By Eddwin Cantu
With the recent rise of progressive decisions in visual media, many film or televised companies are taking more cautious approaches towards their intellectual properties.
Throughout the years there have been many liberties that movies or television shows have taken action in order to push or even break down boundaries to make political, cultural, and even controversial progressions.
However, with the rise of progression follows the waves of sensitive audiences which believe that everything and everyone should be included under the terms of political correctness.
The term political correctness itself, means to avoid any forms of expression or action that are viewed to exclude, target, bigot, or insult groups or organizations that are in disadvantaged or discriminated against.
Now in this case, there is a rise of many people who are open to seeing many liberties and actions being done in several media of entertainment.
Whether it is done through television, internet streamed shows, cinematic movies, works of literature, and even video games, there are many ways in which liberties and progressions are being expressed.
However, people should often be aware of when political correctness should be used and accepted instead of complaining about unfair or possibly discriminatory actions.
One primary example of an outcry is in Marvel’s latest Netflix exclusive series: Iron Fist.
The show revolves around the life of Daniel Rand, a man who becomes a crime-fighting vigilante in New York by using his martial art skills along with the use of mystic oriental techniques of chi.
The concept and show sounds promising but after the show’s debut, many audiences and critics deemed the show in poor reviews.
Many people and critics believed that the show was being insensitive for casting a Caucasian male to fill in the role of a man with oriental martial arts capabilities.
The audience felt that the main role should have belonged to an actor of Asian descent to fit the role better.
Yet the people who complained and critiqued the show have never researched or read the source material of what the character Iron Fist comes from.
If you open any comic book that pertains to the Iron Fist title, you will find that the main character from his first appearance to his latest is and always was a Caucasian man.
The initial conception of the character was never about being accurate to the protagonist’s ethnicity or cultural heritage.
According to author and co-creator Roy Thomas, the conception of Iron Fist was made purely as an homage to the popular martial arts movies trend that was going on in the early 1970’s.
The people who heavily criticized and complained about the show did not bother to look into or research the history of the character.
Yet they still manage to believe that the show was being insensitive despite following the source material it was based off of.
Calling for political correctness in any forms of media is not a bad thing, but audiences and critics of any kind must first research and look into the history of what they’re getting into before making any sort of outcry.
