No, seriously!  Someone actually SAID this!  Specifically, Chinese performance artist Zhao Bandi (does that translate literally as “schmuck with way too much time on his hands”?), who is convinced that the recent Dreamworks release Kung Fu Panda is a thinly-veiled insult to the Chinese people.  All of them.

I really couldn’t believe it when I laid eyes on it.  Bandi’s reasoning is about as flimsy as a moth-eaten silk robe–apparently, portraying a panda as having green eyes makes him some kind of evil lunatic and making the panda’s father a duck is an insult of yo mamma proportions on the entire country.  Check out his own words:

“Designing the panda with green eyes is a conspiracy. A panda with green eyes has the feeling of evil. We would never have used green eyes to describe a kindhearted figure.  Next, why is the panda’s father a duck? Many foreigners think that the giant panda is not just China’s symbol, but also the Chinese people’s symbol.  Drawing the father of the giant panda as a duck is an insult to the Chinese people.”

And–like you didn’t see this one coming?–he’s SUING.  Yes.  Bandi has filed legal action against Dreamworks for daring to portray a panda with green eyes and having a duck for a father.

If there’s any justice in the world, the courts will force Bandi to pay huge legal fees for wasting the court’s time with this nonsense.  Cultural imperatives aside, the panda is portrayed as the GOOD guy in the film.  He saves the entire metaphorical day.  Yes, the panda is a HERO.  With green eyes.  Are you that insulted by this?

The upshot is that all Bandi’s legal action seeks is an apology from Dreamworks, meaning he’s not using this as some kind of get-rich-quick scheme but rather because he’s genuinely torqued, but come on–is anyone actually projecting all this from one Jack Black character?  No, frankly–I don’t think of the panda as evil and I certainly don’t find any intent to insult anyone by making a cartoon panda’s father a cartoon duck.

At the end of the day, it is just another animated movie…it’s never a very good thing to take it too seriously.

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