Laurence Fishburne dons YellowMan’s Yakuza tattoo shirt beneath a suit jacket on Katie Couric’s talk show.
How perfect is it that actor Laurence Fishburne wore a YellowMan shirt when talking on Katie about his role in the latest Superman movie, Man of Steel? Why? Because director Zack Snyder’s choice of Fishburne to play Daily Planet Editor-in-Chief Perry White created a bit of a racial stir. Until now, Perry White had always been depicted as a white (pun intended!) character.
So what does this have to do with YellowMan? Well, the tattoo clothing line was created by founder Peter Mui as a vehicle to celebrate cross-racial and cross-cultural attitudes. This was a deeply personal endeavor for Mui, growing up Chinese in Oklahoma. Mui made it his mission to turn the racial slur “yellow” on its head and re-brand it into an expression of pride.
The late Peter Mui, founder of YellowMan tattoo clothing, along with three of his children.
For Peter Mui, the tattoo medium was an obvious choice to express his cross-racial mission. Tattoos held deeply personal meanings, they were literally colored on skin (the ultimate racial identity), and he observed that Westerners frequently wore traditional, Eastern-themed tattoos, and vice versa. Somehow, tattoos were breaking boundaries and ushering in the first examples of racial coexistence and cultural acceptance. So Mui traveled the world and commissioned tattoo masters of every style to produce original artwork, which were eventually produced into wearable art steeped in rich cultural identity.
So, back to Laurence Fishburne. There he is on Katie Couric’s talk show – talking about his groundbreaking role as a black man playing a traditionally-white Perry White, wearing a piece of traditional Japanese yakuza art by the late irezumi master, Horitoyo, in the form of a badge-of-honor YellowMan shirt – all beneath a purple suit jacket… Absolutely smashing and profound!
For the full video interview with Laurence Fishburne go here.
Get your own smashing badge-of-honor YellowMan shirt here.
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