“Crazy Rich Asians” from an Asian American’s Perspective

Ting Ting Chen
PERIOD
Published in
4 min readJul 25, 2018
scene from “Crazy Rich Asians”

This summer, I constantly found myself in uncomfortable situations in which the movie, Crazy Rich Asians was brought up. When asked my thoughts on the film, I say the simple truth: I read it my freshman year of high school and thought I was destined to be Rachel Chu. Only afterwards did I realize that I liked it so much because I rarely read novels in which the main characters are Asian. In Kwan’s series, Asians played as love interests, protagonists, antagonists, and everything in-between. Even though I am not “Crazy Rich,” I can clearly see how Kwan undeniably captures the mannerisms of Asian people. One part of the story that I remember in particular is how a mom stayed with her daughter when visiting, despite having more than enough money to stay at a hotel. As a fifteen year old, these qualities made Crazy Rich Asians feel relatable and personal to me.

It is not surprising that Crazy Rich Asians has received much publicity as it is the first movie in twenty years to feature an Asian majority cast. The underrepresentation of Asians in films has been problematic since the beginning of Hollywood. In the early 1900s, the British author of the Fu Manchu series described the character as the “yellow peril incarnate in one man.” The popularity of the series shed a negative light on the Asian race. Asians were both rarely represented and portrayed as villainous.

Soon thereafter, a wave of anti-Asian thought rhetoric in the United States created yellow face, the first widely recognized Asian appearance in American pop culture. Used to make a white actor look East Asian, their skin would be painted yellow, their eyebrows would be arched, and their eyes would be pulled to look smaller. Shockingly, in this “politically correct” day-and-age, films containing actors wearing yellow face are no less renowned than they were decades ago. Breakfast at Tiffany’s is an industry favorite, and the fact that the third biggest star in the film, Mickey Rooney, is wearing yellow face is rarely brought up. His role as a Japanese photographer was the only non-white one in the film, which just makes it exponentially more disappointing as he is played by a white man. It is shocking how much our society enjoys movies that propagate racist behavior.

Even when yellow face declined in popularity, there was not a rise in the amount of Asian American actors in Hollywood. While both Asian actors and white actors auditioned for Asian characters, only white actors were being cast. For example, in 1935, MGM cast German-born Luise Rainer over Chinese American May Wong in its adaptation of Pearl S. Beck’s The Good Earth, which details the story of a Chinese peasant family before World War I. The problem persists today — just recently, Emma Stone was cast as a half Asian character in “Aloha.” While director Cameron Crowe later apologized for doing so, the fact of the matter is that Asians seeking representation in media are vastly overlooked.

A study by the USC Annenberg School of Communication and Journalism showed that industry racism is still extremely prevalent today. In 2014, a mere five percent of speaking roles in the 100 top grossing movies went to Asian actors, compared to the 12.5 percent for black actors and the whooping 73 percent for white actors. To this day, more white actresses have won Oscars for playing Asians in film than Asian-American actresses have won at all. In another more recent annual study conducted, research showed that Asians are the least represented racial group in the media.

This brings me back to my point about Crazy Rich Asians — while I enjoyed reading the books, it is frightening to think that this is being marketed as THE Asian movie because it is evident to me that there are still so many problems that need to be addressed. Why did they hire a Japanese movie star to play a Chinese character? Why was a half Asian male hired to portray a fully Asian one? At the same time, the fact that there has been so much coverage just because it is an Asian led film in itself should raise eyebrows as it is a sign of how underrepresented Asians are even in this progressive time.

For these reasons, I feel like it is my duty to watch Crazy Rich Asians. Beggars can’t be choosers, and being an Asian American looking for representation in media can feel like being a beggar. It is up to us to enact the necessary steps needed for change, which is why the undeniable hype of Crazy Rich Asians, should be fueled, and why another Asian-led movie should follow. I want to see Asians portrayed as regular people. I want to watch a movie with an Asian majority cast and forget why it is different. We can not lose the momentum that we have found, or else we will have to wait another two decades for an Asian-led film.

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