Crazy Rich Asian broke records this weekend, like the highest grossing movie with an Asian protagonist. I spent the weekend trying to, and eventually succeeding, get a ticket in the Bay Area.
On Diasporic Asians
I have been spending time in the Bay Area since I was a very young girl. Milpitas was a place of cactus, flea markets, weathered mountains, laughter, and family for me. As a young child, I felt only vaguely different than most people in the region. Now, all these years later, whites are the minority in much of the Bay Area. The popularity of the film on the opening weekend in the region is therefore not surprising. However, the broad appeal across Asian groups is telling.
Asian is different for American Asians. Asia is an enormous continent, about 4.4 times the size of Europe. China alone has 299 extant languages. Dozens of religions are practices in the region. In Asia, geographic proximity is often the greatest connecting factor of the broad range of people.
Outside of Asia, negotiating Asianness is more complicated. To the Western gaze, many Asian peoples are mutually indistinguishable. People might assign ethnicity based on perceptions of appearance, like telling a Korean person that they look Chinese. Linguistic simplification is common. Broad groups of people might be colloquially discussed under one label, like calling Bhutanese, Nepalis, Pakistanis, Sri Lankans all Indian.
The positioning of the Asian against whiteness has had clear ramifications for the identity of the diasporic Asian. Asians consistently see themselves as a loosely tied collective while at the same time living in dissent of this state. Said differently, diasporic Asians often feel allied with other Asians, but they also foster biases against other Asians. Asian on Asian prejudice is common in immigrant communities, but they often act as a whole in relation to the majority.
It is no surprise then that I, an Indian, felt drawn to support a movie about Asians, despite my deep-seated negative feelings of the treatment of Indians in Singapore by the Chinese in power. I, like most people from hailing ethnically from the Asian subcontinent, understand thanks to the diaspora, we share more than separates us. We might be together because of the white, Western gaze, but we Asians are now in it together.
What does it mean to be a diasporic Asian?
Asians understand and express complexity. The wealthy Chinese in Singapore are generally diasporic, arriving on the island to displace the original inhabitants. While they maintained their language, foods, and customs, they also picked up new ones from the other inhabitants. The identity of the Chinese in Singapore is not unlike that of an American, who might enjoy the quintessential American cuisine of spaghetti, bratwursts, and tacos (all immigrant submissions to our national culture.) Identity is, therefore, not static, but instead piece-quilted from their many pasts and their current truths.
Being Asian is a performative act. Just as the characters in Crazy Rich Asians effortlessly code-switch between languages and situations, diasporic Asians negotiate their spaces in the West. They are all things to all people, and everything to themselves. Indians are desis at temple when amongst brown faces, but then become Asian boosters at pan-Asian festivals (and showings of Crazy Rich Asians.) They don’t discuss these positional shifts, maybe don’t even notice them. Instead, they exist ephemerally in their every interaction with other people.
What does this mean for Cultural Organizations?
First and foremost, Asians want to see themselves. They will go outside their regular behavior for opportunities to do so. They are so starved for representations of living Asians, that they will take stories of any Asians. Museum and cultural organizations, arguably, do a good job of showing Asia in the past. The Asia they show is often long gone, transmutted, transformed, and augmented since the reigns of colonialism have been loosened.(Colonialism might not be a political state, but it is still an emotional one.) Museums and cultural organizations need to reconsider the ways they consider Asia and Asians to include the present.
Asians also want their cake and want to eat it too. They want cultural organizations to understand that collective noun that is the word Asian. They want to be seen as part of the group as well as separate. Crazy Rich Asians in their marketing did just this. Advanced screenings targeted Asians rit large. Bloggers of many ethnicities got on the bandwagon. The movie was positioned as a victory for Asians, rather than a movie about rich Chinese who were hell-bent on setting themselves apart from everyone else including less fortunate Asians. This film is a moment of solidarity, not division.
Cultural organizations could strike the same note, if done correctly. Often cultural organizations focus on the past. The past of China, for example, has no more relevance for a Bangladeshi than a Slovenian. But, if those topics are brought into focus through the lens of diasporic Chinese, a broad range of Asians might be interested.
At the same time, Asians want to dig deeper into their individual identity. While Crazy Rich Asians brought Asians together in movie theaters, the film focused on differences. The main character, Nick, is a wealthy ethnically Chinese Singapore-born New Yorker. His mother dislikes his ethnically Chinese professor girl friend due to her meager circumstances at birth. While in terms of disaporic Asians, these two individuals are considered equally Asian, the film’s plot focuses on the disparity between the two lovers. Asian might be a big collective in the diaspora, but that doesn’t make everyone equal.
Cultural organizations, therefore, have to walk a fine line that balances embracing the diasporic collective that is Asian while also showcasing the individual identities of Asian cultures. This complicated proposition needs to be born through in interpretation and programming.
How can organizations best do this?
- Start with Asians. Most diasporic individuals spend a good chunk of their lives negotiating identity, if they want to or not. They will have years more experience understanding the complexity and code-switching on diasporic Asianness. They will know norms that might be invisible to individuals of the majority.
- Expect compromise. Interpretation, for example, usually comes from an academic background. Much of museum collections are objects for the curators and faith for the originators. Developing a nuanced interpretation that privileges living Asians will require ceding ground. While the battle might feel hard lost on the part of organizations, the war to get bigger audiences is worth winning.
- Think of failure as an important step. Crazy Rich Asians was about power and love. These two topics have been perennial favorites for humans for milennia. (Think of the power Eve accidentally weilded over her beloved, Adam, when she chose to eat the apple.) Cultural organizations rarely have such juicy subjects and definitely don’t have such fat budgets. Instead of aiming for the moon, organizations need to look for small ways to connect with Asian communities, fail, and then improve.
Being more successful at attracting Asians, or any minority group, is a long courtship. Trying to make it a fling will only end in heartbreak.
