Dave's comment about Flash Gordon villain "Ming the Merciless" on Maren's post, and her own mentioning of the old serial version got me thinking.
The ethnicity (please not "race" we are all the same race) of villains in our popular media. Who are our go to villains though the years, and who gets pushed aside for a new crop?
I don't have a coherent thought on this one. I'm kind of rambling here. So let's start with the Yellow Peril. As Dave pointed out, the new version of Flash Gordon has Flash face up against Ming as always, but he is not Asian, as he has typically been portrayed. Now, in this particular case, Ming is supposed to be an extra-dimensional, or alien, but still; the Yellow Peril has been whitewashed. Other recent examples of this whitewashing include the movie version of Alan Moore's League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, and Batman Begins. In Mr. Moore's graphic novel, "The Doctor"; a Fu Manchu stand in b/c that name is still not in the public domain, is a major villain. He is Chinese, has the moustache, and has hoards of Asian followers. In the film, no such character exists. They give us a bland, and yet over the top masked figure named the Fantom. In the recent Batman reboot, we are presented with one of the Dark Night's most enduring and interesting characters, Ra's al Guhl. According to DC Comics, Ra's is of Arab/Chinese descent, and is usually portrayed as such in the comics. After teasing us with Ken Watanabe, an odd, but at least Asian casting choice, instead the give us Liam Neeson. A man so white he's Irish.
Like I said, I'm rambling, sorry, just gonna have to go with me here.
For a long time, before most of us were born, the bad guy was the "Injun". Westerns of the 50's and beyond perpetuated the Native American as a vile killer and only interested in scalping good honest settlers who only wanted a place to raise their children. Now a days, a studio wouldn't dream of a plot like that.
For a good while there, we had the Eastern Bloc with the biggest bad of them all backing them up, MOTHER RUSSIA. Ah the misspent days of my youth. I swear every movie with a gun had a Chech or a Russian "Ivan" behind it. Red Dawn mixed it up a little with the addition of some Cubans. For a long time, we beat the Commies. But not anymore. Now they aren't the bad guy anymore. I'm not 100% sure we're done with them though. Keep your eyes open. Commie plots are everywhere.
Let's talk about "The Arab". For generations, all we needed to know was white turban good, black turban bad. Just like Cowboys! "Arabs" help Indiana Jones fight the Nazis in the first and third movie. They helped Peter O'Toole defeat the Turks in Lawerence of Arabia. And in two I really want to touch on, they helped James Bond beat the Russians in The Living Daylights; and Rambo beat the Russians in Rambo III.
Who were these heroic brown people who could assist All-American Rambo, and Her Majesties Finest? The Mujahideen of course. We loved them in the eighties, funded them, trained them, and then after a few more years, they won. Then they fought amongst themselves, finally founded an extreme religious state, and became cannon fodder in movies and video games. Of course by this time they had changed their name and become al-Qaeda. So now we can use "The Arab" as a bad guy. But I think we will tire of Arab bad guys soon. It's too complex for most Americans. The current war in Iraq has soured all of us on a simple "turban bad" mentality.
Then we have the Nazis. Always the bad guy. Can't go wrong with beating on Nazis. The aforementioned Dr. Jones kills Nazis. Hellboy gets his hate on regularly. Bogie shoots one at the end of Casablanca. Cap fights them accross the decades. We've shot them up in video games since Castle Wolfenstein and continue to do so in modern World War II shooters like Call of Duty. Heck, in the new Tom Cruise film, Nazis are the bad guys, and the good guys.
So I guess, what I wanted to ask was where do you think we are headed? Hugo Chávez seems to be looming. Korea could be a problem soon, but I'm not talking about the real world, I mean in movies and video games. Aside from the obvious, Nazis and Aliens; who else are Americans going to be shooting at in the next decade?
4 comments:
In a very general sense, people hate what they don't understand. I think the 90's made us globally conscious enough that we won't demonize particular ethnicities anymore (I hope), but ideologies are still up for pock shots. How about "religious extremists"? Too broad, maybe... hmmm. Canadians? (Just kidding.)
Well, the South Park guys already did Kim Jong-il, but that doesn't mean South Korea is out.
Mormons?
Australians?
The near-sighted?
For me, I don't even care about the ethnicity of my villains - I just want them to be amazingly cool. That's what was so upsetting about bland white "Ming" (why even keep the name?) - no distinguishing features, no air of malice, nothing. I came in expecting somebody with charisma and a distinctive look. I assumed bald with mustache and asian features because that's what the Mings I've seen have been like, but really anything with some actual flavor would have worked. It was as though somebody were remaking 1986's Legend, only instead of Tim Curry's Lord of Darkness, you get a dude called the Lord of Darkness but played by Jeff Goldblum with no makeup. (actually even that could be awesome)
But see what I'm saying? It isn't an ethnicity issue, it's a villain design issue: this is simply not as cool or memorable a villain as this
"What's a Nubian?"
Still makes me laugh.
But seriously. Darth Vader is a great example of What Dave is ( I think) saying. Who cares what ethnicity the Dark Lord of the Sith was, he looked sweeeeet.
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