Everybody Is Kung Fu Fighting… But Should They Be?

So if you’ve been paying attention to entertainment news recently, you probably saw that Marvel Studios has finally announced its first project with an Asian lead. The film, Shang-Chi & The Legend of The Ten Rings, will be released in 2021 and will star Awkwafina, Tony Leung and Simu Liu as the title character. This is a big deal. It’s what Asian American filmgoers have been demanding for years; a big Hollywood blockbuster with an Asian lead, an Asian director, and even an Asian screenwriter. It’s perfect. Or is it? See, I’m very happy that we, as Asian Americans, are getting a big superhero film of this nature. But the more I looked into the movie, the more confused, and concerned, I became.

Let’s start off with the hero himself. In case you don’t know, which you probably don’t, Shang-Chi is an incredibly obscure Marvel comics character. He was created in 1973 by two white dudes, Steve Englehart, and Jim Starlin, and has never really been a major player. He’s never had a solo series, been part of a more famous team, like the Avengers, and he’s got no superpowers to speak of. He’s just really good at martial arts, something that basically every non-superhuman character in comics—Daredevil, Batman, Black Widow—is. Literally, the only noteworthy thing about his character is the fact that he is the son of Fu Manchu, a racist Asian caricature created by the British novelist Sax Rohmer to stir up anti-Chinese hysteria in the early 20th century. Seriously, the character of Fu Manchu is synonymous with Yellow Peril propaganda, and Shang-Chi, the first Asian superhero to be getting a big-budget film adaptation, is his son. Sigh. Now, do I honestly think that an Asian director and an Asian screenwriter will keep this racist part of the character’s origin? Probably not. Plus, I doubt that Marvel Studios, which is all about appealing to as many people as possible, would want to keep something so tasteless. Then again, they did cast Tilda Swinton as an Asian man, so, who knows? Shang-Chi’s origin isn’t really what I want to talk about, though. What I want to talk about is what he represents—Martial Arts—and its relation to Asian characters in Western media. Because that is an issue worth discussing.

See, for the longest time, Asian people were just supporting characters in Hollywood movies. If they were men, they were either weak, emasculated servants—perhaps railroad workers or laundry owners—or Yellow Peril villains. If they were women, they were either prostitute, fawning over some White guy, or Dragon Lady villains. Sometimes they were both. And, half the time, these offensive, stereotypical roles weren’t even played by Asian actors. Look no further than all the White guys who played Charlie Chan. There were exceptions to this rule, of course. Both Anna May Wong and Sessue Hayakawa managed to become stars in early Hollywood, but, again, they did so playing offensive, stereotypical roles. That was all that was available for them. Around the 1970s, though, things started to change. Bruce Lee was becoming a big star, appearing on shows like The Green Hornet—where, again, he had to play second fiddle to a White guy—and in a number of B-grade, but very successful, action flicks. Part of what made him unique was the fact that he was masculine. Not just in the sense that he was good at fighting, which, contrary to what Quentin Tarantino would have you believe, he was, but in the sense that he was manly in how he presented himself. Notice how pretty much all of his movies feature him with his shirt off. This was deliberate. Bruce Lee wanted people to see him, and Asian men in general, as sexually appealing, something that they’d never really been shown as before. This was revolutionary for the time, and despite only appearing in a few films, Bruce Lee managed to open the doors for Asian actors that followed. Well, sort of.

See, while it’s undeniable that Bruce Lee changed how Asian characters were portrayed in Hollywood, he basically just shifted what stereotypes Asian actors were stuck playing. If before the 1970s Asian characters were villains or prostitutes, after the 1970s, they got to be heroes, villains, and prostitutes, all of whom knew Kung Fu. Seriously, it basically became a pre-requisite for Asian actors in Hollywood to know martial arts. Don’t believe me? Then ask yourself what Jackie Chan, Jet Li, Michelle Yeoh, and Zhang Ziyi all have in common. It wasn’t really until the mid-2000s that we started to get movies and TV shows where Asian characters could just be people. They didn’t have to punch, kick and flip over each other constantly. They could be stoners, like Harold & Kumar, teen criminals, like the cast of Better Luck Tomorrow, or even Crazy Rich. And yet, after all this, Asian American actors have never quite been able to escape the clutches of Kung Fu. Even now, in 2019, a large portion of the Asian-centric media being made in Hollywood involves martial arts. Just this year, we had Warrior on Cinemax, Into The Badlands on AMC, and Wu Assassins on Netflix. We’ve got Mulan coming out next year, and Shang-Chi the year after that. All of these involve Asian characters doing martial arts.

Now some of you might be asking, is that really a bad thing? And the truth is, it’s not necessarily. Martial arts are a part of many Asian cultures, and many Asian Americans, myself included, have studied them. But it’s not all there is to Asian American identity. There’s plenty of other aspects of our lives and stories to explore. And I’m just hoping that, in this day and age, where we’re getting more high profile, mainstream Asian content than ever, we’ll start to see them.