The Edge of Seventeen and its Problematic Trailer
Lack of faith in the protagonist’s East Asian love interest?
First let me say upfront that I love love love The Edge of Seventeen. It is funny to its bones. The protagonist Nadine is smart, funny and lonely. She is likeable despite all her flaws. For bonus points, there is a non-stereotypical East Asian character here, Erwin, one that is not good at maths or science, but as a flesh and blood character (more or less) that Nadine fancies and vice versa. Just like any other “white” character can be, a blank canvas that can be anything. And life was wonderful before Covid-19.
What bothers me is the trailer for The Edge of Seventeen. The trailer basically erased the fact that this East Asian character is in this movie at all, by not showing Erwin. East Asian men in Hollywood are to this day still typecast as nerds, martial artists or sidekicks. So when the producers are brave enough to resist East Asian typecasting by taking this chance and cast Hayden Szeto as the “normal” love interest Erwin to Hailee Steinfeld’s character Nadine, his absence in the trailer is baffling. Are the producers not brave enough to follow through their conviction and show that an East Asian character can just be as fully formed and complex as your normal “white” character? So they did a “bait-and-switch” with the trailer? Or were they overruled by marketing executive that does not believe in their vision and therefore decided that the general public is not “ready” for Hayden Szeto, and therefore erased him from the trailer?
I do not consider Crazy Rich Asians to be breaking the mould for East Asians in Hollywood. Essentially it is just another “they do things differently over there” that kind of movie, making the distinction between “east” and “west” essential rather than malleable. The Edge of Seventeen presents an alternative “colour-blind” version of race, where an East Asian character can inhibit what normally would be a white character, and it is the most normal thing in the world that doesn’t deserve a mention.
Sometimes, colour-blind version of race is problematic. For example, the American right likes to say “all lives matters” instead of “black lives matters”, and assert that America in theory is a colour-blind society already, with various laws guaranteeing equality. The American right however is essentially trivialising the fact that in practice, black lives are routinely deemed by the US police as less important than white lives. So “colour-blind” version of race can trivialise existing racial inequality, by claiming that society is already colour-blind.
I think the end goal of BLM, feminist, and intersectional anti-racist movement can still be a colour-blind version of society, where a person can be whatever that person wants to be, regardless of the person’s race, gender or sexual orientation. There will be no pigeonholing based on race (“Asians are good at math.”), gender (“women are good at communicating.”) or sexual orientation (“gay people have good fashion sense.”), and society will accept individuals as they are, not what stereotypes say they should be. The Edge of Seventeen gives us a glimpse of that society. Pity about the trailer though.
