AsianCrit as Method: Defying Racism/Colonialism/Imperialism Through an Examination of Hollywood Film Shang-Chi

• In Event: Asian Diaspora Inquiries: Decolonizing and Deimperializing Theoretical and Methodological Traditions

Abstract

Historically, U.S. mass media has been fraught with racism, with elite Whites controlling the funding and promotion of colonial and imperialist narratives. This trend is more evident in fields such as superhero comics and movies that help Hollywood profit tremendously by selling the “White savior” narrative worldwide (Guynes & Lund, 2020). Meanwhile, Hollywood has created supervillain characters to validate the need for White superheroes. One such notorious example is the popularization of Dr. Fu Manchu in films in the 1930s. This racist portrayal solidified many White Americans’ imaginary of Asian male immigrants as “yellow perils” of a primitive empire (China) who are deviant to the standard of U.S. citizenship and masculinity (Hamamoto, 1994). This nativist view of Asians also justified exclusionary laws such as the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, that banned Chinese laborers from immigrating to the United States, and Executive Order 9066 (1942), which incarcerated West Coast Japanese Americans during World War II.

Drawing on Asia as method (Chen, 2010), empire (Coloma, 2013) and AsianCrit (Iftikar & Museus, 2018) as method, the researcher provides a critical analysis of Hollywood’s first Asian superhero film, Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings (Cretton, 2021). Using Asia as method can illuminate how European, U.S., and Japanese colonial invasion and exploitation of China from the 19th century to the mid-20th century have expanded the geopolitical mapping of the Chinese diasporas, as the film (re)presents ethnically Chinese actors from mainland China, Hong Kong, Malaysia, Canada, and the United States. Empire and AsianCrit as method can be used to interpret how the film counters the yellow peril trope without subscribing to the model minority idea while highlighting Chinese Americans’ assistance of their motherland during the Second Sino-Japanese War. Applying Hollywood’s first Asian superhero film, Shang-Chi, in both lenses to analyze the film can further explain how Chinese diasporas’ current positioning in the United States is shaped by the unresolved colonial histories due to U.S. imperial interventions in Asia during the Cold War and its ongoing imperial hostility toward China.

As recent analyses of mass media (re)presentation of communities of Color focus on accurate histories and imaginative futures (Rabinowitz, 2022), this line of inquiry has several implications. First, it can entice scholars to use Asia as method and empire and AsianCrit as method to center Asian diasporas’ struggles and experiences in mainstream U.S. curricula by linking fictional storylines with historical realities. Second, tracing the linkage between the past and the present can empower Asian diaspora scholars to deimperialize the masternarratives about their peoples, communities, and ancestral homelands anchored in the U.S. imperial project of education and build multiethnic solidarity with people who have suffered similar imperial aggressions from the United States. Finally, given the heightened anti-Asian racism during the COVID-19 pandemic, such inquiry can open a gateway for Asian diaspora scholars to theorize how we can use our embodied histories and wisdoms to counter dehumanization, defy racism, colonialism, and imperialism, revitalize humanity, invigorate Asian diaspora existence, and imagine better futures for all.

Author

• Lin Wu, Western Oregon University