#+ western european and a bit of chinese ancestry means is supposed to look like

[nopejustnoped]

The way some ppl discuss damian‘s appearance and more specifically his skin color is so off putting.

[mermaidsirennikita]

Wait y was nick's casting controversial

The actor who plays Nick, Henry Golding, discusses it a bit here:

http://variety.com/2017/film/asia/henry-golding-talks-crazy-rich-asians-casting-controversies-1202622817/

I’m a huge fan of the book series but I’m also white, so it’s really not my place to say anything definitive, but I can hear what Asian fans of the series are saying and…  I can see why a lot of people feel like Henry Golding isn’t right for the part.  I will say that he doesn’t look anything like what I imagined when I pictured Nick.  I’m fucking BASIC, so I pictured Godfrey Gao.  I’m not well-versed enough on the subject to say, but perhaps he wouldn’t have been the best choice either as he’s Taiwanese/of Malaysian descent?  China and Taiwan historically have a pretty rough history, so I’m not sure how that would have played out.  Then again, Constance Wu is Taiwanese-American, and I do think she’s pretty perfect for Rachel as an actress, so.

Obviously, a big issue in casting Asians in Hollywood is that Asian actors have historically just been sort of thrown into roles because they’re Asian, whether or not they’re of the proper ethnic background for the roles they’re portraying.  Perhaps most famously, Zhang Ziyi, a Chinese actress, played the Japanese lead in Memoirs of a Geisha.  Gong Li also played a geisha in that movie.  Geisha are Japanese–historically, culturally, in basically every way.  The tradition of the geisha is Japanese, the movie is about issues that are specific to Japan (World War II, the fallout surrounding it, and of course the life of a geisha) so… casting a Chinese actress as a the title role is just wrong.  No matter how beautiful that movie is to watch–and I get it, I’m guilty of enjoying it though I know it’s offensive as fuck for plenty of reasons–that will always be a problem.  I mean, it’s especially iffy in that case because of what was happening between China and Japan in World War II.

So, most of the characters in Crazy Rich Asians are of Chinese descent in some way or another, though they might be from Singapore like Nick, Hong Kong, mainland China, etc.  Henry Golding is of Malaysian and European descent.  To put it shortly: he is mixed.  I’ve seen him called Eurasian; not sure if that’s the proper term for him, but the point is that he is an actor of mixed descent.  Nick is not.  Nick’s last name is spelled Young, but if I remember correctly it’s adapted from Yang.  He’s from a very old, literally royal Chinese family and the fact is that in the books much is made of his heritage and how adverse his family is to mixing their ranks even with lower-ranking people in Singapore, let alone white people.  Sure, he speaks with a British accent thanks to his schooling, but the buck stops there.

It reminds me of the whole controversy wherein Amandla Stenberg made some pretty ignorant comments about how she stopped auditioning for the role of Shuri because she wanted to “give dark-skinned actresses a chance”, basically.  When in reality, Amandla doesn’t look anything like a character who would have been descended from an African family with no mingling with other races.  That’s what Shuri is.  Nick Young is a character who does not have a lick of European ancestry.  Henry Golding ain’t that.

For a lot of fans, from what I’ve read, this sort of taps into something I mentioned in my post about Shang in the Mulan live action remake (or rather, his absence). Western movies have traditionally been very hesitant to portray Asian men as male leads, strong and masculine and sexy.  Takeshi Kaneshiro is this total babe in House of Flying Daggers and the movie makes it clear that you are supposed to see him this way, with all of the panning over his pretty face and all of the flirting and the beautiful fighting and just the LINGERING.  He would not (and he and actors who look like him haven’t) get that portrayal in an American-made Hollywood movie.  There were plenty of thinkpieces about Dev Patel being revealed as this object of desire in Lion (a movie that, though it definitely had some beautiful shots that were meant to highlight how beautiful and desirable Dev is, still was fairly sexless) because that almost NEVER happens in American movies.  Asian men are often portrayed as feminine, or creepy, or nerdy, or most of all weird pervs.  Think The Hangover, think Breakfast at Tiffany’s.  

I think it is a bit of a slap in the face for many fans to see Nick Young being cast in a way that could be read as “but not TOO Asian”.  In a movie called Crazy Rich Asians, of all things.  Because Nick is the FANTASY.  That is how I read him, and he wasn’t even my favorite guy in the book.  Like, Nick is probably almost too nice for me, but God I’d date him, insane mother and all, because who wouldn’t?  He’s an aristocrat, he’s handsome, he’s insanely wealthy, he’s old money, and above all he is sweet and kind and caring and he’s even good in bed.  I think many Asian fans of the series seem to be responding to the fact that for all that, Nick still isn’t being portrayed by an actor whose heritage reflects who Nick is.

Again, I’m sure there are counter-points to be made but that’s what I’m getting about this movie.