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Ryan Potter: Asian Gay Superhero

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Ok, he's half-Asian, and he hasn't actually made a public "coming out" statement, but he's definitely a superhero.

Supah Ninjas (2011-13) was a Nickelodeon teencom about a boy, Mike Fukanaga (Ryan Potter), who learns from the hologram of his dead grandfather that he's a supah-ninja.



He recruits his friends Owen (Carlos Knight) and Amanda (Gracie Dzienny), and they try to juggle lives of ordinary school problems with battling super-villainy.  Including heterosexism.

1. Mike and Owen are scripted, according to teencom tradition, as absurdly girl-crazy.  But they have a strong, overt, amazingly physical buddy bond, behaving precisely like boyfriends.

2. Mike is obviously being played as gay, regardless of the girl-craziness the script calls for.


3. The boys tacitly acknowledge the existence of gay people.  When they are assisting a woman, Mike asks "Is there anyone you could call?  A husband or a boyfriend?" Owen adds "Or a life partner?"

4. You're not going to find many teenage actors who are more aggressively gay-friendly than Ryan Potter (here voicing his opposition to California H8, the ban on same-sex marriage).









5. For a change, there's a lot of Asian and Black beefcake.

6. Grandpa is played by venerable gay icon George Takei.

7. Dad is played by Randall Park, a busy comedian who starred in the gay Asian-themed movie The People I've Slept With (2009).  He's not actually gay, according to the article "Randall Park's Coming Out Story" in The Korean-American Experience (he came out as an actor).







8. Brandon Soo Hoo has a recurring role as Cousin Connor, who is scripted as even more obnoxiously girl-crazy than his older cousin (writers seem to think that barely-pubescent boys making graphic sexual propositions to older girls is hilarious).  But he has also been involved in several gay-friendly projects, such as the buddy-bonding movie Everyday Kid (2010).

More recently Ryan has starred in Senior Project, Underdog Kids, and Lab Rats: Elite Force.  He's also a martial artist.


















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