I finally saw the movie Rich Crazy Asians recently.
After all the hype it turns out this movie is just a typical rom-com with an all Asian cast which is the big selling point of the film. "Come watch a film set in contemporary times with an all Asian cast." This movie has been compared to Black Panther which had a mostly all-black cast and crew and was also sold to the public as an empowering shot at accurate and full representation in Hollywood after years of marginalisation.
The author of the book on which this film is based also wrote the novel with the same goal in mind, representation.
After all the hype it turns out this movie is just a typical rom-com with an all Asian cast which is the big selling point of the film. "Come watch a film set in contemporary times with an all Asian cast." This movie has been compared to Black Panther which had a mostly all-black cast and crew and was also sold to the public as an empowering shot at accurate and full representation in Hollywood after years of marginalisation.
The author of the book on which this film is based also wrote the novel with the same goal in mind, representation.
Kwan stated that his intention in writing the novel was to "introduce a contemporary Asia to a North American audience"
Set in Singapore all the characters are supposed to be ethnic Chinese but not all the actors cast are ethnic Chinese prompting many to proclaim this film as not being Asian enough.
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| https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/16/world/asia/crazy-rich-asians-cast-singapore.html |
A primary worry is that the Warner Bros. film focuses on Singapore’s Chinese, the dominant ethnic majority, at the expense of Malays, Indians and other ethnic minorities who collectively account for about a quarter of Singapore’s 5.6 million people.
“Part of the way that this movie is being sold to everyone is as this big win for diversity, as this representative juggernaut, as this great Asian hope,” said Sangeetha Thanapal, a Singaporean Indian writer and activist who is researching a doctoral dissertation on the concept of Chinese privilege in Singapore.
“I think that’s really problematic because if you’re going to sell yourself as that, then you bloody better actually have actual representation” of Singaporean minorities, she said.
You can't please everybody especially when you are trying to do just that. One of the actresses in this film is Filipina celebrity Kris Aquino. What is her role?
There is much that could be said about this film and its sociological implications regarding identity politics but that is not the purpose of this blog or this post. Instead I want to callback to a previous blog post about the two Fil-Ams who "pranked" McDonald's by hanging a photo of themselves inside the store.
Now here's the thing. These two Fil-Ams live in the USA and are wishing there was more Asian representation in the media. But the USA is not a majority Asian country so why the heck would there be a lot of Asian representation in media in the USA? However in Asia one would expect to see a lot of Asians represented in the media. Is Jevh and his friend familiar with the Chinese, Japanese, and Korean film industries, not to mention Bollywood. Worldwide Asians are hardly underrepresented on the big screen or in the media. His assertions about lack of Asian representation are based on his limited perspective.
To prove how ridiculous this whole notion of a need for accurate cultural and ethnic representation is I decided to do an experiment. Actually I decided to take pictures of what I knew to be the truth: there is not a lot of Asian, Filipino, representation in the models plastered all over the walls of the mall. I wanted to take pics at McDonald's but sadly there are no pictures of families or anyone else hanging on the walls inside any of the local McDonald's so taking a few pictures of models in the mall was the only other option. These pictures were taken at random and in a hurry. Security does not take kindly to people snapping photos in the mall. And for good reason.
- Kris Aquino as Princess Intan, a Malay princess
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crazy_Rich_Asians_(film)Kris Aquino, a Filipina, plays the role of a Malaysian princess! How ironic in a movie that is touted as a "big win for diversity" and representation. Why not cast an actual Malaysian in that role instead of a Filipina?
There is much that could be said about this film and its sociological implications regarding identity politics but that is not the purpose of this blog or this post. Instead I want to callback to a previous blog post about the two Fil-Ams who "pranked" McDonald's by hanging a photo of themselves inside the store.
“If you haven’t noticed, there isn’t a lot of Asians represented in media,” Maravilla said in a YouTube video titled, “How to Become McDonalds Poster Models.”
“And hopefully one day I could see someone like me on the big screen,” he added, alongside another Photoshopped picture of himself on the movie poster of the latest blockbuster hit “Crazy Rich Asians.”
https://philippinefails.blogspot.com/2018/09/fil-ams-give-free-publicity-to.htmlBoth of these men were invited on Ellen where they told their story.
"We looked around and we saw these other posters on there and we saw that there's different ethnicities and we saw they were all these people having fun so we decided to, like, represent ourselves as Asians to be up there as well."
"Crazy Rich Asians was a really big influence on me it really pushed me over cus I watched the movie three times it's insane."
"So we wanted to be like Crazy Middle-Class Asians."
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ctw_8596i38So you see this movie was a motivator for them. For Jevh Maravilla anyway who saw the movie three times. It's funny he says they wanted to represent themselves as Asians and not specifically as Filipinos since Kris Aquino, who is Asian, did not play a Filipina role but a Malaysian role. I assume any Asian will do when it comes to Hollywood.
Now here's the thing. These two Fil-Ams live in the USA and are wishing there was more Asian representation in the media. But the USA is not a majority Asian country so why the heck would there be a lot of Asian representation in media in the USA? However in Asia one would expect to see a lot of Asians represented in the media. Is Jevh and his friend familiar with the Chinese, Japanese, and Korean film industries, not to mention Bollywood. Worldwide Asians are hardly underrepresented on the big screen or in the media. His assertions about lack of Asian representation are based on his limited perspective.
To prove how ridiculous this whole notion of a need for accurate cultural and ethnic representation is I decided to do an experiment. Actually I decided to take pictures of what I knew to be the truth: there is not a lot of Asian, Filipino, representation in the models plastered all over the walls of the mall. I wanted to take pics at McDonald's but sadly there are no pictures of families or anyone else hanging on the walls inside any of the local McDonald's so taking a few pictures of models in the mall was the only other option. These pictures were taken at random and in a hurry. Security does not take kindly to people snapping photos in the mall. And for good reason.
That is just a tiny sampling of the type of models and manikins seen at the mall here in the Philippines. Note that practically none of them are Filipinos or Asians of any kind. Or maybe they are but they are certainly not a dark-skinned and distinctly Filipino or even Asian looking type. They are light skinned and almost hapa looking. That is not to say there are no Filipino or Asian models. There are but they are few and far between and most of them are TV celebrities who are plastered on large billboards hawking canned tuna and corned beef.
Has anyone noticed this? Are there outcries about this lack of Filipino representation in mall advertisements? Where are the outraged and the protestors if such a thing as representation matters? Duterte seems to be fine posing with a faceless white manikin in Hong Kong.
What does this mean about representation and identity politics?
It means identity politics is a particularly Western idea that has not found a home in the Philippines. This toxic ideology lends itself to a completely bankrupt worldview and philosophy which causes people to focus on differences to such a degree that has only served to further bifurcate or socially balkanise the West, especially the USA. Instead of seeing themselves as social beings who are part of the larger picture of society, people begin to see themselves as pure individuals identified solely by their sexual preferences or ethnicity or some other trait. Groups of like minded individuals band together and exclude those who are unlike them. When these groups to look the media and do not see themselves looking back cries of racism and oppression are raised. It is a twisted mishmash of neo-marxist Critical Theory straight out of the Frankfurt School and post-modern thought all rolled into one.
In the Philippines there is none of that nonsense. There is however a more pernicious sort of identity politics and political tribalism which is what has lead to the corrupt political dynasties of the Binays, Aquinos, Estradas, and Marcoses.
In many ways this kind identity politics is more destructive.
But at least people aren't worried about whose face is staring back at them on the big screen.
It means identity politics is a particularly Western idea that has not found a home in the Philippines. This toxic ideology lends itself to a completely bankrupt worldview and philosophy which causes people to focus on differences to such a degree that has only served to further bifurcate or socially balkanise the West, especially the USA. Instead of seeing themselves as social beings who are part of the larger picture of society, people begin to see themselves as pure individuals identified solely by their sexual preferences or ethnicity or some other trait. Groups of like minded individuals band together and exclude those who are unlike them. When these groups to look the media and do not see themselves looking back cries of racism and oppression are raised. It is a twisted mishmash of neo-marxist Critical Theory straight out of the Frankfurt School and post-modern thought all rolled into one.
When groups feel threatened, they retreat into tribalism. When groups feel mistreated and disrespected, they close ranks and become more insular, more defensive, more punitive, more us-versus-them.
In America today, every group feels this way to some extent. Whites and blacks, Latinos and Asians, men and women, Christians, Jews, and Muslims, straight people and gay people, liberals and conservatives – all feel their groups are being attacked, bullied, persecuted, discriminated against.
Of course, one group’s claims to feeling threatened and voiceless are often met by another group’s derision because it discounts their own feelings of persecution – but such is political tribalism.
But in recent years, whether because of growing strength or growing frustration with the lack of progress, the Left has upped the ante. A shift in tone, rhetoric, and logic has moved identity politics away from inclusion – which had always been the Left’s watchword – toward exclusion and division. As a result, many on the left have turned against universalist rhetoric (for example, All Lives Matter), viewing it as an attempt to erase the specificity of the experience and oppression of historically marginalized minorities.
The new exclusivity is partly epistemological, claiming that out-group members cannot share in the knowledge possessed by in-group members (“You can’t understand X because you are white”; “You can’t understand Y because you’re not a woman”; “You can’t speak about Z because you’re not queer”). The idea of “cultural appropriation” insists, among other things, “These are our group’s symbols, traditions, patrimony, and out-group members have no right to them.”
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2018/mar/01/how-americas-identity-politics-went-from-inclusion-to-divisionJevh Maravilla and his friend have drunk the kool-aid of this ahistorical and isolating modern leftist ideology.
In the Philippines there is none of that nonsense. There is however a more pernicious sort of identity politics and political tribalism which is what has lead to the corrupt political dynasties of the Binays, Aquinos, Estradas, and Marcoses.
In many ways this kind identity politics is more destructive.
The tradition of political corruption and cronyism, the extremes of wealth and poverty, the tribal fragmentation, the local elite’s willingness to make a separate profitable peace with colonial powers—all reflect a feeble sense of nationalism and a contempt for the public good.
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1987/11/a-damaged-culture/505178/When one reads about the antics of the politicians in the paper, all the us-versus-them shenanigans and all the corruption and graft and killing and raping by those who are supposed to protect the people (the PNP), one cannot help but agree that there is a "contempt for the public good."
But at least people aren't worried about whose face is staring back at them on the big screen.
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