The complete and utter alienation of Tai Lung: Part 1
First thing first: I am not a Tai Lung defender so consider this an unbiased post.
So, Kung Fu Panda color theory is pretty much well known across all of the fandom, and it's obvious even from an outside perspective.
Po and the heroes are yellow/gold
Then Lord Shen's red
Kai's and Oogway's green
And finally Tai Lung colour is blue
(Also Chameleon is also yellow but this ain't about her).
And this is the one I want to touch upon in this post.
You see this graphic?
These are the three primary colours /yellow, cyan and magenta/ that come together to form the main secondary colours /blue, red, green/.
If you are in the fandom, or you just simply pay attention, you'll also know that:
Tai Lung's backstory has ties with Shifu.
Lord Shen's backstory has ties with Po.
General Kai's backstory has ties with Oogway.
But Kai backstory doesn't just simply have ties to Oogway like we were simply led to believe at large, but it also has ties with Po, because of his ties with the panda village and its effect on Oogway's reformation.
And with that, as you might have noticed, both Kai and Shen have, according to the chart, the colour yellow as a part of their secondary colour scheme.
With Shen in particular it goes a step further in that Po has red as a complimentary colour to yellow in some scenes.
Shen is also the least isolated of the villains (mental state doesn't count); always surrounded by his goons who he's going to use to conquer China and the Soothsayer, Shen is only truly alone at the end of the movie on the boat scene where he's just been defeated.
And Kai, despite the fact that he doesn't have goons that can bounce off his dialogue, is also never truly alone whenever we see him; he was a warlord leader of a huge army, he now has a jade zombie army and he often speaks to the Oogway amulet and narrates him whatever is happening, and, like Shen, he only becomes alone during his death scene.
They do tend to isolate themselves from others of their own volition...... but Tai Lung?
He has absolutely nothing. Nobody. Never had.
Returning to the colour wheel, his main colour is blue and he has ties with Shifu's backstory who, after the first movie, loses relevance for the rest of the movies. And blue itself is a pretty alien colour in the entire series (extended material included), it doesn't have any ties with yellow, much like Tai Lung doesn't have any personal ties with Po despite being in opposition, and Tai Lung itself doesn't interact much with the setting besides being a looming threat.
And it all ties back to his isolation and how it probably tied back to his turn to the dark side.
From the glimpses that we see of his childhood, Tai Lung doesn't interact with anyone else aside from Shifu and possibly Oogway, and I'm pretty confident in saying that he probably lived a sheltered life in the Jade palace. A childhood like that can inflict serious damage on a person's mental health in the long run as you don't have anyone who you can confront your experiences with, and it clearly carried on into adulthood, better explaining his fit of rage after being denied the dragon scroll.
Sadly, his loneliness carried on for the 20 years that he spent in jail. And after he escapes, he tries to claim back the dragon scroll by himself since he doesn't have an army or ways to gain allies, so he just carries on with nobody to support him and then he dies of a lonely, gruesome death that reflects on the way he lived.
The franchise itself then continues to portray Tai Lung less as a character and more as a figure of power in Po's journey, completely and utterly dehumanising him in every possible and conceivable way.
Ok, I must admit, maybe I gained a brand new appreciation for Tai Lung while writing this.
Part 2 in the works, this colored part will become a link once the writing is done.
53 notes
·
View notes