Hidden Radicalism in Kung Fu Movies
There's a radicalism within the history of kung fu movies if you can get past Western orientalism and see the actual context.
Kung fu movies started during a period of British colonialism and began as a way to preserve and transfer Chinese culture. Starting in the 50s, these movies were about Chinese legends, tales, opera, rituals, spirituality, folk dance, imagery, music, costumes, aesthetics, and Chinese identity.
Many of these movies were made in Hong Kong, which was under British rule. The privatization of Hong Kong by Westerners also meant Chinese identity was under attack (we still see this legacy). Hong Kong became filled with factories. This is important to remember. Rich Westerners came to Hong Kong to get richer. It was their treasure chest. Movies became a way for Chinese people to keep something for themselves. For us by us.
Even from the beginning, it was normal to see near all-female casts. Or where all the leads were women. You saw female leads not as love interests but as the main lead, as the action stars. Michelle Yeoh is still around. What is a Western equivalent? In these films, you saw people of color not only beating up white men but beating them up violently with style. You even saw Asian men kissing white women.
In 1967, Hong Kong erupted in labor and anti-government protests. The colonizer did not like that. Dozens of people were murdered, and thousands arrested. It was colonial violence, anti-communist massacre, and worker and human rights suppression all at once. All leftist groups were quashed, banned, and imprisoned. This had long-term ramifications. The protests were what the West feared all along about communism, worker protests throughout their colonies and empire. Why haven't you heard of this? Journalists who tried to cover it were murdered. This is Western "democracy." (The West only likes protests when it's not against the West but asking for Western intervention.)
Now think about the kung fu movies coming out of this period within the context of colonialism and the quashing of a decolonial movement. Kung fu movies reflected what the people felt. The movies became angrier and more violent. The main characters were the types of people who became revolutionaries in China. It was about peasants and workers fighting rich oppressors, who were often settlers. These films were about rebellion. Fighting and winning at all costs. The oppressor must be defeated. The underdog wasn't a trope; that was their reality. This was a message that was already beginning to resonate with racialized audiences not only in the West but the racialized world.
Since Hong Kong was still a British colony, they couldn't make stories directly attacking them. So instead, they attacked Japanese oppressors who not only played themselves but also stood in for the West, especially after 1967. (Star Wars did similar where they couldn't outright criticize the US in Vietnam, so they made it about an all-white space empire.)
Anticolonial kung fu movies exploded in popularity. Since the West wasn't gonna allow them to make movies to attack them, people watch this now having no idea who the real enemy was at the time. (Same with Star Wars.) The West used its censorship to convince future generations that colonialism wasn't that bad. This is a pattern many still believe, that Western colonialism wasn't that bad, especially in Asia.
The US at this time was at the height of civil rights, anti-war, anti-oppression, and anti-empire protests. Consider how these movies read to these young radicals.
Also, think about how after WW2, you no longer saw the Asian leading man. Oh yeah, before then, it was becoming a thing. Asian men with white women were being represented, and then the US went backward. After WW2 and the demonizing of the East, which is a historic still existing legacy, you couldn't see Asian male leads. You couldn't really see Asian men. If you did, they were servants and domestic help. Otherwise, white men played them in racist caricatures. Asian women were allowed on screen, but they were sexual property. Think about this legacy that still exists, not only in media but in our collective psyche. Even for Asian Americans, can you really say you're free of all these internalized conditions and biases? It's constant work to resist them. You can't pretend there's a magic pill where you can just be cured.
Through Chinese kung fu movies, Western counterculture saw Asians in a new radical way.
The first major US kung fu/martial arts hit was Billy Jack. It was about a mixed-race Indigenous Vietnam War vet who is defending a socialist "Freedom School" made up of mostly BIPOC students. The movie pushed back against imperialism, racial injustice, and Indigenous oppression. It ends with Billy Jack getting arrested and everyone raising their fists in solidarity against the injustice. It wasn't perfect, but you could see how kung fu movies were very much influenced by the politics of the time, especially because anything from the "East" was code for Vietnam.
With the show Kung Fu, you saw orientalism and Hollywood's racism, especially by not casting Bruce Lee. But remember the American war in Vietnam was still raging. The Korean War had happened. The US is bombing every country near Vietnam and colonizing the rest. You can't symbolize the West more than the Western. So you still had this message, Asia is peaceful and only trying to defend itself, and the Western cowboys are always trying to kill them.
Kung fu movies were counterculture. Then orientalist commercialization really muddled the message and impact.
But US racism sent Bruce Lee back to China. (You still see this with singers, actors, models, and even athletes.) The US still didn't want a strong Asian man on screen. Even with Kato, Lee was mostly in a mask. Since Lee could also speak English and was mixed race, he was less threatening, but still, there was a line that he couldn't cross, and that was to show his face and be a lead.
Lee went to Asia as an angry, militant, unapologetic Asian man who wanted to be in big movies. Young people around the world were angry about Vietnam and Western racism. Hong Kong was mad about 1967 and British colonialism. It was lightning in a bottle. You couldn't have Bruce Lee without the radical moment he existed in. But that radicalism has been erased, and Western fans love him now as a fortune cookie and overpowered anime character.
In his movies, Lee moved away from Chinese opera and moved to gritty, angry fighting. His fighting style was fast and looked more like street fighting. More modern and urban. In his movies, he might have been fighting people in the past, but his modern style was a metaphor for beating up oppressors now. The choreography changed from a dance where we both stylistically take turns beating each other up. With Lee, it was one-sided—I'm just going to take my vengeance out on you.
Lee made movies about Chinese national identity and independence. He destroyed signs like, "no dogs and Chinese allowed" and "sick man of Asia" in his movies. "Sick man of Asia" was coined by British colonizers to say China couldn't self-govern and was in need of Western Rule. Every uprising meant they needed more British rule. The saying isn't about the physical health of Chinese people but that they were unmanageable and in need of law and order. The West was the cure. You heard "sick man of Asia" even more after the 1967 uprising. So who was Lee really kicking when he broke that sign?
Black people in the US, especially in New York who got first access to these movies, related to this message. This was during the time of Black Panthers and Black power. Lee's movies struck a chord in both China and racialized urban areas of the US. To rise up against oppression, you don't vote—you fight. He said you are strong. Your rage is power.
Movies about underdog people of color hit different for racialized communities. It wasn't just cool moves but something more.
For Lee, what better way to symbolize the fight against Western oppression than beat up chuck Norris at the fucking coliseum. Even the styles, Norris learned karate as a Western military oppressor. Lee was a Chinese man using a Chinese art. Both are doing martial arts but from completely different contexts. One was a martial art gained as a spoil of war. The other was a martial art of cultural identity and independence from the West, fighting off becoming another spoil of war. Lee even rips Chuck's chest hair. Remember, especially at the time, and yeah, even today, facial hair to hair on the chest was code for Western masculinity. Lee was saying fuck that. It was a fight not just between two races but two different bodies, two different types of masculinity. Remember Lee's flex off before the fight, imitating a cat? But Western chuds do love wolves, though...
You didn't see people getting kicked in the balls too much in Western movies, but kung fu movies changed that. Think about the symbolism of a Chinese fighter kicking a big white guy in the balls. After years of Western media metaphorically kicking Asian men in the balls. Context.
Lee was catharsis because normally invincible heroes were white dudes, not a person of color.
In New York, kung fu movies were influencing New York Black/urban culture and hip hop. Think about countercultures like extreme sports to parkour. You can see the legacy of these movies. Kung fu movies were an escape and a middle finger to mainstream white culture.
With Enter the Dragon, the filmmakers already knew how popular kung fu movies were to Black audiences, which is why Jim Kelly is in the movie. They had to put a white guy in the movie, however, to get it released in major US theaters.
White action stars at the time weren't buff. Lee was buff (go back to Norris). So was Jim Kelly (not John Saxon). It no longer seemed believable that John Wayne could beat up someone like Bruce Lee. Chinese martial artist Bruce Lee was different from the reactionary figure loved by many w supremacists—the samurai. The samurai reinforced colonizer traditional culture. Lee was counterculture and subversive. He not only snuck in Chinese philosophy into his works and interviews but also quotes from Mao.
During the height of "blaxploitation" movies, you saw Black actors in Chinese kung fu movies and kung fu in blaxploitation movies. Mutual sharing from groups cut out of the Western mainstream media. These movies also played in the same theaters. Through these American films, even going back to Billy Jack, "kung fu" was being used to beat up cops and the w supremacist state.
In real life, there was martial arts training among Black radicals, and martial arts schools popping up in Black communities.
But Hong Kong movies also violated a lot of worker and human rights. Endangering not just adult performers but children and even bystanders. Again, this all happened during British colonialism. Western "democracy."
I mentioned the privatization of Asia, right? So then came the 1997 Asian financial crisis. The economic material conditions are why you saw Hong Kong performers and filmmakers coming to the West (and places like Korea trying to find a Western audience for their media). Sell to the oppressor because the oppressor always has money—yours.
You couldn't have The Matrix without the influx of these filmmakers and performers. Some of you might be too young to remember, but there was a lot of controversy around "The Matrix" because they were shooting cops and other agents of the settler state and made them the baddies. Now you can see that's not unique to The Matrix but a legacy.
Would "kung fu" movies pop up in Korea, Thailand, Indonesia, India, and even Africa without their history of reactionary colonial oppression? Would these films hit the same? Could you also skirt worker laws to make some of these films without the legacy of reactionary oppression?
Here's the thing about cultural hegemony, though. If it's not upended, it still contaminates everything you do. It's the water that makes everything wet. So Western stereotypes for Asians still exist. But rather than just the Asian male weakling or female sexual property, you also now have the martial arts caricature. So it makes sense why Asian actors would push back against martial arts casting because rather than being liberating and voluntary like how it started, it's something forced upon you to restrain and limit you. The West is good at this. Taking something radical, erasing all the radicalism, and leaving only the commercialism they can make money off of and use to reduce people down. Icons become voiceless cartoons. So martial arts in the West is now full of reactionaries, and kung fu/action movies can often have reactionary messages. That's real.
But still, there's a revolutionary spirit within kung fu movies that appeals to many oppressed people—that the underdog can win with one decisive blow.
And one more message, that white supremacist Western nations are not worthy of your admiration.
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