Kung Fu madness began with Kung Fu running as a weekly ABC television series in 1972 and the rapid influx of Hong Kong films, which released under the development of both Shaw Brothers production company and Raymond Chow's Golden Harvest Production company in the 1970s. This paper focuses on on what characterized the Kung Fu films in the 1970s and what explains their appeal both then and now. Firstly, I analyze the Kung Fu films by comparing it with other genres. Then, I indicate three crucial characteristics of the Kung Fu films Lastly, I come to another important question of why Kung Fu films are popular among different social groups then and now. Compared to Samurai films of Japan and the western films of the US, Kung Fu films portray a distinctive hero image. The samurai is a middle-class figure through their attitude, costume and actions.The typical idea of the samurai, emphasized on the Kurosawa's Judo Saga, is controlling one's skill and using it defensively for social good, never for individual revenge and attainment.1 Western cowboys are the symbol of people who fight for the land and honor by virtue of their houses and guns. However, the Kung Fu hero, for example Bruce Lee, has no guns and swords, the tokens of the cowboy and the samurai separately; the tool available to him basically is his own body. The Kung Fu hero is the metaphor of the downtrodden and comes from a lower class. In his essay “Kung Fu Film as Ghetto Myth,” Stuart Kaminsky argues that Lee's films do not manifest any sense of common good as do Japanese Samurai films or American Westerns, but instead promote violence, vengeance, and destruction which meet the underclass' needs and values. 2 But next,I will point out that the violence or destruction in Kung Fu films has deeper meanings. Besides, the typical Kung Fu films have different value expression compared to the American television series Kung Fu, which absorbs China's Kung Fu culture. Kung Fu is set in the 1860s. The hero, Caine, is a Chinese Shaolin priest and is proficient in kung fu. Caine, having killed the nephew of the emperor in self-defense, had been forced to flee China and a large bounty was offered for his capture, dead or alive. So, we meet Caine on the road in the old west—in some episodes, avoiding bounty hunters and he is subjected to suspicion and abuse because he is Chinese and a “furriner in these parts”.3 In Caine's attitude, violence in any form is neither normal nor praiseworthy. It is only a last resort. In the essay of “Kung Fu:Violence and the Stranger in Our Midst”, Guinan indicates the Kung Fu training has two parts: the physical and the spiritual. The spiritual training is emphasized in the television series. It tells Caine what love and friendship means and how to share those affections with others. He experiences the universal brotherhood of all and is in touch with his own desires, fears and needs. With this kind of training he is able to live at peace with himself and with others. Guinan asserts that the myth of the wild west is being undermined by the television series Kung Fu. The American is devoted to keep the body in shape but neglect the inner life. The wild-west attitude – meaning nature must be tamed and hostile forces must be beaten down - became dysfunctional in postwar society.Americans need to recover a sense of reverence for the environment and the natural world around us.4 Obviously, the Kung Fu reflecting the American middle-class spiritual needs is not a real Kung Fu genre. Just as Kaminsky said, Kung Fu, which reveal the middle-class attitudes in which people are kind to others and reserve strength and ability and then you will be rewarded. However, the Chinese Kung Fu films are direct opposite in which strength and ability must be displayed. There is no reward except the satisfaction of revenge and the opportunity to warrant the respect of others who witness the performance superhuman agility. 5 Compared to other types of films, the Kung Fu films describe the lower-class Kung Fu hero whose fighting tool is his own body and express value and need of the downtrodden. However,if we want to gain deeper analysis of the Kung Fu films, beginning with its pioneering figure is a proper way. It comes to Bruce Lee who introduced Chinese Kung Fu to Western audiences and rewrote the history of action cinema in both Hong Kong and the United States. By systemizing relative reading materials, I conclude further three crucial characteristics of the Kung Fu films. As Flanigan indicated, two points that were to contribute to Lee's considerable success in the cinema world were his exactness in choreographing fight scenes and his adherence to the principle of believable martial arts movies.6 This reveals two important features of the Kung Fu films. The first one is the expression of the real Kung Fu. In the Kung Fu films, action is more important than plot and skill is more important than acting ability.Lee refused to use any special effects in his films, such as “glowing palm” and “flying gimmicks”. Lee used only those techniques that were genuine. In this way, Lee created a masculinity for Asians and Asian Americans in his Kung Fu films that was contrary to the “soft bodies” that had been represented in American popular culture. 7 The second characteristic of the Kung Fu films is the skillful and graceful Kung Fu performance. Kung Fu films adopt simple camera techniques, especially the slow motion gets heavy usage to illustrate flashy techniques in fight sequences. Just like the dance musical, fight performance is essential for the Kung Fu films. The Kung Fu hero uses the physical body to show the fighting skill, agility and superior coordination that a human body can achieve.8 There is a typical description of Lee's skillful and graceful fighting performance: “When he finally confronts the archvillain, an expert Kung Fu fighter like himself, Lee shows more of his fighting pattern and sequence. First, Lee jumps high into the air and meets his opponent's kicks right in the middle. Since they both have good fighting skills and agility, they have equal opportunities of winning. During the fighting, Lee's clothes are ripped and his muscular body is exposed to the audience. When his opponent draws Lee's blood, Lee marks this as his moment for revenge. Lee tastes his own blood before he charges full speed at his enemy to finish the latter's life." 9 The third characteristic is the significant antagonism plots between the Kung Fu hero and the villains.Kaminsky asserts that the main villain is a “father figure” and the father figure is always rich and a worthwhile symbolic adversary for the Kung Fu hero. 10 Flanigan argues that this analysis of a functioning oedipal complex of the Kung Fu hero but that is a rather superficial statement. Looking closely at the genre, it appears to be more of a class antagonism represented.11 The antagonist is usually represented as an imperialist type (Japanese lords) or a functionary of ruling class interests (Han, the heroin kingpin in Enter the Dragon). This analysis would be better supported when we derive back to the historical roots of almost every oriental martial art form that we know today. It is well documented, for example, that the Shaolin fighting arts were indeed developed in the Shaolin monasteries . However,the practitioners of these combative arts who had shaved heads and wore robes were not monks at all, but revolutionaries in hiding from agents of the Ming dynasty. It was not an attempt to end religion, but an attempt to ferret out the enemies of the dynasty that caused the burning of the two major Shaolin monasteries.12 So, the class antagonism in the Kung Fu films has been consistently inherited. After extracting the three characteristics of the Kung Fu films, we can respond to a major criticism that there is a large amount of violence in the Kung Fu films. As critics cite, frequently, over half the film's running time is composed of fight scenes. In my opinion, the fight scenes in the Kung Fu films is not pure violence. Instead, as I proved above ,the fight by virtue of the Chinese Kung Fu is not only a kind of skillful fighting art but a body language represented as the resistance spirit to the racial and political repression. So, the criticism of violence is unconvincing. As to the analysis above, we can find that the hero's muscular body and the fight against oppressors compose the core elements of the Kung Fu films. In addition, by connecting with specific film plots, the more cohesive and distinct theme emerges: the Asian or Asian-American's body is connected with nationalism and the fight is considered to be an aspiring approach to regain national dignity, which is clearly expressed in the Chinese Connection. It is set in late nineteenth-century China.Several Japanese Samurai warriors challenge the Chinese Martial Arts School in Shanghai by sending a banner reading “Sick Men of Asia.” The insult is immediately construed as a challenge to the physical body of the Chinese male. When the Lee character learns of this incident, he returns the same banner to the Japanese martial arts school and fights single-handedly an entire group of Japanese karate instructors and students. He fully demonstrates his superior martial arts skills and agility. After winning a victory all by himself, Lee speaks to the defeated Japanese, whose abilities depend entirely on their swords: “Now you listen to me, I will only say [it] once: We are not sick men!”13 In equating his body with “we,” the Chinese Kung Fu hero recognizes nationalism as a matter of physical strength and connects the body with individual dignity,family responsibility, and national honor. The aim of fighting based on the Kung Fu is to reshape national identification. By now, we can respond to another criticism of the Kung Fu films. In his review of the Fist of Fury, Weller criticizes that this film is filled with shallow national pride.14 However, according to the analysis above, we should notice that the 'China' portrayed in Lee's films does not correspond to any space of historical or cultural specificity but only serves as a moment of cultural imagination. 15 The physical body becomes an outstanding symbol of anti-colonialism and anti-imperialism. What's important is not the specific and real history but to express the body and its fighting. Now we can effectively explain why the Kung Fu films are so popular then and now. As Flanigan observed,the Kung Fu films attracted a huge black and Hispanic audience in the 1970s. This phenomenon could be explained from two aspects. Firstly, the Kung fu films under the Chinese cultural context were relevant to the American context and accepted by diverse American groups which were suffering social inequality in the 1970s. Kung Fu films were produced and released in the United States when the country was experiencing unprecedented racial violence and political turmoil. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, the African-American Civil Rights movement began challenging institutional racism and articulating the need for racial equality. The anti-Vietnam War protests questioned the essence of American democracy and the capability of American moral leadership in an international context.16 Violent fighting in this special circumstances could bring about the dignity and a form of redressing the social injustice, especially when it became difficult for people to resolve social problems thorough the lawful and legitimate approach. Secondly, from the social psychological perspective, the audience can easily obtain a visceral satisfaction when watching the Kung Fu hero clash with the established power forces and emerge the victor. Particularly, people who represent the most oppressed segment of a society would obtain great satisfaction, indeed enjoyment, in watching an antagonist be literally destroyed by the kung fu hero. Except the oppressed black people and other racial minorities,the masculine national identity represented in the Kung Fu films became identical to Asian-American cultural aspirations in that both tried to redefine and conflate their identities with the image of the masculine body. The Kung Fu films provide a possible scenario for Asian-Americans to rethink and reinvent the Asian male body.17 ------------------------- 1 Kaminsky, Stuart M. 1974. Kung Fu as Ghetto Myth. Journal of popular . p129. 2 Kaminsky, Stuart M. 1974. Kung Fu as Ghetto Myth. Journal of popular. p129. 3 Guinan, Michael D. 1973. Kung Fu: Violence and the Stranger in Our Midst. p919. 4 Guinan, Michael D. 1973. Kung Fu: Violence and the Stranger in Our Midst. p920. 5 Kaminsky, Stuart M. 1974. Kung Fu as Ghetto Myth. Journal of popular. p130. 6 Flanigan. 1974. KUNG FU KRAZY: or The Invasion of the ' Chop Suey Easterns'. Cinéaste. p10.7 Yuan Shu, 2003, Reading the Kung Fu Film in an American Context: From Bruce Lee to Jackie Chan, Journal of Popular Film and Television. 31:2, 54. 8 Ibid. 9 Ibid. 10 Kaminsky, Stuart M. 1974. Kung Fu as Ghetto Myth. Journal of popular. p136. 11 Flanigan. 1974. KUNG FU KRAZY: or The Invasion of the 'Chop Suey Easterns'. Cinéaste. p10. 12 Ibid. 13 Yuan Shu, 2003, Reading the Kung Fu Film in an American Context: From Bruce Lee to Jackie Chan, Journal of Popular Film and Television. 31:2, 55. 14 Weller, AH 1972. The Screen: A Chinese 'Fist of Fury'. New York Times. P53. 15 Yuan Shu, 2003, Reading the Kung Fu Film in an American Context: From Bruce Lee to Jackie Chan, Journal of Popular Film and Television. 31:2, 52. 16 Flanigan. 1974. KUNG FU KRAZY: or The Invasion of the 'Chop Suey Easterns'. Cinéaste. p10. 17 Yuan Shu, 2003,Reading the Kung Fu Film in an American Context: From Bruce Lee to Jackie Chan, Journal of Popular Film and Television. 31:2, 52.
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