Having been raised by a man who steadfastly believes in aliens (and a woman kind enough to tolerate his DIY telescope collection), I inevitably grew up a zealous sci-fan fan, and nothing in the genre gets me nearly as excited as I am about Star Wars.
My excitement doubled when I learned that The Last Jedi director, Rian Johnson, had cast Rose Tico for the latest movie- and tripled when I learned that the actor he had cast was not only Asian, but Vietnamese-American: Kelly Marie Tran. Kelly has been praised for being the first lead Asian in the Star Wars franchise, the first 'woman of colour' in the series, but she is so much more than that. She is spunky. She is charming. And she is unabashedly proud of and has no trouble relating back to her Vietnamese roots both on and off the Hollywood red carpet, something that has not been seen on such a large scale before. For her debut on the red carpet, Tran sported a jawdropping red grown designed by a local Vietnamese designer. She promoted the movie in Vietnam wearing traditional Vietnamese ao dai, and posted on social media about it in order to pay homage to her Vietnamese parents and upbringing. And in almost all of her interviews, she is outspoken and candid not only about her kickass role as a talented actor in a major film franchise, but also about the representation of Asians - especially Vietnamese - in pop culture.
Yet she has also been criticized, and majorly so - not for her acting talent or her credentials, but rather, for her weight. Her appearance. Her failure to uphold gendered, racialized stereotypes.
On top of user comments mocking her as too manly, other gems included calling Tran "CHObacca," "Jar Jar Chinks," and "proof that just about anybody can get into Hollywood these days through affirmative action policies." Vlogger Paul Ray Ramsay tweeted this especially appalling side-by-side of Tran to another well-known Asian actor:
Which really speaks more about him than it does Kelly Marie Tran. Because as, perhaps, mind-boggling as it is for these critics to wrap their heads around, being 'Asian' and and actor doesn't really require succumbing to a number on a weight scale, donning sexy samurai attire or math nerd glasses, or posing as a dragon lady with martial arts skills. While these roles were important in introducing Asians into Hollywood (Lucy Liu has even acknowledged her role in perpetuating stereotypes and how difficult it was to get any acting job when she first started outside of those stereotypes), they can't-and shouldn't be what sets and defines standards and expectations for Asian women both in and out of Hollywood.
It means so much to have Kelly Marie Tran portray 'Rose Tico' in Star Wars, far more than the average Paul Ray Ramsay could know.
My first language was Vietnamese, not English. I had the privilege of growing up in the relatively diverse and multicultural city of Toronto, but because my neighbourhood was predominantly Chinese, the most I ever really knew about Vietnamese culture was limited to family traditions practiced in our home, piping hot bowls of pho on a Sunday morning, and sporting ao dai on 'Cultural Day' in preschool. Growing up, I had no Vietnamese friends, no Vietnamese-speaking community outside of my (granted, numerous) relatives, and definitely no Vietnamese role models or idols to look up to on the big screen - the closest I ever got to one was Thuy Trang, who played the yellow power ranger, but whose Vietnamese background was barely touched upon (though through no fault of her own). When it came time to take on a Charlie's Angel during recess, I was always Lucy Liu., and when asked what I identified as being, I would usually insist on being '100% Canadian' or "12.5%" Chinese; I even (reluctantly) recall once begging two of my close friends in seventh grade to teach me how to speak Cantonese because I simply had no one to speak Vietnamese to or practice the language with, other than my parents and Ba Noi at home. Other than , I simply had no concrete conception of what it meant to 'be' Vietnamese or 'look' Vietnamese, and admit that what little conception I did have, it overlapped greatly with ideas of what it meant to 'be' and 'look' Asian (read: Chinese, Korean, Japanese.)
It is these varied experiences of disconnect, longing for representation, any kind of representation, and desire for understanding of a country and culture that they often do not know much about that Vietnamese-Canadians, Vietnamese-Americans, and, to a larger extent, Asians in general, especially those who were raised outside of their parents' country of origin, grapple with. From Emma Stone playing a part-Hawaiian, part-Asian character in Aloha and ScarJo accepting the lead role in Ghost in the Shell, we've already seen the criticism of Hollywood 'white-washing' Asian characters, scripts, and storylines. However, what is rarely mentioned is the 'Asian-washing' of Asian characters, the collapsing of distinct cultures, languages, and backgrounds into one: the large majority of actors who play the already few roles available to Asian actors out there are Korean, even though many of the characters those actors are cast to play are not Korean at all, but rather, Vietnamese, Chinese, and Japanese (I'd like to say Cambodian, Thai, Malaysian, Pinoy, Tibetan, and others, but let's face it- characters of this origin barely exist in Hollywood storylines and scripts. There isn't anyone cast to play them because there is no role to play.) In an interview, Kelly Marie Tran even acknowledged herself that she had "resigned...to thinking that one day I would be just the weird side character who always talks about being Asian and brings kimchi to the party."
So what, exactly, does it mean to have Kelly Marie Tran cast as Rose in Star Wars? To me, it means more than adding an Asian woman actor on the big screen. It means introducing to the public eye an Asian woman who defies stereotypes of not just what it means to be Asian and to be a woman larger than a size 0-2, a woman who can embrace not just her American-Vietnamese upbringing, but also a disarming ability to take her work but not herself too seriously. Tran grew up in a low-income family to refugee parents not unlike my own; her father works at Burger King, and her mother, in funeral homes. She worked multiple part-time jobs, including at yogurt shops (and indeed, that infectious, bubbly charisma that one might expect of a yogurt shop employee shines through in The Last Jedi) and as a cleaner for a yoga studio just to pay her way through college and headshots. She was so excited about her own role in Star Wars that she went out and bought the action figures of Rose from Walmart, only to be met with surprise and denial when she informed a Walmart employee that the action figure was played by her. Tran is closer to epitomizing Drake's 'Started From the Bottom Now We Here' than most in Hollywood will ever be, yet stands tall, proud, strong, and indignant in the eye of racist, sexist, and downright obscene remarks.
She deserves a standing ovation all on her own.
What it means to have Kelly Marie Tran portray 'Rose' in Star Wars is not just another strong female lead in the male-dominated scifi genre. For many people who identify with the Vietnamese community, it means being able to look up to a strong woman who has merged confidently into both Western society and Hollywood while staying true to her parents' Vietnamese roots, who can rock a traditional ao dai just as well as she can rock a couture evening gown. For me, especially, it means being able to, one day, raise a daughter and skip the Yellow Power ranger, Charlie's Angels movies, the Miss Saigon stage shows, and be able to point to my television screen during a rerun of Star Wars in a scene of Rose kicking ass alongside the Resistance and say, "See that? That's what it looks like to be Vietnamese."
