The box-office success of Crazy Rich Asians has created a media buzz spawning the hashtag #asianaugust and drawing comparisons to Black Panther as a breakthrough A-List film for a neglected minority in Hollywood. In a gamble to gain a major studio platform for their film, author/screenwriter Kevin Kwan and director Jon M. Chu, both with previous Hollywood credits to their names, stuck to their guns through a string of negotiations promoting it as a vehicle for an all-Asian cast true to the novel in the face of risk-adverse Hollywood producers prone to Whitewashing Asian stories and casting White actors in Yellowface, such as casting Scarlett Johanssen in the 2016 adaptation of the Japanese Magna Ghost in the Shell .
As the filmmakers recount in interviews, when shopping-around the project to numerous Asian artists, they were met with both skepticism and enthusiasm as one after another signed on as a labor of love intent to make it happen. The "120%" effort resulted in a polished, funny and entertaining RomCom that ticks all the boxes that Hollywood audiences respond to, raising hopes in the Asian American community the film will help us to gain mainstream acceptance that could change our status as “perpetual immigrants”.
Also raising hopes that this is starting a trend is the fact two other Asian centered films, more modestly budgeted if more ambitious artistically, were/will release in August, the Netflix adaption of Jenny Han’s coming of age romance memoir To All The Boys That I've Loved Before, and Searching, an indie suspense-thriller by Indian-American director Aneesh Chaganty, distributed by Sony Pictures.
However, as Black film director Spike Lee once observed, every few years “The Year of Black Fim” repeats, so what could be the “Next Big Thing” of this autumn, could prove to be a flash in the pan in a risk-adverse industry increasingly driven by “Franchise” films with “Bankable” stars, writers, and directors with limited bandwidth for smaller films of any type, particularly by or about minorities.
Fortunately for Kwan, Chu et al, they hit pay dirt with Crazy Rich Asians and there is already a sequel in the cards, but given the conventional, mainstream nature of the film (it has been criticized as “too White” and not sufficiently “representative” of the AAPI community), it could have legs the others lack and might translate into the breakthrough for Asians the makers hope it will be.
Addressing the inclusiveness issue in an interview with Variety, Chaganty countered:
Variety: Some have criticized “Crazy Rich Asians” for failing to represent all Asian communities. How much of a responsibility do you think films with predominantly Asian casts should have to represent all kinds of Asian diversity?
They should have none, but they’re treated like they should have all of it. The second that you say any one idea, any one person, any one product, any one film represents an “entire” anything, you’re already setting yourself up for failure. If a white character is in a movie, no one says, “Is that white character representing all white people?”
The way that you solve for representing communities at large is not with a single product — it’s with many products. Quantity solves this issue. Quantity, as a whole, will hopefully represent all facets of people and all facets of a community. “Crazy Rich Asians” is not going to speak to the entire Asian-American community. It shouldn’t, and it shouldn’t have to have that responsibility. It can speak to a few people in it who maybe relate to it. Maybe ours can speak to a few others. Maybe “To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before” speaks to a different community, and hopefully stuff moving forward speaks to more and more, but it’s quantity that ends up solving these issues, not one thing.
The makers of Crazy Rich Asians are very aware of this and set on doing something about it: in an interesting turn of events, director Jon M. Chu and leading man Henry Golding stepped-up to buy out one cinema each to support the opening of Searching:
Are we asking too much?
Are we expecting Hollywood to solve a problem of systematic exclusion that has impacted Asian-Americans since the Post-Civil War Reconstruction era when various Anti-Chinese Exclusion Laws and various other regulations treaties and immigration quotas disenfranchised and prohibited immigration of Asians creating the “perpetual immigrant” status of us in American society that now extends to Mid-Easterners and the Muslim community?
Let’s briefly look at these films and consider how they might help or hinder that aim, and the messages they send about Asians.
NO SPOILER ALERTS NEEDED — PLEASE PROCEED.
Crazy Rich Asians
What’s not to like about this funny, polished, escapist fare? If you hate rags-to-riches-and-back-again romantic comedies that tick all the boxes of Boy meets Girl, a mad-chase to exotic locales and a break-up/make-up, punctuated by a cast of funny/touching/evil/good supporting characters playing to broad parody backed by a dazzling production and score, this ain’t for you. I thought it sounded lame but loved it and everyone in my audience and a bunch of my friends seemed to agree.
The cast and crew pulled out all the stops to make this an entertaining film that should convince viewers that "Asians are just like us" whatever side of the 99/1% divide they fall, and it's great to get away from our troubles for a couple of hours and watch something where Mom is Mom is Mom and no one gets shot. Zany friends you can depend on in a pinch. Rich folk with problems like us.
To its credit, it manages to contrast some problems immigrants face coming to/living in America, the cultural divide between Asian-Americans and Asian-Asians, and obviously Rich v. Poor. The demerit is that it is not a serious discourse on the Asian-American experience, most of us are not rich, and some Asian folks without a sense of humor may object to the sharply drawn character parodies.
But that is beside the point. Fun summer film and a good argument for a sequel if you are Warners Pictures.
Did I mention that Henry Golding is charming and handsome, all women love him and all middle-aged balding men hate him? At least in our house.
To All The Boys I’ve Loved Before
Netflix, to its credit, has taken a lot of chances to produce and distribute films and series with a somewhat greater diversity of story subject and cast ethnicity, reflecting their younger target audience. In fact, they lost to Warner Pictures bidding for Crazy Rich Asians when the Big Screen producer came to terms on cast and crew.
Jenny Han is a popular writer of fiction for children and young adults, and her roman à clef trilogy about her adolescence begins with To All The Boys I’ve Loved Before. A coming of age romance novel, it is based on the premise that the 16-year-old protagonist, who writes never-to-be-sent love letters to the boys she gets crushes on, loses control of the letters which land in the hands of her five targets, including her older sister's boyfriend. The mortified Lara Jean, the product of a White father and (deceased) Korean mother, must then face the consequences of declaring her ardently-expressed if fickle love, finding a partner in crime to cover her tracks and save face. Things do not go quite as planned.
As the father of a Gen 1.5 Asian female tweener, I got a lot of knowing looks from my better half while watching this assigned study project and found it entertaining and funny.
As with Crazy Rich Asians, Ms. Han was adamant that this work remain the story of an Asian girl who deals with the reality of that situation including the insecurities of being a Yolk, and the production is well-executed in every respect, rising above the usual adolescent first-love fare to explore the complexities of love, relationships, and the politics of High School life today.
As a vehicle for promoting inclusion of Asians, it is better than Crazy Rich Asians in several respects. First, it presents a Eurasian household as a normal, unremarkable thing in the USA. The family dynamics are played for what they are between siblings and parent. Laura Jean is played by Lana Condor, a Vietnamese adopted with her brother by White parents, a natural in a role to which she brings nuance and humor.
But foremost is that the story is populated by an ethnically-diverse set of boyfriends, friends, and foes, reflecting the reality of many American communities today, and an object lesson for older generations (including mine) who sometimes have difficulty calibrating to the changes our society is undergoing and the frame of younger people who have shed some of the baggage we can't.
On that level, it's not-all-Asian cast succeeds to make the case for Asian-American inclusion by example better than Crazy Rich Asians,
And it’s funny and entertaining.
The good news for Lana Condor fans is she has been cast in two new films, both roles that might have gone to non-Asian actresses a year ago; she will play Koyomi K., a supporting role in the Magna-based cyberpunk film Alita: Battle Angel, and a recurring role as Saya Kuroki in the upcoming Sci-Fi drama series Deadly Class (Sony). Rinse, repeat?
Searching
Searching has not been released yet so my knowledge here is based on pre-release clips, articles, and interviews. The writers, director, and main protagonists are Asian-Americans of Indian, Chinese and Korean descent, and the story-line is framed as the situation they live in. The premise is informed by Director Aneesh Chaganty’s previous work as a director of ads for Google. As he explained to As Technica:
"I quit my job at Google in NYC and moved to LA to make an indie movie," he tells Ars about Searching. "But I was a filmmaker at Google; I was writing, developing, and directing commercials there. And a lot of my job was to take technology and give it a larger emotional narrative that people understand."
In Searching, he aims to do that in spades: the entire film is depicted from the POV of smartphone and PC displays that play-out photos, video, texting, email, and websites to construct the narrative.
The premise is a simple and classic suspense-thriller trope; daughter Margot Kim (played at various ages by Michelle La, Kya Dawn Lau, Megan Liu, and Alex Jayne Go) goes missing and in his desperate search, her father David Kim (John Cho) hacks into her PC and learns she was not quite the person he thought he knew. A supporting cast includes Debra Messing as Detective Rosemary Vick.
The film showed at Sundance and has garnered positive reviews and word of mouth. The theatrical release is set for August 31.
Writer-producer Sev Ohanian commented that the story was not conceived as Asian-specific, but evolved to include relevant elements once cast as an Asian family, and in final form, was premiered at the Los Angeles Asian Pacific Film Festival because Aneesh and he fought hard to represent Asians.
I would argue Searching is what the cast and crew of Crazy Rich Asians are fighting for; acceptance of films produced by or with Asians with their characters included based on merit or storyline, and as members of American society, not mere stereotypes or alien visitors to earth.
Not different than anyone else. Except when we are.
Three great trailers, each a little different. Looks good.
So? What now?
Obviously, nothing is that simple. Minorities, women and people of various genders, shapes, and sizes out of the Hollywood mainstream have struggled for decades to get representation in film and gain the opportunity to work at every level of an industry dominated by White male decision-makers.
Each group has their own history, problems, advantages, and disadvantages, but as the doors creak open, there is potential to build momentum and common-cause for all to benefit if we don’t approach it as a zero-sum game (perhaps a tall order in such a cut-throat competitive industry).
Factors distinguishing Asian-Americans as a class include:
- Our cultural and ethnic background is rich but diverse (something shared with Latinos) despite being defined by narrow stereotypes in popular culture — we have room to grow but difficulty establishing a “brand”
- Our history is largely untaught and unknown in American society, hence our status as “perpetual immigrants” and the perception we don’t integrate — again, a source of material
- There is a significant cultural bifurcation between long-established incumbents (3rd generation plus) and recent “FOB” immigrants (becoming a majority) more culturally/economically diverse
- Because of the severe historical exclusion from the industry, Asian-Americans have not developed the depth of industry involvement other minorities have; most of the creatives with higher standing were transplants from Asia although this is rapidly changing
- Unlike other minorities, Asia has its own, regional entertainment industries, notably India, China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Japan, Korea, Singapore/Malaysia, Philippines, and Indonesia, with smaller local industries in SE Asian countries that are a potential source of talent and finance
This suggests cause for optimism in the long term.
However, in the immediate future, I do not see the opportunity for Asians as a class to do any better than other minorities and we will continue struggling as “outsiders” in a society where we are perceived as foreign and do not yet have the demographic clout to change that. We might be the fastest growing minority, but our numbers and fragmentation beyond coastal magnet cities are a drag on political clout.
We need to look no further than the Democratic Party and Daily Kos to see this at work.
In the 13+ years I have been here, there has never been an Asian presence of significance on the site; no featured writers or editors, no significant awareness of Asians as a community or a part of this community, and only occasional, token acknowledgment, even when some of our political leaders make the front page news. While some of us network here in an ad hoc fashion, we simply do not have critical mass.
This reflects, to a large degree, the status quo of Asians in society and in the Democratic Party, something for which we are partly to blame by accepting our situation and not making more noise. The fact that Asians are the second most loyal Dem voters after Blacks, is such a well-kept secret it might come as a surprise to many of self-identified political junkies here.
This is something we hope to change. The political disruption created by the 2016 election has created an opportunity for women and minorities who are running (and winning) in record numbers, including a number of Asians. Consequently, mentions and awareness of Asian Dems has clicked-up one small division here, Asians were in slightly higher profile at Netroots Nation 2018, and an Asian woman, Huiying B Chan has joined the Daily Kos staff as a Racial Justice Campaigner.
However, Daily Kos demographics being what they are, and the conventional American political framing of race relations as primarily a White v.Black equation (in only the past decade have Hispanic “Browns” broken-through to the mainstream consciousness) I think Asians will have to wait a bit longer for our turn here.
Despite Markos’ manifesto ”People of color are the future of the party—and the nation. Democrats can't forget that” I don’t expect things to change here quickly, and the Party establishment is even slower.
So why would we expect Hollywood to be any different?
DEBATE, please. To prime the pump, Jian Yang speaks ….
And some data
And the awesome Angry Asian Man blog you ought to know better.
Please honor our leaders for we stand on the shoulders of giants:
Alonso del Arte — New Jon M. Chu movie could be a major step forward for Asian representation in Hollywood
Sara R — Kitchen Table Kibitzing, August 24, 2018: "Crazy Rich Asians"
EWembley — ”America supports diversity: “Crazy Rich Asians” tops weekend box office
That is all.
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