Anxious Pedigree: From Fresh-Off-The-Boat to “Crazy Rich Asians” – Los Angeles Review of Books

Only just saw the film (CRA) and ran across this from Anne Anlin Chen:

“If the object of a stereotype acts out the stereotype, is it internalized self-hatred or is it subversive satire? We have been asking this unproductive question about racial stereotypes almost ever since the concept first entered public discourse — unproductive because the question enacts a false choice: either self-misrecognition (i.e., finding oneself through exoticization) or the recognition of one’s degraded state. To see the perpetuation of this either-or proposition, we only have to remember that perceptions of the Asian, especially the Chinese, in the United States has always bounced between the antinomies of idealization and denigration, two seemingly opposite poles that are in fact expressions of the same symptom.”