YAPPIE - Wong Fu Productions has lost its touch

Yappie is a 2018 web series written and directed by Taylor Chan and Philip Wang, produced by Asian American filmmaking group Wong Fu Productions. Its five episode run follows Andrew, a Chinese American who deals with everyday race-related issues, particularly those that apply to Asian Americans, ranging from being a token minority to yellow fever to unfair treatment from other races. The series is absolutely free and available on YouTube.

YouTube played a large part in my formative years, as I'm sure many Asians my age could relate. TV and movies in the 2000's and 2010's were--and still are--not particularly famous for having a lot of Asian figures. There you'd find mostly white people, with your occasional black or Hispanic actor here and there. However, YouTube was completely different, with a surprisingly large number of Asians becoming very prominent in early YouTube. Everyone knew KevJumba, nigahiga, and Markiplier, and there's a very good chance you've at least heard of David So, AJ Raphael, Clara C, David Choi, Michelle Phan, Anna Akana, Domics, Arden Cho, JustKiddingFilms, or Jubilee.

YouTube was a place for so many Asian American content creators to come together and produce works that appeal to everyone, while often also highlighting their own Asian backgrounds in a way that most Asian American viewers could relate to. It was a place where people like me could go to see people who looked like me and connected to me on a cultural level.

Of all of those, Wong Fu Productions stuck out as the prime Asian channel--producing several short films made by and starring Asians, usually about a subject that anyone could relate to, regardless of race (what a concept!). Whether it's the wildly fun Agents of Secret Stuff, the flawed but rather poignant Everything Before Us, or their "old-fashioned romantic comedy" Single By 30, Wong Fu has had a great history of success with their shorts.

Which is why I was so disappointed with what I've seen in Yappie.

The web series--named after a term meaning Young Asian Professional who acts like a yuppie--is Wong Fu's most political work, and yet is surprisingly unfocused, unstructured, and unsubtle. While the series says its goal is to "explore the social and racial issues related to the contemporary Asian American experience from the perspective of... yappies," it ends up feeling hypocritical, one-sided, and often very preachy.

Yappie's first two episodes largely center around protagonist Andrew being constantly criticized by others for being "safe" and a "perfect Asian". He is publicly humiliated by a rather rude Dante Basco and is dissed and dismissed by both his date and his ex-girlfriend for... living a financially stable lifestyle? I'm serious. He is treated like a bad guy all on the grounds of him having a nice job and being Asian. And while it seemed clear to me that this was just a hipster mentality from immature and privileged people who'd rather be pretentiously "woke" than have a decent paycheck, Andrew is genuinely torn up about it and the series treats it as him being in the wrong.

And the weird thing is, none of that is brought up ever again. It didn't really set up anything. It has absolutely no bearing on anything that happens in the rest of the series other than creating some dumb conflict for Andrew to "start questioning his place and purpose as a model minority".

Episode 3 is the most boring of the five, and is about how different Asian groups don't get along that well, which I don't feel is really that accurate nowadays, although I could be wrong. 

Episode 4 is the only good episode and deals with the question of why Asians are expected to date other Asians. It has some good moments and brings up some great points--namely the perception of Asian males as sexless, effeminate, and undesirable while Asian females are overly sexualized and objectified. But while it brings up great points, even going as far as agreeing that having a racial preference can acceptable, it never really talks about what I think is the biggest argument for why Asians date Asians--because our culture is a large part of who we are and it's much harder to date someone whose culture is wildly different. Instead, this very important point is largely ignored.

Episode 5 is probably the worst written of the series as well as the most laughably preachy. The main conflict of the episode was an argument between Andrew and a black man which starts with the latter being really racist towards Andrew before immediately launching into a well-rehearsed tirade about the systemic oppression of black people in America. That's right kids, there's no room for subtlety here because MAH NAME'S RUSS AND MY PEOPLE ARE OPPRESSED WE'RE THROWN IN JAIL WE'RE GETTING SHOT UP AND ASIANS DON'T DO NUFFIN Y'ALL JUST LIKE DEM WHITIES. And then the episode ends with the completely unrelated topic of Andrew's parents wanting him to date an Asian girl... as if they completely forgot which episode they're in.

Final Verdict

Wong Fu Productions used to produce some really great videos that, while typically were sappy love stories, did have some pretty good writing behind them. Unfortunately, all of that is lost with Yappie. This web series is unsubtle and poorly written, with some really laughably preachy lines that feel unnatural, and a real lack of any structure that connects the five episodes. Rather than taking a deep look into the social and racial issues that Asian Americans actually go through on a day-to-day basis, this series seems to say nothing other than "Asians got it tough, you guys". Also, you're not allowed to be financially stable.

Score: D