Shang Chi: A Step Foward for Asian Representation in the Media

Asian representation in media remains as vital to the Asian-American experience as ever, so is Marvel’s Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings a step in the right direction?

The film centers around Shang-Chi, a young Chinese man living in the US after being estranged from his immortal father. Throughout the movie, he revisits his roots and attempts to understand his family dynamics while utilizing some awesome martial arts. This is the first major superhero film to feature an Asian protagonist, and it’s long overdue. 

According to NBC News, Asian-Americans are the fastest-growing American population demographic. Sadly, this rapid growth is not echoed through Asian-American representation in cinema.

Anna May Wong, born in 1905, was an acclaimed actress in the 1920s and 1930s, featuring in over 60 films. Hailing from Los Angeles’s  Chinatown neighborhood, Wong faced heavy discrimination from audiences and critics, and was often cast into stereotypical roles. Despite her reliance on exotism, she proved to the world that Asian women could be real professionals in Hollywood. However, her legacy lives long after her death in 1961. Recently, Gemma Chan, an acclaimed Asian actress who starred in Crazy Rich Asians, wore a dress inspired by Wong’s signature style to the Met Gala. 

Unfortunately, it would be over 30 years after the death of Anna May Wong before a major motion picture featuring an all-Asian cast premiered in the US. 1993’s The Joy Luck Club, based on the bestselling novel by Amy Tan, focuses on a group of Asian-American women who struggle to find the place between their Asian heritage and American day-to-day experience. The book includes major themes of family, racial identity, cultural clashing, and intergenerational bonds, and it’s a touching portrait of what immigrants and parents have to go through in order to make a better life for their families.

In contrast, Disney’s 1998 classic Mulan is much lighter in tone and style. It is set in Han Dynasty China, with an all-Asian cast that focuses less on race than it does on culture. Despite this, the film incorporates many of the same themes as its predecessors, with a focus on family, generational wisdom, and identity. This film was, for the many Asian children who grew up on a steady diet of Disney, the only prominent representation of their racial group in mainstream media.

More recently, Asian films have made a surprising leap in popularity. 2018’s Crazy Rich Asians and 2018’s Parasite both make assertions about class, family, loyalty, and identity that are steeped in cultural heritage. Although the two films couldn’t be more different in terms of tone, they both were immensely popular with American audiences. Parasite’s gritty realism and deep criticism of class are heart-wrenchingly honest, while Crazy Rich Asians’s colorful and almost theatrical rom-com plot allow for Asian actors to play roles traditionally reserved for white actors.

But why does Asian representation matter so much? As one of Asia Club’s co-presidents, Soraya Kaztev puts it, having the “first Asian male lead was very significant for the film industry…there have been those occasional films and TV shows that have been Asian focused, but not many.” 

Having Asian-American media representation is important for the reason having any representation is important: it allows people to feel that they are seen by the world at large. The history of Asian media representation is long, and hopefully, that history will continue to thrive for many years to come.