In the wedding scene in Crazy Rich Asians, a misty-eyed Constance Wu looks over at Henry Golding as a guitar melody strums in the background. The camera cuts to Kina Grannis as she begins to sing the words to “Can’t Help Falling in Love.” For most audience members, Grannis was just the wedding singer. But for Asian-American viewers who grew up with YouTube, the singer-songwriter’s cameo symbolized something more significant: it was an homage to a generation that had to seek out and create their own representation on the internet when there was little of it in Hollywood. Seeing Grannis in the most successful romantic comedy of the past decade signified a moment of visibility for a generation cultivated by YouTube.

There’s no doubt that Crazy Rich Asians’s 2018 success helped turn the tide. In the year since the romantic comedy stole the hearts of people of all walks of life and established that Asian representation is not only essential but profitable, there have been a number of wins for the community. While a 2018 report from USC’s Annenberg Inclusion Initiative found no meaningful change occurred in the percentage of Asians on screen between 2007 and 2017, the past two years have shown great promise beyond CRA. Lulu Wang’s The Farewell, a sincere film starring Awkwafina that explores topics such as being first-generation and the cultural clash between the West and East, dethroned Avengers: Endgame for 2019's biggest per-theater average. At San Diego Comic-Con, Marvel announced that Kim’s Convenience actor Simu Liu will star as in the titular superhero in Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings.

Even before it hit theaters, Crazy Rich Asians was praised for being the first big-budget Hollywood studio film with an all-Asian cast in 25 years since The Joy Luck Club. During this quarter-century gap, a generation of Asian-Americans grew up with minimal mainstream representation. But as the internet grew, YouTube channels such as Wong Fu Productions, Michelle Phan, NigaHiga, and KevJumba emerged. These Asian-Americans mobilized and took advantage of their creative liberty on the video-sharing social network.

Asian-American narratives and representation have been evolving and existing for years ahead of Crazy Rich Asians and today’s slate of films featuring Asian stories and actors — YouTube allowed creators the creative freedom to authentically and unabashedly share their own experiences. What we’re seeing in today’s landscape of big-screen movies is years of work on smaller screens. An entire world of Asian creators paved the way to better representation on YouTube.

ASIAN-AMERICAN YOUTUBE PIONEERS

Founded by Wesley Chan, Ted Fu, and Philip Wang, who met at the University of California, San Diego, Wong Fu Productions has been making short films for 16 years but began uploading their videos onto YouTube in 2007. As of today, their channel has 3.2 million subscribers and more than 552 million views. The Asian-American filmmaking group has worked with talent including Liu, Fresh Off the Boat’s Randall Park, The Maze Runner’s Ki Hong Lee, and more. The channel ranges from sketches about being Asian-American to short films on relationships and heartbreak.

“Filmmaking was never really a dream that I was chasing, but through pursuing it I found what I was chasing,” Wang tells Teen Vogue. “I didn’t go to film school to learn the craft, but I had all these experiences and stories I wanted to tell.”

Their videos often explored the nuance of these sorts of experiences and stories, along with touching on topics that weren’t really being talked about at the time. Their 2006 short film Yellow Fever satirized interracial dating between Asian-Americans and white people and especially the fetishization of Asian women, bringing Wong Fu major recognition. And while it was exciting to be able to make art about something such as Yellow Fever, the trio knew that there were still limits on the narratives they were capable of telling.

“We always felt pressure to represent all types of Asian experiences, but that’s just not possible,” Wang says. “The experience of a Chinese immigrant living in southern California is going to be different from a trans Hmong-American in St. Paul. But that’s why we want more people to share their stories.”