The phrase “representation matters” has become so pervasive in today’s conversations that it has lost almost all its significance. If the word “matters” is at the end of any cause, it tends to provoke many to dismiss the expression entirely. This is why the film “Shang Chi and The Legend of the Ten Rings” was such an enormous success. It humanizes and empowers the concept of representation.
“Shang-Chi and The Legend of The Ten Rings” one of the newest blockbuster films from the Marvel Cinematic Universe, is the first superhero movie with an Asian-American lead. Equally as important, the cast and creative team are also predominantly Asian. In the movie, Shang Chi, played by Chinese-Canadian actor Simu Liu, was raised as an assassin by his father. He eventually leaves his father’s organization, the Ten Rings, as a young boy in search of a more average lifestyle in the city of San Francisco, where he begins his struggle with countless questions of identity.
This experience is not an uncommon one amongst Asian-Americans. We see this exemplified in Shang Chi’s best friend, Katy, who grew up in San Francisco and is even more out of touch with her heritage than he is. Although she is fully Chinese like Shang Chi, she can only speak basic Mandarin, detests being called by her Chinese birth name and goes out of her way to free herself from her family’s idea of success. They are both stuck in the middle: not sufficiently Asian to be deemed acceptable by their elders and not American enough to fit in with those of the country in which they were raised. It is not until later in the film, where they are sucked into an other-worldly adventure, that they begin to embrace both sides of their culture and identity.
“When people here in the U.S. look at Asians, they typically don’t see anything but the things that stereotypes have deemed them through the ages: nerdy, weak and unathletic. But, every person, regardless of what culture they are from, has similar human experiences, like emotions, for example. So, this movie did wonders in humanizing this ethnic group to a larger audience that is sometimes ignorant,” said music professor and staff pianist at Nova Southeastern University, Jihong Park, who is a native South Korean.
While “Shang Chi and The Legend of the Ten Rings” does a great deal for the cultural significance of the Asian-American community, it does not cure racism.
Wesley Chau, a Vietnamese-American junior at NSU and active member of the Asian Student Association said, “We have had heroes like Bruce Lee and Jackie Chan before. The difference here is that the previous two proudly spoke of their ancestry, while this Marvel movie deals with fictional things that attempt to tell the story of a larger Asian culture. While I do appreciate the representation of Asian-Americans from the largest movie franchise in history, we need more than this even to begin to resolve decades of racial tension.”
Although this movie alone can’t solve the problem at hand, the immediate influence has been an overwhelming wave of pride for the Asian-American audience.
Elisha Mendoza, a Filipino-American senior majoring in art and design said, “I find [Shang-Chi] to be such a relatable character, and I truly admire his growth. He went through a lot of internal hardships that resonated with my Asian-American experience in growing up and questioning my culture and role in this country.”
Marvel has provided the first superhero that the Asian-American community can truly call their own, which is a wonder for the 20 million members of this group.
Let’s hope that, amid the beautiful exhibition of this film, “Shang Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings” has helped to generate a better understanding among those who have never really grappled with the issue of representation.
