io9.com: Now that the first trailer for Iron Man 3 is out, we've all seen our first glimpse of the Mandarin, Tony Stark's biggest adversary in the comics. The Mandarin is sort of a Fu Manchu knock-off, who was described as a "racist caricature" by none other than Shane Black, the director of Iron Man 3. So even if Iron Man 3 wasn't a co-production with China, chances are the studio would have toned down the character a lot.
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All the recent talk about blackface and whiteface and, now, "yellowface" has done exactly what it was intended to do: Make me think a lot about it.
So much talk abounds about whether or not actors of one race playing another race IS racist or, at the very least, is disrespectful. No one will likely disagree if Sir Ben Kingsley is capable of performing the Mandarin well; and for a great deal of us, the argument ends there.
Some examples are clearer than others. Studio Theatre's Invisible Man isn't racist because the black actors play multiple character, including white characters nor is Cloud Atlas for the same reason, right? But the German theatre company who attempted to produce Clyborne Park IS racist for casting only white actors in black roles.
Perhaps these are cut & dry examples and inbetween is a sea of other gray ones. I'm not sure. What I am sure of is that we, as artists and as a community, need to KEEP TALKING about it and KEEPING THINKING about it. True colorblindness isn't just when racism no longer comes up in conversations but when we can all openly and constructively talk about it without feeling like we shouldn't.
So let me say this I am a pretty positive person, glass half full kind of guy. So articles like this make me a little angry inside. Because I feel like people are looking for the wrong in the world. Or maybe I am ignorant and the intent of Marvel was to insult/ do not care what they are saying to the entirety of the Chinese, Japanese, Korean, and continue on with all of their descendants.
Ok so I just went and looked up what racism means. The definitions I found all talk about differences and I love that. What I do not love is that those differences make your particular race better.
I do agree with Jake that the more we talk about the race, the more we feel free to talk about race. Do I think marvel is trying to do something negative, No. Do I think marvel is using what is engrained into the mind's of westerns of what a foreign enemy looks like, Yes. If that bad to play on stereotypes to tell a better story? to better effect the emotions of your audience? to take advantage of your audience?
Both the comments on this article have stolen the words out of my mouth. I have always been interested in the issue of race in the entertainment industry. Often times the director decides to call upon color blind casting or even an intentional choice to change race of a character to make a point in conjuction with the story. And in our industry, looks are truly a large part of how people get jobs. Characters' looks are crutial to the telling of a story for theatrical purposes. A director would not cast a 85 lbs 20 year old to play Edna Turblad in Hairspray, unless he was attempting to make a point. Sometimes a play or even a movie calls upon a design or acting to be based on ideals that in the modern world, sensitive people would consider racist. However, it is important to understand all sides of it. Marvel is by no means making an negative statements toward any group, they are simply making a movie about Iron Man's more imfamous enemy. This enemy has certain characteristcs from the comic books, they are simply staying true to the story.
I want to also say that I agree with Mr. Rothermel's statement about the importance of being able to talk about race within the entertainment industry. Our industry deals with a lot of controversial topics (i.e., sex, rape, same sex marriage, infidelity, etc.) however, race is an issue that often times effects the industry in a way that none of the others do. We need to keep the discussion going and be accepting of all people.
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Why did Marvel put themselves in this position? The villain they've picked for Iron Man 3 is inherently racist and they can't really change that since its heavily grounded in comic book lore. If Marvel wanted to avoid this problem, they should've chosen another villain to bring to life.
I suppose we could conjecture that Marvel wanted to make a statement about race and racism by bringing it to the forefront of conversation, but I sincerely doubt that thought crossed their mind.
I'm honestly just not sure why Marvel decided that the Mandarin was a brilliant idea for a villan anyway. Iron Man has plenty of other villans they could have used (probably, my knowledge of Iron Man's a bit rusty). I feel that another important issue is basically, how big of a deal is his race going to be in universe? I can see it going over ok if the fact that he is Asian isn't really part of his theme and he just happened to name himself The Mandarin in honor of something, but it's going to look really bad and offend a lot of people if the whole reason he's The Mandarin is to reinforce negative stereotypes. I'm not sure my point just got across there.
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