On the stereotypes subject a broad more abstract question -
When a book or comic series is adapted for a movie or television show, should any stereotypes contained within the source material be revised?
These are fair questions. My answer is a bit complicated. First, the Irish are only briefly shown, but yeah, there’s a fair amount of stereotyping. The Faith ‘n’ Begorrah Reel Ringtone kind of lampshaded that in a hilariously wrong way. There are two more differences here: first, Irish-American actors have a pretty wide variety of parts to play in American dramas that don’t rely on stereotyping, which makes the stereotypes here less of a problem; and second, the Irish characters spend a fair amount of time talking to each other in dialog that isn’t completely and totally predictable. Naboo, the main villain of the season, spends less time talking than does any of three or four Irish punks who get killed off by Punisher. Naboo hardly says anything. Inscrutable!
The Russians? That story of the brothers, and their relationship, and how one of them decided to go hardass on Fisk while the other was more conciliatory–that was not a bunch of Russian stereotyping, that was character building. Yeah, there were some stereotypes of Russian mobsters, but nothing like what we’re seeing with the Hand.
The accents and opium don’t bother me a huge amount. Ninjas could have worked, too. What really bothers me is the laziness of the stereotyping. The cherry-blossoms and tea-drinking as about the only characterization of these people beyond ninjaing. C’mon.
Show Naboo having an affair with one of the other ninjas, in violation of strict ninja codes. Show Naboo’s soft spot for dogs. Show Naboo’s morning routine of shaving. Show Naboo’s secret vice of eating chili dogs from a cart outside the subway. Show Naboo attending a Broadway play. Show Naboo struggling with his faith in Hand rituals.
There are a million ways to turn him into a human character. You ask about whether he’s any less developed than Fisk, and I say he absolutely is: we see Fisk’s back story with his abusive dad, we see Fisk’s arrangements to care for his mother, we see Fisk’s weird obsessive love for the art dealer, we see Fisk’s OCD dressing ritual with his closet full of identical clothes, we see Fisk’s abiding love for his second in command, we see Fisk reasoning through threats.
And we also see his plan as a thing of glory. He’s not mwahahaha bad guy; he’s a developer confronting a shithole of a city and wanting to save it from itself. He’s got a grand dream, and the writers and actors sell his dream so well that it’s easy to sympathize with it even as you’re appalled at his brutality.
Compare that to Naboo. The only thing keeping Naboo from mwahahaha bad guy territory is his complete lack of humor. Naboo is evil because he’s evil, because power or demon god or something. The only thing that characterized him is that he’s an immortal ninja bad guy.
This whole thread could have been handled so much better, which brings me to DSeid’s question:
I want to make it even broader and more abstract, actually: When a a book or comic series is adapted for a movie or television show, should any lazy shitty writing contained within the source material be revised?
Yeah, it should, because it improves the story. Imagine if Naboo had been given the same rich characterization that Fisk got, if we understood his conflicted (or unconflicted!) loyalties, if we felt him grieve when his favorite ninja buddies got killed, if we found ourselves sometimes rooting for him despite ourselves, if we knew what gave him joy and what frightened him. Imagine if Madame Gao had been something more than a dragon lady–in season 1 there were some hints of this–if she were shown doting on her grandchildren, if we knew why or how she’d convinced workers to blind themselves, if she engaged in the sorts of quiet lovely conversations that The Punisher engaged in with Daredevil and Karen.
One of the main problems with relying on racist stereotypes is that it shittifies the story. Daredevil has done such a wonderful job with two of its villains, it was a massive disappointment to see what it did with everyone connected to The Hand. I think reliance on racist stereotypes instead of on rich characterizations is primarily responsible for how bad that plot was.
This season though was crowded with characters’ backstories and conflicts and Naboo was not a character they intended on keeping around. We only got a bit of complexity to Reyes as they killed her off, other than that she was cardboard bad too.
The problem was perhaps less racism (and I do not argue that there is none) but that Frank was an antagonist but clearly is anti-hero not villain, and the very conflicted complex Big Bad of The Hand is being set up to be reborn Elektra. Naboo was just a stand-in being set-up for the punch line of Stick being there telling him to next time stay down. So they ended up having no current Big Bad with complexity sans the brief flash of Fisk. Which I agree, is a mistake even if the source is a comic book with comic book villains.
Incidentally, it’s Nobu, not Naboo. Nobu is a fairly common Japanese name. Naboo is where Jar-Jar Binks comes from.
Ultimately, for me, your argument seems to boil down to “this season had a weak big bad and I’m going to blame racism for it and instead of the writers for over cramming the season with plots.”
The Irish were briefly shown? They and the white biker gang were the main antagonists for the first arc.
Most if not all of your cites for complexity in the villainy are from the first season–which was much better written overall regardless of the villains.
Well, okay, if that’s what you read. It’s not what I said.
As for the Irish being the main big bads, I’d actually say Punisher was the main big bad for the first part of the season. In any case, the Irish were far better characterized, adn the stereotypes were lampshaded.
I happen to know for a fact that all Asians are indeed ninja drug dealers with 1600 SAT scores. It’s part of the Asian DNA, duh.
Recently finished watching it. We’ve only had two short seasons. People seem to be expecting more out of two seasons than they can cram in. Asia is so big and diverse talking about Asian stereotypes is like talking about Earthling stereotypes.
Personally, I associate opium with Afghanistan, not east Asia. I’m familiar with the stereotype of some old Chinese guy sitting around smoking opium, but I still think of opium coming from the near east, not the far east.
Haven’t read any other posts about the series. Someone confirm for me, is the guy playing DD an Aussie faking an American accent? When I close my eyes I hear Russell Crowe or one of the other Aussie/NZ actors faking American accents.
Elektra is a Natural Born Killer. I don’t see how that makes her a waif, except when NBKs feel a bit of guilt or remorse, they are automatically weakened.
I’d like to know who the big guy was Stick was talking to in season one. I thought “getting the team back together” would address that and be more entertaining.
Only two short seasons so far. Lots of unanswered questions.
What’s up with the guy who makes custom armor costumes and gadgets? Is his “Betsy” important? I didn’t collect DD comics so I’m not up all the characters but the “makes things” guy seems important.
Charlie Cox is a Brit.
In the comic books he’s a sometimes villain, sometimes kind-of-good-guy named Gladiator who wears gadget-filled armor and has twin circular saw blades mounted to motors on his wrists.
One of my favorite easter eggs on the show is that Melvin has a poster on his workshop wall that looks like a classic men’s adventure magazine cover with gladiators fighting…His comic book name - Gladiator. The cover image is itself an homage to the cover from his first appearance*.
*or at least an early appearance if not his first.
Yes, they relied on the old Asian tropes that the original comics had inherited from a long tradition in genre fiction. I think it’s harsh to call it racism, but it is painfully tone deaf on a racial issue to keep using the same archetypes from a much less enlightened time. These days, when using that kind of material it behooves writers to tackle these issues with care. Among the ways you’re going to end up not being true to the original material because you’re trying to fit it into the cinematic universe, with the other shows, etc., you could squeeze in some amelioration on the stereotyping. Sipping tea and painting flowers is just way too copied-and-pasted from a century-old tradition of stereotyping. This stuff doesn’t place her so much in an Asian tradition as in a tradition of how the west has represented Asians.
Also, am I to understand that The Hand doesn’t understand the inverse ninja power rule?
I don’t want to tear down the whole show over this, but we shouldn’t not ever talk about it. We should be aware of these issues, and ask the writers to think about it.
In the meantime, I overall found the story less tense than the first season, but I enjoyed it. From what I’ve read of the Punisher, I would never have pictured the performance we saw here, but I think this Frank Castle was better than what I would have imagined. He is not just Shane from The Walking Dead, but with different dialogue. He exudes a very different presence just in the way he looks at people. He looked like he had a lot of cunning behind a dull thuggish gaze.
I actually expected through the whole last few episodes that somebody, probably Karen, was going to figure out Matt was Daredevil, so I was actually kind of disappointed that he bothered to say it out loud when making the reveal at the end.
When I finished, tonight, I was treated to a Luke Cage preview. No one seems to have mentioned it, so I wondered if it was added recently.
The thing about Matt’s cover is no matter how much evidence stacks up, most people can’t get past the fact he’s blind. Even the people who DO find out assume he’s faking it.
When I finished it the first week it was out, it was just a short scene where he says he’s tired of always buying clothes - not really worth mentioning. Is there something longer added now?
I know I spent a lot of time talking about the racism of the Hand’s portrayal (and I don’t think it’s too harsh to call it racism; on the contrary, I think it’s vital that we can identify racism without treating it like the Ultimate Evil, instead just recognizing it as one way among many that people are flawed). But that’s because nobody disagrees with the other part of my review, namely, that the Punisher storyline was completely freakin’ amazing, and Kingpin also was incredible during his every second on screen.
My complaints about The Hand have a great deal to do with the high expectations I have of the show, expectations that this particular storyline (along with the Electra storyline) didn’t live up to.
I thought Iron Fist was going to appear this season. I was bummed he never showed up, unless I missed him. Or is he supposed to appear in the Luke Cage series?
I read that they were having a hard time finding a good script for an Iron Fist series.
They must have found it because they’re filming it now.
I have a running spiel about how various attempts to revive old genre franchises, or harken back to them, deal differently with the orientalist legacy of the source materials. For example, in the old Buck Rogers TV show, the Han was wholly replaced with the Draconian empire. The Flash Gordon movie cast Max Von Sydow, a member of one of our whitest ethnic groups, as Ming the Merciless. The Star Wars prequels carried all its ethnic tropes smuggled in as alien species. The new Dr. Strange movie is under fire right now because while it retains The East as the origin of the mystical and exotic, the apparently still-Taiwaneese mentor role has been cast with a white woman. I’d say that the approach that Daredevil takes of not actually changing a damned thing is unusual, though this is not to say refreshing.
So, I’ve been hearing about how good the “Daredevil” series is but I’ve been putting it off, just like I’ve been putting off most superhero series—for one, I feel overwhelmed by the volume of output; next, I am afraid of dedicating time to something I might not like, and third, I’ve always been a DC fan, so I expected that I would start with the DC shows.
Instead, I somehow got hooked onto “Jessica Jones” and after enjoy gin that series (more in a Jessica Jones thread), I decided to try “Daredevil.”
Because there have been so many threads on this show already, I didn’t want to start another one just for me, but I have to be honest and say I haven’t read this thread yet—I’m just dumping my unfiltered reactions. So here goes—
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Overall, I enjoyed this show. I like the “coziness” of the show—I get a feeling that this is really about a small number of people who are very close to each other in a setting bound by geography and problems (that is, Matt, Foggy, and Karen, mostly, and their activities centered on Hell’s Kitchen). I like it least when there are too many references to the wider Marvel universe.
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I have read some criticisms online about Foggy’s character, but I think he brings a very necessary heart to the dynamics. I also quite like the other minor characters—James Wesley, Ben, Vanessa, Claire, etc. There very well written and well acted—I have always been a huge fan of Rosario Dawson and I love to see her pop up here.
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Nevertheless, I have some minor quibbles—
— The choice of Hell’s Kitchen as the neighborhood that needs to be defined makes this show seem really anachronistic. Maybe it would have been better if it had been explicitly set in the 1960s or '70s. But I can’t help but think each time the neighborhood is mentioned—hey, lower West Side of Manhattan? That’s a really expensive place to live with affluent young people and a center of the New York gay community. I think of Hell’s Kitchen as a pretty safe place. Maybe they should have chosen a more modern crime-infested “transitional” neighborhood. Also, Murdock’s dad having been a crooked boxer seems like more of a 1940s or 1950s kind of story.
— The fight scenes go on way too long. I get bored, and put off by the explicit gore.
— The constant massive mayhem and destruction seems way too heavy—the neighborhood they’ve been trying to save would be completely destroyed by now and possibly have thrown the entire city—or even the whole country‚into a massive recession.
— Wilson Fisk/Kingpin is too much of the now-routine omnipotent mastermind. He’s got everyone on his payroll and can get anything accomplished, even without having any supernatural abilities (I can buy it more with someone who has super powers like Kilgrave).
— I can’t really buy Karen’s sympathy for Frank Castle. He’s a freaking homicidal lunatic, regardless of his backstory.
— Speaking of Castle, did his ex-CO intentionally target his wife and children or was it just a big coincidence that they were at the park when the drug deal went bad?
— The district attorney went from corrupt official to out-and-out villain rather suddenly, didn’t she?
— I never really warmed to the Elektra character. Maybe I’ll like he more on second viewing. Since I don’t read many Marvel Comics, I don’t know whether Elektra is the kind of character who stays dead or who keeps coming back.
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I read that the next season might be more “adult” in terms of depicting explicit sexuality, like in “Jessica Jones.” I’m all in favor of that.
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One odd thing about Madame Gao. There was a line at some point in which someone said that she had come a long way from China and she replied with something like she’s a lot further than that. I was assuming that she was part of the Hand. Did I get confused? Or did she imply she was a space alien?
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I don’t really understand the timeline in comparison with “Jessica Jones.” When did Foggy start working for Hogarth in relation to what happened there?
There are four shows for Netflix: Daredevil, Jessica Jones, Luke Cage, and Iron Fist. Iron Fist is a martial arts master trained in another dimension, one of 12 (I think) that periodically connect with Earth. Each dimension produces a martial arts champion and they duel for how long their dimension stays connected to Earth, iirc.
The implication is that Madame Gao is from one of those dimensions. The emblem on the drugs she produced and sold is from Iron Fist’s chief arch enemy, Steel Serpent.