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“Certainly for Hollywood, this kind of stuff has been around since Fu Manchu with the Yellow Peril,” Yuen says. Yuen says this tendency to appropriate Asian culture while simultaneously casting Asian as villains is rooted in age-old concepts of xenophobia. Again, Asian culture is up for consumption, and Asian people only exist to push along the white hero’s journey. The bad ninjas, like Elektra and nearly everyone in the Hand, are Asian.

The good ninjas on Daredevil, like Matt Murdock and Stick, are white.

Marvel’s appropriation of Asian martial arts is a particular sore point, not only because of Iron Fist, but also because of another Netflix/Marvel show, Daredevil. So why aren’t Asian American creators given the same opportunity to reclaim Iron Fist? The print side of the comic book industry has opened its doors to Asian American creators, but film and television continue to remain tone-deaf. Those stories and characters have become richer, injected with perspectives we have rarely encountered in history because creators of color are given so few opportunities to tell our own stories. Handing over Black Panther and Luke Cage into the hands of black creators wasn’t just the right thing to do, it was also the most sensible option. The Luke Cage show is led by Cheo Hodari Coker and doesn’t shy away from black issues such as the police brutality that is disproportionately committed against African Americans. The Black Panther film was directed by Ryan Coogler and featured an all-black cast. That was remedied when black artists were invited to reclaim the franchises. Their white creators had benign intentions but the execution was still clumsy and uncomfortable. Luke Cage is an ex-con who was chiefly characterized by rage and his prison chains. T’Challa is an African monarch gifted with superhuman speed and strength.

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Both series were created by white men who ultimately relied on stereotypes rather than hiring black writers. He cited other Marvel properties such as Black Panther and Luke Cage as proof of the company’s commitment to diversity.īlack Panther and Luke Cage have indeed been great vehicles for black representation in entertainment media, but it took more than adding black characters to make that happen. Roy Thomas, co-creator of the Iron Fist comic, dismissed all criticisms of cultural appropriation when he spoke to Inverse last year, arguing that it’s “just an adventure story” and isn’t degrading to anyone.

Can you dig it? The Push For An Asian American Iron Fist Isn’t Just About Representationīut the underlying drive to reimagine Iron Fist as an Asian American was never just about seeing more Asian Americans on screen. The Iron Fist show follows the “Mighty Whitey” narrative demonstrated in films such as Kickboxer, The Last Samurai, The Karate Kid Part II, and The Outsider to a tee, right down to the hamfisted trope of white men wooing Asian women away from the grasp of savage, domineering Asian men.īig, black, angry, and he even used to talk in jive. This is a pretty common script in Hollywood. Despite being an outsider, Danny inherits the title of Iron Fist, becoming the champion of his adopted city K’un Lun. He’s taken in by an ancient order of warrior monks based in the mystical city of K’un Lun. As a child, Danny is the sole survivor of a plane crash that kills his parents. It’s the story of Danny Rand (played by Finn Jones in the Netflix series), the heir of a billion-dollar corporation. Martial arts and yoga - it’s a consumption item rather than an actual culture to be respected.” “Anything that’s set in Asia or with Asian cultures is treated as an object rather than a subject. Yuen is a sociologist and the author of Reel Inequality: Hollywood Actors and Racism, a book about the vast racial disparity in pop culture. “I think the source material is orientalist,” Nancy Wang Yuen tells Inverse.

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