I was SO prepared to hate Warrior.
The premise of an Asian that comes to America
in the late 1870s to stand up against racism
as inspired by the writings of the late and
great Bruce Lee just feels like peak prestige
TV-bait in every way possible.
This isn’t to discredit or even ignore the
idea of fellow people of color overcoming
obstacles especially in a starring role.
If anything I’m just tired of such insisting
it’s a means to spotlight POC experiences
when the true intention is almost always to pacify
[50s radio announcer voice]
that persnickety li’l devil known as
WHITE GUILT.
[O’hara: He was beating on two citizens.
You! Get the other one!
Penelope: You will NOT ‘get the other one!’
Jacob is my valet and he did nothing wrong!]
Racism solved lads, you can go back to buying
stamps or whatever modern crisis we still
have on our hands-- oh wait it’s racism,
the crisis is still racism.
Whether it’s romcoms like The Big Sick or
more blatant titles like 12 Years A Slave,
there’s just a lot of media that focus on
racial identity
with the ultimate villain being racism.
I’d dig into it more, but this tiktok video
regarding black pain says it pretty succinctly:
[So here’s an opinion: I don’t ever wanna
see another Black Pain movie.
I don’t wanna see anymore slave movies,
I don’t ever wanna see any more civil rights dramas,
I don’t ever wanna see any more
hood movies.
I don’t ever wanna see another movie where
the main premise is ‘being black is hard!’
because b*tch…
I know.
And it’s so depressing when the only depictions
of yourself in the mainstream media are people
that look like you getting arrested or shot.
Or trying to overcome some struggle that’s
based on the way you both look.
Now of course I wanna see black characters
come face to face with challenges and triumph.
But I want writers and directors to realize
that black people can and do face more challenges
than just being black in whatever time period.
Basically if the main villain in your story
is racism…
I’m good.
Keep that sh*t, b*tch!]
I’m tired of this story archetype not just
because of the sheer amount getting churned out,
but because of how the stories tend to
simplify the complexities of racism,
chalking it up to the handful of bad apples, and how
if you have enough spunky white allies and
are willing to become a badass yourself then
your problem will just magically disappear.
Further melding this archetype with kung-fu
movies of the ‘70s really adds an uncomfortable
coat of bro-iness as well.
You know the type-- the kind of blatant shallow
power-fantasies passed off as prestige TV
to justify their gratuitous amounts of sex
and violence only to not have much to say
outside of selling Funko Pops when you strip
it down to its essentials.
And for the first two episodes, that’s honestly
what Warrior is.
Ah Sahm has immigrated to San Francisco from
China in the year 1878 in hopes of finding
his long lost sister only to be met with comically racist Americans around every corner
[trailer announcer voice] 
and is left with no choice but to FIGHT BACK.
The first couple episodes come off exactly
how I assumed they would, with this big emphasis
on being able to fight your way
through racism with your fists,
and some very heavy-handed writing sensibilities,
[O'hara: Your skin... is not the reason you were arrested.
Ah Sahm: I think you know that it is
...Just like you know it's the reason they'll convict me.]
...which isn’t inherently
bad, but isn’t handled the best either.
From the get-go, Ah Sahm is the raddest, baddest
dude you’ve ever met; not only can he stand
his ground against impossible odds, but he’s
a ruggedly handsome Asian lad
that’s able to get the white girl as a romantic interest
(which by pop culture rules is the highest honor any person of color can have.)
It’s played so straight to the point that
it comes off like a first draft of some twelve-year-old’s fan fiction.
Like gee, Billy, write in how your mom apologizes
for grounding you while you’re at it.
So to backtrack a bit, this concept was originally
pitched by Bruce Lee in 1971 only for
Warner Bros to straightup steal the idea and rebrand
it as the show Kung Fu with David Carradine
as the lead, with Lee left uncast and uncredited.
Assuming that a lot of the same ideas from
Lee’s pitch were retained for Warrior, the
ideas are honestly pretty radical for the time:
A primarily Asian cast,
a white love interest,
a public admission that America
could even be racist on such a large scale--
The real problem lies in how closely the modern
staff wishes to adhere to these blueprints.
When you’re essentially creating a Bruce
Lee project posthumously, there’s gonna
be this inherent need to stick as closely
to his original pitch as possible
lest you DISHONOR his good name.
The problem here is that entertainment has
evolved in the time since the show was first pitched,
with some radical ideas starting
to rust over time.
Like racism’s bad, Bruce Lee?
Yeah, tell me about it.
What complicates a lot of media as created
by people of color is that audiences want
to box them into either one of two categories.
Either they must be framed as this vehicle
to spotlight exclusively people of color in
this power move of (insert race here) Excellence,
or they be one of the endless
supply of "racism bad” stories.
People don’t like thinking of non-white
media, especially those starring Asians, to
fall into any other category and to a degree
you can’t blame them since companies don’t
have the best track record of green-lighting
anything besides
these types of media from people of color.
You can’t just be a movie that happens to
star Asians.
You have to be the movie that liberates Asians
from the stronghold grip that is decades of
oppression and whitewashing.
You need to be the Asian-iest Asian movie
that ever did Asian because heaven forbid
your work be judged on the merits of story
alone.
Remember in Black Panther how it kinda felt
jarring whenever it showed Agent Ross because
the movie prioritized Black Excellence?
Similarly in Asian Excellence works, white
characters are tertiary at best, spotlighting
a majority-Asian cast because forreal, when was the last time you saw that in an American production?
And yet three episodes into Warrior, the sheer
amount of scenes featuring solely white people
made me realize Asian Excellence wasn’t
the show’s aim.
At least it wasn’t in the way that we’re
used to.
See, while Warrior’s focus is on the Chinese
experience during the late 1800’s, the narrative
is impossible to isolate to Chinese characters
alone.
Besides the three rival gangs within Chinatown,
our main cast is also met with the Irish mob,
crooked cops, manipulated politicians, and
most importantly, all these characters are
fully realized people in their own right.
They’re not just cardboard cutouts of racism
meant for our heroes to knock down, because
racism doesn’t exist that way in the real
world and Warrior aspires to dig deeper into
why that is.
Episode 5 serves as a standalone episode with
Ah Sahm and fellow Hop Wei member Young Jun,
and at first you think the episode’s focus
would be between them and a racist passenger
on the stagecoach.
But halfway into the episode the racist is
shot by a third party and a different plot emerges.
Similarly, episode 7 ends on a cliffhanger
with the Hop Wei and Long Zii tong prepared
for this massive Chinatown brawl only for
episode 8 to finish the fight in a matter of minutes.
Warrior is fully aware of the baggage and
tropes that come with telling an Asian-American
story and is willing to say that they’re
not gonna be as basic as anything preceding them.
Fight scenes aren’t just gonna be these
gratifying overly-long spectacles.
And racism isn’t a simple case of the one
bad apple to be defeated, but an entire system
of seemingly unrelated laws and events spun
into this messy web of… of messiness.
With our white characters, it’s more than
just a personality trait or an oddly concise
tragic backstory that explains their racism--
it’s the world they live in and the rules
they’ve convinced themselves are right.
Similarly, our Chinese characters are never
framed as the simple heroes of our story,
but rather the amoral characters that just
so happen to be the series’ focus.
Like prestige TV before them, Warrior has
fun delving into the moral gray areas that
drive people to do what they end up doing,
making a point not to applaud what they do,
but to at least provide as much context for
why they do it in the first place.
While it’s easy to idolize Ah Sahm as he
slaps white people around, that same heroic
energy begins to break down the more we learn about him and how aimless
he can be without anyone to fight for.
Upon first landing in America, Ah Sahm’s
goal is to rescue his sister who’s since
become part of the Long Zii tong.
After showing his skill as a fighter, though,
he ends up being bought by rival tong the Hop Wei,
being literally branded to mark his
newfound status as property to a gang he never
sought out to begin with.
By chance, Ah Sahm eventually does find his
sister, though is dismayed to find that she’s
found comfort in her life among the Long Zii,
going as far as changing her name
from Xiaojing to Mai Ling.
Losing sight of who to fight for, Ah Sahm
willingly follows orders of the Hop Wei, scrapping
for the sake of protecting drug territory
and gaining status.
By the final two episodes of the season, Ah
Sahm has become a trusted fighter representing
the Hop Wei in a fight to protect their turf
only to lose,
abandoned by the tong that bought him and left aimless once more.
The concept of identity is nothing new to
Asian-American stories, and if anything they’re
just as off-putting as “racism bad” stories
because they simplify the plight of identity
to a single word: honor.
[Once I deliver the Avatar to my father, he
will welcome me with honor.
Dishonor!
Dishonor on your whole family!
Make a note of this: dishonor on YOU, dishonor
on your COW..!]
[stereotype intensifies]
This whole idea of honor and deep ties with
family aren’t necessarily bad, but they’ve
reached a very stereotypical territory
especially when it comes to telling Asian stories for some reason.
Like if you have an Asian character arc, people
just immediately assume they’ve been disgraced
and their arc is to gain back their honor
which is novel maybe for the first 10 years
of American pop culture and afterwards just
feels trite and borderline offensive with
how synonymous they’ve made it with Asians
specifically.
So to have Warrior not only make a point to
avoid words like “honor” and “disgrace”
in favor of a much more nuanced take to Ah
Sahm’s character journey was a welcome approach,
even if the arc itself does water down to
“what’s my identity within the context of America?"
Throughout Warrior’s first season, Ah Sahm
slowly learns to accept and define himself
not through what he himself can accomplish
in the short-term,
but how his changes can affect
those lifetimes from now.
[Ah Toy: One day I’ll show you.
Ah Sahm: It’s a fight you can’t win.
Ah Toy: Of course we can’t win.
But we can inspire others.
Ah Sahm: For what? You’ll never belong here.
Ah Toy: No one belongs here...
… this is a country
of foreigners.]
When he fails as a savior to his sister or
champion to the Hop Wei it’s because there
was never a mutual understanding between himself
and those he interacts with.
He failed his sister because she never needed
his help, and he failed the Hop Wei because
he never had an investment in their drug trades.
[Mai Ling: Don’t pretend this is about protecting
me.
This is about you.
Once again, you need to prove to the world
that you’re the best.]
Ah Sahm frames his fighting as this noble
duty he’s thrust upon himself when in truth
it’s a justification for him to play hero
without having to think about the consequences
of his actions as long as he wins.
So when he ends up losing come the finale,
Ah Sahm and in turn we as the audience end
up leaving this world of escapism and gangsters to just
sit in the reality that that's not how it was for a majority
of Chinese back then.
We develop context and a deep understanding
for these injustices instead of a cursory
knowledge and thus become more better equipped
to join the cause-- a reason to fight that’s
not just a quick band-aid to a more global
problem.
As the season winds down, signs of The Chinese
Exclusion Act getting passed become more and
more apparent.
And for those that need a refresher, the act
itself lasts for 61 years, passed in 1882
and repealed in 1943.
Seeing the main cast go from overly confident
it won’t get passed to dangerously cautious
as it begins to loom ever closer is but one
of the many true-life wrinkles added to Warrior,
and the overlap as we see Ah Sahm direct his
talents to a greater cause that actually needs
him just makes for great writing in general.
Across the span of 10 episodes, we’re able
to see Ah Sahm’s evolution from aimless
drifter, to fully realized fighter-- someone
that exists outside of the expectations of
others in favor of fighting for something
far greater.
Warrior sets aside this sense of cultural
duty in favor of telling a story on its own
terms and within the context of Asian-American
works that’s a pretty big deal.
The show could have easily played it safe
with a black-and-white sense of morality and
yet it goes out of its way to strive for something
more not because of this honor-bound sense
of making Bruce Lee proud, but because it
has something worthwhile to say.
