ABSTRACT
Better Luck Tomorrow (Justin Lin, 2002) is one of the few mainstream US youth films in which all of the major characters are Asian Americans. The plot of this film revolves around the academic and criminal activities of four Orange County high school students – Ben (Parry Shen), Virgil (Jason Tobin), Han (Sung Kang), and Daric (Roger Fan). Better Luck Tomorrow is an important film because of the inclusion it insists on for Asian Americans in youth films in general and in the teen film genre in particular. The niche-yet-mainstream musical activity mirrors the uncomfortable status of Better Luck Tomorrow as a teen film and the awkward representation of the film's protagonists as All-American teens. Ethnicity is inaudible in the soundtrack, but the marginality of the music still sides with and lends further musical agency to the film's protagonists.
