对一些观众来说，《疯狂的亚洲富人》还不够亚洲

HONG KONG — “Crazy Rich Asians,” a romantic comedy that opened in the United States on Wednesday, is a rare commodity: a Hollywood film with a majority Asian cast. For many Asian-American viewers, that is a positive, if sorely belated, development.

香港——周三在美国上映的浪漫喜剧《疯狂的亚洲富人》是一件罕见的商品：一部主要由亚裔演员参演的好莱坞电影。对于许多亚裔观众来说，这是一种积极的进步，尽管它的姗姗来迟令人伤心。

But ahead of the film’s release next week in Singapore, where much of the action is set, some residents there have questioned whether “Crazy Rich Asians” is the panacea of diversity that its proponents suggest.

但在该片下周于新加坡上映之前(该片大部分都是在那里拍摄的)，一些新加坡人质疑《疯狂的亚洲富人》究竟是不是其支持者所称的多元化灵丹妙药。

A primary worry is that the Warner Bros. film focuses on Singapore’s Chinese, the dominant ethnic majority, at the expense of Malays, Indians and other ethnic minorities who collectively account for about a quarter of Singapore’s 5.6 million people.

人们最大的担心是，华纳兄弟电影公司主要关注该国占多数的主要民族新加坡华人，忽略了马来人、印度人和其他少数民族，在新加坡的560万人口中，后者占四分之一。

“Part of the way that this movie is being sold to everyone is as this big win for diversity, as this representative juggernaut, as this great Asian hope,” said Sangeetha Thanapal, a Singaporean Indian writer and activist who is researching a doctoral dissertation on the concept of Chinese privilege in Singapore.

“这部电影的部分卖点是，它是多元化的巨大胜利，是代表族群的强大力量，是伟大的亚洲希望，”印度裔新加坡作家和活动人士桑里沙·塔纳帕尔(Sangeetha Thanapal)说，她正在撰写研究新加坡华人特权观念的博士论文。

“I think that’s really problematic because if you’re going to sell yourself as that, then you bloody better actually have actual representation” of Singaporean minorities, she said.

“我认为这确实存在问题，因为如果你打算这样推销自己，那么你真应该真正去代表”新加坡的少数族裔，她说。

The film’s detractors said that because “Crazy Rich Asians” had not yet been released in their hometown, their criticisms were based on the film’s trailer and marketing campaign.

这部电影的批评者说，由于《疯狂的亚洲富人》尚未在他们的家乡上映，他们的批评是基于电影的预告片和营销活动。

In a statement posted on Twitter last month, Constance Wu, the film’s female lead, indirectly addressed the criticism by acknowledging that the film “won’t represent every Asian American.”

在上个月发布在Twitter上的一份声明中，影片女主演吴恬敏承认，这部电影“不代表每一个亚裔美国人”，从而间接回应了这一批评。

“So for those who don’t feel seen, I hope there is a story you find soon that does represent you,” Ms. Wu added. “I am rooting for you.”

“所以对于那些感觉自己未被看到的人，我希望很快就会有一个能够代表你的故事，”吴恬敏还说。“我支持你们。”

Janice Chua, a producer on the film, initially agreed to comment, but later said she was unavailable. A spokeswoman for Warner Bros. did not respond on the record to questions about the film.

电影制片人詹尼斯·蔡(Janice Chua)最初同意发表评论，但后来表示无法置评。华纳兄弟的一位发言人没有正式回应有关这部电影的问题。

“Crazy Rich Asians” is based on a novel by Kevin Kwan that satirizes Singapore’s megarich, and the film’s trailer oozes with luxury cars, opulent parties and other trappings of the One Percent.

《疯狂的亚洲富人》根据凯文·关(Kevin Kwan)的小说改编，讽刺新加坡的超级富豪，电影预告片中充斥着豪华轿车、奢侈派对和位居财富顶端的百分之一有钱人的其他标志。

The film is “an unabashed celebration of luxury and money, with hints of class conflict that have more to do with aspiration than envy or anger, set in an Asia miraculously free of history or politics,” the film critic A. O. Scott wrote in The New York Times.

电影评论家A·O·斯科特(A. O. Scott)在《纽约时报》发表的影评中写道，这部电影“毫不掩饰地赞美奢华与金钱，伴随着隐约的阶级冲突，但更多是关于对财富的渴望而不是嫉妒或愤怒，而且发生在一个奇迹般地摆脱了历史和政治的亚洲。”

Kevin Ma, the founder of Asia in Cinema, a Hong Kong-based news site, said that the film’s emphasis on over-the-top wealth was not surprising. “It’s not a new thing for Asians to see rich Asians on screen,” he said.

总部位于香港的新闻网站Cinema in Asia的创始人马乐民表示，该片对奢华财富的强调并不令人惊讶。“对于亚洲人来说，在屏幕上看到富有的亚洲人并不是新鲜事，”他说。

Other critics have applauded the inclusion of cast members who are not of East Asian descent. The cast includes the Filipino-American actor Nico Santos, and Henry Golding, the male lead, who has an English father and a mother from Malaysia’s Iban indigenous group.

其他影评人称赞影片使用了没有东亚血统的演员，其中包括菲律宾裔美国演员尼可·桑托斯(Nico Santos)和男主角亨利·戈尔丁(Henry Golding)，后者的父亲是英国人，母亲是马来西亚伊班族人。

Some Singaporean writers said they feared the film would mirror the underrepresentation of minorities that already pervades local films and television shows.

一些新加坡作家表示，他们担心这部电影反映出当地电影和电视节目中盛行的少数民族代表性不足。

“Mind you, I’m happy that there are non-East Asian actors involved in major roles,” said Ng Yi-Sheng, an author and gay rights activist whose debut poetry collection won the 2008 Singapore Literature Prize.

“不过，能有非东亚演员参与主要角色还是令我高兴，”作家兼同性恋权利活动人士吴易盛说，他的首部诗集获得了2008年的新加坡文学奖(Singapore Literature Prize)。

“But judging from the trailers, the browner Asian characters are predominantly guards and domestic workers and drivers,” Mr. Ng said in an email. “That’s kind of oppressive, don’t you think?”

“但是，从预告片中来看，棕色皮肤的亚洲人角色主要是警卫、家政工人和司机。”吴易盛在电子邮件中写道：“这有点不公正，不觉得吗?”

Singapore, a financial hub at the southern tip of the Malay Peninsula, is a former British colony that gained independence as part of Malaysia in 1963 and then split from Malaysia two years later. The city-state’s governing party has never lost its hold on power, and the government controls the domestic news media.

新加坡是位于马来半岛南端的金融中心，是前英国殖民地，1963年作为马来西亚的一部分获得独立，两年后又从马来西亚分裂出来。这个城市国家的执政党从未失去对权力的控制，而政府又控制着国内的新闻媒体。

Even though Singapore’s Chinese ethnic majority accounts for about three-quarters of the city-state’s population, the government often goes to great lengths to promote interethnic harmony as a symbol of national identity.

尽管在新加坡，作为多数族裔的华人占据该国人口的四分之三，但政府常常竭力促进民族和谐，将其作为国家认同的象征。

“We don’t really have enough of a precolonial culture to celebrate — we’re on Malay land, but most of us aren’t Malay, and Chinese culture was a little too Communist-affiliated in the old days,” Mr. Ng said. “So a multiracial concept of nationhood was kind of the obvious choice for us.”

“我们确实没有足够的前殖民文化可以颂扬——我们居住在马来人的土地上，但我们大多数人都不是马来人，而过去的中国文化有点过于共产主义，”吴易盛说。“因此，多民族的国家概念对我们来说是一个明显的选择。”

But it has always been a delicate balancing act. Today, there are growing concerns in Singapore that a newly powerful China could upset that equilibrium by seeking to promote loyalty to the Chinese “motherland” among Singaporean Chinese.

但它始终是一种微妙的平衡。今天，新加坡越来越担心新近强大起来的中国可能会在新加坡华人中促进对“祖国”中国的忠诚，从而破坏这种平衡。

In the local film industry, the concern centers on why minority actors are “seldom featured as leads in movies and sometimes assigned stereotypical roles,” said Mathew Mathews, a senior research fellow at the Institute of Policy Studies, a Singaporean research institute.

新加坡研究机构政策研究院(Institute of Policy Studies)的资深研究员马修·马修斯(Mathew Mathews)表示，在当地电影界，人们关注的焦点是为什么少数族裔演员“很少充当电影中的主角，有时会被赋予刻板印象角色。”

Last year, for example, the Singaporean Indian actor Shrey Bhargava wrote on Facebook that he had been asked in an audition to use a stereotypical Indian accent.

例如，去年，印度裔新加坡演员谢瑞·巴尔加瓦(Shrey Bhargava)在Facebook上写道，他在试镜中被要求使用俗套的印度口音。

Mr. Bhargava said he had left feeling disgusted and had concluded that diversity in Singaporean films “comes down to playing stereotypes so the majority race can find it amusing.” His post went viral and sparked a debate about ethnicity and diversity.

巴尔加瓦说他感到厌恶，并得出结论认为新加坡电影的多样性“最终还是使用刻板印象，让占多数的种族觉得有趣。”他的帖子传播开来，引发了关于种族和多样性的讨论。

But Mr. Mathews, who has studied race, religion and immigration in Singapore, played down the debate over ethnic representation in “Crazy Rich Asians.”

但是研究新加坡种族、宗教和移民问题的马修斯认为《疯狂的亚洲富人》中族裔代表性的争论并不重要。

“I think most fair-minded Singaporeans would see this film as a work of fiction and not expect a high level of realism and accuracy in cultural portrayals,” he said in an email. “我认为大多数公正的新加坡人会把这部电影看作一部虚构的作品，并不认为文学呈现中应当具有高度现实性和准确性，”他在电子邮件中写道。

The film’s detractors disagree. 影片的批评者并不同意。

Alfian Sa’at, a prominent Singaporean author, who writes in English and Malay, said in a scathing Facebook post that the film featured “East Asian people purporting to speak for all Asians,” adding that he hoped it would “go away quietly.”

新加坡用英文和马来文写作的著名作家阿尔法安·萨特(Alfian Sa'at)在一篇严厉的Facebook帖子中写道，这部电影的特色是“东亚人自我标榜要为所有亚洲人说话，”他还说，他希望这部影片“不声不响地消失”。

And in a Twitter thread and a Medium essay, Kirsten Han, a Singaporean journalist and activist, offered an equally blistering critique.

新闻记者兼活动人士韩俐颖在Twitter和Medium文章中提出了同样激烈的批评。

“When it comes to representation, what I would like to see as a Singaporean is something that reflects my country and society in all our diversity and complexity, and helps audiences make connections between our experiences and theirs,” Ms. Han wrote in the essay.

“在谈到代表性时，作为一个新加坡人，我希望看到一部作品能够反映我的国家和社会的多样性和复杂性，并帮助观众将我们的经历与他们的经历联系起来，”她在文章中写道。

“‘Crazy Rich Asians’ does nothing to improve the situation,” she added.

“《疯狂的亚洲富人》没有改善这种情况，”她补充说。