People are vaxxed and theaters are back. Disney offers their Marvel addicts a fresh dish with the new Shang Chi film. Oh you didn’t know the famous Marvel super hero Shang Chi? That is fine as no one else does either except the comic book store guy from the ’90s. This movie isn’t for you. It’s for the average Asians who are comic fans.
Similar to Pixar’s Soul being not a children’s film but for the modern underachieving urbanite, Shang Chi is for the average Asian-American who loves Marvel products. The average Asian joke is decades old with Mad TV making it a consistent sketch decades ago. These are not the successful products of Tiger Moms but the average Asian-Americans of all stripes. Dr. Li and Professor Singh do not have time to be Marvel consumers with their 70 hour workweeks in a metropolis. They’ll watch this on Disney+ in a few months when they can schedule in the two hours. They do not need pacifying and validation from a Disney blockbuster.
This film is perfectly designed for the underachievers. Our lead has a job as a valet as does his bestie despite their degrees and natural intelligence. They do not reach their full potential as Asian relatives and friends repeatedly explain. This film is custom made for Asians. Chinese is used liberally. We have an introductory scene where the Asians (east and south) bond over discussing the jokes we usually get with knowing nods and the little touches like taking your shoes off before entering an apartment. These are little things that non-Asian kids will not get but are added for those in the know. Flyover Brayden just wants an action sequence and some origin story details.
Disney went out of their way to make this an Asian film. How many Marvel movie fans know this character? He was minor leagues. Nic Cage pointed out the discrimination against Asian male leads in Hollywood and rather than addressing it (consider blacks cast in Asian roles in The Martian), Disney made an Asian exploitation film. The Wiki entry for the film is rather explicit about Disney’s deliberate production process. Representation matters, even when it is an obvious cash grab.
This film is not for you non-Asians. It is an immigrant’s tale just updated for the post-Hart-Cellar wave. What’s sad is that the fantastic messaging of honoring family, considering your life as a product of thousands of years of history, cherishing tradition and loving your family is only A-OK for a non-white Hollywood vehicle. The paternal antagonist is given a nuanced portrayal. You will not see this in the standard, be yourself, dad is bad, and reject family/past offerings from Hollywood. Get ready viewers, because two kids movies coming up are all about shape shifters, including characters who can be male or female, but one is aimed at Latinos. They are coming for you, castizos.
This film was also blatant pandering for the China market. The film opens with a Chinese narration for a good chunk of time to the point where my thirteen year old son asked if this would all be in Chinese. This makes the CCP blocking of Shang Chi all the more delicious. Disney made the film equivalent of groveling for Chinese bucks and is denied buckets of cash. Just desserts.
Is the film fun? It’s standard issue Marvel CGI action, choreographed fight scenes and Millenial dialogue fare. These have been paint by numbers for a while. The flashback scenes add to the story and main character arc that are lacking in other Marvel movies but it’s cinematic fast food. The ending is rather drawn out and mismanaged. Unless you have a child or two asking to go, avoid this one. It’s not for 94% of you anyway. It’s for John Lee in accounts receivable who didn’t get his MBA, hasn’t made management track yet and still drives a Hyundai.
The American Sun 
I’m genuinely curious as to what people here on this site think of “Asians”.
I qualify as “Asian” but my ancestry here predates Hart-Cellar by nearly one hundred years. I’m pretty assimilated. I’m not white, but I can see why resentment is slowly breeding towards the post-1965 crowd. Many said Asians act with a certain sense of alienated impudence towards pre-1965 Americans that I simply cannot understand. Of course, within the “Asian” demographic they’re the majority and I’m the minority, so they get to be the mouthpieces of the “Asian” community. There is so much pressure for me to conform to their mold that I actually find it easier to simply relearn my ancestral language, repatriate to Asia, and figure things out there.
I wouldn’t worry too much about the Asians in America. They’re annoying, but powerless. Their status is conditional upon absolute obedience toward the liberal elite. The ones that post on incel threads usually do so because they are socially marginalized. Asians actually in Asia (yes, this includes Chinese) have nothing to do with them.
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Asians are a fine people and I think most on this site would like to see their own country run as well as the East Asians / Confucian-tradition countries run theirs. In my experience the first/older-generation Asian-Americans are very earnest, hard working people that I’ve always respected, and often would lean right politically. My grandmother used to say “Asians are never the ones on welfare.” It’s their children that typically fall for the Left’s victim-culture wars that alienate them from whites and cause a large rift. I remember seeing once on an Asian-American girl’s desk a book on Ruth Bader Ginsberg – a strange Jewish feminist that has about as much in common with traditional Asian values as a Martian. Yet there it was, and these are the types of girls that seem to apply the Asian ability of obsessive repetition to lecturing you about privilege and all the SJW talking points they are inundated with in the American Empire. I’ve lived abroad and encountered Asians in their home countries and they never behave this way. The culture wars being wrought on pre-1965 Americans as you put it has been going on my entire life and it’s awful. I know many young Americans who have fled their own country because they don’t feel welcome.
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I suspect there will be more “Asian representation” in the media in coming years.
Shang Chi, Mulan, and other movies provide a separate set of cultural contours for Asians to fill. It allows someone to invoke what they perceive to be their cultural heritage in a way that has nothing to do with China itself, much less the CCP. This only works on people that haven’t spent much time in Asia, by the way, for anyone that has realizes very quickly that these cultural depictions are far from universal. But they have appeal because they allow someone to identify with “Asian culture” without having to do the work of learning a language and immersing oneself in a foreign culture, which is admittedly a pain in the ass. This can’t last forever.
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那太好了!
“What’s sad is that the fantastic messaging of honoring family, considering your life as a product of thousands of years of history, cherishing tradition and loving your family is only A-OK for a non-white Hollywood vehicle.”
Search up “Adverse Transmission Moana” for a similar exegesis of Disney’s Polynesian excursion. Sad indeed, but at least there’s something there.
I have half a mind to write an “Onward” article, but to sum it up: Great story about how sons need their fathers. Such an article would fare better in other hands.
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My phone gave me the wrong 哪 dammit
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What happened to all the Helen Keller jokes. How does Helen Adams Keller drive? One hand on the wheel and one on the road. What is grosser than gross? 2 vampires fighting over the last adrenal-chrome shot.
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As a general rule, if Boba Liberals are gushing about anything, I avoid it. I do attempt different entryist strategies: Whenever there’s news about an urban achiever attacking a grandmother, I add 2A, nrx and spandrell-type quotes/memes. Some dissident-right corners may be too spicy for normie Asians but rage + redpill might on-ramp them. On the flip side, Chinp-Out 2020 have freaked out many SWPLs but many do not see an alternate model of how to clean up our bughive cities, thus I share Lee Kuan Yew/Singapore links; I can share the gospel of “Disneyland with a Death Penalty” without triggering lefty midwit antibodies.
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