“Grand Army,” the Netflix original series released Oct. 16, shows an irresponsible level of negligence in its representation of the Chinese community.
The series is loosely based on Katie Cappiello’s Slut: The Play. It tells the story of five students at Grand Army High School who struggle to become their ideal selves.
The series strives to cover many hot button issues, such as poverty, sexual assault, homophobia, and racism. It fails in its depiction of the challenge of establishing identity as a Chinese person in North America.
Leila Kwan Zimmer, one of five leads in the show, was adopted from China as a baby by a Jewish American couple. During Leila’s freshman year at Grand Army, she starts struggling with the pressure of being different. As a Chinese international student who struggles to build a new life in Canada, I was excited to see Leila’s identity crisis addressed in the first episode—not only because I could relate to her struggle, but also because I was happy to see such issues tackled in a mainstream series. However, “Grand Army” failed to handle Leila’s story seriously.
Leila’s story is missing a coherent raison d’être to help the audience understand her problem and her character. This is especially obvious when we compare Leila and the other four main characters. Dominique keeps her family afloat while applying to her dream internship. Siddhartha is applying for Harvard when he comes out to his Indian parents. Jayson plans a school-wide walkout to demand racial justice, and Joey decides to sue two of her best friends who raped her.
When all the other main characters are taking action and experiencing major life changes, Leila spends most of her time vying for attention from people at school. She is so distracted that she even loses the leading role in the play that she says is “the only thing” she has been looking forward to.
The relationships between the other four main characters and their parents are discussed to give the audience perspective on their struggles and give room for their character growth. However, we barely see Leila with her Jewish parents—a relationship that is supposed to be a key element of her identity crisis.
The series completely missed its focus on Leila’s journey to figure out who she is. Instead, she is depicted as an annoying, attention-seeking, and irresponsible teenage girl whose behaviour doesn’t make sense to the audience.
It is the production team’s arrogance and racial discrimination against the Chinese community that makes Leila’s character a major failure.
When the other four main characters have their internal monologue, character growth, and self-reflection presented as narration, Leila has her internal dialogue presented as animated action sequences full of stereotypical anime tropes. It not only belittles her crisis but also makes it difficult for the audience to take this character seriously. The fact that other characters’ issues are handled carefully with in-depth discussions while Leila’s insecurity is visualized as a cartoon shows the production team’s incapability to respect Leila as a character and the Chinese community.
This isn’t the only racist content in the series. The representation of the Chinese community in this show is significantly biased. The only Chinese characters in the series are depicted as unlikable—a stereotype known as the “dragon lady,” in which Chinese women are depicted as powerful, ruthless and deceitful.
The three Chinese-American girls who bully Leila in her history class—the only Chinese characters in the series besides Leila—are stereotypically mean. There are other examples of Asian mean girls in western mainstream media, such as Chelsea Barnes from “Princess Protection Program” and Kimmy-Jin from “Pitch Perfect.”
From a Chinese perspective, it is impossible to not be offended by the complete lack of effort devoted to Leila and the representation of the Chinese community in “Grand Army.” The production team was clearly not afraid to showcase their lack of interest and discrimination against Chinese people, which is a consequence of silencing the Asian community in Western media.
Leila gives a presentation in the last episode on the Kaifeng Jews, a small Jewish community in China. Her presentation is ironically the exact message I would like to give to the production team of “Grand Army” on behalf of the Chinese community in North America: “We are here, we matter, we will be counted in a world that struggles to place us, categorize us, understand us, and value our difference.”
Featured image from IMDb.
