Crazy Rich Asians: A Movie About Nothing

Let's talk about the strangest scene in Crazy Rich Asians

[BigJoel]

Howdy boys, hope you liked this one! Just a little video, a small dude. Anyhow, if you liked it, maybe consider signing up for Nebula or my patreon!! I do a fun bonus video those places every month. here are the links to those things, hell yes.

[somedipshtinthecomments]

Crazy that the film took the Idea "Wealth is the only way to overcome racism" and read it as an aspirational statement rather than the soul-destroyingly bleak notion it actually is.

[chernobylhobo]

I've always heard about this movie, but never knew anything about it. That opening scene is honestly pretty fascinating. The idea that the only way to overcome racism was to be richer than the racists. The opening scene seems to have something to say about how money is the only way to have true freedom and how it would make sense for these characters to be so obsessed with their own wealth because its the only thing separating them from the Asians who would have had to go get a hotel room in Chinatown. It's a shame that the film itself seems uninterested in exploring this idea any further.

[Blockofcheese]

As a Malay Singaporean, the amount of praise this movie got for its 'representation' just rubbed me the wrong way. People are already confusing Singapore as a part of China and this movie chose to ONLY represent Chinese Singaporeans. Singapore literally prides itself for being a multiracial country and they couldn't have included one brown character in the whole movie?

I wish people would stop throwing around the term 'Asian Representation' because its just so vague. Asia is such a huge continent rich with such diverse cultures and yet when people talk about 'Asian Representation', its almost always representation for East Asians only.

[atlroxmysox]

One thing that the book goes into slightly more in depth is the fact that the Singapore upper class is kind of Americanized/Anglocized. They speak English and teach it to their kids before Chinese, they reject Buddhism in favor of Christianity and regard the former as a lower class religion, they send their kids to English and American schools. This is something that’s not uncommon in the upper classes of a lot of non-white countries, like Mexico for example. They reject everything about their own country and culture and aspire to everything American, everything European, everything white. Until they leave home and go to these countries, then they act like cultural embassadors.

[FRISHR]

It's almost as if the rich movie producers wanted to avoid talking about the problem on how money creates a social divide of elitism and classism, that the book originally had.

[onearmedbandit]

What will always be astonishing to me is how people heaped praises on this film and was talked about everywhere, hailed as this monumental achievement for the first all Asian cast in a mainstream Hollywood film since ' The Joy Luck Club' and then one month after it came out nobody talked about it again. I remember seeing it in film, laughing a few times but ultimately walked away thinking it was basically a Disney princess film for adults.

[GrrrlStyleNow]

I think that when you're a 'normal' person (i.e. not a millionaire) watching this movie, it's really difficult to notice that the plot and dialogue of the film are unconcerned with wealth because nearly every second of the film is filling your eyes with extremely expensive jewellery, clothes, cars, houses, parties, weddings, food etc. It's really overwhelming and means that while the CHARACTERS might not be thinking about money much, the VIEWER almost always is.

[togamicchi]

As someone who read the novel, I was delighted when you mentioned Michael, he was a much more sympathetic and nuanced character than his movie counterpart 😭

[nakenmil]

lol, the movie version makes one thing really fucking funny:
"We're obsessive about our Chinese cultural identity and heritage... so let's name our daughter Astrid, a Scandinavian name." X'D

[Yammenkow]

For a movie that throws a middle class person unexpectedly into a hyper-rich environment, I was waiting the whole time for it to have anything to say about class disparity or culture shock or the mind-rot of wealth, but no it turns out the main conflict was "his mom doesn't like me ☹️"

[aquamelody]

I absolutely hated this movie and as a Chinese immigrant, I hated how I kept being told "this is the representation we're looking for". Soap opera-esque plot and rich Chinese Singaporean people don't represent any sort of immigrant experience. And even the scenes in NY were for a very specific set of the diaspora. As it turns out, in order for representation to be successful, you actually have to figure out what you're representing first lol.

[coffeemug]

Your video is spot on. As someone who is from both Singapore (where the movie is based from) and Malaysia (where majority locations of the movie were filmed), I can attest that most people from Malaysia and Singapore were very critical of the movie as the question of social class, racial identity and wealth were never really explored. Rachel's so-called "Asian Americanness" is really just about nothing, in fact, being an American and an NYU professor would make her an even more desirable candidate for marriage. That's because Singapore upper class society are very obsessed with post-colonial social markers such as speaking "proper" English language, "meritocracy" and ivy league degrees. In Singapore, you can judge a person's social class just by their English language accent (they would avoid speaking Singapore English "Singlish" at all cost), and which school they went to (god forbid if Rachel went to community college and worked as a low-waged school teacher).

[friedrice]

I would argue that the focus on Asianess is an attempt to translate a sort of vibe about the book that ultimately falls short. The books are targeted at diaspora Asians and it shows. The books do not stop to explain certain aspects of culture, rather he footnotes it (the footnotes are also a comedic tool but that's aside.) Meanwhile, the movie stops dead to have the mother explain that red is a lucky color to Rachel, a fully grown ABC woman, for the sake of the non Chinese audience. Because the movie is built to be much more accommodating to non Asians, it must find another way to replicate this feeling of a "focus on Asianess" that the book gets from just... being written for Asians. Thus, the conflict surrounding "how to be Asian" (which is minor in the book) becomes central in the film, and they shy away from wealth as a main plot point. The film imagines it can replicate the way the book speaks to Asians by centering Asianess as a theme while never touching any topics or ideas that can't be quickly and palatably explained to a non Asian audience.

[Yammenkow]

Also Nick not telling Rachel anything about his family's wealth at any point, even after they fly there, is a huge red flag.

[skeletonofflavor]

I love how everyone in Big Joels comments just writes paragraphs

[davespiller]

I still find the first scene of Crazy Rich Asians utterly bizarre. The idea that, in 1995, a luxury London hotel would turn away a rich Singaporean is laughable. That's not to say that there's no racism against East Asians in Britain, but luxury London hotels have had 'crazy-rich Asian' guests for over a century. By the '90s central London was already known as a playground for millionaires from all around the world. I think the scene in the film points to an element of intersectionality that wealthy people are sometimes reluctant to address: that being rich often limits the prejudice and oppression with which you are faced.

[genevievelok]

You know it’s so funny, I went through the *entire* movie assuming the bit was that Eleanor was using Rachel’s “American-ness” at least partially as cover for classism

[lazyperson]

The scene I hated most from this movie is Astrid's introduction.

Nick: "Astrid has the biggest heart of any of my cousins"
Movie: shows Astrid stopping by a little girl and complimenting her stuffed bear then immediately dropping $1.2mil on earrings

Ah yes, because everyone knows it takes such a big heart to compliment stuffed bears.
When I first saw the scene I thought she was going to at least buy the bear for the little girl or something but no. Nick's voiceover earlier in the scene gives a much better example of Astrid's "big heart" - she's started multiple charities.

It'd be a different story if we were supposed to find the scene ironic, (ie. Ooh, I see, "biggest heart of *all my cousins*" - even the most benevolent of Nick's relatives aren't terribly altruistic), but it's played straight.
It just really irks me to find that the movie expects me to ooh and ahh over someone that's not actually doing anything worthy of admiration.

[nicecool]

As a Singaporean who’s Malay, I’m so glad you started this conversation again. I was honestly really disappointed with how it portrayed Singapore, it was almost was fiction in my eyes. Singapore is a country that takes pride in being a multinational, cultural and racial country and I hated that the only ‘actual’ scene that involved other races was painted in a negative light. In fact, this movie has actually been a topic in my class and we’ve discussed how it although the film took place in Singapore, it looked foreign. Overall wished they could give better representation because I would have loved to see my race being represented in Hollywood for once.