American pop culture has no language to deal with Chinese American identity issues

[cashew]

Vox's review of Shang-Chi is so awkward. Racial issues have been defined by White-v-Black for so long, pop culture just continues to fumble when faced with the awkward Not-White-Not-Black but definitely racial issues.

This sentence really encapsulates everything wrong with non-Chinese American understanding of the Chinese American culture:

Cretton’s movie also embraces Chinese American culture in its meticulous fight scenes.

Right. Where do I begin?

One of the stereotypes of Chinese Americans is "I know kungfu". And yet here, the Vox writer is desperately trying portray this as a positive. It's basically the equivalent of saying someone has embraced Mexican culture because they made an authentic taco or embraced Brazilian culture because they learned Samba. It's such a shallow understanding I'm kind of...baffled that this sentence even got past the cultural sensitivity check.

I mean, I get it, even something as shallow as getting the martial arts stuff right is nonexistent in American movies and it is one of China's biggest cultural exports, thanks to the likes of Bruce Lee and Jackie Chan, but...uh, Chinese Americans are descendant from all parts of China, not just the Guangdong (aka Canton) Province. Much like Hollywood doesn't represent the USA, neither does Hong Kong wuxia movies represent all of China. Equating respect for the wuxia genre as respect for the Chinese American culture is just plain...well, offensive.

Not to mention the Chinese American experience is not a monolith: there's the first generation immigrants, second generation immigrants, immigrants who came before the Chinese Exclusion Act and those who came after, those who came before '49 (PRC established) and those who came after, those who came before 6/4 (aka Tiananmen) Incident (another huge ideological shift in potential sources of Chinese immigrants) and those who came after, and all of these experiences are very different due to their differing social, political, and economical strata. So a movie that tries to explore the Chinese American experience would at the very least acknowledge these differences. Descendants of immigrants who left China to flee the CCP are different from those who left China under Manchu Qing rule which is still different from those who left China due to human trafficking. These encapsulate very different political ideologies and cultural identities. And yet American pop culture keeps lumping them into the same category.

(Aside: I imagine the Latinx community suffers the same kind of frustration, as an immigrant from Mexico and one from El Salvador and a native of Puerto Rico will have very different feelings about what constitutes as their culture. Or maybe I'm projecting.)

Anyway, where was I?

Oh. Right. Trying to make Shang-Chi sound not problematic. Ugh.

Look, when MCU decided to make Black Panther, they wisely decided the cast, crew, and especially writers and directors should probably, maybe, be of African descent. Both Ryan Coolger and Joe Robert Cole are black. I'm not saying they encompass all of African American experience, but they at least have a more nuanced view and a lived experience that helps them avoid fucking the story up.

Meanwhile, Shang-Chi has Dave Callaham, Destin Daniel Cretton, Andrew Lanham as screenwriters. Ah, yes, now that's a wide sampling of the Chinese American voices. 🙄 I'm sure all these non-Chinese Americans can truly capture the Chinese American experience.

I'm not against White people trying to understand a non-White culture. But Shang-Chi? This ain't it.

Comments

[tanithryudo]

I followed the link and was baffled by this Shang Chi character. Never heard of this guy. Looking over wikipedia, he seems like a really minor character. I guess Marvel had to dig deep to find a chinese protagonist.

I'm not sure I see the point for making this movie though. I mean, are they planning to also release it in China to try and milk money from the large population? If so, I question their effort at making this marketable to actual chinese audiences.

Or are they trying to make some kind of political statement to fellow Americans? Is this supposed to be political satire of some kind?

Or are they running down some list of non-white/minority groups for starring MCU movies after the success of Black Panther, hoping to recreate the same success?

[cashew]

Genuinely don't have an answer for you. I do know that MCU apparently had a list of "Asian Stereotypes" that they intentionally broke when writing the script and that initial trailers shown in Hong Kong and Taiwan had close to 60% negative responses.

Oh and Mainland China refuses to give the movie an opening date.

So. Not sure what MCU is thinking.

[tanithryudo]

It feels like they are making the movie for the leftist american (but not necessarily chinese-american) public so they can all self-congratulate about diversity and breaking stereotypes. But can that demographic carry a box office?

I'm surprised they didn't start with a minority that would be, eh, easier to write/cast/find more popular Marvel heroes for, like mexican-american or native-american-background.

[cashew]

I have no idea if they're thinking the leftist demographic will carry the movie or not. I think it has more to do with Asian Americans being rich and Asian stuff has been getting popular one after another (anime/manga, k-dramas, k-pop, MDZS, etc.). So I think they're trying to tap into the Asian-philia.

Given the popularity of k-pop, I feel like they should've gone with a Korean-American lead first. >.>;

[tanithryudo]

LOL, did they not realize that anime is mainly japanese, k-dramas/pop is mostly korean, and MDZS is Chinese, which are actually 3 different cultures (whose populations don't even like each other a lot of the time...)? I mean, you'd think they'd at least do a decent market study even if they fail basic culture studies.

I don't think Marvel has any korean-american heroes to dig up from the basement. They might be able to find some japanese ones though. There's a fair amount of ninjas in comics, anyway.

[cashew]

Well, I'll give them credit for casting people of Chinese descent for all their Chinese American characters, rather than throwing random actors of Asian descent and hope they pass as each other. (Still cringing at Hollywood casting Chinese actors in Memoirs of a Geisha. Now that is how you can really fuck up representation.)

As for doing a market study...given that the Asian American community, especially the Chinese American community, seem to be lapping this movie up like candy, I guess they got something right. I just wish the community was a little more discerning. (I took a look at the trailer and the wire-fu leaves me feeling a bit cold. It also makes me nostalgic for 90's Jackie Chan movies.)

I feel like with Marvel's push for inclusivity, they surely must have some Korean American heroes tucked away somewhere. But I'm too lazy to check. :p