Iron Fist (Marvel/Netflix)
- Thread starter Skywalker
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I think we're still waiting to judge that of course.
It's Netflix. As a subscription service, it's not bound by censorship as commercial TV is. That's been something that pay TV has been taking advantage of since the earliest days of premium cable, attracting subscribers by offering them more adult content than they could get on regular TV.
In fact, the Marvel shows are relatively subdued compared to other Netflix originals, which often feature much more explicit profanity, nudity, and violence.
Technically, another planet or dimension or something, but yeah.
I do get the impression that it tries, even if it's unsuccessful. The complaints about the boring "board meeting scenes" are apparently attempts to comment on privilege and class. Obviously, I don't know that for certain since specific plot spoilers are still embargoed until after release.
Hell, why does it have to be a New Yorker? Can a Detroiter, Bostonian, or San Franciscan not travel to NYC in times of particular emergency?Why should it be more rooted than any other character?
An "outsider learns the foreign mystical ways" origin can work just the same with an Asian-American, an African-American, a Cuban-American, an Irish-American, any American really, and it can work with a man or a woman just the same. Has to be New Yorker though.
Because it's Marvel.
"She calls herself 'The Daughter of the Dragon'!"
Not to be "that guy", but on the face of it I'm not sure the "white saviour" argument holds water.
Now let me just preface this by saying I've never read the relevant comics and my knowledge of the character is limited to a few wiki pages and Danny appearing as a guest character in comics I have read.
As I understand it, he doesn't choose to go to the east "to learn their mystic ways", he's orphaned as a child and taken in and raised by people in the east. Nor does he go there to "save them" but instead comes back to the west to be a hero there instead.
Unless I'm missing something, this feels like a deliberate deconstruction of the white savoir trope, not a mindless repetition of it.
Now let me just preface this by saying I've never read the relevant comics and my knowledge of the character is limited to a few wiki pages and Danny appearing as a guest character in comics I have read.
As I understand it, he doesn't choose to go to the east "to learn their mystic ways", he's orphaned as a child and taken in and raised by people in the east. Nor does he go there to "save them" but instead comes back to the west to be a hero there instead.
Unless I'm missing something, this feels like a deliberate deconstruction of the white savoir trope, not a mindless repetition of it.
That's true, but in a way it's part of the problem. Maybe not literally the "white savior" trope, but a related one, namely the assumption that Western audiences will only accept a martial-arts hero who's a white man trained in Asia rather than an Asian person. Or, worse, who's an Asian played by a white man, like David Carradine in Kung Fu (a series originally developed for Bruce Lee to star in).
I mean, we've seen the orphan card played by "white savior" series before, a prime example being Tarzan -- a name that, in universe, literally means "white skin." So going there by choice is not a requirement of the trope. It often entails the hero ending up in an exotic location by accident or mishap and transcending those circumstances by virtue of his superior ability.
I don't think his initial stories at all are the white savior trope simply because he doesn't save anyone. After the first story in K'un Lun, he goes back to New York to seek revenge. Then he has adventures in New York. It was pretty rare that he went back or saved K'un Lun.
That changed with The Immortal Iron Fist where he emphatically was the savior of the city. I do think the writers of that book did their best to subvert the trope by making the title of Iron Fist the important aspect and showing a legacy of the character full of non-white people who saved the city. Basically, Danny Rand might be the savior, but he's nothing special there. I don't know if that attempt was successful. I'm not the best to judge. But, leaving aside that story, I don't think the white savior trope actually appears much.
That changed with The Immortal Iron Fist where he emphatically was the savior of the city. I do think the writers of that book did their best to subvert the trope by making the title of Iron Fist the important aspect and showing a legacy of the character full of non-white people who saved the city. Basically, Danny Rand might be the savior, but he's nothing special there. I don't know if that attempt was successful. I'm not the best to judge. But, leaving aside that story, I don't think the white savior trope actually appears much.
I think that's taking the label of the trope too literally. The "savior" part is meant analogously to a religious savior, a messiah or destined chosen one -- or at least someone who imagines oneself that way. I don't think it's necessarily about the character literally saving people as about the tendency of white authors and filmmakers to default to portraying white characters as chosen ones or figures of destiny within nonwhite cultural contexts. Even if Iron Fist isn't a blatant example of that trope, it's still at least adjacent to it, as is Doctor Strange. Although you're right that establishing that Danny was just one in a long line of Iron Fists did help to ameliorate that. We'll see if the show does the same.
Apostrophe in the first word only.
^ Goodness me...what else is hiding on Netflix that I don't know about?
I'm new to it, so I'm still finding out myself. I almost passed on Marco Polo, then tried a few eps just to see if it was a dull historical drama. It's not dull! Well, Marco Polo himself is fairly dull, but the rest of the cast is amazing. Benedict Wong as Kublai Khan is outstanding. Joan Chen is still luminous as his empress. The costumes, the sets... Gorgeous! And hey, nude kung-fu!
Nude kung fu? No wonder he has an iron fist!
Seems as if it's bad if it stars a white guy, bad if it stars an Asian guy, bad if he's a white savior and bad if he isn't; all we know for sure is that it'll be bad.
Seems as if it's bad if it stars a white guy, bad if it stars an Asian guy, bad if he's a white savior and bad if he isn't; all we know for sure is that it'll be bad.
What's bad is our society's centuries-long history of racism and stereotyping. All that baggage makes it very difficult to do a story about other cultures that doesn't risk perpetuating those stereotypes and negative images. It's like navigating a minefield planted all around us by our forebears. It takes great care and awareness to find a safe path through those mines. It's a complicated issue that can't be reduced to simplistic summations. The only way to fight all that ugly history is by listening and thinking and being willing to learn.
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