Female Asian-Immigrant Representation in Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2

Female Asian-Immigrant Representation in Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 From the Hollywood behemoth that is Marvel’s Cinematic Universe comes Guardians of Galaxy Vol. 2, a typical fun, action-packed superhero film that follows Peter Quill and the rest of the eponymous team as they discover the answer behind Peter’s elusive parentage. Written and directed by white American filmmaker, James Gunn, the film grossed more than $838 million worldwide, holds an 83% on Rotten Tomatoes, and was honored with an Academy Award nomination. Yet despite this widespread financial and critical success, Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2, which introduces to the big screen Marvel’s very first female Asian superhero, crafts a problematic character in Mantis (played by French-Korean actress, Pom Klementieff). Hidden behind the film’s kaleidoscopic visuals and zany humor lies an age-old subscription to orientalism, yellow peril, and lotus blossom stereotypes, all of which together culminate in perpetuating a ruling class ideology that Asian women are helpless perpetual foreigners whose sole purpose is to serve and be saved by white men. This film is science-fiction. It takes place in space. Nobody, not even Peter Quill, is entirely human. Characters consist of one green-skinned alien, three blue-skinned aliens, countless gold-skinned aliens, talking trees, talking raccoons, and a man with a fin on his head. Yet it is Mantis alone who speaks with a heavy, non-Western accent. From her very first appearance, Mantis is singled out as a perpetual foreigner, a term that harkens back to the keywords of orientalism and yellow peril. Edward Said’s concept of orientalism emphasizes the contrast between the East as a mysterious, primitive land of “romance, exotic beings, haunting memories…” and the West as a progressive, civilized world (Said, 1). Yellow Peril takes the menace of the Oriental one step further, discussing how Asians seek to “threateningly take over” the West (Ono and Pham, 25). Together they have led to the concept of perpetual foreignism, the assumption that Asian-Americans, even those who have lived in the United States for generations, are constantly seen as potentially dangerous foreign immigrants. It is not only Mantis’ accent that distinguishes her as a foreigner, however. In this first appearance, Mantis is juxtaposed with Drax, a member of the Guardians whose extreme stoicism and inability to understand jokes establishes him, in the earlier film, as a source of comic relief. However, in this scene, Mantis turns into the butt of the joke, her ignorance even more pronounced than Drax’s. After being derided by Drax for failing to smile properly, Mantis admits that she does “not understand the intricacies of social interaction.” She is subsequently tricked by Drax into petting Rocket, the aforementioned anthropomorphic raccoon, who immediately tries to take a bite out of her hand. Naturally, Mantis screams and cries, but after witnessing Drax roaring with laughter, she swiftly transforms to relishing the stinging surprise, laughing alongside him and exclaiming in awkward English, “I like [the trick] very much!” Despite the film being set on Mantis’ home turf, it is nevertheless this Asian-coded character who is still portrayed as the primitively foreign, eager to please, yet socially incompetent alien. However, this innocent ignorance is only one side of Mantis’ “foreignness.” Later in the film, Mantis ascribes to that of the Gook, one of Robert G. Lee’s six faces of the Oriental, which represents the “invisible enemy and the embodiment of inauthentic racial and national identities” (Lee, 11). This term, which can be traced back to America’s loss in the Vietnam War, describes a foreigner who hides their true, treacherous loyalties underneath an outwardly model-minority façade. Mantis is stuck in an inescapably disloyal character arc; she can either choose to betray her master or she can choose to betray her newfound friends. Either way, her “national identity” is shaky. Mantis is initially the loyal servant of Ego, a man who has raised her essentially since birth. However, she gradually grows closer to Drax, and, after being violently accused by Gamora of purposefully hiding information from the Guardians, ultimately chooses to betray her master, sending him to his death. Add to the fact that Mantis’ comic counterpart was originally half-Vietnamese and introduced one month after the United States’ withdrawal from Vietnam, and Mantis as a Gook is all the more alarming. In a cinematic universe where everyone is a genetic “alien,” only Mantis is represented as a cultural “alien,” an ominous foreigner hiding behind a smokescreen of humorous social ineptitude. In a later scene, Mantis demonstrates to Drax, Quill, and Gamora her “empath” powers, which allow her to detect and influence others’ emotions through physical contact. This is a significant skill that could potentially turn the tide in any conflict, yet Mantis goes on to explain that she uses this ability merely to “help my master [Ego] sleep,” immediately establishing her as a significantly more passive, subservient character than her peers, and as a textbook archetype of the Lotus Blossom trope. In fact, Mantis fulfills every single characteristic of the Lotus Blossom, as defined by Ono and Pham; she is “sexually attractive and alluring and demure, passive, obedient, physically non-imposing…” (Ono and Pham, 67). Although not outright sexual (this is, after all, technically a Disney film), there is still a murmur of hypersexual undertones to her role as Ego’s servant. Helping her “master” fall asleep, even from a platonic standpoint, is nonetheless an intimate act, and the necessity of physical contact to effectively perform her duties only intensifies these erotic nuances. Mantis exists for the sole purpose of serving Ego, to ease his pain, suffering, and loneliness. This is the only life she has ever known, the obsequious servant the only role she has ever played. As a Lotus Blossom, Mantis’ own desires and interests are “simply non-existent” (Ono and Pham, 67). In short, Mantis is sexualized (even in the 22 recently released character posters for Avengers: Infinity War, Mantis is a mere one of four to be shot from the classic “three-quarters” profile), but maintains an elusively alluring, childlike innocence in her submissiveness. Mantis is weak, especially when contrasted against the film’s other two female leads, Gamora (played by Afro-Latina, Zoe Saldana) and Nebula (played by Scottish actress, Karen Gillan), who are presented as confident, strong, and aggressive fighters. In this same scene, Mantis reaches out to touch Gamora, only to be slapped away and threatened with a broken jaw. Immediately, Mantis physically retreats, drooping as she looks despondently down at the ground and plays nervously with her hands. Later, Drax even explicitly describes Mantis as “innocent,” “small and weak,” and during the final battle, Mantis is quickly incapacitated and knocked unconscious; Drax ultimately has to rescue her. Ono and Pham stress that Lotus Blossoms are “constructed both as sexual objects and as lacking power” (Ono and Pham, 66). Mantis, both as Ego’s slavish handmaid and as the physically weakest member of the Guardians, possesses both of these characteristics. Innocent and doe-eyed, Mantis’ simultaneously retains a sense of mesmerizing eroticism through her embodied figure and actions, all the while constantly failing to assert herself when physically and verbally abused by Ego, Drax, and Gamora. One could decode this scene from a negotiated standpoint and conclude that Mantis, and therefore Asians, are not necessarily more passive or weaker, but are in fact more civilized, collaborative, and eager to seek alternatives to violence as a means of conflict resolution. However, as the entire superhero film genre relies on adrenaline-pumping fight scenes, this negotiated decoding is merely a fruitless attempt to justify the Lotus Blossom stereotypes at play. Marx and Engels state the “the class which has the means of material production at its disposal, consequently also controls the means of mental production” and thus can subject the masses, who lack the resources, to their own ruling class ideologies, which are “nothing more than the ideal expression of the dominant material relations” (Marx & Engels, 9). It is important to consider this keyword in two separate ways regarding this film. First, we apply the term in-Universe. The ruling class in Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2i is Ego himself, who, as a god-like, Celestial being, has immense control over the entire means of material production. He can literally construct matter out of nothing. The ideology he instills is that of a “White Savior” and his responsibility to defend the downtrodden. One scene depicts this ideology quite vividly, if subtextually, occurs when Mantis describes how she was rescued by Ego after becoming orphaned on her home world. “He raised me by hand and kept me as his own,” she states, and proceeds to agree with Drax’s response: “So you’re a pet.” It is the white man’s justified duty to liberate the “Other” from themselves, and Asian women should be both indebted to their rescuers and accepting of any subsequent physical and verbal abuse. It is these two traits, a sense of gratitude and a tolerance for pain, that make Asian women the perfect companion. With the shadows of World War II, the Korean War, and the Vietnam War still lingering in today’s mind, this ideology continues to justify the fetishizing of Asians and the fixation on Asian war and mail-order brides. Even after Ego is revealed as the villain, this ideology is upheld in the form of Peter Quill, who valiantly stays behind to distract Ego so that the rest of the Guardians and Mantis can safely escape. However, I believe it is also vital to consider the ruling class ideology in the context of Marvel/Disney as a whole.

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