intelligently rationalizes many of her feelings/thought processes — she talks about how her feelings were suppressed growing up with Asian parents and how that affects her communication style today. Yet, being hyper-aware of her feelings doesn’t help her actually process or feel those emotions. She tells her husband: “It feels like the ground…like right here…it never goes away. When I was in college, I saw the psychiatrist and he put me on antidepressants, but all it did was mute it…” She then immediately apologizes, and her husband dismisses the point entirely.

It seemed like for the entire show, no one would understand what Amy and Danny were going through except for each other -- and it was infuriating to watch! I had been secretly hoping for an enemies-to-lovers trope the entire time since they shared similar values and quirks. Although we didn’t quite get there, Amy and Danny did have a nice moment in the very last episode. In their drug-induced, hallucinogenic state while they are lost in the wilderness, Amy and Danny look at each other and truly see each other for the first time:

“You poor thing. All you wanted was to not be alone.”

“I see it all. You don’t have to hide. It’s okay.”

I don’t think it’s a stretch to say that Asian Americans have a particularly tough time sharing their personal struggles, especially with other Asians. Yet, this beautiful moment felt hopeful, authentic, and raw. I really appreciated this line and resonated with it a lot — I’ve found that sharing my own mental health journey and trauma with my Asian-American friends has helped me feel seen and appreciated in ways I hadn’t before.

Microaggressions

Amy in particular was subject to some of the most annoying, slightly racist characters in the series. The intersection of being Asian and being a woman complicates her ability to respond to specific comments and situations. In the first episode, her employee Mia attempts to speak to Amy in Japanese to show her gratitude. Spoiler: Amy isn’t Japanese… awkward! Another character, Jordan Forster, makes numerous off-hand comments to Amy like: “Nobody else in my family understands culture,” “I like you — you have this serene Zen-Buddhist thing going on,” and “You and I both know we could go to China and copy your shit for less.” The power dynamic between Amy and these white women is so tense and particularly irritating for me to watch — like many Asian-American women, Amy puts on a smile despite these ridiculous micro-aggressions. It’s not worth the mental effort or financial opportunity to correct and educate these women, so she maintains a calm, demure demeanor in most of her public interactions. Obviously, we know that Amy is furious by the people she’s surrounded with (and she blows up in her interactions with Danny). Still, her experience in these more ambitious situations is reminiscent of my own interactions with non-POC colleagues/peers and men.

Closing Thoughts

Beef is emotional, funny, raw, and incredibly detailed. Both Steven Yeun and Ali Wong gave amazing, multi-dimensional performances and I wish there were more episodes! I highly recommend Beef if you want a quick watch that will keep you on your toes. I’m really excited to be seeing a lot more Asian representation in the media, especially when the representation is authentic and not based on the basic themes/tropes we’ve been seeing for the past decade or two.