Asian American Psycho - by Chris Jesu Lee

This essay was first published in the 2022 March/April print issue of Current Affairs. Thank you to Sharon Adarlo1 for the beautiful new artwork above. Follow her on Twitter at @sadarlo1. Americans love Asian psychos. The angrier the characters, the bloodier the drama, the better. Consider some of the most popular imported cultural works from Asia in recent times. There’s the Oscar-winning Parasite, a film seething with class rage that climaxes with an orgy of violence at a child’s birthday party. Last fall, nobody could take their eyes off of Squid Game, a drama series that likewise explored social inequality in a literal death game where life and morals were cheap. Oldboy, a brutal story of obsessive vengeance, is one of the most revered Asian films in America (let’s pretend the American remake never happened), while The Vegetarian, an unsettling narrative of a Korean woman’s descent into madness, became a literary sensation several years ago upon its translation into English. But ta

This essay was first published in the 2022 March/April print issue of Current Affairs. Thank you to Sharon Adarlo1 for the beautiful new artwork above. Follow her on Twitter at @sadarlo1. Americans love Asian psychos. The angrier the characters, the bloodier the drama, the better. Consider some of the most popular imported cultural works from Asia in recent times. There’s the Oscar-winning Parasite, a film seething with class rage that climaxes with an orgy of violence at a child’s birthday party. Last fall, nobody could take their eyes off of Squid Game, a drama series that likewise explored