The Conservative Stance on Work in 'Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings'
Image; Disney+
The MCU movie Shang-Chi and The Legend of The Ten Rings (2021) has a lot of good things going for it: the fight scenes are fantastic; the dialogue is funny; the CGI is likewise truly impressive (I never thought I needed to see a live-action Nine-tailed fox until this moment); lead Simu Liu is also a snack. I had a lot of fun watching this film the first time, and rewatching it repeatedly to write this article brought with it new details to mull over and appreciate.
The franchise also features a predominantly Chinese cast, which is undeniably a good thing given the MCU's overwhelming whiteness. The most popular film series in the world should have more diverse leads and more diverse mythologies to draw upon that aren't just the Aryan Power Hour (sorry Thor, you don't have the best friends). It's quite frankly disappointing that it's taken so long for multiculturalism to be a mainstream element in the MCU, but regardless, I am glad we have been seeing it these past few years.
However, beneath all these positive elements, there is a really weird classist message at the heart of Shang-Chi and The Legend of The Ten Rings. The way this series treats work, while unsurprising, reinforces conservative norms about work and professionalism that I think warrants some scrutiny. So let’s get into it.
After a beautiful monologue setting up the story's mythology, this movie starts with our lead Xu Shang-Chi or "Shaun" (Simu Liu) in a spacious apartment doing pushups. He puts on a button-up as Rich Brian & Earthgang's banger Act Up plays in the background. The story's framing is alluding to the fact that this will be the story of a high-powered, super-successful badass.
We then cut to the next scene where we see a man we assume is Shang-Chi pull up in a fancy red car. Only when a different character hands our lead a set of car keys do we realize our entire first impression was a misdirection. Shang-Chi isn't a successful capitalist at all but a working-class valet who spends his days (and nights) with his friend and colleague Katy (Awkwafina). This juxtaposition is meant to tell us that we are getting a very different story from the likes of Tony Stark's Iron Man or Dr. Strange. It implies we will see a window into a working man's life and how they will handle herodom.
Work plays a huge role in setting up how the characters are framed in the first act. We are told several times that what the characters are doing with their lives is unsatisfactory. "Maybe there's a point where you're supposed to stop going on joyrides and start thinking about living up to your potential," a lawyer friend tells our leads early on in the movie. She is referring here to potential in a capitalist sense. It's them being valets that is something that this friend thinks should be changed. Katy's mom is even more explicit, bemoaning: "Waigong didn't move here from Hunan so you could park cars for a living."
In a different type of story, these characters might hate their lives as valets, and this dissatisfaction would serve as the basis for a transformation. We have seen stories like Star Wars or The Matrix where our leads resent their place in the world, and that desire for differences allows them to shed their perceived normalcy to become "special."
However, Shang-Chi and Katy don't resent their lives at all. They look happy. "How is it running to have jobs that you actually like?" Katy asks Shang-Chi after the dinner with their lawyer friend. It's hard to counter her question because nothing in the film disproves this assertion. They don't seem miserable at work, and when they spend the night "recklessly" singing karaoke, there are no material consequences like getting yelled at by their boss or being late for work. Their lives appear fine, healthy even.
In fact, Katy seems to love driving cars. She knows trivia about NASCAR — at one point calling herself the "Asian Jeff Gordon" — and is really good at driving. She skillfully manages to not only glide down a San Francisco street, but she takes over a bus while being attacked, escapes a warlord's garage while being shot at, and navigates through a magical forest trying to kill her. Katy demonstrates a skill level with cars that only professionals with years of driving experience could hope to obtain. She seriously is the Asian Jeff Gordon. She is the moment, and we love her.
With these characterizations in mind, we might expect that our leads take these aspects of their lives and apply them to their superhero identities. Maybe Shang-Chi moves back to San Francisco in the end and vows to maintain the city as a working-class hero like Peter Parker in New York. Maybe Katy learns to be a pilot, or an animal handler, showing that the skills she already loves were a vital element of her superhero identity (maybe, the capstone of her arc could be riding a dragon, for example).
Yet this doesn't happen. Shang-Chi's working-class aesthetic takes a back seat to his emergent one as a martial arts badass. We learn that he is the son of the warlord Xu Wenwu (Tony Leung), and the movie from that point onwards becomes about him grabbing with the trauma his father placed on him as a child. There's nothing wrong with that kind of story, but it feels disconnected from the first act. Shang-Chi hid from his rich, powerful father, using poverty as a vacation from those expectations. He didn't care about claiming his potential because he was born into a grand destiny of his own, and simply wants to escape it.
Similarly, Katy's character makes a complete departure during the midway point. She confesses to an elder over an hour into the movie that she isn't content with her work. She says she never sticks to anything —a pattern we didn't even know she had until that moment. She is then directed to pick up a bow by this elder to start "aiming" at something finally. A training montage ensues, where Katy learns how to master archery in under a day. Seriously, in under a day, she goes through an entire arc where she starts as a novice and then ends as an expert piercing the throat of a skyscraper-tall monster from a mile away.
This half-assed transformation, the movie implies, is her breaking old patterns, except it isn't because this is her glorifying a new activity she has shown no previous interest in. If she were going to stick with something, she'd commit to driving, the thing that textually she has been proven to be very good at and have an ongoing passion for. Since chauffeuring is a "lower class" activity, though, there is no attempt to incorporate that into her superhero identity.
In general, the film has a weird fascination with fetishizing capitalistic success, even as it also tries to set its characters apart from it. For example, there's a scene where Katy and Shang-Chi's sister Xu Xialing (Meng'er Zhang) have a heart-to-heart after being captured. Xialing confesses that she started an underground fight ring because she felt excluded by her dad, saying: "If my dad won't let me into his empire, I'm gonna build my own." To which Katy responds, "Hell yeah."
It's a response that has a very lean-in, "yaaaasss queen, you become that murderous warlord" sort of energy, and like no, that's the wrong lesson to take here. Their father, Wenwu, isn't a villain just because he's sexist, but because he conquered the world and bent it into violent submission. Xialing emulating that terror is not admirable, and yet by the time the credits roll, we are supposed to feel a sort of giddy joy with Xialing taking over the Ten Rings and integrating women into the organization. I am all for gender parity — and love a good female villain — but this framing felt weirdly out of place to me because her arc to become a dictator is portrayed as heroic.
The movie starts with the aesthetic of working-class superheroes before dropping that thread entirely to focus on the worship of the powerful. The condescending opinions of work that our leads endure at the beginning of the film are set aside. We stop questioning these accusations and instead focus merely on our leads' place in the hierarchy.
This film ends with Shang-Chi and Katy having dinner with their lawyer friend from the beginning, recounting the story's events. It's essentially them being able to one-up their friend who told them they had to realize their "potential." They have now realized it and are so much more accomplished than at the movie's start. This bit is followed by a refreshing moment of catharsis when longstanding MCU character Wong (Benedict Wong) teleports into the restaurant and validates Shang-Chi and Katy's story. I found myself openly clapping because I wanted the pair to succeed — to rub their success in their pretentious lawyer friend’s face.
I think it's interesting how this film decides to tell this friend off. In the end, they refute the initial accusation not by exposing how classist and judgy it is to look down on someone for their profession, as the film seemed to imply in the beginning, but by bragging about their heroics. Shang-Chi isn't disputing the nature of success. He is now successful. Whereat the beginning of the movie, he was contrasted against wealth and capitalist success; now, he has become an even more successful version of that persona. He and his friend have "made it." They started from the "bottom," and now they are saviors of the literal universe.
The moral of the story has the structure of a classic rags-to-riches success story, but even this is a distortion because Shang-Chi's destiny was technically thrust upon him due to his birthright. His wealth and family connections are what allow him to be such a successful fighter. While that might make for some interesting commentary, this film isn't deconstructing wealth inequality or nepotism. It's simply replicating those paradigms with no self-awareness. Shang-Chi and his sister Xialing are depicted as having earned their positions as hero and leader of the Ten Rings organization, respectively — even if that claim is ludicrous on its face. Shang-Chi had years of training paid for by his wealthy father, and he monitored both of them secretly for years, undoubtedly making sure they were okay.
Shang-Chi is not the working class hero this film initially portrays him being. If I were being uncharitable (and those who follow me know I am simply a peach), I would describe his story as follows: a rich boy runs away from his abusive father, tries to find himself for ten years by slumming it with creative, aimless types, and then comes home to reclaim his birthright. There is no rags-to-riches story here, and there is certainly no rejection of the hierarchy of work that we are initially set up to dislike.
Now, I don't want to paint this film as uniquely awful. We exist in an economic system where this opinion is the norm, and Shang-Chi and The Legend of The Ten Rings honestly wouldn't have stood out if the film hadn't initially set itself up as criticizing that system. Other films perpetuate this norm far more heinously, and there are many elements here that I do enjoy: the fight scenes; the comedy; the animation (again, this movie has CGI Nine-tailed foxes, you guys).
All this being said, this presentation of work is still upsetting because it ultimately reaffirms the classist idea that you have to utilize your potential by finding a job that others consider useful. It's not enough to drive cars around because that makes you happy. You have to take on a profession or skillset that is valuable, whether that means picking up a bow and arrow or using your fists to save the world; just make sure that you are useful and not poor.