As a developing teenager, I have always felt entitled to the typical coming-of-age story that is so commonly depicted in the movies, one where the protagonist enters a conflict but manages to resolve all her life problems in order to truly “ find herself” and be assured of her identity, all in the timeframe of 2 hours. In actuality, this prompt poses itself as a challenge to me because I struggle with aligning myself to one. So I will start with what is mostly associated with me thus far, my ethnicity. Through the non-traditional text in the form of the movie “Crazy Rich Asians”, I will begin to address how the movie with all of its aspects of genre has influenced me to believe that Asian-Americans are more than our stereotypical attributes and that, I am to be accepted as I am, aside from misconceptions that I only belong in one communtiy in spite of my background in two cultures.
As aforementioned, being Asian-American is a whole another situation of itself where complications can arise. For instance, the hyphen in between the two words already implies that there should be a separation or that there’s a difference big enough in margin that should leave the two to never collide. The movie “Crazy Rich Asians” subverts all of these statements. To begin, a composed work of text could apply to any piece that conveys meaning or a story. The movie accomplishes this through the placement of rhetorical situations aided with simple modes of communication: writing, visual and auditory. Through the help of actors that play out a written script, the movie engaged me as a viewer to re-evaluate the premises of the movie to be applied to my life and as a result, assign its own personal significance as I interpret it. As i reflect the movie’s main purpose and what I largely gain as I walked out of the theater, it was that I am no longer an outcast. For what seemed to be a long time, I could only see myself represented in popular media as the typical nerd and social pariah, a minor character that is so different, they are ostracized. But for once, I do not observe any form of caricature, only the story that follows the relationship between the couple and their engagement. Which, I believe to be one of the creator’s purposes, to normalize the idea to viewers such as myself, that my story, unique to me, deserves to exist entirely on its own without restricting preconceptions that puts a hold on me as an individual. In fact, a large reason why the movie resonated so well with me was because I could see myself in the main female protagonist, Rachel Chu, with how she felt displaced because of her social and economic background in contrast to the Young family’s affluent wealth. As an Asian-American, she also felt insecure about authenticity to being Asian and felt that she should have to compromise her character to fit in.