Film 'Didi' tackles Asian American teen angst at the peak of Myspace, AIM and flip phones

A new film delves into feeling alienated in the Myspace era as an Asian American teen, and it doesn’t help that your immigrant family can’t help with cultural and social navigation.

A new film delves into feeling alienated in the Myspace era as an Asian American teen, and it doesn’t help that your immigrant family can’t help with cultural and social navigation. 

“Didi,” which opens in select theaters Friday, follows Bay Area teen Chris Wang, a Taiwanese American kid played by Izaac Wang. He’s seeking belonging and acceptance from school peers and the local skate scene, and his social struggles in part touch on a common experience among kids of immigrants, Oscar-nominated director Sean Wang said. Without parents who can usher him into American culture, Chris is left contending with an unspoken cultural gap between him and the rest of their peers. 

Actor Izaac Wang and writer-director Sean Wang on the set of "Didi."Iris Lee / Talking Fish Pictures“Your parents are immigrants and they’re not like ‘OK, now listen to the Rolling Stones.’ They didn’t show me the Beatles but people were talking about the Beatles … My parents didn’t show me ‘Jaws’,” Wang said. “I had to go watch that myself because I clearly needed to figure this cultural stuff out. And I think that’s what I wanted to capture in the movie.” In the film, angsty teen Chris — affectionately called “Didi,” which translates to “little brother” in Chinese, by his family members and “Wang Wang” by friends — enters the nascent stages of adolescence in the last month before high school. There’s a cultural gulf between Chris and his immigrant mother, and his father is noticeably absent, away on business abroad. He’s thrown into the era of early Facebook and the Myspace top 8 all on his own. And it’s hard. His friendships change as his buddies treat him like an afterthought, he’s unsure of how to handle interactions with his crush, Madi, and life in his immigrant household is tense.

Chris becomes plagued with loneliness and a lack of self-confidence. He attempts to seek community with other skaters, but his insecurities only lead him to more severed relationships. 

“everyoen hates me and I have no freinds left,” he writes at one point to famed AIM chatbot SmarterChild. 

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/asian-america/-didi-film-asian-american-rcna163293

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