#yellow peril

[nocternalrandomness]

Tammy catching some sun on a 1941 N3N

[obsidian-sphere]

Boy's Cinema, April 2nd, 1938.

West of Shanghai is a 1937 American adventure film directed by John Farrow and starring Boris Karloff as a Chinese warlord. It is based on the 1920 play by Porter Emerson Browne, The Bad Man. Three other films, all titled The Bad Man, are also based on the same play:

The last remake of the film in 1941 starred Ronald Reagan.

[skookworks]

I first encountered the character of Fu Manchu in the Marvel Comics series Master of Kung Fu. He was the father of Shang Chi, the protagonist of the series. He was also the main recurring villain. I was a kid when I read those comics. I wasn’t aware that he was a racist stereotype.

I’ve never read the novels. The only Fu Manchu movie I’ve seen is Mask of Fu Manchu featuring Boris Karloff in yellowface as the sinister doctor. I was an adult and very aware of bad ethnic stereotypes by then. While Fu Manchu was obviously evil I sympathized with his desire to get revenge on the English protagonists. They were assholes. And boring.

[alpaca-clouds]

The thing that bugs me about Cazador

Allow me to ramble about a thing that really bugs me about Cazador and his character design.

Let me start out with the fact, that it is super iffy that Cazador is the one recognizable east asian character in the entire game. At least from what I came across. And, you know. It is iffy if you take a minority and make their only representation the "sadistic vampire who wants to sacrifice 7000 mostly white people to become a god". I hope I don't have to explain that.

And yes, technically speaking... yeah, Karlach is technically also East Asian. With just one problem: Her being red-skinned and having the make-up very much hides this fact. Like, I did not realize this until I saw the mod that removed the make-up from the companions.

But outside of the basic issue with the trope... Well, look. I do not think that the folks Larian were like: "Hehe, we will use this character to show how evil the Asians are!" or something like this. But the game very much shows that there was a lot of internalized biases. And be it just in the fact, that we barely come across non-white characters in the entire fucking game. All non-white characters are basically tokens.

And before someone comes in with: "Faerûn is based on medieval Europe!" First off: "Shut up." Second: Going by official DnD Lore Faerûn is a super diverse place, where you will find all sorts of Asian, Arab, and Black people. I mean, just look at the DnD movie, where they made an effort to have half of the cast be non-white. Like, the Faerûn that Larian depicts is basically the Faerûn of 3e, not 5e.

And then... Well, when it comes to Cazador, then there is the Early Access design.

Now, this is actually where WotC stepped in and was like: "Yeah, you cannot do this." Officially by explaining that elves do not have facial hair. But I do imagine that someone at WotC actually looked at this design and was like: "... Do they realize that this is Fu Manchu?"

Because yeah, this design is simply just Fu Manchu. And for those who are not aware: Fu Manchu is a character popular in pulp fiction of the early 20th century, that arose mostly from Yellow Peril stereotypes.

He was a Chinese magician, who was up to all sorts of evil schemes, which suspiciously often involved sacrificing white people (mostly white women) to evil gods or demons. He made appearances in all sorts of media back then, including movies (where he obviously was portrayed by white actors in yellowface) and some off-brand Sherlock Holmes novels that were not written by Doyle but other writers.

Fu Manchu was also what the original Mandarin in the Marvel Comics was based on.

This is one of the Renditions of Fu Manchu in one of those off-brand Sherlock Holmes stories.

And here is the earlier Mandarin design:

And, like, I am sorry. But that stuff leaves a bitter taste in my mouth.

Again, I do not really think that this stuff was done on purpose. My best guess is, that Cazador was either based on the Mandarin, or on some of the other "Chinese Magician" villains that some American Kung Fu movies put into their media in the 70s and 80s.

But I also think there was nobody at Larian who did any sort of sensitivity consulting when it came to the inclusion of non-white characters.

[driveintheaterofthemind]

Vintage Pulp - Saucy Movie Tales (June1936)

Art by Norman Saunders

Movie Digest

[clickb4it]

headers politics

[wonderfulworldofmichaelford]

Psycho Analysis: Egg Fu

(WARNING! This analysis contains RACISM! Seriously, just look at this fucking guy, holy shit! What were they thinking?!)

People always have different answers to why people just don’t know Wonder Woman’s adversaries to the same extent that they know Batman or even Superman’s, despite her being one of the Big Three of DC. Some say it’s because Diana is all about diplomatically resolving conflict, and thus ends up befriending her foes. Others claim it’s because she kills her enemies. I’m not sure if either of these groups know what they’re talking about because I don’t read comics as extensively as some, but considering what we’re talking about here I’m guessing DC wants to keep people from knowing her enemies because if they do, they’ll find shit like Egg Fu.

Like, just look at this fucking guy. Look at him.

Like I get comics were racist back in the day, but this one takes the cake. What's even more insane is how they keep trying to revamp and revitalize the character in the modern era, from being a bad guy from Apokolips:

To... whatever the hell this is:

There's got to be reason, right? Why are writers so dead set on trying to rehabilitate the racist communist egg man?

Motivation/Goals: As a Yellow Peril villain, Egg Fu exists to show the EVILS of communism while also making sure to show Asians in the most unflattering light possible. He's not particularly good at either job to be honest, dying every time he comes across Wonder Woman and being so utterly absurd a concept it's hard to take him seriously at all. Like, he's an egg. For what reason? I mean yeah there's the pun, but why is he a fucking egg in-universe? What's the benefit of being an egg with a prehensile mustache? How exactly does it help dominate the filthy Americans (oh, I'm sorry, the Amelicans).

Final Fate: In his very first appearance, Wonder Woman does the right thing and fucking cracks this egg:

When the next Egg Fu shows up, she does more of the same:

Unfortunately, when another Egg Fu named Dr. Yes (he's a robot duplicate, because of course he is) showed up, he got away.

As for the modern Egg Fus, they're probably still kicking around. I'm not reading through fifty issues of storyline to discern the fate of some rebooted racist egg man, sorry.

Best Quote: Surely such a character as Egg Fu must have some great dialogue! Let's see, how about...

Oh. Oh dear. That's, um, not great. Uh, what about...

Oh fuck that's even worse. Er, there has to be something here...

Oh god, the only thing worse than racism is finding out a mid-tier DC movie starring Dwayne Johnson has arrived!!!!

Yeah no this guy gets no points in this category, his dialogue ranges from generic bullshit to the kind of stuff you'd hear from the City Wok guy on South Park.

Final Thoughts & Score: So a while ago I reviewed Fu Manchu, a villain that absolutely fascinates me. He is the archetypal Yellow Peril supervillain who has had an absolutely undeniable impact on popular culture, altering history by spawning legions of imitations (such as Egg Fu here) as well as doing things such as giving a name to a style of facial hair. As with all villains that have such a colossal influence, he got an 11 with an asterisk denoting how monumentally racist the character was, despite their being positive aspects to him that were fair for the time period he was created in.

Now imagine that but without any of the positive qualities. That’s Egg Fu.

This is such an absurd, baffling supervillain even for the time he was created. Like, okay, I get racial stereotypes were prevalent in a lot of comics… but a giant communist egg with a prehensile mustache?! Far be it from me to suggest writers were on drugs when coming up with their wild ideas, but you have to admit that substance abuse would go a long way towards explaining why this was allowed to happen. Simple racism can’t explain this; it’s a giant fucking egg.

I think the sheer insanity of it all is what draws me to this character. Not only is it blatantly racist, they also keep trying to bring back and reimagine him. And like, yeah, that’s kind of sick and I love when weird-ass ideas get revamped and recontextualized for the modern era… but Egg fucking Fu? It’s bad enough we had Egg Fu the Fifth and his evil clone Dr. Yes all within the span of a year before being dropped for decades, but then they decided to dust him off and try a redo? Why?

I think the appeal to try and revitalize him comes from the fact that, as far as stereotyped and racist caricature villains go, Egg Fu is so fucking bizarre. Like I can't stress enough this is a giant communist egg who speaks in broken English and has a prehensile mustache. In a sea of Yellow Peril villains he easily stands out despite being relatively obscure from the sheer fact he's not simply a racist stereotype; he's an insane racist stereotype that just boggles the mind as to what the writers and artists were actually trying to say with this.

The history of this character is just so weird, his very existence is weird… He’s the opposite extreme of Fu Manchu for me. While Fu is fascinating for his impact on culture and deserves the highest marks with that caveat that he’s also extremely problematic, Egg Fu gets a 3/10 with a similar caveat. He’s so bad it’s good, but he’s bad because he’s a racist caricature, which isn’t great. I see this like I do the movie The Conqueror, the movie where John Wayne played Genghis Khan. Yes, it’s absolutely absurd and tasteless that these white people are playing Asians, but at the same time everything about this is so absurdly racist it crosses the line twice and somehow manages to become hilarious. Like what are you even trying to do here? It’s offensive in a way where you can’t do anything but laugh at them because they genuinely thought they were on to something here.

And that’s ultimately how I feel about Egg Fu. They really thought they were cooking something with this one, but this egg didn’t poach them any new readers and he hasn’t gone over easy with modern audiences. It’s really hard not to crack up at this complete yolk of a character. So yes, Egg Fu is enjoyably bad in a “What were they even fucking trying to do here?” sort of way, and he’s definitely one of my favorite insane comic book villains that time has forgotten… but there’s no denying that this is a character who is inherently problematic.

Anyway, this review has given me excessive racism poisoning, so I think I'm going to review a comic villain who isn't horribly offensive next time.

COMING SOON! PSYCHO-ANALYSIS: HEMO-GOBLIN!

The South African white supremacist vampire who gives people AIDS!

(Just kidding, I'm reviewing Snowflame).

[5-7-9]

Sounds familiar to Ra’s Al Ghul

Hm

okay that’s almost entirely just Talia Al Ghul

Is nothing original anymore