The Marvel universe on Netflix is expanding.
We started with Daredevil in 2015, which made waves as Netflix’s best show at the time.
Then Jessica Jones depicted a complex story about an abuse survivor that accepts, rejects,
and comes to tentative terms with her superheroine status.
Luke Cage followed and was no less important: the story of a black man that can’t be shot,
trying to find his place in the cultural hub of Harlem.
It’s been a great — albeit, bumpy — ride so far, and we’re finally getting the fourth
Marvel hero to complete The Defenders: Iron Fist.
Iron Fist is a pretty beloved superhero.
He’s also a rich white savior, propped up by a generic oriental “culture” to become
a mystical master of Kung Fu.
Yeah.
We need to talk.
His real name is Danny Rand, and he’s one of the finest warriors in the entire Marvel
Universe.
He’s the sole survivor of a plane crash that killed his wealthy parents in the Himalayas.
Since then, he spent 15 years training with the monks of K’un-Lun to become the Immortal
Iron Fist.
With the power to summon superhuman strength, speed, and agility — and a powerful, glowing
fist — he returns to New York City to save it from
an evil, mystical ninja clan known as the Hand.
Weird, right?
Maybe even a little familiar?
So what we have here is a web of pseudo-Asian mystic martial arts, ninja enemies, and a
handful of white men ready to save the day.
This is a trope, or an accepted convention in storytelling.
But...
why?
Let’s break it down.
First, there’s the issue in Orientalism.
Orientalism in fiction means depicting characters of East Asian or Arabic descent as exaggerated
and exotic others as compared to their white counterparts.
So, if you see Asian men and women in robes talking a lot about honor and karma, or if
they’re solely there as ninjas or martial arts experts, then the show is reinforcing
Orientalist stereotypes.
Filmmakers get away with this because of presumed ignorance from the audience: Martial arts
are obviously real.
Himalayan temples actually exist and people really do adhere to mystical belief systems
all over the world.
The problem comes in assuming those ideas can sum up whole groups of people.
Even worse, those ideas are usually meant to empower white heroes:
If you study in the Himalayan Mountains, you will gain mystic magic to affect the universe,
If you’re blind and study under a blind sensei, you can basically regain your sight
and become a ninja, ...And if you study enough Kung Fu, your fist
will glow with the power of an immortal dragon.
This is especially problematic when characters of this stripe are often the only roles people
of Asian or Pacific Islander descent can get in film or TV.
And, spoiler: casting a white person to this poorly developed kind of role does not solve
the issue.
It makes it worse.
The second problem is the idea of a white savior.
White saviors are white people, usually men, who enter an exotic society and come out as
a “chosen one” figure.
They’ve absorbed the stereotyped culture and have emerged as the best person among
those people.
But this marginalizes people who don’t often get a chance to see themselves as the main
character while also subtly implying that all of the people from these fictive cultures
can’t defend themselves because they need saving.
Thankfully this white person showed up to study and use their culture to save the day.
So what’s Marvel to do?
A lot of the problem comes from adapting source material from the 1970s with baked-in racism
that refuses to go away.
Characters like Iron Fist – and his early forebear Shang-Chi – capitalized on the
Kung Fu craze of the era.
Back then, the characteristics of martial arts film were arguably empowering for marginalized
audiences: Featuring a long-suffering, non-white protagonist on a righteous quest against a
foe that was amoral, colonial, and sometimes white.
But by 1972, efforts like Kung Fu helped co-opt a genre for white America.
Even though characters like Iron Fist and Doctor Strange have come a long way, their
origin stories are steeped in some pretty offensive ideas.
The film version of Doctor Strange, for instance, tried to sidestep that problem by casting
Tilda Swinton as the Ancient One, but that gave fans the impression that Marvel was whitewashing
the character.
For Iron Fist, which appears relatively faithful to the source material, it might just be laziness.
A vocal group of Marvel fans protested the casting choices of Iron Fist, explaining how
an Asian-American Danny Rand could benefit the story.
It was smart criticism that showed how far we’ve come since the ‘70s.
It’s a genre problem nearly 50 years in the making, and we're sadly still struggling
with it to this day.
Food for thought during your next Netflix binge.
There’s been some Twitter drama surrounding the show, of course.
Actor Finn Jones, who plays Iron Fist, tweeted out a link to actor Riz Ahmed’s talk about
the importance of representation in film.
Jones was quickly struck down by fans, given the irony of his statement.
In response, he deleted his twitter.
But he’s back now.