Love in the age of #AsianAugust

The cast of Searching that plays the Korean American family.

Recently we’ve had a breakthrough in Asian American/diaspora cinema, endearingly labelled #AsianAugust where we’ve had three releases of Hollywood produced movies featuring Asian American casts or leads: Crazy Rich Asians, Searching and To all the boys I’ve loved before. All three of these films are unambiguously Asian American works, with Asian writers behind the camera, and Asian actors in front of it as leads. This has been the goal that the Asian American arts community has been striving for, and the community at large has desired to tell more authentic, relatable and non-stereotypical stories.

There is a common theme across these three movies: Love. Deep romantic love, teen love, fatherly love, motherly love, love between brothers, and love between sisters. To see love among Asians should be simple and unsurprising, yet the portrayals we see in western film so far has been dehumanising for both Asian men and women. Asian parents are never affectionate, we don’t cast enough Asian actors for there to even be brothers and sisters, and Asian men virtually never get romantic or sexual roles, and when they do, the scenes get cut out, while Asian women are universally portrayed as romantic interests solely for white men.



These portrayals undoubtedly have an effect on the Asian American community. Asian American women born and raised in the US have developed a strong preference for white men, Pew Research has shown that 54% end up in interracial marriages, overwhelmingly to white men. When we look at East and Southeast Asians in particular, as these are the Asian Americans most commonly portrayed in film, with the previously mentioned stereotypes. The number goes even higher. There is a significant marriage gap between Asian men and Asian women, where a large proportion of Asian men will go through life unmarried and unable to form a family. This isn’t just desirability politics, this is the politics of humanity for the vast majority of people. This is why we fight for reproductive rights, why we fight for LGBT to have access to reproductive technology or adoption, why we fight for a better work life balance. We want family to be a choice that everyone should be allowed to make.



Naturally as life imitates art, many Asian americans have entered the arts world with the goal to make a difference, to elevate Asian American men and women. However there is a scathing gender divide when it comes to our creators. Asian male creators overwhelmingly choose to elevate both Asian men and women, where Asian female creators overwhelmingly choose to elevate themselves and often repeating tired tropes of sexual desirability towards white men. The three movies of #AsianAugust encapsulates this nicely.

We see Crazy Rich Asians directed and written by Asian American men, John Cho and Kevin Kwan, celebrating an all-asian cast and celebrating Asian love with Asian women arguably the strongest and most central characters to the plot, and the plots of prospective sequels. Kevin Kwan, the writer of the books of which the movie is based on, was even propositioned by a studio exec to change the lead role to a white woman. To which he fiercely shot down at the potential cost of the movie deal.



Then we have Searching, a movie directed and co-written by an Asian American man starring an All-Asian family. What is interesting about Searching’s family, is that Asianness is entirely irrelevant to the plot in that there are rarely any cultural references with the exception of one mention of “kimchi gumbo”. Yet the simple fact of portraying a fully unambiguous Asian American family is a massive boon to the Asian American community, with John Cho, the leading actor and a veteran of Asian American cinema fully acknowledging the importance of this.

Lastly, To all the boys I’ve loved before, a Netflix Original movie based on a book written by an Asian American Woman, who has promoted the story, book and film, as another push towards positive Asian American representation. Yet many within the community has questioned the overwhelming centering of whiteness in a story by an Asian American woman, and how that could possibly be a positive outcome. All five romantic interests of Lara Jean (the main character) are distinctly intended to be white, with one of them being casted as black in the movie, where evidently white creatives felt it would be somewhat absurd and racially problematic for it to be entirely white. Lara Jean, the central character that was supposedly based on Jenny Han’s own life and personal fantasies, was written as Eurasian or half white, and to further divorce herself from Asianness, the character’s Asian mother passed away very early on.

The romantic interests of Lara Jean Covey in To all the boys I’ve loved before.

Additionally while there were no Asian male actors anywhere to be found in the story, let alone as romantic interests, critics have called out a scene that essentially brushed off the racist caricatures of Sixteen Candles’ Long Duk Dong, and shifting the attention to the attractive white male: Jake Ryan (in sixteen candles) and Peter Kavinsky who plays a white saviour role in being semi-woke to calling out racism before being cut off by the Covey sisters. As this is in the YA (Young adult) genre, what lessons is this teaching impressionable Asian girls?

And on the defensive, many have brushed off criticism claiming it is sexist and misogyny to question the centering of white men in Asian female stories. Some writers such as Laura Sirikul are even bold enough to claim that there is a double standard where Asian male creators can erase Asian women but Asian female creators are not allowed to erase Asian men, listing a whole host of movies where Asian women are not romantic interests of Asian men that do not feature Asian men as leads AND creators: Crazy Ex Girlfriend, Running for Grace, Freaky Friday, The Good Place or Fast and Furious. And in the examples that are brought up starring Asian leads and featuring Asian creators, The Big Sick and Master of None, both of which are South Asian lead, which as a community has an entirely different baggage when it comes to whiteness to that of East and Southeast Asians, they were heavily criticised by both Asian men and Asian women.

Already Tomorrow in Hong Kong written and directed by Emily Ting, Starring Jamie Chung and Bryan Greenberg.

Ironically they neglect the history where Asian female creators in both literature and film/tv have continually erased or denigrated Asian men. Such as erasure in Already Tomorrow in Hong Kong featuring Jamie Chung, written and directed by Emily Ting, featuring a white romantic interest with white saviour tropes in the backdrop of Hong Kong.

Chinese burn promotional clip

Or denigration in the recent BBC production Chinese Burn written by and starring British Chinese artists Yennis Cheung and Shin-Fei Chen, where Asian men are universally portrayed as sexually deficient upon a whole host of other racist caricatures. The latter has similarly deflected criticism as simply misogynistic men feeling entitled to women.

Joy Luck Club promotional poster

Lastly lets talk about the last time we had a breakthrough like Crazy Rich Asians, 25 years ago with the all-asian hollywood production Joy Luck Club based on the book by Amy Tan. One of the more controversial works in the pantheon of Asian American literature and film, championing Asian women at the expense of Asian men, where similarly they were casted off as stereotypical misogynists, undesirables, and fundamentally the source of the main characters’ problems, where white men are portrayed as evidently superior partners and their salvation. Yet it was still under the direction of an Asian man, Wayne Wang, who turned this piece of literature into film, and Asian men and women lining up the theatres to support this movie.

#AsianAugust is a breakthrough moment for Asian Americans, not just for cinema, a reminder that we can be proud of who we are and love ourselves and each other. It should also be a breakthrough in our discourse, where we as a community should start to recognise established history and facts of how within our own works we have constantly excluded and denigrated Asian men in the name of creative freedom and white acceptance, and move forward in unity to tackle further challenges, write new stories and capitalise on our ever increasing exposure and recognition.