It’s impossible to talk about Iron Fist without talking about cultural appropriation.
There are multiple reasons for this. The most obvious are baked into the character himself, from his origin all the way back in Marvel Premiere as a white guy who travels to a mystical Asian city and becomes better at kung fu than any of the inhabitants before returning to America. There’s also very much the conversation that has been happening around the television series, which has prompted larger debates about the role of Asian performers and culture in Hollywood. Finally, there’s the fact that show so expertly puts its foot in its mouth.
Shaping up…
Bar the Big Boss is the perfect point at which to address this. Again, for multiple reasons. The most obvious is that it represents the last point at which the most obvious aspects of Asian exoticism are in play; barring the closing scene of Dragon Plays with Fire, this episode is the end of the Hand and K’un Lun as narrative forces in the context of the larger narrative. It is also an episode that effectively allows Davos to lightly touch upon the issue of cultural appropriation before brushing his concerns aside by turning him into a stock villain.
But, really, the issue is so firmly baked into the Iron Fist mythos that it is impossible to talk about in isolation.
Warding off evil spirits.
Filed under: Television | Tagged: bruce lee, cultural appropriation, danny rand, ethnicity, fish out of water, iron fist, kung-fu, lewis tan, martial arts, mysticism, orientalism, race, Roy Thomas | 7 Comments »
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