theconversation.com: To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before (TATBILB) has been hailed as the first mainstream teen romance to feature an Asian-American lead. The Netflix comedy revolves around Lara Jean Song-Covey, a Korean-American teenager whose life is turned upside down when her secret love letters are mysteriously posted to their subjects.
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I really liked the way this article addressed TATBILB and how the movie handled Lara Jean's race. The article brings up a touchy subject of how Lara Jean's race is not addressed in the movie and how some can see that as a good thing, while others see it as assimilation. As a person of color, I can see it both ways but mostly agree with the fact that not addressing her race was the right step. As TV and movies get more and more diverse, I get more and more anxious to see if it's done in the right way. I can't tell you how many times the latinX person in the cast is stereotyped with the intention of not neglecting the "LatinX culture". I appreciate the attempt to bring in their culture, but I'm not sure the industry fully has a grip on how to do that correctly. There are exceptions (COCO !!!). Overall, when I see someone who looks like me in a movie, I don't want to be reminded about all the things that make me different when there are so many things that I have in common with everyone around me. TATBILB did a great job of not pointing out Laura Jean's differences while sticking true to her identity.
The increase in representation in Hollywood is a long-awaited and incredibly necessary step for the industry. Growing up in a Latin American household, I often experienced my parents coming home with an obscure Argentinian foreign film (yes, with subtitles) that I simply had to watch to understand my background. I would groan, but agree, to sit with them for the two and a half hours and learn more about my culture. Even though I am born and raised in the United States, I do feel a connection when I watch movies about the places my parents grew up in. Tying in diverse cultures into the mainstream media is momentous because it brings a wide variety of audiences to the theatre. One does not have to turn to the foreign film section—although there is excellent work there as well. I first read the book version of To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before by Jenny Han in middle school. I fell in love with the author who spoke so honestly and fluidly about the lives and insecurities of teenage girls. I went on to read more of her work, including The Summer I Turned Pretty trilogy and Burn for Burn. Watching the film brought so many memories of the times I read those stories. While I am not Asian-American, I was still able to connect to the themes of the story. I am excited to see the continued representation in the media in the years to come.
This film did a really good job breaking stereotypes. As a human, with time to kill, I loved the film, I thought it was cute, fuzzy and a fun movie to watch with a friend and a tub of ben and jerry’s. As a person in a minority group, it was really refreshing to see all types of diversity in the film. Not only was Lara Jean Korean-American, but her love interest, Peter, was not white, and all her friends and crushes had different backgrounds. I can see the authors point on not addressing Lara Jean’s heritage problematic as it makes her seem ‘Americanized’, to make the film more accessible to white audiences. But on the other hand, I love how they portrayed a middle aged, white man, who is a widowed father of 3, and makes sure his girls are still connected to their Korean heritage, although the Korean parent has passed.
It is so exciting to see both To All The Boys I've Loved Before and Crazy Rich Asians hit the screen almost simultaneously. A huge part of combatting casual racism, as the article points out, is having representation within media. Seeing role models, especially in teen movies, gives children of all backgrounds an avenue to dream and seeing diversity in main stream media. It is also really important to have diverse roles in movies, tv and theatre in stories and journeys that are part of everyday life. There are so many romance and comedy movies that all center around white, heterosexual relationships. However, so many stories of those movies could be cast with people of different backgrounds, race, gender, sexual orientation. I think a movie from previous years that did a great job of accomplishing this was The Big Sick. When watching that movie, you knew that race and family culture played a big role in the story but it wasn't all encompassing. At the end of the day relationship and journeys are what should be featured and those stories should be from all backgrounds and be multi-faceted and diverse like the human experience. Representation is a imperative step to create art that is truthful of our world.
I really enjoyed the movie To All the Boys I've Loved Before and it was very refreshing to not see something that was out of the norm on screen. Media is a huge platform that is being used to reach out to the world and society at large. It is wonderful to see it being used to challenge stereotypes, subconscious biases and cause important conversations. Like the author of the article said "one film cannot handle it all". Some issues are not going to be addressed and some newer issues my even arise but it is important that it starts from somewhere.
Although I did not think that the writing of TATBILB was especially good, I do agree with this writer in saying that it was refreshing in the way that it never once brought up her ethnicity as something to get over, or her mixed race as some sort of plot point. She is just a girl, and her ethnicity is part of her, but not part of her character's struggle. I have not seen Crazy Rich Asians yet, but again, it is another example of how people can be portrayed as just that, and not as their ethnicity. The concept of casual racism is far too real in this country and still in the world. Not usually intentional or malicious, but assumptions are still made on a daily basis based off of how we have been taught to perceive certain cultures and how they look, speak, behave, etc. On the other hand, I also worry that some may see this as a way to "Americanize" characters, or make people of different races appear as "normal" and "white." In some aspect, there is value in parody that brings to light the way non-white people are treated in this country. Small acts of racism, intentional or not, need to be addressed and rectified, and showing all stories made for all people is a fantastic start to creating entertainment that can speak to every race, class, and sexuality of person.
I thought that the movie, "To All the Boys I've Loved Before", was not an especially good movie, but it was so new to see myself represented on screen, like anyone else. I'm asian american, and growing up I never had an onscreen role model. I loved Cho Chang from the Harry Potter series because she was an asian girl in media, but her character is very 2D and not that important to the story as a whole. Lara Jean is someone young asian girls living in america can look at and say yea, that looks like me. She falls in love, is kind of a dork and deals with friendship problems like all of us. I think that slowly but surely there is a far greater representation in media for east asians which is really exciting. I haven't seen "Crazy Rich Asians" yet but I really want to. Although that movie may not be the best representation of asian culture, it is like any other horrible mother of the groom stories that populate white rom coms.
It happened that I watched the movie last night. It was adorable, but my very first reaction was about the neutralizing of Lara Jean’s ethnicity, as mentioned in the article. She was adorable in every way, but really, you could have plugged in a teenage girl of any race and the story would have been just fine. Lara Jean does not overcome or deal with her identity in the movie. The ethnic identity was deliberately ignored, except that it added more femininity and ‘innocence’ to the character. In a way I agree with the article that this is possibly the ultimate goal of media representation. Getting the message out is important that regardless of the race, a teenage girl is a teenage girl. But also that is because Lara Jean was planted in a blessed neighborhood where the school seemed to have California-level diversity and therefore people are very aware and considerate. Nonetheless, I support this movie. I believe that if we keep this trend of diverse representations on the screen going, there will soon be movies that sneak in more nuanced representations as well.
It's a valuable asset to cultivate the diversity in the mainstream media, such as Hollywood films or Broadway theater. Though it sometimes works in a way that left many to be desired, I would see this trend which replace so-called "white character" with different cultural, racial actors a good way to kick of the construction of a healthy society that has its own identity but holds good regard of diversity. The fusion between two separated culture is always difficult, even impossible achievement, all thing considered, there's a main body of it, and the way a society trying to perceive the other one works in a dynamic also gradual way. There's no really a short cut to it. Step by step, we must meet each other, communicate and then define our identity, so we may at last develop a pattern that both sides agreed upon. Pushing too hard on any end would result discontent in either side, which causes failure and conflict.
I read this article shortly after reading another article talking about how Middle Eastern and Northern African characters tend to either be terrorists or the character’s story has no relation to ethnicity at all. The author was saying they wanted more stories where ethnicity was relevant to the character but not having it be pure stereotypes. This article on the flip side is happy about how finally there is a character who isn’t white but them not being white is never treated as relevant. I think in the end the ideal is a mix of both, some stories have race/ ethnicity be addressed, some are about people of color but race has nothing to do with the plot. I do find it interesting that representation for some groups tends to skew more one way than another, perhaps with Middle Eastern heritage being under-addressed and East Asian heritage being over-addressed. I know that when it comes to characters with disabilities and LGBTQ+ (especially trans) characters the skew is definitely toward making disability/ queerness being the primary point of their character arc (and the main plot if they are the main character), and I’ve been frustrated by this for awhile. I guess it comes down to making a group of people not just one thing without ignoring factors that tend to be relevant to people from a particular background, and to do that you need a balance of stories that do and don’t address particular aspects of a particular character’s background.
Apart from To All The Boys I've Loved Before just being a very cute and sweet film, it is such a great step forward for Asian-American representation. Like the article says, Lara Jean's race has absolutely nothing to do with the story; it is simply a fact about her. She is not portrayed stereotypically in any way, and neither are her two sisters, who are also major characters in the movie. It is a little frustrating, as always, that this is such a huge groundbreaking concept. We are so accustomed to expect white leads in every major film that it is so earth shattering when a person of color is the lead in a movie that is not centered around race. I love romcoms a lot, but I never thought about just how many white girl meets white boy romcoms are out there until I read things like this. I hope that TATBILB is the first of many cute, lighthearted movies that feature actors of color in leading roles.
Although I personally do not find this genre of movie to be particularly interesting, I think I may try to take some time to watch this. I empathize with the person who wrote this article greatly. I have grown up trying to explain to people this lack of representation, when people simply don’t understand. I have been told that Mulan is one of the best Disney films, or how so many people love things like Anime and Korean dramas. Mulan is a movie that is about the characters being chinese. My life of course has a lot which is about being Japanese, but it does not rule my whole personality nor my experience. I am largely viewed as just stereotypes, like all east-asian women. Being asian-american has lead to feeling out of place, my personality (or even just the idea of HAVING one regardless of race) was something I never saw. I felt pressured to separate them, joking about being an “exotic white girl”, one with a personality of an American White Female, but looking different. This was a shitty term. I have a personality, and it is not despite my ethnicity. It is also not not a personality that is my ethnicity, its a comfortable in-between that is what it truly is to be a person of colour living in an underrepresented world. I too, want to show this show to a younger Chai, and let them just watch someone that kinda looked like me be a living, breathing, tangible person. So instead, I will watch it for the younger Chai still in me, to give a little background comfort.
A few weeks ago I watched (and enjoyed) To All The Boys I’ve Loved Before, and noticed many of the same key points pointed out by this article. I thought Laura’s identity as an Asian-American woman was very well-handled by the producers; it was a part of her, but not her entire character. The article makes a good point about her race being a neutral characteristic of her, which I love! Typically in Hollywood straight white men are viewed as neutral, the basic choice, and any decision other than that needs to be justified. “Why does she have to be a woman?”, “Why would he be gay?”, yet the choice to make a character a straight white man never needs to be defended. Adding diverse characters into media is fantastic, but when diversity is created for diversity’s sake it generally falls flat because the characters become one-sided and have no depth to them other than their single point of diversity, whatever that may be. I think TATBILB subverted this beautifully and I hope they set an example for mainstream media about how diversity shouldn’t need to be forced, but can be done beautifully.
I really enjoy how they have a female Asian lead, but don’t make her ethnicity the focus of the story. Whenever they do that, to me at least, it feels like the only purpose they have for an Asian lead (or really any other race) is to talk about ethnicity, rather than that they can play any role in a film too. That, and that the Asian character doesn’t always need to be the crazy booksmart nerd, or any of the other tropes always put onto them. Like Christine Lee says in the article, I wish I could go back and show my younger self that people who look like me can make it there too, and that I could relate to things other than a child’s cartoon about Chinese cats, and that Mulan doesn’t need to be the only human representation.
For so long I wanted to separate myself from the white kids around me, and to do that I exaggerated every aspect of being Asian that I could. I wanted to be a part of my nonexistent race so badly I practically forced myself into stereotypes just so I would feel less white washed. Even still, having been raised in America, adopted by Jewish parents, raised in a predominantly white community, the kids here that came over from China call me white. It makes me feel like I don’t fit anywhere. I’ve been looking forward to watching both TATBILB and Crazy Rich Asians, because as an Asian-American who grew up in a place where there was almost no Asians around me, nor any representation on screen, it’s nice to see films coming out showing people of my race and people I can relate to. I hope that this only continues to grow, and that the new generation of Asian Americans will have people they can look up to and not be as self conscious about who they are.
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