Relatability, Representation, and the Intervention of Wealth in "Bling Empire"

 

With Crazy Rich Asians and Bling Empire, the budding phenomena of on-screen wealth blur the realities of socioeconomic difference within expansive, varied Asian-American community becomes impossible to ignore. I think it's fair to point out that Jean Chen Ho's praise of media mediocracy's implications depends on a privilege largely conflated to the representations of East Asians. Stories of the Japanese, Chinese, Korean, and Vietnamese cast members fulfill a narrative of flexible American citizenship absent of civic struggles and racial antagonism. While the constructed stories offer ample opportunity to sympathize and laugh at their displays of open vulnerability, the rhetoric also suggests that pure, unfiltered celebration of identity can only come from the site of economic excess, where stability and mobility are no longer in question. Unburdened by financial hardship, there isn't any issue with displaying and reveling in cultural differences like the season's opening Lunar New Year extravaganza. Rather than an appeal towards cultural whiteness, the cast reinforces their ethnic and religious identities to humanize themselves. It's an odd, ironic reworking of the model minority image from a different class perspective. Replace self-respecting diligence and work ethic with inheritances, trust-funds, the occasional desire to fulfill oneself through entrepreneurship, and the dangerous assumption of existing unscathed outside of U.S. racial politics remains problematically involved.

 

But as Jean Chen Ho rightfully suggests, there's an undercurrent of liberating mediocrity fixed to cultural representations through the reality tv format. There's a reason the John M. Chu's film begins with the wealthy Eleanor's rejected entry into a British hotel: outside her world of influence in an interconnected wealthy East Asia, Eleanor is vulnerable because of her racial identity. Wealth and access to transnational networks easily solve the initial problem, and the film offers a look into the rich's niche world. Situated in their luxury, protagonist Rachel perceives everything around her as intimidating excellence or inexplicable oddities. It's a storybook romance in an exoticized setting, so the narrative and the visuals pump up the excess. Arguably, the reality tv show has more opportunities to explore beyond the idea of excellence and suggests basic humanity instead— including the moments meant for ridicule and disgust. No one can deny that the reality show forces us to witness the quirks of each cast member. Thinking of the mechanics of racial melancholia, the show takes advantage of its more meaningful narrative storylines: Kevin, a Korean-American adopted into a white family, introduces himself as an outsider both culturally and economically. It's no wonder that Kevin finds himself wanting to dive into his background once centered in the enclaves of the rich. Wealth certainly helps, but Kevin feels more fortified in his decision to connect to his identity because of the solidarity ingrained within the show's fabric. It all feels very subversive when the cast does something as simple as caring or entertaining the audience.

 

However, the parallels between the Crazy Rich Asian trope and the model minority obligation operate under the goal of hiding Asian discrimination in America. The divergence from the model-minority image seems radical because we have slotted the assumption of academic excellence and social mobility into the fabric of understanding Asians in America. The moment influencer Jaime breezily tells us and Kevin she has dropped out of college, abandoned her Olympian equestrian dreams because of the labor involved transporting horses, and elevated fashion from a hobby to a profession seems jarring of the precedent set by the mainstream Asian stereotype. Media legibility seems relegated to images of obedience, compliance, and self-sufficiency through work ethic projects the sense of constant labor and strife. Audiences assume mandatory storylines of Pressure and self-struggle conscripted into the mainstream Asian-American identity. The leisure and recreation Jaime and the others thrive from seems enchanting because the show offers it as a comical aside. As Ho stresses in her article, in an economy bereft of "narrative plenitude," Jaime's fickleness may not be the "high-lofted achievement" positive representation, but it momentarily feels refreshing. Most people sitting down and enjoying Bling Empire aren't expecting much beyond the pleasure of that moment watching anyways. Reality tv absolves itself from any potential harm through an ironic wink— knowing the audience doesn't expect much sets the bar extremely low. 

 

The contrast between the issues plaguing Bling Empire's cast and the subjects of Sunaina Maira's article is startling. I'd say it's almost laughable if it didn't remind you of the realities of internal difference within a marginalized group. Critiques that Bling Empire's representation lacks seem especially pointed here considering the civic interactions overwrought with state disenfranchisement for Muslim immigrant youth. The triviality of Bling Empire becomes banal and offensive in comparison, and for a good reason. For the immigrant youth confronting American society in the wake of the September 11 attacks, they find themselves in a complicated intersection of internalizing democratic ideals attached to immigration and their verifiable experience proving the contrary. The author's increased focus on educational settings as a public site where Muslim immigrants must enact negotiations— in behavior, conduct, and subjectivities— notably establishes their vulnerability as young people. Targeted by domestic and transnational images, confronted with state-sanctioned discrimination, and fearing the threat of deportation, citizenship becomes a site of tremulous, shifting identity for the immigrant youth. Maira stresses that it is not solely an economic issue, but it feels impossible not to imagine what intervention wealth may have. As executives and producers clamor for images of ethnic and racial celebration through the lens of abundant wealth, the fetishizing undertone makes it clear which ideas of representation can make it to the mainstream.