I’m so glad that Parasite was able to achieve everything it has so far. Aside from being a Korean/Asian film, I think Parasite’s achievements are a feat because the film itself requires audiences to look at every little detail and thought that was put into it. The plot that Parasite has is one that is hard to bring onto the screen without making it look like your typical thriller film. Instead of using straightforward/conventional ways to narrate the plot, the direction of the film makes use of even the smallest nuances in order to tie the story together, which is hard to do successfully especially knowing that not everyone looks out for these details in films.

When it comes down to it, I don’t think there’s a difference between how Western films are written when compared to foreign films. No film can escape having to incorporate a normative plot or narrative element. The difference between the Western film industry versus other industries is that when it comes to being “internationally recognized”, the former is gets produced knowing it is already part of a bigger, more dominant genre/industry, while the latter gets produced knowing that in order to be recognized, it still has to become a “breakthrough” film despite being successful within their own region. This way of thinking obviously changes the plots are executed into film in different regions. When foreign films are presented to the Western audience, one of the most prominent responses is that seeing a foreign plot is a unique and interesting perspective. All plots and all stories from all over the world are interesting and unique, it’s just that some plots (aka the mainstream Western film industry’s) have been normalized and idealized.

I don’t think Kwan intended to portray Asians in a specific way, since he wrote about this super-specific group of people. I think Kwan just wanted to show that Asians can be just as, or even more, successful than their Western counterparts, and that it is a matter of who is being recognized and who isn’t.

I did read the book, and it was brought into film in the way I expected. While reading the book, I imagined this surreal world for the extremely rich that is pretty much entirely separate from how the rest of Asia/the world lives, and the movie definitely was able to capture that.

There has definitely been more of a push to represent and cast Asians in mainstream films. I think that one of the things that made it difficult before was that it was much more difficult to find actors who can play these roles. With the way media is structured and integrated into culture/society today, there are a lot more resources to help find the right people for specific roles. With films like Ghost in the Shell, where they take an Asian character and story to bring into the Western film industry, I think it’s more of a result of having to cater to a particular audience in a particular region. Nowadays, part of the default nature of films and other forms of mainstream media is that they are to be seen and accessed from all over the world, which pushed the movement to properly represent minorities even further. However, while there has been more of a movement to bring Asians into the mainstream film industry, there is still the issue of only representing a specific “type” of Asian. As someone who is from the Philippines, and therefore Asian, I often think about the fact that when people think of “Asians”, they think about light-skinned, small eyed, Asians, which basically only describes East Asians.

The representation of Asians in films changes the image of Asians both in the Western film industry and in Asia. Because of how Asians have been represented in the past, we are oftentimes associated with being the “model minority”, but at the same time, the West’s image of Asians mostly encompasses only East Asians. The existence of the “right” image of Asians is a result of the industry that falsely represents Asians to begin with. I think that the underrepresentation as well as the existence of the “right image” of Asians (or any racial minority) in the Western film industry is heavily influenced by the systems of racial hierarchy that have been embedded into society in the past.

I definitely see why there was a lot of backlash because of how Golding is Eurasian, but I also think that that kind of criticism (which focuses on the fact that he’s half-British) discredits and ignores his Asian heritage as well.

As I mentioned in one of my previous answers, I think one of the key factors that comes into play in this issue is the established system of racial/social hierarchy in Western industries. This kind of hierarchy can even be traced back to centuries ago in imperialist endeavors. The history of “what-holds-dominance-over-what” has just become so established that so many of the cultural norms and standards being practiced today hold true to that. These hierarchies come with specific plots and characters assigned to different groups of people, which is why the work of minorities keep getting discredited and even erased in different industries.