The Inner Life of Cinema and Selfobjects: Queer Asian American Youth in Spa Night and Driveways

Spa Night (2016) and Driveways (2019) focus on queer Asian American youth. Growing up in Koreatown in Los Angeles, a young Korean American man is disenfranchised from the narrative of the Asian American model minority. To resolve the disconnection that results from psychic fragmentation, he explores his sexuality in an iconic site of queer representation, the gay bathhouse, owned and run by Koreans, showing the entanglement of race and sexuality. While Spa Night features a young adult, Driveways, Andrew Ahn’s sophomore film, tells the story of an eight-year-old child. The young boy is nurtured by the various experiences with the self, his mother, and his new friend, an older Korean War veteran who lives next door. These adults’ unconditional love and care encourage an agentic attunement to the self and an achievement of equanimity for the queer child.