By Ed Diokno
Views From The Edge
Two days after the theatrical release of Crazy Rich Asians, the romantic comedy with an all-Asian cast, Netflix released its own romantic comedy with an Asian American actress in the lead role.
To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before is being hailed in some circles as the best teen rom-com in a decade. Author Jenny Han fought to keep Lara Jean Song Covey, the main character in the young adult novel, Asian American despite some studios’ desires to whitewash the character.
However, with the opportunity to cast an Asian American boy as one of Lara Jean’s romantic interests, she chose to go along with the studio’s casting decisions after making (and winning) her point for the teenage heroine.
Even though the movie is receiving high praise, the Netflix product is being questioned for rendering the Asian male invisible as a potential romantic interest, reinforcing the stereotype of the unattractive, unsexy, unromantic Asian man. Not a single one of the heroine’s “boys” are Asian.
“I understand the frustration and I share that frustration of wanting to see more Asian American men in media,” said author Jenny Han in an interview with IndieWire. “For this, all I can say is this is the story that I wrote.”
Han’s protagonist is Korean American Lara Jean Song Covey played by Vietnamese American actress Lana Condor. The bashful high school junior writes love letters to her crushes. High school gets even more complicated when letters she wrote to five crushes become accidentally mailed off.
In Han’s book trilogy, the races or ethnicities of Lara Jean’s crushes are never spelled out which—you would think—gave the Netflix production the creative freedom to be daring and include at least one Asian among Lara’s boys.
Instead, the film appears to have forgotten that their lead character’s identity is Asian American and (very possibly) might have met some Asian boys in her high school class.
Despite the cultural breakthrough and apparent financial success of To All the Boys, Crazy Rich Asians, where Asian men finally are presented as complicated—and attractive—people, is still the outlier. While we enjoy the depiction of Asian men in CRA, their nonstereotypical roles don’t even begin to counter the centuries of Western society’s emasculation of Asian males.
So when To All the Boys presents the rare opportunity to strike another blow against the Asian male stereotype, it hurts that it is not eagerly taken. It hurts doubly because the author is Asian American.
Han, who was raised in Virginia, was stronger in defense of the main character of the book when questioned whether or not the heroine (and her two sisters) needed to be Korean. When producers were wooing her for the movie rights to her book, almost all of them wanted to whitewash Lara Jean.
“What would it have meant for me back then to see a girl who looked like me star in a movie? Not as the sidekick or romantic interest, but as the lead? Not just once, but again and again? Everything,” said Han in an opinion piece she wrote for The New York Times.
“There is power in seeing a face that looks like yours do something, be someone. There is power in moving from the sidelines to the center.”
Han acknowledges her novel’s and the Netflix movie’s shortcomings, but like many people who don’t want to rock the boat, she is grateful for the small steps taken by a movie like To All the Boys in overcoming Hollywood’s historic neglect of Asian American men and women.
“There are so many people that want to tell stories. I think that the issue is how hard it is to get your foot in the door to tell your stories,” she told IndieWire. “For me, I just want to support people in telling the stories that they want to tell, and I would hope that with this movie and Crazy Rich Asians, that if it does well, then we’ll get more.”
“More means more representation, more viewpoints, more stories, and I want to see that. I think also, as I continue on and get more clout, I’m committed to that as well. So I do understand the animus behind [the criticism], and I do want to see that happen for people. I think it’s important to just keep pushing for more and to get the doors to open wider.”
For now, we have to be satisfied with the small steps taken by the male characters of Crazy Rich Asians, Vincent Rodriguez of Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, Hayden Szeto of The Edge of Seventeen, Ross Butler in 13 Reasons Why and Aziz Ansari of Master of None. John Cho’s role in Selfie was promising but short-lived. Cho, however, gave us a complicated, 3-dimensional character in Columbus but no romance was part of the storyline.
The fact that I can rattle off examples of Asian American men as romantic leads speaks volumes to the fact that there are too few examples to pick from.
Maybe next time—and the critical success of To All the Boys and Crazy Rich Asians makes it almost certain there will be a next time—Han can try a little harder to convince casting directors that there is a romantic side to Asian males.
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RE: Author Jenny Han Address Criticism about Lack of Asian boyfriends in To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before: Let me preface this comment by saying that I LOVED To All The Boys I’ve Loved Before. I watched it with my 14 and 12-year old daughters, who loved it as well. They might not say so, but I am sure they felt represented to have someone who looked like them as a main character.
That said, not having a single Asian Male, even as an extra, is a travesty. I have a friend in Vancouver whose daughter goes to the neighboring high school, which is 80% Asian.
If the producers could include one African-American among Lara Jean’s five crushes, certainly they could have changed one or more of the remaining four to Asian, HIspanic, Middle Eastern, Native American, or trans male. This is NOT breaking new ground for young adult stories on Netflix, as Hannah Baker had an Asian Male love interest in 13 Reasons Why.
RE: Author Jenny Han Address criticism about lack of Asian boyfriends in To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before: There was a bit of romantic tension between John Cho and Parker Posey’s characters in “Columbus.” I think they even kissed.