In the sensitive period when DG’s humiliation was not completely calmed down, the first Chinese superhero in Marvel’s movie seemed to be a bit less “rooted in redness ”.
Recently, Marvel Films announced that the first Chinese superhero movie “Shang Chi” is being prepared. The screenwriter is Dave Callaham, a Chinese-born screenwriter who wrote “Wonder Woman 1984”, and Marvel is also actively contacting Ya The production team
This is a news that delights the world’s Marvel fans, and even sparked a heated discussion about who is going to play “Upper”. In a jubilant atmosphere, there are people with good memory who slap their heads: Its not right! Is the father who is angry not Fu Manchu?
“上气” in the original comics setting is actually the son of “Fu Huang Chau” incarnation of “Fu Man”. Therefore, the film has not yet started shooting, and all the netizens are caught in the debate of “ whether to insult China. “
Left said: This film still reflects the stereotypes of Europeans and Americans on China, is a discrimination against the Chinese, and will never watch it;
Right to fire out: I am impatient? I don’t know, in the comics, I ended up fighting against Dad and killed Fu Manchu. Is such a feat of annihilation and pro-intimacy a complete break with the “insult to China” thinking?
In fact, the sensitivity of the audience is a good thing, at least it can make Marvel “have to change it if it is not.” If there is a nation, it is short and insidious, and the temperament is hard to ponder. They used to be poor and dirty. They liked to gang up and carry out sinful activities. Most men are weak and wretched, not close to women, and have no masculinity
In recent years they have built a strong, centralized state and ambitiously trying to conquer the world. What is your evaluation of this nation? Unfortunately, this is us —. The image of the Chinese on the Hollywood screen
These images are seen in the Hollywood series “Dr. Fu Manchu”, “Detective Chen Charlie”, 1927 007 series “Dr. No”, and “Dragon Year” starring Zunlong in 1985. “In 1995, the blockbuster “Red Tide Craze” even hinted at China’s attempt to launch a nuclear war. Other films that are ruined and deliberately demonize the Chinese are countless
“Father debts” is a small family, but Marvel’s selection of “upper gas” is undoubtedly a hot potato: not killing Fu Manchu, he has a father suspected of insulting China; killing Fu Manzhou According to tradition, is it also the crime of carrying “uncle”?
Who is Fu Manchu?
In the Western world, Fu Manchu is a familiar name. The name was born in the writing of a British novelist named Sax Rohmer
Romer once wrote in an article: “Of course, not all Chinese living in Lymehouse are criminals. But it is undeniable that most Chinese who come here are far away There are reasons for compulsion, they do not understand any means of business, except for crime. ”
It is under the control of such stereotypes that Romer began to conceive a “very wicked” Chinese image in his heart, and finally in a popular detective novel “Dr. Fu Manchu” published in 1913, This image has become a reality from conception
From 1913 to the end of 1959, Romer has published 13 Fu Manzhou theme detective novels, which not only has an incalculable influence in the Western world, but also makes the name Fu Manzhou popular in Europe and America, and has become the representative of the Chinese image in the popular concept of Westerners
Today, the image of Fu Manzhou written by Romer is composed of two temperaments: “genius” and “evil”. Romer himself once described the appearance of Fu Manchu: tall, thin, looks like a cat; shoulders are high, eyebrows are like Satan, face is like Shakespeare; all hair is shaved, eyes are green, but it is a great genius, knowing all the sciences from ancient times to the present
In the long intertextual narrative of the Fu Manchu series of novels for 47 years, Romer has enriched the image of Fu Manchu, and several facts are worthy of attention:
First, Fu Manchu is a graduate student with doctoral degrees from four famous universities in Europe, including Heidelberg University, Sorbonne University and Edinburgh University (the name of the fourth place is not mentioned in the original book);
Second, Fu Manchu is a member of the Chinese royal family. He also controls a Chinese terrorist organization named Si-Fan, which holds a powerful military force The organization’s funding is mainly derived from the “white slave trade” that it is engaged in. (Selling whites as a cow is a horse, does it sound like a “deflation”?).
Third, although Fu Manchu is a scientific genius, he always uses the traditional “Oriental” means to do evil, such as assassination by swordsmen, and killing people by poisonous snakes, poisonous mushrooms, and poisonous spiders. Fu Manchu has a kind of green fine needle, just touch it with a needle, such as a flower girl immediately becomes a dry old woman
Fourth, Fu Manchu is about 70 years old, but he is always energetic and active. It is in these image features that are easily captured and memorized that the stereotyped thinking of Western popular media’s cognition of China has gradually formed and reached its peak in the early days of the Cold War
In this stereotype, the Chinese image is a collection of binary oppositional structures: genius and evil, intelligence and reaction, aging and attack, and Westerners become feared and fearless
Dr. Petrie, the main positive character in Fu Manchu’s novels, no matter how clever and hardworking, he can’t completely eliminate Fu Manchu. Fu Manchu, who is declining and even seemingly dead, can always reappear in the next story, forming a “circulation of sin” around the Chinese
And the most ridiculous thing is that Romer has never been to China before creating the character of Fu Manchu, and his understanding of China is very limited. He says: “I rely on Fu Manchu to become famous because I don’t know anything about Chinese people.”
Fu Manchu in the movie.
The great success of Fu Manchu’s novels has attracted the attention of other fields of the pop culture industry. In the field of mass publishing, from 1951 to 1999, there were four series of cartoons adapted from Fu Manchu’s novels; while Hollywood began to plow the Fu Manchu series in 1923, and successively launched 14 Fu Manchu movies, which achieved good results. Box office performance
There have been two TV dramas in Fu Manchu, in 1956 and 1990 respectively. Especially noteworthy is that. The image of Fu Manchu is also a trend in the fashion field. To this day, many people still have a mustard with a very similar shape to Fu Manchu
From the First World War to the Second World War, Dr. Fu Manchu’s series of films was starred by veteran movie star Boris Kalov, and it was extremely ugly. Since 1965, British movie star Christopher Lee has played “Dr. Chinese Evil” in “The Mask of Fu Manchu”, “Thirteen Fiancee of Fu Manchu” and “Castle of Fu Manchu”, and has become popular in Europe and the United States
In the 1970s, Marvel was in addition to the original daughter of Fu Manchu, Lin Biao, and created the story of Fu Manzhou’s son, “Kung Fu Master, the Power of the Air”, so that the father and son can show up together. Similar works include Didier Savage’s “Ghost of Fu Manchu” and so on. In the pop music scene, in 1968, the reggae singer Desmond 岱 甚至 even began to sing “The Song of Fu Manchu”, but the original intention has not changed, still repeating the old tune of cursing the “yellow disaster.”
Fu Manchu, the image of this ugly Chinese, was strongly opposed by the majority of the people when it was born. In 1933, the “Declaration” film special issue published a bird’s-eye view of the “Insulting China” film–a book on the “Looking for the Good Land”, condemning the distortion of the image of the United States
And Fu Manchu started in Hollywood, like a barometer of Sino-US relations:
During the Anti-Japanese War, in order not to offend the Chinese public’s feelings, Hollywood arranged “Fu Man Chau” to die naturally in a certain film
But after 1949, Sino-US relations deteriorated drastically. Hollywood films closely cooperated with the official anti-Communist anti-China propaganda and actively played the pioneering role of the Cold War ideology propaganda war. The image of “Fu Manchu”, the heinous Chinese, will be resurrected again
Until 1980, Hollywood still did not give up this image and filmed “Fu Man’s Dark Plan.” The film ignited a protest in the American Chinese world
It is worth mentioning that there are two Oriental women around Fu Manchu. A man named Karamanèh, she was a personal assistant to Fu Manchu, was bought by an Egyptian slave trader when she was very young. Karamanèh has the characteristics of East Asian, Indian and Middle Eastern people, and is shaped as a very attractive tempting character for Western men. In the later episode, she fell in love with Dr. Petrie, the enemy of Fu Manchuria. I chose to betray Fu Manchu
Another name is Fah lo Suee (in some movies, renamed Lin Tang, played by famous Chinese actress Zhou Caiqin), she is the daughter of Fu Manchu, as smart and cold as her father, and always tries to resist Fu Manchu And replace its position in Si-Fan
These two female characters appearing around Fu Manchu also correspond to the two main stereotypes of the Chinese women’s image in China – the evil haze “the dragon lady” and the weak and sexy “China” The China doll
Fu Manchu and his son.
The “Upper Hero” superhero first appeared in the comics, in December 1973, by Steve Englerhardt and Jim Tallin
The prototype of Shangqi is obviously Li Xiaolong. He is often referred to as “Kung Fu Master” by other superheroes in his comics. He is good at long sticks, nunchakus and swords. The name of Shangqi is obviously related to Qigong. According to the explanation given by the official Marvel, “Shang-Chi” literally means “rising of the spirit”
But from the beginning, Marvel is somewhat “politically incorrect” because they put it. The background of the gas is linked to “Fu Manzhou”. The setting of Shangqi in the original book is the son of Fu Huangzhou, the incarnation of Huang Ba, born in Hunan I think that Marvel is fancy in the old saying “eat hard, endurance, not afraid of death, hegemony” and promote it as the first Chinese hero
More dangerously, the gas was initially brainwashed by Fu Manchu, which was a villain. Later, when he met the Captain America and Iron Man, he was influenced and joined the Avengers. And in the end, the last righteousness and annihilation of the pro, killed his father
From the historical process, the deep-rooted “yellow disaster” thinking in Westerners’ minds, and the cultural conflicts caused by the surge of Chinese immigration in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, eventually led to a combination of race and gender. Strong anti-China discourse. Fu Manchu, a fictional Chinese who is aging, evil, shrewd, and has a clear physical aggression, has become the most “outstanding” representative of this discourse
2014 British cultural historian Frelin, published “Yellow Peril: Dr. Fu Manchu and the rise of fear of Chinese disease.” In the book, when introducing the word “yellow disaster”, he quoted Lao She’s 1929 work “Two Horses” in his description of the impression of Westerners on Chinatown:
“If there are 20 Chinese people living in Chinatown, their records must be five thousand; and these five thousand yellow-faced ghosts are all smoking cigarettes, smuggling arms and murdering people to hide their bodies under the bed. Rape women do not ask the young and the old, and do everything that is at least that ruthless.”
Can a Chinese superhero have a disgraceful father? To be honest, at this point, Hard Candy Jun does not agree with the practice of Marvel
Lao She’s Ma’s father and son described in “Two Horses”, the only house they can borrow is in the Gordon Alley, because only the houses and small hotels in the back of the British Museum were rentable to the Chinese.Now, Gordon Hutong is the most decent neighborhood in London. What is the time to move, Marvel does not seem to understand
Using the image of the father to insult China, and then using the son’s heroic to earn Chinese money, the wishful thinking is loud?