in Beyond Bruce Lee: Chasing the Dragon Through Film, Philosophy, and Popular Culture

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1 University Press Scholarship Online You are looking at 1-10 of 15 items for: keywords : Bruce Lee Beyond Bruce Lee columbia/ The main purpose of this volume is to reconnect approaches to understanding Bruce Lee with historical, cultural, and economic contexts and processes, as well as emphasize the ways in which Bruce Lee can be taken to illustrate some far wider theoretical, ethical, and conceptual problematics. This chapter sets the stage by discussing the need to look beyond Bruce Lee beyond the individual, the figure, the films and the other texts, and into the historical contexts of the emergence and influence of these different elements in order to make sense of who he is. It explores some key dimensions of the cinematic contexts that have a bearing on the dissemination of knowledge about Bruce Lee and his influence, as a way of opening and connecting Lee's films to other cultural contexts. An overview of the subsequent chapters is also presented. Bruce Lee Beyond Pedagogy columbia/ Any consideration of Bruce Lee must take into account his importance as a muse, an inspiration, and an educator. This chapter returns to key examples and instances of Bruce Lee and pedagogy, in order to set out and then to move beyond the established ground, and into some Page 1 of 6

2 vexed debates about philosophy, ideology, and cultural translation. It begins with a discussion of Bruce Lee's philosophy of Jeet Kune Do, before moving into reconsiderations of the relations between film and philosophy, culture, and ideology, as well as politics and ethics. It draws on Lee's oeuvre and intervention into relations with other Western popularizers of Zen, Taoism, and Buddhism, as well as with thinkers such as Jacques Rancière, Alain Badiou, and Slavoj Žižek. Bruce Lee Between and Cultural Politics Page 2 of 6 columbia/ This chapter assesses the discourses on Bruce Lee found in fields concerned with cultural politics, such as cultural studies, media studies, film studies, and ethnic identity studies. In these fields, Bruce Lee ought to be regarded as culturally-politically significant, particularly in terms of his contributions to Asian-American identity politics, diasporic Chinese cultural identity, the deconstruction of white Eurocentric hegemony in Hollywood film and notions of masculinity, his kinetic, symbolic and affective associations with civil rights movements and decolonization struggles, and so on. The chapter clarifies the ways in which all of these assessments of Lee's contribution, intervention, or significance imply one or another relation between culture, media, and politics, with film playing a constitutive articulating role. It indicates the extent to which many such studies of Lee's significance for cultural politics offer celebratory narratives which are slightly problematic in being utopian. It also draws on a Slavoj Žižek's argument about the strange exchange between Asia and Europe an exchange which is exemplified in the case of Bruce Lee. It explores the Žižekian critique of the kinds of protests, aims, objects, and achievements implied by those who champion Bruce Lee. Spectres of Bruce Lee columbia/

3 This chapter considers the various specters of Bruce Lee that circulate today. It focuses on the most recent return of the specter of Bruce Lee in Hong Kong cinema, where his figure can be found structuring major films as the Ip Man (2008, 2010, 2010) trilogy, Legend of the Fist: The Return of Chen Zhen (2010), and Champions (2008), among others. The chapter links this resurgence of the ethnonationalist specter of Bruce Lee, in particular to other recent films in which China emerges as a deliberate and prominent construct within films particularly those films which have been shot partly or entirely within China itself; films that are often part or entirely funded by Chinese sources. These films have taken the form of both nominally Eastern and nominally Western productions, and they all share a certain refiguring or reworking of the very idea of China. The Rise of Kung Fu, from Wong Fei-Hung to Bruce Lee Stephen Teo in Chinese Martial Arts Cinema: The Wuxia Tradition Published in print: 2009 Published Online: September 2012 ISBN: eisbn: Publisher: Edinburgh University Press DOI: / edinburgh/ This chapter examines the rise of the kung fu movie in the Hong Kong cinema. Kung fu is seen as a specific genre of the Hong Kong Cantonese cinema, particularly as represented by its prototypical hero Wong Feihung (and played by the actor Kwan Tak-hing) that gave rise to a longrunning series. The Wong Fei-hung phenomenon began in 1949 and has remained popular to the present day. The other kung fu phenomenon is that of Bruce Lee, the actor best known for his roles in The Big Boss (1971), Fist of Fury (1972), The Way of the Dragon (1972), and Enter the Dragon (1973) before his premature passing. The chapter analyzes how kung fu and wuxia are inter-related as well as how they differ from each other. Bruce Lee in the Post: Post-Colonial, Post-Modern, Post- Protestant, Post-Human Page 3 of 6

4 columbia/ This chapter argues that many studies and narratives about Bruce Lee end in disappointment as a result of the approach which is characterized by nostalgia. This nostalgia takes many forms. Some of the most common narratives are: Bruce Lee once politicized ethnic, subaltern, and postcolonial consciousness, but this energy dissipated; and Bruce Lee smashed certain Orientalist stereotypes about Asian males, but this ultimately intensified other stereotypes. The chapter looks closely at some of these narratives; considers the reasons for their trajectory towards disappointment; and proposes alternative approaches that may enable us to regard the times and places beyond Bruce Lee without either running into nostalgia for lost promise or delusions about the radical propensities of current or future conjunctures. The journey of this chapter will be from subject-centered approaches to Bruce Lee to what might be classified as more materialist or post-humanist perspectives on his interventions. Re-Enter the Dragon, Beyond Bruce Lee columbia/ This chapter reads the beyond of Bruce Lee in terms of the emergence of the Oriental style in Hollywood. It explores the intimate yet paradoxical relationship between Oriental martial arts and the drive for authenticity in both film choreography and martial arts practices; plotting the trajectories of key martial arts crossovers since Bruce Lee. It argues that, post-bruce Lee, Western film fight choreography first moved into and then moved away from overtly Chinese, Japanese, Hong Kong, or indeed obvious Oriental style ; a move that many have regarded as a deracination or Westernization of fight choreography. However, a closer look reveals that this apparent deracination is actually the unacknowledged rise of Filipino martial arts within Hollywood. Page 4 of 6

5 Beyond Bruce Lee: Chasing the Dragon Through Film, Philosophy, and Item type: book columbia/ This book provides an in-depth understanding of Bruce Lee and examines the artist from both a cultural and historical perspective. The work begins by contextualizing Lee, examining his films and martial arts work, and his changing cultural status within different times and places. It then examines Bruce Lee's films and philosophy in relation to the popular culture and cultural politics of the 1960s and 1970s. It also addresses the resurgence of his popularity in Hong Kong and China in the twenty-first century. The study also explores Lee's ongoing legacy and influence in the West, considers his function as a shifting symbol of ethnic politics and examines the ways in which he continues to inform film-fight choreography in Hollywood. Ultimately the book argues that Lee is best understood in terms of cultural translation and that his interventions and importance are ongoing. You Can Stay at My Crib, I Will Show You My Hood : Interethnic Male Friendship Crystal S. Anderson in Beyond The Chinese Connection: Contemporary Afro-Asian Cultural Production March 2014 ISBN: eisbn: Publisher: University Press of Mississippi DOI: / mississippi/ This chapter uses Lee s film Enter the Dragon (1973) to explore the theme of interethnic male friendship between African American and Chinese men in Frank Chin s novel, Gunga Din Highway, and two films released since 2000, Rush Hour 2 and Unleashed. Enter the Dragon engages an Afro-Chinese male friendship within the context of an international martial arts tournament in Hong Kong, providing a transnational backdrop that brings ethnic identity and national association into sharp relief. Page 5 of 6

6 Afro-Asian Cultural Production and the Rise of the Global Culture Crystal S. Anderson in Beyond The Chinese Connection: Contemporary Afro-Asian Cultural Production March 2014 ISBN: eisbn: Publisher: University Press of Mississippi DOI: / mississippi/ This chapter uses Lee s film Way of the Dragon (1972) as a model for interpreting representations of contemporary Afro-Asian cultural interaction. The film shows the successful navigation of a racialized urban landscape shaped by an emerging global economy, thus providing a cross-cultural model that resonated with African Americans. Way of the Dragon also resonated with youth emigrating from China to Hong Kong in the 1960s and 1970s who sought to maintain ties to a national identity in a strange and bustling metropolis. The film creates a transnational imaginary that places ethnicity at its center, resonating with Asian Americans during a time when they were being conflated with an Asian enemy of the United States during and after the Vietnam War. Page 6 of 6