My Unfiltered Opinions on Asian Representation in Films

By Elizabeth Chan (she/her)

First of all, I love the fact that Hollywood is becoming more diverse and that they are including stories from racial minorities, unlike the old days.

And when I say the old days, I mean the cliché of some Asian man or woman who has a highly complicated past, who is somehow extremely committed to their family that conveniently complicates both their backstory and the plot of the movie, who spontaneously breaks out in their own mother tongue language just for the sake of showing that “this person is bilingual and Asian” while he or she speaks with a strong American accent for the rest of the film. Aside from the stereotype associating the Asian character with maths and science, it all feels extremely overused and unrealistic, therefore massively cliché. It goes without saying, but most of us who are Asian or are of Asian descent do not talk or act like that in real life, not all of us have that much of a complicated past, and some of us (like me) don’t even know how to speak their mother tongue. Thankfully, Hollywood has changed to feature more “authentic” films that show what it means to be Asian while recognising Asian cast members. Specifically, as a proud Malaysian, it was empowering to see Michelle Yeoh win the Oscar.

But just because I’m happy and proud that people who look like me are getting recognised and represented does not mean that I like the films that earned them awards. Here are my honest, unfiltered opinions on films that feature and centre around Asian representation:

Crazy Rich Asians (2018):

You would think I would shower this acclaimed “old but gold” film since it garnered international praise for featuring Asians, namely Southeast Asians, as the stars. Wrong. This film is, in fact, the one I hate the most from this list. Again, I am happy that Michelle Yeoh and Henry Golding, stars who hail from Malaysia, gained recognition from the film. But I still despise the film because it is extremely inauthentic. The biggest reason why I find the film inauthentic is because Singaporeans do not sound or talk like the way the cast did. Just like how Australia and Aotearoa are neighbouring countries that share a lot of similarities and are confused with each other by people from other parts of the world due to having a similar accent,

Malaysia and Singapore are similar in that aspect, too. Both are neighbouring countries and people from both countries sound exactly the same while sharing the same accent. So, as a Malaysian, I can assure you that we do not sound or talk the way they did in the film.

Unless, of course, the characters have been born and raised in Western countries overseas, in which I’m aware that the protagonist, Rachel Chu, was a professor who lectured in New York.

That gives a valid reason for their accents, but then again, it changes the entire narrative of the story. Why does the film use characters who have spent their whole lives overseas and not in their native countries to represent “authentic” Asian representation? Won’t they be the ones who know the least about what it’s like to live in their native countries? Also, I find the scene where the whole family gathers around this plant that has a flower that blossoms only once a year absurd. I’ve been to family gatherings, and I’ve never seen every member of the family so focused on seeing a flower. If that ever happened to my family in real life, all the children would still be on their iPads or distracted with something they saw outside while the adults would still be talking. The book might have been better, as all books are compared to their movie counterparts, but that doesn’t change the fact that I still loathe this film with an unbridled passion.

Parasite (2019):

I did not understand this film and had to go to YouTube to watch explanations of the themes of the movie. In hindsight, the fact that I had to research the meaning of a movie I just watched shows that the film did not convey the events of the plot clearly. However, it is an arthouse film, which is why I did not fall under the niche market it was aimed at.

Although, it succeeded in making me feel disturbed and horrified, rather than the traditional horror movie involving some supernatural being to add the horror factor. It also conveyed the social class difference clearly. Because I’m not South Korean, I cannot say whether the film was authentic enough. However, personally, watching a movie take place in the settings of the native country of the characters and watching the characters speak in their native language instead of being dubbed to speak American English made the film feel authentic to me.

Everything Everywhere All at Once (2022)

Once again, I am immensely proud to see Michelle Yeoh, a Malaysian actress who was from Ipoh, a town near my hometown, win the Oscar. However, the movie is debatably another arthouse film, and I was not a part of the niche market it was targeted at. The title is essentially what happens in the movie, in which everything that happens in the plot occurs everywhere all at once, leaving viewers like me discombobulated.

On the bright side, the film did an amazing job in spreading awareness on how it feels to be a racial minority, specifically an Asian American, in a foreign country. It was a refreshing perspective to see a woman, especially a Southeast Asian woman, who is sixty years old as the protagonist. It also had good underlying themes that are not often discussed in the media, like nihilism and existentialism. But I still feel like these ideas could have been conveyed better to make audience members like me understand.

Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings (2021)

Honestly, the best one from the list. As some of you may have known from my past feature on MARVEL movies, I am a huge MARVEL fan and was delighted to see a person who looked like me as the superhero of the MARVEL franchise. I heard there was some criticism of the movie specifically about what happened between Shang-Chi and his father, like his father being “whitewashed” to “symbolise the Yellow Peril,” according to NBC. I did not know what the Yellow Peril was until this day, it’s basically the idea of the danger of East Asian people overthrowing Western civilisation. Personally, I did not interpret the movie and its characters to the extent of symbolising something as horrible as that, I plainly saw it as a superhero story with the hero trying to save the world.

Although, I was bothered with the part where Shang-Chi’s father sent him on deadly missions when he was a tween and how Shang-Chi briefly refers to that as his traumatised past at certain points of the film because it buys into the clichéd Asian representation I mentioned. But I suspect that this aspect was added because the film was following what happened in the actual comic books that were probably written or influenced by non-Asians. Apart from these aspects, I personally enjoyed the film.

Asian Representation or Asian American Representation?

As an Asian who has been raised and practically grew up in her home country, Malaysia, I personally did not relate to or like most of the Asian representation featured in films because they felt Americanised and inauthentic. I am proud that people who look like me are getting the recognition they deserve, but I would also prefer to see films that feature Asians, people of Asian descent or any other people of colour in their native country to not only enhance authenticity but to also show that America isn’t the one and only place to live in.