New York

IF YOU are Asian-American, you have most likely heard of a movie called Crazy Rich Asians, based on the popular novel of the same title by Kevin Kwan. If you are not Asian-American, maybe you are wondering why a romantic comedy is causing so much excitement. If you are saying to yourself that it's just a movie, you probably take for granted that there are many movies that feature people like you. For Asian-Americans, however, one movie can be of enormous consequence.

One of the movie's stars, Constance Wu, explained that the importance of Crazy Rich Asians, with its all-Asian-American cast, comes from a desire for "narrative plenitude." I came up with that idea in my book Nothing Ever Dies: Vietnam and the Memory of War. Narrative plenitude is what makes it possible for Hollywood to make so many Vietnam War movies. Not just Apocalypse Now and The Deer Hunter but also Platoon and Full Metal Jacket and Rambo. They are all set in Vietnam, and some of them are excellent works of art, but they are all dramas of white American masculinity. The Vietnamese are extras in these movies, who exist only to mutter, grunt, groan, curse and jabber incomprehensibly until they are rescued, raped or killed.