Page 2 of
2 The geopolitics of kung fu
movies By Paul Foster
out the Chinese nation
geographically, and the characters and their
behavior become archetypical products that inform
the national consciousness.
For example,
Jin Yong's final epic The Deer and the
Cauldron, which was serialized from 1969 to
1972, provides a historically based fictional
account of Qing imperial consolidation, intrigue
and international conflict. The protagonist Wei
Xiaobao colludes
with
Ming loyalists based in Taiwan, a pseudo-allegory
of post-1949 Taiwan, and travels to Russia,
forming an alliance to thwart Wu Sangui's
conspiracy to overthrow the Kangxi Emperor.
Hero and Crouching Tiger perform the
same mapping function as the characters traverse a
vast space from western Xinjiang, to Beijing in
the northeast, and south to Wudang Temple in
central China.
This construction of
national identity also involves a construction of
ethnicity. Jin Yong's novels frequently turn on
conflicts between ethnic groups struggling to
dominate China. The cultural superiority of the
Han,who make up a little more than 90% of mainland
China's population, is ultimately reaffirmed
through struggles for sacred kung fu texts, even
if martial superiority on a dynastic scale is
temporarily elusive. Such works as The
Eagle-Shooting Heroes and The Demi-Gods and
Semi-Devils demonstrate both the breadth of
China's ethnicities and the primacy of the Han.
In addition to helping fashion national
and ethnic identity, the kung fu action provides a
complex vision of Chinese social values that
reinforces and challenges the audience's view of
China, ancient and modern. Cultural values such as
Confucian respect for hierarchy, central
authority, education and virtue are entwined with
swordsmanship that resembles calligraphy (and
vice-versa), poetry recited while defeating foes,
and loyalty to martial master and state. At the
same time, the films counterpose these individual
qualities of rectitude with national aspirations.
Hero's narrative, for instance,
demonstrates the wisdom of a powerful ruler and
his highly efficient military organization that
can build a peaceful and prosperous "nation". On
one hand, the individual's sword and kung fu
prowess, like one's moral rectitude reflected by
one's calligraphy, can overcome the massive
destructive efficiency of orchestrated arrow
strikes.
On the other hand, the ruler is
determined to assert the unity of "Our Country"
(the English subtitle gloss) over the hero's
thirst for righteous individual revenge. The fact
that the Chinese gloss for "Our Country"
(tianxia) literally reads as "all under
heaven" creates space for a reading that points to
China's rise as the pre-eminent 21st-century
industrial power.
East versus West?
Chinese kung fu narratives often propound
the cultural superiority of the Chinese. In
blatantly nationalist films such as Fist of
Fury, Bruce Lee uses Chinese kung fu to defeat
an entire Japanese karate school, thus showing the
metaphorical superiority of the Chinese over the
Japanese and other foreign imperialists in
Shanghai in the early 1900s. This nationalist
narrative is repeatedly re-performed in later
Fist of Fury film adaptations starring
Jackie Chan (1978), Stephen Chow (1991) and Jet
Lee (1994), as well as a 28-part TV series with
Donnie Yen in 1996.
China's superiority to
the West is a common theme in crossover hits,
particularly the films of Jackie Chan. Shanghai
Noon, for example, juxtaposes a corrupt,
violent and mentally unstable American wild west
with a cultured Chinese princess and her loyal
imperial guard, who personify moral integrity and
decency in the effort to save her. Rush
Hour portrays the honest and hard-working Hong
Kong cop using his kung fu and his brains to
outwit arrogant and bumbling agents of the US
Federal Bureau of Investigation at every turn and
ultimately rescue the diplomat's daughter. In
Who Am I, Jackie's would-be Central
Intelligence Agency rescuers engage in high-tech
villainy in their efforts to kill him to
consummate their illicit $500 million
nuclear-weapons deal.
In each of these
movies, the well-meaning Western partner serves as
a foil for Jackie's loyalty, ingenuity, honesty,
and bravery - the defining qualities of the
Chinese hero who metaphorically, as well as
literally, conquers the corrupt foreign world.
Hero and Crouching Tiger
function on a subtler ideological plane to
reaffirm Chinese values such as the centralization
of state power and the loyalty of individual and
clan to the state. In this way, they suggest a
cultural cohesion not dependent on the threat of
Western nation-states. A maturation of Chinese
consciousness with the onset of the 21st century
is indicated by a move away from obviously
nationalist movies that reflect a China struggling
with a 20th-century sense of inferiority to the
West and toward an exploration of Chinese values
and capabilities on their own terms.
The
Western assimilation of elements of the "kung fu
industrial complex" offers a corrective to
previous notions of a weak China. By successfully
exporting its stars, directors, styles and kung fu
(along with such attendant notions as chivalry and
valor), China thus has a platform for expressing
its values. By the same token, Western audiences
may view a more positive and proactive (thus
complex) China rather than blindly wallow in the
paradigm of prejudice constructed during the
semi-colonization of China during the 19th and
early 20th centuries.
The kung fu
hustle In the first four decades of the
People's Republic of China, film production was
tightly controlled for didactic propaganda
purposes. Hong Kong was the center of film
production in the Chinese-speaking world. With its
entry into the World Trade Organization, China has
gradually loosened proscriptions on the film
industry. These changes coincide roughly with the
success of the Taiwanese-made Crouching
Tiger. Now, many of China's most talented
directors have pursued formulas of blockbuster
commercial success after the money-making
potential of kung fu films was proved.
Directly drawing on Jin Yong's rich
literary and film legacy, Stephen Chow's Kung
Fu Hustle is an inspired caricature of kung fu
film. Kung Fu Hustle won at least 21 awards
and nominations in Hong Kong and Taiwan and was
the highest-grossing foreign-language film in
North America in 2005. Kung Fu Hustle
imagines a future for two of Jin Yong's most
famous martial lovers, Yang Guo and Xiao Longnu.
As writer, director and actor, Stephen
Chow taps into mythic archetypical action styled
by Bruce Lee and to characters created by Jin
Yong. A high level of kung fu cultural literacy is
mandatory to understand the rapid-fire inside
jokes and allusions that permeate every scene, but
the movie still appeals on the surface to the
uninitiated.
Thus the "hustle" of Kung
Fu Hustle is Stephen Chow's demonstration that
China can transcend more narrow issues of
nationalism and national identity and fully
embrace its own cultural forms. China no longer
needs to make nationalist pronouncements about
cultural subjugation in modern global society,
thus serving to seal its rise in the 21st century.
China has become a producer of artistic
and esthetic culture, not just consumer products.
It has moved up the manufacturing chain to create
higher-value-added cultural artifacts. As such,
kung fu film nationalism - and internationalism -
supplies both Chinese and foreign audiences with a
muscular, mythologized view of Chinese martial and
cultural prowess.
Paul Foster is
associate professor of Chinese at Georgia
Institute of Technology. His recent book is Ah
Q Archaeology: Lu Xun, Ah Q, Ah Q Progeny and the
National Character Discourse in Twentieth Century
China (Lexington Press, 2006).
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