Thursday, April 8, 2021

Kung Fu (1972) starring David Carradine is a great and anti-racist show


I don’t understand this need to hawk your cheap wares by tearing down the foundation you stood on to make them. Yeah they cast a white guy as a half-white, half-Chinese character 50 years ago, in a different time with different standards. But the supporting cast was Asian American, the most memorable characters who delivered the most famous lines. Virtually every Asian American actor working at the time appeared on the show at some point. Their culture and heritage were never treated as objects of mockery.

The show wasn’t racist; it featured racism, and condemned it. Caine was an immigrant looking for belonging in a country that didn’t want him, and the anti-Asian bigotry he encountered in his travels was always shown for the ugly thing it was.

Yes, Bruce Lee could have done the fight scenes better, but the fight scenes weren’t the point. The show preached non-violence and the preciousness of life; Caine mourned for everyone he couldn’t save because he recognized the value in each of them, even those blinded by hate.

It was a great show with a diverse cast and a powerful message, so it’s disheartening to see it used as a sacrificial lamb to prop up this CW revenge drama whose common DNA apparently includes the name, the inciting incident, and nothing else.


Talk about an insensitive 50-year-old casting decision all you like, the show’s most embarrassing legacy will still be the lead actor accidentally choking himself to death while rubbing one out. Maybe that’s the wrong this new version is supposed to fix!

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