Thoughts on Crazy Rich Asians from a Singaporean raised in America.

Joy Luck Club opened in theatres across the United States in September 1993. I was a sophomore in university in New York City at the time. Just after it opened, I remember asking a Chinese friend of mine if he’d caught the film and what he thought of it. “Horrible,” he joked, “an all Asian cast and no one’s doing any kung fu. What a waste.”
When I did get around to seeing it, I watched it with three friends, all white, Jewish women. I thought the movie was okay. My companions, however, loved it. As soon as the movie was over, they rushed outside with tears in their eyes to find phone booths so that they could call their mothers and tell them how much they missed and loved them. Joy Luck Club had a much greater effect on them than it did on me. Which makes sense given that the film is really about mother-daughter relationships.
So while I appreciate that Wayne Wang’s film was seminal — the first all-Asian Hollywood studio feature — I had no emotional connection to the movie. In actuality, a film like Harold and Kumar Go To White Castle, as silly as it was, resonated more with me (and, I’d suggest, thousands of other Asian or Asian-American men, not that most would ever admit that in public). That movie was funny. It represented, in slapstick and satirical ways, all the BS Asian guys in America grow up dealing with.
(Asian women, on the flip side, have been equally stereotyped in Hollywood films and American society, but at least they’re considered attractive, albeit looked at condescendingly as “exotic”.)
This is not something I suspect most of my Singaporean Chinese peers truly understand. In Singapore, if you’re Chinese, you’re one of the majority. Growing up as a minority in the West, and especially not a cool minority, in fact specifically the uncool minority, can truly take a toll on one’s sense of self. Asian men, in particular, have it tough because until recently, the stereotype of the Asian guy was of a nerdy, unattractive, socially awkward, perverted math geek who knew his way around a computer server better than the body of a member of the opposite sex. Bruce Lee was an aberration. For most Americans growing up in the 1980s, Sixteen Candles’ Long Duk Dong was the image top of mind.
When I was in university, the Asian Students Union held a forum, inviting prominent Asian-American male actors to sit on a panel titled “Asian Men: Sexy, Sexless, or Sexist”. It was one of the whiniest, most cringeworthy 120 minutes of my life as I listened to classmate after classmate complain about not being cool enough to score a date with the girls of their dreams. Sadly, this was reflective of a large number of Asian-American men in the 1980s and 1990s — they grew up feeling slightly inferior and much less than cool.
Because being (East) Asian was so uncool, many Asian dudes would adopt the cultural norms and signifiers of cooler minorities. If your skin colour and features permitted, you could pretend to be Latino, Native American or even Eskimo (seriously, I knew someone who tried!). It was a comical but common sight to see teen boys in New York’s Chinatown in the early 1990s sporting Africa medallions, poor attempts at high-top fades, and the latest hip-hop gangsta rap fashions. They wanted to be anything but Chinese.
I’m painting this picture so that my Singaporean friends can understand just how significant a movie like Crazy Rich Asians is for so many Asians who have grown up or spent considerable parts of their lives in the West, and especially the United States. And especially the boys. Because this is the first mainstream Hollywood picture that stars Asian men who aren’t geeks nor are they being asked to do backflips and defeat an army of baddies with ancient fighting techniques.
Yes, they do take their shirts off, as we’ve already seen from the trailers and the film, but that isn’t such a bad thing. Of course, Asian boys have been whipping off their shirts and whipping female fans into a tizzy in Korean and Japanese dramas for ages now. But the audiences for these shows are mostly Asian women. To showcase Asian men as sex symbols to a global and largely non-Asian audience is a big thing. It’s no wonder director John Chu had a such a hard time casting the film’s leading man.
There are, of course, so many detractors. Many are beating the drums of their own socio-political agendas. Netizens and commentators are criticizing how our country is being portrayed; they’re worried the world will only see the lion city as a playground for spoilt one-percenters. Others feel offended by the kinds of people portrayed, and not portrayed, in the book and movie. One of my own close friends has already taken to Twitter and publicly declared that she knows enough (and is disgusted by these) crazy rich Asians so she sees no point in ever supporting the film.
I find myself disagreeing with many of these critics, not because I disagree with what they have pointed out; I mean it’s super obvious this movie does not all represent the multiracial melting pot that we actually are. Nor does it show the real social differences (and inequalities) that are becoming much more of a real political issue for many of us. I disagree because I’m coming at this from a totally different perspective.
Firstly, Crazy Rich Asians is a satire; well, at least the book was. The characters are caricatures. As are the depictions of the outlandish homes, habits and histories of these characters. That’s what made the story particularly fun. Author Kevin Kwan was not trying to write a definitive and accurate report on the state of present day Singapore (and Hong Kong) and its class structure. He’s no sociologist or historian. So why are we criticizing him and movie director John Chu for not showcasing the breadth of our society? He was, in a fashion more akin to auteurs like Whit Stillman, simply taking the piss out of the aspects of his own peers that he saw as deserving of ridicule. At the same time, he attempted to include some real life lessons and serious messages within his pages. Which is basically what a good satire, in the vein of great satirists such as Christopher Buckley, Joseph Heller, Mark Twain, Kurt Vonnegut, and Timur Vermes, has always been. The Oxford dictionary defines satire as, “The use of humour, irony, exaggeration, or ridicule to expose and criticize people’s stupidity or vices, particularly in the context of contemporary politics and other topical issues.”
Of course, we Singaporeans have always been a little thin-skinned, quick to make jokes about others, but ready to trade blows whenever anyone pokes fun at us. Let me also say that I’m not at all offended by Crazy Rich Asians. Nor should most Singaporeans. Because the book and the movie weren’t about me and you. The simple truth is that the vast majority of us (mediocre me included) aren’t from that strata of society that’s being lampooned, so we might as well join in on the fun and have a laugh at expense of the so-called HNWs, Tatlings, or whatever else they or the media are calling them these days.
Given the satirical nature of the film, an intelligent viewer should understand that the Singapore being depicted is not the real Singapore, but only an exaggerated sliver of our society. But even if Billy Joe Bob from some small town in the Midwest of America doesn’t get it, I’m actually okay with that. Having lived for twenty years in the United States, I have no problem with its less worldly citizens thinking that Singapore is a fast-paced, cosmopolitan, commercial capital, with a great entertainment and party scene that attracts the most beautiful people from all corners of the globe. That image sure beats the idea that we’re some dull, autocratic third world country that canes teenagers, doesn’t allow people to chew gum, and that’s actually a part of mainland China.
Crazy Rich Asians has the potential to kick-start something very big. For many Asians in the West it already represents a zeitgeist that has been building for years. Whether we like it or not, American media is everywhere. The vast majority of movies in theatres in our own country and so many others, the shows we watch on TV or Netflix every week, come from the United States. And while America’s soft power has taken a hit thanks to The Donald, its influence in the world of entertainment is still undeniable.
If successful — and so far, the response (and the box office takings) has been great — Crazy Rich Asians could open the doors to more films and television shows fronted by lead Asian characters. If this becomes something American and global audiences come to accept (as normal), the long-term effect has the potential to be enormous. And I am not talking about an effect on Hollywood, but on people all over the world. Researchers much smarter and more qualified than me have underlined the importance (and growing importance) of providing positive role models for children and young adults. For an entire group of people, who have been the not-so-cool minority their entire lives, to be finally given the shot of being the cool kids, that’s a really special thing.
And wouldn’t it be amazing if, for the kids to come, they’re able to grow up in a society in which the images and depictions of people that look like them inspire them to be anything they want, without ever putting them down or making them feel inferior to anyone else? That would be something very much worth fighting for and supporting.
Of course, this is a lot to pin on the success of one film. Even if Crazy Rich Asians is a blockbuster hit, it could be, like Joy Luck Club, a unicorn, and most of its cast members might never get a starring role ever again. Personally, I hope the opposite happens. I hope that the film is opening the eyes of Hollywood producers to the amazing storytelling and acting talent within Asia (not just Asian-America), and more and more doors open. I hope that this leads to more stories, depicting a wider range of Asian experiences, being told through popular media. And I hope that the characterisations of Asians in Western film and television inspire us instead of making us feel ashamed. I hope my own kids never grow up having to see new versions of Long Duk Dong (Sixteen Candles), Short Round (Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom), Ben Jabituya (Short Circuit), Russell (from Up), or Data (The Goonies) on screen.
There’s a movement happening to help Crazy Rich Asians achieve a massive box office success. Witnessing that, and the reaction of audiences, has been wonderful. I was super happy to fork over my money for tickets earlier this week.
At the end of the day, I’d much rather be on the side of enabling the success of a film that might play a small but important role in shifting society’s needle towards greater diversity than criticise it for whatever (small) shortcomings it might have.
(The author, while Singaporean, lived in the United States from the age of 2 through 18 and then again from 20 to 24.)
