stacey tuong vi nguyen

It’s kind of crazy to think that I’ve graduated from Cal for almost a year! I have an entire back log of things that I’ve been thinking about lately, particularly things that have changed since I moved back home to San Jose and started the 9 to 5 grind. Some of them are random and others are bigger things. 

1. I can’t go to sleep past 1:30 AM, which is still bad, but I was very much a 3 am sleeper in college, since my classes usually didn’t begin before 10 am. 

2. I’m no longer (deathly) afraid of driving on the road. Throughout college, I was an avid public transportation rider, but now that I’ve been practicing driving every day, I actually prefer driving. Nerves still get to me from time to time, especially when I’m driving past a car that’s yielding to me, but I quite enjoy the sense of control I get behind the wheel. As someone who’s still learning so much about the world around her, there are very few things I feel like I have control over. 

3. I listen to a lot more music and podcasts now! I even have a Spotify Premium account. School forced me to stay focused since it required me to break down really dry material. Now that I’m doing creative work, it’s actually necessary for me to have some audio material that inspires and/or educates me. 

4. I am calmer and less self-conscious than I’ve ever been. It’s too hard to keep up with the Jones at this point in my life because everyone is on different paths! So I’m just working hard towards developing myself rather than trying to outdo anyone else.  

5. I plan less. It’s crazy - a year ago, I tested as an INFJ (a hard J, in fact), but these days, I lean more towards INFP. Working in a professional environment has definitely shaped me to be more organized and detail-oriented because that’s necessary for communicating with others. In my personal life, I tend to go with the flow and invest myself only when I find something that truly aligns with my values. 

6. I enjoy analyzing television series and movies. I’ve always enjoyed shows and films, but I never really actively, intellectually engaged with television until I left Berkeley. (It’s kind of a scary place to do so since everyone is so smart!) You could call me an amateur critic of sorts. I regret not taking a film class in college, but I think that having free time now makes it easier for me to be critical and reflective about the television that I watch. The golden age of television is such a time to be alive. 

7. I wear less makeup, since it takes some extra effort in the morning and my skin breaks out whenever I wear foundation. When I do wear makeup, it’s subtle. Some mascara, brow gel, BB cream, and a lipstick if I’m feeling frisky. In college, I wore a lot of loud dark berries and bright red lipstick, but now, I’m partial to rosy pinks and pink magentas. 

8. I wear much cheaper makeup, despite having a little bit of disposable income now. I shopped a lot at Sephora in college, but now most of my favorite makeup is from Cover Girl or Maybelline. 

9. I’m not even mad at my long hair! Surprising, I know! I’m fairly happy with my hair length right now, which has grown past my shoulders. In college, my hair cut of choice was a blunt bob with some straight fringes, but now I have long hair and no bangs. 

Last Friday, I dropped by San Jose’s very own Camera 3 to watch Personal Shopper. Frankly, it surprised me that a mere six or seven people appeared to watch this film, given the critical acclaim that it’s received. Perhaps I went at an early time or perhaps the kids these days just stream everything online. Anyway, on to some thoughts I had during the movie!

The movie stars Kristen Stewart as Maureen, a lonely, despondent American woman residing in Paris. Maureen finds herself stuck in a job ill-suited for her talents - she works for a needy and vacuous model who is as demanding as she is ill-tempered. She’s stuck in a long-distance relationship that drains her. On top of it all, Maureen waits for a supernatural sign from her late twin brother, who passed away from a congenital heart disease that she herself has. 

Stewart, often poked fun at for RBF, defies patriarchal prescriptions of female hysteria in her latest film. As it goes, society, as it is constructed through mass media and social media, expects one mode of womanhood - a woman who is happy and blithely follows the rules. But Stewart's character Maureen pushes back against these expectations. She’s moody. She adamantly waits for her brother to give her a sign and won’t accept anything short of clarity. She’s obsessed with the spiritual world. Bored and impulsive, she tries on her boss’ clothes despite knowing that she wouldn’t like it. She converses with a stalker, whose origins are mysterious. In a world where women are told to be prudent about their safety, Maureen gives an emotional middle finger. 

Beyond Maureen’s characterization, what Personal Shopper crafts so beautifully is a narrative about grief. It artistically captures the spontaneous and messy process of grief - we don’t mourn and move on - we are, instead, wounded by this grief, which fuels anger, impulsiveness, ennui, despondency, and most obviously, an acute awareness of our own mortal existence. In this last state, we unconsciously attribute meaning and magic to mundane occurrences. 

The narrative of grief in this movie is not a straightforward narrative. If you’re looking for a linear, run-of-the mill Hollywood horror movie, this is not the right film for you. What’s unconventional about this film is its spontaneity, its brokenness, its jarring mishmash of the twists and turns that make a life - the film is ultimately about the the different threads of a young woman’s life - her career, her family, her sense of self-worth - that are loosely bound together by, well, a series of unfortunate events that build up a thriller. 

Tag

“One Step Ahead” - Aretha Franklin 

“Track of My Tears” - Smokey Robinson 

“Love on the Brain” - Rihanna

“House of the Rising Sun” - The Animals

“Yesterday Once More” - The Carpenters 

“Heaven is a Place on Earth” - Belinda Carlisle 

Michelle

“Blue Bayou” - Linda Ronstadt 

“Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow” - Carole King 

“She Used To Be Mine” - Sara Bareilles 

“Breakaway” - Kelly Clarkson 

“I Wanna Dance With Somebody” - Whitney Houston

“I Will Always Love You” - Whitney Houston 

José

“Poetic Justice” - Kendrick Lamar

“i” - Kendrick Lamar

“Game of Love” - Santana

“Carry On” - fun.

“Folsom Prison Blues” - Johnny Cash 

“Break Even” - The Script 

Michael

“Trouble” - Ray LaMontagne

“The Chain” - Fleetwood Mac

“Ragged Wood” - Fleet Foxes

“Death with Dignity” - Sufjan Stevens

“House That Built Me” - Miranda Lambert

“That’s How Strong My Love Is” - Otis Redding 

Kristy 

“So Far Away” - Carole King

“Rivers and Roads” - The Head and the Heart

“Don’t You Worry About a Thing” - Tori Kelly

“Sometimes” - My Bloody Valentine

“Rise Up” - Andra Day 

“Ordinary People” - John Legend

Jon

“All I Do” - Yuna

“Autumn Leaves” - Leslie Odom Jr. 

“In My Veins” - Andrew Belle

“Death with Dignity” - Sufjan Stevens

“All I Want” - Kodaline

"When I Was Your Man” - Bruno Mars

Yvette

“Ain’t No Way” - Aretha Franklin

"In California” - Neko Case

“Comptine d'un autre été” - Yann Tiersen

“I Wish I Knew How It Would Feel To Be Free” - Nina Simone

“I’ll Take Care of You” - Joe Bonamassa and Beth Hart

The fluorescent streetlights creating green halos around pedestrians

The mountains luminous orange from afar 

The train’s cool wind that brushes across your skin 

The cacophony of car engines so loud, they’re silent

The intense clarity

Almost renders everything unreal

As you walk down the dim streets

And everyone needs to watch it, like, now. 

It only took me twenty Barry Jenkins and Mahershala Ali interviews to finally sit down and stream this freakin’ masterpiece on YouTube. Go watch it today - it’s only five bucks to stream! 

And holy moly, my mind was blown to pieces. Every detail in the movie, every shot was just so deliberate and beautiful and wonderful. Every line felt deliberate, yet raw and authentic. Unlike a lot of other movies that are built upon the artifice of seamless and rehearsed technicality, at Moonlight’s very foundation is something so simple, yet so fragile and complex: empathy. You can just tell that this movie was made with a lot of care. I’m a writer by trade, but this is the kind of art that I would very much love to make one day. Here’s the main things that I loved about this movie:

The character of Chiron. Chiron’s life is depicted in three parts - his elementary school years, high school years, and adulthood. The movie is his bildungsroman with respect to his relationships with his mother, the projects, and queerness, among many other things. Pre-adolescent Chiron, referred to as “Little,” is bullied by his classmates for his size and presumed sexuality. Feeling rejected by his community, Chiron folds into himself, emotionally opaque to the people around him yet at the same time so vulnerable and innocent. Chiron is played by different actors in all three periods of his life. None of them look the same, but you can still see that same uncertainty and tenderness in their eyes. 

Mahershala Ali. Holy Moly. This man rightfully deserved an Oscar for his breathtaking performance. Ali plays Juan, a drug dealer who becomes a father figure to Chiron. (Also, his girlfriend is played by Janelle Monae. EGOT material???) His character is wonderfully complex. Juan is tough and will do what it takes to survive. But his character harbors a certain tenderness and kindness. Your heart breaks into a million little pieces when you see him teaching Chiron how to swim and explaining to Chiron what a “faggot” is. 

The music. The music in this film harbors a certain kind of timelessness that lends itself to driving a lot of the emotional intensity you feel while watching it. It includes everything from motown to intense classical music. The movie starts out with Boris Gardiner’s “Every Nigg** is a Star,” an upbeat, relaxed song that celebrates the black community. (Sounds familiar? It’s the first song sampled in Kendrick Lamar’s “To Pimp a Butterfly” album). It plays over a scene where people are dealing drugs with one another. But if you had not known what was going on, it would’ve just looked like an idyllic, calm neighborhood scene - which is to say, the song probably served some purpose in fleshing out the beauty in what is conventionally regarded as tawdry and dark. The intense classical music tends to play when Paula, Chiron’s mother, begins verbally attacking her son. It serves to demonstrate the intensity of her verbal abuse that Chiron can only emotionally mitigate by tuning out. 

The beauty in the everyday. This is a movie set in the projects of Liberty City, Miami, where crime and poverty are rampant. It’s very much a movie about the struggles of blackness, queerness, mass incarceration, and institutional racism. But to say that it is a film about blackness, queerness, mass incarceration, and institutional racism would also be reductive. 

Moonlight is beautiful on two levels - first, its acute attention to aesthetic details and second, its achingly human portrayal of people (such as dealers and addicts) who are typically stereotyped as rough and thuggish. There’s this scene between Paula and Juan that really captures both levels. One night, Juan catches Paula doing base and berates her for neglecting her son. She points out that he himself is a drug dealer and asks him mockingly if he will take care of Chiron. The scene is set in a dark, grody area and it’s equally emotionally dark. But in the background you see these beautiful, flickering pastel lights coming from the cars and apartments. 

Ultimately, this film is beautiful in its specificity. It’s beautiful in its nuance. It makes no false gestures towards escapism. It looks at life straight in the eye and finds beauty in the darkest places. 

So tonight, I finally had some down time and watched two awesome movies - Get Out and The Lego Batman Movie. I don’t have much to say about the latter (nor do I really have the right to, since I slept through a good fifteen minutes of the movie), but I will talk about Get Out because it makes me so damn excited that there’s now a popular and critically acclaimed film that exists in the intersection of horror, science fiction, comedy, and social commentary. Bear with me - it’s 1 AM and I’m pretty sleepy. 

Jordan Peele’s debut film is absolutely hilarious, brilliant, and relevant. It’s an allegory about race relations in America that takes you out of your comfort zone and transplants you into mystifying depths of terror and laughter. Although it doesn’t rise above horror tropes (cough - and damn you - jump scares) and is intellectually aggressive, Get Out possesses such refreshing storytelling that you are consistently curious throughout the movie. It’s a deeply thoughtful and subversive film that never comes off as *too* pedantic. 

Chris Washington (played by Brit actor Daniel Kaluuya - yes, the dude in the second episode of Black Mirror) is a young Black photographer who visits his white girlfriend’s family reluctantly. His girlfriend, Rose, is played none other than Allison Williams, aka Marnie from Girls, aka someone who is associated with what is the pillar of white feminism. Bae seems to be woke and open-minded, defending Chris against a white officer’s racial profiling and claiming that her dad would vote for Obama if he ran a third term. Racial tensions are made clear at the beginning of the movie when Chris asks Rose if her parents know that he’s Black. While characters in horror movies never seem to know that they’re being hunted or hurt until it’s too late, the Black man in this movie knows that he should watch his back always. 

Strange events transpire when the couple arrives at the Armitage estate. Rose assures him otherwise and her well-off physician parents Atticus Finch the hell out of Chris to make him as comfortable as possible. But like I said, weird shenanigans go down. The Black servants at Armitage residence vacillate between politely hostile and Stepford wife creepy. Rose’s mother Missy (played by the brilliant Catherine Keener) performs some freaky hypnosis on Chris in the middle of the night that brings him back to memories of his mother’s death. The only other black person at the Armitages’ party is eerily docile and freaks out when Chris’ phone flashes. Chris’ friend Rod (Lil Rel Howery), a TSA agent and the comic relief of the movie, keeps in contact with him via phone. Rod’s convinced that there’s something wrong with the estate, that the white people in Rose’s neighborhood are turning Black people into “sex slaves.” 

Well, without spoiling too much of the movie, Rod isn’t far off. Get Out explores everything from racial hierarchies of power to perverse depictions of agency in the face of abuse and torture. It explores that malice (through a very exaggerated example) that belies the benign smile of the white savior complex, satirizing white liberal elite culture for distancing itself from implications of racism in the most grotesque way possible. There’s honestly so much to be said about Rose and her family, but I can’t without spoiling the last half hour of the movie. Just go watch it!

It’s been raining so much that Northern California is almost out of the drought. Singin’ in the Rain makes rain out to be much more romantic than it is. I walked to Safeway today and carried back twenty pounds of food in the pouring rain with an ineffectual ultra light puffer jacket to protect me. I didn’t have my driving lesson this week. 

My parents have been leaving the radio on downstairs, usually the Vietnamese station. They say it’ll detract mice and thieves. When the station grew staticky the other day, I switched it to American pop music because I freaked out while alone in the house. Still, “Crazy In Love” is pretty freaky, maybe even psychedelic, when you’re all by yourself. 

I’ve been reading so much lately. It takes away the loneliness of the absence of social media, which isn’t really organic companionship to begin with. I’ve already read 6 books this year! I’ve also been working through my pile of New Yorker subscriptions from college. When I first started subscribing, I didn’t have the patience or intellectual muscles to really appreciate The New Yorker - but now I read issues with the same curiosity as I read Mental Floss or Highlights as a kid. 

I’ve been pretty obsessed with O.J. Simpson lately. There’s something so literary, so Gatsbyesque about the downfall of an American hero. I finished Ezra Edelman’s incredibly mordant 7+ hour documentary, OJ: Made in America. The documentary incisively juxtaposes the sport star’s disassociation with blackness upon the struggles of civil rights, both in the sixties and within the context of the Rodney King riots. It chillingly places his history of domestic violence with clips of police brutality. It complicates Simpson’s status as a civil rights icon given his affluence, racial apathy, cozy relationship with the LAPD, and the prosecution’s overbearing evidence. It condemned celebrity culture and media frenzy while realizing the inherent irony of doing so. I was pretty taken away by the dialogue that Edelman’s documentary created and highly recommend it. 

I bought new underwear in bulk this week.

I haven’t drank coffee in six days and might be going insane. Tea, while delicious, does not amp me up. My sleep has been better but my crankiness has worsened. 

Today marks my fourth day of sad lunches this week. The day started out with a sad bagel too, which I disavowed for the past few months after recalling that Michel from Gilmore Girls calls them glue for the intestines (which, they really are). I’ve had frozen chicken and cheese chimichangas the last few days for lunch, which provide good fuel, but do not particularly feel healthy to eat. Needing a little alone time, I decided to traipse to the South Asian cuisine restaurant next door to work, Curry Nation, which is, yes, named after Steph Curry the basketball player. 

Ever since trying out Indian Flavors Express in Berkeley, I’ve associated Indian food with post-paper comfort. (I hope that’s not reductive.) And Curry Nation is decent, $10 for a buffet. But it lacks a certain coziness that I was accustomed to with the South Asian food that I have tried. The chicken tikka masala lacked spice and instead carried a strange tangy flavor. The spinach paneer was salty and the over-blended texture threw me off. The naan was doughy without being particularly flavorful. I hardly made it through my second dish. I did, however, enjoy the chicken rice and the overall quiet and subdued atmosphere where I could just read and eat in solitude. 

Did I mention that I haven’t drank coffee in three days? It’s been a very drowsy and sleepy past few days where I’ve just been reading and obsessing over OJ Simpson’s trial when I’m not at work. I started OJ: Made in America, and interestingly, found out that San Jose State shared the same civil rights energy as Berkeley! I’m also reading War of the Worlds and Mary Roach’s Grunt right now. The last canonical piece of literature I read was Native Son, and I’ve been lacking the emotional energy to read books like it. Science literature gives me the kind of escapism and creative fuse that I need right now, for better or for worse. 

As it goes, I’ve been trying to spend more time reading this year, but being me, I’m a sucker for good television. As it goes, I’ve been touting pretty ambiguous feelings about the Kardashians, on one hand, disgusted with their lurid, petty showcases of wealth, and on the other hand, admiring their business intuition and capacity as a platform for America to talk about issues such as race and gender. On Thursday night, I flipped through my YouTube subscriptions and saw a clip of Khloe Kardashian on a bit with James Corden, where he asks his guest a question and they can reply with the truth or eat something “disgusting” (just an aside, but there’s definitely some fishy xenophobia going on here). Corden asks her if she thinks O.J. did it. Kardashian doesn’t reply and proceeds to eat a fish eyeball in lieu of answering his question. 

The Internet is full of rabbit holes, and somehow I ended up watching the new FX mini-series, The People Vs. O.J. Simpson. Since I was born after the beginning of the case, I knew very little about it. But I decided to check out the series because Sterling K. Brown and David Schwimmer starred in it. 

The series focuses not so much on Simpson’s guilt or innocence, but rather the bureaucratic incompetence of the criminal justice system and the role of systemic inequalities such as sexism and racism. 

The biggest issue that the show extrapolated upon was the complicated role of race in the trial. Simpson is a successful black man who, while dissociating himself from the black community upon his success, becomes a symbol for racial injustice and police brutality in a trial that is controversially taped and available to the media. There is a narrative that is awfully uncomfortable - a black man on trial for an unspeakable violent crime and white victims, one of whom is a woman who has made past claims of domestic violence. Johnnie Cochnan, the main defense lawyer, is portrayed as pushing this narrative, sometimes relentlessly and ruthlessly. 

We also see how identity politics shapes the character of Christopher Darden, Marcia Clark’s co-prosecutor in the case. Darden is portrayed by This Is Us’ Sterling K. Brown, who deservedly won an Emmy for his role. Darden becomes increasingly wary about his blackness in the prosecution - was he tokenized? Why did his team want a black face, but not a black voice? Darden is indignant, fully admitting Mark Fuhrman’s racist allegations but also firmly believing in the scientific evidence present and feeling compassion towards Ron Goldman’s family amidst the media-induced brouhaha. 

Additionally, we get an excellent performance from Sarah Paulson, who portrays the devoted, tough-as-nails Marcia Clark. We get a very human portrayal of Clark, who juggles life as a single mother trying to win custody of her children and media sexism on top of a difficult and emotionally taxing case. She’s not perfect, presumptuous and supercilious at times even, but compassionate towards the victims and lucid in sussing out the scientific evidence. 

And to go full circle, the show centers the media’s obsession with reality television. Every now and then in the courtroom, the perspective pans out to show the fuzzy, faded film style of real-time taped footage, a nod at the filmed case. It blurs a line between reality and what is portrayed as reality. The inclusion of the Kardashians in the show seems more relevant than ever, especially with today’s obsession over Keeping Up With the Kardashians and the rise of a president-elect whose success was no doubt in part due to his television personality and brand of affluence. The show gestures at the power of manipulated documentation to create a clean and emotional narrative, and how it disrupts logic and renders even scientific evidence ineffectual. 

This morning, I was out with my boyfriend to grab some coffee at The Coffee Cup near Toyon and McKee. We took our pastries to Pentencia Creek Park and just walked around. It is so quiet and green, especially now that the effects of the drought are easing. Later today, I drove my dad’s beat up teal Camry around the same neighborhood, much to my dad’s consternation, because I am a terrible driver. San Jose is astoundingly beautiful at 4 PM on Sundays during the winter. The sun, emanating glaring flecks of orange and yellow, starts to set around that time, and puffer jacketed suburbanites are out and about with their children and dogs. 

It’s so quiet but vibrant. The quiet of the suburbs really suits my introverted nature. As an adult woman, I’m coming to learn a lot about San Jose’s complexity - its brilliant but also problematic love of technology, its humble, but vibrant niches of diversity, and its utterly understated, though sometimes bureaucratic centers for marginalized groups. For a long time as I traipsed through academia, I wanted to be given intellectual stimulation and critical thinking rather than just being in tune with my own intuition and intellectual acumen to be a force of change. 

So, I just watched La La Land. 

I loved it more than I disliked it. Overall, I found it a beautifully produced and directed movie. Gosling and Stone shared perfect chemistry. The people behind the set design, wardrobe, and choreography deserve so much recognition for making the movie a visual pleasure to not only watch, but experience. Everything was over the top vintage and throwback, but in the most vibrant, tasteful, and energizing way possible. The threadbare plot - as one would typically find in schmaltzy romance movies like this one - worked because the performances were just so damn emotionally powerful and the staging was just so visually stunning. Oh man, and you can’t forget the music. From Sebastian’s haunting jazz riffs and Mia’s husky, playful singing voice, this movie honored the musical tradition that you can find in classics like “Singin’ In the Rain.”

I loved the ending. It was magically realistic. The phantasmagorical alternative ending montage really deconstructed and chipped away at the whole notion of the happy ending that you would find in a 1950′s musical movie. Watching this movie, I felt something I’ve never felt before - happy, then sad, but in the most wholesome way possible. The ending spoke to both Sebastian’s and Mia’s intense personalities and how their relationship was not the end goal, but a means to their lofty dreams. It spoke to the necessity of sacrifice in achieving one’s dreams. 

All of that being said, I did have some qualms with a few things...especially race. There were two main things that bothered me:

1. People of color were literally being used as props. The movie started out with a singing South Asian woman, but immediately, the scene felt like a background, a layout for the bigger story. Fast forward in the movie, you literally, though, see Black people freezing while the spotlight shines on Emma Stone and Ryan Gosling. 

2. Ryan Gosling’s white male savior complex to save traditional jazz from being hijacked from phony, inauthentic contemporary music. I really felt uncomfortable with this idea because 1) I’m defensive of contemporary pop music, but more importantly 2) people of color create new spaces to call attention, to create respect by their own means, to be, as John Legend’s character puts it, revolutionary. The fact that Ryan Gosling’s character had to save the all-Black “The Messengers” from their own supposed downward spiral into pop music yielded an icky, suspicious feeling in me. As I myself am growing up, I’ve noticed that people of color tend to appropriate less high brow spaces because in those situations, they can attain legitimacy. 

To put it out there, I don’t expect movies to be pillars of social justice movements. Ryan Gosling and Emma Stone are white actors in an overwhelmingly white industry, but they are also very good at what they do. The issue is bigger than just two actors. 

I kinda...need...a personal social media detox...

Lately, I’ve been experiencing a lot of dread and anxiety about the state of our country. As a recent graduate, as a woman of color, as a child of immigrant parents. I know, I’m lucky. I have a job I enjoy and am learning from and the support of parents who still care for me. But I can’t help but feel as though it was partially my apathy, even just a tiny sliver in this country of 300 million, that helped build the current state of affairs. 

I go on Twitter and Facebook vociferously to connect with friends and consume news. But a lot of the news that I follow, while “reliable sources,” are filled with fodder. For crying out loud, our incoming president is openly a xenophobe and sexist. And all we can do is post about is the freaking Kardashians, the latest celebrity feud, and most expensive makeup brand? The online groups in my alma mater’s Facebook page are filled with nonsensical memes that are supposed to be hip and cool with their apathy and non-sequiturs. But honestly I just feel heartbroken thinking about how Berkeley’s emphasis on competition and climbing the ladder has made its intelligent and capable students forget what a once progressive and compassionate place it had been.

Also, why is everyone a La La Land and Meryl Streep stan? 

I’m guilty of all of this, and I am ashamed of myself. I don’t want to sound patronizing, but I guess that all of this is escapism, and we buy into it because it’s easier than being aware of that feeling of helplessness. 

I’m projecting. I’m sorry. 

I say all of this knowing full well that both high and low culture are valuable in understanding the world around me. But I can’t do it through mainstream social media anymore, at least not for a while. I’m going to go subscribe to the Times or the New Yorker again, or something. I won’t be checking my IG, Twitter, SC, or FB for a while.