From poverty porn to wealth porn: A dichotomy of two images of Asia in Hollywood

Back in 2009, when Slumdog Millionaire became a global blockbuster and won critical acclaim, like the main character in the movie, I was a young man from a humble background with dreams in my eyes and a resolve to go after them. The story struck a chord instantly and it became one of my all-time favourite movies. There were people who dubbed the movie as "poverty porn" and dismissed it right away, in spite of many other aspects of life in the developing world, that the movie endeavoured to showcase.

Fast forward to 2018, almost a decade has passed and the world has changed. The rising middle class in Asia is now the primary driver of global economic growth. The predictions of China being the next superpower and overtaking the US are getting more realistic with every passing year. Like most people who come from middle class families across Asia, I have achieved success in terms of improving my quality of life and I now live in a country which has deep rooted western values.

The adage, life imitates art and art imitates life, could not have been better exemplified than the storyline of the movie, Crazy Rich Asians. The movie, while being promoted as a rom-com, has a lot more going for it than just being a peek into the dating lives of the ultra-high-net-worth individuals from Asia. For me, the central theme of the storyline was the duality of being connected to two different value systems and the feeling that one is a part of both at the same time. This is something that can only be experienced by someone who is an immigrant themselves or to a lesser extent by first generation immigrants. The movie also tries to capture the aspect of inequality among the wealthy and tries to expose the dynamics between old money families and the nouveau riche.

While the movie does fulfil a need for minority-representation in Hollywood, I don’t believe it is a true representation of all Asian immigrants or even all rich Asians. If anything, to a certain extent, it re-enforces the incorrect semantics associated with the word, Asian, as being Chinese. This does not in any way take away from the fact that the movie is a genuine attempt to showcase the lives of Asian immigrants across the globe. It would be almost impossible and probably commercially unviable to capture the cultural diversity that the Asian continent has to offer in a two hour movie.

The fact that some people are dissing the movie as "wealth porn", is a big win not just for the people involved in the making of the movie but also for the Asian community as a whole. It would not have been possible to get that kind of reaction for a movie about a minority group just a few years ago. I hope and wish that this outstanding work of art marks the beginning of a new paradigm of Asian representation in the global media.


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