Downtown Rumbles: Sharp's Scotch Bar

**Lord Falcon** · 03-17-2017, 06:44 AM

As an Asian man myself, my take on Iron Fist being white:

I have never been outraged by most cultural appropriation. If we are to live in a multicultural society, then culture must be allowed to mix, flow and be adopted freely. I want other races going nuts about Chinese kung-fu. It's a genuinely awesome cultural product, as is our food and money transfers to the next generation through red packets wishing them success and happiness. Us Asians wear Caucasian shirts and suits, we shake hands like Caucasians and we commercialize Christmas just as well as Caucasians do. As long as you're not living culture just to mock it, people already practicing the culture should be (imo) flattered and take pride in the fact their culture is considered awesome enough to be adopted.

So as a concept, I am totally fine with Danny Rand being a white guy who's immersed in Asian culture. I actually really enjoyed Tilda Swinton as the Ancient One, because she filled a directorial vision for the role and played it marvelously. My disappointment was reserved for Wong, who was done with none of the poise, easy class and snark I expected of the character.

So no complaints if Spider-Man becomes Asian next. He's already been black-hispanic.

**Nik Hasta** · 03-17-2017, 07:24 AM

Originally Posted by Lord Falcon

As long as you're not living culture just to mock it, people already practicing the culture should be (imo) flattered and take pride in the fact their culture is considered awesome enough to be adopted.

It's this point here that's the rub, I find.

Due to Western media being mostly created by white people, for white people and starring white people, some members of ethnic minorities feel that what should be their chance to explore characters that are explicitly for them/their culture get passed over to white people or viewed through the lens of a white person. This creates resentment because it implies that their views and experiences aren't worthy of being the primary viewpoint of the show.

I think that my big view would be that I think Western media could do a lot more to reach out to try and represent minorities and the marginalised in a more nuanced way. As a white British dude who hails from one of the whiter areas of the UK, I'm acutely aware that I'll never understand or experience the sense of cultural isolation that members of marginalised groups have described to me or the experience of those groups in life so my only recourse is to push for more opportunities to redress the balance where possible and, honestly, I want more media that puts me into the shoes of groups I am not a member of because that's most interesting to me.

Racial representation in art is an interesting topic.

**Cthulhu_of_R'lyeh** · 03-17-2017, 10:20 AM

Originally Posted by Cleric of Hell's Brigade

It won't be a fight, hoss. I'll just bribe you.

Sold!

/limit

**Guy1** · 03-17-2017, 10:57 AM

Whelp, two episodes in and Iron Fist isn't too shabby. There's no sign of whiny hacker girls so it's automatically better than Arrow in that regard. And we've got an Iron Fist Punch! This is going to be an interesting one.

**Guy1** · 03-17-2017, 11:39 AM

Originally Posted by Guy1

Whelp, two episodes in and Iron Fist isn't too shabby. There's no sign of whiny hacker girls so it's automatically better than Arrow in that regard. And we've got an Iron Fist Punch! This is going to be an interesting one.

Trinity is back baby!

**Hiromi** · 03-17-2017, 11:59 AM

I'm not seeing anything wrong with Iron Fist from what I've seen so far, certainly nothing to justify the critics panning it, it's by no means the best of the bunch(nor is it especially weaker than them) but it also seems to have a decent flow and pace that some of the other properties lacked.

As for casting ethnicity or whatever I'll just say that as an adaptation I don't see it as valid criticism from a film or television critic's perspective in so far as grading the show's entertainment or craftsmanship. If this was an original property maybe but the show is decently faithful to its source.

**Nik Hasta** · 03-17-2017, 12:20 PM

Originally Posted by Hiromi

As for casting ethnicity or whatever I'll just say that as an adaptation I don't see it as valid criticism from a film or television critic's perspective in so far as grading the show's entertainment or craftsmanship. If this was an original property maybe but Danny Rand's background is roughly similar to Bruce Waynes.

I don't think that's entirely a fair statement myself. First off, the casting ethnicity of your lead character is a valid criticism of it being an adaptation. The term adaptation implies that things will be altered during the process of creation. If they were going to alter Danny's race to be more inclusive, the launch of a new Netflix series was the prime time to do it. It's the second most visible avenue of output that Marvel has outside their movies and there's much less financial risk than their movies. They had a very real opportunity to do something different than rehashing problematic tropes from the comics and they chose not to. Methinks it's an entirely fair criticism.

Second, I think that the race of the character could definitely effect the show's entertainment value if you are concerned with how the optics of the white guy appropriating East Asian aesthetics/culture thing plays to you. As Falcon noted above, it doesn't bother him which is dandy. I have Asian friends who were kind of upset about the show's casting choices and opted not to bother with it because it's just not something they are interested in seeing.

Also, the idea that it would be fine to change it if it was an original property is a bit reductive. Source material is not sacrosanct. Comics aren't movies. They aren't TV series. They are a different medium. The process of adaptation is going to alter the narratives of comics to fit new mediums better. This process is a factor now and, I imagine, will continue to be moving forward. The notion of the origin being something you can't change is kind of odd in of itself and the more concerning idea that Danny's story would somehow radically alter simply if he was of Chinese/Korean/Japanese/Tibetan/whatever descent is very weird to me.

Why couldn't a Batman inspired origin be something that an East Asian person have? Why couldn't Rand Corp be an Asian American family company? What about Danny being white makes that more believable to you?

I'll stress the caveat that I'm quite aware that discussing this kind of material can get uncomfortable and can be a bit charged so I'm just making clear to all and sundry that no offence or insinuation of malignancy is meant by my line of questioning. I just like discussing this stuff. If you feel I'm being pushy or whatever, please let me know. Tone is hard to convey online and I don't want to cause any offence.

**Beadle** · 03-17-2017, 12:56 PM

Dammit the actor playing Joy Meachum looks weirdly like a younger Melanie C (Sporty Spice).

**Iron_Twister** · 03-17-2017, 01:21 PM

Huh, no wonder why Highlander Endgame wasn’t as terrible as it could have been in my case (though frankly, it speaks a lot when not having Donnie Yen...makes the film not enjoyable to watch)