What it’s like watching Raya from a UK SEA perspective
Disney’s Raya has been lauded for its representation of South East Asian cultures ever since it hit our (home) screens on Disney+ back in March. The latest Disney epic is now out available on the Disney+ free tier as of 4 June, so here at besea.n, we decided to do what we do best: we asked our community - specifically, our SEA fam - what they thought. This review is brought to you by Mai-Anh of besea.n, and voices from the besea.n Instagram community.
Warning: this article contains spoilers.
Image: Disney. Raya, voiced by Kelly Marie Tran.
While Disney seems to have learnt a couple of lessons with regards to production (*cough cough* Mulan), I still had my reservations. Before I allowed myself to get too excited about the film’s release, I did some homework. Screenplay by SEA writers? Check. SEA head of story? Check. Creation of the Southeast Asia Story Trust, a collective of cultural consultants and anthropologists? Nice.
Directors and producers? Nope (although I did appreciate the 50% representation in these roles by people of colour). And finally…
Where were all the SEA actors?
Apart from Kelly Marie Tran, who plays Raya, and Thalia Tran, who plays Little Noi, or Con Baby, I couldn’t pick out any SEA names from the list of lead cast members. East Asian actors have struggled to find their place among the racist (notably whitewashing and colourism) and sexist structures that underpin much of Hollywood, I’ll grant you that but...isn’t there enough space for a wider range of ESEA faces? It’s not like Disney is obscure enough to need to rely on big names to draw a crowd (see Moana).
Greater pens than mine have lamented this casting oversight in far more eloquent detail, so for now, I’ll simply repeat something that I’ve said a million times before: the ESEA community will never advance if we do not learn from early mistakes. Time and time again, I see events and projects labelled as ‘ESEA’ with little to no SEA representation - and what SEA representation there is often smacks of tokenism. No shade to EA actors carving out their careers - this one lies with the casting director. I wasn’t at all surprised to find that the casting director on this film is not ESEA, or even Asian.
Image: Disney. Young Raya and Chief Benja, voiced by Daniel Dae Kim.
Why does this matter, particularly for ESEAs in the UK?
Because there’s a worrying precedent of erasure that risks damaging our newly (and digitally) fostered community cohesion. I’ve seen plenty of events purporting to speak for the UK ESEA community, represented entirely by ethnically Chinese participants, to the erasure of even other EA communities like Korean and Japanese. I say ‘ethnically’ in a loose sense, recognising that ‘Chinese’ is not a sufficient identifier for many, but merely to make the point that SEA representation is often very heavily infused with Chinese cultural markers. While there are many geo and ethnopolitical factors that determine displacement and migration, and while everybody deserves a seat at what should be a very large table, for UK ESEAs, hearing solely about the achievements and struggles of certain groups in conversations about representation can have the effect of making you feel like a minority within a minority - and I say this as somebody endowed with a significant amount of privilege and proximity to whiteness. How does it feel for the most marginalised of SEA groups, including those from the LGBTQ+ community? I appreciate that East Asians don’t even get a look in at the best of times, which is what makes this an especially painful point to make, but I truly believe that the advancement - however small - of some within the community, while others are overlooked, will only serve to create cracks in the otherwise solid foundation we’ve built. It’s either all of us, or none of us. There, I said it.
Back to Disney. It’s not to say that they’re getting it completely wrong. Since summer 2020’s Black Lives Matter protests, we’ve seen them put out warnings at the beginning of certain films on their platform, such as Dumbo and Aladdin, situating them within a particular context and acknowledging that the depiction of certain peoples and cultures was wrong, is still wrong, and may cause offence. They also apparently convene a monthly Zoom conference with the media conglomerate, their business subsidiaries and representatives from groups like the African American Film Critics Association, the Coalition of Asian Pacifics in Entertainment and the Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Media.
“Creating and sustaining space for these conversations to happen is important, and it’s an excellent start. ”
The behind-the-scenes stuff has been written about in a lot of other articles. What I was most interested in was how it would feel to watch it as a British or UK-based SEA person. I’m fully aware that I’m the exact demographic this film is likely to resonate with - I grew up in a majority white country, I had a ‘western’ upbringing, and the characters I saw represented on nineties TV looked nothing like me (except the Yellow Power Ranger, until Thuy Tran’s tragic death, after which the role was played by Black actress Karan Ashley). The same may not be said for people who grew up in South East Asia - and it’s worth noting that Raya isn’t even available to stream in a lot of SEA countries; a clear indicator that non-diaspora SEAs aren’t really the intended audience. Another one for Disney’s ‘to fix’ list.
So what did the community think? I asked a series of questions about a few key themes in the film to our Instagram following, and here are the results I got from our SEA fam (my own commentary underneath as MAP).
Casting and production
The Instagram fam had a lot to say about this topic!
MAP: Having made my thoughts on the production and casting fairly clear, I was gratified to see that a lot of community members felt the same. The actors were excellent: there just weren’t enough SEA voices.
I, too, was glad not to see Scarlett Johansson making an appearance.
Dragons
Image: Disney. Sisu, voiced by Awkwafina.
MAP: You know what? I kind of didn’t hate the dragons. I know they had a fluffy, slightly cringey element, but this is a Disney film, after all. A lot of our community members commented on the unicorn resemblance, and given the recent popularity of Scotland’s national animal (I’m not lying - Google it), it wouldn’t surprise me if Disney intentionally went for a unicorn vibe. Great merch possibilities.
I did love the influence of Naga dragons, which symbolise goodness and hope in much of South East Asia (while, in many East Asian cultures, dragons are a symbol of power and luck). This was echoed by some of the community members, who felt that the concept was great, even if the execution was unexpected.
Food
MAP: This might have been the most validating part for me. Watching Ba (which means ‘father’ in Vietnamese, though I can’t speak for other SEA cultures) sprinkle typical SEA ingredients into a cooking pot was enough to bring tiny little tears to my eyes. I really can’t explain what that moment felt like. I could almost smell familiarity. We saw a host of favourite fruits drift in and out of various scenes, such as durian and lychees, as well as the later validation by Spine warrior Tong that, just in case there was any doubt, the mango is the greatest of all fruits. I even spotted some pandan jelly in the end credits! This is the kind of detail that makes me feel seen. For me, though, the clincher was the meal that brought them all together: congee. Be still, my beating heart! Or is it my rumbling stomach?
Finally, I did have to agree with one community member, who voiced their disappointment at the lack of noodle coverage. As a proud, lifetime member of #teamnoodle, I concur.
People & customs
MAP: I have to hand it to the animators; I was pleasantly surprised to see a wide variety of people depicted, from different body shapes to different skin tones. I’m no expert, but to me, the clothes had strong SEA vibes with little touches and details that didn’t go unnoticed, like the Filipino salakot style hat worn by Raya and the nods to Cambodian sampot worn by the Heartlanders. And seeing Kelly Marie Tran wear an actual áo dài on the red carpet for the film premiere was SO validating. I’m also very much in agreement about hot dad: finally, a cartoon crush that will replace Robin Hood (who is a literal fox).
The Instagram community was split on this one: some liked the pick-n-mix mash-up of various cultures, while others felt it was a missed opportunity to specify and spotlight different cultural elements, especially as Asians are often classified as a monolith in society.
Image: Disney. Raya (Kelly Marie Tran) faces off with Namaari (Gemma Chan)
But the martial arts scenes! As a former UK national pencak silat competitor, I was pretty hyped to see some Indonesian silat influences in the martial arts scenes, as well as Muay Thai and Filipino Arnis/Kali/Eskrima stick fighting. To be honest, I was willing to forgive Disney for neglecting to add musical numbers, since they clearly put a lot of effort into these sick fighting scenes.
The writers also made a concentrated effort to ensure that the film reflected Asian customs around hospitality; anyone from an ESEA background would likely resonate with the focus on gift-giving and food as a love language.
And can we talk about them all taking their shoes off before entering the gem fortress? Yes.
Kumandra’s setting, geography and landscape
Image: Disney
MAP: Most people felt that the scenery was beautiful, and I’m inclined to agree. I got some strong Angkor Wat vibes from some of the architecture in this film, which I was definitely all about. The setting also felt futuristic enough not to lean too much on one culture. I read that the writers deliberately didn’t make it so that you could easily classify the different regions of Kumandra - Tail, Talon, Spine, Fang and Heart - as different SEA countries, for fear of generalisation or division. I quite liked the way that they did that, as it leaves the relatability open-ended; each viewer can pluck out and appreciate the parts that resonate with them the most, without being married to one region in particular.
I also loved the focus on water. The word for ‘country’ in Vietnamese literally means ‘water’. The Mekong River is a critical resource of millions of people in South East Asia, running through five SEA countries in total. I couldn’t help but think of the Mekong Delta - a river network very close to my heart, as my family lives in Saigon in Southern Vietnam - when I looked at the dragon-shaped river on the map of Kumandra, and of course I instantly thought of SEA floating markets and villages on stilts when I saw Kumandra’s Talon region. Kumandra’s dependence on water dragons and the echoes of water as the lifeblood of SEA communities - with the odd floating lotus flower for good measure - was a beautiful touch.
Image: Disney
Overall takeaways?
MAP: When watching this film, my partner pointed out something that my ‘SEA representation’ tunnel vision failed to see: that the storyline isn’t exactly original. A flawed, yet spirited daughter, tasked with the seemingly impossible mission of saving her land and restoring peace, and doing it all on a boat with the help of some comedy sidekicks? Moana, anyone?
But I can’t lie, I read the rise of the druun and the division of Kumandra within the context of racism and border policies. For me, it was the perfect - if not slightly cheesy - metaphor for the ESEA community of today. When we, as ESEA people taking our place in the world, choose to empower each other, rather than to compare and compete, it unlocks within us a potential to achieve so much more than we ever thought we were capable of.
Or, to put it another way:
“When they put their faith in me, it empowered me beyond anything I could imagine”
I realised, over the course of my furious note-taking during multiple watches of this film, that I was really determined to love it from the start. It’s been a really tough and, at times, disappointing year in terms of ESEA representation and commodification. We’ve seen disrespectful representation on cooking shows, including *that* Masterchef incident, an attempt to colonise Mahjong, and obviously we all remember the downright attack on Chinese takeaways that was the Zing-Zing marketing campaign.
Sometimes you just need to watch something and appreciate it without feeling the weight of colonisation and racism on your shoulders. And I really, really needed that. Of course, I wasn’t expecting Raya to solve all our problems. After all, it’s a film made by an American mass media conglomerate; it’s not indie SEA cinema.
The SEA fam waited so long for this. The overall feeling from our Instagram polling seems to be that it’s an enjoyable, beautiful film and a good start with regards to representation, but there’s more work to do. Including the creation of a queer Disney prince, as one follower has suggested!
It’s true that it’s just the beginning of the representation we deserve, but damn...I’m going to let myself enjoy it. After all, one of the meanings of ‘raya’ in Malay is ‘celebration.’
Note: this article was edited on 9th June 2021 to remove a reference to over-representation of Chinese Malaysian SEAs in the UK community discourse, based on reader feedback.
