ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the collision of Asias in responses to the adaptation of Crazy Rich Asians, where greater interest lies in its politics of representation rather than its relationship with the novel. This raises two interesting questions: how can an adaptation can be read so independently of its source, and what happens when the novel is added to the equation? I argue that a further collision of Asias occurs between novel and film because the adaptation of Kwan’s story into a Hollywood film produces an entirely different performance of crazy, rich Asians in Singapore. Here, the analysis views adaptations and their sources as performances, actions that produce, rather than reflect, that to which they refer (what they do), and how they do so. As such, while adaptations and their sources may be linked by their similarities, they can also be regarded as different and independent performances of the same story. Therefore, it is paradoxically the difference between novel and adaptation that enables the film to be detached from its source and read on its own terms.
