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Sep 6, 2020Liked by jonah wu

That's wild that you have to subscribe -and- make a one time purchase. During this year of all years, it feels predatorial.

I can feel your anger in this, this is a really good piece. : ) Though I can't speak for PoC rep, I feel a similar way towards media about trans people that's not coming from actual trans people, but cis film makers fetishizing the experience as they see it to generate $$ for themselves. It's tokenizing and generally horrible in actual tangible ways for the communities that are 'represented' on screen. Like the massive pay disparity with Crazy Rich Asians. That's so exploitive ew

I heard the movie itself makes a lot of this even worse with the way it analyzes power structures.

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yeah, there's definitely some problematic stuff in crazy rich asians. i touch on those problems briefly in the piece i wrote about CRA (linked somewhere up there LOL). someone who is more well-versed on singapore geopolitics than me can speak more on it, but the wikipedia page actually summarizes a lot of people's criticisms well: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crazy_Rich_Asians_(film)#Casting_criticism

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I feel the need to point out that, as far as I’ve seen, Tony Leung Chiu-Wai (Little Tony, of 2046) has NOT made pro-Beijing comments, and has so far supported HK protestors. Big Tony, or Tony Leung Ka Fai, is the one who’s spoken in favor of Beijing. I had to double check, but I was momentarily heart-broken when I read here that Little Tony had spoken against the protestors, so I wanted to clarify.

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Thank you for the information! I wasn't aware that he has supported the HK protestors. I got the information that I wrote in the essay from Leung Chiu-Wai's Wikipedia page: "During the promotion of the film Hero, some politicians and commentators in Hong Kong attacked Leung for expressing the view that the Tiananmen Square demonstration crackdown was necessary to maintain stability. Under constant political pressure and boycott threats, Leung made a single statement that he may have been quoted out of context but refused to retract his statement in the magazine. However, the movie magazine editor maintained that the original statement was not out of context and challenged people to read the complete interview." The publication reporting this has since folded, but the article has been preserved by the Wayback Machine: https://web.archive.org/web/20050907000939/http://www.hkentreview.com/2002/december/decother/tltian.html

However, an article I found stated that he supported the 2014 protests, which were more recent than his Tiananmen comments, so I think that's probably fair justification for removing him from the pro-Beijing list. Thanks again for commenting, and for reading this essay!

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