When we were studying, our foreign teacher kindly recommended a small shop, claiming that there was "the best hamburger in Harbin".
When I entered the house, I saw that the boss was a foreign couple. Burger, a beef patty with lettuce and tomatoes.
As I say, not as good as Harbin Pie.
Thinking of the foreign teacher's appearance, I couldn't help but fall for it.
Friends who study abroad say that even KFC is still delicious in China, but it has been improved according to Chinese tastes.
When foreign teachers mention KFC in China, they shake their heads.
There's nothing wrong with two burgers, and there's nothing wrong with two people with different tastes.
This can also be used to explain the popularity of Crazy Rich Asians in North America and the controversy in China.
Let me, a Chinese born and raised, come to see the Chinese story [Crazy Rich Asians].
But I like the crooked nuts.
[Crazy Rich Asians] The budget is only 30 million US dollars, and the North American domestic box office has harvested 173 million.
Before landing in mainland China, the global box office has reached 235 million US dollars.
But in mainland China, the first-day film schedule was only more than 10%, which could not make much splash.
It's like a person who has been away from home for many years and returned home, but he is not satisfied with the soil and water of his hometown.
People with yellow skin and yellow heart will hate to mention the famous "American Chinese food" - General Tso's Chicken when it comes to this movie.
Americans say, your Chinese food is too delicious. Hunan people say that there is no such small whine in our Lingjie Hunan cuisine.
The founder of General Tso's Chicken, Peng Changgui, went to Changsha to open a restaurant, dressed in glory.
It soon closed down.
General Tso's chicken eventually became the Chinese food that lives in the United States.
①
The meat of that chicken is more precious
The title of the film is Crazy Rich Asians. "Asians (Asian)" is only one-third of the full name, and "crazy rich" accounts for most of the film.
The heroine, Rachel Chu (Constance Wu), is a second-generation immigrant and a native New Yorker.
She has been with her boyfriend Yang Li (Henry Golding) for a long time and accompanies him back to Singapore for the first time.
It was only after Rachel got on the pirate ship that she discovered that the Yang family was the largest family in Singapore.
Then there is the drama of a wealthy family looking down on Cinderella .
How rich are the wealthy?
Their residence is worth 200 million.
With such a luxurious palace, the crew has a tight budget, and it is absolutely impossible to set up a scene in Singapore, where an inch of land is expensive.
Even if this scale is only filmed, it can only be found in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, in Tersar Park, to find two abandoned buildings and transform them into what the film wants.
The breath of a feudal tycoon was blowing in his face.
The place where Yang Li's friend held the wedding was the Marina Bay Sands Hotel, "the most expensive independent casino building in the world".
Even at the beginning of the film, there are episodes of "The Prince Who Turns into a Frog" and "Meteor Garden", which use money to kill people.
This nose and eyes have played a lot of heroines. Is it a face that can be tolerated? white discrimination? Don't let her stay in a hotel? Then buy the whole hotel.
I think it's too idol drama quality, I only dare to dream. If you write, you will be sprayed to death.
But for the original author, it was a reality he saw as a child.
This poor ghost said nothing.
The author, Kevin Kwan, has a thick family tree in Singapore - going back to 946.
Originally owned by the Sultan of Johor (the supreme ruler of Johor), the house is one of the largest estates in Singapore.
They have been educated in England since childhood, and like the British nobles, they have afternoon tea at five o'clock every day.
Matching with the illustrious family background of this prototype, not only the houses in the film are magnificent, but the shirts of the characters are also dazzling.
It's not a big deal, or even a high-end counter brand -- it's all custom.
I don't know what brand they are, after all, a non-custom dress starts at $1,000, which has nothing to do with me.
Kevin says:
They don't wear Cartier, because in their eyes it's a "bad street".
The story of [Crazy Rich Asians] is of course not very oriental, its ancestors have been very westernized for three generations.
That General Tso's chicken, not to mention the method, even the raw chicken was raised in the water and soil of Europe and the United States.
②
Those people's tastes are very subtle
In fact, from the author to the director, of course, they all understand that this story cannot represent Asia.
Kevin clarified again and again:
Even if it can "represent", it can only represent 1%, and 99% of Asians, with more stories.
He also knew very well that native Asians would not be interested in this story:
They have their own stories. I'm too old-fashioned for them.
It is also obvious who the target audience is. The movie sees the world through the eyes of the heroine, who thinks she is of Chinese descent, but when she came to Singapore, she found that she knew nothing about the mysterious eastern power.
This is the general mentality of the second generation of immigrants in the United States.
But at first, the second generation of Chinese Americans also lacked interest in this book.
It is precisely the "New York media, the fashion industry, and the wealthy on the Upper East Side" who really cheer for it.
Asians followed, not necessarily because they were moved by the story itself, but because it was powerful enough to dismantle some old stereotypes (while establishing others).
For example, American society generally believes that Asian men are not sexually attractive.
In the original script, he was supposed to kiss the dead heroine, but it was changed to "a deep hug".
Because at that time people felt that "no one wants to date an Asian man", the filmmakers were afraid of the kiss, which aroused the disgust of the North American audience.
And in [Crazy Rich Asians], the yellow-skinned men are all showing off their tendons:
And Asian female characters are often either nerds or prostitutes.
As for Chinese people being able to master kung fu, it is a long-standing American superstition.
Otherwise, why did Fan Bingbing play Yang Guifei in China, and if she wanted to play an American movie, she was flying in the sky in [X-Men: Reversing the Future]?
Over the past 100 years, the history of Asian-American struggles in Hollywood has been full of setbacks.
Hayakawa Sezu, the first person in Hollywood who can be called an Asian movie star.
He couldn't stand the prejudice against Asians in Hollywood movies, so in 1918, he opened his own studio and became the highest-paid movie star at that time.
But just four years later, in 1922, he had to leave because of anti-Asian sentiment in Hollywood.
Anna May Wong, Hollywood's first Chinese movie star.
In 1937, she wanted to star in the adaptation of Pearl Buck's original [The Earth], but the film had set a white male lead early, and the infamous "Hays Code" stipulated that non-white actors could not play against white actors.
In 1961, Asian Americans had the first Hollywood musical to feature them.
They were so happy and watched it over and over again. Unexpectedly, this look is more than 50 years old-there has been no other Hollywood live-action musical with Asian stories.
Talk a little closer. For example, Scarlett Johansson played Motoko in [Ghost in the Shell], a Japanese prototype, with the setting of being transformed into a white man...
Rich Asians certainly don't represent Asians, but it's good to defuse some weird superstition.
At least, Asians can fall in love on the big screen, kiss and hold high. Although this love, the sour smell is not strong, but it has become a pretext to show cultural differences.
③
Those oriental atmospheres, familiar and unfamiliar
But the cultural differences in the film, outsiders look fresh, we look stale.
During the North American publicity, it is often said that [Crazy Rich Asians] is the first mainstream studio movie with Asian team after [The Joy Luck Club] in 1993.
But it's not.
According to the standard of [The Joy Luck Club], [Letter from Iwo Jima] and [Memoirs of a Geisha] can all be called the Asian team.
The reason for this misunderstanding may be because, from the perspective of Crooked Nuts, [Crazy Rich Asians] and [The Joy Luck Club] are very similar to the same movie.
It is full of subtle oriental culture.
Like the last key scene.
Mr. Yi paid 60,000 intentionally or unintentionally, and called Wang Jiazhi to lose his cards. She was as excited as a little rabbit.
Rachel said that her mother taught her that mahjong is the way of doing things, negotiating, cooperating and compromising.
This is exactly what Aunt Lindo (played by Zhou Caiqin) taught Amei (played by Wen Mingna) at the beginning of [The Joy Luck Club] at the mahjong game.
Crooked nuts can't understand what this mahjong game is doing, and IMDB used a long list to explain:
Rachel came out with an eight-barrel, and Ellie Yang won. But this card is also what Rachel needs. So Allie looked so shocked when Rachel showed up.
The literal translation above seems silly.
Crooked nuts friends, in fact, we only need two words to say this: feed the card.
Moreover, such a thing as feeding cards is to please people. Who would say it? It must be famous for doing good deeds. It is too oriental.
At the end of the original book, there is actually no reunion. Dongfang pays attention to sacrifice, so let Rachel sacrifice love.
The film version can't bear to swallow, in fact, it is closer to the American values, and it is more like General Tso's chicken.
Another point of shock to the crooked nuts was that Yang Li took off his shirt and was naked when his mother was still in the room.
In the interview, Michelle Yeoh was also asked this question.
It seems impossible to explain this to Westerners. Michelle Yeoh can only say:
In the East, mothers have always been suspicious. It's been like this since the child was a child, and it hasn't changed as the child grows up. There is nothing scary, but a sense of pride, because this is my own son.
Similar to [Gua Sha], a small thing in the eyes of the Chinese, scraping and scraping a child at will, but it is regarded as "abuse" in North America.
And [Crazy Rich Asians], a film with weak chemistry and oriental elements in my opinion, is a cultural spectacle in the eyes of many Americans.
Its popularity in North America, its coldness in China, and the quality of the movie have nothing to do with it.
Just because our stomachs, our soil and water, are so different.
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Text: Ginger does not stop
The article comes from WeChat public account: Movie Detoxification
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