#expressiveasians

1/08/2018 ~

I’m quite broke after splashing out on theatre tickets, so whether I can actually go to see this movie is debatable (and I probably should have budgeted better) but I am just a little bit excited for this. 

Just the thought that this movie is going to be shown at my local theatre, not at the niche arthouse place 2 hours away is so exciting to me. I haven’t seen an East Asian person, outside of East Asian media, so someone who might possibly look like me, on a screen here for six months since Conservative backbencher Alan Mak did a 30 second interview after Prime Minister’s Questions. 

I have never seen so many Asian actors on the screen in a non East Asia-made movie, in roles where they are not token Asians, in roles where East Asians are being depicted as people with personalities as opposed to East Asian stereotypes and the living scenery that tends to entail.

Personality is often a trait denied to East Asian characters, where the stereotype is for them to be cool and quiet, and the preference is for them to be voiceless (off the top of my head, I think Ex Machina and X-Men 2), expressionless and little more than exotic objects and living tools, to be taught emotions and personality like children. The only personality ‘traits’otherwise allowed are sexy lethality, for women, stoic swordsmanship for men, and then loyalty to the point of death for both, the perfect servant and sidekick.

Considering the recent discrimination lawsuit brought against Harvard (https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/15/us/harvard-asian-enrollment-applicants.html) where Asian-Americans were ranked lower for ‘lacking personality’ and previous justifications for not casting Asians because they are ‘not expressive’ (https://www.teenvogue.com/story/casting-director-asian-actors-not-very-expressive) it’s so important to be able to see East Asian faces embodying personalities and being allowed to express them on screen to break the perception, the mental image - such as, of the Asian-American kid the staff in Harvard admissions conjure up in their mind - of hard-working Asians being all work, no fun and having no individuality.

The lack of individuality in East Asians ties into that old gem of a racist trope the ‘inscrutable’ Oriental, where claiming inscrutability absolves the one who subscribes to it of the responsibility of needing to understand the other side that they may be granted the dignity of being seen as a human with thoughts, feelings and mind. It has allowed East Asians to be seen as ‘less individual’ than Westerners, as if we’re some of sort of cockroach hive where one is interchangeable with another. It’s the sort of narrative than can be used to justify genocide, but I won’t go into that here. 

At any rate, somehow East Asian cinema and TV are full of East Asian actors expressive and emotive enough to convincingly (and wonderfully) make human drama rich narratives. If Asians outside of Asia are seen as personality-less and lacking individuality, i find it hard to believe that the issue is with the disaspora Asians themselves.  

According to the Guardian,  ‘ Hollywood is still using the film to gauge whether it should even greenlight more Asian-centric projects. ‘ so, yes, fingers crossed that this does well. I wish this movie all the luck at the box office.

Clean Bandit - Rather Be ft. Jess Glynne [Official Video]