When local filmmakers began to try to integrate Chinese elements with a Hollywood set, Tsui Hark, Wu Ershan and others used the "Orientalism" of the West to create a dichotomy that is not Chinese but not foreign. But when Asians from the West, who grew up in the West, began to look at their Asian faces in the mirror, they created a kind of "General Tso's Chicken" Chinese-Western spectacle.
After I've had all the "hot and sour soups" around the UK, I especially don't want to criticize the latter. I had a strange experience, even though I was so fond of Britain, I understood that it was always someone else's country and that I still needed a bowl of hot and sour soup instead of English breakfast tea. My country is a mess, and I still miss its kind face. It's unbearable and needs me to build instead of throw it away.
The "General Tso's Chicken"-style "Crazy Rich Asians" is more sincere than the imitation of the West by those local filmmakers. It is the imagination of the "mother country" of the Asian ethnic group, just like Wakanda in "Black Panther" Not really like Africa. It is full of vases, screens, embroidery, and mahjong, which are the symbols that best represent the East in the eyes of Asians. The mother said to her daughter: "No, although you speak Chinese, you are not like them." This sentence also shows that "Crazy Rich Asians" can impress so many Asians in the United States, but it cannot impress the audience in China. The reason for passion. It seems to be telling a story about Asia, but the physical and mental difficulties faced by the group of Chinese in the lens (racial discrimination, psychological imagination and nostalgia for the mother country) are incomprehensible to local Chinese.
"Crazy Rich Asians" is almost full of Asians expressing their thoughts about the Western society they live in. It constantly emphasizes that Asians themselves and other ethnic groups in the West, although different in thinking, are generally the same. When Westerners discriminate against Asians like chink, tiny genitals represent impotence, creepy's smile is wretched and erotic, weird and shy character is calculating, mean and malicious, "Crazy Rich Asians" 》 put a lot of ink on trying to correct this discriminatory concept——
It focuses on the male characters' naked bodies, provocative backs, and broad chest muscles, showing that Asian men are as strong as white men; the protagonist is as flirtatious and sexual as white men; people gather as white men Open a party; the heroine does not smile like Asians, her eyes are narrowed, she is confident, kind, and dares to laugh in public... etc. Such elements are repeatedly emphasized, it seems to be inexhaustible . Behind this, the creative motives of Asian creators appear to be sincere, and they do not hide their deep self-esteem for a long time.
"Crazy Rich Asians" is still nothing more than a derivative of a "Cinderella" fairy tale in mode. It's just in this routine that the creators have caught some crux of the traditional Chinese family structure. This story has a similar character structure to "Dream of Red Mansions", an old lady like Jia's mother, "Mrs. Wang" who upholds family norms, and many brothers and sisters, cousins, and even Jia Baoyu Qin Zhong Jiang Yuhan in A Dream of Red Mansions The family is indifferent and tolerant to a "comrade" member, just like the hidden affection of the broken sleeves. It's just that the building of "A Dream of Red Mansions" finally fell down, while "Crazy Rich Asians" made love a victory, and Western values prevailed.
It is commendable that "Crazy Rich Asians" almost unconsciously pointed out the root cause of Asian "inferiority". This is why it is destined to be an important imaging source for the study of Asian psychology and cognitive behavior. In this big family, like the Jia family, the highest-ranking person in power is the oldest woman. The grandmother stayed up until her husband and son "disappeared" and held the power of the family. "Crazy Rich Asians" is more extreme than "A Dream of Red Mansions", and it has almost no male powers.
This directly points to the fact that the Chinese collective "father" is missing, and even it uses the heroine's mother's past to reveal the "sin" of the father's generation. At the cultural level, the Chinese ethnic group has lost their "father" for a hundred years. The Chinese family's emotions have always been maternal, and are maintained by the taste of home-cooked meals from their mothers, which exist in the mahjong table and dumpling wrappers. This is reflected in Ang Lee's "Father Trilogy" as well as in Taiwan's new film "Fan Baode" this year. The deep emotional rift between the son and the father is a trauma left over from history, and it seems that The crux of the Chinese community that has never been resolved, the "ugly" father has always been the last part of the next generation.
The Asians' imagination of the "mother country", the sincerity of their "inferiority", and the gimmicks of the Asian rich and new, make the film seem noisy and confusing. I am afraid that even the art director of Crazy Rich Asians did not realize that there are so many symbolic Chinese elements in the space and scenery he arranged, but the only thing missing is the shadow of the bookcase.
This also seems to indicate that the cultural community is damaged by one loss. Under the same haze, no matter where the Chinese are, they will still share the same fate.
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