A new Netflix show featuring “wildly wealth” Asian Americans has been slammed for racism.
Bling Empire, which premieres on 15 January, the eight-part series is based in Beverly Hills and follows the group spending their time at extravagant parties, lavish spending sprees and on luxurious holidays.
Christine Chiu, Kane Lim, Kelly Mi Li and Kevin Kreider are among the stars.
“While their days and nights are filled with fabulous parties and expensive shopping sprees, don’t let the glitz and glamour fool you,” the Netflix description teases.
“Between running multi-billion dollar businesses and traveling the world, these friends are as good at keeping secrets as they are at spilling them. And there is certainly no shortage of secrets.”
Since the trailer was released, many have taken issue with the show’s message.
“Now we normal workaholic Asians have to live with another list of f**king unreal stereotypes,” one Twitter user wrote.
“Right now Hollywood is only giving them pictures of obnoxious filthy rich Asians. THAT upsets me.”
Some took aim at how Asian representation has taken a wrong turn.
“It was a joke abt how the only representation we Asians have is wealthy/celebrity status Asians like Crazy Rich Asians and whatever bull this show is supposed to be,” another said.
“Like we don’t have much representation of like poor/working class, LGBT or mentally ill, etc.”
Others questioned whether the show was meant to be satire or real.
“Wait is this a satire mockumentary reality series or is this an actual reality series i straight up can’t tell from the trailer lol,” one said.
“We get it : Asian people (Chinese & Hongkongers) are filthy rich and cartoonish. That’s the message y’all have been pushing for like 4 years, right? we get it. Now show us something else about asians.”
Another stated how regular Asians will have to “deal with even more stupid generalizations.”
“This isn’t what we mean by wanting decent representation in media, especially since us workaholics can’t relate to wealthy East Asians who were born with privileges. Relating to the audience is an important thing.”
One person took aim at Netflix, “yeah, Netflix really didn’t think this through.”
“It’s like they ignored years of progress that we’ve been trying to create while we work so hard, so giving us more bad stereotypes just adds to all the discrimination, racism, & increased attacks we face over COVID for being Asians.”
Now we normal workaholic Asians have to live with another list of fucking unreal stereotypes 🖕🏻
— Selena (@selena_ph7) January 8, 2021
Asian ppl be like “GIVE US REPRESENTATION BUT ONLY REPRESENT SUPER WEALTHY EAST ASIANS THAT ALMOST NOBODY CAN RELATE TO!”
— ✨Jasmine✨ (@bby_sagittarius) January 9, 2021
It was a joke abt how the only representation we Asians have is wealthy/celebrity status Asians like Crazy Rich Asians and whatever bull this show is supposed to be. Like we don’t have much representation of like poor/working class, LGBT or mentally ill, etc
— ✨Jasmine✨ (@bby_sagittarius) January 10, 2021
Now, us Asians have to deal with even more stupid generalizations. This isn’t what we mean by wanting decent representation in media, especially since us workaholics can’t relate to wealthy East Asians who were born with privileges. Relating to the audience is an important thing.
— Brandon Figaro (@silverkuoh32) January 10, 2021
