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Inhuman Figures is a film essay by Michelle N. Huang and CA Davis that excavates three popular science-fictional archetypes—the robot, clone, and alien—to reveal how imagined futures are produced from a long history of treating Asian Americans as tireless workers, indistinguishable copies, and forever foreigners.

Inhuman Figures is a film essay by Michelle N. Huang and CA Davis that excavates three popular science-fictional archetypes—the robot, clone, and alien—to reveal how imagined futures are produced from a long history of treating Asian Americans as tireless workers, indistinguishable copies, and forever foreigners.

Meet the Characters

robot

The Robot is the ideal worker—a hyper-competent, uncomplaining, and obedient machine who brings the future into being. But what toll does tirelessly striving towards efficiency and productivity have on these dehumanized laborers? Maybe the question isn’t how to build a better robot, but how to build a better human being.

clones

The Clone is the ultimate interchangeable Asian: where does one begin and one end? Representing replaceability, disposability, fungibility, clones threaten to destroy one’s individuality by reminding us we are all part of collectives.

Alien

The Alien is the radical Other, the forever foreigner who has crossed great distances to arrive on America’s shores. It seems natural to fear the unknown—their desires, their habits, and even their bodies. But how strange might the “human” look from the perspective of the alien?

Emi

Emi is our Asian American Everywoman, trying to find her way in a world that seems increasingly dystopian at every turn. She has the sneaking suspicion that there’s a reason she never learned any Asian American history or read any Asian American literature in school, but she’s still trying to square her own internalized racism with her desire for intra- and interracial solidarity.

Meet the Crew

Michelle Huang HeadshotMichelle N. Huang • Writer

Michelle N. Huang is Assistant Professor of English and Asian American Studies at Northwestern University. Her writing has appeared in venues such as Journal of Asian American Studies, American Literature, and Amerasia. She is currently at work on her book, Molecular Race. You can find out more about Michelle at: michellenhuang.com

CA Davis HeadshotCA Davis • Director

CA Davis is a documentarian, film editor, sound designer, and graduate student based in Chicago, IL. He works as a digital storyteller at Northwestern University and moonlights as the creator and host of a LATTO Thought, an audio documentary exploring the histories and social developments of interracial life central to the United States. His work has been featured by TriQuarterly MagazineFilmscalpel, and RØDE Microphones. See more of CA's work at CADavis.me.

Brittney Galloway Headshot

Brittney Galloway • Animator
@blgalloway • sleepygallows.com

Crystal Galloway Headshot

Crystal Galloway • Animator
@crystalngallowaysleepygallows.com

Keith Couture Headshot

Keith Couture • Art Director
@keithacouture

Meet the Characters

robot

The Robot is the ideal worker—a hyper-competent, uncomplaining, and obedient machine who brings the future into being. But what toll does tirelessly striving towards efficiency and productivity have on these dehumanized laborers? Maybe the question isn’t how to build a better robot, but how to build a better human being.

clones

The Clone is the ultimate interchangeable Asian: where does one begin and one end? Representing replaceability, disposability, fungibility, clones threaten to destroy one’s individuality by reminding us we are all part of collectives.

Alien

The Alien is the radical Other, the forever foreigner who has crossed great distances to arrive on America’s shores. It seems natural to fear the unknown—their desires, their habits, and even their bodies. But how strange might the “human” look from the perspective of the alien?

Emi

Emi is our Asian American Everywoman, trying to find her way in a world that seems increasingly dystopian at every turn. She has the sneaking suspicion that there’s a reason she never learned any Asian American history or read any Asian American literature in school, but she’s still trying to square her own internalized racism with her desire for intra- and interracial solidarity.

Meet the Crew

Michelle Huang Headshot

Michelle N. Huang • Writer

Michelle N. Huang is Assistant Professor of English and Asian American Studies at Northwestern University. Her writing has appeared in venues such as Journal of Asian American Studies, American Literature, and Amerasia. She is currently at work on her book, Molecular Race. You can find out more about Michelle at: michellenhuang.com

CA Davis Headshot

CA Davis • Director

CA Davis is a documentarian, film editor, sound designer, and graduate student based in Chicago, IL. He works as a digital storyteller at Northwestern University and moonlights as the creator and host of a LATTO Thought, an audio documentary exploring the histories and social developments of interracial life central to the United States. His work has been featured by TriQuarterly MagazineFilmscalpel, and RØDE Microphones. See more of CA's work at CADavis.me.

Brittney Galloway Headshot

Brittney Galloway • Animator
@blgallowaysleepygallows.com

Crystal Galloway Headshot

Crystal Galloway • Animator
@crystalngallowaysleepygallows.com

Keith Couture Headshot

Keith Couture • Art Director
@keithacouture

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Michelle: As someone who spends most of her time with books, being able to visualize concrete connections—between my own embodied identity as an Asian American woman and the historical underpinnings of these sci-fi archetypes—was incredibly powerful. The process of watching the found clips over and over made me viscerally sick about how normalized the dehumanization of Asian bodies is—whether the disposable women clones of Cloud Atlas or the quotidian workplace dismissal of Harold in Harold and Kumar.
But rather than “fighting the stereotypes,” CA and I really sought to create a film that nuances and embraces—rather than fears—otherness, and Keith, Brittney, and Crystal quite literally animated that hope for a better future.

CA: The way this production came about was really quite remarkable. After attending a talk Michelle gave back in 2018 on dystopian Japanese American internment narratives, I knew that turning her research into a film would be an impactful way to display how American race making affects minoritized peoples in different ways for the sake of U.S. empire building. The following weeks became a flurry of reading her articles and highlighting the material that eventually became Inhuman Figures' script.
To fill any visual gaps between the clips featured in our film, I immediately knew Keith, a friend I had known years before making Inhuman Figures, would be perfect for cultivating the tone and style of the film's art. But there was a catch—Keith had never done full animation before. Luckily, however, when I saw Brittney and Crystal's work on a freelancer site, I knew their hand-hewn animation style was the perfect match. The Galloways took Keith's character concepts and drew them precisely as Keith did without any notes. None. It was a virtual mind-meld with Keith as Brittney and Crystal drew his concepts to life infallibly—an inarticulably rare and special process.
But what made this production truly special for me was that the team reflected the very multiracial coalition building that Michelle's research and teaching exudes. It was her comparative practices that manifested this film into existence. If it wasn't for seeing myself—a mixed Black, Filipino, white American—reflected within her research and writing, I'm not so sure this film would have become what it is today: a vehicle for understanding each other's histories so that we can see ourselves in the racialized other.

Brittney and Crystal Galloway: There were 2 historical moments that resonated with us. First was the naming of the Iron Fish Butcher. As black women, bringing up racial issues is often met with sentiments along the lines of “why do you make everything about race?”. But then we learn about something like this where a machine was named the “Iron Chink” because it was made to replace Chinese workers. Historically in America, everything was already about race, and we need to talk about that more.
The other moment was learning about Afong Moy, the Chinese woman put on display for the public. We have heard of Sarah Baartman and knew people with physical “abnormalities” were put on display, but we had never heard of Afong Moy. It really got us thinking about how invisible Asian American issues are, and more projects like this are needed.

Keith: I remember an early meeting where CA was explaining how the CRISPR virus worked and that we needed to create an animation of the virus to visually demonstrate the section of narration Michelle had recently written—a summary of Larissa Lai's Saltfish Girl. At this point I thought, "I am in over my head! How am I supposed to picture what a microscopic virus is doing?! I'm an artist, not a doctor!" But now I can't imagine the movie without that silent, animated narrative, in which Brittney and Crystal beautifully depict these big, abstract concepts Michelle is talking about. I think it's significant that we chose to visualize the ideas in Michelle's research using animation, an art form with such a sordid history of exploiting Asian artists' labor. To me, Inhuman Figures doesn't just challenge the hierarchies of racial capitalism with its message, it also shows that it's possible to make animated stories without exploiting artists.

This project was supported by a research grant from the Alumnae of Northwestern University and a Northwestern University Provost Faculty Grant for Research in Humanities, Social Sciences, and the Arts.