Lewis Tan Shatters Through The Badlands
It’s been a hell of a year for Lewis Tan. And for the next seven days, it’s going to be one hell of a week! An O.G. and official Friend of the NOC, Lewis Tan is back on Hard NOC Life.
Tag: #AAIronFist
One-on-One with Yoshi Sudarso
On Hard NOC Life, Keith sits down with actor and stunt performer Yoshi Sudarso.
Representation Matters: Super Asian Americans
The superhero genre is slowly expanding its insular universe with Wonder Woman and the highly anticipated Black Panther. Though just a drop in the bucket compared to white male superheroes, such images can significantly impact audiences who have never seen themselves portrayed as (s)heroes. Recently at Comic-Con in San Diego, one Asian American girl, Ashley Keller, teared up when she met Gal Gadot (aka Wonder Woman) in a video that went viral, demonstrating the real-life impact of on-screen role models:
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#AACC2017 and Failing to Get a Photo with Lewis Tan
To get to my failure, I should start with a childhood that took place in Los Angeles. Hawthorne, California is a small community situated in Southwest Los Angeles. With Inglewood to the north, Gardena to the east, Torrance to the south, and the glamorous beach communities to the west, it was basically the edge of working class/POC Los Angeles butting up against the elite.
What this meant is that I’d had some familiarity with celebrity. Not with myself, mind, but, like most Angelenos, I’d run into famous people while out and about. My most hilarious sighting being Los Angeles Laker Luke Walton at a local Target, while I was shopping for a few things with my mother. My mom was incredibly upset that I did not tell her that the tall and maddeningly handsome Walton had just waltzed right by her with the grace of a ballerina (Walton did have decent footwork) and the obviousness of a panzer tank.
Needless to say, my life here should have prepared me for meeting Lewis Tan. It, however, did not.
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The Iron Fist That Almost Was: One-on-One with Steven Maeda
It’s been nearly two weeks since Iron Fist debuted all 13 episodes of its initial season on Netflix. Prior to its release, the first half of the season previewed for critics received a drubbing the likes of which is unheard of for a Marvel/Netflix property. I’ve since watched the whole season, and yeah, it wasn’t good. Setting aside my issues with the casting of the lead, Iron Fist suffers from the worst sin of any piece of entertainment: it’s boring! Worse than that, it has absolutely zero point of view. I still don’t know what Scott Buck is trying to say with this show. To that end, I wrote a post about different Asian American showrunners who could have brought a unique perspective to the Iron Fist story that the current show lacks. In response to my article on twitter, one of those writers, Steven Maeda, even revealed he actually pitched an Iron Fist concept to Marvel!
I reached out to the former X-Files and Lost writer to get the skinny on what happened to his pitch to Marvel.
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Iron and Rage with John Brougher
Last week, we hosted a special live-streamed edition of Hard NOC Life with filmmaker John Brougher about his new short film Iron and Rage. John talks about his inspiration for creating his own #AAIronFist and why representation of Asian American humanity on screen is so important.
Thanks to Jen Bartel, Kris Anka: This #AAIronFist Redesign Took Over Twitter
This past weekend, Netflix finally dropped all 13 episodes of Iron Fist. For the most part, the internet was not pleased. While a smattering of Fist Stans tried their damnedest to pretend what they watched was, you know, good, the consensus among critics (and fans too) was this was Marvel’s first big miss. There was one awesome outcome of the Iron Fist debacle, however: a slew of awesome comics artists began sharing their takes on a redesigned Asian American Danny (or Dani) Rand! And it all started when Jen Bartel shared her riff on Kris Anka’s original:
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An All-Star Lineup Discusses Whitewashing and Asian Erasure
Doctor Strange. Iron Fist. Ghost in the Shell. It’s hard out there to be an Asian American actor. Or an Asian American consumer of media. Or someone who would prefer to see more Asian Americans on screen (and behind the scenes). That’s why guest host Valerie Complex (whose #IAmMajor clapback recently went viral) gathered an all-star panel to talk about being Asian in Hollywood: feminist pop culture writer Clara Mae, Geeks of Color Creative Director (and Finn Jones’ favorite person on Twitter) Asyiqin Haron, Man in the High Castle actor Lee Shorten, and (the man who should’ve been) Iron Fist’s Lewis Tan.
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The Frustrating Aftermath of #AAIronFist
We are rapidly approaching the release of Iron Fist, the fourth Marvel series on Netflix, and reviews have been less than kind. When the show announced it had a (non-Asian American) showrunner, NOC re-introduced the hashtag #AAIronFist. It was an attempt to get Marvel to acknowledge that Iron Fist is a character whose origins are Asian, and should be played by a person of Asian descent, to increase representation in media.
For my part, I wrote an opinion piece about why we need an #AAIronFist. I submitted that being Asian, or even half-Asian, would give Danny Rand a depth to his character that we hadn’t seen before. The “stranger in a strange land” trope where the white man is the foreigner has been done to death, and is vaguely insulting. An 8-year old orphan comes to magical Asian land and becomes the ultimate martial artist? That right there is the definition of the white savior.
Why would my approach have been more interesting? Let me educate you on what it’s like to be an outsider.
RELEASE: Netflix’s Iron Fist Reimagined with Asian American Superhero
Filmmaker Releases Iron and Rage to Contribute to National Conversation of Fairer Asian American Representation in Hollywood.
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Five Showrunners Who Could Have Gotten Iron Fist Right
Three years ago, when I initially wrote about casting an Asian American in the lead role on Iron Fist, I had no idea the NOC would become ground zero for the #AAIronFist movement. I just never thought an Asian American Danny Rand was that radical a notion! Now that we’re on the eve of the show’s debut on Netflix — in addition to its star’s recent twitter tantrum — years-old arguments are starting to resurface on twitter and elsewhere. Coupled with early reviews savaging the series, I figured now was as good a time as any to resurrect one more Iron Fist thinkpiece before (hopefully) never having to talk about this goddamn show ever again.
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Finn Jones Whitesplains Iron Fist to Asian Woman Then Takes Twitter Timeout
by theblerdgurl | Originally posted on Medium
Yesterday, Finn Jones, the actor playing Danny Rand on the Netflix debut of Marvel’s live action version of Iron Fist abruptly quit twitter. He wasn’t being harrassed, he wasn’t threatened, there was no controversy. In fact, to most observers, he simply seemed to be having a conversation. This raised more than a few eyebrows, especially since the show is set to debut in less than two weeks on March 17.
On Sunday night, Jones appears to have gotten into a discussion on twitter with Asyiqin Haron, a 21 year old artist from Singapore who also happens to be the creative director for Geeks of Color, (Heron’s comments are from her own personal twitter account and she was not representing GOC or tweeting from their account when she made them).
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CTRL+ALT: A Culture Lab on Imagined Futures, This Weekend in New York City
Like the rest of the nation, I woke up this morning to an unfathomable reality. Despite our best efforts, the country has chosen hate and division. Those dystopian science-fiction novels don’t feel so far off anymore. Still, we at The Nerds of Color must soldier on. I’m doing that by participating in CTRL+ALT, the Smithsonian’s pop-up Culture Lab on imagined futures this weekend in New York City. Though, to be honest, I’m having a difficult time imagining the present, much the less the future.
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#AAIronFist and The Law of Liefeld
So in desperate need of attention and relevance, Rob Liefeld has decided to weigh in on the #AAIronFist controversy.
For those of you just joining us, this summary here breaks it down.
Created at the height of the 1970s kung-fu movie craze, Iron Fist is an American who learns martial arts from masters at the hidden city of K’un-Lun. He becomes their best student and earns the power of Iron Fist, the ability to channel superhuman energy into his fists. Basically it’s a story about a white guy being better at martial arts than everyone else, steeped in tropes that critics regard as examples of cultural appropriation.
According to Liefeld, Iron Fist “has never ever been considered racist,” (never ever never ever) and casting an Asian American actor would be “reverse white-washing.”
Marvel, Please Cast Daniel Dae Kim as Namor the Sub-Mariner
On a recent episode of Kevin Smith’s Fatman on Batman podcast, Marvel Chief Creative Officer Joe Quesada revealed that Marvel Studios has retained the rights to Namor, the Sub-Mariner. Of course, this isn’t the first time Quesada has assumed the rights to Namor had returned to Marvel — and Namor’s movie rights are some of the most confusing in comic book movie world. Still, it’s long overdue for a movie featuring one of the high-profile members of Marvel’s Illuminati, not to mention the fact that Namor is a perfect opportunity to cast an Asian American male as a lead in the MCU!
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#WhitewashedOUT with Lexi Alexander and Shaun from No Totally
Another week, another whitewashing controversy to unpack on Hard NOC Life. This time around, we welcome back NOC-favorite director Lexi Alexander and Shaun Lau from the podcast No, Totally! to break down Doctor Strange screenwriter Robert Cargill’s statements about why they whitewashed The Ancient One. They also chat about Keith’s New York Times op-ed and announce the new hashtag campaign #whitewashedOUT.
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The Nerds of ‘Hamilton’
For this week’s edition of Hard NOC Life, we’re changing it up and focusing our attention on a genre that doesn’t get much attention on the site: musical theater! At a time when Hollywood still thinks it’s risky business to put people of color in their movies, Lin-Manuel Miranda’s Hamilton is literally poppin’ a squat on conventional wisdom, like it or not. With its company of African American, Latinx, and Asian American actors playing the men (and women) who founded our country, Hamilton is proof that diversity equals box office. Joining Keith to talk all things Ham, are super-fan Constance Gibbs, Hollywood Reporter Rebecca Sun, and #OscarsSoWhite creator April Reign.
Not Your Asian Ninja: How the Marvel Cinematic Universe Keeps Failing Asian Americans
Originally posted at The Daily Beast
I liked Daredevil Season 2 a lot. I didn’t like it quite as much as Season 1, but it was always going to be impossible to find someone to live up to Vincent D’Onofrio’s take on Wilson Fisk (who still effortlessly steals the few scenes he gets this season). But the writing and the acting for Frank Castle, aka The Punisher, is compelling as hell, enough to spark a lively debate about the appeal of vigilante justice and gun violence in American culture.
The tangled, messy web of corruption behind the death of the Punisher’s family, the complicity of the state and the media in creating him, his turnaround in becoming a criminal defendant in the Trial of the Century, and the moral ambiguity of Castle’s past as a soldier who exposes the American public’s hypocrisy by bringing the brutal logic of the overseas War on Terror stateside — that’s all great stuff.
The problem is all that great stuff is only half of Daredevil Season 2. There’s a whole other half that’s almost totally disconnected from the Frank Castle plot, the Nelson and Murdock law firm, and New York City politics. There’s a full 50 percent of Daredevil Season 2 that’s total crap, and that half is the part with the ninjas.
#AAIronFist Fan Art by Alison Roberts
We all know Marvel and Netflix passed on the opportunity to cast an Asian American actor in the role of Danny Rand on their upcoming Iron Fist series. Still, that didn’t prevent artist Alison Roberts from illustrating what Danny might have looked like as an Asian American.
Shang-Chi is Coming to Netflix(!), Still Doesn’t Negate Need for #AAIronFist
This morning, our friends at MCU Exchange (with help from The Hashtag Show) broke some pretty big news: mainly, that Shang-Chi will be a featured part of the Iron Fist series on Netflix, with the possibility that he may get spun off into his own series! This is definitely some welcome news, especially considering how a lot of folk reacted to the news of Finn Jones. In fact, I can already hear the FistBros1 queuing up in our mentions telling us to finally shut up about #AAIronFist.
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So Much for #AAIronFist: Marvel Casts Finn Jones
Despite a months (née years)-long campaign to have Marvel and Netflix consider Asian American actors for the role of Danny Rand in their upcoming Iron Fist show, it was announced that Game of Thrones star(?) Finn Jones had been cast in the role.
Honestly, is anyone actually surprised?
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Cole Horibe and Charles Pulliam Talk #AAIronFist
The #AAIronFist train continues! For the latest edition of Hard NOC Life, we welcome journalist Charles Pulliam-Moore and actor/dancer Cole Horibe stop by to talk about why having Iron Fist be an Asian American character makes the most sense. We should also point out that this episode was recorded the day before Scott Buck was announced as the showrunner of the forthcoming Netflix series.
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