Wok - how do I bitch about a project involving my friends?

Hello again guys. When I heard that a group of my friends had come together to make a movie, I thought, hey good for you. Don't wait for life to give you chances, sometimes you've gotta create your own chances in life. You can't always wait for work to come looking for you, sometimes you have to be bold and do something like this. I wasn't asked to be a part of this venture as I don't know the director - it seemed that they managed to raise a small amount of money to cover some of the cost of the pilot for the TV movie and nobody got paid for their work, not up front anyway, not unless they manage to sell the movie for a lot of money. I watched the trailer recently and I cringed - it felt painfully dated, like something someone would have made back in the 1980s and it felt like they pandered to every ethnic stereotype there was in the book about Chinese people. But don't take my word for it, watch the trailer below, okay?

Don't get me wrong - I am sure the projects will have some merits and I'm really only judging it by the rather short trailer, but I can't help but feel disappointed. The Chinese family featured in the movie ran a Chinese take-away - now I am not denying that they don't exist (there is one in the block where I live in fact), but the whole generation gap thing about Cantonese speaking parents vs English speaking children, it just felt a bit tired and dated. Surely the narrative about the Chinese community has moved along since? I do have some British-Chinese friends here and all of them without exception speak English as a first language - surely we have our own stories to tell, about our experiences in the Britain of today. The whole immigrant thing - okay, that is the narrative of the previous generation who came to this country speaking Chinese as a first language; that to me at least, felt like a narrative I don't relate to personally since I speak Mandarin as a third language (with English and French being my first and second languages) and I suppose there is a space for that narrative. But my friends are not in their 40s, they are younger than me in fact: so as to why they went to tell the story of their parents rather their own story, well, to say the least, I am left puzzled.

But perhaps there is an element of me looking at this issue from my own perspective as a British-Chinese person who doesn't relate to that Chinese-immigrant narrative, since I had arrived in the UK from Singapore via France. My experience is hardly typical: my Mandarin had never been great and I was educated in English - that was the language I wrote my essays in, expressed myself in, processed complex ideas in. There isn't one British-Chinese voice, but a whole multitude of them in the UK: ranging from those who are totally white on the inside and don't speak a word of Chinese to those who are fresh off the boat from China and struggle to form a sentence in English. I have met both over the years and everything in between. I supposed I had hoped that a group of young, well educated British-Chinese actors who were either brought up in this country or had arrived here as young children would have done something to challenge those ethnic stereotypes - but instead, they drew upon them for comedic effect in the movie.

London Chinatown 

Nonetheless, there is no smoke without fire - these ethnic stereotypes do exist for a reason and by that token, I am the exception rather than the norm. But perhaps the reason why I am feeling uneasy about this is because the family depicted in the movie is a working class Chinese family - as opposed to an upper class, Oxbridge educated, posh Chinese family. Am I simply being a snob here, in choosing not to watch working class people (of any skin colour or ethnicity) being portrayed on the screen? Perhaps we're coming back to the same issue of class all over again: of course working class Chinese people exist in the UK. Well educated Chinese people tend to become accountants, bankers, university professors, business tycoons, doctors, lawyers - they don't end up running Chinese takeaways. Those who end up working in the catering trade usually do so because they don't have any other option, as they simply do not have the education or training to find better paid work or pursue a professional career. Ironically, the actor playing the protagonist Bruce is in fact highly educated and holds down a well paid professional job - so I couldn't help but feel that his personal life would have made a much better story line than the loser of a protagonist in Wok.

And please - we're not talking about high-end Chinese restaurants here, we're talking the bottom end of spectrum:Chinese takeaways in the UK keep their margins low by running just a kitchen and a counter. There will usually be a tattered, faded menu on the counter - you simply rock up to the counter, place your order and pay up. You then wait for your order to be prepared and it will be packaged up for you in takeaway, disposable containers. There is no space for you to dine in the shop, that's how they keep their margins low. You'll be lucky to have a chair to sit on whilst waiting for the kitchen staff to prepare your meal. The meals are cheap and that means their profit margins are usually not very high. These Chinese takeaways often open from around lunch time till very late at night - the one near where I live is often open till midnight. That means working 12 hours a day, 7 days a week in a business which generates very low profit margins. Personally, I don't bother with my local Chinese takeaway because I can get a ready meal from the local supermarket and it costs even less than what the Chinese takeaway charges. Quite frankly, I have no idea how these people manage to make enough money and stay in business. It must be a very hard life indeed.

Even those in the catering trade have interesting stories to tell, no?

Then again, should entertainment only reflect the lives of the rich and the privileged? Or should art make a genuine effort to reflect all sections of society and the experiences of everyone, rich or poor?  I guess this discussion about class status in British society does touch upon a raw nerve as it is often the elephant in the room that nobody talks about. Or do I simply feel that people who run a low-key small business like that are simply not interesting enough to be on TV? One of my favourite series of all time is House Of Cards - now do I have that much in common with the politicians in the White House? No, I don't actually. But I relate to them, even if it is just a question of aspiration. I would rather take interest in the lives of the rich and the powerful halfway around the world, then the poorer, working class folks who may live in the same postcode as me. I watched a documentary on the BBC recently about the working class in East London and I couldn't finish watching it as it was just so depressing how utterly wretched their lives are: they weren't highly educated people with lofty ambitions. In short, I chose not to identify with people like that, even if they lived in the same city as myself. I didn't like the way the documentary didn't challenge their points of views at all. I would rather identify with the ruthless ambition of characters like Frank and Claire Underwood from House Of Cards.

I am wondering if I may have felt somewhat more positive about a movie featuring rich British Chinese characters who were hedge fund managers, university professors or politicians?  Maybe. You need strong protagonists in any good show in order for the audience to relate to them. Is it possible to have a likable, attractive, affable working class hero as a protagonist in a TV show or movie? Of course, but that depends on the quality of the script. One of the best British films of all time is Billy Elliot, which is about a 11 year old coal-miner's son in a poverty stricken corner of North-Eastern England during the worst of the miners' strikes in the 1980s. The Elliot family were flawed but portrayed in a very sympathetic light, making it easy for the audience to feel for them, empathize with their struggles and that was mostly down to the captivating performances of the brilliant actor Jamie Bell as young Billy. In fact, I have little in common with coal-mining families in the North-East of England (that sector had effectively been shut down by Thatcher after a long decline), yet the brilliantly written script enabled me to connect with the characters in the movie and transcend the cultural boundaries. Such is the power of good writing. By that token, I doubt 'Wok' was well-written.

Perhaps I am rushing to judgement over what I saw - which was no more than a trailer. But such are trailers for you - they are meant to show you the best of the film and entice you to want to watch all of it. I'm afraid saw little in 'Wok' that made me want to see all of it and it left me worried that I may be rather offended by some of the Chinese stereotypes they had exploited for cheap laughs. The only thing that went through my mind as I watched the trailer was that some of my friends were actually in the show and I'm wondering why they didn't object to the script or at least try to improve it? If I could cringe that many times during a 1 minute 55 second trailer, I can't imagine how I would react if I actually saw the full length version. I'm from Singapore okay, I'm quite used to seeing TV programmes with Chinese people speaking in English - that has been done in Singapore for over three decades already. So I have no idea why Wok had to play to so many Chinese stereotypes, just because the main cast is Chinese. And as for the token Indian character, urgh - don't even get me started. I'm not Indian but I feel offended already and I do wonder which self-respecting Indian actor would play such an offensive racist stereotype.

So there you go, that's my take on 'Wok'. Watch the trailer if you have two minutes to spare and let me know if you think that my evaluation has been too harsh. Am I being an evil, nasty snob? What are the challenges of making your audience like your protagonists in a trailer? What are the kind of protagonists you feel a connection with when you watch a trailer like that? Do let me know what you think and leave a comment below please. Many thanks for reading.