Born into a blossoming “Pinoy” family, my 26-year-old brother has always opposed the Filipino community. You would think that, as a culture prominently defined by our togetherness, amicability and national pride, our family would indulge in the display of our cultural roots, constantly boasting how hilarious and impressive we are across many skillsets towards the outsiders. Ultimately, this is the stereotype. This is the way of how we are perceived by society. And of course, we embrace it; we bask in its sun.
At least for the four out of five of us in our family.
When my brother grew up, he was the first and only one to distance from our family’s Filipino-dominant community. Observing his absences on Sundays, we thought he was losing his cultural identity.
He often expressed a desire to move to a rural area with sparser Filipino populations, and he even said he would never return to the Philippines if it weren’t for our family.
It was finally in a car ride with him and I, where he explained his personal detachment. The community pride was overbearing to him, that those young few who surrounded him were uniform of each other in the sense of social conformity. Instead, he discovered an appreciation for the multicultural community, the western appeal, feeling free to immerse himself in the Australian culture without condemnation.
At the time, that idea was outlandish to me.
As a second-generation immigrant religiously proud of my Filipino heritage, the main character, Ember, of the culturally inspired film Elemental (2023), directed by Peter Sohn, initially correlated with me in the beginning. As a member of the “Fire” racial inferiority within Element City, Ember’s fervent love and willingness to descend her cultural heritage; her dream of inheriting her father’s shop and strict compliance with only associating with Fire; was one I found inspiring and blatantly, a Pixar embodiment of me. With society clearly segregated by race and prejudice, Ember comfortably stands her ground separate from the rest of multicultural society, blending seamlessly into Firetown. Only this isolated bubble of comfort gets demolished when an emotional Water guy, Wade, enters her life Form: Discursive Maddy Paras and breaks down Ember’s own defensive barriers of prejudice, ultimately redefining the multicultural dynamics we are so used to assuming today.
This film is not merely a Romeo and Juliet tale between two chemically contradictory blobs; it is a reflection of a cultural revolution catalysed by mankind’s innate qualities of love and desire for harmony.
Although a kids’ movie about literal matter, Elemental does not fail to critique modern-day segregation and racism in society. Amid the orientation, Firetown embodies a clear division of the metropolis, an extreme long shot displaying its provincial, slum-like setting juxtaposed in subservience to an ultramodern Elemental city. Additionally, the Lumens are constantly looked down upon and denigrated by dominant cultures throughout the film purely due to their race.
However, can we really villainise generalised western cultures for inflicting discrimination? Insolent dialogue such as “go back to Fireland” and “burn somewhere else” are paralleled by the Fire peoples’ own unjustifiable disrespect towards members of dominant cultures in the film. A scene observed where both Bernie and young Ember are fervently cursing Water teens trashing their shop may indicate how parental figures can unconsciously pass down involuntary attitudes of contempt towards their children. This debunks the typical accusation that western cultures are the sole oppressors, showing how being persecuted does not necessarily correlate with having a clean, pure slate of morality.
We are not born prejudiced; we are taught it. Sometimes, we can forget that we are dealing with humans.
Part of being human is our intrinsic need for love, harmony and to be seen, and Elemental demonstrates how these vital components to life can transcend cultural barriers and unite diverse individuals. Wade and Ember are amplified as character foils in the way that the latter possesses an inability to open up about the truth of her emotions, something typical of Asian cultures, and Wade, despite coming from a vastly differing cultural background, can smoothly embolden her to express her heart. During the hot air balloon scene, Wade commiserates with her anger, seeing through her outward expression into the depths of Form: Discursive Maddy Paras her trauma, “You must have been so scared.” This dialogue of immediate sympathising with Ember’s deeper, more passive negative emotions comes extremely foreign to her.
And yet, because of our human craving for compassion, it was this stark difference in cultural mentality that eventually lured her into the beauty of Wade’s pleasant personality.
“Wade Ripple, I want to have you with me. In my life. Forever.”
Throughout the film, the sequence of the recurring motif of the Vivisteria, the endangered famous flower, can retell Ember’s progression of cultural revitalisation. Originally a traumatic reminder of her maltreated past as an entity racially prohibited from her at a young age, it shifts to become a symbol of new beginnings and harmony between Wade and Ember when the water submerged flower is seen to only bloom when Ember’s light contacts it; a beautiful manipulation of fantastical nature inside the film.
Ultimately, Elemental can favour how exposure to the beauty of other cultures can incite a desire to assimilate and engage with them; to indulge entirely in the attractiveness of their distinctiveness relative to your own culture. The prospect of new experiences, new peoples, and new mindsets enthral our mortality, and can break down society’s preestablished stereotypes and prejudices towards one another; simply if we are united as one. It is fundamentally satisfying to the human brain to expand, diversify our cultural awareness, understanding why people are the unique way they are and simultaneously loving them for it.
I used to judge my brother. Now, I commend his courage to dismantle the very norms that perpetuate our separation – his wonderful initiative to fully embrace the richness of our shared humanity.
This piece is a part of the Student Showcase for Year 10.
