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Edited by Mrph1 on Jul 29th 2024 at 3:09:00 PM
That's exactly what I meant...there is a lot of subtext in Iron Fist, but apparently a lot of viewer don't even notice it. Even the homeless guy in the beginning plays his part in the ongoing discussion of the expectation of society. And what I really appreciate about Iron Fist is that it never judges, it just lays out the arguments for you, allowing you to make your own conclusion. Daredevil is in contrast sometimes preachy, Luke Cage goes out of its way to have a lengthy speech in the end just in case you haven't understood yet what it is about (though it is very likely that you didn't, because Luke Cage often forgets its own themes in favour of just showing off some more black culture) and in Jessica Jones, well, there actually is no grey area because the main topic is abuse and we certainly don't want to argue if abuse is a bad thing or not, so the job of the show is more to lay out the possible effects of abuse than asking a complicated question.
edited 30th May '17 6:14:31 AM by alliterator
These kinds of heated and complicated conversations are why a lot of people in hollywood just go 'screw it' and make everyone and everything white. If everyone is the same race, they don't need to overcomplicate their creations by bothering to add race relations as a theme into the story. I don't like it, and I think it's lazy, but as an aspiring film producer I can understand where they're coming from.
Lots of creators see race and gender as extraneous to the story they want to tell. They see addressing those issues in a work that isn't already revolving around those themes as unnecessarily overcomplicating the story.
In their mind, having everyone be the same race and/or culture allows them to write a story that has nothing to do with race and/or culture. Nowadays, creators write tons of characters of various races and genders, but they still want to write the same simple stories where race and gender don't infringe on the stories they want to tell.
Conversely, this means that any stories that do address race or gender must be ALL ABOUT race or gender. Think about it: there was very little in Jessica Jones that didn't have to do with gender: from addressing toxic masculinity to exploring literally every facet of rape that could be explored. Same with Luke Cage: it had themes separate from race, but it was also drenched in black culture and practically felt like a vacation ad for modern Harlem.
edited 30th May '17 8:42:33 AM by PushoverMediaCritic
Your point is basically saying "Stop having conversations criticizing race and whatnot because it just leads to writers ignoring you and sticking with white people". You yourself can look at it not from a racial angle, but unfortunately that's not how the world works. It's also completely ignoring all of the criticisms of Danny Rand's Mighty Whitey portrayal to say "stop thinking about things in terms of race".
Have you any dreams you'd like to sell?Agents of SHIELD has had absolutely no storylines or plotlines concerning race (aside from the fake race of Inhumans), but they have two Asian-American leads. It's entirely possible to just populate your story with people of color without having a story centered around their race.
The problem with doing that with Iron Fist is that the story itself is so rooted in Asian culture and, more specifically, the Mighty Whitey trope that doing a story without addressing it would seem weird.
A immediate counter-point to that is The Magnificent Seven (2016). As simple of a movie as you can have, a stylish, high-octane action old west movie. Yet out of its titular 7, 4 are minorities (there's one Asian, one Comanche Amerindian, their leader is a black man and there's also a Mexican).
edited 30th May '17 9:44:41 AM by Gaon
"All you Fascists bound to lose."The idea that a work starring a diverse cast must be about race is a fallacy. For instance, Brooklyn Nine Nine has a very diverse cast by TV standards, and while it does absolutely deal with race issues (they recently did a very good episode on racial profiling), it is absolutely not the sole or even main focus of the show. It's just a show set in New York that has a cast realistically representing the types of people you'd come across in a major urban area.
Another good example.
edited 30th May '17 9:46:43 AM by comicwriter
Also, doesn't casting an Asian-American to play Danny's role also has it's fair share of Unfortunate Implications? As in, "only Asians can do Kung-Fu". It was, for sure, one thing that was also discussed.
If anything, I'd have gone the third way and cast someone of a whole other ethnicity. I mean, if they were going to go the "outsider" route, why not have Danny as the son of a millionare mexican immigrant (a la Carlos Slim) living in America? Just go crazy with it.
Again, I fail to see how Danny fits the Mighty Whitey trope. He's a reckless idiot with no social skills that is very good at fighting yet is matched in skill by every other opponent. Nevermind the fact that Finn Jones can't fight for shit; in the narrative, Danny is a great fighter. How is he then a Mighty Whitey when the only person from K'un L'un flat out states that Danny is making a shit job at being the Iron Fist? Pretty much everyone that meets Danny at one point or other gives him shit for trying to be a hero. Danny is never shown to be right, and the show left it very clear that he has a lot of growing up, both as a person and as the Iron Fist, until he is what he was intended to be.
edited 30th May '17 10:03:06 AM by ExplosiveLion
Lots of creators see race and gender as extraneous to the story they want to tell. They see addressing those issues in a work that isn't already revolving around those themes as unnecessarily overcomplicating the story.
In their mind, having everyone be the same race and/or culture allows them to write a story that has nothing to do with race and/or culture. Nowadays, creators write tons of characters of various races and genders, but they still want to write the same simple stories where race and gender don't infringe on the stories they want to tell.
Conversely, this means that any stories that do address race or gender must be ALL ABOUT race or gender. Think about it: there was very little in Jessica Jones that didn't have to do with gender: from addressing toxic masculinity to exploring literally every facet of rape that could be explored. Same with Luke Cage: it had themes separate from race, but it was also drenched in black culture and practically felt like a vacation ad for modern Harlem.
The problem with that logic is that every story is about race and every story is about gender. This is because every character has a race and a gender. Even when they're aliens, they're still played by someone with a race and a gender.
The idea that race isn't a factor if the characters are white and gender isn't a factor if the characters are male is what's referred to as the White Male Default; the state of mind in which White Male is the default state of existence, the standard of all experiences, and only characters who deviate from that standard have racial or gendered experiences.
My Tumblr. Currently side-by-side liveblogging Digimon Adventure, sub vs dub.Then why are we even judging Danny for being white when he has other, more important, characteristics? Cherry picking, y'all.
And, as someone above said, making this show about race would really be pushing the narrative coherence of the story. Yes, it is rooted in Asian culture, but the theme handled in this show is not "racial misrepresentation". The theme is, as far as I can tell, "great power, great responsibility". It missed a great opportunity to approach an interesting topic, but it doing so doesn't necessarily make the show inherently bad nor racist.
A story is only about race when you make a conscious decision to make it so. Just because a character is black, lesbian, or a mix-raced drag queen, you're not forced to adress their gender or their race unless the story demands it.
As far as I recall, Falcon's arc in the movies that he has been has absolutely NOTHING to do with either his race or his gender. On the other hand, Black Widow's arc in Age of Ultron was absolute garbage because it tackled her femininity in the most idiotic and out-of-the-blue way possible.
edited 30th May '17 10:21:05 AM by ExplosiveLion
Ugh, just re-read my above comment. I cover every point you all have made against it. Hell, I don't know why you're making points against it! I went out of my way to establish that I don't like that trend in writers and I provided a counter-point to almost every point I brought up!
I'm not trying to start an argument, I'm trying to explain a side that no-one was considering to try and cool the existing argument down.
The central theme of Iron Fist is not great powers and responsibilities. It has that as a theme, but the central theme is a man stuck between two worlds, NY and K'un-Lun, the west and the east(Ish), Capitalism and Confucianism, businessmen and monks, corporate politics and Kung Fu.
The opening clarifies this: It's Danny's silhouette practicing Kung Fu with K'un-Lun shifting to NY in the background, signifying he's a man stuck between worlds.
"All you Fascists bound to lose."But when you are the main character, you get many opportunities to be multidimensional, erasing those implications. Luke Cage is a black criminal, but that is far from the entirety of his character.
@Tobias: No, they aren't. Not every movie or show is written with race in mind. Most scripts are written as ambiguously as possible to cast as wide a net for the cast as possible. Specifying a character's race in a script is almost never done, unless the screenwriter has a specific actor in mind, the character's race is part of a racial theme in the story, or it's an adaptation and they're going for maximum accuracy to the source material.
Also, I'm aware of the White Male Default. It was literally the first thing I mentioned. I'm explaining the positions of people I don't agree with.
edited 30th May '17 10:38:44 AM by PushoverMediaCritic
I think it keeps it throughout its entire run. The reason people say he doesn't deserve it is because he fled K'un-Lun to New York and because he's an outsider (i.e he is too "Western") and throughout the entire show Danny keeps wondering if he is Danny Rand, son of Wendell Rand, or the Immortal Iron Fist, sworn enemy of the Hand, protector of K'un-Lun, his two heritages in both worlds.
edited 30th May '17 10:31:03 AM by Gaon
"All you Fascists bound to lose.""This is because every character has a race and a gender. Even when they're aliens, they're still played by someone with a race and a gender."
and even them is not the same, as white chararter CAN be just chararter since make them about their race will be white supremacy or very tasteless, the issue is that minorities chararter suffer the "embassy" efect which mean they represent their entire race, that alone make use of their chararter tricky.
Anyway I just saw the first season of daredevil and...it good, Karent and Foggy have chemestry and foggy actor really convey friendship, I not enterely sell on fist but I have to said is inner strugle make him a good chararter, Madam Gao is AWSOME, sure she move a little bit to much in "misterious and wise asian" but the acting helps a lot and Nobu....yeah he isnt awsome, not a little bit and the narrative just sort of....skip it.
Also "damn, matt and is hearing, he is like a bat" not foggy, the one BEFORE him is like a bat, the moment matt start branding people.....
"My Name is Bolt, Bolt Crank and I dont care if you believe or not"One of the weirdest reasons I saw for having Danny be an Asian-American was that K'un L'un would allow him to reconnect with his heritage. And I'm just thinking, like, K'un L'un isn't Japan, or China, or Taiwan, or whatever. It's not part of any real country. Like, I'm Italian-American, so we'll say my "culture" is white European. If I went to fuckin' Narnia, that's not reconnecting with my culture.
My various fanfics.

I don't disagree that the themes are there, but subtle isn't the word I'd use for IF— it's pretty hit-you-over-the-head about it when it's talking about its themes, about the same as the other shows, only with worse dialogue. It just doesn't spend as much time on its themes, and without anything else filling the time, the show just feels very sparse by comparison. The events of the show alone aren't really original enough for me to agree that it has much new to say about the themes you're mentioning. It's possible to say a great deal through subtext, but given the things that this show tells rather than shows, I'm not very convinced that as much what you're reading into it was intentional.
As for Danny being a millennial character, that's something you've mentioned before. What exactly do you mean by that?
edited 30th May '17 4:25:04 AM by Unsung