2018's "Crazy Rich Asians" received a warm welcome among young Chinese Americans after its release. Kimberly Yam, editor of The Huffington Post, tweeted excitedly:
"When you were eight years old, your father delivered meals to the school. You thought he was cool, but your classmates laughed at his accent When you were nine years old, a female classmate at the ballet camp hated you, Saying that you don't like the shape of your eyes That year you were sixteen years old. On Halloween, two of your classmates dressed up as 'tourists from Asia', with cameras around their necks, and compared to scissors that You are seventeen years old, you meet a boy in college, and he wonders why you like milk cool instead of xiaolongbao You are twenty-five years old this year, and you watched a big movie with an all-Asian cast. I don't know why you're crying in the movie theater. You've never seen a movie like this in Hollywood where all the Asians are so beautiful." She tagged the tweet Representation Matters, which literally translates to: How to show Asians ancestry is important.
The tweet quickly garnered hundreds of thousands of likes. Why would a popular entertainment movie move Chinese Americans so much? The explanation I heard was: finally seeing Asians on the big screen with the same emotions as Westerners. In the past, most of the films that reflected the life of Chinese Americans emphasized cultural differences. Such as "The Joy Luck Club", "Saving Face" (Saving Face), "Double Happiness" (Double Happiness). These films portray growing up in a Chinese family as a heavy experience. This heaviness is real, and this display also contributes to the promotion of diversity and inclusion in American culture. But the Chinese who grew up in the West also accepted the influence of Western culture, but their side with Western culture is rarely shown.
For this reason, I don't really like "Don't Tell Her". Grandma had cancer, and the whole family decided to hide it from her because the Chinese believed that telling patients the truth would make them terrified and thus hasten death. The heroine's father wanted to reveal the truth, but the heroine's uncle disagreed: "You Westerners regard life as an individual, while the Orientals regard life as a collective." The uncle, who lives in Japan, often "has cultural differences between the East and the West." ", obviously pulling the Japanese to take the blame. But as far as I know, Japan now also informs the patient of the real condition.
In the movie, three generations of a family come to visit grandpa's grave. The son lights a cigarette in front of his father's gravestone. Grandma said: Your father quit smoking before he died. The son said: Dad didn't quit. The heroine's cousin got married in a hurry in order to return to China to see her grandmother. Even her grandmother felt that the marriage was abrupt. For fear that others would think that her grandson had made her girlfriend big, she asked her family to lie to the guests and say that the two had known each other for a year. The Japanese girlfriend doesn't understand Chinese, so she frequently looks at her fiancé with a smile and nods. I feel very uncomfortable seeing this. Who would dare to marry a Chinese family in the future? People think that it is your Chinese daily life to deceive your family.
The performance of cultural differences cannot be superficial. There is a Chinese wedding scene in Ang Lee's "The Wedding Banquet". The Chinese who attended the wedding made a bridal room with a slightly low-level interest. A foreigner sighed: "I thought the Chinese were all quiet math geniuses, but I was wrong. ." I smiled knowingly when I saw this, and didn't blame the director for insulting China, because the director expressed his thoughts on stereotypes. In "Don't Tell Her", although the female protagonist who grew up in the United States disapproved of her family's actions, she could only frown and do nothing, which fell into the stereotype. From my experience living in the United States, I have seen many unreasonable parents, but I have never seen a single child who can only shrug. In fact, the heroine has many choices. For example, she can cite the American Cancer Society's cancer statistics report to convince her parents that the cancer mortality rate in the United States decreased by 29% from 1991 to 2017. It can be seen that informing patients of the diagnosis results will not increase the mortality rate. How can a child who grows up in the United States not have the basics of science and debate?
Some people think "Crazy Rich Asians" is a commercial film, not as high as an art film. But I think: In terms of breaking the stereotype of Chinese Americans, if you don't have the ability to make a profound art film, it is better to make a commercial film about handsome guys and beautiful girls. Pop culture has a strong shaping effect on public perception. There is a saying: Obama can be president, half of the military merits of Denzel Washington. People are used to seeing black heroes on the big screen, and they will subtly accept a black person as president. If all the movies about black people are "Moonlight", black people are always bullied and repressed, and the era when black people can be president will not come so soon.
I don’t know if there is any basis for this statement, but it’s a fact that films that show Asians are obviously not as diverse as films that show Africans. There are many art films like "The Joy Luck Club", "Face" and "Double Happiness", but there are few entertainment films like "Deja Vu". If ordinary Western audiences will always see unreasonable Chinese-American parents and Chinese-American children who have no way to vent their grievances and depression on the screen, when they deal with Chinese-Americans in their daily life, they will naturally have "you are different from us". expected.
And here's why "Crazy Rich Asians" excites young Asian Americans. The message of this successful commercial to the average Western audience is that we, like you, love to daydream. Relying on the popular story template that everyone can understand, the audience has accepted the Asian faces on the screen, and has also implicitly produced the concept of "they are just like us". Asians have the same emotions as Westerners, and they can solve problems with Eastern wisdom. This is what young Asians long for on the screen.
Compared to "Crazy Rich Asians", I think "Don't Tell Her" is a step backwards. Don't tell Kimberly Yam, she'll be sad.
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