Let’s talk about Raya.
For those not aware, Raya is Disney’s upcoming movie about a girl named Raya who seeks to save her land by searching for the last dragon. A few days ago they just released its second trailer, and with it, announced a few more cast members other than Kelly Marie Tran and Awkwafina. This is where I started to raise my eyebrows.
As background, I’ve been a little wary of Raya. I am Indonesian. I’m one of the people this movie is supposed to represent. I have a lot of interest in this. I also know how much Hollywood can royally mess up their representation attempt. (Mulan, anyone?) So, as excited as I was, I was also very, very skeptical of this “Southeast Asian inspired movie”.
The cast announcement that followed made me even more skeptical. Here’s the cast list: Gemma Chan, Daniel Dae Kim, Sandra Oh, Benedict Wong, Izaac Wang, Thalia Tran, Alan Tudyk, Lucille Soong, Patti Harrison, and Ross Butler.
At first glance, it looks great. Except for Alan Tudyk, everyone is Asian. However, as a non-East Asian, I immediately see a problem. Awkwafina, Gemma Chan, Benedict Wong, and Lucille Soong are of Chinese descent. Daniel Dae Kim and Sandra Oh are Korean. By the numbers, that’s 7 people who have little to no connection to Southeast Asia and 5 who do. Izaac Wang is part Laotian, Kelly Marie Tran, Thalia Tran, and Patti Harrison are of Vietnamese descent, and Ross Butler is Singaporean with a Chinese-Malay mother.
Look. I get it. Awkwafina, Gemma Chan, Daniel Dae Kim, Sandra Oh, and Benedict Wong have star power. They’ve all been in big pictures before. Three of them have starring roles in the MCU and the other two were in beloved, long-running television shows. But also I’m tired of being mistaken as Chinese and this movie is not going to help that.
It’s also very lazy on the part of Disney. Let’s take a look at a similar movie they’ve done where they took inspiration from a very diverse culture, Moana. Say what you will about the representation in this movie, but if you look at the cast list, almost everyone except for, again, Alan Tudyk and singing voices by Christopher Jackson and Lin-Manuel Miranda, has some connection to Polynesian culture. (I did not know that Nicole Scherzinger was in this movie and that she was born in Hawai’i.) There’s even a freaking footballer in here and he was still Samoan!
So why, Disney? Why did you think this was okay when I know you’ve done better? I’m sure there are plenty of talented Southeast Asian Americans that can fill some of these voices. I’m not even asking for all of them to be Southeast Asians, just a majority of them. Or at least the ones who will be speaking the most.
If we didn’t have the precedence of Moana, I would have just chalked this up to typical Hollywood trying and failing at representation and move on. But the fact is we have Moana. About half of that cast isn’t even American, so I know it’s not because they want to hire only Americans.
Some people will say what does it matter? We don’t get to see these people. We just hear their voices and they’re all speaking in American English, anyway. And to that I say, these people are the ones doing the interviews. They’re the ones that the media will be asking questions about the movie. They’re the ones people are going to see promote the movies. To the not knowledgeable, all they’ll think is “oh, Gemma Chan and Daniel Dae Kim are how someone from Southeast Asia looks like” when in reality, most do not. When asked about how the representation is like in this movie, they can only answer from their perspective, which is decidedly not Southeast Asian.
Maybe the story of Raya is amazing. Maybe the plot will be the best Disney plot there ever was. Maybe the animation will be so breathtaking that nothing else matters. But in the back of my head, I’m still thinking of 10-year-old me, having just moved to America, speaking very little English, with every single person thinking I’m Chinese, and having to explain in very broken English that I am, in fact, from Indonesia, a country that they didn’t even know existed.
