By Lau Lu-Zheng
Crazy Rich Asians, by Jon Chu was released in 2018, and blew Hollywood and it's international spectatorship by storm. also authored the documentaries of Justin Bieber: Believe (2013) and Never Say Never (2011). If one is into dance movies, you’ve probably seen his youth-audience targeted smash hit series Step Up. Still no clue? How about G.I Joe (2013) and Now You See Me 2 (2016)?
The film won the 2019 Golden Globes Best Comedy Motion Picture, alongside many other awards. However, it also gained controversy, criticized for exoticizing South-east Asians and painting them in an unrealistic light. In this article, I explore the means in which people might deem this novel-adaptation an “Orientalist” film, and how instead, it can be seen as the breaking of stereotypes, and the celebration of the Southeast.
The Palestine-American critical thinker Edward Said (1935-2003) in his book, Orientalism regards the term Orientalism not just as “the academic study of the Orient”, but historically, the subjugation of the Orient. He continues to say that the “Orient”, then is not just the homogenized Middle East, East and Southeast Asia, but the advantageous(lucrative? shrewd?) epistemological mindset of the Western, as he writes: “(the) Western style for dominating, restructuring, and having authority over the Orient.” (3) From sensual depictions of Middle Eastern women in paintings of the 1800s, to the films we indulge in to this day, Said heightens our senses to the historical and present-day media that subconsciously play into this idea that the Westerner domineers over the eroticised, sensual and mystical Easterner. However, Said’s discourse and exposure of Orientalism does not conclude with his advocacy for boycott, much like we do in our hypersensitive present. Instead, in the 1970s when the book was published during the height of Orientalist Hollywood filmmaking, his total focus was against the “distortion and inaccuracy”(9) of the communities depicted.
In Crazy Rich Asians, Rachel Chu, an Asian-American (much like the director himself) travels to Singapore to meet her boyfriend’s family who turns out to be the richest family in the city. In this isolated reality above the gentry, one cannot argue against the patterns that might convey Orientalism: Nick’s scoffing mother despises Rachel for her poverty, and sends investigators to expose her family’s messy past, exemplifying a overly political and harsh asian older woman — whereas younger asian women are seen in colorful dresses and bikinis, seemingly one-dimensionally present for their exotic beauty. How can one condone this apparent blatant misrepresentation of peoples, just for an aesthetically pleasing epic?
Often we are concerned with the matter of representation, and indeed with the monopolization of media by Hollywood, it tends that only the Western upper class can be heard, but this does not disclude the diaspora that make it out of their quasi-rural countries. Jon M. Chu is a first generation Chinese-American, his parents immigrants from China, now running a restaurant. The film is adapted from the fictional novel by Kevin Kwan, but is based on the Chinese (race) in Singapore, not from China — significantly different in culture.
Hence, it would have been easy for Chu to have depicted the population he has never been to, homogenizing “Chinese”(referring to nation) culture, assimilating Singaporean Chinese into the larger nation of China that he would have any personal knowledge of. Instead, there was intentionality in the preserving of accuracy in the portrayal of cultures, much like how Said hopes in his book, Orientalism. In an interview with Vine, he recalls specific mise en scène, referring to the Peranakan (mixed Chinese-Malay) speciality wall tile designs and the set team's mistake of putting up white lanterns, a symbol of death used in funerals instead of red lanterns, prosperity inviting symbols. Getting mahjong experts to build a symbolic game for them, asking for input from local actors: Additional post-production work, delays and costs were added to the production because of Jon’s stress on getting culture right and not distorting it.
Chu can also be seen to advocate for the Asian acting community in Hollywood, much less deprecate them. After 25 years, it would historically be the second ever full Asian cast to be represented in Hollywood studios since the screening of Joy Luck Club in 1993. In between and even before, it was not uncommon for the Asian Hollywood community to play the side role, belittling themselves to fit the racially motivated role. “They think we’ll say yes to anything and we’ll just be grateful,” Constance Wu, lead actor of Rachel Chu, says to a writer about her career.
Jon M. Chu even throws a punch towards orthodox Hollywood by casting Ken Jeong, an American-Korean actor as a Singaporean-Chinese man. In his most famous casting as Leslie Chow, an ineloquent, thick accented mafia leader in The Hangover, Chow retorts: “I'm Chinese, not Korean!” In Crazy Rich Asians, Jeong satirically plays into the stereotype, he begins his appearance in the film by jokingly speaking to Rachel in a thick, incomprehensible Asian accent — only to immediately switch back to fluent english and tell his daughters to finish their nuggets, there are starving children in America — a covert blast against classic misrepresentation in Hollywood.
Jon M. Chu even throws a punch towards orthodox Hollywood by casting Ken Jeong, an American-Korean actor as a Singaporean-Chinese man. In his most famous casting as Leslie Chow, an ineloquent, thick accented mafia leader in The Hangover, Chow retorts: “I'm Chinese, not Korean!” In Crazy Rich Asians, Jeong satirically plays into the stereotype, he begins his appearance in the film by jokingly speaking to Rachel in a thick, incomprehensible Asian accent — only to immediately switch back to fluent english and tell his daughters to finish their nuggets, there are starving children in America — a covert blast against classic misrepresentation in Hollywood.
Historical Cinema is all too peppered with Orientalism, and to those that have seen it happen all too often, ex: Lawrence of Arabia(1962), My Geisha(1962), and even movies that are closer to our hearts such as Indiana Jones(1984), that play into the mystical men and women of the Middle East tamed by the White male, it is not unforgivable to be hyper-sensitive of it in films that attempt to capture and celebrate diversity instead. It is then, as critics of the work graciously provided for us, our responsibility to take up arms against those that might, as Said suggests, distort and inaccurately portray communities, as well as hold up and advocate the minority that stands against a pitifully undiverse industry. Certainly, Chu plays with the conventional stereotypes that have seasoned the writer’s rooms, but through the explanations of these generalizations, he exemplifies a new wave of filmmakers that risk crossing this polarizing matter, without ill-representing or inaccurately depicting communities in the process, ultimately bringing new perspectives and exposure to the International spectatorship.
