this ming is a psycho
Let's move right on past the whole yellow peril angle of a villain like Ming the Merciless for a moment and focus on the real racist tragedy in Flash Gordon . There are no Lion Men from Ardentia in the film. Instead of the awesome Thun with the mane and the fangs, we get what amounts to a stereotypical African native type. And then, to add insult to injury, he gets killed by Ming after almost no screentime. Let's not even mention the lizard men, who we see not only in Ming's jail but also Arboria's jail. Plus, one is killed onscreen, to be mourned alongside King Thun, and he doesn't even get any dialogue. So then, there's Ming. In Astounding Wonder: Imagining Science and Science Fiction in Interwar America , Cheng (2012) argues that Asian villains in science fiction brought "the otherness of advanced and degenerate civilization... Degeneracy justified conquest--exploration's coincidental and expeditious by-product--as redemptive reclamation" ...