Gadgetory

the Marvel Universe in Netflix is expanding we started with daredevil in 2015 which made waves as Netflix is 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 super heroine status Luke Cage follow and was no less important the store 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 al-bait bumpy ride so far and we're finally getting to 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 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 amongst of Kowloon 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 to save it from an evil mystical ninja clan known as the hand we're right right maybe even a little familiar what rules our body my MA so what we have here is a web of pseudo Asian mystical martial arts ninja enemies and a handful of white men ready to save the day this is a trope or an accepted convention at storytelling but why let's break it down first there's the issue of Orientalism Orientalism and fiction means depicting characters of East Asian or Arabic descent as exaggerated and exotic others as compared to the white counterparts who taught you in other ways 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 the presumed ignorance of the audience martial arts are obviously real Himalayan temples actually exist and people really do adhere to mythical 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'll gain mystical magic powers 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 fists will glow of the power of an immortal Bagon this is especially problematic when characters of the 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 - 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 the 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 the main character while also subtly implying that all 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 and racism that refuses to go away characters like iron fist and his early forbear shang-chi capitalize on the kung-fu craze of the era back then the characteristics of martial-arts films were arguably empowering for marginalized audiences featuring a long-suffering non-white protagonist on a righteous quest against the foe that was a moral colonial and sometimes white but by 1972 efforts like kung fu helped co-opt Hashanah 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 dr. strange for instance tried to sidestep the problem by casting Tilda Swinton as the ancient Wantage 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 protest 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 were sadly still struggling with it to this day food for thought during your next Netflix binge so there's been some Twitter drama surrounding the show of course actor Finn Jones who plays iron fist tweeted out a link to actor Reza mats talked about the importance of representation in film Jones was quickly struck down by fans given the irony of his statement in retaliation he deleted his Twitter account he's back now