Art Imitates Life

I’m not the kind of critic who gets to see TV shows before they come out. Apparently, Netflix thinks that I should be some sort of writer for a “real” venue before they’ll send me some screeners. Come on, Netflix. Let me write overly contrived think pieces about your TV shows, which you can then pass off as common marketing fodder. Maybe?

Moving swiftly on. The only things I know about Iron Fist are what I’ve read from other critics. My peers have not been kind.

The biggest beef orbits around the show being tone-deaf to the fact that it cast a guy who looks like the ancient and mystical Seth Rogen to be a master martial artist. This casting choice, though a poor one, isn’t in and of itself inherently evil. The problems emerge in how Danny Rand’s character is written as a mansplaining douche. He ends up dismissing the experience and experiences of the martial artists around him, who also happen to be women of colour.

Art imitates life, am I right?

So here’s my plan for this weekend. I am going to watch the first episode of Iron Fist. Then I’m going to watch the first episode of Into the Badlands. Then we’re all going to gather back here and Uncle Adam is going to slap together a few words on masculinity, sword fighting, and all those other good things. Because if the creators of Smallville can give us Daniel Wu in a show that reminds me of The Walking Dead when it didn’t suck (that is to say when Frank Darabont was still running the show) then what’s holding Marvel back? Is it just plain old racism? Or is there something else going on here?

Sound like a plan? I think so.