Wealth psychologist Dr. James Grubman, author of Strangers in Paradise: How Families Adapt to Wealth Across Generations, has created a paradigm for discussing wealth and class differences. He likens becoming wealthy to immigrating to a country where one doesn’t speak the language, doesn’t know the laws, the culture is completely different, and the value system is obscure. Immigrants to “paradise” undergo the same culture shock and potential loss of status as did the immigrants who arrived at Ellis Island in the nineteenth century. Compared to, for example mid-twentieth century attitudes, modern society has made great progress in regard to abolishing class limitations. Most people will agree that having status correlated to achievement and accomplishments is healthier for society than for status to be fixed from birth. However, because there is a trend to reject the existence of class, or even acknowledging that class is more complicated than so simple a metric as income, race has come to replace what should be discussed as class and culture. Being honest about the role of class and culture has always been important, but it is more so as we are dealing with increasing discontent which is framed in terms of race and gender.
A perfect example is the outrage which surrounded the filming of the Crazy Rich Asians movie when the director John M. Chu chose several Asian-British and mixed-race actors over Asian-American actors of pure Asian descent. Of the principal roles, only two of them went to Asian-Americans: Constance Wu who played Rachel and Awkwafina who played Rachel’s American-educated friend Peik Lin. Chu was always upfront that he selected his cast because he needed to create a sense of a specific culture, so he (sensibly) chose actors who could bring the world he envisioned to life. Many of the Asian-American and North American actors who expressed opposition to the movie indicated that, in their minds, looks were the only thing which mattered. Yet this is the shallowest and least important basis for world-building as race alone is not as representative as representation activists think it is. As a unit of measurement, race is about as facile as Madeleine Albright’s soundbite, “there’s a special place in hell for women who don’t help other women,” which overlooks that women are a pretty broad category and they don’t necessarily feel affinity for each other merely based on their gender.
To illustrate, let’s try an exercise. Consider for example the following excerpts:
“How in the world do you know him?”
“We were at Stowe together.”
“You guys met at a ski resort?”
“Not Stowe, Vermont. Stowe — it’s a school in England.”
“Oh. I went to Harvard Business School.”
“Yes, you’ve mentioned that a number of times.”
Second excerpt:
On the main terrace, Carlton leaned against a railing alongside his Cambridge chum Harry Wentworth-Davies, surveying the scene. [….]
[Harry remarked] “I couldn’t believe that bloke on the telly who goes around the world terrorizing other people’s restaurants served it to me.”
“This is how Richie draws his crowd. Heaps of pretentious food and pricey booze,” Carlton said with barely veiled contempt.
Without any context, who are the characters? Are they male or female? Are they Caucasian?
The excerpts are from Kevin Kwan’s China Rich Girlfriend, the sequel to Crazy Rich Asians. All the speakers are male, and everyone is Chinese except Harry. The setting is a party thrown by Richie Yang. Written in pseudo-script style, the first excerpt would look like this:
Richie Yang
(in reference to a Turkish billionaire)
How in the world do you know him?
Nick Young
We were at Stowe together.
Richie Yang
You guys met at a ski resort?
Nick Young
Not Stowe, Vermont. Stowe — it’s a school in England.
Richie Yang
Oh. I went to Harvard Business School.
Nick Young
Yes, you’ve mentioned that a number of times.
Compared to reading the excerpt out of context, does knowing that both men are Chinese change our understanding? If one has seen the movie, presumably one is picturing Henry Golding as Nicholas Young. But do we have a clear view of Richie, outside of his ethnicity? What do we know about the character? He went to Harvard Business School, but that is a graduate school, so we know nothing about his undergraduate university. For his schooling, we only know that he is probably not Western preparatory school educated based on his gaffe over Stowe. He spends lavishly.
The second excerpt written like a script would look like this:
Setting: the terrace of a rooftop restaurant in Paris. Two Cambridge men observe other guests.
Harry Wentworth-Davies
I couldn’t believe that bloke on the telly who goes around the world terrorizing other people’s restaurants served it to me.
Carlton Bao
(Contemptuously) This is how Richie draws his crowd. Heaps of pretentious food and pricey booze.
Now, let us consider Carlton based only on the excerpt above. Carlton went to Cambridge. His best friend, Harry, is someone from Cambridge. Carlton is observant. He likes to stand and watch a situation from a distance. He has a sense of propriety, but he may not have very good manners — after all he is a guest at Richie’s party even as he expresses contempt for his host. Or, for reasons unknown, he has decided that Richie isn’t worthy of respect. Or, his contempt could be a response to the contempt Harry shows for the celebrity chef. We can safely say, though, that the event isn’t to Carlton’s standards and that neither he nor Harry is impressed by celebrities.
In terms of body language, would we expect Richie and Carlton to bear themselves the same way? Probably not. Would we expect them to speak the same way? That one should be an easy no. Richie uses a colloquial speech pattern — “how in the world do you know him?” — while Carlton uses the three-syllable word “pretentious” correctly even as he also uses informal speech to display contempt, e.g. what they’ve been served isn’t “wine,” it’s “booze.” What he’s implying is that the host has served something based on price, not on quality. We know Richie and his guests don’t think the same: Richie thinks ostentation is impressive; Carlton and Harry aren’t impressed. Could we say that there are more differences between Carlton and Richie than there are similarities? Now for the thorny question: do we think merely belonging to the same race as these characters is an indicator of a person’s ability to capture these nuances?
The purpose of this exercise, which is based off a role-building technique taught to trained actors and film students, is to illustrate that vulgarity and contempt for vulgarity transcend race. Nick Young, Carlton Bao, and Harry Wentworth-Davies all find Richie Yang vulgar. Nick (Asian), Carlton (Asian), and Harry (Caucasian) belong to the same class which for them is a greater bond than race, so their affinity is with each other, rather than with Richie (Asian).
In a follow up, teaser for the film sequel, semi-interview with Golding, The Guardian wrote, “The director, Jon M Chu, was at his wits’ end after a fruitless search for his leading man. An accountant working in the film’s Malaysian production office suggested Golding. She had met the travel show host a few years before and claimed he was exactly like the character of Nick, Singapore’s most eligible bachelor in the groundbreaking 2018 film.” Golding’s casting, along with that of Sonoya Mizuno (Araminta) caused controversy, particularly among Asian-American actors. Former child star Brenda Song claimed she was not allowed to audition for a role as she was “not Asian enough.” Chu rebutted with two points: 1) he wouldn’t have auditioned her as he knew who she was and had already seen her work, and 2) he would never have said that and no one on his team said that. However, she is partially correct: she’s not the right type of Asian. To put it bluntly, Nickelodeon child stars don’t normally come from the culture of “natives of paradise” with its emphasis on particular schools, universities, dress, and behavior codes. The reality is that she isn’t from the culture of Crazy Rich Asians. While there is a common expectation that actors should be able to transcend their origins and incarnate every role, I would say that is easier said than done. It’s worth pointing out that Cary Grant, real name Archie Leach, son of a Liverpudlian laborer and a seamstress, was never able to play a British aristocrat, unlike his contemporary David Niven who came from an upper-class background, which tangentially included attending Stowe School. Only America, with its more inchoate ideas of upper-class accents, looks, and behaviors, allowed Archie Leach to reinvent himself — with some help, naturally — as Cary Grant, vaguely mid-Atlantic glamor model.
Nick Chen of The Independent claimed Henry Golding’s casting was “white washing.” Keep in mind that The Independent is the newspaper which fell for the fake Marquess, who claimed racism but whose misuse of forms should have been a signal that he was a fraud, so the publication’s credibility for discussing race and class is low. “What’s more, on Twitter,” Chen wrote, “Emma Stone is still a recurring punchline for depicting a quarter-Chinese woman in Cameron Crowe’s Aloha. Yet a case can be made that Stone is closer to her character’s 25 per cent Asian ethnicity than Golding is to Nick’s 100 per cent Asian-ness.” Defined by what, genetics? Nothing about the fact that in the trilogy Nick is repeatedly described as a boarding school educated Oxonian, who holds a professorship at NYU, and is a grandson of Sir James Young, a man who is described in his 1930s portrait as “looking every inch the matinee idol in his houndstooth jacket and white fedora”? For that matter, the reader is never directly told what race the late Sir James was. Genetics or culture? Nature or nurture? Is that really the level to which conversation has descended?
What about Prince Felix of Denmark? He is part Chinese through his mother, the Countess of Frederiksborg. Could one tell just by looking at him? Maybe, maybe not. Are we going to reject the validity of his Asian side merely because he has light brown hair and eyes? His older brother Prince Nikolai has their mother’s dark hair and eyes. Is he somehow more Asian because of that? Let’s imagine that fifty years from now, a film needs to cast the Danish princes. Do we become mired in concern that we find actors who have the exact right proportions of the princes’ genetics, or do we find actors who look approximately like them and have the skills or background to perform convincingly as European princes?
As a quick side note: the baiting over casting Emma Stone as a quarter-Chinese woman must stop. It’s a-scientific, as anyone with only a high school level of biology should know. Which side a mixed-race person looks like is largely a matter of luck. Case in point: the Danish princes. They are about one quarter Asian, yet Prince Felix looks about as Caucasian as Emma Stone. Should someone run for the calipers?
Awkwafina, who played the role of Peik Lin, bashed the bashers, particularly those who claimed Golding was too White for the role. She called attention to the fact that her cousins are half-Asian, and she’s the only one in the family who “looks” Asian. Looks are not much of a foundation especially for building a world set in a culture as complex as the Crazy Rich Asian trilogy. She doesn’t deny that fewer roles were available even as recently as a few years ago, but she argues against being mired in the past. Concerning fewer roles, while that must have been frustrating, can one expect better? We’ve seen throughout this article that there is a theme of a certain type of Asian, often American but not always, holding forth about lack of acceptance, while being unaware of the existence of Asians who attend top boarding schools, who live and conduct themselves as members of an international “paradise,” or who are genuine royalty. There are equally uninformed Caucasian people. The average Caucasian American is unaware that Phillips Academy (the American equivalent of Eton or Harrow) exists, despite generations of American and international patricians of all races among its alumni. The people who wrote pieces with Asian stereotyping have only inflicted the same ignorance on Asians that they have inflicted on themselves.
Golding himself handled the whitewashing claims with grace, but his own history only raises more questions about how much DNA is enough. Golding went through the manhood ritual of his mother’s Iban people, who are indigenous to his birthplace Sarawak. Can any of the naysayers claim the same? Is that Asian enough? Did any of the naysayers attend a preparatory school in England, a feature which is repeatedly emphasized as important about Nick? Henry Golding did. For that matter, did any of the naysayers attend a preparatory school at all? Could the American naysayers name three ways an American preparatory school is different from an American public school? Can they name three famous American preparatory schools without using Google? If they can’t do that, I can guarantee that they can’t identify ways a British boarding preparatory school is different from an American public school.
I am not saying that casting a White Etonian as Nick Young would have been acceptable. When a race is specified in a story, the author’s intent must be honored. But matching the race of a character is separate from matching his or her class. If the author’s specifications on race must be honored, so must his or her intentions on class. Due to conversations around race and casting in classical music, particularly opera and musical theatre, I must also clarify that the principles named above only apply in film. In music, ability to sing the notes is primary. So for malcontents who say that a White singer shouldn’t sing the role of Turandot, when you can hit a high C and sustain it while cutting, without microphones, through an eighty-person orchestra, then we can talk. The same applies to those who say that Asians or Blacks shouldn’t sing White European roles.
The lone premise of the malcontents’ outrage was that race is a universal credential. In their minds, physical, racial looks are all that matter. Instead of apologizing and bowing to malcontents, it is time for them to face facts. We would laugh at the idea that just any White woman could play Princess Diana in a film merely because she is White. For that matter, given how important Princess Diana’s background as an earl’s daughter-turned-royal with a plumy RP accent was to her public persona, most people would agree that casting anyone but a British actress who could catch those nuances would be a colossal mistake. We wouldn’t expect Dwayne Johnson to be able to play Martin Luther King Jr. or Barack Obama in a film merely because he is Black. Just as with race, there is a great diversity of class and the imprint that it makes upon individuals. This is true representation, one which has existed throughout all time. It is organic, and it is preferable to the homogeneity of mediocrity and the unity of the common which representation activists would foist upon the world.