Talk:Ngoc Lan Tran/Archive 1

Archive 1

References to use

• Downsizing is a big film that gets lost in shades of Matt Damon beige: "Chau's character, Ngoc Lan Tran, is reduced to a cultural stereotype, the victimised but morally pure 'other' who, despite having the most interesting backstory of any character, is meant to be funny to us because of her pidgin English and blunt mannerisms. Dusan and Tran may as well have 'METAPHOR HERE' written on their foreheads as they tug Safranek back and forth between a life of selfish excess or grudging benevolence."
• In Conversation: Hong Chau

Thanks, Erik (talk | contrib) ^{(ping me)} 19:07, 10 February 2018 (UTC)

Merge this with Downsizing article?

Not sure why this has its' own page. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 107.3.17.242 (talk) 01:29, 21 September 2018 (UTC)

Because there is more coverage about the character than the film article could reasonably hold, especially in regard to the Asian portrayal criticism as well as the performance praise. Erik (talk | contrib) ^{(ping me)} 03:07, 21 September 2018 (UTC)

I see it the other way around. If the information in this article can't be made to fit into the film's original article then then I'd argue that it's not reasonable that it be included in Wikipedia at all. Breaking this article down, the first two sections as well as the last are basically already included in the film's article, the casting section isn't technically even about the character, and the other two sections are basically one critical reception section split in two because of a supposed controversy.

I say supposed for two reasons. First, it's just critics writing about it in their reviews or talking about other critics; this wasn't a major controversy that begat non-review news stories, protests, comments by luminaries or anything else notable (as far as what has been linked shows). Secondly, if it (or anything else in this article) were notable then surely it would warrant mention in the film's original article. Using Occam's razor, this would suggest that it's not useful information to include in Wikipedia, full stop. To mix my metaphors, I would follow the KISS principle here and merge only the most pertinent information, not hesitating to apply a close shave.

P.S. I'm not the other anonymous commentator. 24.212.153.7 (talk) 02:56, 5 February 2019 (UTC)

Wikipedia is not paper, and we are not compelled to try to fit everything about one film in one article. When there is a spin-off article, there is often summarizing from the main article, like here with "Fictional appearance". Furthermore, redundancy will always exist in some sense, but a character-centric article like this one allows for more in-depth coverage, especially for a side character, than the film article itself. The "Critical reception" section is admittedly a unique approach where there are so many details in all the reviews that they don't all make it into a film article's own section, because we generally sample the broad strokes. Here, we are sampling what was said about a portrayal. Let's say a film is very renowned for something like costume design to the point of having a spin-off article; I think such an article should be able to sample reviews specifically in regard to costume design.

In addition, this character has definitely been talked about outside standard reviews. The non-review sources include New York's Vulture, IndieWire, The New York Times (!), Southeast Asia Globe, and Salon covering this portrayal directly. Compare this to most other film characters that never get that significant coverage. Speaking of WP:SIGCOV, it says, "Significant coverage is more than a trivial mention, but it does not need to be the main topic of the source material." So the aforementioned sources are more than enough in that regard to demonstrate notability. I am hard-pressed to believe that this standalone article is somehow detrimental to the encyclopedia. Erik (talk | contrib) ^{(ping me)} 16:23, 5 February 2019 (UTC)