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Crazy Rich Asians: More “Crazy Rich” Than “Asian”

“Being rich is the new white.” The problem with calling Crazy Rich Asians a win for Asian representation is that not all Asians are rich, and not all Asians are Chinese.

Sep 15, 2018

Almost everything has been said already about Crazy Rich Asians, the first major Hollywood studio film to feature an all-Asian cast since The Joy Luck Club in 1993. The hallmark romantic comedy has already grossed over $170 million worldwide and boasts a 93 percent approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes. This has prompted news outlets like The New York Times to herald it as a watershed moment for Asian representation in the U.S.
However, with increased demand for on-screen diversity — think the all-female cast of Ocean’s 8 and the all-black cast of Black Panther, for instance — Crazy Rich Asians has been endlessly and fervently picked apart. Is it Asian enough? Where does it fail in terms of representation? What, if anything, does it get right?
Crazy Rich Asians flirts with ideas of cultural identity, family and class. The Jane Austen-esque plot follows American-born Chinese NYU Economics professor Rachel Chu (Constance Wu) as she flies to her boyfriend Nick Young’s (Henry Golding) home country of Singapore for his best friend’s wedding. She is unaware that the Youngs are gobsmackingly rich and that Nick is essentially Singapore’s most eligible bachelor. Rachel must face Nick’s disapproving mother, Eleanor Young (Michelle Yeoh) and the upper echelons of Singaporean socialites who look down on her as a westernized, middle-class Asian-American.
I enjoyed the film’s more female-oriented take on the romantic comedy genre, the impeccable performance of Michelle Yeoh as iron-willed Eleanor, and the daring soundtrack in English, Cantonese and Mandarin. But I couldn’t help but reflect that the film was more crazy rich than Asian. The film does touch on the nuances of having a dual cultural identity and the sting of being labeled an “unrefined banana: yellow on the outside, white on the inside” as Rachel’s best friend, Peik Lin (Awkwafina) puts it. However, as Jerrine Tan points out, the exploration of what it means to be X ethnicity in diaspora doesn’t play out in a neutral fictional fusion setting like Wakanda in Black Panther, but in a real country — Singapore—with real problems.
Singapore, as a playground for the uber-rich, becomes a plot device for Asian-American awakening. All the film’s set-pieces are wrapped up in the shiny escapist fantasy of the Singaporean elite: a world of first class airplane suites, bachelorette parties on secluded islands, earrings worth $1.2 million and Gatsby-like soirées in palatial mansions. As a Singaporean of Filipino-Chinese descent, the only part of Singapore that I recognized was when Nick and his friends bring Rachel to eat at a hawker center.
Some may argue, however, that the film simply delivers exactly what it says on the tin — crazy rich Asians — and that it is not Hollywood’s duty to represent Singapore. I agree. But I wonder: what does it mean that the first Hollywood film to feature an all-Asian cast in a quarter-century is centered around wealth? Do we have to be crazy rich for Hollywood to sit up and take notice of us? Do we have to buy our way out of racism to the big screen?
I worry that Crazy Rich Asians won its gold open partially because audiences wanted to peek into the world of Eastern opulence. I agree with Singaporean journalist Kirsten Han that there’s something almost Orientalist in how the film fixates on the exotic display of the Asian super-rich. But Singapore is not only a tax haven for people “richer than God” as one character in the original novel proclaims. Singapore is also home to a growing number of dissatisfied middle and lower-income families who struggle to merely get by in the expensive city-state.
Singaporean YouTubers have taken it upon themselves to parody the over-the-top trailer ruthlessly — my favorite is Night Owl Cinematics’ [Crazy Average Singaporeans] (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=irWoMzLD0OU). In it, the glitzy backdrops of Raffles Hotel and resort-casino Marina Bay Sands are replaced, more sensibly, with a government-subsidized public housing flat, in the sleepy residential town of Tampines.
When Rachel exclaims in playful awe that Nick neglected to tell her he was “the Prince William of Asia,” Nick jokingly retorts that he’s “much more of a Harry.” The exchange is a loaded one, as Mimi Wong notes, “the subtext here is that money is an equalizing force that trumps even race.” To complicate matters, Singapore used to be a British colony.
My issue with the wholehearted embrace of wealth in the film is that it veers towards capitalist colonial thinking. This almost suggests that money is the solution to poor Asian representation. We are visible now because we are richer than you. Being rich is the new white. In fact, in the very first scene of the film, we witness Eleanor buying out an entire hotel chain in London and teaching the English concierge staff there a lesson about discriminating against Chinese guests.
Singaporean society has something very similar to white privilege in America — Chinese privilege — with the Chinese constituting about 75 percent of the population. With its hyperfocus on the dominant Chinese-Singaporean elite, the film unwittingly reproduces the very racial dynamics it aims to eliminate. Prominent Singaporean writers and activists were quick to point out the conspicuous absence of Malays, Indians, and other ethnic minorities — 25 percent of Singapore’s population — in speaking roles. When they are on-screen, as poet Pooja Nansi writes powerfully, Singaporean minorities are in positions of servitude.
Most disturbingly, a film that prides itself on being woke about identity politics includes a scene that prompts the audience to laugh at dark-skinned Sikh guards. They appear out of the shadowy foliage surrounding the Young estate, positioned like monkeys or monsters. You wonder: what happens to the Asians who can’t buy their way out of poor representation?
Perhaps it is fitting that the last sound we hear in Crazy Rich Asians is the ka-ching of a cash register before the credits play to the song, Money (That’s What I Want) by Cheryl K.
Jamie Uy is a columnist. Email her at feedback@thegazelle.org.
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