I refused to watch the movie when it splashed onto silver screens in 2018. My disdain was met with dismissal by friends and family, who thought I took too seriously a movie that was nothing more than frivolous fun. “Crazy Rich Asians” (CRA) might be fun, but its blockbuster status transcended mere entertainment. Asian American audiences lauded the movie as a triumph of representation in an industry that has long traded in white stories and characters. The glitz of a Hollywood romp full of Asian characters recalled the excitement that many African Americans felt for “Black Panther,” with its bold vision of an Afrocentric utopia. Despite the hype, I resisted the movie until a student told me about how CRA had affirmed her own Asian identity in a White culture. Thus, I made my first attempt to watch the movie. I stopped 30 minutes into the film. Couldn’t stomach it. Three years later, after re-watching Slavoj Zizek’s “A Pervert’s Guide to Ideology,” I braced myself for another round with CRA in attempt to glean some psycho-social insight from the film.
The movie opens with Eleanor Young (Michelle Yeoh) and her kids’ arrival at an upscale, heritage hotel. The smarmy staff dismiss her offhand, the stench of racism barely under disguise. The scene follows with Eleanor inside a telephone booth, ranting to her husband about her mistreatment. Then, she returns to the hotel. The staff urge her to leave the premises when the obsequious hotel owner appears, eager to receive Mrs. Young and her children. The man announces to the staff that the Youngs are the new owners of the hotel, and therefore, their new employers. The scene ends with the hotel staff dumbstruck and Eleanor sauntering off in triumph.
This opening scene, comically absurd in its reversal of power, plays to a deep-seated resentment that breeds within the Chinese psyche. Exploited by colonial powers, torn by civil war and internal strife, China has been relegated to the backwaters of history. Pride in Chinese culture has been in retreat. Many long for China’s revival on the world stage, an ascendency that restores the prestige of the Middle Kingdom. They see this nationalistic resurgence as rightful comeuppance after centuries of humiliation and abuse at the hands of the West. The primary force of this ascendency is economic rather than military. The economy would be China’s instrument of power. Accordingly, the opening scene of CRA indulges an Asian fantasy of an ultra-rich patron who clobbers her oppressors with wealth. Thus, money trounces bigotry.
However, the fantasy belies a deeper insecurity. Racism is the total denigration of identity: it’s no mere scorn against skin, but a dismissal that cuts through bone. One cannot stand against racism by wielding the trappings of power. One must actuate power itself. Money is what one has, not what one is. To challenge racism, one must realize a calibre of character that is unshakable in its own confidence, a certitude that renders the bigot both ludicrous and impotent. In this regard, there is a latent insecurity that CRA exposes in plain view: by indulging the idea of wealth as the ultimate equalizer, the characters reveal their inferiority. They do not see themselves as equals next to their white counterparts and must resort to wealth to assert their power. Those who do not feel the weight of their own dignity will grasp for proxies to approximate what they lack.
CRA delivers the froth with an ensemble of flat characters with all the emotional complexity of a Disney cartoon — the comedic sidekick (Peik Lin played by Awkwafina), the flamboyant gay confidant (Oliver played by Nico Santos). The visual appeal of the film lies in depictions of outrageous opulence. Yet the extravagance leans toward the garish and gauche; the plastic chic cloys the senses and shutters the eye. Peik Lin’s family mansion is decked in gold and marble, a pale imitation of Versailles that proves money cannot buy good taste. I am tempted to say that this gaudy display intimates the film’s finer subtext, a parody of wealth and its corrosive effect on humanity, but the slipperiness of the film’s glossy depictions never allows for such a reading. CRA walks that impossible line between sincerity and satire. We never know whether to love or hate the rich Asians. When their antics reveal them superficial beyond redemption (the bachelors’ debauchery on a private island, the bachelorettes’ hysterical shopping spree), the film lurches into the wedding scene dripping with sentimentality. A church is transformed into a marshland. Water lines the aisle. The fairy tale is obviously a farce if not for the infusion of sanguine emotions so typical of Hollywood convention. It’s magic, it’s sweet. We get the point. The hollowness of the characters are thus papered over. Herein lies the elusiveness of CRA, both in its slick Hollywood spectacle and its parade of stock characters: this is a world where parody and seriousness are utterly indistinct from one another, where comedy and drama fuse into a miasma of frivolity and earnestness. Yet, the implications of the film’s faltering depiction of wealth may be incriminating after all: a privilege that does not know its own absurdity, a callowness that mocks itself in its attempt at profundity.
Wade through the noise of the film, we find one fledging effort toward substance. Eleanor’s disapproval of Rachel rests upon the apparent cultural clash between East and West, the perennial disjuncture between harmonious collectivism and narcissistic individualism. This confrontation between the two women outlines a larger showdown between tradition and modernity, ancient values and forward progress. Unfortunately, CRA does not invest any further into clash of cultures, nor does CRA examine each character in their own struggles to manage conflicting values. The friction between the two women ends with Rachel outplaying Eleanor in a game of Ma Jong, revealing her hand and marking her exit as an independent minded, modern woman whose confidence does not derive from money. Rachel walks away with her dignity. If the tension represents the clash between East and West, then the West has won. If the conflict stands for middle-class groundedness against upper-class snobbery, then then the former carries the day. At least, this is what we are led to believe.
However, upon a closer look, why does the film pitch a sympathetic view of Western individuality against a cold and rigid Eastern tradition? Why is the audience made to feel solidarity with Rachel rather than Eleanor, despite the superficial acknowledgement of the latter’s subordination under her own mother-in-law? Is this not another vote for American ideals, even though the faces are Asian? For that matter, why do the characters who possess some depth and humanity (Astrid and Nick) speak with a British accent, while the peripheral characters speak in pronounced Chinese and Singaporean accents? Yes, Nick and Astrid were educated in the UK, but the sub-text of a film hailed as a breakthrough for representation reveals this latent bias. Despite a supposed triumph of Asian culture, we peel back the glittering sheath and CRA reveals a Western inclination that betrays its apparent celebration of Asian identity.
I might be accused of taking too seriously a film that never meant more than silly good fun. In response, I argue that we don’t take seriously enough the messages smuggled underneath silly good fun. Popular culture is culture, period. Its medium is never neutral, its stories never inert. Internalized racism, class bias, and ethnocentricity are reinforced in sugary entertainment, even when they purportedly disrupt the dominant white hegemony. The granular workings of colonization are found in the flics that we consume without thought. In CRA, we get the splash without the swim, the menu without the dish. The film leaves untouched the notion of affluence as an unalloyed good, the pre-eminence of individualism over collective values. For all its glittering antics, CRA delivers a floppy arrival on the silver screen. I hope Asian audiences find more substantial stories that celebrate their identities, hopefully stories in which the Asian characters are neither rich nor crazy.