Don Bonus Introduces A Version of Himself

As high school graduation and adult life looms near him, AKA Don Bonus's eponymous subject has many paths laid out in front of him. Not unlike others, Don's life can be treacherous, unpredictable, and difficult. Don's life is made all the more difficult by his positionality as a first-generation Cambodian-American refugee situated in Californian housing projects' crumbling infrastructure. Fleeing one war-torn landscape for the nation-state's vague safety that caused the devastation is not an unfamiliar tale of migration. The projected allure of self-fulfillment beckons many to cross dangerous obstacles to participate in the great American experiment of mobility — to abandon their material belongings, all while unknowingly carrying the historical and emotional baggage of neoliberalism and settling in the weighted squalor of the state. National concern has shifted towards profit, leaving the newcomers unable and virtually forbidden to enjoy the transition. The pressure coalesces and reminds us: encounters of racism, familial strife, and violence become commonplace. Equipped with a camera, Don demonstrates the struggle to cope with what has become normalized, and uncontrollable, through his eyes. 

It feels disingenuous to say that Don's position as the film subject enriches the autobiographical documentary. Without Don's control over the camera, however, internal suffering, acute pain (and the suffering of others like him), and the honesty that ground the film would have been jeopardized. Placed squarely in the center of the frame, Don's talking head monologues offer the chance to air his grievances and frustrations, often immediately after their occurrences as a conspiratorial and trusted confidante. The unlimited, interrupted space and time to describe and reshape his encounter exemplifies the best of the documentary: Don's unique perspective and history, his suggestions for structural improvement, his consequential assumptions about himself and those around him. It offers a chance for Don to confess the difficulty of active participation in a system that provides little comforts to him— the heady excitement of a new home after five years of living amidst onslaughts of violence and robberies momentarily cheers Don before his younger brother's attempted murder trial unfolds; the idea of college success dims after unhelpful conversations and the perpetual absence of aid. Here, the fragmentation evident within Don's family becomes all the more striking and heightens his overarching use of the apparatus. With no other choice but to follow the daily motion of the life allotted to him, Don finds himself without a support system. The camera becomes a vessel in which he heals his loneliness and isolation. 

A camera directed by Don's bodily impulses does not just concentrate on the systematic invasion of his inner life. The familiar may be restrictive in the documentary, as Don explains in one sequence outside, but it has always been his home. Graduation celebrations, New Years' Eve festivities, public school hangouts are the slivers of happiness that buoy Don amid conflict. Bustling cultures are apparent within the periphery of the film, but all become notably overshadowed in the struggle of living as underestimated and victimized. Don's friend group's brief appearances particularly demonstrate how the identity marker of Asian-American as a bonding agent to centralize similarities for protection can often elide the tension of difference within the perceived monolith. Don points to how the model immigrant minority dictates that all Asian parents must hover over their children, but how Cambodian Americans, in particular, offer a counter-narrative to the presumed living standard. Don's reality of despondence, instability, and uncertainty contradicts the assumption— but not for lack of trying. Don, consciously aware of the expectations he must face as an Asian immigrant and an American citizen, perceives his surroundings as imminent failure and determinedly focuses on education as America encourages. 

Ultimately, the very thing that makes the documentary's experimental nature refreshing is also what makes it so particularly devastating. Although the primary concern has never been about the viewer's comfort, Don— fighting a seemingly impossible uphill battle against family, against his neighborhood, against— has always had our sympathies, and we shift in discomfort at his suffering. I thought that Heyang Kae's article detailing the film's collateral narratives, or the intersections and implicit connections between US imperialism American neoliberal policies, expounded how the film AKA Don Bonus was able to encompass so many different topics about the specific social order and context with its content. A lot of the author's critiques were undoubtedly valid, namely that the simple fact that the editing component of the documentary's calls forth questions about the sequences, but I have to disagree with the idea that the film failed in its conventional "reproduction of truth" because of the individualistic focus on Don as a subject. By the simple fact that the camera functions as an extension of Don, it differs from mainstream narrative films that seek to ideologically comfort and market towards an audience. Centered on Don's experience, the film demonstrates how a subject entrenched in systemic intersections can deeply and personally feel their effects, and they can become shrouded in its ideological framework. I don't think there would have been as visceral of an emotional response without Don's presence and perspective filling the frame. 

But as much as the individual perspective informs and contextualizes the setting, it ultimately endangers the entire cinematic venture. With its ending, the film questions its capacity as a social restorative product, demonstrating how genuine pursuits for authenticity and subjectivity can become muddled in the very same framework that persecutes the marginalized subject. Don shyly shows the print of his gleaming diploma and waxes prophetic words about the divergence after high school, mentioning the possibility of college but refraining from detailing his own fate. With the image of Don's lonely bid towards self-responsibilization— adorned in a cap and gown and the thin paper— there is perhaps the suggestion of hope. However, the achievement loses its gleam with the unforgettable knowledge that this has always been Don's life: one with far few choices.