How Asia got crazy rich - Toward a materialist history of Crazy Rich Asians

I really enjoyed reading this and found it does resonate with my own experiences and what I am seeing in Asia and North America. There are a lot of good points through out, but in particular the following stood out for me:

On the other hand, neither is the “Crazy Rich” incidental, for to be wealthy is what marks the Asian characters as modern and relatable, even endearing.

Wealth has become a marker for modern. Mainland Chinese people want to participate in capitalism and purchasing power is how they are being heard.

This comes out clearly when Kwan’s story is contrasted against Amy Tan’s The Joy Luck Club...The Joy Luck Club suggests that strong family bonds were what helped Chinese women weather and ultimately escape an oppressive, traditional society. Crazy Rich Asians turns that idea on its head. The conflict between Rachel and Eleanor conveys that strong family bonds are obstacles to empowerment for a new cosmopolitan Chinese diaspora that values individualism and romance. There is an implied historical process here, then, from old Asia as the antithesis of western individualism transformed dramatically into a new Asia embodying the future of capitalism.

When I first read, and then watched The Joy Luck Club, I really didn't like it. And I believe a huge part was that it was telling a story of traditional Chinese immigrants. There were so few books about Chinese people in general that I found it grating how their experiences were made to seem foreign and exotic. Things like bring food for the family when someone passes away is, in my eyes, not a Chinese tradition, but a human one. So, it is interesting that I honestly loved Crazy Rich Asians, when it really went out of it's way to show this elite and exotic Asian world. Maybe it's because Rachel is the audience's lens, and follow the craziness with her.

The historic racist narrative of Black Americans was that they were lazy and undeserving of social mobility. The current narrative of Asian Americans is that they are too mobile, drilled in math and piano at an early age, hence unfair competition.

I just thought this was a really interesting point, especially viewing Chinese as unfair competition. In Canada, there is discussion (with a fair amount of support) is basically limiting foreign ownership of Canadian property, specifically in BC. Though the policies themselves are not suppose to be racist in anyway, mainland Chinese always ends up as part of the issues listed.

It is walking a fine line. Perhaps this is why Rachel must resolve the film’s encounters with the Singaporean capitalist sublime by insisting upon her individual desire, threatening to walk away from Nick’s family in the name of love, reassuring the audience that she may be Chinese by heritage but at heart remains unmistakably American.

This is just following the rom-com formula I think. However, I do notice that when someone is Asian-America (Canadian) the stories always do lean back towards western values. This might just be truth though, as I find myself using leaning that way too (as a Canadian born Chinese, CBC).

Could we therefore point to crazy rich Asia as something worth holding onto, not as a celebration of the wealthy or even of Asia in particular, but rather as the historical possibilities of successful wealth redistribution from its former centers to the margins and from the top to bottom—as a resource for renewing a more radical vision of global development? That would turn out to be something much more worthy of celebration.

Kinda liked the way this reads, but honestly think it's well beyond the movie itself, especially considering the majority of the movie is about "old money".

Coming up as a 404 for me