Why Was Shang-Chi Rejected By Chinese — The Very Culture It Was Based On?
In 2016, the concept “Confidence in Culture” was officially announced as an important government principle. Under these relevant policies, Chinese people became very sensitive about their cultural identities. The voice is raised to object stereotypes and biases receives more attention than ever. In 2021, targeting at the Chinese market, Marvel producers wanted to replicate the success of Black Panther by making a film about Asian(Chinese) character ( also from the marvel comics.) As an American movie based on Chinese culture, Shang Chi And The Legend Of The 10 Rings was highly anticipated. However, after the movie became available, it’s received a lot of negative feedback from Chinese perspective.
In respond to this phenomenon, some media claimed that the rejection of this movie shows a hostile attitude (from Chinese government/citizens) towards a narration regarding their culture from another perspective. However, I believe that it failed because the characters in figures presented were not recognized as a precise depiction of Chinese figure, it fits the western political fantasy about Chinese government, an autocratic capitalist country which opposes and hiders democracy and freedom.
Under current globalization, concepts such as “be inclusive” “respect diversity” became the main concern of the public. To abide to this new social norm, the producers of this film made major plot changes to avoid this superficially demonized antagonist. In the original Marvel comics, the figure of the antagonist “Mandarin”, a cruel Chinese villain with magical powers, pose threat on the liberal democratic world like a demon. He (also known as Wen-wu in the movie) physically and mentally tortures his son Shang-Chi, attempt to release “Fin Fang Foom” (the evil monster in the final scene) and rule the whole world under his dictatorship. Shang-Chi had such a hostile relationship with his father that he escaped to the U.S. and found an American father. Since this character is clearly biased and offensive. All the scenes above were deleted. In the new plot, the figure of “Mandarin” is also altered, he trained his son because he was in great grievance; he tries to release the evil monster to save his wife. Overall, the hostility between Shang-Chi and his father was weakened. The producers spent a lot of time and effort to eliminate biases while presenting an intriguing story. But why was it still rejected by almost all Chinese audience?
This movie started off with a strong indication of yellow peril. After the main antagonist was introduced, the war scene started. It was a fight with Arabians (according to their headbands). Then, several shots indicated their assassination on soldiers in the medieval times, explosion they set up on buildings that were obviously European. These several shots covers how the 10 ring army developed from a long time ago and affects the whole world. One specific thing to notice here is that all of the enemies shown in these scenes were white people. This fit exactly the idea of yellow peril: Asians with powers will finally post threat on white people. In the fantasy world, these “evil” Asians would threaten the survivals of these western soldiers in wars. In the real world, Asians would cause trouble to the Western liberal democracies. Having wars with white people might fit the impression on Asians. However, according to Chinese history, China almost never had any frequent interactions with white people. Even with the wars China were declaring they were mainly fighting with other Asians living close them. Therefore, to Chinese people, this scene has only one function: an excuse for Western countries to point their fingers at China and justify what their policies (since they wanted to survive the crisis cuased by Asians).
Furthermore, among almost all the scenes throughout the whole movie, the antagonist was depicted as the one and only leader in power in the ten-ring army. And the reason why he was the leader is simply because he had more strengths and power form the rings. Not a simple scene shows his wisdom or strategy, nor he ever listens to suggestions from others and changes his mind. In the beginning of the movie, Mandarin wanted to visit Taro. That was the only time he had a conversation with one of his henchmen. In that scene, he was the absolute power: when the henchmen indicated that he would send a search team to look for the place, he injected that idea and decided to visit the place by himself. The henchmen end up dead because of the moving Bamboo Forest. There were no shots that indicated this henchman possessing any power in the organization. Comparing with the setting in Hydra, which is another Organization that serves as antagonist in the Marvel Universe, the ten-ring army had literally no one else in power. In hydra, if the one leader died, there will be others that were intelligent and powerful to take over the leadership position. However, at the end of Shang-Chi, Xialing (Who was not a member of the organization) took over the ten-ring army. The film states that people are waiting for Xialing to take on her father’ s legacy. This also indicates that there was no competition in power and that she is the only choice. This overall plot indicated that mandarin was the only dictator in this organization. And this would never be noticed by Americans, because in their mind, China is an autocratic country that was led by a dictator. So, it is completely normal to have a dictator in an organization that represents China. Based on this logic, the appearance of Shang-Chi symbolizes the US government, which become very concerned of Chinese political oppression of opposing parties.
Moreover, the most obvious implication stated when the story moves to describe the establishment of the ten rings army. “Over the centuries, they spread into every corner of the world. They moved in the shadows, toppled government, and change the course of his tory” this is the sentence that offended almost every Chinese person that watch this movie. Some may say that as an antagonist, it is normal for him to be doing evil things all over the world. However, according to Yunting, we would not be offended if you depict a Chinese figure who is cruel and merciless like murders. But you could never describe a Chinese organization is trying to “topple governments”. Before the current Chinese government was established, China was called allies and manipulated in World War II by The eight nation alliance. China was forced to pay money for their casualties while we were the ones who were invaded and harmed. The land at the northeast of China was taken away. That was the most shameful history that every Chinese citizen remembers. Saying that Chinese would topple governments is as ridiculous as saying that Jews would invent biochemical weapons and plot a Holocaust against other ethnic groups for over 1000 years and were still not satisfied with their results. Someone may argue that Chinese government might be able to perform manipulation and other political tactics. I agree that we may never know what the government actually did. However, in this case, what matter is what Chinese people thinks about this movie. Different from many other countries, Chinese people in Chinese government were closely connected. By this I mean: when the US attempts to depict a negative figure of Chinese government, The Chinese people believes that they were depicting a negative figure of the general public. Thus, they would not accept a negative depiction.
To conclude, the movie Shang-chi was not widely accepted by China because it offended Chinese people by using negatively stereotypical figures but also missed out some extremely important rituals.
《尚气》全球大热，但中国也许不欢迎它https://cn.nytimes.com/culture/20210923/shang-chi-china-marvel/
《尚气》获全球赞誉却踢到中国民族主义铁板https://www.voachinese.com/a/marvel-s-shang-chi-was-made-with-china-in-mind-but-beijing-still-doesn-t-like-it-20211003/6255409.html
America’s Dangerous ‘China Fantasy’ https://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/28/opinion/americas-dangerous-china-fantasy.html
The U.S. Can’t Afford to Demonize China https://foreignpolicy.com/2018/06/29/the-u-s-cant-afford-to-demonize-china/
