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#in case it isnt clear as someone from sg i have 100000000 issues with crazy rich asians. the movie AND the book. god
mavspeed · 4 years
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What are your thoughts on Indian actors (and I am talking more about Indian British and Indian Americans) having to most likely have to learn how to do an Indian accent so they can get work e.g. Dev Patel or Sacha Dhawan were probably most likely required to learn how to do an Indian accent in terms of their roles e.g. Outsourced (Sacha Dwahan) - I don't know too much about his filmography but that one is where he uses the Indian accent or Slumdog millionaire and The Best Exotic Marigold 1/?
Hotel. I've just noticed that there is perhaps an expectation for people of colour to have a specific accent that might be part of that ethnicity. Like on one hand it is racist e.g. Aziz Anisari refuses to do an Indian accent due to this, but on the other hand if we look at Constance Wu's accent in FOB, it's done because her character is from Taiwan, therefore she would have a non-American accent. Which is why I like Crazy Rich Asians so much because all, if not most of the characters do not 2/?
have the stereotypical or 'heavy accent', they speak in an almost clear but also received pronounciation (it's the closest way I can describe it e.g. Nick Young's mother has an almost like articulate accent and sounds 'educated' - excuse the vocabulary, I'm trying to ecplain this the best I can). Which tbh, correct me if I'm wrong, but from experience countries such as Hong Kong and more so in India there are people who don't have what people think the Indian or Hong Kong accent, even though 3/?
They're from those countries. I've met Indian people who've grown up in India, but their accents are rather neutral. I think it just depends on socio-economic status as well, considering perhaps how well a person can speak maybe determines how well their educated (this is also talking about native English speakers). But I do not want to go on a tangent about that, but more about how it is racist to see how Hollywood often for roles where the character may be Indian but there is no 4/?
evidence to suggest that he is actually from a non-English speaking country or they just put that in because he happens to be a person of colour e.g. Ravi Patel playing a telephone operator in Transformers, which Aziz Anisari rejected because he felt it fed into the stereotype of a call centre employee with an accent. Which is I think, maybe I'm wrong but the film Sorry to Bother you plays with because it talks abouthow black people often put a 'white voice' on to sound more approachable 5/?
as the 'black voice' is considered 'unapproachable' (racism). I just want to make sense of this, as it's something I've noticed with Hollywood or western media. 6/6
i will address this but first of all what you said about crazy rich asians- look, here’s the thing. as a singaporean myself can i just say that that movie is highly inaccurate because i’ve lived with fellow chinese/indian/muslim singaporeans all my LIFE and we ALL. HAVE. SINGAPOREAN ACCENTS. even if you go off to study in the uk YOU WILL COME BACK WITH A SINGAPOREAN ACCENT. i love henry golding and gemma chan to bits god knows i do but they should have done what michelle yeoh did and attempted a singaporean accent because even with elitist pricks who studied from elitist schools like acs or ri or whatever the fuck we STILL HAVE ACCENTS. michelle yeoh did a singaporean accent and its the closest, most accurate approximation of it in the entire cast. awkwafina’s character is bullshit because i have NOT met a single singaporean who has consistently maintained a blaccent. of course racist singaporeans do a blaccent and thats because they’re racist and antiblack to an alarming degree. but if you’re chinese, indian, malay, eurasian, chindian you WILL have the singaporean accent. its inescapable. 
here’s my opinion on this- its not racist, not at all, because we all have accents. everyone from every single part of the world has an accent. if you think people can speak WITHOUT an accent, that’s because you have been brainwashed into thinking the neutralised american accent is the norm. nothing is the norm. you talk like how people around you talk like. if you audition for an indian role, of course people will xpect you to have an indian accent. if you audition for an american role, people will expect you to have an accent from that bit of america- new york or california or texas. sorry but aziz ansari refusing to do an indian accent is bullshit (and ties into a deeper discussion about indian celebrities in the indian diaspora being shameful about their brown heritage because you see this shit, again and again and again with mindy kahling and kumail nanjiani and aziz ansari like hasan minhaj is the ONLY indian celeb other than dev i’ve seen actually hype up and appreciate his skin colour and race in a really self celebratory manner), because there is nothing shameful about the indian accent. its a beautiful thing and for some reason, indians outside of india think its something derogatory or to be made fun of just because its different than what they’re used to. is it racist for white directors to assume people of a certain ethnicity automatically have that accent? yeah it is, because a little thing called a diaspora exists. but you have to realise that everyone has an accent. there’s no such thing as a status quo accent because if you think there is, congrats because not to go all anti-west but you’ve been brainwashed by the west!
idk which part of the world you’re from but as an indian singaporean who has also been to literally every single country within asia except for korea and pakistan i can tell you firsthand that no, we do have heavy accents. people from hong kong have heavy accents too. so do people from china. but its not something weird its just a Thing because lets be real, white people have heavy accents too. half the time i need subtitles for richard madden interviews to parse out what he’s saying. so tldr, nah its honestly not an issue. not for me, anyway. and crazy rich asians is a shit fucking movie do not support it 
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